Overcoming Fear of Failure & Self Doubt to fulfill Your Sporting Goals with Jen Brown

Do you have a sporting aspiration however find yourself stuck! Is fear or failure or self doubt holding you back. Or do you simply just don’t know where to start? In this episode of me&my health up we chat with Jen Brown who provides insight into what may be holding you back from achieving your sporting goals. Jen Brown, is a Performance & Wellbeing Expert. Jen is also Endurance Sports Coach & the founder of Sparta Chicks, an online community and coaching business that supports women who participate in endurance sports and outdoor adventures by sharing experiences, honest conversations and practical tools so they can tap into their inner strength and chase their goals and dreams with confidence.

Jen started her career as a Corporate Lawyer, however now specialises in coaching women to overcome their self-doubt and achieve their sporting goals and is an author, speaker and the host of the Sparta Chicks Radio podcast.

About me&my Health Up & Host

me&my Health Up seeks to enhance and enlighten the wellbeing of others. Host Anthony Hartcher is the CEO of me&my wellness which provides holistic health solutions using food is medicine, combined with a holistic, balanced, lifestyle approach. Anthony holds three bachelor degrees in Complementary Medicine; Nutrition and Dietetic Medicine; and Chemical Engineering.

Credits
Podcast editing: Ivan Saldana

Podcast Disclaimer
Any information, advice, opinions or statements within it do not constitute medical, health care or other professional advice, and are provided for general information purposes only. All care is taken in the preparation of the information in this Podcast. [Connected Wellness Pty Ltd] operating under the brand of “me&my health up”..click here for more

Transcript

Anthony Hartcher 0:01
Do you have a sporting aspiration, however, find yourself stuck? Is it fear of failure or self-doubt holding you back? Or do you simply just don't know where to start? This episode of me and my health app will provide you insight into what might be holding you back from achieving your sporting goals. I'm your host Anthony Hartcher, clinical nutritionist, and Lifestyle Medicine Specialist. Today, we'll be chatting with Jen brown, our performance and wellbeing expert.

Jen is also an endurance sports coach and the founder of Sparta Chicks, an online community and coaching businesses that support women who participate in endurance, sports, and outdoor adventures by sharing experiences, honest conversations, and practical tools so that they can tap into their inner strength and chase their goals and dreams with confidence. Jen started her career as a corporate lawyer, however, now specializes in coaching women to overcome their self-doubt and achieve their sporting goals, and is now an author, speaker, and host of Sparta chicks radio podcast. So welcome, Jen, how are you today?

Jen Brown 1:15
Thank you for having me. I am very well, the sun is shining and makes lockdown just a wee bit easier, I think.

Anthony Hartcher 1:23
Yeah, but you must be I guess there are certain aspects to your training that you'd be able to keep upright, and then there are others that are probably a bit restricted on what you can do around that.

Jen Brown 1:35
Yes, I, I tend to get out in at sunrise. So I've still been able to get out for a walk or a run at sunrise. But my swimming, let's just say all the motivation I've gained from watching the years from watching the Olympics is kind of sadly going to waste but you know, it'll I'll get there eventually I'll get back into pool eventually.

Anthony Hartcher 1:58
Has been very inspiring to watch these elite athletes achieve amazing things and do incredible things with their bodies and yeah, it's really been nice to watch that. Whilst we're locked down here in Sydney. I'm really intrigued with this corporate lawyer transition to what you're doing today. So please share your story, I'd love to hear it.

Jen Brown 2:25
It looks back on it, it almost it I can see how people what am I trying to say? It's almost unbelievable even to me, I think the transition in my career. So I was a corporate lawyer for almost 12 years, and then took a very sharp right turn into personal training and endurance sports coaching. The reason for that sharp right turn I think was twofold, one was increasing dissatisfaction with life as a lawyer both in terms of shall we say micromanagement, the way law firms traditionally operate this is going back 10 years ago now so I know there are a lot of firms doing things differently these days.

Love the work love the clients but just did not love the lifestyle and at the same time I had been a lawyer I discovered endurance sports. It started what started actually in the gym as doing weight training and then discovered running and I I think it was a situation where increasing dissatisfaction with law crossed paths with increasing interest in sports performance and I think my, I'd had a pretty turbulent career as a runner up to that point I was constantly injured just neglect.

