SPEAKER_00 0:07

Hello there and welcome to another episode of Slice of Pie, where the Pie is the psychologically informed environment, and the whole aim of this podcast is to try and figure out what that looks like, whether it's sports, medicine, business, singing, or acting. Funnily enough, my guest on this episode has worked in all the fields I've just named, but more on her in a wee bit. In the last week, I've been looking at podcast statistics. According to TechCrunch, podcast downloads are at an all-time low. So I'm incredibly grateful for those of you bucking the trend and tuning into these. Thanks to all of you that have listened to the three episodes thus far with Ms Dartha Starker, Richard Keegan, and Leon Lloyd. If you've dropped in for the first time on this episode, please make sure to check out these, as I absolutely loved those conversations with some incredibly clever, insightful, and kind people. But on to this week's guest. In this week's episode, we'll be hearing from Dr. Josephine Perry, a HTPC, registered and chartered sport and exercise psychologist as well as columnist, speaker, and author. After a successful career in media and journalism, Josephine has transitioned into her new career. As she mentions in the podcast, she brings a wealth of transferable skills and life experience to sport psychology. And this worldliness, shall we say, really comes through in the conversation as we traverse from careers to life, to light bulb moments to publishing to management and many, many more topics. It was a really cool ride to go on, and I hope you enjoy it too. Just a quick note that the sound is a bit patchy, but stick with it because Josephine's insights are well worth tuning in for. So, enough preamble from me. Let's get into it with Dr. Josephine Perry. Josephine, how are we?

SPEAKER_01 2:12

Good, thank you. How are you doing?

SPEAKER_00 2:14

Not too bad, thanks. Not too bad. How are you spending your your Monday today?

SPEAKER_01 2:18

Uh well, still in lockdown. So I did make it out for a run earlier, which was amazing. And then most of it is entertaining my three-year-old. So um quite a busy day, really.

SPEAKER_00 2:28

Oh, are you you you managing to spend a bit more time with the three-year-old now under lockdown?

SPEAKER_01 2:34

Yeah, we're I I'm feeling very privileged actually. That since she was very tiny, she's spent a few days a week in nursery, so it's probably the longest I've ever got to spend with her. Um, and she's just at such a cool age and she's really funny, and um she's kind of sucking up knowledge and learning, and it's been a real privilege to get to kind of hang out and have lots of fun.

SPEAKER_00 2:54

Oh, that's awesome. It's so nice to hear that the the kind of challenging time that we're going through at the moment is still bringing up these little little mini rays of optimism, I suppose, little silver linings. So that's nice to hear.

SPEAKER_01 3:06

There's definitely challenges, and both me and my husband working and entertaining a three-year-old kind of means we're working in shifts quite a lot of the time, but but we're getting there, and uh it has been lovely to spend time together.

SPEAKER_00 3:19

Oh, great. Well, look, thanks so much for agreeing to come on the podcast. It's hugely appreciated. The podcast is all about what different environments can learn from each other. Now, you have an interesting career trajectory, having previously worked in media and communications, and it would be really lovely if you could tell us a bit more about how that transition came about and whether you've seen any crossovers in your new career as a sport or performance psychologist and the previous life that you had. Sure.

SPEAKER_01 3:49

So, yeah, I started actually my I guess first grown-up job um was at CBS News, and my first day in the newsroom in Washington, DC was the day the Monica Lewinsky story broke.

SPEAKER_02 4:00

Oh wow.

SPEAKER_01 4:00

I like to start with big drama, uh, and that was absolutely amazing. I spent six months in DC really just sucking up news and how it worked and learning a vast amount, and then they were kind enough when I came back to London to give me a freelance role that I did throughout my master's and throughout my PhD. And then I ended up moving into kind of more pure communication, so real fluffy PR. I think at one point I was in Kellogg's press office writing press releases on behalf of Tony the Tiger.

SPEAKER_02 4:29

Okay, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 4:29

And then it moved into much more kind of the serious PR, the lobbying side. And eventually my last I call it proper job was um as comms director for a large health charity. And while I was there, I kind of got to the, I guess, the top of what I could do in communication. So I was feeling a bit frustrated, and I spent all of my time dealing with HR things and looking after people because it was quite a big team of us by that point. And I very rarely got to do the stuff that I was actually good at, which was talking to journalists, coming up with really good story ideas, dealing with crisis communications, and that was the stuff I loved, but I didn't really get to do that much of it. So I was feeling a bit frustrated, and I went over to Melbourne in Australia for an Iron Man, which is what me and my husband, three babies, did as our sports.

SPEAKER_00 5:16

Oh wow, okay, fair play.

SPEAKER_01 5:18

And I'd done all of my training, but I'd done most of it in central London. So my swimming had pretty much been in 20 meter pools in for the gym chain that was part of our health corporation. So it was great, it was handy, but it wasn't really preparing me for the sea I was about to enter in Australia. And I stood on the beach that morning and the waves were just enormous, and I was kind of looking scared, even the Aussies were looking quite scared.

SPEAKER_00 5:45

That's when you know it's scary when you've got the even the Aussies are looking at those waves and terrified.

SPEAKER_01 5:51

My husband's Australian, he's been swimming since the age of zero, and he was looking a bit nervous too. So I knew this wasn't going to be a great day. And um, the guy on the tanoi said you can't change those conditions, you can only change how you feel about them. And I don't think there's many light bulb moments that you get in life.

SPEAKER_00 6:09

The guy on the tanoi said that.

