Leadership BITES
Leadership BITES
Josh Fletcher, The Wellness Blueprint
In this conversation, Guy Bloom and Josh Fletcher delve into the complexities of stress management, exploring its dual nature as both a necessary and potentially harmful aspect of life. Josh shares his personal journey, highlighting the importance of self-awareness and coping strategies in managing stress effectively. They discuss the physiological responses to stress, including the fight, flight, freeze, and fawn reactions, and introduce the 3Rs framework: Recognize, Reset, and Refocus. The conversation emphasizes the significance of creating a supportive environment and the concept of 'visoring down' to maintain focus amidst external pressures. Ultimately, the discussion provides practical insights and strategies for navigating stress in both personal and professional contexts.
Takeaways
- Everyone experiences stress; it's a natural response.
- Stress can be both beneficial and detrimental depending on context.
- Self-awareness is crucial for managing stress effectively.
- The fight, flight, freeze, and fawn responses are common reactions to stress.
- Recognizing stress is the first step in managing it.
- Breathwork can significantly help in stress reduction.
- Creating a supportive environment is key to wellbeing.
- The 3Rs framework helps in navigating stressful situations.
- Positive actions can compound to improve overall wellbeing.
- You have the power to control your response to stress.
Sound Bites
- "It's all about buying time."
- "Action beats overwhelm."
- "You can control your response."
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Guy Bloom (00:00)
When I started doing podcasts, I mean, we're about 130 now, I used to get very anxious about every sound, every noise. If somebody came to the door, I'd freak out. Now I've relaxed to a state of just, you know, you know what? I'll be back in a minute. I've got to go and answer the door. So listen, let's say in pulp fiction, let's get into character. So here we go. So Josh, fantastic to have you on this episode.
Josh Fletcher (00:15)
It's life, yeah.
Guy Bloom (00:30)
of Leadership Bytes. Welcome.
Josh Fletcher (00:33)
I appreciate your invite and it's great to be here and hopefully share a few nuggets and some of my experiences and tales with people.
Guy Bloom (00:41)
Well, I'm very much looking forward to it. I've seen you on LinkedIn, which is where I seem to spend a certain amount of time every day just sort of mooching around. And now that I am at a reasonable number of people on sort of having interviewed and spoken to, I've now got to a place where I just approach people that look like, I was going to use the word interesting, but yes, interesting, but look like they have a reason.
and a sense of purpose in what it is that they're about. Because I always find people with purpose, you know, will hold space on an opinion. So with that in mind, I do, of course, know who you are, but it would be great just to get a sense of that. So I always ask the same kind of question, which is if you were at a social gathering and you got talking to somebody that didn't know you, and then they went, Josh, what do you do?
Josh Fletcher (01:39)
I would say that there's not a person that exists that doesn't have stress in their life. If you've got a heartbeat, you've got stress. And what I do is help people to manage their relationship with stress. And I also support people in removing barriers to wellbeing. There seems to be so many reasons not to do something. So I try to simplify wellbeing, self -care.
Guy Bloom (01:39)
What would, what would the answer be?
Josh Fletcher (02:07)
boundaries, switching off and just make all of these things accessible.
Guy Bloom (02:13)
Well, I've become quite fascinated by this topic, by some of my clients are in the construction industry. And as I've spent more time with them, it became quite clear about the level of stress that exists in that particular place in space. And if male suicides about two or three times that of female suicide, it's about four times higher in the construction industry. So.
I've, it's something that intellectually I understand inverted commas knew about, but I've really started to pay attention to it more. So I'm, I'm sitting on the cusp of having just enough knowledge to have an opinion. But obviously speaking to you is where I'll be educated. So we'll go down that path. But before we get going, I think it would be lovely just to hear, your.
journey to where you are today. I think when you're talking, knowing your background to a point, I think that really helps the listener have a strong sense of why what you have to say is rooted in experience. And I'd love just to hear your background and anything that you think is relevant to us understanding that.
Josh Fletcher (03:28)
Yeah, sure. So I'm from a large family, so I'm the youngest of four. There's not a great deal of time between us. There's only four and a half years. So what that meant is that my parents were out working a lot and obviously trying to feed four kids is no easy feat, especially when we're going through that hungry phase, like eating them out of house at home all at the same time. So I...
I essentially spent quite a lot of time on my own. My older siblings are off out doing older sibling things, didn't want to hang around with their baby brother. So I spent a lot of time on my own, which made me two things. Like number one, very independent and number two, very feral. And those are two kind of themes and traits that I've carried throughout my entire life really. And I probably now describe them as my biggest strengths, my biggest weaknesses, all bundled into one. Now I've kind of got an understanding of how to manage them, I suppose. So I,
Again, I'm a bit of a mongrel, so I've moved around. I'm a bit like made up of all these different parts. I've moved to the south, the north of England. I have no issues with just dropping sticks and disappearing or somewhere else. So I mean, the examples of that would be a year spent in India, three and a half years spent in Romania. I now live in France and split my time between France and the UK. I've worked in...
six or seven different countries. So I always had this like deep sense of adventure and I defined myself by wanting to challenge myself, be uncomfortable, adventure, and that's my life and my path. So those were kind of my values at that stage, which drove me towards this kind of wacky career and life path, I suppose, that I've had. And now I'm looking and building, creating more.
comfort, sustainability, calm and enjoyment in my life. So I've got, it's almost kind of come full circle really. And I recently just exited sport. I got into coaching as a failed rugby player. So I had hands like cows, I was never quite going to make it. And everything needed apart from the skill, which was quite fascinating really, because I wanted to work with people that had everything and the things I didn't have.
