Are U OK Mental Health with Sir John Kirwan

Interviewer:

Hi, and welcome to the podcast with podcastmybusiness.com.au. And today we have a really special guest Sir John Kirwan or JK. Rugby union legend for the All Blacks. How are you JK? 

Sir John Kirwan:

I’m very well, thank you. I’m currently at my beach house and I had a surf this morning, so I’m on top of the world. 

Interviewer:

Wow. Okay. Well I’m in Sydney so we can still do that. In fact, I was at Bondi Beach yesterday. There we go.

Sir John Kirwan:

Beautiful. So is most of New Zealand isn’t it?

Interviewer:

Sorry?

Sir John Kirwan:

So is most of New Zealand aren’t they at Bondi Beach? Isn’t that where the New Zealander team go?

Interviewer:

There and Coogee.

Sir John Kirwan:

Coogee, there you go.

Interviewer:

I lived in Bondi years ago and there’s lots of new Zealanders in the area. They’re getting out a little bit further, but yeah. So look, one of the reasons why I’d love to have you on the show is not only talk about rugby union and playing sport and whatever, but you’ve got a mental health app and we’ll get to that because men are terrible at talking about mental health, especially in business. So really, I guess my first question is who is your favorite player out of the Holy Trinity?

Sir John Kirwan:

Yeah. Look for me. I loved Campo. Believe it or not. I loved Campo because he made me better. He was a way better rugby player than I was. So you had to be really on top of your game to play him. But I think the guys from that era Nick Farr-Jones, they were a special breed, Michael Lynagh. I always enjoyed, I actually played with Michael in Treviso when he played, him and I played together over there. So it was a golden era of Australian rugby.

Interviewer:

Yeah. And we used to win the Bledisloe Cup every now and again as well.

Sir John Kirwan:

Yeah. Yeah, you did. I remember losing it. Like I said, that team in that era was an amazing rugby team and we certainly had to be on our game to win and we’d loose often.

Interviewer:

So I’m not going to dwell on what’s happened since so much, but what I’m curious about as well is what… I read recently read a biography of Sir Edmund Hillary. And it was a good one because it’s by somebody who actually knew him and climbed with him.

Sir John Kirwan:

Yeah.

Interviewer:

What is it about New Zealand and, okay, that’s now called a sport, mountaineering and mountain climbing and whatever, about New Zealand and being exceptional at certain aspects of sport?

Sir John Kirwan:

I think it probably extends across the Tasman to our Australian brothers and sisters as well. I just think we have a go, I don’t think we see failure as a thing to worry too much about. And I also think that we have the nature around us to do some really cool stuff. So I think it’s that combination that sort of, “Oh shit, I’m going to have a crack at that.” And then most of us spend a lot of our times in the outdoors and get passionate about in some cases, extreme sports. Because I don’t think mountaineering’s… Well, I’m anti guided Mount Everest put it that way. I think that if you can climb it, climb it brother. But if you haven’t trained don’t get on the football field with the wallabies and the All Blacks it’s just not safe.

Interviewer:

Well, that’s so true. And actually people now what they do they take a helicopter up to base camp, get dropped at base camp. And I remember reading in the book, the difficulty in Ed climbing mountains before he even thought about Mount Everest and got to Mount Everest and got to the base camp. And we all know about that word failure in business. Failure is a positive thing because from failure you actually learn. So what sort of business lessons do you think you can apply from sport, especially the top level that your playing at?

Sir John Kirwan:

Yeah, I think fail fast is a really good one. So when you lose in rugby, you’ve got one day to sort it out and then you’re onto the next game. And you’ve got to sort it out pretty quick. So fail fast, learn fast. And then I think the other thing is work from Saturday backwards. A lot of people who I’ve met in business work from Monday forward. Whereas if you do rugby, you go, okay, I’m playing Saturday. What do I need to do Friday? What do I need to do Thursday? What do I need to do Wednesday and what do I need to do Tuesday? So those are some of the things that I think are really, really important. And then if you do that, you start understanding to put rest in.

Sir John Kirwan:

Because if you train every day and you don’t rest Thursday or Wednesday or whenever, there’s all sorts of different research on which days are best for rest. Then your adrenaline levels, testosterone levels are not going to be high enough to perform on Saturday. So it’s no use working hard all week and finding that out on Saturday. I think sometimes businesses, especially around stress and anxiety can learn, rest is as important as the training. So they are the sort of things that I’ve learned.

