Duncan Starr-Boltt on Fitness, Identity, Eastern Mind Mastery, and Purpose-Driven Goal Setting

[00:00:03] Hi, I'm Dr. Russell Thackeray and welcome to Resilience Unravelled, a podcast with new ideas, new thoughts, and new thinking about resilience. Guests with remarkable stories, products and services that can really power up your own mindset and resilience. You can also go to our site for more information, to ask questions, or to access some of our resources at resilienceunravelled.com. Let's get started.

[00:00:32] Hello and welcome back to Resilience Unravelled and welcome to my guest, Duncan Starr-Boltt, who's sitting resplendent in front of me, looking very carriage. First of all, welcome Duncan, how are you? I'm really good, thank you. Thanks Russell. Lovely to be here. And I'm detecting from that accent, maybe a Brit is sitting in front of me. How marvellous, someone from the UK. Tell me where you are. I'm in Cambridge. Very nice. Is that somewhere you work or is it?

[00:01:00] Yeah, I work. I actually live in Crete for eight months of the year and Cambridge for four months. I work online a lot, but in Cambridge when I'm here. Very nice. Tell me a bit about you. Who are you? Oh, brilliant. Yeah. So, we talked about identity. We briefly mentioned identity before this, didn't we? But who I am. So, originally, I went to uni at Newcastle to study mechanical engineering, which is where you are, isn't it? Newcastle.

[00:01:29] Yeah. Yeah. And so, I started off as an engineer. And then, because I didn't realise you could work in the fitness industry. So, as soon as, so I did engineering for a few years, which was great fun. But then, my love was always fitness and health. So, I went into personal training, sports massage. And then, I was enjoying that. But pretty early on, as a personal trainer, I realised that it was the mind that people needed the biggest help with.

[00:01:57] So, I dove into that. I dove into NLP coaching and things like that, which was really good fun. But, I was 20. I didn't feel like I could be a life coach. So, I did it on the side. And then, and then I set up. Then, I went to work for myself as a personal trainer. And then, I started a few companies like personal training equipment. Then, eventually, I ran my own gym with a business partner, which was great fun. And, eventually, it was a CrossFit gym. And, and, and then, that went really well.

[00:02:27] But then, eventually, I ran the gym on my own. And I got myself stressed. So, I'd always thought I was going to be good at handling stress and managing stress. And I've been researching how to do that. But then, I got really stressed. And the Western stuff wasn't really working. So, then I dove into the Eastern stuff. And that really, that was really cool. That sort of really helped me master my own mind.

[00:02:48] And I went off to India. Probably spent seven years trying to master my mind. You know, really working on it. Luckily, the gym was running itself quite well. I'm quite good at, I got the gym running. I got a good team in. I could travel and focus. We were trying to figure out where to live in the world. So, because we don't, I'd always wanted to live on the beach in the sun. We've traveled the world, whilst I was doing lots of self-work as well.

[00:03:12] Trying to, trying to figure out where to live, which was great fun. But, and eventually, we settled on creep. And, but I've missed that I've always been into fitness as well. I was always a higher, I was always, so, this is kind of funny, Russell. Not many people watch Forrest Gump and think, that's it. That's how to live your life. But I watched Forrest Gump when he ran everywhere. I was like, yeah, that, that's it. That's what I'm going to do. That's how I'm going to get really fit.

[00:03:42] So I got, I just used to sprint everywhere, like in sport. If they kicked the ball out of play, I'd sprint and get it. And I'd, if there was only five of us playing football, I'd volunteer to four on one. And I'd just try and sprint. They'd obviously win, but I'd put up a good fight. Yes. So that got me really fit. And then, and then I was always determined to prove how fit I was. That was when we talk about identity, that was my identity was very fit. So I, yeah, so I was trying to break a world record.

[00:04:08] I think my earliest challenge was to swim the channel and I managed to swim Lake Windermit, which is 11 and a half, about 11 and a half miles. So it's a good, good achievement. But I was kind of training for the channel at the time. So I didn't really acknowledge that as a, but looking back as a brilliant achievement. But then I tried the, I'm a failed channel swimmer. I got incredibly seasick, which I didn't think, didn't think you'd get seasick swimming. No, how strange. I didn't know that happened. I suppose you're going up and down a lot, aren't you?