SPEAKER_01 6:11

Yeah, yeah, he was the commentator, and it was just a proper, proper light bulb moment. I will never forget it. Because it immediately made me think, oh yeah, I have the choice over how I approach this. And it sounds really stupid that I've managed to get to the age of what it was 36 without ever really thinking that or noticing it. But it was the first time I was like, if I choose to have a good day right now, if I choose that those waves don't scare me, they won't scare me. And I just never thought about it in that way before. And I got in and I did the swim, and the videos on YouTube of it still make me turn my stomach, they look terrifying, but I survived, and actually I had a really good race, and it just got my brain and really ticking afterwards about the power of our brains and how our approaches can change things very differently. And over a couple of months I started thinking about it more and more and decided I wanted to do something completely different. So I quit my job. I had a few weeks of wondering what I was gonna do, thinking of it as a bit like a gap year, and then realised I was actually too bored for that. So I signed up to university to do a conversion course in psychology, thinking that if it didn't work out, well, I've got a year's training in psychology, which would be very helpful around behaviour change. As a communications director, I could get back into it, but I'd be a lot more equipped. Um, but if it did work out and I really enjoyed it, then perhaps I could go down the sports psychology route. And that's eventually where it took me.

SPEAKER_00 7:39

Wow, that's some story that. Yeah. So you've you've you've had this, you've had this first life, this first career, enjoyed it, kind of got to the the top of it. And you do hear this actually from a lot of people who've been in in their first career for a while and enjoyed it. When they get to the top, the stuff that they're doing takes them a little bit away from the stuff that they enjoy. Yeah, because they move more into, let's say, kind of management or personnel and and stuff like that. It was that was that your experience?

SPEAKER_01 8:09

Yeah, I think to go to be effective at a high level in an organization, you need to be very strategic. And I'm not sure I am. I actually like being really hands-on, I like really talking to people, I like designing and the activity element of it. So there wasn't really anywhere else to go.

SPEAKER_00 8:26

And then you've had this light bulb moment, the the Tannoy commentator stroke stoist. Maybe Albert Ellispan has said those words. And do you still can you vividly remember that now? And that do you consider that as a genuine kind of turning point in life?

SPEAKER_01 8:45

Yeah, yeah, I could still picture myself in the middle of bike transition with thousands of bikes around me, lots of people, and just listening to this voice over the town. I really should find out who the commentator was, actually, and thank them.

SPEAKER_00 8:57

Yes, yeah, let's do it. Let's hunt them down. I think probably be too ambitious to put a shout out on a podcast that's currently getting hundreds opposed to the thousands. So might have to find a different You need a big Aussie following. Yeah, exactly. Well, look, I mean, also after that, you've crossed over into this new journey, the new career. Tell us a little bit more about what your kind of life looks like at the moment. What are the the jobs that you are balancing at the moment as a sports psychologist?

SPEAKER_01 9:26

It's pretty mixed. So I guess a big chunk of my work is working one-to-one with athletes. Um, lots of endurance athletes, obviously, that's my background, but also lots of fences, netball, cricket, tennis, so complete mixture. I think I'd worked out when I finished my stage two, I was looking back kind of how many sports I'd worked in, and it was 23 sports at the time.

SPEAKER_00 9:47

What was the most niche sport you worked in?

SPEAKER_01 9:50

Oh, speed skydiving. What? Terrifying speed sky skydiving. How fast can you jump out of the plane?

SPEAKER_00 9:58

Geez, that must have been pretty fascinating from a pop psychology perspective.

SPEAKER_01 10:02

Yeah. Um, but everybody's got something that's fascinating about their perspective on their sport. I've worked with quite a few quizzes, the people that do quizzes professionally, and their perspective of of how we use sport psychology techniques to help them be fascinating. But actually, there's some real similarities. So one of the elements we will often work with is about how do you trust your gut instinct. And if you are not a hundred percent sure, if you don't have the right levels of confidence, you'll end up really questioning yourself. And the time it takes to question yourself destroys any confidence you did have in your answer, and you often end up giving a wrong answer. And I was reflecting the other day how similar that is to somebody playing tennis of how do they trust their gut instincts of how they need to respond to a move that's coming towards them. And so it's really interesting, you've got something that seems entirely different, and you're actually it's very similar techniques and you might end up using them.

SPEAKER_00 10:59

So you've got 23 different sports there, but over that journey you're constantly seeing issues crop up that you can make connections with athletes that might be in completely different sports.

SPEAKER_01 11:11

Yeah, um, and not just athletes, uh I work quite a bit with singers, um, actors, and also um which I never expected, but medics. So doctors in training or doctors who are trying to become consultants who've struggled with some part of the qualification process along the way.

SPEAKER_02 11:29

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 11:29

And usually that comes down to the element of questioning themselves in the heat of the moment when they're feeling under pressure in an exam kind of interview situation. And so actually, it's again it's very similar elements that we're dealing with across all areas of performance, whatever your speciality is. I guess my mission in sports psychology is actually to be able to share sports psychology with as many people as possible. It's not a zero-sum game, it's not that if you learn some other people are gonna do worse or you necessarily do better, the more we can share it across every sector, the better we can all do what we want to do and enjoy doing that process a lot more. So I write for lots of different magazines like Cycling Weekly, Golf World, Runners World, to try and share some of those techniques and ideas around sports psychology. And because of my background in communication, I also do quite a bit of media training. So either professionals who want to be able to share their messages better in the media, but particularly athletes, and how do athletes promote themselves in the right way without having any negative psychological side effects from that?

SPEAKER_00 12:35

A chartered sports psychologist who's also proficient in media, almost the perfect podcast host. I I love your mission there to share the learnings or the experience and the knowledge that you have as a chartered psychologist with as as many people as possible. From your point of view, would you prefer the protected term to be performance psychologist?

SPEAKER_01 12:58

Oh, that's an interesting question. I tend to call myself a performance psychologist now. I think it's it's really tricky around the protected term.

SPEAKER_00 13:07

Yeah, it's a tough one, isn't it?

SPEAKER_01 13:08

I think almost I prefer the word psychologist to be protected.

SPEAKER_00 13:11

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 13:12

Um, because most members of the public probably don't, if they hear the word psychologist, they assume you've got the qualifications and the training.

SPEAKER_00 13:21

I think about a lot around the protected term, as you said, being around the domain, like sport and exercise, but those those tenants can be taken into different performance in environments. In relation to some of those different domains that you have worked in, uh, medicine, the performing arts, sport, I'd love to dig in into that a wee bit in a sec. But before we go there, I'd love to understand uh because I read a I think I read an article that you'd you'd penned in in the sport and exercise psychology review a few years ago around transferable skills, skills that you feel that you've taken from the the media and communications life and have been able to use those in sport psychology. Do you mind if we we talk a little bit around some of those those key skills that you feel have been transferable into your your new career?