which was the talent really, everything apart from talent. So when I would work with athletes, it would often become very frustrating when this hyper talented individual, but they wouldn't put the work in that for me was really, really difficult to manage throughout my career. So I've done, I did 18 years in elite sport. So I did time with,
I quit my job as a personal trainer, but I had a thriving business. I was doing exceptionally well. And I jacked all of that in at 26 to go and do an unpaid internship, which took me five years to pay off the debt that I got into doing that. That was at the English Institute of Sport in Sheffield. I then got a job up in Manchester Institute of Sport, English Institute of Sport location. After that was with the GB Taekwondo program for London 2012. Managed.
to support, I was assistant coach for a couple of medals at 2012, led the water polo program. So it was kind of straight in the deep end in the S &C world, straight in the conditioning world. Then after that, I had my first kind of major speed bump and that was I got asked to reapply for my own job and I didn't get it. And I have all sorts of reasons that I now know, but at the time that was devastating because I defined myself by what I did, which is a really common issue. Then I...
got a job in pro rugby, so I just worked my like obsessive and I don't mean that kind of phrase, obsession is a word used by the lazy to describe their dedicated. I mean like genuinely took over my life and I can't remember a single positive thing that happened in my social life between the ages of 26 and 31. Not because there weren't great things happening, but just because I just shut them all away and pushed them all aside because that was all I could see.
So as a result of that, I burnt out. I fell asleep behind the wheel on the motorway on the M621 between Leeds, like up around that Leeds area. And that was in 2016. So I woke up on the side of the motorway and managed to escape. But that took place because of compounded stress and I'd burnt out as a result of that. So...
what my solution was to just like a mic drop, I just almost fled the country. I ran away and I went and got a job in India and I went there for a year and just refound my mojo. So I did India for a year, then moved to Romania for three and a half years working with the special forces there, setting up a human mental performance program for the special forces in preparation for what's going on over in the East now really. And then.
straight after that finished I thought I'm not ready to come back to the UK so off I went to France and Leon, had a child in the meantime. Then I was working at Formula 2, Formula 3 motorsport, just done a sprint in Saudi and now all in on my business so it's kind of gone full circle and I'm just not out for myself now following my path and my dreams. I realise that for the whole of my career.
I've been chasing other people's dreams. It was never my dream to work with Formula 2. It was never my dream to work in an Olympic program. It was me supporting someone else's dream. And I kind of realized that after about 15 of the 18 years and the last three, I suppose, have been about building my exit strategy and to where I am now.
Guy Bloom (09:40)
I love it. I love a windy road. You know.
Josh Fletcher (09:44)
No, it's definitely
that. It's like, it's all over the place. But the thing is, it's, I take full responsibility and ownership. It's my life's my path. Like, I like to say that I'm the captain of my ship and I'm Captain Josh and that's that. And I'd stand by all of my decisions I've ever made. So with like absolute kind of conviction and ownership, like that's the path I took for those reasons at that time, that was right. And then...
it doesn't work out, I own that and I move on to the next thing. So that's something that's really important to me.
Guy Bloom (10:19)
I get that and very rarely do I meet anybody worth listening to that hasn't had a list of successes but also a list of head -on -table moments where you go and that wasn't my finest hour you know that's...
Josh Fletcher (10:35)
I'm
the biggest failure I know and that's why I succeed. I've failed more times than I can imagine. Right now I'm almost collecting no's because I'm aware that every no is bringing me closer to a yes. So people aren't going to say no forever and I'm really crystal clear on that. So it's almost like I'm expecting a no, meaning I don't get disappointed. And for me that kind of...
Guy Bloom (10:47)
Yes.
Josh Fletcher (11:04)
that reframe is really powerful. And I used to do that in the personal training world when I was setting up, it's a numbers game. If I know that I could, if I wanted one client a week, one in 10 was going to, like three in 10 was going to book a consultation. One in one of those three was going to show up. Therefore I needed X amount of people to talk to each week every day. And I just played the numbers game.
Guy Bloom (11:25)
Yeah. Yeah.
It's, I've done martial arts all of my life and I read this one great quote, which I wish I'd said it, which was, and I'm going to absolutely butcher this, so bear with me for anybody that actually knows it, but it went something along the lines of, a black belt has failed more times than you can actually consider. That is why they're a black belt. It's the...
Josh Fletcher (11:56)
Mm.
Guy Bloom (11:57)
It's
the constant failure as in, I'm not doing that right. I've messed that up. It's that constant calibration. They're not a black belt because they started awesome, were continually awesome. And that's probably insert any sport here. You know, the list of failure actually makes you successful as long as there's learning and adjustments and calibration.
Josh Fletcher (12:21)
I think the fascinating
thing about sport and any skill really is that to make it, you need talent, you need the discipline, dedication, and I suppose you need the opportunities and you need the physical qualities. So you combine those things together and then you've got elite. But your talent is what your talent is, to a certain extent. It's dictated by what you're born with, by how you're coached, who you're coached by.
all those sorts of things, but all the other things can prop that up. So most people aren't reaching their glass ceiling or their own ceiling. So the other elements can encourage you to get there quite easily. It's the same in business. It's like, right, well, where's my ceiling? Well, my ceiling at the moment probably relates to marketing. Well, okay, what is it I need to do about that? My story, the story is solid, but it's almost like, well, people don't know what the story is because you don't tell it. Well, yeah, that's a good point really.
So that's where the limiting factor is. And I just use the same as the athlete analogy. It's like a physical training quality. If you've got no power and you need to kick someone in the head, then you're going to struggle to do that with any speed and people are just going to swat it away. So maybe it's the power that's the limiting factor from being able to win fights because you can't kick someone in the head. So it's reverse engineering is where I'm at, I suppose.
Guy Bloom (13:45)
I'm 55 now so I can't kick any bugger in the head anymore. But there we are!
Josh Fletcher (13:49)
It would still be
quicker than the average person would kick someone in the shins though.