You know, juggling one niggle to the next and eventually, I started working with a physio who was also a Pilates instructor and I realized all the mistakes that I had been making and I could see all the same mistakes my friends were making and so it was sort of there wasn't quite a sliding doors moment where but it was a time in my life when the two paths converged and I took the path well actually decided to take the path when I was sitting on a hillside in Nepal.

I just got on holiday to Nepal and as you tend to do in holidays like that, holidays like that, you tend to sort of step back and think big picture and see the big picture and I just thought to myself, I can't go back to law. I cannot, I am done with law. I'm burnt out of it. What else am I gonna do? And so I had to go back to law because I actually spent all my money on the holiday but I went back to a little for a little while but it was time to put the transition plan in place and it took me, it wasn't an easy transition for me. It probably took me 18 months from the time of the decision to the time of outing or leaving and setting up a home business but god it was worth it was so worth it.

Anthony Hartcher 5:04
So please share what you do today in more detail because I obviously gave a brief outline but there's a lot more to what you do today.

Jen Brown 5:13
So I describe it as wearing I wear two hats, essentially. So one of the hats I wear is that I am an endurance sports coach and I ran Sparta Chicks. So I work with everyday athletes, or sorry, everyday people like you and I, you know, people, amateur athletes, people balancing work, and kids and commitments and all the things and who have some goals related to it might be running or triathlon, cycling, swimming, outdoor adventures. So whether that's a trip to Basecamp, or climbing Kilimanjaro, and yeah, so part of my time I spend working with people like that.

Which I love, helping them achieve their goals, and then the other hat I wear is this performance and well being expert hat and so I work with busy driven results focused professional people, men and women, to help them unlock what I think is untapped potential, I truly believe and I have seen this through my 10 years of sports coaching that we all have, we are all capable of so much more than we can possibly imagine. And so basically, what I do is I've taken everything I've learned about mindset, navigating fear, self-doubt, and confidence, how to develop resilience and endurance, how to perform at your best how to create, you know, to manage your energy, and share that now with busy, ambitious results focused people in corporate space.

Anthony Hartcher 6:50
Fantastic, I think it's much needed because, you know, there's that, you know, people have these ambitions, like, they're watching the Olympics, for example, and they're thinking, I was watching the rock climbing the other night. So take that, for example, the rock climbing and you're thinking, wow, how can they do, that's amazing, you know, you know, and it might spike sparks of interest in them, but then they're thinking about, I don't have the flexibility, I'm not strong, I couldn't do that and so there are self-doubt sets in and they're thinking, you know, I've tried various things before, and I've failed at it and, and they know, they can really sort of give up on their aspirations and really, what I've wanted to discuss with you today is how to help people overcome the self-doubt, there's limiting beliefs and, and essentially help them get started.

So it's, you know, how do you shift that mindset in someone? How does a person help shift their own mindset at home, and then be able to start out and where should they start and how they should go about it, given that the aspirate, like, so you know, you take what you do, or around endurance sports, it can be seen as daunting, but really, I'd love to say off, I've accomplished that, but I just, you know, where do I start when it's like a four kilometer swim, you know, 180k bike ride, and then you know, back it up with a marathon, it can be overwhelming. So please start with these barriers that we have, typical barriers that you see with clients, and then how you work with them to overcome some of these obstacles, and then how you help them get started.

Jen Brown 8:37
Such a big question. So that's a good question. I think, I think the answer does depend to some extent on where you're like, what's your starting point is, where are you starting from? So if you ask, you know, starting at the very beginning, it's a new goal or a new sport, or something that you want to try for the first time, I think the biggest mistake we make is the size of the goal we set. You know, we, we set such a big goal, or we compare ourselves to someone else so far ahead of us along that journey, that it becomes daunting, and sometimes we never even start.

