Greg: 00:00 – It’s Greg Strauch of Two-Brain Media, and on this week’s episode we talked to Colm O’Reilly. He is the owner of CrossFit Ireland, but we don’t dive into owning a gym. What we dive into his mental health of an entrepreneur. We talk about his early days of some of the struggles that he had. We talk about the importance of focusing on you and putting it all together and the action items you guys can take today. Subscribe to Two-Brain Radio to hear the very best ideas, tips, and topics to move you and your business closer to wealth. Two-Brain Radio is brought to you by Two-Brain Business. We make gyms profitable. We’re going to bring you the very best tips, tactics interviews in the business world each week. To find out how we can help you create your Perfect Day, book a free call with a mentor at twobrainbusiness.com.
Greg: 00:53 – We’d like to thank another one of our amazing partners, Level Method. As a CrossFit gym owner, I know retention is key to keeping my business going for years to come. Retention is not easy, though. People want to see success, and if you don’t show them early, they’ll find a place that does. This is where Level Method comes in. With Level Method, you are now able to guide your members through an amazing structure that’ll give them a path to success. Once you have success, you instantly have motivation for them to continue, which will now be delivered to your members. Start systemizing the creation of powerful moments for your members today. Go to levelmethod.com to book a free call.
Greg: 01:30 – All right, I’m on another amazing Two-Brain Radio podcast episode with Colm O’Reilly. Colm, how are you?
Colm: 01:37 – I’m great. I’m very grateful to be here, so thanks for having me.
Greg: 01:41 – Happy to. And today’s subject is something that we don’t really talk about in say, the gym industry or really as an entrepreneur. And that’s the mental health of being a business owner and entrepreneur. I know with my personal background of being in the military and the things that you go through while being in the military, on deployments and other things, mental health is a much bigger subject, especially with veterans and suicidal rates, and it’s not talked about as much as business owners or entrepreneurs, especially when, I mean, we’re constantly failing in certain areas to learn and then be successful. But it’s not something that is brought up too often. So we have you on here to kind of bring up that stuff. But before we do that, kind of give us a little bit of background because I mean, not only do you talk about this a lot, but you are an entrepreneur as well, so you own businesses. But let’s kind of dive into that before we dive into the actual story for today.
Colm: 02:39 – Dive into my history as an entrepreneur or my mental-health history?
Greg: 02:43 – Let’s start with the entrepreneur and then we’ll jump into the mental health.
Colm: 02:47 – OK. Well yesterday marked 12 years of CrossFit Ireland, so that was pretty cool too to step back and realize. And when I started CrossFit, I, you know, had no clue about what to do business-wise. I just threw open the doors in some dingy shed down the back of an industrial estate and you know, stumbled along for a few years working for Nestle at the time. So I spent half of my day making people fit and the other half getting them fat again through Nestle. And eventually joined some business partners, went into business with them, that went south at some point, had to go through essentially a business divorce. Started up the new true CFI 3.O as we affectionately call it. Again, stumbled through business until I came across Two-Brain two years ago. How we weren’t fired for being, you know, the bad clients and always getting subject to the drama of the month and drama of the week. But eventually, you know, started listening to our mentors and yeah, built a good business that we have now.
Greg: 03:49 – Well congrats on the 12 years in business and definitely not a name you hear too often when you’re named after an entire country, let alone here in the States where if you’ve got a state name like CrossFit Illinois or something that’s pretty big because you started out in the very beginning. So having CrossFit Ireland, that’s definitely a landmark by itself. But congrats on 12 years. That’s amazing.
Colm: 04:11 – It made perfect sense at the time to call ourselves CrossFit Ireland because like there was six in Europe at the time or something like that.
Greg: 04:20 – Exactly. No, I would do the same thing if I was in your position. Now with that, you had a lot of ups and downs, I’m sure. I mean, you talked about just jumping in and not having really any kind of background business-wise to start. And you just started kind of going. Now I can only imagine the toll knowing myself and doing the same thing that you had to go through, especially then to deal with all of that stuff. And the mental health side of it. But it sounds like your story kind of probably helped you with some of that as well. So kinda let’s take it back to the beginning. Tell us about your story that kind of really brings to light working on mental health entrepreneurs and business owners.