SPEAKER_01 14:13

From reflection from where I am now in my career, the biggest thing I've used is, and this sounds very manipulative and it's not meant to be, but it's how to get what you need from other people.

SPEAKER_02 14:26

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 14:27

And I find the biggest area a lot of athletes struggle with is actually communicating with their coaches or parents. And I work a lot with juniors who are 13, 14, 15, and they're going through really big changes in their lives, and at that kind of age your peers become much more important to you, and you're almost destined to fall out with your parents in different ways, and you may well have had a coach that you've got brilliantly with before, but actually you've changed the way that you learn or the kind of relationship you're looking for, and that doesn't necessarily get picked up by the parents or the coach. And so teaching athletes how they can communicate to get what they need in a way that's not harmful can be really helpful. And I've worked quite a lot with athletes that have got scholarships and gone over to the US, and it's fascinating when you talk to 16-year-olds, it's almost probably 90% when you say where do you want to go with your sport? If they're a serious athlete at 16, want a US scholarship and go over to college over there. And it sounds like a really big dream, and it's amazing, and you get your you get much of your fees paid for, and you're a big deal on campus, and you get to pick your classes first because you're really special, and they go off with all these really high hopes, but then they end up on the other side of the world to their support system. They may not have any friends who have also gone over there. Things are done very differently, and they get no choice who their coaches, and they also may have very different goals. So their big goal overall might be to get an England vest. Their coach's goal is to win points for NCAA. And if the coach doesn't achieve that, the coach gets fired. So that's all the coach cares about. The coach has to do their job. But the athletes gone over there with great big high hopes and dreams, and that can be a real struggle for people. You've had such high expectations, and then suddenly you feel so low. So we do quite a lot of work of really preparing people for that before they go, but also helping them understand the coach's perspective. So once you realise your coach has a different goal to you, then okay, what can you get from your coach that still fits their goal, that still supports what you want to do? You can feel a bit more ownership of it. And so if you can start to work with athlete to understand other people better and to find ways to get what they want in a sensible way that doesn't cause lots of drama, doesn't upset lots of things, they tend to find that really helpful. And I think that's something I really learned from the communications world. A lot of people, when I try and media train people, their impression of journalists is that a journalist is out to get them.

SPEAKER_02 16:58

Oh, really?

SPEAKER_01 16:58

A journalist is out to get a really negative story, and they're gonna screw me over in some way, and I don't want to risk saying something stupid.

SPEAKER_00 17:06

I suppose that that's a kind of a British cultural learned response to journalism, I suppose.

SPEAKER_01 17:12

Yeah, and a lot of people are very fearful of having anything to do with the media. And what we're trying to get over then, and what I can use my previous experience to highlight is that most journalists, 95% of journalists, probably more than that, just want really good, interesting content. Nobody is trying to screw you over, nobody is trying to make you say something stupid. They want good quality content, and if you can provide that, they'll come back to you time and time again. And so when you can help people understand what a journalist wants, they can then manipulate, but they can write what they want to get over in a way that works for that journalist, but still gets their own messages across. A lot of what we what I used to do in communications of really helping people understand different perspectives and where you can compromise in the middle so everybody gets a little bit of what they need, I think is really helpful in sports environments too.

SPEAKER_00 18:04

That's really interesting. You you've come from, I suppose, that that first career or that first life where there's it sounds like there's a lot of competing agendas, the agenda of the journalist who wants to get great content and build their own career. They might work for a publication who has a certain viewpoint on the world, and so they have an agenda, and then you have the people who are being interviewed, the stories that you're writing about, they have their own goal and agenda as well. And an experience of being able to balance all of these goals, these agendas, these biases, taking that into your your new career as a performance psychologist. You have, I suppose, you have a little bit of empathy and a big picture view on being able to knit together these these competing goals and and agendas in partnership with your performers.

SPEAKER_01 18:53

I also think some of that is aged though.

SPEAKER_00 18:55

Some of that is aged.

SPEAKER_01 18:57

My age.

SPEAKER_00 18:58

Oh, okay.

SPEAKER_01 18:58

In that I was fascinated listening to your interview with Richard Keegan that he was talking about how he rushed through trying to hit all the milestones. And I absolutely did the same thing.

SPEAKER_00 19:08

Oh really?

SPEAKER_01 19:09

And I also did the same thing when I started in sports psychology. So stage two, when you're doing it part-time, probably take five, six years. I still did it in two and a half years.

SPEAKER_02 19:21

Oh wow.

SPEAKER_01 19:22

And I'm not sure I'm not sure that was a good thing because I was rushing to meet those milestones. I felt like I'd started 20 years behind everybody else, and I needed to rush to catch up. And so there was a lot of that I must learn everything right now, and I must hit all these targets right now. Actually, I think one of the most valuable things I bring to the athletes I work with is the fact that I've lived in the real world for 25 years since leaving home, and that you can see that big picture of how things work, and that we don't need to rush everything we do, and that a lot of the pleasure of what we do is in the journey. And so, what I thought was a real negative when I started out of starting 20 years behind everybody else because I'd had another career, I actually now see as a real positive that it gives you so much more perspective on how the world works.

SPEAKER_00 20:11

Yeah, it's interesting that the I've I've certainly heard, I don't know whether you've you've heard this as well. I've heard from from senior people in in psychology who've who've told me that it's it is one of those industries where age is a benefit. And when you come into a consulting room and you have a young athlete, they make a snapshot, don't they? I suppose schema theory and in psychology, they have a snapshot, they see that you're of a certain age, they make an assumption, therefore, that you have a certain amount of knowledge and life experience, and and suddenly that credibility feels like it's there. Versus, I suppose I certainly felt it going into to pitch situations and big client presentations when I was in my early 20s in in advertising. I really felt this vivid sense of my own youthfulness in that situation.

SPEAKER_01 21:01

Oh, yep.