Interviewer:

Yeah, exactly. I don’t mind adopting that approach is that go out and fail, fail a few times, recover, move on to the next thing. And let’s face it where we’re at at the moment with COVID there’s going to be lots of challenges for everybody around COVID.

Sir John Kirwan:

Yeah. Look and I think a really interesting story. I rang a really good mate of mine. He was my old black captain, but also my peer. We were great mates. We used to room together, not a great roommate to be fair. But good guy he was a forward, he was a front rower. So just don’t ruin the front rows would be my advice to anyone listening, they’re horrible. And also don’t go behind them at the buffet because they eat everything so couple of quick tips there.

Interviewer:

Well, they can’t hear you because they’ve got the cauliflower ears anyway.

Sir John Kirwan:

Yeah. That’s right. They kind of get the ear plugs they need in. I rang him the other day and he said to me, “You know JK, when we were growing up, our parents would talk about the Depression, the Great Wars, our grandparents would talk about that sort of stuff. We’re going to be talking about COVID for the rest of our time. But I think for all the business people out there that are listening to this, that is a plus. Don’t think we’ve got the books. We can’t write the books. We can’t look at the blueprint for this stuff. So that’s why, what we spoke about before is really fundamentally important. We don’t know what this new working from home, or who’s going to work in work, or what’s going to happen. How are we going to manage it?

Sir John Kirwan:

But the biggest thing you need to do is communicate, try stuff, fail faster. We all need to be accepting of the learnings and move on very quickly. And I think we’re in this together, like all other wars. And so I think that’s really interesting from a business point of view is that we understand that there’s no books about this. But we don’t, you don’t want to be looking back on this moment two years from now and writing books about what we should have done. And so the only way you can not do that is by trying stuff moving fast, make sure you’re okay with failure, communicating it to all your people and change quickly.

Interviewer:

Yeah, exactly. And I think that’s what it is is so much opportunity out there at the moment. There’s going to be people who are going to be looking back in two years time going, “Geez, I didn’t even read the book, let alone write the book.” Others are going to say, I didn’t even know there was a book there. But yeah, there’s opportunities, seize the opportunities and move fast.

Sir John Kirwan:

Yep.

Interviewer:

Excellent. Okay. So one of the things that we touched on already was making time for yourself. And one of the things that you’ve done, which I think is awesome is that you’ve got this new mental health app. And it’s really built around your experience on the field because let’s face it. Those of us who’ve been in the locker room playing different sports as guys, we just don’t talk.

Sir John Kirwan:

Yeah. Well, I think I’ll give you the quick backstory. So when I was an All Black, I suffered from anxiety and depression, which I heard from people for a long, long time. Until I wanted to jump out of a window one night. And I was very fortunate that the guy lying next to me said, “JK, you’ve got a good heart.” That just happened to be Sir Michael Jones, who was also an All Black. But what happened was I got home and I started understanding myself, understanding my mind, learning tools and techniques to actually keep myself thriving on a daily basis. But what also happened was, I was the face of this in New Zealand for 10 years. And our stats were going the wrong way. Our people still weren’t talking about it. So what I thought about was we’re doing things the wrong way.

Sir John Kirwan:

So I went out and we interviewed 3,500 people in the business world to ask them, what is mental wellbeing? What is mental fitness in the workplace? And what we found out that stress and anxiety is the new norm. And some of the tools and techniques that I used to stay well, people need in everyday life. So we created Mentemia actually as a business tool because we think that if you put your people first in your business, and if you look after the mental health, they will be more productive. They’ll be happier and you’ll be able to retain more of the people that you want to retain. So you’ll have longevity in the workplace. But the other interesting thing is a lot of this information is out there, but it’s as boring as bat shit. So what we wanted to be able to do was also deliver it in a real engaging way and make fun of habitual change, so little bite sized pieces.

Sir John Kirwan:

And we started as a business to business here in New Zealand. And COVID came along and we decided to give it free to all of New Zealand and Australia. And the whole idea is that that the business gifts it to their people, so they can look after their mental health, understand mental fitness. And then we believe if you can do that then you’ll have a happier, more productive workplace.

Interviewer:

Okay. So what was the name of the app again?

Sir John Kirwan:

It’s called Mentemia, and you can download it free at the app store. So M-E-N-T-E-M-I-A. Mentemia, [inaudible 00:11:28]. And that means my mind in Italian because I did spend a lot of time in Italy as you know.

