We’ve talked about how to handle the normal hurdles that might prevent us from maintaining a high performance lifestyle, but what about when something truly massive and unexpected comes up to throw us off track?
This is something Ali Flynn has excessive experience with, having overcome a traumatic childhood, strokes, chronic illnesses and more to then launch and run 3 businesses while also becoming a triathlete.
In this episode Ali shares:
- Her personal background and how it started her journey to high performance
- The moment she had a stroke as a mother of 3 kids
- The massive high performance goals she set and achieved post stroke
- The boundaries she put in place to help her avoid burning out post stroke
- Her advice for how to face adversity in a positive way and not become bitter
- How to set your values
- How she allowed different habits and activities in her life at different times depending on whether they served her or not
- Her non negotiables that allow her to prioritise herself and her health
- How she handles having to drop things when disasters and crises hit
- Her advice on how to transition to a new goal gradually and not suddenly
- The 3 things that help her stay at the top
Key Quotes
“When adversity hits you can get bitter or you can get better.”
“If we focus on doing the small things often, we move the dial.”
“How do we as an individual get so honed in on what our plan is and remove the outside distractions?”
Episode Resources
More about Ali
To book an exclusive spot in Ali’s High Performance Leadership summit head here: https://www.trialtitudeperformance.com.au/registration1660014924140
You can listen to her podcast Challenges That Change Us here: https://podfollow.com/challenges-that-change-us
You can check out her facebook community here: https://www.facebook.com/groups/challengesthatchangeus
Follow on Instagram: @challengesthatchangeus
Or check out her website: www.Challengesthatchangeus.com
Jessica Spendlove Website – www.jessicaspendlove.com
Jessica Spendlove Keynotes – JessicaspendloveKeynotes – Jessica Spendlove
The High-Performance Profile Quiz https://jessicaspendlove.com/quiz/
Jess Spendlove Instagram https://www.instagram.com/jess_spendlove_dietitian/?hl=en
Jess Spendlove LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/jessica-spendlove-64173bb8/
About Your Host
Jessica Spendlove | Wellbeing Speaker & High Performance Strategist
Jess Spendlove is an international wellbeing and high performance speaker, coach, and advisor. With over 15 years of experience across corporate leadership, elite sport and the military she is known for helping ambitious leaders and teams optimise energy, build resilience, and sustain peak performance.
As one of Australia’s leading performance dietitians and a trusted voice in executive wellbeing, Jess delivers science-backed strategies that empower individuals, teams and organisations to thrive under pressure and achieve long-term success.
Episode Transcript
The following transcript has been automatically generated and not checked for accuracy
Jess (00:22.27)
Ali Flynn, welcome to Stay At The Top. I’m so looking forward to today’s conversation. I’m sure we’re going to cover so many different aspects of personal life, professional life, overall just living and breathing, what high performance means. So thank you for joining me here today.
Ali Flynn (00:39.601)
Thanks Jess, this is the first one for the year for me. So I’m really looking forward to getting on and having a conversation. One of my favorite topics to talk about and just kind of sit in and explore.
Jess (00:50.69)
I know it’s a bit of a role reversal. Obviously I’ve been on your podcast and I loved it. It stretched me. It was kind of sitting in a little bit of a different spot to my usual subject matter expert and talking a little bit more personally. So I’m really looking forward to blending the two and helping listeners take away so many lessons and nuggets and just aha moments and a new fresh perspective.
It’s the start of 2024. Everyone is looking to do things differently, not repeat old behaviors. And I think this is a great conversation to help a lot of people get clarity on how they wanna set 2024 up for themselves.
Ali Flynn (01:31.773)
Well, let’s get into it.
Jess (01:33.758)
Look, I think the first place to start is give us the overview of you. What has shaped your life? Go back as far as we need to and talk about from a personal lens and from a professional lens and just paint a picture on the highs, the adversity and yeah, really shape today’s conversation.
Ali Flynn (01:57.581)
It’s always a tough question, isn’t it? When you get asked to kind of look back through your life and think about the things that have truly shaped who you are today or influence the way that we behave or the values we have or the choices we make in life. And to be honest, mine really began in my early childhood. I grew up in quite a violent environment and…
I had this really unique kind of world of living in privilege. I went to private schools, I played so much sport, like every sport under the sun was fortunate enough to play it. I had beautiful friends, some beautiful family, but I also had this huge amount of cloud of violence that sat around me. And as a result of that, as I moved into my senior school, schooling, I started to think about what can I do with this? Like,
I don’t ever want anyone to feel the way that I felt, which is often why people go into psychology, right? Like to either explore what’s happened for them or to help other people. And that was definitely, I was one of those. I was like, how can I use my experience to help others to never be in the same position that I was in? And so I went and did an undergrad in psychology, started to work in mental health, moved into a position where I was working with children and young people who were homeless or at risk of homelessness and did another degree in emotionally focused therapy.
So working around trauma and understanding that, how we relate to ourselves, how we relate to others, our emotional patterns, you know, some of those like we often, particularly in the high performance space talk about what are some, sorry, it just started pouring here. Can you hear that? Like.
Jess (03:36.339)
Oh my gosh, that’s… yeah!