SPEAKER_00 21:02

Uh, I think a lot of people feel that across across different careers.

SPEAKER_01 21:06

I still remember going for a job when I was 25 and got nailed all the interviews, and they came back and said, we love her, we can't appoint her, she looks too young.

SPEAKER_00 21:16

Oh wow. You wouldn't be able you wouldn't be able to say that. Yeah, you wouldn't be able to say that now, would you?

SPEAKER_01 21:21

And that was before age discrimination. No, you wouldn't be able to say it now. Um but they were like, we can't put her on TV as our spokesperson because she just doesn't look like she would have the authority to be saying what we need her to say.

SPEAKER_00 21:32

Well, there you have it. Proof, isn't it?

SPEAKER_01 21:33

No problem now.

SPEAKER_00 21:35

If they can't be enacted now because there's fortunately more uh more rules in place in order for that type of discrimination not to happen, is proof that that certainly is a a a thinking pattern that people have.

SPEAKER_01 21:48

Apparently, we make our first decision on somebody within a tenth of a second.

SPEAKER_00 21:53

Oh, it's it is terrifying. I think in have you read the book Free Economics?

SPEAKER_01 21:57

No.

SPEAKER_00 21:58

There's there's a passage in that book where. They take the political candidates in certain countries. So let's say it's people running for a councillor seat in a place in Ecuador, and then they show just the pictures of those people to a pool, a sample size of survey respondents in Buckinghamshire, but then they take the Buckinghamshire councillors, people running for that position, and show it to the people in Ecuador. And they they ask them just from their picture, can you tell me who's going to win this election? And the success rates are terrifying. They are through the roof.

SPEAKER_02 22:34

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 22:34

Because I suppose in that particular domain, looking at a picture of someone and therefore decoding how kind of presidential or prime ministerial they look is such a big predictor.

SPEAKER_01 22:46

But we also decode very, very quickly through sight. Decoding through writing or listening takes an awful lot longer. So when you're in front of somebody, you you know it's going to be what you look like, is going to be taken up much, much quicker than anything sensible or insightful that you say.

SPEAKER_00 23:04

Now, just to finish off our little section here on transferable skills coming from one career into another, your book, Performing Under Pressure, Psychological Strategies for Sporting Success. By the way, congratulations for launching your book last year. Did the the background in Media Comms come in helpful getting that project off the ground?

SPEAKER_01 23:25

So the book was designed to be the book I wished I'd had when I did my stage two, or and certainly when I did my masters. I can say this because the masters that I did has changed significantly from when I did it. But when I did mine, we had four or five sessions on mental skills training where, say, on a Monday we were taught goal setting. We were told to go out and find an athlete to do goal setting with over the week, and we'd reflect on it the next week and learn a new skill. And that was it. And then suddenly you finish and you're on stage two, and you're like, I don't have any tools to go out there with. I've I've learned some theories and I I know some approaches. What on earth do I go and do with people? And so it was the book I wished I'd have had to be able to look through, right? This is what's going on with somebody, what might help them. So it was written as nine chapters of the reasons most people come to see a sports site, and then at the end of each chapter, different techniques that you can use. And it ended up being, I think, 64 different techniques or strategies. So that was not led out of my previous career, that was led out of my frustration that I couldn't find a book that did that for me during my stage two. I think what helped me get published though, was that publishers are looking for people that can self-promote.

SPEAKER_02 24:44

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 24:45

And so when it was pitched to different publishers, they really do look at how many Twitter followers you have, or how many people you're engaging with on Instagram, or how able you are to get yourself out there and to bring in your own readers. And so that bit certainly helped to be able to get picked up by a very good publisher and be able to get the book promoted.

SPEAKER_00 25:07

And the the book itself, it's certainly aimed in terms of the description, the byline that you have at athletes and sports psychologists. If you were to pick that book up though, and you you had an interest in sport, but equally you were working in in business and you have to pitch or making bids for new clients, is that a book that you could pick up and it would still be quite helpful?

SPEAKER_01 25:30

Yeah, so it was written almost with coaches in mind. So coaches that want to be much more psychologically aware develop really good psychological environments for the athletes that they work with. It was also written with stage two candidates in mind. So when I'm starting out, what can I what can I be doing with athletes and why am I doing it? But definitely, if you're a wider performer, you can look at well, how is self-talk going to help me? And then it's very how do I do it? So you can go straight to that. What do I physically do? What do I think about? What process do I follow in order to be able to do that activity and help myself develop more confidence, feel braver, cope with setbacks.

Half time reflection

SPEAKER_00 26:17

Right, let's break for half-time oranges. Like the Richard Keegan interview, this one is an hour episode with lots of food for thought. So if you need a break to have a breather or put the kettle on, this is a nice opportunity to do so. In terms of halftime reflections, I've got a couple. First of all, what a whirlwind of a first half end-to-end stuff, talking about career transitions, light bulb moments, managing multiple agendas, publishing, and the trade-off between the rise into management and getting further away from what made us fall in love with the profession in the first place. Second of all, we talked about schemas and first impressions, and age potentially being a benefit in psychology-based professions. Now I'd just like to mitigate that point for a second, as I know there may be some sports site trainees and others in the early stages of their career listening into this. Well, I've looked and I could find no existing evidence suggesting that age affects perceived practitioner competency. So, really, these comments in the podcast mainly came from my own experiences in advertising. And I must also note that the studies mentioned in Freeconomics were about first impressions. So, whilst youthfulness might be a first impression, it should hopefully dissipate once we start practicing and showing our competence through our communication, knowledge, and ability to build relationships. In fact, a study from only last year, 2019, in the Frontier in Psychiatry Journal, which I'll leave a link to that in the description, displays of efficiency, knowledge and skill, the patient's perception of warmth, whether a practitioner gets me, displays of personal engagement, connection or care for a patient, these are actually the things that build into the perception of a practitioner's competency, not the first impression. And in terms of our own self-efficacy, in the literature that I've seen, it doesn't appear that age seems to impact significantly. So, for example, in an article in the International Journal for the Advancement of Counseling by Lam, Tratz and Lucy in 2012, there was no impact of age or gender on trainees' self-efficacy. One of my values is being thorough and evidence-based. So when you get to edit a podcast conversation, you quite often catch yourself or your guests touching on ideas or subjects which get you thinking further, or to Google to check out your hunches or things you've been spitballing in the conversation. It's a really valuable method of reflection and motivated by A, as said previously, the desire to be evidence-based, but B also to put out content to listeners that are as helpful as possible. Anyway, that's enough of me rambling. Let's get back to the conversation with Dr. Josephine Perry. Talking about processes could be a nice segue here into putting those processes into practice through your consultancy, performance in mind. You mentioned at the start you had you've had a range of different performers that you've worked with. So I noted performing arts, medicine, sports, obviously. Anyone in business?

