“The willingness to revisit our thinking may be one of the most valuable skills we develop.”

-Scott Livingston

There is a particular kind of progress that can quietly keep a practitioner stuck. The client feels a little better. Exercising is a little easier. We get enough change to feel encouraged, and enough reassurance to keep doing what we have been doing. A few visits later, we are still having essentially the same conversation. There has been movement, but how much closer are we to the life, activity, or performance this person came to reclaim?

About a year ago, Jaime and I developed Reconditioning Plus+, a community for practitioners who have completed our coursework and are applying a Reconditioning approach in their own environments. These are seasoned professionals with plenty of professional life miles under their belts. They bring curiosity and critical thinking to the conversation, qualities that likely attracted them to our work in the first place.

We meet twice a month, and this week’s meeting explored when to change direction. We began by talking about when to circle back: when to revisit the history, expand an assessment, or explore something we had set aside at the beginning. As the conversation unfolded, it became clear that the challenge was also about our willingness to question the explanation we had become comfortable with.

After nearly forty years in this work, I still have to ask myself that question. Am I continuing because the plan is serving the person, or because I have become accustomed to the plan?

Every practitioner works within constraints. We have appointment lengths, organizational expectations, clients who want answers, and people whose immediate circumstances limit what we can assess. A client arrives with a painful shoulder and reasonably expects us to pay attention to that shoulder. Someone arrives in considerable distress, and our first responsibility may be to help them settle enough to participate. We make decisions with the information and opportunities available.

I understand that reality because I live it. My current work continues to remind me that a beautiful process on paper has to function in an environment where time, resources, and expectations are real. The difficulty comes when those first decisions quietly become permanent. Something we postponed becomes something we forget. An explanation that helped us begin becomes the explanation we stop questioning.

One member of our group recognized this in his own practice. When a client arrived in an acute crisis, he would appropriately narrow his focus. On subsequent visits, he sometimes remained in that same lane, even when there was now an opportunity to look more broadly. He could see that changing direction felt harder once he had already established a way of working with the person.

This became painfully clear during my first three months in my new role with Cirque du Soleil, where I was taking over cases already underway. In some instances, I was the third or fourth practitioner an artist had seen for the same issue. Changing direction meant understanding the work that had come before me, earning the artist’s trust, and explaining why I wanted to explore something different. An established plan carries momentum, and redirecting it takes care.

Language and cultural differences have added another layer of complexity. For a number of the artists I work with, English is not their first language. Understanding their experience and explaining my reasoning can take more time and care. We may also bring different assumptions about workload, rest, and the relationship between life circumstances and pain. I have had to pay closer attention to what we each mean, rather than assume we understand one another.

It hasn’t always been easy to establish a shared understanding of the problem or the next step. This experience has reinforced the importance of asking better questions and remaining willing to challenge my own explanation. Even when I am getting some improvement, I still need to ask whether the plan is taking the artist toward the demands they need to meet.

I suspect many of us recognize ourselves in that experience. We want to be consistent. We want clients to trust us. We may wonder how they will respond if we begin asking different questions or looking somewhere beyond the area they came to discuss. Yet a clear explanation can make that change of direction understandable: here is what we expected, here is what we are seeing, and here is what I would like to investigate next. That is part of being accountable for our reasoning.

During the meeting, I spoke about using the first few sessions as an early checkpoint. In my own practice, two or three visits will often prompt me to review whether we are seeing the response I anticipated. The timing depends on the condition, the goals, and what we are trying to change. Tissue recovery and longer-term adaptations have their own timelines. The question is whether the response makes sense in the context of the plan.

We also have to establish whether progress has actually stalled. A person may say they feel the same today while being able to do something they could not do two weeks ago. We need to revisit the starting point, ask about the work between sessions, and look at meaningful changes in function. Once we have done that honestly, we can ask the question that matters: what might I be missing?

Sometimes we need more of the history. Sometimes we need to observe a task we have not yet seen. Sometimes we need to understand more about the person’s sleep, workload, or life circumstances. Sometimes we need another professional involved. The point is to let the findings influence the next decision.

Another member offered a particularly useful reflection. He described how he had previously tried to be “a lawyer for my system,” defending what he saw through the approach he already used. He was now trying to be a scientist: testing his initial hypothesis, looking for information that might prove it wrong, and becoming more willing to revise his thinking. That shift, he said, was giving him greater confidence.

There is something valuable in that. We often associate confidence with having the answer. Experience has taught me to place considerable value on being able to revise one. A working hypothesis gives us direction. We then need to pay attention to the information that challenges it as carefully as we attend to the information that supports it.