So, you know, I was speaking to someone recently who hadn't run in years and she said, Okay, that's it. You've inspired me, I'm really going out and running for 30 minutes today and I know this woman very well. So my answer to her was probably a little bit more flippant and direct than I might otherwise be. But I was like, no, you won't. You will not go out and run you will physically not be able to go out and run 30 minutes, because I know you and I know you haven't run in five years and I think that's one of the ways we sort of sabotage ourselves is that we set these unrealistic goals and if you once someone you know who's starting out for the first time getting off the couch and you leave the house with the intention of running for 30 minutes, and you can't even run for three?

Well, it makes sense that you're going to throw your hands off and say this was a stupid idea, I can't do this and what was the point? So setting goals, realistic goals, like they might even seem so insistent, so small that they're insignificant, but I really don't think they are. They're just stepping stones along the way. So the first thing is around the milestones and I think the other big things both for athletes, or people who are new to any sport, and, and certain athletes much further down the track is around comparison, and expectations. So so often we compare ourselves to someone better.

So we were it's the classic comparing apples and oranges, where we're comparing where we are, to someone, you know, sorry, we're comparing where we are, which might be at the very beginning to someone who's been doing it, three, or five, or 10, or in the case of the Olympians 20 years. So making sure that we're keeping our comparisons if you're going to compete, so fairly narrow and one of my favorite comparison exercises is actually when I heard from Adam Grant, who wrote, Think Again, he compares himself to who he was three years ago and I think sometimes that's a much more positive, constructive comparison, especially when you're starting out.

Or if you've been doing something a little bit of time, and it's just at that point where it's starting to stick, you know, looking back at how far you've come, is often more powerful and motivating, and helpful and constructive than looking ahead or looking forward and if I had to add one more thing to that list, it would be our expectations, especially the unspoken expectations that we have.

Expectations will make you miserable, I found that to be true in various aspects of life because I've had so many conversations with people over the years who, you know, for example, the beginners who might expect to be able to run 30 minutes or in more established athletes it's they expect, or they think they should anyone, anytime someone says should, it's like my little spidey senses get set off, but they think they should be faster, or be able to be stronger, or they should have made more progress by now and I think anytime you're sort of thinking to yourself, the word should there is massive scope for frustration and disappointment to set in because often those expectations that we have set are not reasonable expectations.

Anthony Hartcher 12:56
I really like that, because I actually saw this quote, one time, which was talking is like a stress definition and it was said, basically, the definition of stress is the gap between expectations and reality, right. So you, so you're essentially is exactly what you said, you know, if you lower the expectations to the reality, then what are you worried about? You know, like, I mean, it's good too, like, it should probably realize, I mean, yes, you want to, like improve yourself and have that constant, never-ending improvement, but not have that expectation that as you said, is way ahead of, you know, where you're at, you know, like, so if you're at Yeah, she said at the round that comparison, like if you're comparing yourself to these Olympians, then, of course, you're gonna feel well, there's so long road ahead, and so too daunting that way to start.

Jen Brown 13:55
No, I was gonna say, I think to like that you're right, there is this balance or continuum that exists between expectations and using expectations and comparison as a source of fuel and motivation but there's a tipping point at which it almost becomes unhealthy or unhelpful and I think that tipping point is, is where that expectation or comparison has crossed the line from being, you know, helpful and realistic to optimistic and unhelpful.

Anthony Hartcher 14:31
Absolutely, you know, I think a good example is that that most recent sale of these the founders of Afterpay that, you know, sold their company for an incredible amount of money and, you know, it was only really in that sort of new company phase or, you know, that just beyond start-up and the, you know, done extremely well and, you know, some batting entrepreneurs can say, oh, I want that and that you know, there's obviously you know, a long journey that those people went on in order to get to that outcome and, yeah, it's not good healthy comparison, because those founders would have been just focusing on what they can do to make their company better each day, as opposed to, you know, I'm expecting to sell this company for $39 billion.

Jen Brown 15:16
And I mean, even Afterpay sale, that was a seven year process, never mind, you know, whatever skills that they had developed prior to that, and I sometimes think we forget the bigger picture, we forget, we look at you know, the progress someone's made in the last two or five years and we forget often that it's the culmination of 20 years of development and practice and gathering of expertise.

