Episodes
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This podcast is devoted to our companion pain. There is an exhaustive list of the ways we have been taught to disassociate from pain.
We are experts at resisting what we don't want to feel. Problem with that is, because we are resisting pain, we resist allowing our experience when we are involved in something that is creating pain.
If you are resisting pain in your training, you are resisting chunks of your training. As a consequence, you will find yourself resisting large chunks of your racing.
Its a conundrum that most athletes don't want to look at.
So I'm here to draw you attention to it because it is also a huge area for opportunity, growth and expansion as an athlete and as a human.
If you can learn to bring your pain home, your inner fracture during training and races will cease.
This one is about meeting your pain and discomfort. Learning how to stay present and attentive to your process while you are experiencing pain.
Learning how to allow your pain its place. Allowing it to empower you rather than having it siphon all your energy into victimhood.
Dive in.
Gilesy.Support the show
Grants Website
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Ive been punching away at blogs for many years. In many ways that writing has become my own teacher.
Raw curiosity has dragged me headlong into a personal investigation of my own state, and the writing it spawned has held a mirror up to the world of performance.
The curiosity brings the questions, how do we live our best life? How do we bring ourselves to the zenith of performance?
The answer is we don't! We bring the performance to us.
The simple answer I have learned and experienced is that we need to bring more of ourselves, and as such we unweight ourselves of a mental burden. We are not adding to the burden of performance we are subtracting from it by simplifying it.
To learn how to accept the more uncomfortable aspects in the world of performance we must learn how to accept our own experience and let it teach us. Thats all about coming back to your own essential power, which in essence is the refusal to move a millimetre away from yourself.
How are you going to do that? I've written a cheat code on it.
This podcast is a very short summary of the key aspects.
Whether you plan to explore the cheat code with me in the coming months or simply listen to this podcast, there is plenty here you can use in your own journey of self exploration and peak performance.
At this stage I am thinking I will present an interactive webinar series over 6 sessions. Details on the cheat code will be coming up soon.
If you feel like reaching out with questions, you can DM me here- [email protected]
Cheers,'
Gilesy.Support the show
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We are full of patterns. Habitual, unconscious ways of being in the world built mostly around safety. Programmed patterns are running all the time in our training, many of them separating us from our own internal power. The past drags us around by our bootlaces unless we are very consci to it
Pattern InteruptsHabit SettingRitual IntensionsThe Animal Body that you arePrimal DriversGrounding Internal PowerPressureUsing your own energy as the driverNurturing Performance Inviting Success
All the metal, subconscious scripts that we run under pressure play at the forefront of our minds eye drowning out the potential in us.
If you are going to interrupt any physical or mental pattern, there is one immutable rule to do doing so, that is to make damn sure you are consistent. Ritual and habitual intensions are crucial to making real change.
This one is not for the faint hearted, It pulls no punches, sometimes thats what it takes to wake us up into a pattern interrupt.
Make change or stay the same, thats the choice. If you want something different, you have to be prepared to do something different.
Otherwise Its a case of monkey see, monkey do. Nothing new comes unless we observe ourselves closely and take responsibility for that.
What you can expect to cover in this one:Probably a lot more too in this brain dump.
Hope you enjoy,
Gilesy.Support the show
Grants Website
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Sport and indeed life, demand our attention, our presence and our focus.
That focus is about retaining our personal integrity. It is to not speak against ourselves, or descend into self blame, self judgment or the self defeatist talk which can often lead to a fracture in an athletes focus.
It's about remaining self possessed and free from the internal agitation that deregulates our nervous systems and send us into a stress response when we need the full force of our own power.
Listen to this one if you want to learn how to become adaptive rather than reactive.
This ones about being poised, self collected, self contained, self possessed and composed.
You are the root of your own power.
GilesySupport the show
Grants Website
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Don’t define yourself as an athlete, embody it!
What does that mean? It means bringing it home.
The measurement of the process is useless without the awareness it takes to integrate it.
The integration is about the intelligence and the self awareness that you apply to the suck and the embodiment of the physical unfolding that is taking place right here and now.
This is how physical consistency, adaption and development work. Cognition and consciousness are not just functions of the brain but are also influenced by the body and its interaction with the environment.
The physical and mental process is utterly interconnected.
This forms the whole approach of my own coaching and mental skills jam man.
You are: head, heart, body, mind and soul. Not less than that.
This one is about bringing the whole athletic journey home to yourself where it belongs and is at its most potent.
