Hayden: [00:00:00] Well, I've really appreciated Cadel Evans taking time to share some of his personal stories since cycling with us. Uh, I I found the interview fascinating from a whole range of perspectives, particularly the fact that many people have followed Cadel's journey and his story and have written about his time during his cycling career, but not many have really...
Spent much time delving into what his life must be like afterwards. How do you go from such and in all encompassing kind of really focused disciplined sport like cycling [00:01:00] from being world champion from being Tour de France winner To a life after that, how do you go back to leading a normal, balanced life, because many would argue, I would argue, that his life was not balanced, it was incredibly focused and disciplined and fit, but not balanced and healthy from a long term, sustainable well being perspective, so that's the bit that I was particularly fascinated about, and I was keen to talk to Cadelabout, and it was great for him to share some of his own experiences.
thoughts and experiences around that. So the purpose of this section now is really to go deeper into some of the things that came up during my interview with Cadel and to, dive into the research, the evidence behind it, maybe the models and the frameworks and to share some practical tips with you. So hopefully we can all learn together.
So let me begin. One of the things that Cadel spoke about was. He shared a story about the day he retired, he actually, his last race, professional race was his own race, [00:02:00] bike race that was named after him, the Cadel Evans Great Ocean Road bike race. He finished that, didn't win it, didn't win his own race, but he decided to get on the bike and put his bike gear on and ride the very next day.
And. He shared a story around, you know, endorphins and the positive feeling and he wanted to continue that. But the bit I wanted to focus on is the concept of continuing habits. He didn't have the time to continue to ride for hours and hours and he needed to transition to a different life. But he immediately got back on the bike and developed a habit.
He talked about the concept of... not losing what you have. He also talked about doing exercise in the morning and then everything else fitting around that. So I wanted to sort of focus on a couple of things. There's a guy called BJ Fogg who's written a great book called Tiny Habits similar book by James Clear called Atomic Habits.
So probably two of the best books I [00:03:00] know around small habits, whether you call them tiny or atomic habits. And what BJ Fogg talks about is make habits laughably small make them tiny. And if you can't do those, then make them even smaller, laughably small. He gives a number of stories that I really like around that.
One is that he was a fit and healthy person, but he wasn't very strong in the upper body. And so he wanted to get stronger and wanted to do pushups. One of the concepts that BJ Fogg talks about is the concept of making sure that you pair a new activity or a new habit with a trigger. That is in your normal life.
So he used to drink a lot of water. And so that made him go to the toilet to pee. And so he said, I go to the toilet five times a day after I drink a lot. I decided to do two push ups after every time I went to pee. And so I did 10 push ups [00:04:00] every day. Did that for a month. Now, doing that is not going to make you incredibly strong, but it's the habit, the muscle of that trigger.
and daily habit that then can lead to a new habit, then eventually increase that to 10 push ups every time and eventually he got up to 100 push ups. So the concept of building habits around daily things that are already triggers, already there, can be a trigger to a new habit. So I think that's a really good story that I like.
The other story that in fact Simon Sinek tells about Tiny Habits is, he gives the example of cleaning your teeth. And so, if I clean my teeth in the morning, I won't have clean teeth. If I clean my teeth in the morning and night, I won't have clean teeth. But if I clean my teeth morning and night, I Day after day for my whole life I will have clean teeth.
It's the same thing for any other habits. Let's say I go to the gym. I go to the gym and smash out a workout. That won't get me fit and [00:05:00] healthy and strong. If I do it the next day and the next day and I do it every day for my life, I'll lead a fit and healthy life. That's the same for any habit.
You can't just do it once you've got to do it on a daily basis But you've got to make sure it's small so you can repeat it the next day So you're not injured or hurt or it's too big and too hard it does remind me of Phrase from Zig Ziglar the famous motivational speaker where he said you don't have to be great to start But you have to start to be great.
A lot of his stuff is perhaps not so, scientific or evidence based research, but that little phrase there is part of B. J. Fogg's concept of just begin to do something you need to begin. And you need to do something that's, that's tiny. Something else that Cadel Evans spoke about was he shared how, sadly, during the end of his career, he had a lot of challenges.
He separated from his wife, who [00:06:00] ended up taking his son away from him. And he had to, at that time, cope with building a new life. And so. That must have been incredibly challenging. So I did ask him, how did he cope? And one of the things he talked about was the connection between the mind and the body and how powerful he thinks that is and the rush of endorphins you get when you are fit.
So he really did focus on his physical fitness and the discipline to do that every day. And in fact, he had a little, little phrase, get up and do your exercise first thing in the morning. It's then done, you've taken care of yourself, and it's the most important thing before anything else happens. And so he had that discipline and that habit and that routine of doing that, and that helped him mentally to be able to cope with the challenges he was going through.
