The Self Help Antidote

Send a text If you’re feeling stressed, overwhelmed, or uncertain, and as a result you’re trying to mentally power through in response, you need to listen to this.   We all want to feel and perform at our best.  Yet, all of us have had moments where it seems that no matter how hard we try, we’re swimming upstream against life’s current.  Sometimes we feel as if we are struggling just to stay afloa...

Send a text I wanted to bring on a few co-founders (and close friends) of PTA Global to talk about what we learned from creating that company years ago.  I believe that the insights we gained from that company are critical to the success of any business whose success is based on continually bringing value, packaged in an engaging experience to their consumer.  Which is pretty much everyone.   In t...

Send a text In this episode I speak to three prominent, highly successful educators in the fitness industry.  Each of them brings decades of experience from a uniquely valuable perspective.   Mel Tempest is the CEO and the founder at Ignite Fitness Business Events, the host and founder of The Gym Owners Fitness Business Podcast and The Womens Leaders Fitness Business Podcast. She is a keynote spea...

Send a text This episode I get to bring back one of my favorite people, Tiffanee Cook.  She’s a great friend as well as an outstanding guest.  Besides being an accomplished fighter, business owner, speaker and podcaster, she’s witty, high energy, insightful, and curious.   In our conversation we talk about common illusions and biases many of us have around other people, behavior change, learning a...

Send a text If there was a single thread through which the tapestry of our lives are interwoven, it would arguably be our stories.  In the broader sense, the fabric of our society, collective beliefs and mores are knitted together through mythology.   Myths help us to understand the world.  More than that, they help us understand ourselves, and our place within it.   Myths have the capacity to bri...

Send a text Where in your life are you spontaneously disciplined and authentic?   The answer to that question has the potential to shatter the harmful misconceptions you’ve been taught about yourself, while leading you to discover one of the most liberating truths of your lifetime.  Your inner truth about who you are, what you find most meaningful, and what you are meant to do.  I’m not talking ab...

Send a text Navigating through the turbulent challenges we collectively face, where things can be as unpredictable as they are demanding, requires resilience.  More than that, it requires resourcefulness.  No matter what life has thrown at her, my guest for this episode has consistently demonstrated both.   Since opening the doors of her health club in Ballarat Australia nearly two decades ago, Me...

Send a text My guest for this episode is a speaker, consultant, rugby coach and educator in the fitness industry.  He is the author of Smarter Workouts: The Science of Exercise Made Simple and Ageless Intensity, the subject of this episode.   As an established authority on exercise science, a former Exercise Physiologist for the American Council on Exercise and presenter for the National Academy o...

Send a text Wellbeing is not just about the state of our body, but the human being that resides within it.  If our beliefs and expectations can turn an inert treatment into healing, through the phenomenon of the placebo effect, what impact can our beliefs and emotions have on our general wellbeing?   Most people will readily acknowledge that exercise, nutrition, and sleep are critical to our wellb...

Send a text “Don’t believe everything you hear” sounds like sage advice, but it’s not as easy as it sounds.  Sometimes, despite being a complete fabrication, some things sound so plausible, even desirable, it’s hard to not be influenced by them.  When those beliefs are generally accepted by people you respect and surround yourself with they become even more enticing.  Worse, they're harder to...

Send a text Everyone wants to do better, be better and contribute beyond themselves.  Okay, mostly everyone.  But if you’re an avid podcast listener, odds are I am speaking to you.  The problem is that there’s so much information on self-help, transformation, personal and professional growth.  How can you tell the difference between the valid and useful stuff, from the fluff?   My returning guest...

Send a text My guest for this episode is a four-time Olympian, five-time best-selling author, with over one-hundred fortune 500 clients and he has presented over five hundred Major Keynotes around the world.  At twenty-one Ruben Gonzalez decided to become an Olympian.  Even more incredibly, he decided to compete in the Luge.  He not only succeeded but became a four-time Olympian in one of the most...

Send a text Most people would agree that being effective at public speaking is a critical way of separating yourself from the endless stream of communication people are exposed to and overwhelmed by.   Contrary to what we are taught, the last thing you want to do  is “try harder” to create emotional impact during a presentation.  This will only serve to bring about the exact result you don’t want....

