Optimum Performance And Mindset With Special Forces Psychology Veteran Garry Banford

Summary: Todays podcast interview is with a Special Boat Service (SBS) veteran who agreed to share his insights into psychology, performance, motivation and mindset. Make sure you support the podcast though Patreon to help grow the podcast. https://www.patreon.com/thinkinglikeagenius Garry Banford now runs  DuratusUK which is a  performance and mindset coaching business to help people achieve their optimum potential and maximisetheir results. Find out more at https://duratusuk.com/ For the books which we discussed in the podcast here are the links. Drive theory - Dan Pink  https://amzn.to/30FgcKQ Stealing fire - Steven  Kotler https://amzn.to/2XRcmkE Rise of Superman - Steven Kotler & Jamie Wheal https://amzn.to/2XOfcad The Obstacle is the way - Ryan Holiday https://amzn.to/2JOC2ER Facebook Messenger link https://m.me/thinkinglikeagenius Facebook Page - https://www.facebook.com/thinkinglikeagenius Twitter - https://twitter.com/ThinkingLikeAG Pinterest - https://www.pinterest.co.uk/thinkinggenius/ Follow us on socials and make sure you share the love. Lance Wantenaar Full Transcript 00:00:41 Welcome to thinking like a genius podcast helps support the growth of the podcast through Patrick on and get access to support or only content. Today's guest is Garry Banford. Garry is a special forces veteran who retired out of the armed forces and started up his own business. He is the epitome of a thinking soldier and has qualifications in psychology and performance. He now runs Duratus UK which helps individuals and teams develop their optimum performance mindset. Duratus UK's goal is to make your mind strength your defining feature. You learn how to perform under pressure you improve your ways and methods to cope with overwhelmed banish fears over thinking and also procrastination which is the biggest problem for a lot of people. You'll also feel less anxious. You will have a clearer thought process and you will see daily challenges in a completely and also different light because the different perspectives. I had the opportunity to discuss a lot of very important mental processes and issues dealing with performance and how to improve it. He was a fantastic guest. We had a really interesting discussion about a number of topics. He can give you some fantastic tips, actionable ideas and to get in touch with him what you do is contact him on Instagram or Facebook using Duratus_UK or go to his website which is DuratusUK.com. I will post all these details on his contact information in the show notes. I'll also be including some of the links to the books which we discussed in the podcast. So make sure you stay in touch or get in touch with Garry. 00:02:37 Gary thank you very much for coming on the thinking like a genius podcast. 00:02:42 I was pleasantly surprised that you agreed to it because I came by a bit of a left field introduction through it was Instagram and I was actually quite intrigued when I first started looking at your site and the areas that you were involved with. 00:03:00 Lance So there's a couple of things which I found interesting is that your background is obviously from a psychological background because you studied psychology and then you went in to the armed forces and then ended up getting into the SAS and then once you left that you started going back to your kind of roots and then started using your experience in the armed forces plus also your education to go into your current business that you're in. So can you give us a bit of a background on yourself and where you are at the moment or what you involved with at the moment. 00:03:41 Garry Banford Yeah absolutely. Thanks for having me on board. So yeah no thanks for reaching out. It's always nice to connect with people moving in like minded souls as well. 00:03:49 So a little bit about me I love you said studied college only to the A-levels or standard and I often say this to people I studied psychology sport and physics and at a time that nobody really put those three subjects for at least two of them sports and psychology together. This was before performance psychology or sport psychology is really this is back in 96 95 and that was it was it was just bubbling away but there wasn't really an awful lot much of a trend with it so it just worked for me. 00:04:23 I always enjoyed the topics and how they both two things work together so I enjoyed that had a position at university again bubbling away. 00:04:34 But if I'm honest it didn't really float my boat out I was at the time I was looking for a little bit of adventure I was looking for that excitement I was looking at my options I was 18 years old and as an 18 year old who knows what they want to be when they grow up right. 00:04:49 So I certainly didn't so I went down to the Royal Marines careers office initially applied to be an officer and again I think I was 17 and a half at the time and they said I qualified but we'd like to get into a bit more life experience and they recommended I go to Australia go sheep shearing or something like that on a Australian farm. And I walked out of the careers office thinking that's not really what I want. So I almost walked straight back and immediately said Look I want to join the Marines as one of the lads and that's what I did. Again went through the Marine training in 1997 and went through straight through first time which is becoming more and more unusual again. The reason why I was doing it was you know I was never a particularly athletically strong I was always very average but I was just very determined that gave me a career for about four or five years in the Marines before the twin towers attack happened and I'm sure will come onto this a little bit later. But I on watch in the Twin Towers attack. I'm sure yourself can remember it. Lance and many or all of your listeners above a certain age will be able to remember it. You know that feeling that it hit me with I was serving in the military at the time and just felt like I wanted to do something about this terrorist problem and at a time. Again not really wanting to argue the rationale behind it but at the time for me it seemed logical to step in and volunteer my hand up and volunteer for UK special forces which I did again. 00:06:22 So I went through completed that beginning of 2003 and then I was a volunteer for the SBS actually Lance just to correct you a same selection process as the SAS. 00:06:34 So I was a volunteer for the SBS and that's where I spent most of my career from 2003 right up until Christmas just gone by. I finished in December and looking back. I've had words of probably extraordinary career. You know I do think people will look back over that period of time and the situations and environments and the challenges that we were thrown into post 9/11 were extreme to say the least and I know I've certainly learned a lot about me. 00:07:06 I learned a lot about the teams of the guys that I worked with and about human performance and I think one of the touched on just the start of the opening was I've always viewed my viewed my career through the lens of psychology and performance psychology. And I've always used various things to help me in that and I wasn't always great at it. But as as my career's developed and dealing with chaos has become a little bit more normal shall we say. 00:07:36 Those techniques have become more honed and I've become more proficient in them. 00:07:40 I had an incident maybe about four or five years ago when we started within the group to employ performance psychologist. He started talking about stuff in a particular class that he was delivering to the group and I was looking around the room and a lot of people were fairly blank looks and I was thinking myself well everybody use these techniques right. 