We know the connection between the mind and the body. A couple of examples of that are simply, if you're struggling to sleep, for example, And you struggle to sleep regularly and in fact, if you have insomnia. Which is where you struggle to [00:07:00] either get to sleep, stay asleep, or you wake up too early and can't get back to sleep for three weeks in a row.
Which, sadly, over two million Australians suffer from at any one time. If that is you, it is like you are over 05 alcohol content. And imagine trying to lead or make decisions and think clearly on a daily basis when you're at that level of say, alcohol consumption, it's the same with poor sleep, the same when your body is not fit and healthy.
And so he focused on that physical fitness, which also helped his mental fitness and emotional fitness as well. So that was something I think is really important that we gotta think about that connection between the body and the mind and the emotions. So that was an interesting story to share. And I think we all need to be really mindful of that to cope with challenges in life.
Another little story that I found interesting to delve into was, he [00:08:00] talked about the concept of being a little bit hungry. Cadell had to ride for long, long periods and often that's very exhausting and he often would not eat a lot during that period. He would obviously have some protein bars and whatever he had to eat.
But that taught him about feeling hungry. And he said it's quite good to have that discipline of feeling a little bit hungry. To know what true hunger is. And I think a lot of people in the western world will often say, Oh gee, I'm starving. When they're not really starving, they might be hungry. And so, because they don't really know what is starving, how many people have actually not eaten anything in the Western world for 24 hours?
For 48 hours? You may, if you've done any of those activities, know what it's like to feel truly hungry when you're... is not full at all. And so, I think one of the key messages out of that sort of story is that particularly living in this western world that we [00:09:00] live in where food is readily available for most of us It's hard to know what true hunger is, so paying attention to your body on a daily basis rather than automatically putting food in without thinking about your level of hunger is something that's really important to develop.
To develop insights and awareness and true awareness of your body and what it feels like at various stages of the day, before, during and after eating a really important thing to become mindful of, to be very mindful of the food that goes in your mouth and the true feeling that you have. Another part of that was he talked about just enjoying a couple of pieces, two small blocks of dark chocolate a day.
And really important to understand that when we indulge ourselves in some, naughty pleasures, if you like what I call them, that's really important to be able to do that. But it's important that we allow ourselves to do that where we're mindful of that rather than putting that food in. We are really appreciating, slowing down to be mindful and appreciating [00:10:00] that food that we're having.
And also we're having small amounts of it. When we're mindful of the food that we're eating, we typically eat slower and don't eat a lot of the food that's a little bit bad for us. Something else that came up during the conversation with Cadel was the fact that he's He's now raising two young children, Aidan and Blake, they're about five and three years of age, with his new partner, Stephania, and there were many challenges with that.
And so as he's transitioning to being a father, raising two young children and he's no longer, you know, self focused on winning the Tour de France or whatever, I asked him about his sense of purpose because clearly he had a strong sense of purpose when he was professional cyclist. What is his purpose now?
So he spoke about his purpose now is to be a great role model for his children and others. Uh, So that concept of a role model has a lot of meaning for Cadel. So it made me [00:11:00] think about purpose and meaning in lives and how does that drive certain behaviours. And I think many athletes struggle with that because their whole life and their whole purpose has been that sport.
Whether it's professional cycling, tennis, football, swimming, whatever that is, you typically, that you identify so much with that sport. sport. In fact, and you, you can't see your own identity without it. So you need to develop a new strong sense of purpose to be able to transition to a new life. A couple of uh, bits of research around that probably the most popularized and strong one in the last five to 10 years is It's by Simon Sinek, and he's written a great book called Start With Why, and that's all around making sure that you are aware of your why, your sense of purpose, and sharing that with others as well, not just focusing on what you do or how you do it.
But sharing with others why you do it, which is a strong influencing strategy for others, but also being aware of [00:12:00] it, it's a strong strategy for yourself to be aware of your why. What is your purpose, either at work and or at home or both? If you haven't done much of that kind of thinking or reflecting, I suggest you, you take time, you can Google it, you can get some help from a coach or a psychologist to fully understand your why.
I think it's really important to think about your why at work and at home. Have you got a life purpose? Have you got a purpose in the work that you do in your career? If not, then that's powerful to understand your own why. Another piece of research is by a Stanford psychologist and researcher, William Damon.
In 2003, he showed that having a clear purpose helps people focus on the things that matter. And I think it's really important that we are able to do that because, particularly in today's environment where you pick up your phone and you've got You've got 20 messages, you've got lots of information coming at you.
It's really crucial that we are able to [00:13:00] focus on the things that matter and not just be responding or reacting to the things that come at us. So making sure we've got a clear sense of purpose allows us to prioritize and focus on the big things in life, the important things in life, or the big rocks in life.
The final piece of research I thought I'd share with you is by Kenneth Watchtum in 2019. He actually did some research with older adults and he found that if they felt they were living a meaningful and worthwhile life they experienced more positive changes throughout their lives and their sense of well being was enhanced.