Guy Bloom (13:53)
Well, somebody
actually said that to me. They said, how good are you? I said, well, I'm not half as good as I used to be, but I'm a lot better than you probably think I am, which is the way I kind of think about it. So listen, let's dive into stress. And it's a topic, like all things, that everybody knows the word. It's a...
Josh Fletcher (14:02)
Yeah.
Guy Bloom (14:21)
phrase that can be used very loosely. You know, I'm stressed. And it can be on point, but also it can be just said as a kind of throwaway statement. So if we were just going to start with a benchmark for...
If you are actually legitimately talking about somebody being, you could use under stress, fine, feeling stress, right, being stressed, you know, there's lots of little ways of using this word. Maybe I'm just going to ask you with no particular point other than just to...
talk a little bit about just that word and how you see it being used and when it is maybe a valuable thing but also maybe that's when it's gone to the dark side and now it's a problem.
Josh Fletcher (15:13)
you
Yeah, and stress is a natural response to...
fear of, it's a natural response to, it's a safety mechanism. And something is causing some sort of fear, something is causing some sort of stress. We're sensing a threat and often it's automatic and there's a dump of cortisol into the body. We have a ramp up of our nervous system response. So you've got your sympathetic and your parasympathetic is a ramp up and the parasympathetic
that is gives a calm down. So up here, the ramp up is fight, flight, freeze and form is another one that exists that we've been talking about now. And then the ramp down is rest and digest or rest and relax. So it's natural with hard, we're hardwired to sense danger. We're always scanning for danger. That's normal. That's absolutely normal. Stress is not a good thing or a bad thing. It just is. It's actually something that we need in our life. If we don't have.
We need stress in our lives to avoid boredom, to avoid monotony, to stay motivated, stay engaged, to stay alert, to stay aware. And again, it's a natural safety mechanism. The time that it becomes a problem is when the demands being placed on us outweigh our resources to be able to deal with it. So if we don't have the resources to be able to deal with what
is being placed upon us, then it becomes a negative thing. And even then, we don't need balance, but we do need to recover that balance at some point. So if it swings one way, we need to swing it back the other way to get to some sort of equilibrium or harmony, if you like. And there's a point where we're stretched. And that's important. That's absolutely critical in our lives. And there's a point where that will tip over the edge and become too much.
If you have a period of recovery is exactly the same as sport, you put someone in a hole and then you bounce them back the other end, ready for competition by recovering them effectively. It's absolutely identical. But the problem that we often have as human beings is that we don't do that recovery element because we're not consciously aware of what's actually happening to us and what is stressing us and what's going on. So then the resources are...
essentially your coping strategies, like your ability to be able to manage the situations that are going on. And that stems from self -awareness. That stems from understanding what your stresses are. That stems from understanding how you're responding right now. And I use that phrase responding and not reacting because a reaction is something that's often quite emotionally led. And I don't know about you, but 99 .9 times out of 10, out of a hundred, every single like,
when you react with emotion in an emotional situation or in a stressful situation, that equals escalation. So emotion plus emotion equals escalation. So that's something that I've experienced so many times. So then you ask the question, well, where are you contributing to the problems here? And if you're reacting with emotion to a stressful situation, then that's how you escalate things and they get out of hand and out of control. So then we kind of start to think, well,
Okay, that's all making sense. But where are we compounding the stresses now? So imagine you wake up in the morning, your alarm goes off late, you go downstairs, you burn your toast, you leave the house and then you get stuck in traffic jam, you get to work and then your computer won't load up. That's four or five different stresses, but your computer loading up, not loading up on time has got absolutely nothing to do with you burning your toast. They're totally unrelated, but they're
The linking factor is this dump of cortisol that goes into the body and it's just stacked on top. It's like building a Lego brick house and then eventually it will tumble down when it gets too high. So the most important thing really is to become aware of, well, I've just caught up late. All right. Okay. Well, this is a stressful incident. This is stressful. I don't like this. I wouldn't choose this. That was not an ideal situation. You need to do something to release the stress pressure valve.
so that the next thing that happens that's stressful in the day, because there are hundreds of things, you're not compounding. And it's really quite interesting when you do start releasing the pressure valve, you almost keep your stress threshold lower. So you lower your stress threshold, which obviously gives you, imagine if we all lose our minds at like an eight out of 10. 10 is like, we're just red mist.
having a meltdown on the street and eight is we would say we've lost control and you know that's not an ideal scenario. We'd probably all walk around at about a four, we'd need to, but if you're walking around at a six you haven't got far to go until you've actually losing your mind. So what happens if we can walk around at a four and then when we do get, when we do have that kind of dump of cortisol into our body it raises us to a six and then we can bring it back down.
that stops it going five, six, seven, eight, volcano. So that's essentially what we want to try and avoid.
Just got the sound off.
Guy Bloom (21:09)
Yeah, there's quite a lot there, which is great for us to talk about. The fight, flight, freeze, fawn is something that actually most people have heard of fight or flight. And I'm quite intrigued about that. I use it quite a lot when I think about most of my clients are in the, well, all my clients really are in the corporate space. And, you know, that fight response to
push back, to argue back and actually to prepare aggressively for a meeting and to be, it's not that you're just in fight mode in the moment, but you can be in a fight mindset because that meeting's coming, that conversation's coming. So you can see people who are in fight preparation.
regardless of the actual fight itself. And that can be on a rolling basis of, I have these meetings every quarter and I have to prepare for them. So you see that. The flight then is that passivity, that pulling away, that just playing safe, keeping your head down, passive aggressive, maybe agreeing to something in a meeting but having no intent to do it. So people kind of recognise those, but that...
That freeze and thorn. Let me say what I think it is and then you tell me if I've understood it correctly. Because I offer freeze from a place of almost like an animal staying still and hoping it won't get bitten. And it kind of goes, I'm in a meeting, I'm in a conversation. So I'm not going to go on the offensive. I'm not going to be seen to pull away.