Gilesy.Support the show
Grants Website
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This week we had a chat with Mark Jansen about the challenges an athlete faces being an elite level age group triathlete and cyclist while working full-time in the corporate world.
Mark is a super strong willed athlete, racing successfully in 70.3 and Ironman. A twice top 5 finisher in Hawaii and a multiple sub-9 hour Ironman, he is well positioned to speak about the balance of work, life and sport.
We talk about the gift and the curse of the type A personality and the management it takes to keep that requirement in homeostasis.
We are talking about confidence, loads, recovery, the benefits of an active lifestyle and the foil of high-level sport and a corporate career.
We chat about what it means to go deep in racing terms and the physical and psychological nuances of racing and training that make them what they are.
Mark is a highly articulate human and that makes this chat great listening.Enjoy,
GilesySupport the show
Grants Website
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Want the best of yourself?
It's not about how you react; it's about how you respond.
Critically, it's about your state of mind as you respond that governs the quality of the action you take in that response.
You're programming around what you think you can and can't do radically affects your capacity to respond from a place of power rather than from a place of defense. If you are responding from defense, you are out of your power and trapped in your head.
All that you see in front of you is how you feel in your head.
Let me give you an example: How does the world look to you when you are sick?
It's not the same world, right?
Yep, Its pretty drab! Did the world change or did your perception of it change based on the way you feel?
We know through scientific research that we process the world based on our history, not on how it actually is in reality.
So, when you hit that spot inside yourself where things start to get difficult in a race or a training session and you are in a world of pain, that hurt doesn't belong to the session or the race, it belongs to you and your perception of it.
That's a melting pot of expectations brought to you by similar experiences of your past.
You see that course as you are, not as it is.
What are you going to do to get free of that so you can contact and deal with the reality of it as it is here on the coal face?Let's explore that real potential that you carry as an athlete and a human.
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I suspect that a warrior hides in the DNA of all athletes. Many of us are disempowered in these times though. We are so busy trying to be an athlete on an outer level and not quite coming to terms with what that means.
When does the warrior become the worrier? Where do we leak power in our sessions? What are the implications of that for our racing and performances? How do we lose connection to purpose, enthusiasm and motivation?
So, in this podcast Im covering a few specific questions:I'm breaking it down here and pulling apart the pieces that seperate us from our own instinctual warrior. Yes, you have one!
Lets explore how we can rediscover the power we need to perform on a level we never thought possible.
Gilesy.
Grants Website.Support the show
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In life we have times where we meet a crossroads where we have to make a choice.
Profound life change can be a portal to a deeper existential shift in our perception of ourselves as human beings.
This week we had a chat with professional triathlete Laura Dennis who is being faced with that challenge right now.
Laura sustained a serious head injury after being hit by a car in training, and today we chat to her about the significance and the meaning of presence, intention, gratitude and visualisation in changing our perceptions not only of what has happened but also of where we want to be and what we want to experience.
The human brain is an amazing organism that has the capacity to literally change its own perception and heal itself.
I hope you enjoy the listening.
Gilesy
https://www.grantgiles.com.au
https://sansego.sansego.co/coach-grant
[email protected]Support the show
Grants Website
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People have ideas about mental strength which are not entirely true, often thinking they need to be ruthless with themselves.
They tend to think they need to have an Ironclad will that shows no vulnerability, no mercy, no leniency. But that which does not bend, often breaks.The problem is, it is weak as it is projected outwards towards the world, and strong as it’s projected inwards towards ourselves. Like a tracker on a scent or footprints in sand , he has to use an element of intuition or the trail and the footprints will be lost in the sands for ever.
If he starts to follow every track and every print in the sand, he will lose the scent completely.
This is a metaphor for how we lose our own scent. We get lost trying to track our own progress because we only want to assess it from the outside, but it doesn’t work, it’s not enough!
A torrent of fiction, drowning in a sea of information bereft of a direction, a million tracks leading to no where if we are mindful.
So, this podcast is about finding you own inner strength so you can bring it to the world.
Gilesy
http://www.grantgiles.com.au
https://sansego.sansego.co/coach-grant
[email protected]Support the show
Grants Website
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In this podcast I am discussing the three pillars of progress through process.
Thrive Automaticity Discomfort
Namely -I discuss the subsets of each pillar. The idea here is to provide you a short cut in your own athletic endeavours through the experience of my own and the observation of those I have coached over the last 25 years.
Gilesy.
http://www.grantgiles.com.au
https://www.inconvenientminds.com.au/
https://sansego.sansego.co/Support the show
Grants Website
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Most of our problems as athletes are bound up not in the way we physically train but in the way we think and react to the stimulus.