[00:04:36] Yeah. And there was like, the boat had, the exhaust was like blowing right in your face, which didn't. I was going to say if you're on a boat, it doesn't count. Yeah. Yeah. So it was, yeah. So I failed at that. Then I, then I tried to break the plank world record and I got sciatica in both legs. That's just cause you're clenching all the time. Yeah.

[00:04:56] Then what else? Oh, I tried to complete the bleed test. Do you know the bleed test? It's like a, it's like a 20. It's a, it's a measure of fitness and it goes up in, in scales. Every beep, you have to go quicker to keep up. You have to chase a beep. Okay. And I used to do that every day. But obviously if you do that every day, you start going backwards after a while. And then, oh, and finally as a CrossFit gym owner, eventually I set a world record for wall balls. What?

[00:05:23] It's where you, it's ball balls. It's where you have a medicine ball, like a nine kilo medicine ball, and you have to hit a 10 foot target. And then you squat down and hit that target. So yeah, I'm talking resilience. I've always, I've always had really strong mental toughness. If that makes sense. Just that like with wall balls. So this is one, one interesting subject. So with wall balls, I was always like, most people hate wall balls.

[00:05:47] That's their least favorite thing. Cause you've got to squat fully and then power. It takes, so it's just, it feels exhausting for most people. But I always, when I'm doing something like that, I'd always look for the rest. There's quite a lot of rest in a wall ball. It's the, the power comes from the last kind of, you're, when your hips finally fully extend. That's where the power comes.

[00:06:07] So the rest of the whole movement I saw as rest. So, whereas most people are doing a wall ball thinking the whole thing's horrible. Do you see what I mean? Whereas I'm just like. It sounds it. Yes. You and I are very different. I can't imagine why you'd be doing this at all. But we'll come to that in a minute. I'm sure. So you got the world record and how many did you do? 452. In what, when, what, what level of time?

[00:06:33] It was in, the, the record was unbroken. So as many as you can do without stopping, without putting the ball down. And so having achieved that, did it matter? Because actually part of your purpose sounds like you'd been motivated by not achieving. Yeah. So, yeah. So back then I was very driven, ambitious. Do you see what I mean? And it was actually a huge relief to have finally proved that I was fit. But everyone was like, we knew you were fit.

[00:07:01] You've always been the fittest person we know. Nothing's changed. Who are you proving it to? Yeah. Just exactly. Exactly. Just, and it just, by proving it to, I suppose, proving it to myself, then I could just, I relaxed quite a lot, which was lovely. Because from everything you've said, we haven't mentioned cycling yet, but I guess if you're on the CrossFit and you've ridden gym, it's, I thought you were going to go towards triathlon there because you did the swimming and you did the cycling and you were sprinting all over the place.

[00:07:28] So I'm sure we, lots of people have done triathlon, Ironman and all that sort of nonsense. I had rubble, but. Yes. No, I, I tried triathlons as well. I did try triathlons, but, but by then my drive had gone. I, once I, we're talking about, so for me, when I figured out that, because I've always been goal driven, like my, my dad's got this amazing goal setting technique, which I'd love to tell you about, because it's a really cool process.

[00:07:55] But when I, when you dig, when I dug into the Eastern stuff, the, when you dig really deep onto your real goal, the goal behind all goals, it, it, it comes down to all we're striving for in life, all we want. Because every action we perform in life is to feel good. If you boil it down, if you dig up why you want to do that, it's either to feel good or not feel bad. Not feeling bad is feeling good.

[00:08:23] So everything, every action. So when I figured that out and then your, a whole, a whole experience in life is internal as well. So all we're trying to achieve in life is to feel good inside. Actually, if you dig a little bit deeper than that, all we're trying to achieve is to know that we're okay. That's actually the, the reason we don't feel good is because we think we're not okay.