I was reading this morning, there was an article around talking to Aryan Titmus's coach, and you know, you would have seen this in a German sports world, people will go, oh, look, there's an Ironman race, which is a four four kilometer swim, 180 Kilometer bike ride, 42 Kilometer marathon, which I know you've done, but people will see that and go, Oh, there's one in 12 months time, I'm going to have a crack at that and it's, it's great and it's doable for some people.

But in this interview, I read with Aryan Titmus's coach, they started discussing these Olympics five years ago and I do think sometimes A we, we see the, we forget essentially how much goes into those high level newspaper gathering achievements or even the achievements of our highly talented friends that sometimes make us really, you know, envious and jealous. It's not just the last 12 months that they dedicated to something it's, it's the years beforehand and that can sound a little bit negative, like, how can I ever catch up with someone who's been doing this for 10 years. But I think if we, if we just keep that in the back of our mind, while we set realistic expectations along the way, that's the, that's the most helpful way to approach the situation.

Anthony Hartcher 17:17
And I think it's also what you acknowledge is that everyone's completely unique, in a sense, their journey won't be the same as someone else's their end capability, even after five years may not ever be you know, and it's pointless comparing ourselves to this person, because they may have just focused on their unique strengths, strengths from an incredibly young age and.

You know, develop them and develop them and develop them. And some people may be still finding that unique strength that they have and so it's really, you know, if you're entering someone else's space, where it's the strength that you'd like to have, but you don't have that, you know, we don't all have, you know, equal ability in the same areas. Or, you know, in order to get that equal ability, you have to work for us, right, it's, you know, and you might have to work a bit harder than that person because they naturally have it.

Jen Brown 18:10
And it comes back to, you know, focusing on you and your journey and how far you've come and I think in Angela Duckworth's book Grit, she talks about how we as a culture seem to idolize talent and not hard work, we seem to discredit hard work and just idolized natural talent and I think like everyone has an upper limit of the ability of their, of their potential. And everyone has a, you know, upper cap of their talent and it's the hard work that separates the two and without the hard work, it doesn't matter how much talent you've got, you'll never explore the upper limits of, of your potential and so I think sometimes we dismiss the hard work that goes into things and especially when I think high performance.

The magic of high performances, they make really hard things look really easy and I think that goes for, you know, Simone Biles on the beam last night, Aryam Titmus in the pool earlier in the week through to the guys selling Afterpay like that, it just looks easy from the outside and it never easy and I think when we pay it when we forget that we do ourselves a disservice because we know how hard it is like we've all been there. We know how hard it is to set a goal to run to 30 minutes when you've never run before in your life and you see these runners out there in the streets in the morning and they make it look so easy and you want to curse them. Look, sometimes we do but there's a lot of hard work that's gone into that as well.

Anthony Hartcher 19:57
How do you suggest someone to start Like, given they have come to this realization that it is hard work ahead. But without them getting too overwhelmed by the amount of hard work. How do you suggest they start out so that they actually get started? They start on their journey, rather than procrastinate and think I just don't have the time for that hard work. Yeah, so yeah, how do you help people get started?

Jen Brown 20:21
I would say firstly, find something that you enjoy, that you love. There's a little asterisk, I will put in this, this bit of advice. But I think one of the biggest mistakes that we make, and it's also one of the easiest, one of the best ways to make it easiest for ourselves, is to find something that you enjoy. If you don't like running, don't run, if you don't like swimming, don't swim, you don't have to, if you like, you know, if you like riding a mountain bike, go for it. So I think that's the easiest way to start is actually to find something that you enjoy.

Now, the little asterisk I mentioned to that is this, when you set out running in particular, I think running for every sport to some degree, but from my personal experience running highlights this more than anything, it's really hard. It's, I had a break from running and I started again, and as a coach, it was actually painful and a great gift because it reminded me how hard it is to start.

But here's the beauty, if you stick with it long enough, there will come this magical day the pieces will fall into place, you will find flow and joy and you will be hooked. The challenge is justifying something that you love doing enough, long enough to reach that magical day. So that's one of the first ones that I I like to recommend because there are so many people who want to get think fit, but think that they should run, for example, or should swim or should do CrossFit or something but if that doesn't float your boat, don't torture yourself.

