“When I’m being authentic,” says Ben Scott after being asked when he’s at his total best.
“Authenticity looks different for different people, but for me I suppose it’s when I feel in a balanced headspace. It’s when I’m turning challenges into opportunities, when I’m fulfilling my highest values and structuring my day around what I love doing and value most. That’s when you see me at my best.”
Having the pleasure to speak to an individual who has spent all of his working life focussing on helping others improve their own wellbeing, it’s interesting to hear Ben’s take on what wellness looks like in his own day-to-day life. Over the course of the hour in which we speak, it is a topic that he’s clearly comfortable discussing and has thought about in granular detail given his own struggles with anxiety in his early years.
“At about the age of 13 or 14 I had a lot going on in my life, a lot of challenges. On the face of it, I was a fun-loving kid but various stressors in my life became overwhelming for a kid of that age. The warning signs that my system was struggling were there from a young age. From at least the age of six I had signs of tics, blinking or grunting heavily. I had panic attacks about swallowing at eight years old, and swallowing my own saliva became a real fear. Without the skills and knowledge of how to deal with it, I had no choice but to try and keep calm and carry on.
The more these issues entered Ben’s life, the more sensitive and reactive to his surroundings Ben became.
“Life became smaller and smaller. By the age of 15 I couldn’t go on planes, or go through tunnels. Even going to a friend’s house I’d worry they’d say something that would send me into a panic attack. It became really difficult. The last straw was when I ended up having a huge panic attack in the safety of my own bedroom. In that moment of quite literal darkness, a light was born, and I started to question, beyond the medication I was now taking for it, whether there was a better way. I felt I had to go looking for it.”
Given his dad was a medical doctor and his mum was proactive and open to alternative measures such as speaking to a clinical hypnotherapist, Ben’s surroundings and support network fostered the feeling that he genuinely could find a way to reduce the stress and anxiety he had been experiencing.
“It was a gradual process. When I overcame it, I felt I needed to work out for myself how I’d managed to do so. I wanted to know more about my mind and body. Whilst the hypnotherapy sessions helped me and were hugely beneficial, they didn’t really help me to understand how I overcame it or why this had all happened to me in the first place.
“When I eventually gained that understanding, that’s when I wanted to pass it on and help others. In fact, it wasn’t a want to pass it on, I felt genuinely compelled to share it with other people.”
Whilst for some this urge to absorb information would go no further than a couple of weeks collecting information via Google or a tutorial or two on YouTube, for Ben, this instead saw him undertake a 5-year Masters in Chiropractic, a 3-year postgraduate in Functional Neurology, a postgraduate in Clinical Hypnotherapy, and a postgraduate certification in Childhood Developmental, Learning and Behavioural Disorders. To say Ben’s knowledge of holistic health and wellbeing is impressive would be an understatement. In 2021, Scottish Rugby reached that conclusion too.
“During COVID-19, Scottish Rugby’s Men’s management team wanted to use that period as an opportunity to grow and find out what they were missing. They knew the team wasn’t fulfilling their potential at that point. I was contacted by them because they’d analysed sporting teams around the world, attempting to see what they were missing, and they were lacking a focus on wellbeing. All The best teams in the world had a strong focus on wellbeing and they were humble enough to say that they didn’t. They decided to speak to wellbeing experts around the world and I was fortunate to be one of them. They liked what I had to say and then I was asked me to come on board for the 2021 Six Nations campaign as their wellbeing coach. My role was ultimately to bridge the gap between wellbeing and performance.”
What exactly did the role entail and how was it met with by players?
“Wellbeing for me is about helping people to live their lives, so they can fulfil their potential. Wellbeing gets all confusing because people don’t simplify it in that way — they think it’s just about eating good food or thinking positively. For me, the four pillars of wellbeing start with having a strong sense of purpose, a sense of who we are and what we want to do. Number two, people need to have high quality health. Three, they need high quality loving relationships as there is no point in doing any of those things without having people to do it for or with. Lastly, they need the ability to identify and overcome any barrier, usually mental ones, that get in the way of achieving those things. These can be feelings of guilt, fear, anger, shame, or grief etc. When we have these pillars in place, we can now go live our lives and fulfil our potential. My role with the Scotland squad was to let them know about these things and help them to do more about them.”