Colm: 05:04 – OK. So I tell this story mainly because the problem is with a lot of mental health and unfortunately with men’s mental health is we’re very secretive about it. We’re expected to be strong and particularly as business owners, we’re expected to be strong and put up a front. But I had a suicide attempt when I was a young man, when I was only 17, you know, jumped off a bridge trying to end my life. And I’d like to say that that was like, oh, that was the only glitch in my past. But like looking back and being honest and with a lot of self-reflection, I realized I was always subject to the external whims of my life. So if finances or getting along well with my family or relationships or friends or career was going well, I was the man, and if things were going bad, that clearly meant that I was somehow flawed or somehow a failure.
Colm: 05:52 – And that’s, you know, that’s what I noticed. I was always subject to the whims of the external world. And about four years ago I’d gone through the pressure of going through a business divorce, constantly dealing with my ex-business partners and ex-friends, through solicitors, trying to set up, trying to trust another business partner again because I didn’t have the finances or the capacity to run a business on my own. You know, happened to get—you know, had a very turbulent relationship at the time as well. And there was issues with that and that kind of led me to the point of overwhelm again, where areas of stress from my life just got too much for me. And a lot of credit to my business partner, Derek, he was like, you know, people are drawn to you. I always remember his words and he just said, you know, keep going because you’re worth it, and that meant an awful lot to me.
Colm: 06:39 – And essentially from that point I said, right, how do I permanently fix this? How do I not just deal with, you know, anxiety and depression and all of the emotional rollercoaster and also like, how do I help other people? Because you know, there was a lot of needless suffering inside of my own head for a lot of my life. And you know, you don’t need to go through that. You don’t need to be alone. You don’t need to suffer it. And you certainly don’t need to be subject to what’s going on in your external world for you to feel good and secure inside.
Greg: 07:11 – That’s a lot of different things that you’ve gone through from the beginning of owning, owning a business or even prior to that in your life. I mean, attempting suicide and then realizing that, hey, you actually still do want to be here. And working through that is a huge, I would say, hurdle, mentally that you had to go through to get to the point of where you decided that. And then on top of that making the choice to decide to live instead. How did you get to the point where you’re like, hey, I want to open up a gym then? Or I
want to open up a business?
Colm: 07:48 – It wasn’t very well thought out if, I’m perfectly honest with you. Initially it was just a drive and I saw what CrossFit did to me very, very quickly, and I always liked helping people and I always liked teaching people. And what I noticed in CrossFit, and still to this day, what’s way more important to me is not that someone loses 50 or a hundred pounds. Not that someone gets their first pull-up or snatches a hundred kilos. It’s always the change they go from, you know, not liking who they are or not liking their body to accepting who they are and that sense of belonging. And having that inside of the gym and then seeing the changes they can make in their life outside of that, that’s always been the most rewarding part. And it’s not true for everybody. Some people it’s just a workout, it’s just a way to stay in shape. But for others it’s so much more than that. And that’s always been the big driver behind what we do at CrossFit Ireland. It’s not just, hey, let’s get your first toes-to-bar, but like, let’s get you accepting yourself, loving yourself, and let’s get you the confidence that you deserve.
Greg: 08:50 – That sounds like, I mean, and that sounds like what most gym owners are doing, is helping other people, but I like kind of how you talked about the sense of that you’re having them accept themselves for who they are and working on the mental side of it. I think CrossFit is very good at that. Especially if you have a workout that is an hour long, such as like Murph where people are doing that on Memorial Day usually or some other times and it’s a much longer workout that really works on your mental capacity. Works on your physical capacity, I think we can all agree, but really your mental capacity as well. What made you want to focus in on helping other entrepreneurs and business owners in the mental-health realm?
Colm: 09:33 – Well one thing really came home to me is when we were all in Chicago and Dan mentioned that the rates of suicide, depression, bipolar, addiction among entrepreneurs are so much higher than they are amongst their counterparts in quote unquote the real world. And it occurred to me then that I’d had a lot of experience helping people informally and I’d had a lot of experience personally trying to figure all this stuff out, that I had this knowledge that if I could find a way to codify it and talk to people about it, that I could really make an impact. Because as a business owner, you’re lonely. You know, you struggle with this disconnection, which in Johann Hari’s wonderful book, “Lost Connections,” he talks about depression and anxiety are very much, you know, a sense of loss. And we have that loss of identity because the second we become a business owner, we’re rich and we’re time rich and we’re rolling in Rolls Royces, right?