What I'm going to do is I'm going to take a position of almost submissive passivity as in whatever you say. It's that freezing, it's not freezing as in they can't speak in a meeting. That's not what it is. But I'm actually freezing my opinion. I'm freezing my kind of, I'm not daft enough to go on the offensive and I'm not daft enough to pull away and shut down.
So if I kind of press the pause button here and just go wherever you... So I'll freeze what I think and I'll go wherever... Which means I have to suck it up, which means I have to swallow it. And that's got to go somewhere. And...
Josh Fletcher (23:43)
You've just perfectly
described form.
Guy Bloom (23:49)
That's fawn, is it? Right, so what's freeze then?
Josh Fletcher (23:50)
It
freezes that paralysis, it's rabbit in headlights. I know what the answer is, but it's not coming to me. It's that. You know, if you ever see a kid fall over, then they fall over, they have that crash on the floor. The first thing they'll do is they'll look up, they'll have a gasp in, and then the tears come. It freezes that, that first very, very initial reaction.
And it's that I didn't know what to do. My mind went blank. That's that freeze element there. And that freeze element is often the first thing that takes place. It happens in the military or police or any of the emergency services. You're trained, but then when the training doesn't kick in and do its job because the pressure's too high, that's that freeze. And people freeze in combat, people freeze in a fight. You know what you need to do, but you're like,
You just can't execute it. There's something stopping you and then you'll pull yourself out and then you can kind of take action. But that freezes that very, very initial, that initial part, which does exist. And you can freeze at any point in the conversation. Your mind goes blank. Then you start thinking, I'm aware that I'm not doing anything. The stress is rising, rises, rises. And then you just like, it's like paralysis. You just like stationary stuck.
Guy Bloom (25:17)
So in a workspace, freeze then would be that inability to offer your opinion, to verbalise a position, to... Because actually, the fear of the situation or the anxiety of the situation, the stress of the situation is shutting down your ability to, in essence, operate and to be of value in the moment.
Josh Fletcher (25:46)
Yeah, you're just your mind goes blank and the clear example would be that's just my mind's just gone blank or well, yes, well, yeah, well, well, okay. And there's telltale signs. But the key thing is for you to be able to recognize that and register it. So be able to pull yourself out and take the next step. And you can buy yourself more time with like, can you?
Can you just phrase that in a different way? Or can I just ask you to repeat that last section? And that's just enough time for you to then get yourself back down again to be able to respond.
Guy Bloom (26:29)
Am I right in saying that can you go to one that triggers you to go to the other?
Josh Fletcher (26:35)
Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. You can move in and out is situation specific. But normally, so these are all emotional responses and emotions like you probably heard of the chimp paradox. We have an emotional brain and some people call it a chimp and the chimp gets fed on. It's like fed by, you know, high, high stress, high pressure and emotionally driven responses or.
emotionally driven reactions. It's like giving it a banana. So when you're like, when you're choking, the chimp like, you know, eating his banana happy as Larry, your logical brain is absolutely going nuts. So you need to short circuit that chimp and chimp doesn't like logic. Chimp doesn't like reason. The chimp doesn't like you taking control and calming things down. Chimp's like, well, what's going on here? And then it will try and put another negative or...
like emotional thought in your brain, but you can short circuit all of this with your physiology. So the chimp is actually relatively controllable. And you do need to exercise that at some point, which is, you know, with emotional responses, etc. But it is relatively controllable. There are many different tactics that you can use to do that, which gives you it's just enough time to go, all right, I've heard you. All right, just give me a second here. And then you have a split second, a couple of seconds to
you know, move towards the next steps, which would be kind of regaining that control and composure.
Guy Bloom (28:06)
Yeah. So I could go, I could have a freeze response that maybe my embarrassment or somebody attacking me, why don't you know, then could push me into fight or could push me into flight. So I guess I could have the one reaction and then ricochet into the others. And that, that could cause compounding the issue, I guess.
Josh Fletcher (28:13)
Mm -hmm.
Absolutely.
Yeah,
because you're in a heightened response. You're in react mode and you can just ping around like a pinball because your body doesn't really know, your body and mind don't know the difference between being chased by a lion, your boss shouting at you in a meeting or a high stress board meeting or a rugby tackle. Your body and mind doesn't know the difference, but it's a trained skill.
So once you train that skill, you can train the response and you can train yourself to react differently and acknowledge the emotion, but choose a different pathway. So there's all sorts of different things that you can do to do that.
Guy Bloom (29:14)
So if we've got this kind of action, excuse me, reaction, which is like a, you know, I guess somebody stamping on your toe and you're swearing or something, action reaction, then in between you've got conscious choice, the ability to insert something in between that hard to maybe do when you're in the grip of the moment. But I think what I'm hearing you there, if you actually train it as a actual trained responsive,
that happens to me again, rather than do A, I'm gonna do B. So talk to me about managing and I know you have a bit of a unique kind of approach to things and it would be great just to hear if somebody resonates with, I do sense I have stress, there are certain things that trigger those responses. Walk us through how you.
Josh Fletcher (30:02)
Yeah, so I
think there's two separate lines really. It's like in the moment stress management. So what can you do if things are just totally overwhelming, like everything's hitting the fan. And then there's the chronic stress. So that's the buildup of stress over weeks, months, years, so that you are now chronically stressed. They're quite different. I mean, when you're chronically stressed, like the first thing you want to do is stop.
the stress continuing to mount up. So you can use the stress management tactics from in the moment quite effectively over in the chronic side, but you also have to have some bolt on elements that need to exist as well. So in the moment, one of the most impactful strategies I came across was with the came from the special forces. So when I was working with the Romanian guys, I was sent on a course, NATO special forces headquarters, mental performance and resilience course.
and I learned about this strategy called the 3Rs, I was quite fascinated. How can these people tolerate this crazy level of stress and pressure so consistently throughout their entire career when they deploy in training? Well, they've inoculated that stress, which basically means trained it under increasing pressure. And one of the tactics that they use is called the 3Rs, recognize, reset, and refocus.