SPEAKER_01 29:41

I do some one-to-one sessions with people in business, and that might well be around. I've got this big thing coming up, I've got a big pitch, I don't have the confidence to do it. And so you'll be doing, I guess, single sessions of right, let's help you. The confidence is inside you. You've done all the preparation, you know, how do we bring that out? How do we remind you? What do you need to hand in order to give you the confidence on the day? So, yeah, we'll do some work with business people in that way.

SPEAKER_00 30:11

And what are the what are the the kind of the issues that crop up the most across performance? So let's take that that confidence issue. Is it or is it people who were once confident that have just had a temporary loss? What are those kind of crossover issues that you that tend to crop up?

SPEAKER_01 30:29

Actually, it tends to be in performing arts, it tends to be a very specific element of their performance. So it may well be that they are absolutely able to do film work with no problem, but the theatre's suddenly become a big issue. Or they're actually really good when they're singing solos, but when they're doing smaller elements or they're doing duets, they're really worried they might do something that would upset their partner or that would make their partner look bad. So it doesn't tend to be weirdly the big stuff, it's not a complete lack of confidence. It's often very minute elements. It's I've got this one song that I have to do in every audition and I'm just never getting it right. I can't hit a certain note. And so you're you're dealing with very, very tiny elements usually rather than a universal lack of confidence or too much anxiety.

SPEAKER_00 31:25

I suppose it's the idiosyncratic issues that crop up with individuals are the things that you end up working on. Yes. So you might start with a global issue, which might be confidence, but it's only through talking with that particular person do you find out about their particular context, their history, what's going on in their life at that point, and those moving parts and how they're all affecting the whole.

SPEAKER_01 31:48

Yeah. And so it means you can't. I used to wonder why there hadn't been, and I've heard people trying to set it up, but almost AI for sports psychology of you fill in a bunch of questionnaires and behind the scenes there's a lot of maths coming out, and it gives you five or six different mental skills you could learn that would help you with whatever your problem was. And the longer I'm working with people, I realize there are just too many variables, and there's just too many tiny elements that make the difference. So I don't get so worried when people are talking about kind of the mechanicization of different jobs and whether we'll still all have jobs in 20, 30 years, because there is absolutely a science to it, but there is also a real art of really being able to help somebody become so self-aware that they can actually see what those tiny elements are that are holding them back rather than giving it a big generic name of lack of confidence.

SPEAKER_00 32:44

There's a couple of things that crop up there for me. One is there's a couple of things that tend to predict the success between psychologists, whether it's counsellors, sports psychologists, and and their their clients. The first is the relationship between the practitioner and that performer.

SPEAKER_02 33:02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 33:02

That tends to be a really, really huge predictor of benefits from that relationship. And the other is how much the person is willing to commit and invest to the process and put in their own work in order to make it happen. And I suppose on on the one side, the relationship bit is not going to paint a very rosy picture for AI or apps, etc., etc., because you're losing that human bit. But on the I suppose on the flip side, if you were the type of person that was really against talking to an opening up to someone, and let's say you were just kind of a techie and you really did believe in the power of AI, and that you know, that belief transmitted through into the enjoyment of using that app. I suppose maybe that that could work. I suppose the the pool of people in that latter group just might be quite a lot less than the pool of people in the former group.

SPEAKER_01 33:57

A client said to me a while ago, I don't know how much I did in your sessions. I was like, oops, and she went, what was really beneficial was the walk home afterwards. Because that's when I reflected on everything, and that's when I had my insights, and that's in my self-awareness group. And I'm not sure doing a computer program that will teach you how to do positive self-talk or how to reframe something or how to write your goals will ever do that because it's the questions and where that discussion goes is how you develop. And one of the things I found really interesting from when I started writing out the book when I finished it, was I added an extra section in of skills. Okay, and that extra section was self-awareness, and that was in a it took nine months to write the book, and so that was nine months process of when I was working with individuals. I began to realize the more self-awareness they had, the more strength they would have to change things on their own. And so it would be real long-term development rather than eight, ten sessions that they had with a sports psychologist, and that self-awareness is where people really develop. What I actually love is when clients turn up and they're like, I've downloaded every worksheet from your website, I've done them all, and it's like brilliant. So you've done all the tech key AI type stuff. Now let's dissect them. Now let's see where you can go with those, rather than spending time in the sessions doing more of the technical stuff. So those are the clients that really, really develop because absolutely they've got the core work done, but they can then really use that to learn so much about themselves and how they personally develop, rather than there's some brilliant books out there and brilliant autobiographies that you can read about other people and how they've developed. But they're gonna have so many different elements to their life to you. It it it might resonate, but they're not necessarily gonna work for you the things that they did. But when you have real time to develop yourself and build that self-awareness, I see that's when people really shine and kind of really end up succeeding.

SPEAKER_00 36:07

That's really interesting. That that self-awareness piece tends to crop up quite a lot, doesn't it, across different uh models of psychology. I mean, you hear you hear lots of different terminology as well for metacognition. I hear quite a lot. I think Russ Harris calls it the observing self. Yeah. In his book. Lots of different words for it, but effectively it's it's creating a relationship or having a more self-aware relationship with your your own thoughts and how you react to certain triggers.