Colm: 10:29 – That’s the perception, right? That’s what’s in the media. And we all say it to each other. You meet up with the other CrossFit gym owner, and they say, “Hey man, has your gym?” And you’re like, “Oh, it’s great,” and you’re nodding and smiling, but you’re really hoping they don’t ask how many members you have, or you know, and we don’t even have the conversation like, are you a profitable, because like it’s not talked about. Thanks to Two-Brain it is talked about a little bit more, you know, but we have that loss of security as well because we’ve taken the risk. We’ve jumped off the ledge and we’ve got to build a parachute on the way down, that we don’t have that security that we had in the nine to five previously of knowing what our paycheck’s going to be at the end of the month.
Colm: 11:10 – You know, we don’t have that security of knowing we’re insulated from the big tax bill that comes in or knowing we’re insulated from some city codes or anything like that. So we have that loss of security as entrepreneurs as well. And then finally we do have that lost connection. Like we’ve built these gyms that are meant to be this place that’s fantastic for everyone else to come and forget the rest of their day and workout and high five and sit on the couches, if you’ve got them. But we have to step back from that, remove ourselves from that, monitor that the whole time. So just that, you know, that expression, it’s lonely at the top. So I think that’s why I was drawn to help entrepreneurs. And I think that’s the reason why entrepreneurs in particular suffer more from these things, because they are separated from people.
Greg: 11:58 – I couldn’t agree more. And with that, what are the key points that gym owners should find importance in or business owners, entrepreneurs should find importance in when focusing in on really themselves, like you said in the beginning, of helping people find acceptance when they’re in the gym, at CrossFit Ireland, but really as entrepreneurs as well, it sounds like we need to do the same thing. So what are the things or key points that people need to find important in themselves in acceptance, to kind of get through the mental health side of being an entrepreneur. At least the downside of it. I know the upsides’ easy, right? If we’re making all the money and we’re super profitable, everything’s great, and our mental health kind of shifts from, hey, everything’s awesome. But then there’s those times where we get a little bit lower, profit’s down or in the negative. What are the key points for people to focus in on?
Colm: 12:53 – That’s a big question. So I’ll try to deconstruct it and if I start to ramble, you can interrupt me, deal? All right. So I think it’s super important to invest in yourself daily. Because you are—and I know these are all cliches, but you are your greatest and your longest-held asset. And you know, we’ve all seen the guy who works out and like never takes a break, never takes a rest day and runs themselves into the ground. As gym owners, we see it all the time. We see it in a workout that someone goes to failure on the first set of pull-ups and can barely do one or two. And we look at them and we’re like, man, take a break, take some time. Like take 10 seconds, don’t go to failure. Yet as business owners, we do this, we push ourselves right to the end.
Colm: 13:39 – We get up at 6 a.m. and we work right through to 10 p.m. and we work weekends as well, we’re never taking that break. So with that in mind, the first thing I always advise people to do is to take some sort of meditative or mindfulness practice. And generally people go, oh well I can’t quiet my mind. I can’t take that time. But we’re not asking you to quiet your mind. We’re literally just asking you to take one minute and just sit and breathe and take some time. Because what happens in these, in these one minutes, which I just call clarity breaks, is it allows you just to step back and see the wood from the trees and allows you to step back and see what’s urgent and what’s important. Because you know, the list of demands on our time is never going to end.