Ali Flynn (03:37.593)
just bang. Sorry Sam to let that out. I forget what I was saying. Yeah in the high performance space is you know what are the what are the parts of us that may be more hidden from our view? What are some of the shadow sides? What are the area? What are the things that are operating outside of our awareness that might be influencing what we do? So from there I was working primarily in sexual assault and domestic violence actually and had a little girl and decided that
work for me at that point in time and stepped away and then bang had three kids in three years. There was no time for work. In the meantime I did a personal training course to become a PT and started working second pregnancy, opened my own business in personal training because it felt a lot lighter. It felt like a different vehicle to do the same thing. I could still help people but perhaps without that kind of heaviness of therapy.
And then when my little one, my youngest, was nine months old, I ended up having a stroke. So I was up in the bathroom getting ready to run a boot camp and I had this headache on my left and these pins and needles down my right, enough that in that moment, I knew my life was in danger.
There was no other thought than I’m in deep shit here and screamed out to my husband and he came up and he works in the medical field. He’s worked in the hospital for over 20 years and he had the exact same response. He’s like, I think she’s having a stroke. 30, fit, young, no reason to believe or think that. And yeah, I had this rare brain condition called reversible vasoconstriction syndrome.
And not sure if it’s still as rare as it was back then, but I was living in a country town. They airlifted me to Sydney, spent months in hospital, couldn’t read and write, couldn’t stand on one leg. I had three kids under three and a half. My baby was still on the boob. Like, you know, life just flipped in a single second. And, you know, as I mentioned before around the challenges in my childhood, it came up in this moment. Like, I was really struggling with my rehab. I was…
Ali Flynn (05:47.309)
I was doing everything everyone told me to do, but I was kind of just felt like I had this ball and chain around me and I just kind of wasn’t getting any momentum or movement. And I spent some time reflecting on what’s actually happening here, like what’s going on for me? Why do I feel so stuck? And it was in that moment that I realized that
My whole life I’d had this little mantra right as a kid I was like you can hurt me you can touch me but you can’t touch my mind so I’m going to get smarter like you can do anything you want to my body but you can’t hurt my mind and the stroke took my mind and that in that moment when I realized that one little saying that had served me for so long and so well throughout my life was actually the one thing that was holding me back the most in this moment.
And so from there I…
I opened a business six weeks or eight weeks before my stroke. So I just opened a PT business and had my stroke. And so I had a heap of time off. As I said, I wasn’t allowed to drive for six months. You know, I had to kind of learn. I lost my short-term memory. So I had a sign on my front door that said, don’t walk out, you have three children. I knew I had three kids, but I didn’t know they were with me in that moment. And that rain, is that gonna be a problem, Jess?
Sam should be able to remove it. It is so heavy.
Jess (07:13.183)
Yeah, he’s, yeah, I’m sure he will. I’ve had like, I can’t, I actually love Rainn, so I’m actually like, I’m kind of jealous, but no, I think it’ll be fine. Like he’s, we’ve dealt with a lot like me now doing this here and he’s been amazing, so yeah, yeah.
Ali Flynn (07:22.132)
Okay. Alright.
Ali Flynn (07:30.433)
Yeah, okay, I’ll keep going. So I was just talking about, oh yeah, starting my own business. And so, yeah, and so once I was able to start to drive again, I thought about perhaps dipping my toe back into business and to be honest,
having a stroke was the best thing that could have happened for me as a business owner, because it allowed me to reset. When I first started my own business, I was just doing everything and anything. I was saying yes to every opportunity that came across my desk. I found I was working seven days a week. I had so many clients, I didn’t know what to do with it. Do you know what I mean? Like it was just like, yes, I can do that. I was, I was kind of, it was passion and excitement as one in this big ball. And it would have been a straight line to burnout. But because of my stroke,
business. I came back in a lot wiser and a lot more considered. I was like what works for me and why am I doing this? Like what is my intention behind it?
Jess (08:25.482)
And was that moving back into the PT business? Yeah.
Ali Flynn (08:27.957)
Yeah, yeah. So I came back into a PT business and I fell in love with business. So part of my recovery from my stroke, there’s probably two things. One was business. I fell in love with business. I’ve always loved people, but.
I just love the strategy, the ops, the working out finances, having kind of like all these balls in the air and trying to work out what do you do with all of these different balls and create something out of it that has an impact for others and influences the way that they live their life and gives them more clarity and more confidence and more self-worth. So…
I ended up opening three businesses, three companies and an international podcast post-stroke. But the other thing that happened was I um it’s kind of funny when I think about it now but when I was lying in the ICU bed um in the neuro ICU ward in Sydney I decided this is when I couldn’t like stand on one leg that I was going to be a triathlete. Now to give some context I had never
Ali Flynn (09:31.141)
and I’d never done an ocean swim. Like I’d got in the ocean and like played around with my mates or you know, but I’d never actually gone in and done a one or two K or three K swim. But in that moment I was like, I will be better when I’m a triathlete.
And so that little girl inside me that you had to fight so hard as a kid stepped up to the plate and was like, right, this is what we’re going to do. So two years later, I competed in my first Olympic triathlon and then went on to compete in multiple half ironmen. Which
was a huge part of my recovery. But for anyone listening, you know, that’s high performance served up on a platter because it’s like, how do we rise above and do the extraordinary in our ordinary lives? Like, how do we, what does it take? What are the ingredients? How do we, as an individual, get so honed in on what our-
reasoning is, what our why is, what our purpose is, what our plan is, and remove the outside distractions to focus in on the one thing that we want to work towards, or the few things that we want to work towards. And then what does it look like once that’s passed?