00:08:02 Turns out that they didn't and hadn't been dealing with all the stresses and strains of the mental stresses and strains of the job by using these simple techniques and it was a reality check for me that I'd probably not done a great job of really talking about what was going through my mind. Maybe when I sat in the back of a helicopter towards a particular area of interest or on the ground when all sorts of things were going on around us and potentially losing control of it. 00:08:30 So it was a reminder to me that you know there's always stuff to be shared and to be learned from that point I guess I did a little bit of a better job of communicating that to my men and to my teams my friends. 00:08:41 So yeah that's that's me in a nutshell I guess right now. 00:08:44 I've since left and you know as you mentioned I run my own business helping elite teams relief organisations or business says business people individuals just perform optimally with a mindset and a performance so something I'm so passionate about. It's always been something I'm passionate about and that's that's where I find myself right now. Lance Wantenaar Digging a bit into the optimum performance side of the discussion. Yeah there's a lot of focus obviously on optimum performance when you start looking at the information which is published. I'm going to use an example of the British cycling team which has become so you could say the vanguard of high performance. You could see results in the way that they and their approaches that they use because they use the 1 percent marginal gains and they they really focused on making small changes and you know focusing on all of the small changes to get a compound effect of increased performance. If you had to take the marginal gains act approach how would you use it within a business sense or a personal sense Garry Banford There's a lot of value. My personal opinion is a lot of value to the marginal gains and we can all be marginally improved in lots of different facets of ourselves. I work in every part of our lifestyles etc. If I'm honest I think most people we're talking to you know that marginal gains principle worked very well with an elite sport like cycling where the gains to be had over your competition can be significant. You know over these long distances in the elite level that everybody is already performing at. But if we're honest with ourselves I think most people can't really relate to the level of performance so by much more into tones principle of the 80 20 and you know there's way more gains to be had in focusing on your strengths and focusing on the things that you're really good at and most of us have huge gains to be made in those areas as well as much as we like to think of ourselves as elite performance athletes. You know even in my background it's something that I always used to talk about with younger guys as they were coming through. Maybe thinking about a career in special forces you know everybody looks at the selection process that as this. 00:11:14 People that served in the military this is you know it's almost an impossible task order performance standards required are just an incredible level. The reality is that the performance standards are actually very achievable and there's thousands and thousands of people have managed to pass these tests. People's problems of self belief and people's problems actually are thinking they're good enough to even attempt to try it. 00:11:42 So I buy into marginal gains and I think at the elite level there's absolute value to it but I think for general people and for most people we could talk all day about sleep. For example with how most people could get the best gains in their performance whether that's lifestyle health wealth even in just getting a better night's sleep. And you know that this isn't marginal we're talking huge leaps in performance advantage. So you know I'm happy to talk about marginal gains with the elite cycling team. Lance Wantenaar I'm more and more about there's lots of general things that we can look at to get these advancements in it from a general perspective. All of these things that I've looked at if I just look at some of the examples my own life I've as you said sleep is a big big factor in actually making a big difference not just on overall functional capability but it gives your brain the capability of actually going through a proper rest cycle switching off and making sure that it can actually process some of the stuff that it's dealt to us almost on an active basis during the day and really good quality sleep is fundamentally really important. There's a lot of misinformation which people post on various forums and whatever you where they where they purport that you know high performance people or really successful business people in their sleep. 00:13:09 It is probably one of the biggest misconceptions that you can get because if you don't have proper sleep you start having a cumulative knock on effect on your cognitive ability. You start having cumulative knock on effect in your house because you start eating foods which are really high. You could say calorific value but low nutritional value to maintain the energy demand and yourself. And what happens is that you you start having a bunch of other knock on effects because of that because your nutrition is starting to have a knock on effect. And you try and support your system by using various other methods like loads of caffeine bad bad food just to give you that thing so you can keep on going. And that starts having a massive the cumulative knock on effect. What you're saying is is that you start making mistakes and then you start going into a massive spiral and at some point along the line you will get to a point where you'll you'll go completely wrong and you'll have a crash of some sort and you basically burn yourself out. And the other thing that I that from to me is fundamentally really very important is nutrition. I really dislike the term diet because a diet normally infers that you restricting yourself in a way that's going to be detrimental to your health. If you're looking at nutrition you start looking at the bigger picture of your quality of your food the types of food and all of the other things that you look at and your mindset actually changes to actually focus on not just what you eat but also when you eat and your food choices change over time of course. What other performance tips would you would you have for people as a base for the meat performance comes down to those those key ingredients. Garry Banford 00:14:56 You know you mentioned a lot of things around sleep. People only know what they know right. And so it's no great surprise that people will spout about what they know and what works for them. The reality is you can't you can't argue with a research you can't argue with the actual data. And in my old organisations used to not value sleep. The process to get people into the organisations know didn't value sleep and the training didn't value sleep. The operations didn't value sleep could be easy to sort of say well you know we were we're working just fine. The reality is we weren't working often optimally because we were we were so drained and we were just living in a state where this is how we felt. And this is what was normal to us. There's that famous sort of information of how much or how little sleep Margaret Thatcher used to get. Oh great. Okay so you know she basically wasn't making fantastic decisions when she was in charge of the country. You know that you can't argue that all the data points towards cognitive skills your decision making your memory retention you know all these things are clearly evidence that the lack of sleep performance drops. 