[00:08:45] So when I realized that I was like, that's my only goal as my, so that's why I was like, that's my goal. I've got to reprogram my mind to know that's my primary goal. And yeah, so that stopped a lot of the nonsense. If that makes sense. It does. It does make sense. Tell me about your goal setting technique, because actually there's a big move in psychology away from goals. I'm interested that you're such a fan. Tell me more.

[00:09:10] Yeah. Yeah. So like I was saying with that, if we go to, why do we perform every action is there's always a goal behind every, an outcome. We're doing everything. So if I'm drinking water, it's because I'm thirsty. And so every action we're performing is for a reason. That's my premise behind why we should set goals is because we're always, whether we like it or not, there's always a goal there.

[00:09:37] Yeah. But I also actually, sorry. I see the point of not setting goals of psychologically moving away from goals as well. That would be because when, when we, you've got the high achievers. So I was a high achiever, very driven, driven person. But luckily I spotted that quite early. Okay. So when we're driving, driven, we're, we're striving towards something.

[00:10:02] So we, we become highly skilled at teaching ourselves that we're not okay. And I suppose that, that is what they're alluding to. They're saying, if you're trained, always striving for in life is to know that we are okay. And if you're setting goals all the time and striving all the time, you're training yourself. So ambitious driven people are very highly skilled at discontentment. So that's.

[00:10:28] But it's one of the key things about goal setting is that tends to generate less happiness and less person satisfaction, doesn't it? Yeah. Yeah. So it, and it's the quandary. I went through this quandary myself. So I went off goals as well. And then, but then as soon as I started working with people, when they're not, typically people that they, if they don't have goals, they don't know what they want from life.

[00:10:53] Then there's real uncertainty. Do you see what I mean? It's hard for them to get them to focus on something if they don't know what they want. So a goal setting process, actually, it gives them a lot of clarity when they have that, when they see the big, they're able to see the big picture. So yeah, that you've got to kind of get the balance right because we've, so going through a goal setting process gives you a lot of clarity and a lot of it.

[00:11:23] Yeah. It helps you for me, it helps you be efficient in what you want because, because most people, if they don't set goals and I'm not talking about being driven, that's the important thing. So you can, so I suppose the important thing is to set goals without being driven, if that makes sense. Yeah. But by driven, you're assuming that the drive is somehow unhealthy. Is that because the drive is often an external, an extrinsic sort of reward?

[00:11:53] Yeah. Yeah. So yeah, you're right. The drive, the drive is energy. Yeah. And so it's, that's a really good response for us. I like that is, yeah. Assuming it's unhealthy because it gives us a lot of energy to be driven. It's a positive thing. Yeah. It's only the lack of being able to switch it off. That's the negative thing. The lack of, cause it's the lack of satisfaction when we need satisfaction. Yes. And interesting, isn't it? Cause satisfaction is a choice. So why would you choose to be unsatisfied?

[00:12:23] Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Because it gives us something, doesn't it? And it's sort of this, you're talking a little bit about transactional analysis here. That idea that everything, every choice has a payoff, which is either because it works or because it feels good. I use that word with bunny ears, but it is true, isn't it? That's right. And actually the fact that one person's definition of what it feels like can be negative doesn't mean it's, doesn't feel good to that person.

[00:12:49] Cause if you want to beat yourself up, then congratulations on beating yourself up really well. Cause a lot of people beat themselves up every single day and really get some satisfaction from that, don't they? Oh yeah. Yeah. That's yeah. Yes. Yeah. There'll be a, there will be a sense of satisfaction there, weren't there? But there's, but it's. But it's part of that human condition, isn't it? That arguably they say that the best thing you can have is positive, positive probation.

[00:13:16] And then the second best is negative. This is what, this is the challenge with parenting, isn't it? The worst thing is to have nothing. So why do people stay with abuse in abusive relationships? Cause it's better than no relationship at all, isn't it? And it's a, it's a very strange thing about the human condition, isn't it? That we would rather have something negative than nothing. I think it's probably that maybe that social tribe thing, perhaps. Yeah. Yeah. There's, and also, yeah. It's, and what we're talking about is unconscious, unconscious behavior really here.