SPEAKER_01 36:37

Yes, yeah. I see a lot of parents who say I can't afford any more tennis rackets, and my son daughter's lobbying them across the court and they can't control the temper on court. Well, teaching them some mental skills is lovely, but it's not going to make much difference. Teaching them how to spot their own triggers and what to do over different triggers and how to find different, more effective ways of dealing with those triggers will help them on the court, but it'll also help them at school. It will help them in day-to-day life. So much of the work we do is about helping them understand themselves so that they can be their own master of what they do, but they really get to direct what they're doing. So that self-awareness is really, really important. And I don't think you can get that from a book, and I don't think you can get it from a machine.

SPEAKER_00 37:23

And it's going to save you money as well if you're breaking £200 tennis rackets every week.

SPEAKER_01 37:28

I know, yeah, we're cheap compared to that. And but someone did say to me, like, you've written a book and you've just given away everything you do, why would you do that? Um, which is a very good point, but it was because actually I see where sports psychologists can add the value, and that's why we're not people that have done a two-week course online, that's why we've spent all these years training. Our value is to ask the right questions and to help people really come up with their own answers, not to tell them what to do because it's directed in a book.

SPEAKER_00 37:59

Yeah, and I suppose it it's the spirit in which you're sharing that information as well, going back to your your your mission and that value that you have in order to not just keep all of this this knowledge and this experience locked away for your your own personal gain, but to share that with as as many people as possible and and see a knock-on of as much knock on effect for as many people as possible in terms of them getting the benefit from it.

SPEAKER_01 38:23

Definitely. I mean sports psychology is it's not cheap. If somebody spent seven years training, they need to be rewarded for that. And the years and years after that, they they need to be charging a decent price for what they do. But if there are ways we can give some of that to people so that they can still develop, then it's kind of win-win for everybody.

SPEAKER_00 38:43

Yeah, there'll be many stage two trainees nodding their head along there with the the the economic point you bring up. But I'd I'd love to move the conversation on. We've we've talked about working with individuals there, some of your experiences within one-to-one consultancy and the different types of performers that you've seen, and some of the crossover issues. In terms of the, you know, the podcast is called Slice of Pie, the psychologically informed environment. How how often, when you're working with individuals, do issues that relate to the environment crop up within your consultancy?

SPEAKER_01 39:21

I tend to find the higher level that the performer is at, the more issues are focused on their environment.

SPEAKER_00 39:30

Interesting.

SPEAKER_01 39:31

When you are at a very when you're kind of Olympic level, then you don't just have yourself to think about, you're not just doing your own training or your own practice.

SPEAKER_02 39:40

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 39:41

You've got a coach, you've got physios, you've probably got a national governing body in whichever country you're in, whatever their setup is. You've got lots of other people, you might be asked to do some media kind of work. You've got a much bigger environment that you have to take into account. If you are a junior athlete at a very high level, you often have again national governing body elements, you've also got your parents' considerations to take into account, you've also got different peer relationships that might be going on at those ages before you before you've got the maturity sometimes to deal with it. That can be much harder when you're doing your thought much more for the love of it and for performance. You just focus on yourself and you can not worry about those elements so much. I think the environment area tends to sneak in a bit more for everybody around social media. And I work a lot with people with exercise addiction or eating disorders, and in those cases, we really do see the impact of social media on people's well-being and on people how they see themselves by how they're fear being judged by others. That fear of judgment is huge, and that environment can be really influential in usually a pretty negative way.

SPEAKER_00 41:05

That's very interesting. That's the first time social media's been been mentioned on the podcast as as a part of the environment. But I suppose these days it's it's an enormous part of the wider environment with which with which you you perform.

SPEAKER_01 41:19

Yeah, so if you're trying to get into a GB kind of Olympic level program, if you're trying to get out of academy level in football and go up a bit higher, you need a social media presence, you need to be trying to get sponsorship, you need to be doing Instagram videos, you need to be seen in that world. That's what's going to get you that extra sponsorship and get you noticed, get you invites to certain competitions. You can't often avoid it, but you do need to know how to use it in a way that doesn't harm you in any way, um, either reputationally or psychologically, and will help promote you in a good way.

SPEAKER_00 42:02

Yeah, it's interesting. So I I had a a few different athletes last year actually who have sponsors, brands that that work with them, and they're incredibly important to them. They help fund the performance lifestyle that they that they lead. And that that money is very, very, very helpful. One of the issues I've seen crop up is as part of that relationship, they're then asked to post about certain things, whether it's events, whether it's products, etc., and they have suggested, let's say, copy captions, hashtags that go out of that content. And I've been told in in session that actually that that kind of conflicts with how they would want to portray themselves. Yes. So the rest of their social media world might be, let's say, quite humble, but then the content that they're asked to put out on behalf of the brand is let's say maybe quite cocksure and you have a conflict there.

SPEAKER_01 43:04

Yes, and and you can see people being turned off by that kind of content. You can see some very cringe-worthy content that does go out, and and you can see people's real personalities being a little bit curtailed by that. Um, and and even wider than just on social media, I I looked at how athletes um engaged with the media as my master's dissertation, and I was looking at Olympic athletes during Olympic times of how the media influenced their behaviours and their kind of psychological approach to their sports. One athlete said the day before a world championship and they did an endurance sport, so they were gonna be out for a long time doing their event the next day. They didn't even get breakfast or lunch because they were so busy doing sponsor events.

SPEAKER_02 43:52

Oh wow.

SPEAKER_01 43:53

I think that's when the sponsorship has completely decimated their performance. How are they supposed to go in and How many calories there's event would use three, four thousand, and they haven't properly eaten at all the day before.

SPEAKER_00 44:06

That's really interesting.

SPEAKER_01 44:07

So it can be not at the when you see the Jess Ennis level, that that's a world apart, but there's a level between those that we see every day and come to mind and everyday athletes like us that are where they're really struggling for that sponsorship and that recognition and they want that next step up, and they'll there are things they'll have to do to get it that won't help their performance at all. So as a sports site, sometimes there you might be trying to help their confidence to be able to stand up to that sponsor and explain what they can and can't do. Other times it might be okay, you might have to suck this one up so that you've done your duty to them. And other times it might be you have to put this up front with a sponsor if this isn't gonna work for me. I'm gonna be no good to you as an athlete if I'm compromised on it.