00:16:05 So you know everybody's different. Granted but I think we all need loads more than what most people are getting. 00:16:11 So sleep will always be something I look at I'll always look around you mentioned nutrition again. People get so wrapped up in the finer details in it rather than looking at the macros you know. But meat is more about education it's more about training watch their daily lifestyles. 00:16:26 At the end of the day we're all creatures of habit and the habits that we have are part of our makeup. And you know when people really get a bit of a self reflection on their own habits then when they start to see themselves what the performance or mistakes they're making or when they can have. 00:16:44 The gains again that's a that's on a case by case basis. But there's some big general still think normally comes down to education food sleep fitness and just daily think daily good habits that you can you can put in place to change. Change how you react and work with the environment that you're in. Lance Wantenaar Yeah. Do you actually find that these you could say general good practices then has a knock on effect on people's mindset and motivation as well. Garry Banford Well of course but again I'd argue that they probably don't realise it at first. You know they people don't make the link between six hours sleep for five nights in a row and feeling like rubbish you know they just don't make that connection because it's just what they used to they used to feel like this and like you mentioned that they they have got habits that they need when they first wake up. I need a massive coffee. That's great. You know coffee is awesome you know. And you can enjoy your caffeine cake but people believe that they need these things and that's that's where we get into problems. This is all down to habits. Again I'm not I'm not knocking coffee at all but I'm a big fan of coffee but I think people's understanding of the effects that it has on their physiology is massively skewed. 00:18:01 Lance Wantenaar Yeah. My personal kind of history is coffee is fine. I'm fairly lucky I'm on caffeine insensitive so I can drink a significant amount of coffee and my heart rate won't go beyond its normal beat but because I know I'm so caffeine insensitive I compensate by controlling exactly amount of coffee that I drink. And also I try and get the best quality coffee that I can get. Yeah so it does mean that I go down the nth degree. But you could say pedantic about things when I started going down down that road. But I get roast on demand coffee as good quality as what I can get. And it means that one I enjoy the coffee that I drink but then I don't I don't try and push the limit just because I can. So I just drink the coffee that I have in the morning and the rest of the day I'll drink water or drink you know some other form of tea or something of that nature which is non caffeinated so I'm completely the other way. 00:19:01 Garry Banford I am sensitive to caffeine. Two coffees back to back and you can't shoot me up. So I really I really have to be careful with it. I very rarely you know I choose not to drink coffee after sort of three four o'clock of an afternoon. I've definitely made the switch to green tea. Long live green tea. Again the benefits and myself just enjoy that. 00:19:22 That's interesting because I find this sort of for quite interesting is each person's physiology is incredibly different in how they react and things and that's the other key thing which I think a lot of people need to realise is that there's no cookie cutter thing that's going to work definitively for each person. This in general things which will work but each person has got to educate themselves on their own. You could say parameters in which they have to function which ones work for them which ones don't work for them if they don't take that responsibility of actually educating them about themselves. They'll never really get those benefits over a long period of time because people 17 seem to rely on a lot of generalist statements and they don't actually fine tune it to make it work for them or relevant to them. 00:20:09 Oh absolutely. I mean most people just buy into the next fad example of anything you know if there's a new fat diet a new the next best thing that's just come out people will jump on board that because they're looking for the easy heart. But really it's no surprise. So it shouldn't be a surprise to people that you know everything should take a more generic rules generic best practices that people should know about and then absolutely take a personalised approach. In the day each of our brains is the most complicated thing in the universe you know is any wonder that I got especially you know all the things we eat and the things and the things we think or all have a different effect on all of us. 00:20:47 Garry Banford So is it really that surprising or is it just when we sit down and think about it and we actually remind ourselves that this is obviously the case now. I am 100 percent with you on that. Just one thing works for one person is that you know there's no logical reason why that would work for another just as very generic rules that are best practices and these are the things we have to try and adhere to. 00:21:07 Lance Wantenaar You mentioned a couple of interesting things because my previous podcast guest that I had a state Stefan Chmelik who spoke about the vagus nerve when we went it went into quite a lot of detail about that about how your your gut health has a direct effect on your overall health but also on your brain function capability because of the vagus nerve. 00:21:28 And people actually fail to realise how important actually taking care of their nutrition has got a direct effect on their mental capability. There seems to be a massive you could say a missing link where people don't realise that what goes in is definitely going to have an effect on what happens in the head. It's almost like putting in a poor quality fuel in a car dirty fuel on a car. If you have that you're going to start having problems with misfiring engine damage poor performance as a bunch of other knock on effects because of it. It's the same thing that happens to a person when you start putting in rubbish few or the poor quality food it has a knock on effect on other parts of your actual overall house. 