That applies to the process Jaime and I teach, too. A framework should help a practitioner make decisions within their own environment. It should leave room for judgment, timing, and new information. If someone feels they must perform every assessment in a fixed order, regardless of the person in front of them, then we need to help them understand the intention more clearly. We are teaching a way to think and plan with intention.

The other thread running through our meeting was what we do when an intervention produces a useful change. It is easy to get excited when a drill changes a test or a movement feels easier. But we still have to connect that response to something the person needs to do. If walking is the goal, we need to observe walking. If stairs are the challenge, we need to examine and practise that task. If performance is the destination, we need to build toward its demands.

An immediate response gives us information and may create an opportunity. We then need to use that opportunity to develop the coordination, strength, capacity, and confidence required for the activity. We also need to see what carries over between sessions and what holds up as demands increase.

I shared a case in which I had been making progress with local work and strengthening, but the performer was still struggling as training demands increased. Revisiting the history and broadening the assessment helped me reconsider the plan. What stays with me is that I, too, had become invested in a direction that was producing some improvement. The wider rehabilitation process involved several interventions and a team. The lesson I take from it is the value of returning to the questions when the response no longer matches the expectation.

This is one reason I value these conversations with our community. Experienced people can bring their uncertainties into the room, examine their decisions, and help each other see something they might have passed by. I learn from that process as much as I contribute to it.

A little better can be meaningful. We should recognize it. We should also remain curious about whether it is taking the person where they want to go.

For me, that remains a responsibility of practice: stay attentive to the response, be willing to revisit the explanation, and keep the person’s goal at the centre of the next decision.

Are you willing to challenge your own conventions?

“The dream I nearly talked myself out of, the people who helped me bring it to life, and what Leave Your Mark has given me along the way.”

-Scott Livingston

This week, I am releasing the 500th episode of Leave Your Mark. Even writing that sentence makes me pause. I remember how long I wanted to do this, how many times I found a reason to put it off, and how convinced I was that the technology would be beyond me. Now there are five hundred episodes, more than four hundred one-to-one interviews, and a weekly commitment that has become part of the rhythm of my life. But long before there was a podcast, there was a kid who wanted to ask people questions.

In high school, I loved watching Phil Donahue. There was something about the way he could bring someone into a conversation and explore their life that caught my imagination. I wanted to understand people that way. What had shaped them? Why did they believe what they believed? How had they found their way? I could see myself doing that work, and for a brief time, I had a plan to pursue it.

I applied to a Radio and Television Arts program at a local community college. There was an entrance exam, and it wasn’t easy. They wanted to know that you paid attention to the world and had a real interest in media. I passed, was accepted, and imagined a life playing junior football while studying something I was genuinely excited about. Then my father told me he would only support me financially if I pursued a university degree. I needed his help, and that condition changed the direction of my life.

The only other thing I really knew was football. I loved playing, loved lifting weights, and thought perhaps I could become a coach. My marks didn’t get me into the physical education programs I applied to, but somehow I found my way into a fledgling exercise science program in Montreal. Whether I got there by the skin of my teeth or with some help from the coach who recruited me, I still don’t know. Then I arrived and decided I wasn’t big enough to make the football team. The broadcasting plan was gone, and now football was gone too. I had made it to university with very little idea of what I was going to become.

What followed was the slow discovery of athletic therapy, strength and conditioning, and the possibility of combining the two. Sports medicine was still a relatively young field. There was room to explore, contribute, and build something. I found work I could do well and people I cared deeply about helping. That uncertain beginning became a career of nearly forty years, filled with experiences and relationships I could never have planned.

Still, the desire to broadcast stayed with me. It showed up in my teaching, in my coaching, and in the conversations I wanted to have with friends and colleagues. I loved learning through other people’s experiences. I wanted to get past the résumé and understand the person who had lived it.

When podcasting eventually came into my world, I could feel the possibility. Here was a way to do something I had wanted to do since I was a teenager. But I was busy, and I kept telling myself I didn’t have the time. Underneath that explanation was something harder to admit: I was afraid. Recording, editing, publishing, getting the show onto platforms people could actually find; I had turned every unfamiliar step into evidence that this was beyond me. It’s easier to say you don’t have time than to acknowledge how much you want something and how afraid you are to try.

In the fall of 2017, at a retreat led by a mentor, I finally addressed it. Starting a podcast became one of my big hairy audacious goals. Soon afterward, I came across Brian Rose’s Broadcast Yourself program through London Real. Here was a structure for doing the thing I had spent years imagining. I invested a significant amount of money and committed to eight weeks of being taught, challenged, and pushed to get a show into the world.