SPEAKER_00 44:53

You've made me remember something I I read in, and I do you know what I should probably stop bringing up this book on the podcast, otherwise, people are gonna think I've only read one sport biography. Because I think I mentioned it in the Mustafa episode, Sam Warburton's book, he mentioned that as he progressed in his confidence in terms of being a leader of that Welsh and that British Lions team, he would be more comfortable bringing in a wider pool of people to share in the general duties that came with being a leader. So for Wales, that meant bringing in people like Alan Wynne Jones. And sometimes if he felt like he selfishly needed to focus on his recovery or his nutrition, he would ask some of the other guys to swap in and do a media interview or swap in and do a thing with one of the sponsors. And so that wider group would kind of share out those responsibilities so all of them could still focus selfishly on their own performance. I think that's a really grown-up approach to balancing the the environment and your own individual pursuit.

SPEAKER_01 45:58

I think that takes some maturity though, because sport can be very unforgiving and it can feel very insecure. And so I can imagine a lot of people would feel uncomfortable giving away those types of opportunities because they might not come up again. So it takes having been in it a long time and to feel very confident with your position.

SPEAKER_00 46:17

I think that that chimes a lot with with what I read in in Sam Warburton's book there, that that maturity came hand in hand, or let's say that confidence to maybe be to show a bit more vulnerability or to ask someone else's opinion that came with his maturity in the position.

SPEAKER_01 46:35

Yes. There's also definitely an element though within sport that it's a short career. And I think the average age of retirement is early 30s. And so I read a great start that 90% of athletes have to have a second career because they haven't earned enough in their first one not to be able to. Um and I imagine it's many footballers that are in that 10%. And so there will be quite a large part of their consciousness of I need to build up this reputation, I need this media coverage, I need this profile to help me with whatever I do next. So there'll be a little bit of work perhaps as coaches or kind of media commentating if you've got to a prestigious enough level. But for most people, it's really helpful to have that profile and to be seen as somebody that can communicate externally and have built up lots of followers and have engaged with lots of people to whatever comes next. So we don't want to put anybody off doing that kind of it, it's really helpful for their long-term career. But we want to help people do it in a way that's that's good for them and doesn't harm them in any way.

SPEAKER_00 47:40

Yeah, I I can totally see that that the context within high performance sport, and as you've mentioned, the the quite narrow window with which you can be at the elite level might kind of supercharge that characteristic of wanting to keep certain duties to yourself or to be able to thrive in that that spotlight and with those opportunities. But I certainly see that that pattern within the business world in the way that people accrue responsibility and titles through the working career, you can definitely see that there's there's always or quite often a growing pain going from being a very talented whatever it is, to a manager or a director, and that that feeling of that weight of responsibility that you need to take on those problems, you need to be the one who solves them.

SPEAKER_01 48:35

Definitely.

SPEAKER_00 48:36

And and I I do think anyone, with regardless whether it's it's sport or any performance environment, being able to share however you want to do that, whether you actually physically share out some of those roles or just share through talking to people that the challenges that you have allows you to make it not just your your problem. In in discussions with with many performers, and you ask them that question, what's got you here? Quite often they'll talk about a number of behaviours around hard work, humility, a good approach to mistakes, sharing problems with others, whether it's you know, quite often athletes live with their their family for the first part of their career, and then they might make it, and suddenly they you know have a bit of money and they can move into a house, and suddenly they actually don't have that social contact or support anymore. You ask them to look back and go, what's changed? Suddenly, the the behaviours that have got you there, you're not actually utilising those behaviours anymore. You don't feel like you can make a mistake, you're not sharing your issues with other people, you feel like it's all on you.

SPEAKER_01 49:41

Yes, and I think that's much wider throughout sport and wider anyway. That as soon as we have a little bit of success, we move from that trying to do well to trying not to mess up, and that definitely comes with each promotion you get in business or with each win you get in sport, that we have that real mindset change, and it's that trying not to screw up, which is what usually makes us screw up.

SPEAKER_00 50:04

Yeah, it's the um what's it don't think of a pink elephant.

SPEAKER_01 50:08

Yeah, yeah. If I tell you that there's a pink elephant walking through the room and you must not think about it, of course you're gonna think about the pink elephant, you can't think of anything else. The best example of that I found was a couple of years ago, and I think it was Garcia in I'm not hot on golf, but one of the really big golf tournaments. Okay, and he shot a ball five times into the water. And you can just imagine every single shot it will be. Do not think about the water, do not think about the water. And of course, that's where it went every single time.

SPEAKER_00 50:39

Yeah, yeah. Um, I think that in in psychology there is a a name for it, isn't it? Is it ironic effects or paradoxical effects?

SPEAKER_01 50:48

I'm sure it's the ironic effect.

SPEAKER_00 50:50

Yeah, it's the ironic effects or ironic bias, yeah. Yeah, so getting towards the the end, I'm gonna ask the the question that I'm asking most people on the podcast at the moment, and there's no perfect answer, but I'm always super interested to hear people's angle or how they come at this question. So, in terms of the psychologically informed environment, the pie, what what does a psychologically informed environment look like to you? Or what does it mean to you?

SPEAKER_01 51:20

It's definitely changed from when I started out. I've definitely moved, I guess, from I'm still a performance psychologist and I still see that as the heart of what we do, but actually I think performance comes second and well-being comes first. So I would say a psychologically informed environment would be about where you put well-being ahead of performance. And when you do that, it actually usually improves performance. But when you put performance first, it usually harms well-being. You get burnout, you have a short career, you don't perform too well. I guess at the heart of a psychologically informed environment are people. It's their thoughts, it's their feelings and behaviours and how they are doing. And when you put that at the heart of it, everything else works around it much, much better.

SPEAKER_00 52:05

So a psychologically informed environment is having people at the centre, their well-being catered for, and their their context catered for, and that produces not only beneficial effects for their well-being, but also as a result, their performance as well.