Send a text This is episode gets quite deep at times.  It’s moving, inspiring and at the same time heart breaking.  It’s the story of how a top-level athlete and an extraordinary human being survived two battles with cancer, what he learned and who he became along the way.   Josh Komen was the top 800-meter runner in New Zealand.  He was a young confident athlete in his prime, with a bright future...

Send a text Logical Fallacies are errors in reasoning from which the conclusions we arrive at don’t follow the thought process that got us there.  As human beings tend to be more rationalizing than rational, logical fallacies are more common than we think.   In this episode we discuss common logical fallacies and what gives rise to them.  Equally important, some “experts” in their field understand...

Send a text I was in a weekly team meeting the other day and the subject of "normal" came up.  Namely the insistence of others that you and I be more like them.  What does normal even mean anyway?  If you google it, you'll find the definition of normal is "conforming to a standard; usual, typical, or expected'.  Who fits into that?  More importantly, would you really want...

Send a text Discipline matters.  More specifically self-regulation.  The more time that goes by in our lives, the greater the benefits exercising self-regulation.  Conversely, the greater the consequences in our lives if we don’t.   What doesn’t benefit us, however, are the generalized, overly simplified assumptions about why we do what we do.  Yet, we hear them so much, with such certainty, many...

Send a text In this episode Dr. Roy Sugarman offers us fascinating insights into the commonly held, yet false beliefs we tend to have about human behavior.  We discuss how these misconceptions not only interfere with our ability to understand others but how they can hurt our own potential for growth as well.   Dr. Sugarman lays out a neuro-scientific basis for challenging the assumptions we hold a...

Send a text What can world renown performers such as Steve Carell, Stephen Colbert, Amy Sedaris, Rachel Dratch, Tina Fey and the late great Chris Farley teach us about masterful coaching and life?  Turns out, quite a bit.   I have been deeply impacted on a personal level by my guest on this episode.  He is arguably one of the top improvisational coaches in the business, he is the former Artistic D...

Send a text Martin Rooney is the founder of Training for Warriors.  He’s an internationally recognized trainer, speaker, author and pioneer of strength and conditioning.  Martin and the TFW system have been featured on ESPN, ESPN2, Spike TV, Fox Sports Net, the New York Times, Men’s Health, Men’s Fitness, Men’s Journal, Muscle and Fitness, and countless other high profile news outlets and publicat...

Send a text Adam Daniel is a respected health and performance coach, educator and presenter, with over 20 years of experience.  Adam has been part of the PTA Global Faculty, a ViPR Global Master Coach, and the lead presenter for Fitpro.   He has been a consultant for the English RFU and British Rowing. He is the Lead Health and Fitness Educator for a power-based training brand.    As a Master Trai...

Send a text Everyone gets stuck from time to time.  Everyone has moments when they feel as if they’re languishing more than they’re thriving.  The problem for many people, however, is that the beliefs they have about why they’re stuck are often inaccurate.  Therefore, the strategies that they employ to get unstuck are flawed.  This puts them into a vicious cycle.  The harder they try, the more stu...

Send a text My guest today has a bachelor’s degree in Nutrition, she’s a Practitioner of Functional Diagnostic Nutrition and a Fellow of Applied Functional Science through the Gray Institute.   Her passion is helping others find freedom through nutrition and movement.  Amy Slater has 16 years of experience working as a personal trainer.  She’s certified through the American Council on Exercise and...

Send a text Dr. Don Wood is the founder of The Inspired Performance Institute.  He works with individuals who have experienced trauma as horrific as being maimed during the Boston Marathon bombings, to people who have had their lives painfully impacted by early childhood abuse.    He also works with individuals who may not have been confronted by intense trauma, but have experienced what he calls...

Send a text What would you do if quite suddenly and unexpectedly you lost everything and had to start all over again? That is exactly where our guest found herself years ago.  Lisa Stephenson not only lost her home, security, and any sense of certainty, but what was most devastating is that she lost her identity.   However, she discovered that the choices we make about who we are going to be when...