“The players could have easily looked at me and said “I can lift heavier than you, I eat better than you, I look better than you, what can you teach me about wellbeing?”, and I’m sure some of them did. However, everyone I worked with was a joy to work with. They were challenged to overcome the stigma and hurdle of asking for help and being vulnerable in this area. That’s what it takes to be your best.”
Whilst sport is seeing a rise in funding guided towards performance psychology, assisting athletes to develop direct sport-related techniques for the likes of concentration, dealing with pressure and goal setting. Whilst useful, Ben still feels there needs to be a greater emphasis on promoting the aforementioned pillars of wellbeing and, in turn, passing on skills for life that will naturally translate to better performances on the pitch.
“My gripe with sport is, if at all, they focus solely on sport psychology but for me you must focus on life psychology. That’s what truly focuses on the way you think and perform.”
As a promising footballer growing up, Ben’s day-to-day anxiety struggles did not disappear on the pitch. No goal setting strategies or visualisation sessions would play much help to what reflected his general mental state at that point in his life.
“I was a perfect example. I went onto the field and my performances went down, which had nothing do with the sport and everything to do with my barriers outside of it. The sport reflected and triggered barriers that were already there.”
“I have worked with so many athletes and seen the same thing — athletes who seemingly have a barrier on the field, that has nothing to do with the on-field problem. For example, a player might struggle with “confidence going up for a high ball”. We can focus on psychological skills they can use in the moment that purely relate to the sport itself, and that is of course valuable. If we dig a little deeper though we can establish what their problem is ultimately about, and so often it’s nothing to do with the sport, it’s to do with a problem in their wider lives that the sport is simply triggering, such as a “fear of letting people down”. These barriers might have been there for years, sometimes related to childhood or a challenging relationship they’ve had. The “sporting barrier” is usually a “life barrier”, and focussing solely on the sport often leaves the athlete never overcoming the real problem, and risks them never being aware of what it ultimately is. If you help the person establish the actual root cause, their issues on the field start to dissolve and by default their performances can start to improve, on and off the field.”
“The challenge is helping people to realise you are never done with this stuff. I can work with somebody over four or five sessions, overcome a barrier and then they do nothing on this work and find themselves with a new barrier down the line. The irony is I went into that wellbeing role really struggling with my own wellbeing. I’d just had a huge trauma and was struggling with symptoms of PTSD. Just because I know about wellbeing, doesn’t mean I don’t need to keep working on it. That’s true for us all.
“I made a point of being transparent with players, and it was one of the first things I made a point of doing and probably one of the reasons why we got more people buying into this stuff than we predicted at the time.”
Now, although no longer working exclusively with Scottish Rugby, Ben continues to help people as a registered Chiropractor at Morningside Chiropractic in Edinburgh. Additionally, he continues to help elite athletes across a variety of sports to enhance their wellbeing via online coaching. That decision to step aside from Scottish Rugby certainly wasn’t an easy one though.
“You don’t make a decision like that overnight. The sport has meant so much and the Scottish rugby team specifically. When struggling, rugby became a huge focus in my life. To be in a position that helped the team in that sport in an area that is so important, I was so fortunate. They wanted me to stay, but I always said to the players that you must follow your heart no matter what. If you don’t then you’re going against who you are. If you find yourself ultimately doing something that isn’t aligned to who you are and what your heart is saying, you must make the hard decision to say no and move on to the next thing. I felt it was the best thing for me and represented everything I had shared.”
Given that Ben began the interview outlining the important role that authenticity plays in his own wellbeing, it felt fitting to end the interview in a way I believe clearly highlights an individual eager to continually develop, help others and practise what he preaches.
Quick-Fire Questions:
Describe yourself in three words: Mind, body and soul.
How would your friends and family describe you in three words? Infuriating, hilarious and loving.
Are you more introverted or extroverted? Probably somewhere in the middle.
Biggest personality strength? I can always bring love regardless of the circumstances.
Biggest personality weakness? Sometimes overly sensitive.
Best moment of your career? Realising it’s all ultimately about love. It sounds a bit wet but once you realise that your life changes for the better.
Most challenging moment of your career? Leaving Scottish Rugby.
Death row meal?
Starter: Prawn cocktail for the kid inside me.
Main: Something Persian I think
Dessert: A cheeky bread and butter pudding
Drink: A chocolate type smoothie.
Best piece of advice you’ve ever been given? Follow your heart.
Get in touch with Ben
Ben’s email address: benscott87@icloud.com
Ben’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dr-ben-scott/
Ben’s Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/drbenscott