SPEAKER_01 52:24

Yes, but but people first.

SPEAKER_00 52:26

People first, gotcha.

SPEAKER_01 52:28

Which sounds like a bus company or something, doesn't it?

SPEAKER_00 52:30

But um Yeah, it also it it almost sounds like a an American presidential campaign slogan.

SPEAKER_01 52:38

Okay, well that there's my third career.

SPEAKER_00 52:40

Yeah. Well, look, thanks so much, um, Josephine, for for joining the podcast. What's what's next for for you and what can we expect to see from you over the next few months? I know it's a very uncertain time at the moment, but what's the the ideal plan for what you're doing next?

SPEAKER_01 52:57

Well, I've just finished my second book, um, which is for Routledge, they have a series called The Psychology of Everything. They're much more accessible than usual academic books, and so they're for the general public, but it's a short introduction to hundreds of different subjects that we psychology can really help give some insight to.

SPEAKER_00 53:18

Brilliant. When's when's that out?

SPEAKER_01 53:20

Out in October, and my book is The Psychology of Exercise. So that really took me back to basics because we didn't cover much exercise in my course, and I've only really worked on sports since finishing. So, but it was fascinating. And I broke it down into kind of a chapter on theories because that helps us understand where we're coming from, but then looking at the psychology of exercise for children, teenagers, adults, retirees, and those with a health condition, and then a final chapter on exercise addiction, which is why I've done lots of research. So, yes, I've just finished it, the edits came back and they're all done. So it comes out with a batch of other psychology of everything books in October. So, yeah, I'm not really sure what's next. I'm I'm using this as a little bit of catch-up time to wipe a load of stuff off the to-do list. And actually, I was I was reflecting today. I think the beginning of lockdown almost felt like the start of a holiday where you're you're trying to recover from everything that's been going on over the last few months, and it felt quite stressful and a bit fuzzy. And I wasn't I really needed that that break in that slowing down of time. And today was the first day I've started to get some new ideas again, and that feels like almost that second week of a great holiday where you're you're quite itching to get back at things, and you're like, Yeah, I want to do this and this, and you feel a bit like a puppy wanting to get going again. So um, I'm just getting to that stage. So hopefully I should get some good ideas coming up soon.

SPEAKER_00 54:50

Oh, brilliant! Yeah, so you you've had your reflective period, your relax, detox, however you want to call it.

SPEAKER_01 54:57

I wouldn't call it detox, it's been far too much wine drunk in this lockdown period so far. But yes, definitely.

SPEAKER_00 55:04

Okay, but you you're coming out of it with a kind of sense of excitement and some new ideas and in how to to take your consultancy forward.

SPEAKER_01 55:12

Yes, definitely.

SPEAKER_00 55:13

Great. Well, I think the book sounds like it's going to come out at a a really good time. Doesn't look like the period we're we're living through now is is going to change anytime soon.

SPEAKER_01 55:22

And I'm just looking out the window now at I'm sure this this period is creating more exercises, seem to see more and more people walking and running and yeah, if that works, it would be fantastic because some of the re doing the research for the books quite terrifying by the impact of um inactivity and how harmful it is on obviously our physical health, but also our mental health and our cognitive well-being. If people are using this time to do more exercise than they would have, that's brilliant.

SPEAKER_00 55:52

Great. Well, look, thanks again. Well, so if people want to follow you online, where are the places that they can keep up to date with all the stuff that you're doing?

SPEAKER_01 56:02

So I'm usually on Twitter, far too much. Um, and that's uh Josephine Perry. And my website's got loads and loads of free worksheets, and I try and write a blog every couple of weeks. So there's lots of things reflected upon on there and different kinds of sort of psychology element, and that is performance in mind.co.uk.

SPEAKER_00 56:24

Brilliant. Well, I'm gonna put all the all those links in in the description of the podcast anyway. So thanks again. Best of luck with managing through this this period and and longer term with putting that puppy-like excitement into action. Again, thank you so much for for sharing your experiences and and your insights on the podcast.

SPEAKER_01 56:45

Thanks so much for having me.

SPEAKER_00 56:46

Brilliant. Thanks, Josephine.

SPEAKER_01 56:48

Cheers, bye.

SPEAKER_00 56:50

So you've

Full time reflection

SPEAKER_00 56:51

reached full time, and if you are listening, that's over an hour of your day you've spent on Slice of Pi. So thank you so much for staying with it. I hope you took a lot from the conversation, as I certainly did. As I've said many times, one of the aims of Slice of Pi is to uncover insights that may be transferable across environments. And I think one may have cropped up in this episode around the nature of success and the perceived pressure that that can create. Whether it is three points in the league, that promotion at work, or your newest ad campaign that you knocked out of the park, every win, every success, every nudge up the career ladder, after that initial hit of excitement and pride, it can quickly give way to unhelpful thoughts around living up to expectations, or not screwing up, or not letting others down. These were the thoughts that we labelled in the podcast with Josephine Perry, ironic processes. And that's the theory within psychology from Wegner, the ironic process theory. Now let's be clear, the content of these thoughts, let's say not letting others down or having to live up to expectations, may not be irrational because the reality of high-stakes, high performance environments is that you are expected to perform at a high level. So what do we do with these thoughts? Well, sometimes reframing can help, but I don't think we have to reframe them or put a positive spin on them or pretend they're not true. Because the truth is it was unlikely that you were paying attention or focusing on such thoughts whilst getting to the stage that you have. So it's unhelpful to start giving energy to these thoughts now, which is why we don't have to call them unrealistic, but unhelpful. And this is where some of the acceptance commitment therapy or ACT literature can be quite helpful. It's about acknowledging that a thought may be true and accepting it, holding onto it lightly and deciding what action in line with our values that we can take next to take us forward. Certain realities we can't control, but what we can control is what action we decide to take next, and whether that's in line with the values that we hold dear. Right, well, that's enough contemplative deep reflection from me. Thanks so much again for listening and catch you in a week's time for episode 5.