00:22:14 Garry Banford Yeah. No of course you know there's these things these sounds like common sense when you say it but I always smile at the saying that the least common sense is is common sense right because we know most people are like sheep we just go along with what most people are doing and what things were being marketed by and you know not really understanding the effects that all the decisions that we're making. Most of the time you know almost subconscious leads most people. So yeah there's no surprise to me that this is the case. Again I don't profess to be some form of absolute athlete or you know some sort of a well-being warrior. No that's not me at all. I make good sensible choices based on what I know and I continue to try and learn and to grow and to constantly develop my knowledge in these things these areas that will make me more and more healthier more educated. It's just a it's just my good practice that I've got into. 00:23:05 So yeah I don't profess to be some sort of high performance machine although we all all you know I just choose to just make good choices healthy choices you know then I'm not wrestling with these decisions of meat into diets or needing to starve myself in and try and sort of drop so many pounds for a certain a certain period of time so you know I just don't I don't concern myself with all that too much I just try and never pretty healthy life make pretty decent decisions most of the time. Keep it simple stupid learn something that's always worked for me. 00:23:35 Lance Wantenaar You're digging into these two of my favourite topics as well is motivation and mindset. Yeah give us a bit of insight into your views on motivation and also mindset and how they all interlink and how are they. They're all tied together. 00:23:54 Garry Banford So I've not listened to all of your podcasts I love lists to a few and so I don't know if I'll be covering old ground but again I don't profess to be the greatest scholar on all of this. Again I like to keep things really simple for me what's always made an awful lot of sense is just differentiating between the extreme motivators and the intrinsic motivators. And again for yourself it would all be pretty obvious but I'm going to speak to all of your listeners and so maybe some of them don't understand the differences and just those extrinsic motivators being money fame et cetera you know they're not great. 00:24:28 You know people will be motivated a little bit by those things but the really deeply motivated or the deep motivation comes from those intrinsic triggers which things like the greater good of other people helping others and these acts of gratitude and things like that. So for me again related it to my career I guess if I'm honest you know I joined the military just because I was looking for adventure I was looking for excitement at that point in my life I never for one second joined thinking that I would do over 22 years. That was never my plan. Nobody plans or not many people plan that long in advance right. And I certainly didn't either. But you know as things progressed you know I was I was quite enjoying it at the time based on what I knew that I was traveling the world with a great bunch of people and we were having a good laugh doing it's not a bad place to be. Then when the Twin Towers attack for me that was the intrinsic motivation to seeing you know the apparent terrorist attack. I just thought to myself I need to do something about this global terrorist problem you know and whatever that might be in very conscious that one person is always going to struggle to make much of a difference. But however it worked for me and volunteered. You know I was thinking about. I grew up reading. Bravo Two Zero. You know the one that got away books like that and they. So to seed I guess for you know a military career. It sounded really exciting stuff of dreams really. As a boy growing up running around the fields playing army or whatever. You know what. So those seeds have already been sowed. 00:26:00 But again as I experienced nobody ever really thinks they are good enough to be in UK Special Forces because all you ever hear about is the failure rates and so I was probably one of those guys that I I thought I would like a go but I never once expected I was going to knock it out the park. Well after 9/11 that was the real impetus for me to say you know what now is the time. You know I'm not going to get more experience doing what I'm doing. I'm not having an effect on the bigger picture in this job and so for me that was that was my motivation. And then again the rest of my career through all the troubles from all the chaos and through all the the difficult times you know being surrounded by like minded people doing it for the team you know doing it for my friend next to me or you know taking sometimes large risks with my own life I guess sometimes it was always as part of that group. 00:26:51 And no there's no point that you could ever just put your hand up and giving you know you had to just keep going to the end because other people's lives your friends lives or the people you're going to try and help were dependent on it. And so that was always a massive motivator for me. 00:27:05 Looking forward now again not wanting to debate the rationale of my career in UK SF. You know I'm sure lots of people have lots of mixed opinions but you know as I've left now to have left and absolutely looking forward to new chapters and I've got a young family you know my motivation now is around you know being the best father I can be for them and having the most time flexibility which is why I've gone into my own sort of coaching business that allows me. Yes I'm very busy with it but it also allows me a certain amount of control over my time which is the one thing I guess that I probably had the least control over over my 16 years. It's just I'm sorry 22 years that's just gone. You know it was always a thing that probably troubled me the most so now to shape my life going forward with my own business to be able to put the times that I'm choosing to work at the forefront of what I do. It's been a great, It's proved to be a great success for me for my own well-being I think as much as anything. Lance Wantenaar With regards to coming out of the forces and actually starting up your own consultancy. Yeah obviously there's a certain amount of mindset that's associated with it. There's obviously is very big impact for a lot of former forces people as when they actually come out that's a big challenge for them to make that adjustment to public life. And a lot of them seem to struggle with that. What was the difference in your mindset and your approach that you use here. 00:28:32 No. Yeah I understand the question. So this is this is something that I don't want to sound too controversial on but this this constant message that we're getting that people live in the military struggle. I mean is this that of course there are people that struggle and I'll talk about why I think that is but is it a lot of people. Is it the majority or is it actually something that's being made an awful lot of. And in the hope that this sort of government supports these guys a little bit better for me. I was ready for many