Jess (10:42.134)
And I mean, with that, there’s so much within what you’ve just said. Like the first question I wanna talk about in more detail is you’ve had the stroke, you realized there was things that you needed to navigate and work through from your childhood. You set an audacious goal of.
wanting to do Ironmans, which then, Olympic distance triathlons, which turned into Ironmans, you then, over a period of time, built three businesses. Like, that is extraordinary within itself, let alone the fact that it was off the back of facing such a significant chronic illness, a stroke, a life-changing moment. Just, how did you navigate that? How did you do that whilst protecting yourself as the asset and not…
overloading yourself. Like talk to me about the internal drivers, the external drivers and just the boundaries you had in place that allowed you to do that.
Ali Flynn (11:37.565)
The greatest skiff that I’ve received from adversity. So I have this little saying like, it’s like the Bondi buses, right? For anyone that’s not in Australia or don’t know Sydney so well, there’s this famous beach, Bondi. And if you miss the bus, the next one’s coming along, right? One minute, three minutes later, you never have to wait half an hour. So adversity in my life has kind of felt like that at times, you know? It’s like the bus leaves the station and the next one you can see coming up the road. So whether that be my stroke, I have a daughter with a chronic illness, I’ve since been diagnosed with a chronic illness, my other daughter lost it.
goes on, right? What are the things that I’ve taken out of that and one of the biggest key things that I’ve learnt is how do you work out what’s important to you?
And it comes back to values. Now this gets passed around a lot in business, a lot in personal development, but I cannot stress enough how important that has been on my journey, because once I know what’s important to me, my key values, the decisions get easier. If you imagine walking along a street with no street lamps, and then all of a sudden there’s three street lamps light up, that’s what values do for me in my chaos and adversity. It’s like, what is important? We thought we were gonna lose our daughter a few years ago.
and my husband and I sat down and we’re like, what’s important and how are we showing up in that space? And experience was one of our key drivers at that point. And we were like, are we doing that or are we just sitting at home?
being in this crisis zone of medical chaos. And so we packed all the kids on the plane, we flew to Melbourne, it cost us an arm and a leg. We had four or five days there, just creating experience because we thought if our daughter’s not gonna be here long term, which she’s fine now, but at the time we didn’t know that. We also didn’t know if I was gonna be. Why, how do we want our kids to remember us? How do we wanna live our life? How do we wanna…
Ali Flynn (13:33.465)
What do we want to be able to stand there in a year’s time and say, yes, I did that? Or to say that a different way, you don’t want to have any regrets. Like when you look back through the last year, are there regrets there? If there are, why are they there? What can you do about it? So I can honestly say right now in my life, I’m living it exactly the way I want to live it at this point in time. A few years ago, I wanted to scale my company to be international, but I don’t want to do that anymore and that’s okay.
Are there still really hard days? Absolutely. Are there still moments that you feel overwhelmed? Yes. But that allows you to have the awesome moments, the highs of highs, you know, the moments where you’re standing there and the sun is shining and you’re looking at and you’re thinking, you know what? This is fabulous.
Like I’m in a good place right now. So that has all come from knowing values first and foremost. Like you said, what are the things? The other thing is acceptance. You know, when adversity hits, you can get bitter or you can get better. But you gotta pick, you know? And it’s very easy to go down the bitter road and you also can get off it whenever you want to. With getting better, you may not know the how, or the who, or the when.
You know, when I had my stroke, they said, you may never get your eyesight back. I lost eyesight in both quadrants of my eyes. They said, that will probably be the one thing we can guarantee you won’t get back. I was fortunate enough to get it back, but I didn’t know that at the time. So I could have gotten bitter over that, or I could just continually to do the small things that I was being told by the experts, the things that I thought were gonna benefit me, the things that, you know, when we talked about ingredients before, what do you put in to make the chocolate cake that’s your favorite cake? So just do keep adding that stuff.
keep going back to the recipe book and going, you know, are these things in my life in the proportion that they’re meant to be?
Jess (15:32.326)
And my question there was going to be given, and this is probably more from your expert hat maybe than even your own personal experience, but of course both will weigh into the answer. Like for someone who has faced adversity and is finding themself in more of a bitter place and they’re wanting to work through that, they’re wanting to be better, they’re wanting to look at things from a different lens, how can they start? Where do they start? Is it coming?
back to their values and working through that, is it taking it day by day? What can they actually do if they are finding that they’re naturally gravitating towards that more bitter outlook? How can they rework that?
Ali Flynn (16:14.489)
It’ll be different for everyone. I guess for me, when I found myself in that place, which I found myself plenty of times in that place, is yes, think about your values. So what’s important, what’s guiding you. I always go back to trust the process. I trust in my heart of hearts. When I look at athletes, when I look at the business world, when I look at the personal development world, when I look at the military, it doesn’t matter where I look.
If we focus on doing the small things often, we move the dial.
And so I trust that process. So when I couldn’t read properly, I went back to reading those spot books, you know the dog books that were spot. And it wasn’t, you know, it would have been very easy to be like, oh, I can’t do this. But I was like, I trust that if I can read spot, that I’ll be able to read the next level of the books. And from that next level, I’ll trust that I’ll be able to read a novel. And from a novel, I trust that I’ll be able to get back to business. Now that might be a bit woo for some people, but you’ve got to be able to hang on to something that’s greater than yourself, I think.