Anthony Hartcher 22:12
But what about that, you know, so they think, well, I love doing this, I'm going to do it and then they're thinking about, look, I've sort of done these things in the past, and I failed at it and you know, I'm not gonna succeed or get to where I want to with this. How do you help people with the letting go of that fear of failure from the past? And just getting on with it? Yeah. So can you give some tips around that?

Jen Brown 22:38
That is such a great question and I think it's something that's important for us to think about in all aspects of life, because it is our beliefs and the stories that we tell out ourselves about what we can and can't do that sort of either underpin our performance or undermine our performance. So if like, if you have tried to start running before and weren't able to sustain it, I would actually go back and maybe a little bit of a post mortem about that previous experience, like, how did you try? Like, what was the strategy you used? In hindsight, what mistakes do you think you made? What roadblocks did you not? Did you have but didn't anticipate? How often were you running? Like, what distances were you running?

I think the answer is there somewhere along the line, because I think, you know, these, we have these situations where we do something, we try something sorry and then we don't do it, and then it becomes proof that we can't and I don't believe that to be true. What I think we've done is just go about it the wrong way. So I think the secret actually lies in looking back and going okay, well, assuming I went about it the wrong way and it's not a reflection of me. It's just a reflection of the strategy I use.

What, how do I need to change strategy? You know, what do I need to try differently? Is there someone I can talk to like bounce ideas off and get their advice on? Did I do too much too soon? Do I think you know, how was my body feeling your body is always a great indicator if you listen to it and most of us are not very good at listening so that even those of us who have been around the traps a long time. So I think that's a great way to start to answer that question and the second thing is to not just look at when you haven't done something, but the times that you have stuck to something the times that you have shown up consistently, not just limited to sport but in all aspects of life.

I think one of the things we do is tend to silo the different parts of our life and in doing so we don't necessarily carry the lessons and insights and wisdom we've gained from each part. of our life into other parts of our lives. So what are the times in your life where you have succeeded? What are the times in your life where you have been consistent? Where you have stuck with something? Where you have done something that you never thought you could do before?

Look to those two, because I think the more we focus on those, and the less we focus on the times we've, we haven't done something, certainly, the more positive and I don't mean positive in like a rah rah way I mean positive in terms of constructive problem solving, focused on continuous improvement, growth mindset, learning perspective you'll get and overall your the more you'll understand yourself and your body, which is invaluable as an athlete.

Anthony Hartcher 25:47
Yeah, obviously, not to dwell on the failures, but look at where you've had successes, and as you said, learn from the failures. So take the learnings from the failures, but you know, like, then reflect on the wins that you've had, and build confidence from that and then it's it is having those small wins and those small celebrations along the way that really helps you continue to grow into that area of you know, that you want to develop in.

Jen Brown 26:15
That's a great point, actually, you make and about celebrating wins, is that I think one of the things that do us the biggest disservice when it comes to our confidence and self-doubt, and it's inherent in the imposter syndrome as well, is not celebrating our wins and when we don't celebrate our wins, our confidence doesn't grow. Our identity doesn't change how we see ourselves never grows with our achievements and so accepting feedback, sorry, accepting praise, accepting compliments, celebrating the wins, even if it's just like the first time you ran for five minutes, come home fist pump, hire five, like, have a party celebrate that sort of stuff. Because that does help you shift how you think about what, who you are, and what you are, or are not capable of.

Anthony Hartcher 27:14
You mentioned imposter syndrome and I know you do a lot of work with your clients around removing this imposter syndrome. So yeah please share some more as to what it is and some tips which you have people have this imposter syndrome of how they could potentially help that or remove that obstacle from their, from what they want to achieve.

Jen Brown 27:39
I could talk about this for days, I promise I won't. Okay, so the best way to start this conversation is actually to share what it looks like. You know what, how it shows up in your life. You know what, how it shows up in your head and so it's normally thinking things like, I'm not ready, I'm not good enough, I don't deserve my success, I don't belong here, I only achieved that because of X reason, I was lucky, someone made a mistake, I managed to pull the wool over people's eyes. I've managed to follow them. I'm just winging it and any minute now someone's going to tap me on the shoulder and say, hey mate, what are you doing here, you don't deserve to belong here.