years to leave. Personally again I guess I enjoy my career before having children and parts of it that I enjoyed certainly the camaraderie the friendships the band to the experiences some of them were fantastic. Know once I had children however you know when you're talking about risk and I'm sure we'll come on to that we talked about risk and you know you think in the big picture for yourself you know you put things into balance. And for me I was very ready to leave the military by the time. But there's this great characteristic of an immediate pensions. And so this was something I wrestled with personally for probably four or five years. You know time will tell if I made the right decision for me. I was ready to leave. So I'd been thinking about this for an awful lot of time and this is I think the one thing that most people don't get right they don't spend enough time thinking about what it is. It's really you know we mentioned earlier about motivation what it really is that's motivating people to do what they do. We're all creatures of habit. We're all sheep ultimately and we will just keep doing the thing that makes us comfortable. I've always been somebody that's like to challenge. 00:30:07 I've always been someone that sought out new challenges fresh challenges. I felt like I'd become stale in my career. I've reached the top of my sort of rank structure that I was sort of really happy with when I got to I guess as a career I wasn't really seeking anything else from it. I'd take all my boxes as it were everything I'd join to do I felt like I'd done. And so I was absolutely ready for a new change for a number of years and wrestled with that in my mind as to what it is and let's be honest. You know this is something that we all think about or should think about on a basis you know is are we really doing what really floats a boat which really sort of makes us tick. And for me what I realise towards the end of my career one of the things that I like doing the most was was helping other people. I guess if I'm honest with myself I've said it three times now but not to argue the rationale at all. Well you know if I think it was to try and help other people. Yes. When I first joined I was looking for adventure and excitement but I think as my career progressed I was doing it to try and still have that adventure and excitement definitely something I look for in my. Significance but also I was doing it to try and help people. And I that that passion developed and I've always enjoyed helping people you know whether that's you know my friends whether it's people I don't know using my experiences and using my insights which you know I can completely accept that they are fairly unique. You know aside from my peers and those insights are valuable now to me you know they give me a great context to life. They give me a great concept to death even you know and I guess in answer to the question I was I was I did after an awful lot of thinking on what I would do and I leave and why I was leaving and I was very ready for me I had to find myself in a position where I be helping others because you know this is where I'm in my flow this is the thing that sort of gets me up in the morning. You know I enjoy doing it why wouldn't I do that. So working out how I fits in and fit into business fits into corporate fit into sport. You know I felt like I could and I would but we've all got these fears right so these fears of working out what that is which challenges for me and fortunately for me I revel in a challenge and for it and it's going great guns which is which is awesome I think and announced it to be more specific in my answer about the question. I think people leave the military and they don't appreciate how much of their own self identity was was being that soldier. Now I felt like towards the end of my career I myself wasn't that soldier. I was very much so ready to leave but people often again said they will join the military expecting certain things they'll get it for a certain number of years if they don't continue to progress. You know you and I both know if you're not on a upward trajectory you're on a downward trajectory. You know there's no there's very little in between. If people aren't on an upward trajectory they feel like they're getting stale then they become disgruntled and people will often leave the military disgruntled and feeling like it's the problem in their lives when actually they just can't balance their life and work. They can't blend that work in life. They're using the military because it's really hard because ultimately it's a really selfish job. You go around the world and you know if you've got a family it's really really hard to to keep that family happy. And so what people realise when they leave or maybe don't realise the world is just that their purpose was attached to that job and when they leave they've lost an awful lot of structures that they weren't even appreciating. Bearing in mind most people join a really young age and you know haven't really had to do an awful lot for themselves you know they've had their accommodation sorted they've had their bills sorted they've had the tax sorted they've had their dentist sorted Doctor sorted all this stuff that people just go it's just normal well no it's not just for me. One of the biggest changes was having to cook a meal for myself every single day you know that's you know I'd always woken up and couldn't grab breakfast or I could have gone to the canteen and grab lunch or grab an evening meal. I didn't have to think about what I was eating every single day and there was a great selection. So these changes although to some people like yourself probably think Well I have to think that every single day of course but people leave the military and then all of a sudden these things are new to them and so is it any wonder that these things can spiral out of control and they can feel like they've lost control. 00:34:26 And again that's that's my sort of thoughts for what it's worth why people struggle when they necessarily leave the military. And fortunately for me I thought about that an awful lot and put some plans in place. Lance Wantenaar I think you hit on a very valid point that you were considering it from all angles or something it was in your mind and also you were the topic that you actually touch on the identity because your identity change it also change your perception on how you look at things. And that I think that is probably a very key component in all of it is because people's identities are still attached to their previous role and what they were doing. It's very difficult to make that change because they don't feel like they're in a position where they feel they've got a certain amount of control or autonomy and a lot of motivation and mindset in the activity or getting involved in things comes out of one your identity and identifying yourself but also the amount of autonomy that you have and the amount of control that you feel that you have when you get involved in something if you don't have that control almost feels like you're out of sync with the rest of the world. 