The WhyThe IntentionThe PurposeVisualisation Rituals / Habituals Intentional Action Belief Perseverance / Resilience Many More
No point in training like a champion and thinking like you have already lost. To make any real change we first have to understand what it is we are thinking.
Importantly we can change the way we think, feel and react, creating a positive, supporting mindset for performance at the very same time.
In this podcast Grant gives you an overview of a winning mental strategy -
THE HIERARCHY OF MENTAL PERFORMANCEWorking on performance from the inside out is the best way to bring mind, body and spirit into a state of flow that leads to the ultimate in personal performance excellence.
Cheers,
Gilesy
https://www.inconvenientminds.com.au/
http://sansego.sansego.co/
[email protected]'
Support the show
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The chase for the dream, the outcome, or the result is the motivating factor that encourages many people to get after their aspirations.
PurposeThe whyIntentionAttentionFocusDoubt Negative Expectancy Negative Self Talk Alignment Flow
In this podcast we explore what is important in terms of the energy that fuels our chase and our relationship to the chase, do your motivations and actions move you towards your goals? Or do they move you away and indeed block the path you have chosen.
In this podcast you will lean how to unpick your own locks so your intention and attention are directed into alignment with what it is you really want to achieve.
We explore the realms of -And many more. I hope you enjoy the listen.
Cheers,
Grant Giles
https://www.inconvenientminds.com.au/
http://sansego.sansego.co/Support the show
Grants Website
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When we get what we want, we want what we don’t have!!It’s a slippery slope, sometimes getting what we want is the worst thing that can happen to us. If it comes easy, it comes greasy, slips through our fingers and then the more we have the less we feel like we’ve got.
This concept we are sold of fame and fortune is an empty promise, a void with no real substance, people who arrive there quickly learn that it is not made of what they thought it would be made of.
The void comes courtesy of a lack of definition, the promise is that when we arrive at destination success that it will define us, and of course it can’t and doesn’t.
In the same way when we believe that destination happiness is a place, a face, an object or a person, we ultimately come up against this empty void.
The more happiness you think you have attained, the more you want, the more money, fame and success you think you have attained, the more you want.
The salesman sells you on more, but what you feel is less, it’s an uncomfortable paradox, the more safety you get, the less safety you feel.
It’s a hint that the deeper aspects of life send us to let us know that the things we play with are not made of definition, we are already defined by life, and try as we might, we can never add to it in any real sense. It’s a great leveller, the vagrant, the destitute, the middle class, the upper class and the filthy rich all cut from the same piece of mortal cloth, now that’s a truth you can take to the bank.
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This week we are speaking with Karl Page, the founder of WOSUP (War On Single Use Plastics). Karl is somewhat of a journey man. We speak about the fantastic inspiration behind WOSUP, the idea behind the experience that sparked a movement of sustainable materials. Established in 2018, WOSUP is a social impact enterprise dedicated to making a difference in our environment by providing sustainable alternatives to single use plastics.
This podcast moved into the journey of the self, the role of alcohol in Australian society, Karl’s personal journey into sobriety and the meaning behind it.
We delved into many aspects of what it means to be human in the current environment of pressures. We are all being forced to look inwards at our lives, and so we consider what we can find in the dark shadows to guide us to a more authentic way of life.
We speak about the choice to live authentically, simply, and minimally. Most importantly, we speak of how we can live sustainably on an unstable planet.
I find the content of these podcast chats amazing. When the (non-plastic) container is opened and the truth comes forward, the truth speaks its own powerful language.
This one is a great listen.
Thanks Karl for your honesty and authenticity.
Wosup Website-
https://wosup.com.au/pages/about-us
Grants Website-
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There is nothing like race day pain and suffering to test our mettle. The deals we make with ourselves in the smoky backrooms of our minds, the tenuous connections that we make to our own internal strength, often frayed at the edges by the experiences of the past and the doubts of the future.
That incredible day before a big event where the mental pain at times often feels overwhelming, only an athlete or anyone who risks much knows that feeling, that low drawn feeling of ambiguity to a future that isn’t here yet, and yet close enough to make us suffer.
o But what if there is another way?
o What if the answer is nowhere near as complex as the stories our minds create?
o What is the truth?
o What is the reality?
o What is the possibility in all of this?If you have ever experienced what I am talking about here, you may want to listen to this one. We never arrive at clarity without investigation and enquiry.
As athletes and humans, we tend to investigate everything for an advantage, and hey, athletes are opportunists, but they tend to overlook the one area that can leverage the greatest of all advantage, the space between our own two ears.