So that's how it kind of shows up in most people's heads inside their head, really. So it's actually been studied for over 40 plus years now and it was first named the imposter phenomenon by two researchers back in the 70s and incidentally, they studied 150 high achieving women and they found what they found was that these women could not internalize their success.

They couldn't accept or acknowledge that the success that they had was a result of their expertise and experience and wisdom and instead was due to the fact that we're lucky that someone had made a mistake, that they had a really common name and you know, someone they know, someone made a mistake in the head office or that they were winging it, they'd pull people, you know, they pull the wool over people's eyes and so it's this, it's this disconnect, really, between how the world sees us, and how we see ourselves and ultimately, it's between our competence and our confidence, you know, we are competencies here our confidence is lower.

The whole world can see our competence, but we can't so there's this massive gap between the two and we just feel like we're a fraud because we're not as good as other people think we are. So that's how it tends to show up in the world. Now I mentioned that study, the initial study was over 150 high achieving women. The question I am most asked today is can men get it? The answer is most certainly, yes, more recent studies have shown that, there was a study 10 plus years ago that said, that found 70% of high achieving people, male and female will experience that at least once. More recently, there have been studies showing that up to 80% of people will experience it both men and women.

In fact, there's even been a few studies that have shown it in certain areas like academia that men experience it more. So the myth around it being a woman thing has certainly been discredited. In terms of how to go about it, I think the very first step is to notice it. That seems a little self evident, I think, but sometimes, you know, we have all these thoughts going on in our head and we don't even realize that we're saying it to ourselves because we have so many thoughts in a day.

It's just this constant diatribe that's going on. So I think the first step is to notice it, to normalize it. So that is to go, actually, that's the imposter thing. It's normal that I would feel self-doubt or scared or uncomfortable in this situation. Another great tactic a lot of people use is to give it a name. So my favorite story along this point is by Australian Aria, a winner, Aria award winner, Claire Bowditch the singer, so she named her little inner critic Frank,

Am I allowed to swear on your podcast, I didn't ask you at the start. So I beep it. So she shares in her book that when her inner critic when the voice of this imposter gets too loud and opinionated, she actually says, eff off Frank to the voice and just sort of by naming it, what you actually do is compartmentalize it a little bit, you make it separate from you and it's surprisingly effective at how it doesn't, doesn't get rid of the voice, but it like turns the volume down on it, so that you can kind of go, okay, I hear you, I know what you're trying to do.

You can just sit in the corner, because I've got something that's important to me to do and I think those three things, at least the first stage of, of overcoming it in the moment, I think the more you do that, the more you build up a bit of resilience and tolerance to it. But it is sort of a long process of rewriting what we believe about ourselves. So it's not easy, but know that you are not alone. Everyone else has experienced it at some point in time. And I think the more we can talk about it, and the more we could share our experience, the less power it has over us as well.

Anthony Hartcher 33:05
Yeah, I think that was the key that you share that tip around, not saying it you'd like to not identifying it as you identify as someone separate to you and acknowledging that, you know, you're having that conversation with someone else. So it's not me, it's not who I am. It's not my identity. It's Frank, Hey, it's your I know you're there.

Jen Brown 33:30
I know you're there. I hear you, you can be quiet now, I've got this. Yeah, that's one, there are 1000 other things, tactics you can do. I think the one tricky thing with the imposter is that it's a bit of a shapeshifter and it will, it will often show up in different ways in different at different times and in different parts of your life. So some way some people will experience it in certain phases of their work career, but never in other aspects of their life.

I know some athletes who don't experience it, but work at work, but really struggle in terms of their sport, standing on the start line of a race, for example, I've spoken to some people who struggled with it as a parent, because it is this great unknown and you really have no idea. If you bring home your baby for the first time, you really are winging it, because you really don't you know, they don't come with manuals, not really.