Recognize that there is stress, that this is a stressful situation. Accept it and acknowledge the fact this is stressful. Even say it out loud because that self -talk has been known to have the same impact as someone else saying it to you. As an example, Josh, this is a stressful situation. Like, yeah, this sucks. You wouldn't choose this, but it is what it is. That's just enough time for you to do the next step, which is to get into your body and to use your physiology to alter your...
your natural stress responses. So you need to do something to lower yourself back down. So a couple of really great things that you could do. And some, all of these, the military guys use, and some of these will be useful for other people. So that would be some intentional breath work. So that might be that really common like physiological sigh. So.
almost like a double inhale. Doesn't have to be too aggressive. I know you can do it aggressively, so you could do super aggressive.
with that really long extended exhale. Just one of those has a massive suppressing impact. And I was on a breath -west course this weekend and looking at a pulse oximeter whilst doing this. It was fascinating.
Guy Bloom (32:45)
And is that because
it's part of that, its own methodology of bringing you back to you? As in you're in control of, start there almost. The one thing you can do is control your breathing and it gives you back that sense of being back in control. Is that what that's doing?
Josh Fletcher (32:58)
Yeah, it's.
It's lowering your parasympathetic, your natural response, sending a message to your brain that there's safety. The exhale, that long exhale, you're safe. It's sending that message back that you're safe in this situation. And that is what gives you enough time to move and enact the next steps of the final R. But just to add a bit more onto that, you can also...
stimulate your vagus nerve. So you can do some sort of vibration. So humming will stimulate that vagus nerve, a long exhale with a hum. And I'm given a few examples because I'm aware that if you're in a conversation with somebody, then you're not exactly going to start saying, you know, your boss is kicking off at you. Let's give us a second boss. I am aware that doesn't happen. What you can do is you can avoid mouth breathing.
You can take an inhale through the nose and a longer exhale through the nose. You can release the muscle tension. You can unclench your jaw. You can relax the muscles in your face, all of these things in a conversation. So when you stack these up, they're quite potent. And what that's doing is again, it's sending that message to the brain there that your body is sending the message back to the brain. You're safe. And that gives you enough time to refocus, which is the final R.
recognize. You look like you're armed to the question.
Guy Bloom (34:36)
And when you
say you're safe, is it because I've got this? I'm in charge. I'm not in free fall. You're saying because I am controlling the breathing, I am consciously relaxing myself. It doesn't mean that I might not still be anxious. It doesn't mean that I'm not still in an anxious. The context might be rightfully anxiety creating.
It's not that the context has changed, but I'm not free falling. I am in control. So is that then that message then going, is that the bit that's telling you, the brain, it's okay? Or have I misunderstood that?
Josh Fletcher (35:25)
No, it's...
It's not necessarily about I'm in control. It's that you're buying yourself a split second to take a positive action, which can change the situation. So it's saying I can influence this positively. This can have a good outcome. Literally the only thing that we can ever 100 % control in life is how we respond to certain situations. We can't control just about everything else, but that's one thing we can always control. But sometimes it's so overwhelming.
Guy Bloom (35:37)
Okay.
Josh Fletcher (35:57)
that we can't think logically about it. So you're buying yourself enough time. It's all about buying time. You're buying yourself enough time with these strategies, the breath work, you can do humming, you could do like literally shaking, bouncing up and down. This is buying you that split second of time to calm down the emotional response and think logically so that you can come to a more helpful solution that's not led by emotion. So you can be reasonable.
You can reason, you can apply logic and nine times out of 10 come up with a better solution. So.
Guy Bloom (36:32)
Yeah. I interrupted you on the moving to refocus.
Josh Fletcher (36:36)
The refocus side of things is like, right, what is the smallest next step, next positive step I can take in order to move into the direction I want? Now this doesn't like think micro level. So as an example, you've just come out of a meeting with your boss, like you're super stressed, like it kicked off, like things flying around everywhere. It was crazy. You get back into your office.
I'm going to shut my door. I'm going to pull my chair out. I'm going to sit down in my chair. I'm going to open my laptop. I'm going to put in my password. I'm going to go into my emails. I'm going to go to my calendar. I'm going to identify two slots where I might be able to call a meeting. I'm going to write the first line of my email and that micro level detail. It's almost action beats overwhelm. So you're diving straight into the next positive thing you can do and
This process can be clunky. This three hours can be clunky initially and it can take some time and some intention like minutes, but you can get this down to split seconds. And the example would this would be the motorsport guys. When I took that strategy to the motorsport guys and I was working with a guy who was a psychologist for about half the F1 grid at this point, and he was working with my driver as well. And I explained this and he said, yeah, it's great, but like we're talking like two tenths.
turn one and turn two so two tenths of a second so that that's too slow but here's what we can do we can do a it's already a stressful situation you're driving 300 kph that's not stress over it what is so what they do is they'll release the tension and they'll take a long exhale so when they cross the start finish line there's that
you know, a couple seconds on that start finish straight, but they will release tension, they'll relax the grip on the hands and they will.
take a longer exhale and refocus on what their next job is.
Guy Bloom (38:41)
Yeah, and that's all that is, is those three things in a predetermined pattern.
Josh Fletcher (38:46)
Yep, that's it. It's just straight to the reset.
Guy Bloom (38:51)
just recognising if my boss raises their voice to me or insert name here if anybody raises their voice to me in a manner where I go into my normal action reaction process and I can actually if I recognise what's occurring I will have a predetermined reaction an algorithm that I will then run because
I know that works for me to give myself the ability to reset and refocus. So I don't have to think about the three Rs. All I have to do is recognise the trigger point for the algorithm to run.