Grants Website-
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Doubtful, fearful, reactive, defensive, divisive, alienating, isolating, estranging, inharmonious, disingenuous, manipulative, repetitive, cynical, victimising, dishonest, deceitful, underhanded, duplicitous, insincere, calculating, scheming, devious and unscrupulous.
A bunch of words to describe the tip of the iceberg that we have all been witness too in Australia and around the world in the last few months.
What do they all have in common? They are words, mutations in truth and reality, states of mind that form thoughts, beliefs and ideology, actions that are born of this small group of words and thoughts fed in a matrix of chaos and confusion, that are met by the amygdala in our brain that alerts our nervous system that something is up and fires up the fight and flight response which takes our rational brain offline. It's an amygdala hijack that requires a mindful approach to solving.
Nothing gets solved by doubt, fear and panic. We each need to serve ourselves a healthy dose of mindful thought and action right now in the interest of keeping ourselves centered. Living life for the moment is the best way of keeping ourselves healthy in this stressful time.
There are always two ways to look at things, within the toughest of times, opportunity lies, growth waits, evolution patiently waits for the opportunity to leap and we never know the hidden reasons behind such discomfort and suffering. Perhaps Krishnamurti said it best when he said "man does not see the illusion in fear until he loses everything there is to lose and then realises there is nothing to fear".
Footnote: The content in this podcast is personal, one mans observed opinions, using words as a means of expression, is always fraught with misunderstandings and context issues so listen up with an open mind or switch it off.
Much love in trying times,
Gilesy.
Grants Website-
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The advent of Instagram and the body image sales pitch that has created influencers and so called successful movers and shakers, pushing us to look a certain way by targeting our unconscious need to fit and consume, can at times be a very destructive force which separates us from the deeper truth of our potential if we are not using a high degree of self awareness.
The dangers are obvious. Disordered eating, body dysmorphia, unrealistic body shape goals, self judgment, anxiety and depression are the shadows which cloud the perfect pictures.
The projection athletes tend to make of themselves around fitting certain image criteria lends itself to major drawbacks in terms of development, personal evolution and athletic metamorphosis, and can lead to stagnation and indeed regression.
A major portion of human athletic suffering is brought about not by the pain of the process, but rather, the suffering of trying to measure up to the internal images and the expectant images of what others perceive it should look like.
This podcast is an exploration first of the issue and the way out of it towards our personal growth, not only as athletes but more importantly as human beings.
Grants Website-
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Doubt is the ultimate cynic.
Are you sick of manifesting the opposite of what you want? Repeating the same outcomes regardless of the preparation? Feel like a victim, not a victor? Fatigued from trying?
Do you know what trying would look like if doubt were not present and you were?
If we could only see the athletic process without the filter of judgment, tags, labels, doubts and fears and into the power of pure seeing. We can, it is available, and it is a choice that we have to choose to make.
Doubt is that gnawing feeling of not feeling grounded in our true sense of natural confidence. It's a cynic, a liar and a cheat, that whispers shadowy thoughts into our sense of stability.
So today we take a little exploration into the realm of doubt, the role it plays and the havoc it wreaks on our athletic endeavours.
How doubt does it, how it gets imbedded, how we manifest what we don't want, and what we can do about it.
Grants Website-
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What we often don't talk about is our journey as ex-athletes. It is a subject that we need to bring out into the open.
Ex-athletes often feel like they have been swept under the carpet or put out to pasture in some way, but this projection lacks a basic truth, in that most of the discomfort in retiring from sport, or anything else for that matter, is in fact self driven in the way that the individual has defined who they were in sport and the way they define themselves now in the return journey.
Everything in life has an outward and return journey, the issue is that we are accepting of the outward journey, regardless of how difficult it is, and then we resist the return journey without considering it's value.
So we look at our experience in sport and life in terms of likes and dislikes. We resist our retirements and our return journeys because we try to make a solid out of a liquid.
A sporting career or indeed anything else is not solid, it is transient, temporary and completely unstable. Finding happiness in life post sport is about finding happiness in the pure experience of what you do and finding out why you are doing it. Instead of looking outwards as we have been taught to do, to do the opposite and look inwards for clues to what we would actually love to be doing for an experience instead of an outcome.
To take a closer look at all those goals and outcomes and to realise that none of it is solid, and then to feel and realise the freedom in that, man what a relief. From there to work not on what appears to be valuable from the outside, but to work on what is valuable to you as a human, right here and now, for the ultimate benefit of your future.
Grants Website-
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