The Elephant in the Room

“It’s not stress that kills us; it is our reaction to it.“

– Hans Selye

I’ve always loved the expression “the elephant in the room.” It’s that thing everyone can feel but no one wants to name—the obvious issue hiding in plain sight. We avoid it partly because it’s massive, and partly because its obviousness tricks us into believing the answer should be simple. But of course, nothing could be further from the truth.

In human health today, the elephant in the room is our relationship with stress. Or, as I’ve come to appreciate through my applied neurology journey, a better word for it is threat.

Our limbic brain is constantly filtering the endless stream of information pouring into our consciousness—what we see, hear, feel, anticipate—and deciding whether these experiences are safe or dangerous. It does this through the lens of protective reflexes, past experiences, and the thousands of small impressions it has accumulated over a lifetime.

Your brain builds its understanding of the world incrementally. Daily. Weekly. Year after year. Layer upon layer, it constructs the map it uses to interpret future inputs.

Trauma complicates that map. It makes things sticky. Some experiences linger for years, maybe forever, and we don’t always know which ones are still gripping our system. Some threats get resolved; others get tucked away and hum quietly beneath the surface.

Stress and threat, in many ways, are the same: they are our brain and body responding to load—physiological, emotional, cognitive, neurological. And here lies the paradox:

We need stress to grow.
But too much stress overwhelms us.

So the challenge becomes understanding dosage. What’s the dose that helps us adapt, and what’s the dose that pulls us apart?

The truth is, there is no universal dose. Everything is contextual. Everything is momentary. Your current readiness, recovery, sleep, emotional state, and accumulated load determine your capacity in this moment—not yesterday’s version of you, or last month’s.

A rested, well-regulated system can handle astonishing amounts of stress. A fatigued, overloaded system can be tipped over by the tiniest nudge.

So when is stress productive? When does it turn caustic? Where is that line?

We don’t always know. We can’t always know.

Every person is a snowflake—unique in history, physiology, tolerance, and interpretation. Other people’s experiences can give us valuable options to consider, but we still have to test everything on ourselves.

And here’s the kicker: most of our stress response is invisible. We don’t feel it. We don’t notice the signals. We either misinterpret them or override them completely.

Sometimes I’ll notice myself blinking more than usual while I’m working at the computer. My eyes start watering. My vision gets fuzzy. I recognize it—but I push it away. Hours later, the fatigue hits me like a wave. I can feel the weight of work I should have taken breaks from. I should have stepped away earlier, walked around, breathed. Instead, I forced my way through. The dose overwhelmed my system, and by the end of the day I was spent—when I could have changed the outcome with one simple break.

That’s stress. That’s threat. That’s the elephant—quietly reshaping us in the background.

Threat is like an unseen governor on an engine—limiting output long before the driver realizes something’s wrong. The car still runs, but it never reaches its potential speed. The problem isn’t the engine; it’s the hidden limiter protecting it from danger. Our nervous system works the same way.

One of the simplest ways to reset the system is to create interruptions in the load: step away from the stressor—especially screens. Go outside. Let your eyes meet real light sources. Walk for a few minutes. Breathe intentionally: two seconds in, eight seconds out. This small pattern of behaviour reduces accumulated threat, resets your physiology, and prevents you from crossing that invisible stress threshold.

Even with all the tech—glucose monitors, sleep metrics, HRV, training load analytics—we still can’t see everything. Some changes are slow, insidious, and invisible until years later. Cancer metastasizes quietly. Stress does too.

Stress is the elephant in the room—shaping us daily, often without permission or awareness. Our next big frontier in health and performance is figuring out how to measure threat in real time so we can distinguish when stress is productive and when it’s slowly becoming destructive.

What part of your life is signaling something you’ve been ignoring?

Keep an eye out for future blogs where I’ll unpack this subject even more—how threat shapes movement, behaviour, and performance, and how we can build systems that work with the nervous system instead of against it.

Coaching is Wrapped Up in Humility and Confidence

“We stand on the shoulders of those who came before us. No on succeeds alone.“

– Unknown

I spent this past week down in Phoenix, Arizona, as part of the ALTIS Master’s Program Residency—a space that, every time I visit, reminds me what great education feels like.