Interviewer:

Well, that’s right. Where, of course, Campese his family is from Italy as well aren’t they.

Sir John Kirwan:

Yeah. And he played just up the road. I played for Benetton Treviso and he played for Padova. So it’s like, what would you call it in Australia? You’d probably call it Queensland, playing New South Wales, one of those ones. [crosstalk 00:11:56]

Interviewer:

Well, the only talent I know I learned at school, so I won’t use any of that. I get strange looks from Italians when I say use it, don’t why. Cool. All right. So what about some other, I guess when we’re talking about mental health for businesses, because again, all under a lot of stress, so business owners, are getting on board a little bit more looking after their staff, but this app is also perfect for business owners themselves.

Sir John Kirwan:

Yeah, exactly. I think it’s often, people say to me, why should we be thinking about mental wellbeing, mental health? And I said, well, it’s been ignored for a long, long time. And it’s probably the X factor that we need. So if people are well mentally and on form, then they will be more productive. And what happens normally, especially if you’re a business owner or a leader in a business, you are really going hard. And so I say this, if I have a really strong mental fitness plan and I have a daily one, and I put my mental wellness at the top of the list. Then I’m a better businessman; I’m a better father; I’m a better husband and I’m a better friend. And I say to people and I’ll ask you? Would you like to be 10% better physically right now?

Interviewer:

Absolutely 100%.

Sir John Kirwan:

Absolutely 100%. Right. And I asked this question a lot and everyone says, “Yes.” I even asked it to a bunch of trainers who do it for a living and even, they said “Yes.” But then if I asked you the same question, would you like to be 10% better mentally?

Interviewer:

I’d like to be even more than 10% better.

Sir John Kirwan:

Exactly. Exactly. So look, I know this for a fact, if you have a really strong daily mental health plan, you will be. And that’s what Mentemia is about just delivering, engaging stuff, everyday stuff that you can do to make yourself a little bit better mentally. And we believe it’s fundamental in the business world, because like I said, stress and anxiety is the new norm. If I say to people and it’s probably not a good time to talk about this with COVID, but give me three common symptoms for the flu. And people go, “Oh, sore throat, runny nose, aches and pains, headaches.”

Sir John Kirwan:

And I go, “Yeah. Okay. So what do we do about that? ‘We’ll go down to the local pharmacy chemist and we’ll buy the latest shit we’ve seen on TV. We’ll jam that down our gob for three days. And if that doesn’t go away, we go to the doctor.'” And I said, “Yip, that’s pretty much what we all do.” And then I say, “Well, give me three or four common symptoms for stress and anxiety.” And they go, “Well, headache, can’t sleep. Take my best self to work and then I want to kick the cat when I get home.” Say, “Yip. Okay, what do we do about that? ‘Maybe have a few beers on a Friday night.'”

Interviewer:

Yeah, yeah. I kept silent then deliberately because that’s I think what most people would do.

Sir John Kirwan:

Yeah, exactly. But that’s not good for you because if you start using alcohol as a stress release, you get in trouble. Whereas if you look after your mental health on a daily basis, and you want to go and have a few beers on a Friday night, you’ll be much more relaxed because you won’t be worrying about your phone or this or that. The interesting thing is we get more inputs in one day now than our grandparents had in a lifetime. I say to people, what do you do if your computer craps out? And they say, “Well, we ring the IT guy. And he normally says, ‘Turn it off and turn it on again.'” And I said, “Does it work? ‘Yeah, 98% of the time it works.'” And our brains are no different. So modern society has pushed us to be always plugged in, always on the go, always got information coming in. So five or six times a day, you just need to unplug that computer. It’s simple as that.

Interviewer:

Exactly. And that’s really important. I like to do that. I’ve been addicted to the news around COVID and whatever, probably too addicted to it. And in the evening I’ve been looking at it on my phone. And going, “This is not good. You need to have that rest time, that downtime to chill out.”

Sir John Kirwan:

Totally. And that’s so right. Look, the news really is not going to change in 24 hours. So what I do is I look at the news at a certain time of day, and then I don’t look at it again for 24 hours. Because you know what, if something really drastic happens, someone’s going to tell me, but I don’t need to know how many deaths there are from COVID today because I’m already sad enough about it. So I look at the news once and then I don’t look at it again until for 24 hours. And I take time to wind down before I go to bed. For me, breathing’s really important. I breathe properly five or six times a day. I’ve got an active mind. I’ve got what they call a ruminating mind.