I fall back on mantras a lot in that place. It’s like, you know, there’s some really key ones that I go to, there’s no problem I can’t solve. Life ebbs and flows, like it never remains constant. So no matter how hard this is right now.
no matter how big it feels right now, it can’t possibly feel the same in weeks, months, years to come. So one way or another, we’re going to move from where we are right now. And so trusting that process, and also having to think about, you know, the why. When I was in hospital and the hard days were hard, I was so crystal clear on my why, which was to get back to my husband and kids.
Ali Flynn (18:01.037)
at that point in time, there was nothing greater for me than I just wanna get home to my husband and kids. And then when I was home with my husband and kids, it was like my why was, well, I wanna be able to live a life where I can say I’m living as the mom I wanna be and the woman I wanna be, and the wife I wanna be, and the friend I wanna be. So that was my next why. And so I just, that coupled with your values, coupled with the process, and then trusting the process, over time moves you along.
Jess (18:30.666)
And do you think with that, I mean, even within yourself, do you, you know, is it at the end or the start of the year you sit down and you evaluate that and see if your values have shifted or where everything’s at? Like, do you have a practice? And my second question is, again, understanding everyone’s going to be a little bit different in terms of anyone listening to this, that’s wanting.
I feel like values is something which gets talked about, but I think there’s still a lot of people that are like, well, how do I even actually figure out my own values? What is the process I should follow? And then with that, it’s not a set and forget because you change, your values will change. So I guess the first question is the practice or the ritual or just how you create space to do that. And the second thing would be any tips for listeners listening along who are just.
in awe of your outlook and in awe of the adversity you’ve faced and how you approach things and maybe a process or a protocol they can follow to kind of work through that for themselves.
Ali Flynn (19:37.565)
Sure. A couple of big questions there, so I might get a little lost along the way, but just pull me back in. I think.
Jess (19:40.526)
I know sorry I… sorry I… ha
Ali Flynn (19:48.413)
I think the thing that comes up for me in that moment is, can I answer the second question first? Is if you’re not sure what your values are or you haven’t reassessed them recently, just take some time, carve out some time in your life. It’s more ideal if you can have it as quiet space, but you know what, if you can’t, take the time that you can. Do what you can when you can. But it might be starting with an A4 sheet like Google.
Jess (19:54.242)
Perfect.
Ali Flynn (20:16.869)
values, a whole list of them, and go through it with a highlighter and start to think about, well, what words resonate with me? And then go deeper, like what is it about that word? How would I show up if I was living through that word? If someone in my world wasn’t showing up that way, would that be hard for me? Because that’s often when we’re struggling with someone else, sometimes what’s happened is we’re crossing a value condition or a value barrier.
And then you can ask some bigger questions again, like what was my mum’s value set? What was my dad’s value set? Have I inherited that? Have I ever questioned that? You know, so it’s that curiosity of a child that allows us to explore it a little bit more. But once you’ve got the words, you wanna sync them right down to two or three that are relevant right now, and be really clear on the behaviors that go along with that.
You know, for me right now, it’s experience. It’s still a really key value of mine. So how does that look? It’s a yes from me. If there’s something about experience and I can do it and we have the resources and the time as a family or in my work, I’m a yes, let me do it because I believe life is all about experiences and the memories we create and the connections we build. So that would be my starting point for anyone out there that hasn’t necessarily kind of found the pathway to the values yet.
Do I have a ritual? Yes, every year I sit down and do a mindset reset session with my clients, but I do it first. So I sit there and I spend a couple of hours having a think about, and when I say a couple of hours, somewhere between 90 minutes and two hours, just reassessing what are the things that I’ve, what are the lessons I’m taking out of last year that I want to bring forwards and lift up into the new year? What do I wanna let go of?
You know, I’ve heard you talk about this just quite a lot in your podcast. It’s like, what serves us now and what no longer serves us? What habits have we got in our world that are nourishing, helpful, high-performing? What ones, perhaps they might’ve been awesome a year ago, but no longer serve us now, and how do we let go of those? You know, how do we shed those off for now? Doesn’t mean we’re not gonna pick them up at a later date, but they know, and the best example here I can give is Netflix.
Ali Flynn (22:35.241)
I never allowed electronics in the bedroom. It was just this thing. It was a really key kind of core belief of mine that the bedroom is for sleep and why would we bring all this stuff into the room? Then I got a chronic illness where I couldn’t stand. It’s a thing called POTS, Post Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome. So what happens is, is when I stand up, my heart rate shoots through the roof above 130, sometimes up to like 170, just on standing. So I was quite sick for some time and…
I needed to be in my room, so I started bringing the computer in and then it started being Netflix in bed and do you know what? That served me for a really long time. It was actually really helpful. My kids would come in and lie with me, we’d watch things together, they were asking great questions, our conversations were rich, deep, insightful. If I’m really honest, Jess, it’s no longer serving me, but it’s this habit that I’ve gotten so used to.
that now still sits in my life and takes up this huge amount of space that could be used for something else.