[00:13:45] And for me, the top thing is to become consciously in control of, of your experience and choosing to respond. And I think once you get someone like logical, then it's really, then you can, then you can start choosing. And yeah, it's, yeah, but it's helping someone, getting someone logical. It's, yeah, it's a process, isn't it? I'm interested in the Indians of the Eastern side. Cause obviously it's interesting.

[00:14:14] I've spoken, I've had a run of people from Australia and India and such like, because of what's going on in America, we have fewer American guests. And quite interesting to listen to people from the East talk about, cause they don't call it the East. They call, let's just say it's where we are. That's logic. Yeah. And I was always quite amazed by people from the West coming over and having this idea of the East as it were. And is it interesting that this idea of self-awareness, self-enlightenment, having accountability through choice and all those sorts of things we see is somehow spiritually enriched.

[00:14:44] And they're going, it's, it's just common sense. It's just the way we're brought up and all that sort of stuff. And they say it much less as a religious sort of experience and much more as just a sort of the part of the manual for living a good life. But it is fascinating that we seem to need to move over to these, let's just do say it again, Eastern ideas. So what was the attraction for you first of all? Is it just because you said the Western stuff didn't work? So you thought I need to find something else. Was that the motivation for you? No, yes.

[00:15:13] No and yes. That's good. Thanks for picking me up on that. But it's, for me, the bigger, it was the logic of hearing it. In the West, I like this kind of analogy. In the West, we try and fix the mind. That's the process. We try and fix the mind. And fixing the mind is like trying to push water up a hill. It's constantly changing. The mind is constantly adapting and changing all of the time. And the mind can never be okay.

[00:15:41] We talk about, I mentioned, knowing that we're okay. That inner peace. Okay. Now, the mind can never be at peace because the mind believes it's so many things. Our identity. We touch upon that again. So in the West, we're trying to fix this unfixable thing that's constantly adapting. Both our minds are changing during this conversation. Whereas in the West, no, sorry, in the East, in the East, they just say you are not the mind. So that is so simple. See what I mean?

[00:16:11] In the West, you could fill a library on all the books on the mind and all the different techniques on how to fix the mind. So it's such a complex thing that I was previously faced with was like, wow, the mind, how can I ever learn all of this? How can I do all the degrees on the mind? And do you see what I mean? Whereas in the East, they're just like, oh, no, you're not the mind. Oh, that's easy. So then your mind can be racing. Your emotions can be racing. Your body can be hurt. You can still be okay.

[00:16:41] So they just talk about that. They're just trying to create a little gap between you and your mind. And I love that. It's so simple. But if you're not the mind, what are you? Yes. Then that's for us to experience. It's not like we are.

[00:17:01] So if we can observe the mind and we can observe emotions and we can observe the body sensations, then we are that observer. But what is that observer? That's the... But yeah, that's another... There's lots of different ways of doing that. But I really... Yeah, you've got a few simple explanations like you're the watcher, you're the observer.

[00:17:29] And then meditation, mindfulness, they teach us the skill of watching. Yes. And with practice, you increase your capacity to be consciously observing. If that makes sense. It is. It's a fascinating concept, isn't it? The idea of being the observer, the watcher, this idea of pure consciousness, I think, used to be called... I can't remember if that's right. But it is this idea of that. It's almost this idea that you've got the dog in the tail and the mind's the tail. And it's about the dog wagging the tail, not the tail wagging the dog.

[00:17:58] It's that sort of idea. And it's an interesting paradigm, isn't it, in terms of what you think the mind is? Because when you're talking about setting goals, that's a very mindful process, isn't it? So actually, what are we doing there? Are we controlling the mind or are we... Because we're no longer observers, we're interfering with that process. How does those two things sit together? Yeah. Yeah. So my kind of... I was faced with a quandary.

[00:18:26] Should I go and live in a cave or go and live in India and just be at peace? Or... But I really want to impact the world and have enough and be involved, if that makes sense. So yeah, there's... I could go down the route of just the eastern side and master all that. But really, what I want to do is have my own voice in that space that kind of... That makes it more appealing to... Because it's not appealing to the... To your average person.