So Strong sense of purpose and meaning in life crucial to any life and particularly if you're transitioning from a high performance sport to something else, redefining a sense of purpose is crucial. That relates to the concept of motivation that we also spoke about. Cadell seems to be highly Purpose driven and motivated.
So he hasn't lost that level of [00:14:00] motivation since retiring. There's different types of motivation I want to talk about though, because some of Cadell's motivation whilst he was cycling was a fear of failure. Now the issue with a fear of failure is it's kind of a double edged sword. On the one hand, prevents complacency and focuses your efforts to be better and better and not being complacent.
But if that is sustained for too long, it leads to chronic worry and anxiety, and it isn't good for you over long term. You feel more fatigued and tired and drained and exhausted, and sometimes a sense of hopelessness develops. So instead of having this fear of failure, I would certainly encourage people, and the research shows this, to focus on Motivation towards something.
Now, Cadell spoke about the great feeling of, those endorphins when you really push yourself, when those endorphins get going and just being aware of your own levels of endorphins. That made me think about intrinsic [00:15:00] motivation. We know that intrinsic motivation is much better than extrinsic motivation.
That is motivation from other, the motivation intrinsically comes from within yourself. The best form of motivation intrinsic motivation is the feeling of being fit and healthy. The feeling of those endorphins, but you don't even need the endorphins, just the feeling of feeling fit and healthy. The challenge with that though is some people lack that real body awareness, the awareness of themselves and what does that actually feel like.
So it's really important that you... get in touch with that feeling and start to increase your awareness of your body and what it feels like to be healthy compared to unhealthy or, injured or not in that state of health and wellbeing from your body perspective. And ensure that you are building motivations and desires that are longer term towards some goal that you have that's an intrinsic goal rather than [00:16:00] extrinsic goal.
Something else that we spoke about was cultural norms. Now, you know, in my book, I spoke a lot or wrote a lot about social norms. I love the concept of norms. He spoke about cultural norms, having lived half his life in Switzerland and Italy or various parts of Europe, but mostly Switzerland and Italy rather than Australia, where he grew up.
Now Cadell spends time between Australia and Italy and Switzerland. The habit of people, particularly in Italy, of having a glass of wine with dinner was something that he got used to a daily almost, I guess, glass of wine with dinner. We compared that to the norms, the cultural norms in Australia, certainly his experience.
of not drinking daily, but kind of binge drinking on weekends, binge drinking a lot more on Friday and Saturday nights, but not having that glass of wine. And that was fascinating because I think again, the concept that I want to help people be aware of is [00:17:00] we live in environments. whether it's a country norm, a cultural norm of a country or society, or the local norms of the groups that we belong to, the key is to be aware of those norms and aware of whether they are helping you or inhibiting you in terms of leading a life that's more well from a psychological perspective, physical, social and emotional perspective.
So his perspective on norms was quite fascinating and I think it's important for us to all take ourselves out of our own little bubble and be aware of the greater norms and then make choices, conscious choices about whether we want to follow those norms or be a bit different. Something else that came up in the conversation was Cadell's level of perfectionism.
Now, the quality of perfectionism actually probably really helped Cadell be successful in his cycling career. Because cycling's all about small [00:18:00] improvements. I mean, the Tour de France that he won, you know, they cycle for days and days. I think it's 21 days memory. and the winner might win by 18 seconds, which is just incredible.
So every second counts. So that quality of perfectionism helped Cadel be successful. However, in his life after cycling, that quality is mostly going to hinder his own well being. There may be parts of that help him drive discipline and, and exercise and those things, but overall there's going to be a lot of negative impacts on his well being.
So, for example some of the qualities of, perfectionism are kind of black and white thinking, or a fixed mindset, a shoulds and musts, we must do it this way, we should do it this way, but particularly that black and white thinking. Now, in real life. Things aren't black and white. There's a lot of grey, a lot of uncertainty, and so if you've got that black and white thinking and things are uncertain or unclear [00:19:00] or grey, that's going to cause you some frustration and some anxiety and some worry.
And as you remember I mentioned before, that worry that's chronic is not good for our, health. Instead of that, we need to learn from somebody like Carol Dweck, who's introduced the concept of the growth mindset versus a fixed mindset. So a fixed mindset believes that intelligence is static, that we either know or we don't know that whereas a growth mindset sort of says.
from whatever point we are now, we can get better, we can improve and develop ourselves. She has a lovely little phrase, that's Carol Dweck, has a lovely phrase, which for example, if you're not very good at maths, instead of saying, I'm not good at maths, you would add the word yet to the end. I'm not good at maths yet.