00:35:41 Garry Banford Absolutely I think I massively buy into Tony Robbins six human needs being inside the military for some people provides them significance it provides them growth it provides them contribution. So all these things absolutely make people feel really comfortable and feel like they're doing great. When you leave you've lost all that. And I also massively buy into Dan Pink's Theory on Drive and performance multipliers is that something you're familiar with yourself once. 00:36:11 Lance Wantenaar Not yet. It's something I still have to look at. 00:36:14 Yeah. So it's a Dan Pink great book Its called Drive on performance multipliers and he talks about the reason I mentioned is because you mentioned autonomy there. So autonomy mastery and purpose then the three key things that will drive people to to do great things ultimately and to keep working so hard. So autonomy that feeling that you've got some sort of control over your daily activity. 00:36:38 This is this is shown in Google how they give 25 percent of the 20 percent of their workforce is time to work on a project for themselves within the work year and also three and develop this back in their 70s I believe it is when post it notes were invented this is where that came from then by them giving away or allowing their employees to dedicate some of their work time to working for themselves and it has great benefits to people feeling like they've got some form of autonomy this is the working from home principle in a nutshell. You've also got mastery and the feeling that you know you've got you know you are growing in what you're doing but also feeling like you've got great mastery in your particular field and probably more importantly the people around you your peers look at you and say you know he's all over what he does he or she is is incredibly competent and is skilled and is someone that I would go to for advice in his subject matter expertise you know that's a great performance motivates him finally purpose again which is why I've already spoken about with regards to motivation intrinsic why you are doing something you know whether that's helping other people or whether that's you know trying to earn as much money as you can you can debate that one all day with people as to which one will be more successful you know when you're doing things for other people and you're always going to keep pushing yourself that a little bit harder. 00:38:00 There's one other company which I know uses that whole autonomy approach is a clothing company called Patagonia. 00:38:08 Oh yes right. They live on the coast and they let people go surfing is that right. Yeah yeah yeah yeah. 00:38:13 Would be an awesome one where you can just break off and go for a surf and then come back to a meeting. I've not quite been able to get that and doing that in central London is probably not advisable on the terms. 00:38:25 Yeah. If you if you stick a pin in the exact centre of England I live about five miles from the very centre of that. So maybe go for regular surf nowadays is is not going to happen but this is it's about having these experiences where you can get in your flow you can just forget about what you're doing and you can just get you know just fully recharged with whatever it is that floats your boat isn't it. But yeah it's powerful stuff it's absolutely powerful stuff yeah. 00:38:52 Lance Wantenaar Touching on the whole flow aspect. Yeah I've looked at quite a lot of kind of flow research and also a lot of the information which has recently come to light one of the guys which has written some fantastic books is Stephen Cockburn with the rise of Superman also stealing fire. 00:39:15 Yeah and that is a really interesting part of you could say performance but also key insight into the ability of that a person has intrinsically because of biology and various other things. But being able to identify how they can develop certain of their principles to access flow states and also make or help people realize that they do sometimes get into as you said states of flow on those moments where everything else kind of falls away. I knew in that you could say in the zone a lot of people know it as being in the zone. And that's it's actually something I'd like to work on a bit more to try and refine that and actually pick that out. But that's that's a really interesting part of you could say human development which I think is going to potentially have a huge impact once people are a lot more aware of it and become a lot more capable of tapping into those because they triggers to be able to get into that state. Have you done much in that regard. 00:40:26 Yeah I have. I've read both of books that you just mentioned that too by Steven Kotler and Jamie Wheal. Is that right Steve. 00:40:33 Yeah. Yeah. Jamie. Yes. The fascinating books and things that I can relate to I think one of the nations that they use which really struck me and helped me to relate to it was the the principle of surf and in the beliefs and thoughts around surfing that you know it's a it's a very old sport. Hundreds of years. And the thought that people could serve a wave higher than 25 feet was just so absurd for the vast vast majority. Up until the last 20 odd years and then the last 20 odd years there's just been an exponential growth due to people willing to push the boundaries and get in this flow. Yeah that sort of bought into that so I can relate to that in lots of ways. You know our again our training that we would run and practice time and time again would be as realistic and as chaotic as we could make. So therefore when we did these things for real on deployments that we were we were we ready and I can honestly say most of the time when I was on operations maybe run off the back of a helicopter not an MVD to try and arrest a high level terrorist. You know we I feel like I was in the flow and that was that was you know I can very vivid memory very very vivid recollection of my performance my actions everything. All your training all your senses come together. I often smile to myself when people at least for maybe a footballer and then the cup final or something and we'll describe there's just no feeling like scoring a goal and in particular in a particular environment. You know that's great. But I've always said I can assure you that your body when when it needs to when you like when lives are on the line your body gives you everything it can. You know by its very design we'll give 100 percent of its systems whether that's adrenaline whether it's dopamine whether it's serotonin when it needs to to allow you to function at your best in a time of potential chaos potential crisis but also when you are as prepared as you can be. And in my experience again the rush the feeling the flow that you can get from almost life or death situations is very very powerful. You know it's something that kept me doing what I was doing for a long time. Yeah. So buy into flow. One hundred percent and I'm also interested in where this will go in the next next few years. 