Josh Fletcher (39:25)
Two interesting things you said, algorithm, so I think of exactly a great word. It's in a computer, it's stored there. And once it's stored, you've got a memory. So you're remembering the response. yeah, I remember when this happened before. But it's a skill. Stress management is a skill and you have to drill it. If you don't drill it and practice it literally everywhere in your life, then it's never going to stand up under pressure. So I had a great example of this with the second driver I worked with. We explained this process and we went through it.
And he could do it when pressure was low, but as soon as it got to like free practice, pressure's low in qualifying out the window. He says, I managed it for two laps after that gone. It became too stressful situation because he hadn't practiced it enough in life and in other areas. So it's critical that we use these opportunities everywhere in order to drill the skill. And in order to.
stack up the positive habits so that when it does come to something really stressful, then we're like, okay, maybe that works there. It's not the identical situation because I don't know, that's like, imagine a road traffic accident compared to the stresses of your everyday life. That's extreme, but you still know that these tactics can work in that situation as well. So it's really valuable, but you've got to drill the skill.
Guy Bloom (40:47)
I'm fascinated by that. One of the things when I'm working with people, if we just talk about feedback and somebody's struggling with giving certain people feedback, the reality is, well it doesn't happen that often, Guy. Fine. But if you don't practice, if you don't drill the skill, it doesn't mean that you have to drill it in that exact context, because you may not be in that exact context. But if, for example,
you think, yeah, but I'm generally okay giving people feedback, but you don't use the methodology, you just have a chat with them. Actually, put it into the everyday. So actually, the skill is there, the algorithm is there. So when you need to dial it up, the methodology is already in place because you've institutionalized a set of behaviors for yourself that it doesn't come out. I think that's what I'm hearing you say.
Josh Fletcher (41:41)
Yeah, absolutely. It's like stacking up habits. And I've used this example for myself and I've got a couple of examples I could pull on where I've been using the three Rs for God knows how like three years or something like two and a bit years really, really actively. And all of these other stress management tactics as well. And I've been kind of bundling them all together, but you never really know when they're working until something happens. So it's like putting money into a bank account and never checking, never being allowed to check what's in there. And then one day,
Guy Bloom (41:43)
Yeah.
Josh Fletcher (42:10)
you get sent a message of how much you've gone in your bank account and you're like, wow, okay. But Jesus, a lot, I didn't realize that's compounded interest compounded positive habits, the same way that we could compound negative habits, the compound and positive habits. So the example that I had is that I had,
I lost my laptop. I left my laptop on the plane. Three and a half years of work gone and my whole business was gone. And I just thought, right, here we go. Here's an opportunity. So straight away I said, right, here's an opportunity. Let's see if this recognized reset works. And initially I was like, that is a little crap. It ain't going to work. This is too extreme. And I just went over and over and over. And I had a room full of people looking at me. You know, when something like majors happened and people just can't stop looking at you. They were like,
you've lost your whole business. And I was like, yeah, why are you so calm? This is freaking me out. Why are you so calm about this? Why are you all right about this? Just give me a minute. And I'm recognizing like, yeah, this is super stressful. What can I do about it? Right, reset.
refocus, right? What's the first thing that I can do? And it worked. And people just like, this is what you're doing. This is bizarre what you're doing right now. So that was the first example. I didn't get it back incidentally and I hadn't backed it up. So it's a schoolboy error for me. But I also had to accept that pretty early on. I had really fudged up. Yeah, no, back things up. And then the second example was something a little bit more funny, I suppose. I dropped a kilogram of yogurt in my open freezer.
Guy Bloom (43:37)
Mental notes yourself, use the class.
Josh Fletcher (43:48)
and all over the floor, my flipping slippers, a whole lot. And like, it was a tough, stressful day anyway. And I just went, bollocks. And then that was it, done. And that was, so it was less than a second. And then it took me half an hour to clear it up. But the whole time I was thinking, okay, this actually works. Like this genuinely works. And sometimes life just gives us these reminders of how well we're actually doing. But we're looking out for these reminders of how...
awful everything is. We're not looking out for these reminders of how well we're actually doing. So I started, that was a massive like turning point for me. Huge.
Guy Bloom (44:26)
And I don't know about you, I sometimes find that some people, they really like the vocabulary. So you can, some people can take that, recognize, reset and refocus, and it's really powerful for them to use that vocabulary. And then I find that, yeah, you've learned it, but it's a little bit like learning to drive a car. Then there's your style. And I will have, I'm not using this, but let's just take it as this. I can imagine that people would say with this.
Well, I'm not using the three Rs, Josh, but, you know, I can spot the situation I'm in and you're going recognize, and then I do take a moment just to take a breath and you're going reset, and then I come back at it, you know, and I'm in control again, you go, yeah, refocus. So, yeah, for some people using the vocabularies key, but also I think when it becomes so familiar to you, you're not necessarily thinking consciously in those terms.
Josh Fletcher (45:01)
Yes.
you
you
Guy Bloom (45:19)
but it's gone inside of you now as a set of behaviors that you can actually identify. You might not be using the vocabulary, but you are doing the process. And...
Josh Fletcher (45:20)
Yeah.
You don't want people to be using the vocabulary once
it's learned and habitual response because that's slowing down your ability to put it in motion quick. So the motorsport guys, military guys, this is like a split second. So once you drill the skill, once it's in, it's just in. It's the same as any type of skill. It's absolutely fine. Nobody's precious about language, really. It's...
You take a framework and you apply it to your own context of your life and what resonates with you. If the three R's does, great. If it doesn't, then call it the, I don't know, call it a 17 step process towards managing your zen. It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter.
Guy Bloom (46:14)
Yeah. Now, we've got the... Talk to me about the visor down. What is that referencing? What's that part of? And how does it fit into what we've been talking about?