Colm: 14:23 – We’re always going to have clients who want to talk to us for an extra five minutes after class. We’re always going to have our employees who, you know, need us to show that thing that we’ve shown them 10 times before or you know, they’re having difficulties in their life and they need you to fix them. We’re going to have our friends, our spouses, our kids outside of work wanting our time. So it’s really important that you set aside a little bit of time each day and each week just to sit quietly and let the important stuff bubble up to the surface. So that would be number one. Second onto that then is is having some self-compassion for yourself. I see entrepreneurs in particular, we’re driven people, and particularly, if we’re CrossFitters as well, we really want to push ourselves and find out where our limit is, and we can be very, very harsh on ourselves as a result of that. We can really push ourselves, and then we unfairly compare ourselves to everyone else, and we’re like, well, I should be more successful or I should be better. I should have a better Fran time and abs and a better profit margin and
not have to work and holidays. And then we berate ourselves for all these mistakes. Whereas a little bit of compassion really helps in accepting that everyone struggles, you know, in that respect, that everyone makes mistakes, everyone puts unfair expectations on themselves. And then that allows you to treat yourself a little bit more kindly and start saying, well, what would make today a success? Rather than achieving everything, what can I do today? And that’s the idea of, you know, compassion is really treating yourself like your own boss properly and giving yourself the right goals to achieve what you need to achieve today, to feel good in yourself and move your business and move your life forward. But also give yourself that support and encouragement. Talk to yourself like you’re talking to that scared personal-training client who’s come in for the first day and is terrified to get on the Assault bike or hang from the pull-up bar. That’s plenty of reassurance and that’s plenty of support. Whereas we don’t do that to ourselves. If we’ve got to make sales calls and we’re not particularly good at them or we’ve got to apply to the bank for a loan or we’ve just got to say no to another demand on our time so we can go home and play with our kids.
Colm: 16:36 – That’s step two, compassion, step three, I’m sure everyone here on the podcast is doing it and I really hope they are. It’s practicing the gratitude and the Bright Spots. A great line I like to use is that an entire forest growing makes less noise than one tree falling. What they mean is there is so much good in our lives, but when we get stressed we tend to let the stress of one area of our life trickle over into all the areas of life and cloud everything else. And this is why it’s so important to take time daily or weekly to say what is going good in my life and what am I grateful for? And it’s not even that important to actually find something that’s going good. It’s the act of looking for something that’s going good, starts to slowly rewire your brain to look for more opportunities than threats.
Colm: 17:23 – And then it starts to slowly rewire your brain and then to develop a more growth mindset and a more open mindset. And then the final internal thing is loving kindness or sympathetic joy, which I have to joke to disarm people is probably the gooiest part of a self-care routine. Loving kindness is basically wishing other people well, because if you’re full of resentment or full of, you know, anger that other people are getting ahead unfairly, quote unquote in your eyes, that’s holding you back. And a very simple example is my business partner, and he won’t mind me telling me this story, was getting frustrated looking at other gyms in the area’s Instagram accounts and going, oh my God, they have a new rig, or oh, they’re doing this, or they’re copying us. And what we just did is we got him to stop following them. And that really helped him because then it wasn’t distracting him from his mission and his job and his purpose. So I know I’ve talked for a while, but the foundational practices of mental health as far as we can see and as far as we teach people are taking clarity beaks, having compassion for yourself, practicing your gratitude and practicing loving kindness.
Greg: 18:34 – I love all four of those. Especially, I mean, the mindfulness is a huge part. I love using a meditation app. I even started downloading some other things to kind of work on my mental capacity, which I had a Bright Spot for. And of course, using all of these things are something that I always strive for, but it doesn’t mean I always do it all. So, I love all four of these. Well, we’ll be right back with Colm right after this break.
Chris: 19:00 – Hello my friends. It is Chris Cooper here. Since 2009 I have been writing daily blog posts, producing podcasts, videos, all kinds of stuff on social media with one mission in mind: to make gyms profitable. I came to that mission because I was an unprofitable gym owner. It almost ruined my finances and almost ruined my career, my marriage, everything. And since that day, since I made my recovery, I have wanted to help other gym owners become profitable, too. It’s part of my mission to the world because if you’re profitable, you’ll be here changing lives of thousands of your clients for the next 30 years. I think together we can have a tremendous impact. When we started mentorship, I did every single call myself. I was doing up to a thousand free calls a year and I was doing 10 calls with people who signed up for our early mentorship program, but the Incubator has been updated and improved a dozen times since then. Now the Incubator is really the sum of all of our experiences with over 800 gyms worldwide. In the Two-Brain mentorship program, we can now learn from everybody. We can collate data, we can see what’s working where and when and what the new gold standards are as they emerge. When somebody has a great idea, we can test it objectively and say, “Will this work for everyone or will it work for people on the West Coast or on the East Coast?” We can do that with little things like Facebook ads. We can also do that with operations and opening times and playbooks. All the questions that you have about the gym, we can answer them with data and with proof now. That’s the Incubator. It’s more than what I wrote about. It’s more than my experience. It is the best standard in the fitness industry, period. And I hope to see you in there.