Jess (23:35.322)
And I think the best thing you’ve called out there is everything is evolving. We’re not, we don’t learn something, do something, set and forget. I love what you said before, it’s appreciating life is an ebb and flow. And really the only thing we can expect is that things will change. So get comfortable with that. And yeah, that’s exactly right.
as life changes, whether that’s from adversity, whether that’s from, you know, it’s potentially like maybe you’ve lived on your own and you’re now in a relationship, but there can be so many different things that bring about change in our life. We need to consider what is now working for us. And I think a lot of people have a different opinion about the new year and resolutions and all of that. And I think the new year is a great time just because it serves as a circuit breaker.
it serves as an opportunity for everyone to reset. Like ideally people are reevaluating their lives and their behaviors and everything and they’ve got the ability to do that throughout the year. But if you don’t, the end of the year, the start of the year is a great opportunity to do that. And it’s just being honest with yourself. And one, I don’t know if it’s a gripe that I’ve got, but the information economy that’s available at the moment, like I think it’s fantastic in a lot of ways, but I also think that
it’s probably causing a lot of problems for a lot of people because there are some really incredible minds with some incredible podcasts that are very long, like two or three hour interviews. But the way that the information is presented is, this is just best practice, this is what the literature says, this is what the protocols are saying. And so many people are listening to them and just hearing that and trying to apply it, but.
What that doesn’t do is that doesn’t necessarily have them check in with themself. What’s important to them, where they’re starting from. And that’s just what I’m such, one of my biggest missions is helping people start to tune into what they want, what their body is telling them and how they start to decode that. And for me, I come at that a lot from nutrition and energetically how people are feeling and from a performance perspective, but.
Jess (25:51.766)
What I’ve just heard here, it’s nearly like even more important and deeper. It’s like as a human being fundamentally, what is important to me as a human and where do I want to go? And I’ve probably got behaviors in my life that I wanna stop doing as well. Just because you’re a health professional and you have the knowledge, behavior change is hard and there’s so many levels to why we do things. So I really…
Yeah, I’m really grateful that you’ve shared that and also your practice and unraveled my two questions there. All day.
Ali Flynn (26:26.266)
I was thinking Jess, just when you were saying that though, like I often think about an analogy of like, you think you’re playing tennis, right? So you’ve got your tennis racket, your ball, you’re in the game, you’re playing, and you’ve actually moved games and you’re playing hockey, but we’ve forgotten to check in and we’ve forgotten to be like, oh, this is a whole different game. It’s got different rules. It’s got different, um, refs, it’s got different players, you know? And so in life that can be a change of career. It can be becoming a mom, a dad.
It can be a breakup, it can be a financial change. That’s like going from tennis to hockey and we need to take stock like you were talking about there. It’s just taking a moment and being like, what is the lay of the land now? And what do I know from my past? What do I need now? I mean, the present, how do I be strategic about going forwards? And you know, we can learn from the sporting and business world. If you’re an athlete, you’ve got warmup, you’ve got your session, you’ve got warm down, you’ve got…
Recovery, you know, there are so many elements that combine together, tactical skills to combine together to create a session. It’s the same with us as humans. Like there are so many elements and it is okay to shine the lens on one part, go deep, explore, get curious, and then pull back out and be like, well, where does this fit on the landscape? Cause it’s not siloed.
Mindset is not siloed. You know, when we do all this mindset work, yes, we go deep in mindset, but then we’ve got to think about nutrition and go deep in nutrition and then think about sleep and go deep in sleep. But remembering to come back out and look at the landscape and be like, well, where does that sit in the bigger picture now?
Jess (28:05.122)
100% and the thing that I really like about what you said and I don’t know if you find this I definitely do in my work and we have a lot of kind of crossover with sport and business and the types of people that we work with but when you are someone who’s very motivated and driven let’s put them in the high performing high achieving category
Jess (28:26.602)
These types of people also need to understand that whatever they’re excelling at whether that’s their sport their career their business It doesn’t necessarily mean that every aspect of their life they’re going to be able to excel and I think that within itself is something which
Jess (28:49.63)
I think that within itself is something that people need to process, be okay with, but also seek out the right support that they need to help them with that. And we’ve just rattled off a few things there, you know, mindset, nutrition, sleep.
The start of the year often presents a let’s reset everything and let’s do it all at the one time. And we know that behavior change is hard. We know that the ability to change things requires a level of dedication, conscious decision, motivation before it actually becomes a habit and dedicating one focus at a time, whether that is you doing your own.
deep dive, whether that is engaging an expert to help you navigate that. You know, what I see is people really understanding that when it comes to like leadership coaching and business coaching, but working with someone in either an executive coaching space, a nutrition, a sleep expert space to help you tailor something to your life, to help you, you know, collapse timelines and to also just remove the bandwidth. Like high performance are generally highly intelligent people,
health literacy or their performance literacy is there. That is a skill and that is an expertise, which when you have so many other competing interests, it can be really just hard to navigate that on your own. So…
Ali Flynn (30:12.733)
And it’s a lonely space if you do navigate that on your own, you know, you don’t need to do that.