Josh Fletcher (46:27)
Yeah, I think...
It's this idea of blocking out what you don't need. So what you need is in this space here. So you are any type of situation that you can create this kind of, I use the visor, visor down because it's very easy for us to imagine a helmet and with a visor that's on and you can't see lots of things around you. You can only see what's in front of you. And I love that analogy because,
for me that was what I observed with the military guys that when they had a job to do, they weren't thinking about, they were able to move and compartmentalize things that didn't need to be engaged with and thinking about at one particular moment in time, like what's happening at home. They were able to like just separate these things and say, right, in order for me to be able to execute this to standard, this is where I have to put my mind.
And the motorsport guys did exactly the same. They just kind of cleared all the noise away and just zoomed in. And it's almost like that tunnel vision focus that they can pull on everything that's inside their mind in order to get the outcomes and the results that they want. So yeah, it was just an interesting way to say hyper -focus.
Guy Bloom (47:53)
almost like a
it's like a call to arms isn't it that sort of you know that yeah it's that call it you know when you know when you watch the film Pulp Fiction you know they're talking about hamburgers in the car and then they go right into character which is that recognition that okay for a fireman okay let's go and put the fire out if you're an f1 driver right visor down yeah right visor down yeah it's that flick
Josh Fletcher (47:58)
exactly what it is.
You'd see it. You'd see it.
Yeah, a great example of this is one of the F1 drivers now. Oscar Piastri was in the team of my first driver in F2, so he was in the same team. Nice guy you'll ever meet in your life. Like super chilled. Like he's almost flipping horizontal. When he puts the flight, he's a different person. Like absolute animal. Like a totally different animal. And then he takes the helmet off. He's like horizontal again. You just think, what's going on here? But he's the absolute...
salute personification of this like becomes a different person. Nothing else is there. It's just bang. And it's a little bit fight mode, but it's fight clean, fight hard, fight fair, fight focused.
Guy Bloom (49:02)
Well, it's professional mode.
It's job. It's time to do the job.
Josh Fletcher (49:08)
Yeah, but for me it represents a bit more than that. It's almost like you can have time to do your job, but you still got a lot of the stresses and pressures that are existing elsewhere that are placed upon you. You can be in a meeting, like you've got a hyper, a super important meeting, but you can still be thinking about whether your team is carrying on with jobs three, four and five that are also a priority. It's almost like...
It's like a flow state and getting into that flow state.
Guy Bloom (49:41)
So, Advise It Down is that
hyper -focused, it's that it's not do your job, it's that it's time to do the best version of yourself doing this. It's to not to be, not to go down the emotional rabbit hole, not to be caught out by the red herring. Be that version of yourself that has singular focus, knows what you're about, puts the resources that we've been talking about into play and do the job.
that sets you apart and ease you at your best. Almost like bring it, now's the time.
Josh Fletcher (50:13)
it's it pull
on pull on everything that exists in here understand that you have everything that's needed inside your helmet your right with next to your rise you have everything and no other thoughts opinions influence matter apart from informative information from your engineer if you're driving a car but like nothing else matters and being able to block all of that out and just zone in and say and it even includes that whole
Guy Bloom (50:19)
Right.
Josh Fletcher (50:44)
self -talk of you've got this, you've done this hundreds of times before, you know that you can do this or even changing that I'm scared here. Yeah, yeah, it's okay to be scared. It's good to be scared. Be fearful, but let's use that fear. You're scared because you're doing something you're not done before, but this is what you've trained for. This is what you want. This is why we're here. And it's that whole kind of like tough as it's tough as teak. It's like you, you,
you're ready, you're prepared, you're just in the zone. It's like a combination of zone, professionalism, flow, and knowing that deep sense of knowing that you've got everything inside your helmet to be able to deal with it.
Guy Bloom (51:26)
Yeah, that's a great phrase. You've got everything inside your helmet that you need. That's a lovely word. That should be a t -shirt.
Josh Fletcher (51:32)
We have,
I mean, the problem with problems, I've been thinking about this a lot recently, like, more often than not, the problem isn't actually the major issue, the major issue is the way we're thinking about the problem. And that's what's standing in the way of us. That's what's standing in the way of something being, you know, this level problem compared to something escalating. Often it's just the way in which we're approaching it.
Guy Bloom (51:44)
Yeah.
Yeah, so it's your competence capability plus or minus your inner dialogue that is going to affect or infect your outcome.
Josh Fletcher (52:08)
Yeah, but even that, I would add something around emotion into that somewhere because you don't have to have the capability. I don't have the capability for many things, but I know that I can go and either get the capability, but if I'm super anxious and emotional about what my lack of capability, then I'm stuck. But if I'm from understanding the situation, I'm understanding a lack.
capability, I'm staying calm enough to be able to recognize those things, then that gives me the ability to actually make positive steps towards a solution. So it's a little bit like getting out of the problem and into the solution as quick as you can. And that's absolutely what the military guys do. It's like, you know, they do their hot debriefs and then they'll do their longer debriefs and they'll go into the weeds on things. And it's almost like in the moment, it's like, yeah, we...
We cocked up there. Yeah, we acknowledge that. Yeah, right. One thing you need to change. I need to be faster through the door. Okay, done. What do we need to do next? Dot, dot, dot. Okay, bang off we go. And it stops you overanalyzing a problem and allows you to continually move forward. And then when you're in a calmer state of mind and more, you have more time and availability.
headspace and energy -wise, that's when you can do that kind of deep dive into what took place and why, but you don't have to do that in the moment. That's rarely the right time to do it anyway.
Guy Bloom (53:43)
You know, Jordan Peterson talks about making your bed as a kind of a life kind of stepping stone. You know, if your life's not in control, just start by making your bed, then tidy your room. And really what he's talking about is this capacity to take control of what you can take control of, even though you can't change your context. You may be unemployed and maybe your other half has left you.