00:43:03 Lance Wantenaar How did you find that situation made your evaluation or your your perception of failure and without some discussion was about failure before and why. I've now changed how I perceived failure. Instead of looking as failures you could say a black or white scenario where instead of looking at it from a failure perspective I start looking at it as a journey but also as a learning perspective because the end of the day is as you start when you start or you never do anything 100 percent right. And part of the learning process is actually making mistakes because then you start learning it but as you start developing a skill the discrepancy between success and failure reduces down so that you get a more consistent. You could say results out of the the effort that you put in. But what was for you the biggest insight and actually your change of perception when it comes to failure it's really easy for me. 00:44:02 Garry Banford So my biggest shift in perception was having some absolutely howling failures and not being comfortable with what it felt like whether it was my own feeling about my failure whether it was what how other people viewed me you know my biggest life lessons of being around failure now relate to what you're saying I've always tried to have that perception and I've always understood that you know on reflection my biggest growth personally or greatest growth personally have come from my biggest failures. Now people will hear that people will read about that and they will say Well that's obvious right but it doesn't make the feeling that you get when you you mess up any more uncomfortable it's hideous you know. But that's all when you go back to motivation that's also your motivation to do more. It's a choice you know when you choose to you know not wanting to go into too much detail. It's a calm. My first though I've done a number of operational chores in special forces to Iraq and the work over there was was relatively comfortable. It was it was challenging and there was risks. But it was exciting and there was lots of things going on when I first went to Afghanistan. It was a completely different environment. And but also the stories that people have been bringing back before I managed to get out there were like nothing I've ever heard before and think like good friends of mine would be made good friends of mine were being killed and my own thoughts my own perceptions of what this place was like we shifted massively and so the first time I went out there all this pressure builds up again without going into too much detail. My first performance if you like on my first nighttime operation that I was so fall so often so fall below where I wanted to be my own self image my own feelings of who I was that I had I had to spend a long time or I only got until the next night but I had to spend an awful lot of thought and energy dealing with my performance and what I could do to achieve it. Now this is what I talk about with my clients is understanding that these experiences that you have vs your worst failures are your greatest learning lessons life lessons and you know for me you know being able to sort of re challenge myself on numerous occasions for many many years worth of operations and to learn and to improve and to build on that. Know that's where you get success and that's where you get mastery. And these are things that this is the process that you've got to go through to get that it's a you know I look at my upbringing and you know as I was always involved in competitive sport from a young age and I've always gamer fied what I've done and it's really helped me to sort of know when I'm losing and to know when I'm winning and to see my improvements. You know I've really sort of used those analogies around competition in my early days of growing up and challenging myself with being prepared. I was thinking this is my point. You know I was never wrong or very rarely a talented person who very rarely the high achiever when it came to sports or when it came to competition I was always struggling to make my mark and to get any form of success for me. But I'm 100 percent confident that those challenges that I faced and those difficulties were what made me be able to deal with my life as it went on and deal with the challenges the increase in challenges that I'd face to now where that get me wrong I'm exactly like the next person when it comes to surprises that we call problems you know that these are these problems that come around the corner to all of us. You know I I struggle with them like the next person but I face them you know and this is something I've learned to do. You have to you have to swallow the frog right. Yeah. You know the saying by Mark Twain around got to you've got to swallow a big ugly frog and that's what you've got to eat and swallow it first thing in the morning right. Because it's not going to taste any better by the end of the day. And if you've got her and if you've got two francs to eat and eat the biggest and ugliest one first. All right. This is just this is the analogy of life. You can't look at your problems and just keep ignoring them you've got to not hit them face on but just think about ways that you can deal with them efficiently and the best ways and massive you know if you if you ever read the books by Ryan Holiday around The Obstacle Is The Way I think I might have I think on my shelf. 00:48:22 I think it's one of those books I could do reread list because it's a great fantastic book. 00:48:28 The Obstacle is the Way by Ryan Holiday and you know a lot of my clients that are struggling with facing the problems I get them to read that because you know I can relate 100 percent to the vast majority of stuff that he's talking about in there from my experiences in probably one extreme of dealing with obstacles. 00:48:46 Lance Wantenaar You mentioned a quite interesting aspect about adding gamification into what it is that you did when to help you succeed. I found that is becoming more more prevalent with a lot of the you could skill development that you do and getting people motivated to do to do things because once you start making it interesting you start triggering some of the other single brain chemicals which makes makes you more motivated to do it and triggers some of the intrinsic motivation because then you start getting the novel to get some of the dopamine reward you get some of the you could say the hormonal triggers to actually give you you say the reward out of what it is that you're doing because you be using some of that you could say some of the external factors of the gamification it makes it changes it from being a chore to doing being something enjoyable. And once you start being being able to enjoy it it changes a lot of your internal motivations and also your drive for actually achieving something. 00:49:47 Garry Banford Fear is a great motivator right. Yeah I mean the way I look at strive there's a reason strive is so successful it enables us to compare ourselves to others it keeps ourselves accountable to others and it gives us rewards for successes. You know there's no there's no. This is Pavlov's dog really is it's operant conditioning. This is what it's all around and you know teaching ourselves and training ourselves to look for those things that will give us the positive reinforcement that the positive stimulus is so to me mean hits that you know our brains and our well-being need let's not let's not pretend that we don't need that we can get them from all different kinds of ways of course. I love that though didn't you. Dopamine though Green is the motivator that we're all looking for right. 