Jess (30:19.346)
100% and we tend to gravitate towards what we’re good at. And personally what I’m seeing, it’s probably more with the types of people that I’m particularly working with one-on-one at the moment is they’re generally, it’s not always age specific, but they tend to be in their 40s and they tend to have been someone who they’ve built the business, climbed the ladder, built their wealth, like they’ve got that part of their life pretty down pat.
but they’re now realizing that’s come at a cost. And for someone like yourself, that was something that you were faced with. And there’s a whole reasons that that’s happened. But for a lot of people in this space, it’s the decisions they’re making, everything comes at a cost. So if we’re not treating ourself as the asset and we’re not prioritizing our health as much as we are.
our career, our business, whether that’s in the boardroom, on the sporting field, that is going to come at a cost. And I really hope having a conversation like this just puts it to the forefront of the mind because health is one of those things we don’t necessarily appreciate until we’ve lost it, or we start to see people around us having crisis and it starts to bring it to the forefront of our mind. So one thing I just would love to ask though in saying all of that for you, because…
You’ve got three children, three businesses, you’re living with chronic disease. What are some things in your day-to-day that you need to do, your non-negotiables or guardrails or whatever we wanna call them, that allow you to prioritize yourself as the asset and your health and all of the competing interests that you’ve got going on?
Ali Flynn (32:04.285)
Structure. I love uncertainty, right? So when I talk about structure, I talk about it quite loosely in that I can change my structure at any given moment, but I need some structure to follow. So I try and wake up at around the same time every day and it’s always at dark because that serves me. So 4.30, latest 5 a.m., I wake up, I have a coffee, I meditate, I go and move. And when I move, I also connect. So I train with people that I care about that fill my cup up.
Jess (32:05.343)
Mm.
Ali Flynn (32:33.697)
If I’ve got time, we have a coffee afterwards. And I’m often thinking, I shouldn’t have a coffee. Like, you know, the words should, shouldn’t, you know, I could be doing so much more. But then I remind myself that connection piece is one of my non-negotiables and it sets me up for success for the rest of the day. Get home, have a shower, get dressed, go to work. So I have Brecky with the kids and the family. I go to work and then the first thing I do is go take stock. We’ve mentioned this a few times, Jess. I’m like, where are my businesses at?
of all the things I need to do, what are the priorities? And of those priorities, what’s gonna have the greatest impact for me to do now? And I create a list or an order for the day, for the week, for the month. And I’m constantly revisiting that all the time. I’ve got a Trello board, I transfer that onto paper because I love actually physically crossing it off. But I also have it stored up on the computer so I can access it any time. I would spend somewhere between 15 minutes to it.
40 minutes in the morning, setting myself up for success before I even touch an email, before I look at anything that’s absolute priority. There’s very few things, believe it or not, in our world that are a priority. Like, in my business, I’m always like, is that really though, you know, is that really a priority? If I don’t answer that phone call or that email for two hours, what does it look like? And I think we put that sense of urgency on it so often.
And so I’ve gotten really good at that art of being like, what is actually a priority? As in a non-negotiable priority versus a, it’s a priority in my head emotionally, like I’m attached to the outcome, or it’s gonna move the dial in my businesses or for my clients. And then from there, I do my day, pretty standard. There’s some other things like hydration and fuel that I need because of my chronic illness.
And then in the afternoons, I try and switch off where I can at about two or three p.m. in the afternoon. And then I switch into mom gear, then I’m on. I’m like, catch you later, businesses, you can burn down. Like, I know that sounds bad, but that’s how I do it so that I can fully step away. When I lock my drawer at the end of the day, I’m like, I have done my best today. I’ve given 110%, and it is enough. Even though at times it may not feel like it, it is enough, and I will be back tomorrow. And then I go home.
Ali Flynn (34:52.621)
and I’m with the kids and I’m with my husband and I go to bed very early, which people probably don’t realize about me. Like I’m a before the chooks kind of person if I can get away with it. Otherwise it’s actually a real effort for me to be up past eight or nine o’clock at night. It just doesn’t work or serve me. I’m not at my best. Yeah, and then, you know, I have.
times in my diary, like my diary is color coded in the sense that there is actual times written out that is just family time. I may not know what’s going to fill that time, but it’s like that’s a non-negotiable work, cannot step into that space. My phone is off, my computer is off and I am fully present. So they’re kind of the things I think about when you say what are my building blocks for success? And then that’s just on rinse and repeat, except when something happens, I’m totally okay to say, okay, I’ll come back to that when I need to.
and I step away and I focus on the crisis or what’s happened or if we’re in a hospital for a couple of weeks, none of that happens. That’s okay, I’m in the eye of the storm. The storm will pass and we’ll be in cleanup phase and rebuilding and then we’ll be in thriving phase where life is back to normal and we’re kind of in that high performing thriving space. It’s okay to drop down and be in the eye of the storm and not know what’s coming next and not know how you’re gonna manage and not know who you need in your world and all of those things, that passes.
and you can rebuild and get back to where you want to be.
Jess (36:14.29)
And you know, one thing I’ve heard there, which is something I know I call out a lot, it’s the idea that high performance is not peak performance. Peak performance is a summit and a sprint and your maximum, and it’s something that you can push. But I find a lot of people have that expectation that should then be their norm. And for you, your approach there is, I have this structure, which best serves me, and that’s what I aim for. But when either life,
something happens in life or business or family, I can be agile and that ability to have an ideal structure but be flexible, I like to refer to it as consistency and the inconsistency. And the other thing I’ve heard there is this ability to periodize your schedule and your life, whether it’s the season, whether it’s what you need to do, whether it’s what’s being asked of you. And…
I truly believe that concept, which is very well established in sport from a number of angles, training, nutrition, is really something which people in the corporate world, entrepreneurship, business, would really benefit from adapting, truly understanding and looking at ways that they can leverage that within their life to set up a really high performing life.