[00:18:56] It's too far out. It's too far away. This is the whole subject. What I'm saying for a lot of people, they're like, oh, blimey. Do you know what I mean? So my goal is really to reach normal people, to inspire them to live a great life and have... And enjoy themselves, but get them connected to their purpose because I want to have a positive impact on the people and the world and the planet. So yeah. So it's figuring that out, if that makes sense. So you mentioned earlier, your father had got this fantastic goal-setting process.

[00:19:26] And I know that you're interested in vision and purpose. And often the goal is a manifestation of the purpose. It's the way you drive yourself towards that purpose. And you also mentioned something called the impossible goal. So I was just wondering how you could open the door on those two things. Yeah. Thank you. And you asked earlier, I just kept not talking about it. That ropes it down. Yeah. So yeah, I'll start with the vision stuff because it's really cool. So yeah, my dad's, he used to call it the triangle.

[00:19:55] I prefer, but because I've done it my whole life, I just didn't think it was that powerful. I was like, yeah, probably most people use something like this. But then as I've gone into coaching, I've started to realize how effective it is and how powerful it is. And basically the process, he based it on Maslow's hierarchy of needs. So the process gets you to self-actualization, the goal-setting process. It puts you in the shoes of someone who's achieved everything they've ever wanted in life. And then we ask you, what do you want now?

[00:20:25] So a lot of people never... So when most people set goals, firstly, most people don't set goals. So they don't really have... So we're talking about, okay, we're talking about satisfaction. So they don't really have clarity over what they want in life. And they're not really working towards... Because life is so chaotic, this is why I'm pro-goals. Okay. I'd be anti-goals if life was quite clear and we were quite sorted. Do you see what it would be?

[00:20:51] And actually, if everyone's going to aim for having a good life, feeling happy and being at peace, then definitely no goals. I'd say those should be your goals. If those are your goals, wonderful. But if they're going to engage in the world of goals, the world of things, the world of possessions, capitalism, then goals are very important at that point. Because that's going to stop us from chasing the carrot till we die, kind of thing. Or keeping up with the Joneses.

[00:21:21] So what my dad's process does is, firstly, we set your goals. We write down everything you want in life right now. And all your problems and everything like that. And then we say, okay, you've achieved those. So there's a visualization exercise because I teach yoga and meditation and breath work and things like that. So I'm quite good at that as well. We put you in the shoes of someone who's achieved that. We say, what do you want now? And then that's the next level. We say, what are your new goals? And this is typically, might be like three months in the future. And then we write those down. And then we put them again.

[00:21:51] We go through the process. We put you in the shoes of where you've achieved that. And then we say, now what do you want? Okay. And we do this like between four and six times. And what that does is you, in each stage, you're really building that vision. You're really starting to connect with that future self and put yourself in the shoes of that person. And when you, and so you have, so it feels very real, feels very achievable to, and when

[00:22:20] you get to the level four, you're achieving level three is everything you've, two to three is everything you've ever aimed for, everything you've ever wanted in life. And then you go beyond that and you're like, oh wow. So you really see your full potential. Okay. And then when you get to the top, when you've got everything you could ever possibly want and you've done all the things, you've had all the money. Then at that point, self-actualization occurs. And then you're like, now I've got all this. What do I want? And then we're faced with our purpose.

[00:22:48] We connect with what the impact we'd like to have in life. And so that's, what's great about this is it gets someone to see what firstly with the state of the world. Okay. If everyone had a purpose and really thought about humanity, the world, if everyone could see with such clarity that what they can do and we're connected to that and we're working towards that, then the world would be a better place.

[00:23:17] So the more people who do this exercise, the better. Do you see what I mean? Because it really does connect them with their purpose. And the great thing is when you come back down, we adjust what your initial goals are. And when I do this exercise with people, they're like, wow, the goals are nearly a huge goals. We'll talk about impossible in a minute. The goals are huge goals, but they seem very realistic. Like, because at the end I create a step-by-step plan as well. And those are very small steps.