Greg: 20:42 – All right, we are back with Colm. Now, let’s kind of talk about something else that I know, and you brought it up in the Irish summit. And I know it’s something that you’ve talked about before, but that is the inner world versus the outer world. What exactly are those? And what are the things to work on in each?
Colm: 21:00 – OK, so it’s just a concept of looking at what’s going on in your life versus how are you dealing with it inside. So the outer world is traditionally what we try and change. And if you ask anybody, you know, what would make you happy today? You know, what would make you feel peaceful? They’ll generally say something outside of themselves. And key examples are, well, if I hit 10,000 in monthly revenue this month, that’s going to be good. OK. Or if I can just get away for the weekend, that’s going to be good. Or, you know, if I hit that lift today or my Open score, that’s all the outer world. That’s all it stuff inside of you. And I’m not denying that we all have genuine real things in our outer world we need to address and we need to fix, but if we make ourselves subject to them, we’re always going to find the next thing.
Colm: 21:50 – You know there’s the time you prayed, you wish you had a hundred clients and then you get there and you’re like, oh man, I’d be much happier if I had, you know, 20 PT clients instead of a hundred group class clients. And then you get to there and you’re like, oh man, I’d be much happier if I didn’t work weekends. And then you’ve stopped working weekends and then it’s like, oh, I’d be much happier if I moved into a bigger house or got rid of my mortgage. And what you’re doing there is you’re always placing your happiness and your sense of fulfillment, your sense of peace of mind outside yourself. Now, I’m not denying going for these goals. And you can have great success, quote unquote “outward” success going from these goals without ever looking at your inner world. But I argue that you need to spend some time on your inner world as well.
Colm: 22:35 – You need to spend some time that, you know, regardless of what happens in your life, you know, regardless of whether a client leaves, a coach leaves, you know, you get rich or poor, that you’re going to feel good in yourself, that you’re going to feel good in yourself, and you as a person and you as an entity feels good. And that’s why it goes back to the idea of investing daily in yourself with a little bit of loving kindness towards yourself, a little bit of self-compassion towards yourself, investing in your mindful and your gratitudeness. The funn
y thing is, is that when you build this inner peace of mind, you’ve more confidence to go out and tackle the outside world.
Greg: 23:12 – So basically working on the inner you portion of it.
Colm: 23:16 – Yes. Yeah. Instead of making everything external of, oh well, if I just fired that coach, you’re like, I’m going to work on myself and use that strength that I build up within myself to go tackle the outer world.
Greg: 23:27 – And I think, I mean, that that to me is something very huge. I think growing up in the military in the sense of from when I could join the military when I was 18 and I would always be focusing on me. And as I moved up in the ranks and moved up into a NCO position, a noncommissioned officer position, you can’t do that. You can’t think about yourself. You have to think about everyone else. And I think that shift in my mindset helped me work on me to then help others or help the outer world, as you said. So, what are the things that people should be focusing in on the outer world section of it?
Colm: 24:07 – OK. So I wouldn’t jump straight to it there because that’s like everybody hops on a call and says, hey, I need more members. It’s like well, you probably need to tighten up all your systems first to make the analogy back to it. So what I’d suggest is when you’re working on yourself is to start structuring your own world first and then go out and look at the actual problems in your life. So if you allow me a brief digression, I’ll talk to that. So your inner world, I break down into four things. And that’s your identity, your values, your self-talk, and your habits. So, to make the analogy back to back to CrossFit, you know, when you have someone in for that No-Sweat Intro and you asked them what does fitness mean to them, they probably don’t have an answer.