Sir John Kirwan:

I just call it a monkey brain. So it’s very difficult for me to do meditation and yoga. Now, meditation and yoga is great for you and you should do it, but I’m an active relaxer. If I cook a meal, or if I read a book, if I do active relaxing then that for me is like meditation. So I also think it’s important and this is what we want to also deliver [inaudible 00:17:18]. Everyone’s different and that’s okay. You just need to find what’s good for you. But looking at the news mate at seven or eight o’clock at night is not going to help you spiritually.

Interviewer:

Thanks for pointing that out. Good on you. Again, any other tips or suggestions you’d like to make? What I’m curious about also is that high performing athletes in Australia, New Zealand, as we said, right at the beginning, a very popular, very well liked. Especially, men like them. That’s a great opportunity to talk about mental health because we all used to hearing that these high-performing athletes have visual images and form in their mind, the end of the race before they even start the race.

Sir John Kirwan:

I think everyone’s different. For example, if you try visualization, so some people, when they visualize, they see themselves on the field and us sitting in the stand. When I visualize, I see it out of my own eyes. We’re all really, really different. Some people, the game slows down incredibly, other people can’t remember. I think it’s very difficult to put it all… Everybody in one category. And I find that also with mental health, we’re all really different. The way we react, the way we do things. Some people are really relaxed before the game. Some people are really nervous. When I used to play as a guy I used to chunder all the time, it was horrible. I had to move seats actually because that’s what I did before a game and stuff like that, but we’re all different.

Sir John Kirwan:

But one thing they do talk about is performance anxiety. Worrying about performing, worrying about whether you’re going to win or lose. And often I talk about, and one of the tools that saved my life that we put in Mentemia. Was a thing called a Worry Map. Because as an elite athlete, I used to worry about all sort of shit that I couldn’t control. And when I was really unwell coming through that the psychiatrist said to me, “JK, you need to learn the Worry Map.” And I said, “Okay, I’m keen to try that. What is it?” She said, “Well, it’s really simple. What can you control? What can’t you control? What can you do, and what can’t you do?

Sir John Kirwan:

And if you go through that properly, what happens is you end up with a list of things that you can control, a list of things that you can’t control, which you shouldn’t even think about. And what you can and what you can’t do about it. It was very interesting talking about COVID, I’m married to an Italian, who’s had to go back to Italy for a family situation. So the other day I was getting pretty worried about it, but I just did my Worry Map. So what can I control? Well, we can buy all the masks? We can do all that stuff. We know she’s going to fly through Sydney onto Qatar when she gets out to… So you just come up with a list of things to do.

Sir John Kirwan:

Can I control if she’s going to meet someone who’s infected? No, I can’t do that. Is they’re going to be the virus… So same thing in business often, especially if you’re a business leader, especially small business owners, I really recommend them to do the Worry Map because you worry about a whole lot of stuff that you can’t control. And it takes up a lot of energy. Instead of having a list of the things you can control and actions into your action form.

Interviewer:

I remember Even back in March, we’re going through the lockdowns, you guys went a little bit more severe, which we’re not going to even discuss that. But I remember the serenity prayer, which is similar to what you’re referring to. So you even just say that. Help me to control the things I can do something about. And let me know the things that I can’t control, and the wisdom to know the difference.

Sir John Kirwan:

Yeah. And also another thing that’s important, once you start talking about this sort of stuff and it’s called externalizing. So you externalize it, it’s on a piece of paper you’re looking down at it, or you’ve discussed that with someone who you care about. And all of a sudden, it’s not an internal issue anymore because often we do internalize and our brains sometimes can take these thoughts and actually exaggerate with them. Whereas you got to go, “Well, hang on a minute.” Let’s think about putting it on paper, talking about it, and that externalizes it and gives you an action plan. 

Interviewer:

Excellent. Okay. All right. Thank you very much. Okay. Anything else you’d like to add?

Sir John Kirwan:

No, mate, it’s been a pleasure.

Interviewer:

Thank you. And it’s Mentemia, M-E-N-T-E-M-I-A. Download it, especially as a small business owner, really important to look after your health. It’s easy to forget because you’re too busy doing so many other things. It’s not even on the list. So put it on the list. Download the bloody app. It’s not even on the list. So put it on the list. Download the bloody app.