Or you might say, I'm not good at cycling yet. not good at English, yet. So, that demonstrates a growth mindset. Whereas if you believe, I'm not good at maths, then [00:20:00] I'll never be good at maths, or I'm not good at English, I'll never be good at English, or whatever it is. That's a fixed mindset. It is what it is and that's it.
And so that links into that black and white mindset or that perfectionism. So, Cadel mentioned that and I think it's crucial for us to continue to strive for goals to get better and improve and develop yourself rather than being black and white. And also it allows us to learn from mistakes. We want to learn from mistakes.
If we've got a black and white mindset or a fixed mindset rather than a growth mindset, we typically don't learn anything or very much from failures and mistakes. Something else that related to that came up, which is the concept of self compassion by Dr. Kristen Neff. So we spoke about the need to be kind and compassionate with yourself and people that are typically high performers, high achievers like Cadell.
Need to learn to come down and be kind to themselves and to be more realistic and [00:21:00] kinder, particularly as Cadel transitions into a different life. There's three elements of self compassion that we spoke about that are really important that Dr. Kirsten Neff speaks about with the concept of self compassion.
There's self kindness, common humanity and mindfulness. Self kindness really is the concept that often we talk worse to ourselves in our head than we talk best friends or other people. We would never say the things to other people that we often say inside our head. And so it's really important to be aware of the self talk, the things we say to ourselves, and be a lot kinder to ourselves in the language that we use.
Another one is around common humanity. And that's really the awareness that we are all human beings. And as human beings, we're all fallible. We make mistakes, we fail. And Many people feel the same as us. They feel similar to us and that's okay. That's normal. The challenge with this in [00:22:00] today's society is that often with Instagram or Facebook or other social media tools, people only post things mostly that are of their perfect lives, their lives when everything is going well.
But the reality is we all Suffer from challenges in life, adversity and obstacles. We don't post many of those on social media, and it is really important that we acknowledge that actually life is not perfect. Life is full of challenges and adversity. And recognizing we're part of common humanity means.
We're all going through this together, and that allows you to have more self compassion and kindness. The last part of Kirsten Neff's concept of self compassion is about mindfulness. Now, a lot of people have read and understand mindfulness, which is really all about being aware of the present moment, what you're doing right now, rather than allow your mind to go forward or back too far.
It's being really present in whatever you're doing, whether that's mindful breathing, mindful eating,[00:23:00] whatever you're doing, being present and in the moment. Now, with respect to self compassion, mindfulness is really about being aware. of yourself, being aware of the thoughts that you say to yourself and being aware and mindful of some of the potentially harmful ways we talk to ourselves.
So it's really that self awareness, that mindfulness around the self talk and around the sometimes hurtful, unkind things that we say to ourselves. So in order to be more self compassionate focus on being kind to yourself. recognizing we're part of common humanity and increasing your levels of mindfulness around the kind of self talk that you're using.
The last thing I want to share that came up in the conversation is Cadel is someone that's been deeply reflective. It was interesting to note that he is somebody who as part of bike riding, you're often alone, often by yourself for hours on hours. And so your mind goes to places and you reflect and he's developed that ability to [00:24:00] reflect.
And certainly that quality has helped him. Post cycling because it's really important quality for learning and for personal growth and development. You can't grow and develop if you don't reflect and you don't increase your awareness. And it's really important for for him particularly in life after the tour.
He needs to evolve and adapt and change in order to have a long, healthy and fulfilling life. And I think If that's true for Cadell, it's true for all of us that we need that ability to reflect in order to learn, grow and develop and lead a long, healthy and fulfilling life. So that's probably a nice place for us to stop reflecting on the key lessons and learnings So I guess to summarise the things that I took away from that conversation, the power of building simple, small habits. like BJ Fogg talks about and even Zig Ziglar's statement, you don't have to be great to start, but you have to start to be great. We learned about connection between the [00:25:00] mind and the body and how important it is to keep yourself physically fit even if you're not going to ride very long road races, keep yourself physically fit, have the discipline of doing something every morning and that's going to increase your Not only your physical well being, but it will enhance the connection between that and your mental and emotional well being.
Another one we spoke about was that concept of purpose. And Cadell's had to do a lot of work around changing his purpose from being a Tour de France winner to being a role model. for his children. We also spoke about motivation, and I think that's really important to learn about intrinsic motivation and motivation towards something rather than fear of failure or motivation away from something.
two other concepts of perfectionism and the importance of building a growth mindset rather than a black and white mindset. And also in doing so, Being kind to yourself and being self compassionate are really important things. So I hope you found those lessons really useful and can [00:26:00] Perhaps incorporate some of those into your life to enhance your wellbeing.
I really want to thank CadelEvans for his participation and contribution. It was a fantastic podcast and fantastic interview. And I really appreciate Cadel's time and generosity. I would love to encourage the listeners to subscribe to my podcast, to leave some reviews and to share the podcast with others.
Thank you.