ALTIS, for those who don’t know, didn’t begin as the coaching-education juggernaut it is today. It started the other way around—as a high-performance training environment that later attracted an entire generation of curious, hungry coaches who saw something different in how ALTIS approached learning. Over the years, that pull became the catalyst for a shift. The more coaches who came through their doors, the more obvious it became that their real superpower wasn’t just training athletes—it was teaching people how to think.

Led by CEO Coach Stuart McMillan, alongside partner Coach Kevin Tyler, Coach Andreas Behm, and patriarch Coach Dan Pfaff, ALTIS has spent the better part of a decade building something world-class. Then, a few years ago, an Englishman with a basketball past and a deep love for change-of-direction research—Rich Clarke—approached Stu with an unconventional idea:
What if we built a Master’s program that matched the reality of a coach’s life?

Not an academic slog. Not a one-size-fits-all curriculum.
But a living, breathing program—paced for real people with real careers, grounded in science, rich in applied experience, and woven with mentorship.

That idea became the ALTIS Master’s Program. Now in its second cohort, it’s becoming a model for what high-quality coach education can be. And sure, the information is top-tier. The content is outstanding. But the real magic is that everything is delivered in context—messy, real-world, athlete-in-front-of-you context.

Still, what strikes me most every time I’m down there isn’t the curriculum.
It’s the people.

The educators and mentors ALTIS has assembled are exceptional—not because they posture expertise, but because they embody humility. They’re confident in what they know and skillful in what they do, but they also carry a deep understanding that certainty is an illusion. They know that the work is fluid.
They know that everything depends.
They know that absolutes are a comforting myth for people who need things to be simple.

Real coaching isn’t simple.

And strangely, acknowledging that isn’t destabilizing—it’s liberating.
It frees you to move forward with conviction, while staying open.
It grounds you in what you understand, while reminding you that the journey of knowing is never finished.

One of my mentors once told me something I’ve never forgotten:

“When you feel right about something, ask yourself three questions:
What do I know?
Why do I know it?
And… what if I’m wrong?”

That last one is the kicker.
It keeps you honest.
It keeps you humble.
It keeps you growing.

Being surrounded by mentors who live that truth—who model curiosity, vulnerability, and the courage to rethink—is a gift.

We all stand on the shoulders of the people who came before us.
None of us succeeds alone.
None of us figures this out in isolation.

Remember that.

Embrace the Organic Nature of Life

“Imagination is the source of human achievement.“

– Sir Kenneth Robinson

I was listening to an old TED Talk by Sir Ken Robinson today, and it got me reflecting on all that I’ve learned through doing the LYM Podcast.

Ken spoke about his experiences talking with so many different people over the course of his career. He shared a story about his 20-year-old daughter and some of the things she had come to believe. For example, she didn’t see much use in wearing a watch because it only had one function. “It’s a single-function device!” she declared.

His daughter was deciding her course in life, and felt paralized to make a decision right or wrong.

That story was a table set for one of Ken’s great insights: we often assume that life follows a linear path. We’re taught this from a young age — finish high school, pick a major, go to university, then get a job and start your career.

But the truth is, life rarely unfolds that way. Life isn’t linear — it’s organic. We plant seeds in different gardens, and sometimes things grow, and sometimes they don’t.

Growth often depends on how much care and attention we give those seeds — the equivalent of watering and fertilizing a garden. The more intentional we are, the better chance things have to thrive.

But what motivates us to keep paying attention?

A few days of neglect can leave a garden dry and unproductive. A few more days, under a hot sun, and the plants may die.

What we choose to pursue in life works the same way. Initial excitement might get us started, but it’s consistency and perseverance through the dull days that allow the flowers of our lives to truly bloom.

Most of us need to go through several cycles of planting, growing, and pruning before realizing what will or won’t take root within us. Some say you should “do what you love, and you’ll never work a day in your life.” Others say, “choose something, get good at it, and you’ll grow to love it.”

I think the truth lies somewhere in the middle. Don’t get stuck trying to make the perfect choice — just choose and experience.

Choose slowly, but exit quickly. If something doesn’t resonate, move on. That doesn’t mean jumping from job to job every week — you need to give things time to truly know whether they fit.