00:50:31 Lance Wantenaar Yeah it's also something that's intrinsically linked to habit formation because that reward loop get that feedback loop very tightly integrated into dopamine and all of those reward chemicals of course. 00:50:45 Garry Banford Of course we all we are the sum of a biochemical chemistry right now and neurotransmitters and neurochemistry. I mean this is this is who we are. Whether we like it or not and how those things interact and those rewards that are brain gives our bodies of stimulation. This is us. And this is what gets us up in the morning and this is what makes us do what we do. So yeah let's understand these things and let's let's let's optimize. That's right. 00:51:08 Lance Wantenaar The last topic I would like to just delve into is your view on on risk. I know you mentioned a couple of times previously where you said your your risk ratio or your risk assessment changed from being in the forces to when you came out is because you've got a family your you could say risk association your risk values were changed obviously because of you could say your context changed because of your family situation. What is your view on on risk and the impact on how people act and react and also get motivated and you say drive forward to achieving. 00:51:45 Garry Banford I mean we risk is always so it's an interesting. It's a really interesting topic and in my experience of risk is that we're all great at taking little bits of chunks out of risk and so and but to take a massive chunk of risk to make take a massive leap into the unknown is really uncomfortable and not nobody really enjoys doing that. So it means people that take fantastic amounts of risk the chances are that they've built up to this and that's the same in my world I'm sure it's the same in your world I'm trying to think of a guy's name that recently free soloed El Capitan. 00:52:23 Yeah you know he he he doesn't view risk any differently to how we view risk but he's just learned to take you know gradually over time he's just taught himself to view each little improvement that he's made as well he's de risked and I guess that was the same with me you know my training was always exceptionally good. You know the training that we used to deliver and the choke training that we used to do before we deployed anywhere was incredible. And we had to make it as real as chaotic as realistic as possible and this is what we strive to do. Therefore when chaos occurred we'd already prepared for chaos. This wasn't something that was new to us. And when the worst case scenario happened well guess what. Every single time the most dangerous course of action happened. Part of our orders process we would talk about the most dangerous course of action. We planned for this every single time and so it's funny because people often risk is completely perception or completely individual people's perception. And I do some work with the police and we talk about that because you know some of them in certain roles don't value or don't view the risky stuff that they do as risky at all and would look at let's say a real goal kicker or somebody in an Olympic final or a lawyer or a judge making a decision on you know a pretty hideous child child sex case or whatever you know as being way more risky and way more stressful than what they're doing what they are making life and death situation decisions. And it's all down to perception. So it's all how we view the world and it's all out to it's all down to the training that we've had. You know the biggest risk that I felt feel as I've left the military considering the risks that I used to take on a regular basis at work. The biggest risk now for me is where's the money coming from right. You know this is and this is a risk that most people have dealt with every single day of their adult lives. But again this goes back to the people in the military that got a very stable income in a very short amount of money coming in that they can plan against and that's great. And that offers you an awful lot of security it's a massive comfort blanket. You know when I left you know the biggest thing for me was wow this is you know the day that the military stopped paying what was coming up me like ground rush you know and it was this this pressure that I really had to concentrate on to deal with where I was going to earn some money from you know without going into a job that would take all my time and then not you know I wouldn't be meeting my needs of the reason why I was leaving et cetera. 00:54:56 So you know all these things are valid but it's all down to perception you know risk is risk is a fascinating topic yeah it's that it's one that I guess some people would view some things that myself and my colleagues do as just ridiculously risky but I tell you now the people involved in it very rarely feel like it's incredibly risky because of the amount of practice and training that they've had in a particular area. Just to finish on that the parachute training school. So the RAAF teach most of the parachute training into the UK military and UK Special Forces even they still own that training. 00:55:33 And their motto is knowledge dispels fear. Right. So they spend an awful lot of time giving you fundamental information and knowledge and perspective into how few risks there actually are or how unlikely something catastrophic is going to happen because of course the amygdala will always give you the worst case scenarios. Whenever you also are preparing to do something you've never done before. So the more education and more training you can have to inform your thoughts of actually thanks for those thoughts. But you know what. It's not really needed by now and being able to subdue those with coping strategies. It's performance psychology sorry. And you know it's it's really useful stuff. 00:56:17 Lance Wantenaar This has been a massively interesting discussion. I think there is a there's a lot more discussion about rescue again. We can probably go into this so much though we can talk about it. I definitely agree with the approach of the education how that changes your assessment of risk and how the information and also the quality of the information that does have a key fundamental mental aspect or influence on risk evaluation and perception and context right. 00:56:45 People giving you the information that's critical. So are you getting your information from people that lived and breathed and experienced this. Or are you getting information the textbook that you don't even know who the person is written that you can get from Instagram. Like you mentioned earlier you know this is absolutely critical. You know you've got to seek the knowledge and the people that know you know and you know there's a lot of performance psychology out there that's based in theory. And again there's absolute value to a lot of that. But there's also value to the people that have got significant vocational experience combined with that knowledge and theory. You know that's if there's even greater value in that it might be I would say that they're right. 00:58:02 When you supporter and review of podcasts like this from someone like Lance it gains more visibility and motivates him to produce more. What topics most interest you. The best topic gains a shout out on the podcast. Support the show.