[00:23:46] I'm like, what's the first step to doing that? Then we go classic goal setting. We write all the steps out. So that's, yeah. So it's, what's powerful about that? You'll know all of this, Russell. When our identity, we come back to one of my favorite subjects, identity. Okay. Our identity, who we believe we are, is based upon our thoughts of the past and our thoughts of the future. That's because that's all we've got access to. Past the future.

[00:24:14] So the present's experiential. And as soon as we're paying attention to it, it's the past. Do you see what I mean? And commonly like NLP will be, will change your perception of the past. And that will help you change who you are, who you believe you are. We can scramble old thoughts and things. Do you see what I mean? To help you get past things. But changing someone's perception of the future is very simple. And when you give someone a vision of the future and you get them to journal on that

[00:24:43] specific vision, that's a really powerful way to switch who they believe they are in the present. Makes sense. Yeah. It makes a lot of sense. There used to be a similar process called the be, do, have. Who do you want to be rather than what do you want to have? Because actually we tend to, oh, who are you going to be as well? That's quite interesting. It's quite similar to your sort of idea there, which is good. And it really is absolutely right in terms of changing the vision of the future is really important, isn't it? I'm conscious of time marching on. Yeah.

[00:25:12] And you mentioned earlier that you'd written a book and I wondered whether some of these ideas are encapsulated within the book. Yeah. Yeah. So my book is, it's called Seeking Sukha, which is, and Sukha is a lasting happiness and peace. So it's like a, it's different to prayer, which is what we were talking about earlier, which is seeking happiness in external objects. Yeah. So my books, I don't know. Have you read The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari? Oh, blimey. Long time ago, but yes. Yeah. So it's similar format to that.

[00:25:42] So it's in, it's a fictional story. So I wrote a course on how, on happiness and inner peace on, on, on, on, on, on satisfaction, how to, how to master your mind. And the, you know what we're talking about being consciously in control of your whole experience. So I wrote a course on that. And my book is, it's a fictional, so there's a success coach who's not happy. And he's like, and he's noticing all his customers are burning out.

[00:26:10] Because again, the subject we were talking about, he's just revving them up all the time and not teaching them satisfaction. And, and he's starting to burn out. And then he just, he's, there must be an answer. Why am I not happy? And then he meets a monk and, and that monk sets him a challenge. And then, and then if he, when he passes the challenge, he takes him on a journey to his, his monastery in the Himalayas. So it's, yeah, it's a, and it was quite easy to write.

[00:26:34] Cause it's, I was like, I had a module on my course and I was like, what scene would make this, would illustrate this module quite easily. So yeah, it was, yeah, it's a nice, it's a really, it's a really happy, if someone's looking to be relaxed, to, to really connect with that subject and learn. It's a, like a really, I made it a real, like the auto, the audio is really good. I made it like a really relaxing, enjoyable read. If that makes sense. Did you do the audio yourself? Yes. Yeah. That's quite impressive.

[00:27:04] Quite the process doing an audio book. I didn't think it'd be hard. No, I can imagine it's really tricky. Reading out loud is trickier than it looks, isn't it? Very tiring. Yeah. And this, I went on, my stepdad's got a farm. I thought a farm would be quiet, but every five minutes, tractor, airplane. Yeah. The stop. Yeah. You've got to go through a proper sound booth. Look, it's absolutely fascinating. And I get the sense that we barely scratched surface today's chat.

[00:27:31] But so if people want to find out more about you and your approach, how will they do that? Oh, LinkedIn's great. Connect with me on LinkedIn or my website. Dot com. That, that would, that's got a lot of information about me and yeah, but just get in touch. I love having conversations and helping people. And just for people who are aware that bolt is spelt with two T's, which got foxed me earlier if we remember. So there you go. It's been a joy to meet you. And it's been fascinating. And congratulations.

[00:28:00] I've never met anyone who's so pleased with not achieving. And I think that's quite, quite refreshing in today's world. I think because we're so motivated by the traditional and actually just enjoying the journey, I think it's just something that's really inspirational. So brilliant. Thanks for spending time with us today. Hi. I hope you found that episode useful and entertaining.

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