Ali Flynn (37:30.041)
We, I spend so much time, Jess, I love that you said that, since so much time being like, what can we learn from the business world? They do it well, right? They do strategy well, they do marketing well, they do ops well, they do finance well with one that’s humming and thriving. What can we learn from the sporting world? Like a solo elite athletes, team athletes, what can we pull from that to apply to our own wellbeing?
Like these are lessons that are out there that we can tap into, and you mentioned earlier, shortcut the timeframe that it takes to learn it, to fall over, and start to take them on as one little lesson at a time. How can I take that lesson and apply it in my world? Is it relevant? Will it help me? Why is it important to me? And how do I just start? Like if I was gonna choose one thing today, just one thing that’s gonna get me one step closer to my goal, whether that be sleep or nutrition, whatever area you’re picking, or a task, what is that one thing?
and just start with that tiny one bite-sized piece. We know that, but that’s what I come back to all the time. Whenever I’m overwhelmed, I’m like, what’s just one thing? Forget the fog, forget the overwhelm, what is just one single thing I can focus in right now and get to work on that?
Jess (38:42.318)
And it’s such a great point to come back to because it’s easy to have the list of all the things to do. And then it’s the overwhelm of where do I even begin? But break it down, start with that one thing, build the momentum. And yeah, I think it’s finding what that most important, whether it’s the task, most important value, most important behavior that you wanna work on that you need to do, and not procrastinating on all of that and doing everything else first.
Ali Flynn (38:51.257)
Mm.
Ali Flynn (39:09.997)
Yeah, and I think what you’re saying there Jess is it’s work out whether you are in landscape or whether you’re in detail. It’s just different. It’s a different space. So if you’re in landscape you’re thinking vision, values, big picture, like goals, like all of that. But if you’re in the detail, you’re in like, well, what do I actually need to do? What are the steps I need to take here? So you’re pulling from that vision down into the tiny small detail space. And then so recognizing what space you’re in, I guess, can be really helpful when you’re feeling overwhelmed.
Jess (39:36.618)
Yeah, that’s a really, really amazing point. I’m mindful that we’re coming towards the end of the conversation, but I just really, oh, well, actually, let’s, before we ask the question, is there anything, I haven’t like directly asked the, how do you consistently perform in the face of adversity, but are you, yeah, yeah.
Ali Flynn (39:40.549)
Gonna run out of time. Ha ha ha.
Ali Flynn (39:54.253)
No, no, I think that’s fine. Yeah. Yeah, the only things the only thing we haven’t talked about, which we definitely don’t need to is sometimes a really good tool for people that’s really simple is the traffic light. Like when we’re talking about all these areas of life, if you just traffic light the areas and work out getting from the red to the orange rather than the red to the green, would that be helpful? Just as a strategy?
Jess (40:08.025)
Mm-hmm.
Jess (40:13.358)
Mm-hmm. Yeah. So in terms of should I just maybe say in all areas of a life Have you have you got any tools? Yeah Yeah, all right. Let’s do that. And then I will we kind of answered the question before but the I’d still like to ask it just because I do is the what three things help you stay at the top So I know you spoke about obviously
Ali Flynn (40:24.497)
that you can use to kind of look at where those areas sit or something like that.
Ali Flynn (40:41.617)
and I’ll tie them together. Yeah. All right.
Jess (40:42.814)
Yeah. All right.
Jess (40:49.738)
Ali, I’d love to know… That’s awkward. Awkward intro.
Ali Flynn (40:57.233)
That’s right, just take a sec, cause I was just thinking I might change one of these too, cause I’ve kind of talked about that. Board of support, yeah. Yeah, maybe just say, have you got it? You can just say something like, you know, do you have any other tools that you use in this space around what we’re talking about or something?
Jess (40:58.989)
Yeah.
Jess (41:06.634)
Right.
Jess (41:12.05)
Yeah.
Jess (41:17.002)
Ali, do you have any other tools that you think would be really helpful for the listeners to use in their day-to-day or their planning that can help them prioritise and identify what they want to focus on?
Ali Flynn (41:30.441)
Yeah, definitely. And I guess let’s talk about the wellbeing space because that’s kind of been a theme that we’ve been talking about, you know, when you’ve got sleep, nutrition, performance, where we haven’t spoken about the nervous system but the nervous system sits in there, fitness, like we’ve got all these big buckets right in life, career, family. When we’re taking stock, what is a very simple way we can do that? And one of my old coaches, Kamal, taught me this and I love it and I use it on a daily basis is the traffic light system.
So if you were to make a list of those areas or buckets of your life down one side, and then next to it, choose a color of the light. So green is on fire, it’s where it needs to be, loving life in that space. Yellow is almost green, you know, like we’re doing quite well in it, but it’s not quite where I wanna be. Like I’m just under, but doing all right. So if I stayed here, that would be okay. Orange is, look, I’m not where I need to be, but I’m not rock bottom. And red is, I’m in the danger zone, it’s not where I wanna be at all.
like Netflix, I’d put now down in the red. It used to be in like the yellow, it’s down in the red now, it’s not serving me, it doesn’t do anything for me at all anymore in my life. But the key to this, and this is what I see all the time when I’m working with people, is they try to jump from the red to the green. Why can’t I overnight move the dial from the red to the green? That’s not your goal right now. Your goal is to work out what’s that one next step to inch one step closer to the orange.
might not even be in the orange. It’s like, what’s that one thing that’s gonna move me up that run just a tad and your focus is to get to orange. Once you get to the orange, your focus is to get to the yellow. So when I couldn’t stand, I had to learn to walk again. It was like, how do I stand on one leg? Once you can do that. How do I now walk to the bathroom? I can do that. From the bathroom, how do I walk to the kitchen? Does that make sense? So that’s kind of the breakdown pieces. My end goal might be to run 5Ks, but right now I’m in the red.