Colm: 24:51 – It’s just like not here, not fat, not out of shape, not unfit, but they don’t know what being in shape or being fit or being healthy means to them as well. So working on what’s your sense of identity, who do you want to be and you know, and what do you stand for? So we want you to have your identity and that takes time to work on. Then you can work on your values, which is basically what you say yes or no to. And working on this then allows you to better address your outer world because you’ve given yourself the care you need. You know who you are, you know what you’re going to say yes or no to, and then you can start looking at your outer world and that starts with your self-talk because how you talk to yourself is going to reflect on how you interact with other people and if you’re nicer to yourself, you’re going to be nicer to other people.
Colm: 25:39 – You’re going to be more agreeable and you’re going to get more buy-in from the people in your life you need to, and then you can start looking at, well, is my own sleep, my own nutrition, my own exercise, my own environment set up for success. Then I’d say you can start looking at your life and you could look at what are the supports and what are the stressors in your life because if you jump straight to looking at like what’s going good and what’s going bad in your life without building up a foundation, it’s very easy to get overwhelmed. It’s very easy to get beaten back down. Whereas if you’ve built up that little bit of robustness, that little bit of a barrier and semi-permeable membrane that you allow the good stuff in but you don’t allow the bad stuff to affect you on a deep personal level, then it’s much easier to go after your world and say, OK, well, what does need fixing?
Colm: 26:28 – And you can compartmentalize that into, OK, this one thing in my life needs fixing, but that doesn’t impact every part of my life and my self-esteem and it doesn’t destroy my own health. So I can look at my finances and say, OK, they need fixing and this is the plan. OK, I’m going to forgive myself for making the mistake of taking out a crazy business loan, you know, to buy 50 Echo bikes when I didn’t need them and I’m going to figure out a plan to fix it. Or, OK, I do need to work on my marketing and I’m going to work on just that, but I’m not going to let that affect my relationship with my kids or my own health. Does that make sense that you work on yourself first and then it makes it a lot easier to start addressing the outer world?
Greg: 27:11 – 100%. And I think, that is usually the part where most people don’t work on, I’d say, is the fact that they’re not working on their inner self. They’re not working on being better. I know that has been my strive for 2018 and 19 was to read more and to listen to everything I can and try to take it in. But at the same time, kind of what you talked about of having better self-talk. But then even in stressful situations, I know you brought it up with the whole money side of, hey, my gym’s making money or not making money, or hey, I’m gonna go get that loan for those 50 Echo bikes. At times it does get stressful, for every business owner. We are all business owners to include the mentors of Two-Brain, we all have businesses and times still gets stressful for us.
Greg: 28:02 – We still have things to navigate, it’s just at a different level. We’re all navigating through different things. It’s just at a different level. And I know every time I navigate something that I know is going to be stressful or some kind of issue comes up or something, I have to work on my self-talk and work on me. How can I view this in a better state than viewing it in a, hey, somebody did this, they’re gone. They need to be fired or hey, and having more of that reactive state. But really sitting down and going, OK, how can we work through this together to have the best possible outcome?
Colm: 28:38 – Oh, I agree 100%. And just for our listeners, we are not advising rushing out and taking a massive loan to buy 50 Echo bikes. Just we want to get that clear.
Greg: 28:47 – Please do not do that.
Colm: 28:49 – The thing with stress is if we haven’t built up a buffer, and even if we have, that we tend to let one area of stress cloud everything. And you know when we get on and we talk with our mentors or we talk with the people at the level that can understand our problem. So it can be tricky to talk to you know, your social-media person who has just started college. It’s difficult to talk to them about well I’m under distress to try and get a permit to buy a building because you guys are worlds apart. So you’ve got to talk with someone who’s roughly at your level.
Colm: 29:21 – And secondly, it’s with stress, we tend to let it cloud everything. And by looking at it directly, you know, calmly and saying, OK, well what specifically is the issue here? And dialing and constantly asking those uncomfortable questions, we can find out what the specific problem is. And then when we know what the specific is, the solution is very, very clear as well. But if we, you know, ruminate in our heads and mull it over, that stress becomes overwhelming and that’s when it starts to impact other areas.
Greg: 29:51 – So now that we’ve looked at the inner world, how can we address the outer world?