Josh Fletcher (54:09)
you
Guy Bloom (54:13)
Maybe you have made some bad bloody decisions in your life. Right, what's the knit? What can you control? Right, clean your teeth, brush your hair, iron your clothes, just take control of, and this is that path, isn't it, of do your breathing. You can control that. You know, it's that kind of, these are stepping stones to, then you can think about what you're gonna do next. And will it work? Well, it may or it may not. However, you'll be,
Josh Fletcher (54:17)
you
Guy Bloom (54:42)
doing it on purpose. It won't be, the situation won't be controlling you, you'll be controlling your response. It's not called the it'll work out well methodology, it's called the whatever it works out it'll work out but you'll be in control of it.
Josh Fletcher (54:44)
Yeah.
Yeah, there's a couple of things that I always like to talk about with this. I like to use the analogy of stack like a thousand positive habits or a thousand positive actions, not habits, actions. So we get so caught up in like, I've been through phases where I've had like a lot of things that I need to work on, both personally and professionally. I'm like, Jesus Christ, where do I start? And I write these lists, I write these sections. Have I done something for my...
physical health today, have I done something for my mental health, have I done something for my business and we've got all these lists flying around all over the place as check boxes. And in the end, I just thought, you know what, sod this, I just need to start. And so I've actually got a page in my book which has one, two, three, four, line across five. I don't know what they call that when you do like a stack of five numbers. One, two, three, four, line across five. One, two, three, four, line across five.
And I said, I'm going to stack up a thousand positive actions. I don't care what they are, but they have to be a positive action. And I'm going to check in with myself every 200 and I'm going to have a little 250, sorry, I'm going to have a little celebration every 250 and I'm going to check in and see how I feel. So those positive actions were, I would not press snooze. I would get up and do some sort of movement or I would get up and do some breath work or I would, if I had a habit of being late, I would, I would.
every time I was on time, I would put a positive action. And so I would just go one, two, three, four, line across five, one, two, three, four, line across five. And I stacked them up. And before I knew it, like I thought, I'll check in with myself. I'm feeling pretty good at the moment. I wonder how many I've done. And I was over 300 and I circled to 250 and I was like, this works, like genuinely works. I have no pressure on myself. I wanted to hit a thousand and I wanted to hit it quickly, but I didn't put any other parameters on it. So that's stacking up the...
Positive action is a really, really easy way to start prioritizing what you're doing well, rather than bagging on yourself for what you're not doing well. And plug that on your fridge, put a pen next to it, and then in the evening, it's a great time to do it, because you can think back over the day that you're looking at and you're seeking out the positive things that happened in the day. So it's this kind of cross between gratitude slash acknowledging the things that have gone well. And there will always be things that you've done well, like someone cut in front of me and I didn't lose my head.
Okay, good check and before you know it like some days you have three things and you're like, I better get on that tomorrow as opposed to I've only got three. It's like tomorrow They limit you get up you take two positive actions making your bed leads to the next the next the next so That's that's one thing that I wanted to mention and the second thing is about your environment So your internal and external environment the things that you said and Jordan Peterson's like
elements of control, your external environment you can't really control that much of. That's people around you, what other people are thinking, what other people are saying, how they're maybe acting, the types of things that the conversations that are going on, social media.
the weather, the climate, all these different elements. You can't control lots of those things, the relationships you have as well. So what a lot of people say was if you can't control it and you need to remove it, well, what if you can't remove it? Well, the only thing you can do if you can't remove it is change how you respond to it. So that's that responding and focusing in on what you can control.
in within your external environment, whilst you're still trying to exit. So you want to build your exit strategy. But whilst during that build of your exit strategy, it would be to focus on what you can control and your reactions. With your internal environment, like we 100 % need to take full responsibility for what we consume, essentially through our eyes, our ears, our mouth, our nose, through social media, through conversations, through the drama that we invite into our life, through how we're
reacting to stresses, what we eat, what we drink, that's what we can take control of. And what tends to happen is if you remove your focus away from external or focus on internal environment, then you rapidly start to get huge changes taking place in your life, regardless of how much carnage you have and chaos.
Guy Bloom (59:30)
Love it. So Josh, time is never in my favour when we're doing these things. So I just recognise we're approaching an hour, which I tend to censise about the tops for most people. I've not reached the heady heights of a Joe Rogan podcast where we can talk for four hours and actually everybody will listen to it. Yet, yet. So.
Josh Fletcher (59:51)
Yet, yet.
Guy Bloom (59:57)
Josh, if people want to connect with you, if they want to reach out to you, if they just want to see what Josh is about, where do they go, Josh?
Josh Fletcher (1:00:08)
Yes, you can check out my website, wellnessblueprint .co .uk. And I'm also hanging around quite a lot on LinkedIn these days, just my name, Josh Fletcher. Then on Instagram would be wellnessblueprint, you know, at wellnessblueprint, Twitter, at coachblueprint1, because they didn't have wellness blueprint available. So yeah, that's where I hang out.
By all means come and have a look around and what I'm doing. I've got a few different bits and pieces and offerings that I can support people with. But I just enjoy talking about how to remove barriers to wellbeing and stress. So yeah, I'm grateful for the time.
Guy Bloom (1:00:51)
Well, perfect. So wellnessblueprint .co .uk, Josh J. O. S. H. Fletcher on LinkedIn. That'll all be there. Stay on just to make sure that everything uploads. And other than that, I just want to say thank you for an hour of your time. It's been a great conversation. One of those ones that could just go on and on and on into more and more detail, but I think it gives a really strong flavor of you and also some really useful stuff just to think about and consider. So thank you, sir.
Josh Fletcher (1:00:57)
Yeah.
Guy Bloom (1:01:20)
Very much appreciated.
Josh Fletcher (1:01:20)
My pleasure, thank you guys. Thank you.