What’s that one thing to shift it up into the orange?
Jess (43:29.866)
I love that. I think that’s a really great helpful tool because you’re exactly right. People have two modes, red or green, when there’s a process and there’s steps in between that people need to take or should take to just build that momentum, build the confidence and take that initial first step. Ali, I’ve loved our chat today and to wrap it all up because there’s just been so many great tips, insights, strategies, an incredible story.
Ali Flynn (43:36.197)
Mm-hmm.
Jess (43:59.106)
behind everything, what would be three things that help you stay at the top?
Ali Flynn (44:07.357)
Cool, that’s a great question, Jess. Three things that help me stay at the top. The first one is my board, my wellbeing board. So if you’re in business, you would have maybe a board of directors. If you’re in sport, you have your coach, your nutritionalist, your physio, you have a team around you. So I have a wellbeing team and that has like my wise owl in it. It has my biggest cheerleader in it. It has my husband and my partner in it. It has…
Jess (44:08.11)
Hmm.
Ali Flynn (44:35.161)
You know, it might have a business coach in it for some time. It might have a nutritionalist in it, but who sits around your table and are they the right people for right now? And this is just your advisory board. This isn’t your like every day, go to the movies, go shopping kind of day. This is like for me to be at my best and to thrive in my life, who do I need sitting around that table and have I got them at the moment? Or am I missing a player and where do I find them?
Or is there someone sitting there that no longer needs to be sitting there for this purpose? So that would be something that I have and I can easily tap into any one of them and I know who those people are in my world. So that’s huge for me. I think we spoke about acceptance. So what can you control? What can’t you control? Jess, you mentioned it, where are you starting from? It’s so important. If you’re gonna drive from Sydney to Brisbane, you gotta know where you are in Sydney or you don’t know what your next street is or what your next turn is. So taking that time.
taking a moment to check in, where am I right now? What am I bringing from the past? And what am I strategically moving towards in the future? And I guess just what we said earlier around purpose, like get clear on that and your purpose will change over time but have a think about what’s important to me now and how do I live and breathe into that and how do I show up into that? And how do I wanna be remembered for that? You know, I…
really important connection is really important for me but part of that connection isn’t about me being with the people I love. I do lifeline volunteering once a fortnight for four hours in my busy world because I’m so passionate about giving back to people less fortunate than me and so that there’s some purpose there that’s my legacy that I want to leave is that I walk in this world living my full life whilst
standing beside others in theirs and helping those less fortunate. You know, that’s so clear in my mind and I’m constantly saying, am I doing that? Am I showing up in that space? Is it hard? Yes, no, there are days I don’t wanna jump on the phones for four hours, but I just, I never get off and regret it. Not once, it’s like doing fitness. You never regret a session, never regret being on the phones and helping someone less fortunate.
Jess (46:43.182)
I love that I was having a conversation with my partner this morning about that and something I was wanting to do, be in more service to people less fortunate. So I might have to pick your brain a little bit about that. Off the back of this podcast today, but Ali, I mean, you’re a woman doing a lot of things. You’ve got your podcast, Challenges That Changes, which people should definitely head over and listen to for some absolutely inspiring stories. But…
Ali Flynn (46:54.289)
Hahaha.
Jess (47:09.526)
Where is the best place for people to follow you, connect with you, learn more about everything that you’re doing?
Ali Flynn (47:16.721)
Probably challenges that change us is definitely probably where you find me. If you’re interested in the audio stuff, try altitude performance, T-R-I, Altitude, A-L-T-I-T-U-D-E, Performance is the national company that I run. And we’re about to, I was just gonna mention it Jess, like it’s similar to what we’re talking about. We’re about to run a three day high performance leadership summit, which we’re bringing the best minds of business, sport.
military and psychology into the room with 25 senior leaders to learn the lessons and have the conversations about what can we learn from over there that can apply to over here right now, you know, how do we go deeper and peel those layers back and, and that’s just an example, Jess, of what we’ve talked about. And I’ve heard you talk about on this podcast is how do we, how do we learn from those other areas? Because there is so much to be gained.
Jess (48:09.598)
Amazing. And where do people find more information about the leadership conference?
Ali Flynn (48:14.517)
Oh, and also LinkedIn. They’ll be able to find it on LinkedIn, Allie Flynn. That’s where a lot of people look for me professionally. So yeah, it’s been amazing. Thank you so much, Jess, for inviting me on.
Jess (48:18.467)
Perfect.
Jess (48:25.106)
Oh, thank you for coming and sharing. And I mean, there was so much we could have covered, but I love the through line of how do you live a high performance life in the face of adversity and some of the tips and just the tools and the insights on top of just an incredible, incredible story. So thank you so much for joining me here today.
Ali Flynn (48:46.001)
Thank you.