Colm: 29:55 – Like I was just saying, is that looking at, you know, looking at the whole picture. So what is going well and how do we do more of that rather than what’s the big problem and why is this making everything in our life terrible. So we start looking at, well what specifically is the stress or what specifically is the root cause. Is it that I don’t have the right employee in the right seat? Is it that I don’t have the right procedure? Is it that frankly I’m just expecting too much of me. You know, it’s like that person who comes in and you know, they want to drop a hundred pounds by next week’s wedding and it’s just not going to happen. And very often this happens with people with stress is they want to be out of stress right now. And it’s like you’ve got to start working on it bit by bit and piece by piece and acknowledging and recognizing that you are taking time for yourself. So when you can do that, and then when you c
an set an action plan in place, trust that action plan and follow it.
Colm: 30:52 – And most importantly not allow that action plan to interfere with the other good stuff in your life. That’s when you can really address your outside world. You can’t change people, but you can change how you’re going to interact with them, what you’re going to tolerate or not. And that’s going to have severely reduced your stress. You’re still gonna have issues, but you’re going to be able to handle them rather than the issues overwhelming you. And then not just becoming another thing and another thing and another thing that constantly drains you down.
Greg: 31:22 – That makes perfect sense. So if people want to put this to work today, if people want to have the ability right now to start working on some of this stuff, what would you say are the best things for them to do and take action on right now?
Colm: 31:37 – Absolute best thing to do is every morning, take a little bit of time for yourself. If that is 60 seconds, that’s 60 seconds just to sit and breathe calmly. Now when you do that, you’re going to have so many thoughts pop into your head and that is completely normal. That doesn’t mean you’re a bad meditator. That’s like when I do a workout and I get out of breath, that doesn’t mean I’m not fit. That’s that fitness happening. So when you sit and these thoughts start bubbling up, that’s OK. You’re just going to develop a little bit of awareness and a little bit more. From there, actually say, what would make my day a success? And this will be tricky to start off with because you’ll probably write down, well, I’ll get a sale or this will go well, but you’ve got to say, what can I do today that I can go to bed feeling fulfilled?
Colm: 32:26 – And that’s going to give you a lot of clarity. And then you’re being compassionate with yourself that you’re setting yourself very clear, positive expectations of what you can do to make your day a success. And then at the end of the day, you can review that, forgive yourself if you didn’t achieve everything and use it to set up the next day. And that small practice daily really starts to add up. You know, it’s not gonna make a big difference on one day. Like that one stretch isn’t gonna make you do the splits, but it will really add up to give you a lot of clarity in your life. That’s the simplest way of getting started I can give you.
Greg: 33:00 – I love it. I love it. And I think that’s a perfect place to wrap it up. I know me personally, this is stuff that I’m going to work on. I can always be better. Whether I’m using a meditation app or I’m using other things to work up my mental capacity. I don’t think I do this drill and I think I need to start today. So, I will be first person to definitely say that, hey, I don’t work on everything all the time, but I’m always willing to try to be better every single day and earn that compound interest, if you want to call it that, by doing it little by little to eventually make a big impact on my mental state. So Colm, thank you so much for being able to jump on. If anybody wants to contact you about mental health as an entrepreneur, as a business owner, what’s the best way for them to reach out to you?
Colm: 33:46 – They can just email me colm@crossfitireland.ie is the easiest way to reach me. And Greg, I’ll say to yourself, it’s like you don’t have to be perfect at this stuff, bro. So don’t beat yourself up for not being perfect. You can only go at your speed. And your speed is your speed and that’s good enough for you. That’s true of everyone listening.
Greg: 34:07 – Agreed. Colm, thank you so much again for jumping on. We greatly appreciate your knowledge and expertise and I wish you many, many more years of success in CrossFit Ireland. So again, congratulations on that, but thank you so much for sharing your time with us.
Colm: 34:22 – I really appreciate it. Thank you everyone.
Greg: 34:24 – Thank you for listening to Two-Brain Radio. Make sure to subscribe to receive the most up-to-date episodes wherever you get your podcasts from. To find out how we can help create your Perfect Day, book a free call with a mentor at twobrainbusiness.com.
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