So it's been it's knowing that it's likely to occur in any situation that is new to you, that any situation that kind of puts you towards the edge of the comfort zone to expect it and that how it shows up for you will be very different from how it shows up for me. So that's, I think why you'll see lots of articles that are just like five tactics to overcome the imposter and I I'm reluctant to lose to use that language I would say because the tactics that work for you may not work for me. The one about naming it does seem to be pretty common across the board, but that's about the only one. So it's a very individual experience but as I said, the more we can talk about it, the more we can share what works for us and what doesn't work. I think the better off we all are.

Anthony Hartcher 35:19
Yeah, I think it's a great segway into how you help people essentially. So, if you're stuck with this imposter syndrome, and you need some help, then certainly reach out to Jen Brown. Jen, you have your own podcast where there's no doubt we talk about the imposter syndrome in detail and in many times over and various episodes. So yeah, please share how listeners can connect with you and then a little bit about your podcast.

Jen Brown 35:48
Thank you. So then there's two places two real places to find me. One is at Spartar Chicks, spatarchicks.com, and Spartar Chicks on all the handles. So if you're interested in the endurance side, Spartar Chicks, as you said was my coaching and online community for women interested in endurance sports, as I said, it's everyday people like you and I just have these slightly crazy goals that we love in our part time. So that's one place to find me.

You'll also find Spartar Chicks radio over there, which is the podcast. It has been going for four and a half years now we're episode 160 something and again, interviewing mostly athletes, but some business owners people who have achieved success in various aims and my intention and goal with the podcast was to explore fear and self-doubt more than anything, you know how you achieve big goals?

When you're scared when you're uncertain when you're you know, so scared that you want to go and hide how do you navigate that in order to do the thing that you want and I have actually asked almost every guest about the impact their experience with the imposter syndrome to so that's been a very interesting and diverse range of answers across the board and the other place you can find me for my work more in the corporate space with individuals, teams, and organizations around mindset and the imposter, building resilience and endurance and around performance or high performance teams high performance habits. You can find me at spatarjen.com as well.

Anthony Hartcher 37:36
Fantastic. Thanks for sharing and I'll include all those links in the show notes and just finally, Jen, have you got any inspirational words of wisdom that you'd like to conclude the episode with?

Jen Brown 37:52
How long have we got, no, I go back to something I said before it is that if there is one thing sports coaching has taught me that I now see in every aspect of life it is through this, you are capable of so much more than you can possibly imagine. The horizon that you see for yourself is just a false horizon. It is you know so much there's so much more you can do beyond that. So dig deep back yourself, trust yourself, and go for it because I just think life is too short to do anything less.

Anthony Hartcher 38:30
Fantastic words and totally agree after watching the Olympics. I think that's what keeps us in or have just the human capability. You just think, Wow, are we capable of doing this sort of stuff? You know, like it's just yeah, I think it's great concluding words, given that we're watching the Olympics at this point in time. So.

Jen Brown 38:49
So my laptop is just sitting over there right now, I will contest. It's funny, have you seen the meme going around about something Bill Murray, I think said on Twitter, about how every Olympic event should have like a normal person in it to actually provide a benchmark or framework or something to show how exceptional these people are. That would be I would love that because I was looking even at some of the swimming times this morning. We're recording this the 10 Kilometer marathon swim was on and I looked at the swim times really cried because I can't even do that for one kilometer in the pool, nevermind what they swam in 10 Let the pace they spend that over 10 ks so yeah, that would be fun.

Anthony Hartcher 39:35
So very true. So very true, because I could the marathon runners the pace so ran the whole 42 K's that some people could barely do it for 100 meters.

Jen Brown 39:45
I couldn't even do it for 50 meters, never mind a kilometer. So yeah, it's there, it's just a testament to the ability of the human body and mind, I think.

Anthony Hartcher 40:02
Absolutely and as you said, don't underestimate it, don't underestimate the human potential. So thank you so much Jen for sharing all this wonderful expertise and wisdom with the listeners and for listeners, for the listeners. If you really enjoyed the episode then please share it with others that could also benefit that, you know, you may know that are struggling from imposter syndrome or self-doubt or fear of failure and we really have this sporting aspiration. Please share it with them because they could benefit and yes, stay tuned for more insightful episodes of Me&My health up. Thank you

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