At the same time, be honest with yourself. Does what you’re doing feel right in your gut? Do you feel alive when you’re in it, or are you just filling space?

If it feels right, stick with it — until it doesn’t. If it doesn’t, give yourself permission to move on and try something new.

Almost every person I’ve interviewed has had multiple stops and pivots before finding the work that truly resonated. And even then, they continue to evolve — revising, iterating, and discovering new layers within their craft.

So, embrace the organic nature of life.
It’s what keeps things interesting.

Pay attention. Be present. The more you do, the more you’ll find yourself naturally moving toward the things you love — without the pressure to have it all figured out.

And above all, have fun.

That’s what it’s all about.

There is No I in TEAM

“The way they played for Toronto, for this country, and or each other was extraordinary to watch.“

– SL

I am heartbroken for the Toronto Blue Jays organization today. I actually feel bad for the city of Toronto and for Blue Jays fans across Canada. I wouldn’t call myself a fan of the Blue Jays — that would mean I watched them all season, living and dying with each win and loss. I didn’t.

But I am a fan of sport.

I’ve worked in sport as a performance professional at nearly every level imaginable, and I’ve experienced both great highs and devastating lows. I’ve seen what it takes to win championships and gold medals, and I’ve seen what happens when it doesn’t come together.

If I’m being honest, my own career has probably had more of the latter than the former. It’s far easier to be poor or average in sport than it is to be great. And even harder than being great yourself is being part of a great team.

The Unsolvable Equation of Team Chemistry

Individual greatness is one thing — no one truly does it alone, but as an athlete, you make your own choices about how you work, how you play, and how you compete. You win and lose by your own accord.

Team sport is another beast altogether. Everyone must align around a shared course and direction. It’s not enough to simply say you want to win a championship or to win a few games. You can have all the right intentions. You can prepare meticulously. You can allocate resources and even outspend everyone else.

None of that matters if you don’t have chemistry.

And no one — absolutely no one — has the perfect formula for the chemistry experiment that is team sport. Many have tried. Most have failed. It’s not for the faint of heart.

The 2025 Blue Jays: A Story of Brotherhood

That’s what makes what we witnessed with the Blue Jays this season so compelling.

In 2024, the team finished last in the American League East with a 74–88 record and a .457 winning percentage. Most of the players from that roster returned in 2025. There were no blockbuster trades or game-changing acquisitions in the offseason that could have predicted what was to come.

Maybe some pointed to the eventual re-signing of their superstar Vladimir Guerrero Jr. as a spark — but even that seemed like a stretch.

The 2025 season didn’t start particularly well either. The team struggled early. But slowly, things began to click. The Jays found themselves at the top of the standings for most of the year.

With each win and loss — through all the ups and downs — something special began to percolate in that clubhouse. Players started talking about a brotherhood. They weren’t just playing for standings or for the chance to compete for a World Series; they were playing for each other.

That’s when you know something rare is happening.

When Greatness Becomes Connection

Not every championship team feels this way. Some win despite their cracks. How? No one really knows — and maybe that’s part of what makes sport so endlessly fascinating.

But when a team truly loves playing the game together, it’s unmistakable. You can see it. You can feel it.

We’ve seen that magic in recent years with the Florida Panthers in the Stanley Cup Finals, with dynasties like the Kansas City Chiefs and the New England Patriots, and in the legendary championship runs of the Chicago Bulls. Those teams had something that oozed out of every pore — a collective energy, trust, and belief that went beyond skill or systems.

The Dodgers just did something incredible — winning back-to-back World Series titles, something not done since the Yankees of the late ‘90s. Watching them, you could feel the greatness and the talent. But with the Blue Jays this year, you could feel the love.

Their players spoke with tears in their eyes after it ended:

“I didn’t want this to end.”
“I love being with these guys every day.”
“I’ll miss these guys this offseason.”

That’s what sport is all about.

The Fragile Magic

Will it be the same next year? No one knows. That’s the delicate beauty of team chemistry — just a little more or less of something, and the whole balance can shift.

Anyone who claims to know how to manufacture it is lying — or sitting on a secret worth more than gold. Every season begins with the same goal: to find that elusive connection. Few ever do.

But this year, the Blue Jays did.

It was something truly beautiful to watch.

Thanks, boys.