Pete Lindsay - Pig Wrestling The Brilliantly Simple Way to Solve Any Problem... and Create the Change You Need

Pete Lindsay, PhD

Pete is a performance psychologist and cofounder of Mindflick. He has spent his career striving to make psychology accessible, tangible, and relevant to high performers. His work has been featured in the Times, the Guardian, and leading research journals.

Previously the head of psychology at the English Institute of Sport, Pete worked with many of Great Britains Olympic teams. Alongside his work in the corporate domain with CEOs and Michelin-starred chefs, he works with a leading Premier League football club.

Mark Bawden, PhD

Before cofounding Mindflick, Mark spent twenty years as a performance psychologist, which saw him work across elite sport, education, health, and business.

Mark has applied his strength-based approach to performance enhancement throughout professional and Olympic sport, contributing to five Olympic Games, including being Team GB Head Psychologist at the London 2012 Games.

Mark worked with the England cricket team for seven years and was subsequently head of psychology at the ECB.

Pig Wrestling is a simple story with a powerful message.

Whenever we find ourselves wrestling with a sticky situation, we need to stop struggling and instead take the time to clean our thinking.

Through a short story about a young manager who is struggling to create the change that he needs, the book introduces the principles of Problem Cleaning in a truly memorable way.

Based on the authors work with the worlds elite sports and business performers, Pig Wrestling gives us the tools to create change whenever and wherever we need it. By applying these principles to our daily lives, we can learn to thrive in complex and messy times.

For our families.

SO TELL US , what is it for you? Whats the change that youre trying to create?

What is it thats standing in the way of you achieving your goals, from fulfilling your potential, both personally and professionally?

Perhaps its a situation that youve wrestled with for some time, or maybe its something thats simply gotten the better of you more recently. The truth is, we all have something that we struggle with from time to time.

It was ten years ago, when we first asked ourselves this simple question

What if you could create the change that you need, whatever that may be, by this time next weekif that was the case, what else would have to be true?

At that time, we could never have known how that thought experiment would result in us questioning everything we believed about change, and the problems that people wrestle with.

Over the following decade, we explored and researched an incredibly diverse range of disciplines and fields. We spent time with experts from the worlds of philosophy, psychotherapy, systems thinking, behavioural economics, family therapy, design thinking,even the world of magic.

Using these insights, we analysed our own work with elite athletes, teams and business leaders, exploring how some individuals manage to create meaningful change, whilst others, despite seemingly having more resources at their disposal, find themselves stuck.

As a result of all of these experiences weve come to believe that there is one reason, and one reason alone, why individuals struggle to create the change that they need. Its a reason that is common to all individuals, and to every problem that they wrestle with.

Wed now like to share this with you, along with everything else that weve learnt about creating change.

This book represents the first step on that journey.

Pete Lindsay & Mark Bawden

Hathersage, 2017

WHEN WE FIRST meet with a new client, we know very little about them.

We have no idea what challenge theyve been wrestling with, or what change theyre trying to create. We dont know if their problem will be personal or professional. Whether it will be public or private. Whether it will involve just them or a larger group of people.

What we do know, is that in order to enjoy more success in changing times, its important that each of us is able to create the change that we need.

But sometimes, a situation simply gets the better of us.

Despite our best efforts and intentions, in spite of considering every avenue available to us, we seemingly find ourselves no further forward. Frustrated, fatigued and at a loss about how to proceed, we might reluctantly conclude there is nothing more than can be done. That that is simply how the world is.

In the course of our work, weve come into contact with many highly successful people who, despite their prowess in certain domains, have nevertheless found themselves stuck when trying to bring about change in other parts of their lives.

In working with these people, weve had the opportunity to study the characteristics of the problems that seem to bewitch even the best of us. Along the way, weve identified the various thinking traps that we can all too easily fall into, along with the assumptions that continue to hold many of us captive.

More importantly, weve also been able to discover a number of practical routes to getting unstuck, helping even the most frustrated of us in taking meaningful steps forward once again.

Thankfully, it transpires that these hard won lessons can actually prevent us getting stuck in the first place. By remaining mindful of these principles, and consistently applying them in our daily lives, each of us can continue to thrive in increasingly fast-moving and complex times.

Using the simple fable that follows, wed like to share these lessons with you.

Fables are great devices to convey complex and powerful messages in simple and coherent ways. Over the course of this short story, youll learn a series of key principles and strategies that will help you create the change that you need.

Weve crafted these elements into an easily remembered, if slightly bizarre, framework which is contained within the fable. Based on our experience of teaching and applying it, were confident that youll be able to recall all of the elements within this framework after just one reading. From that moment on, youll have those tools immediately to hand, ready to be deployed whenever and wherever you might need them.

Having learnt this approach, some of our clients have found great benefit in incorporating specific aspects or principles into their working practices. But whilst the lessons contained in this fable are based on our work with top businesses and performers, we have found the approach to be just as applicable to everyday scenarios, helping people live healthier, happier and more productive lives.

However you choose to use them, we sincerely hope you enjoy learning and applying these lessons. In doing so, may they help you and those around you in avoiding the perils of Pig Wrestling.

A truly novel approach to solving many of lifes problems from two experts in the field. This short fable presents a framework that covers significant concepts in a simple manner allowing the reader to apply them immediately. This enjoyable book could bring about profound change.

Professor Steve Peters

Author of The Chimp Paradox

Whether you are trying to win Olympic gold or manage the demands of being a busy Mum, we can all find ourselves wrestling with challenging situations. Ive been fascinated by psychology for a long time, and I found the novel ideas contained in this book quick to grasp and easy to apply. Theyve certainly made a profound difference to the way I think in sport and in life