Recently, I went back through the notes I wrote during that program. Before there was a microphone in front of a guest, I was asking myself what mattered to me, whom I hoped to serve, and why anyone should care. I wrote about inspiring people, challenging convention, and creating change through example and mentorship. I wanted to explore fulfilment, contribution, leadership, and personal growth. I wanted to understand how someone could build a life that felt meaningful to them, beyond whatever success looked like from the outside.

One assignment asked us to identify our biggest source of resistance. My answer was the need to be perfect. Reading that now, after five hundred episodes, makes me smile. I wanted to become a better listener, but first I had to stop allowing my own expectations to prevent the conversation from ever happening.

The show was initially going to be called A High Performing Life. As I worked through the idea, I kept returning to the people who shape us and the influence we have on others. Parents, teachers, coaches, mentors, friends. People whose words or example stay with us long after a particular moment has passed. Leave Your Mark became the name because it held the question I wanted to explore: what do we leave in the lives of the people we touch?

We were asked to make a list of potential guests and begin inviting them. I reached out to Olympic athletes I had worked with, colleagues I admired, and people who had helped build the profession I loved. To my surprise, everyone I approached said yes. Their willingness gave me the chance to begin. I still had to learn how to record and publish, but now there were people on the other side of those invitations trusting me to do it.

The interviewing advice was to prepare about eighty percent of the questions and leave twenty percent for exploration. I started closer to the opposite. Over time, the conversations became almost entirely exploratory, with a few familiar questions to get us moving. I learned to listen for something worth staying with: a hesitation, an unexpected answer, a passing reference to someone who had changed a guest’s life. Sometimes the most interesting part of a conversation began where I might otherwise have moved on to the next question.

I wanted guests to feel that the experience had contributed something to their lives as well. Perhaps they would see a connection they hadn’t noticed, remember someone they hadn’t thought about in years, or hear themselves explain something they were still trying to understand. Those are the conversations I love most. I finish them feeling rearranged. Someone else’s story has given me a different way to look at my own.

One of the early guests who did that for me was Stu McMillan. Stu had an aversion to appearing on podcasts and told me he had generally declined invitations. But he said yes to mine, and that first conversation became one of those experiences that confirmed why I wanted to do this. He has returned several times since, on his own and as part of panel discussions. Having him back for episode 500 felt right. He has been part of the journey, and he is someone with whom I can have the kind of conversation that made me want to start it.

This time, we spent less time on the technical details of performance and more time on the person doing the work. We talked about persistence, stubbornness, the influence of his father, and the standards he brings to things he cares about. We also talked about coffee. Quite a lot about coffee, as it turns out. His interest began in London in 2010, through an introduction from Steve Lewis and Steve Hooker, and grew into a pursuit that now influences where he goes and how he spends his time. If you know Stu, you can probably imagine the attention he brings to a cup of espresso.

There was a connection running through all of it. His appreciation for quality, his willingness to go deeply into an interest, and his desire to understand what makes something work show up in coaching and in the rest of his life. He also spoke about recognising when to leave something behind. Persistence and stubbornness can be close neighbours. Experience doesn’t necessarily make that distinction easy, but it gives us more reason to examine it.

I appreciated what he said about collaboration, too. He wants to work with good human beings, with people who can help him improve, and with people whose growth he can support. That matters to me. After so many years in human performance, the quality of the people beside you carries enormous weight. Their character, generosity, and willingness to learn influence the work and the experience of doing it.

Our conversation brought me back to those original planning notes. I had wanted to understand how people find fulfilment and continue to evolve. Here we were, years later, talking about changing interests, the parts of business that don’t come naturally, the pleasure of good work, and the relationships that make it worthwhile. We were exploring the questions that had been there from the beginning.

Along the way, the show has developed its own traditions. One is the birthday reading from Linda Joyce’s The Day You Were Born, a book I came across while wandering through Manhattan years before the podcast existed. Those readings have often opened another door into the conversation. Guests recognise something, question something, or begin telling a story that might otherwise have stayed untold. The surprise on their faces has become a familiar pleasure. So has discovering just how much of a person’s life sits beneath the professional biography.

Five hundred episodes have given me more than I could have anticipated. They have helped me listen more carefully and reminded me how little of someone’s journey we can understand from the outside. A career that looks inevitable in retrospect may have felt uncertain for years to the person living it. I know mine did. I thought the broadcasting dream had ended when I went to university. Decades later, I finally gave it room, bringing with me a lifetime of people, experiences, and questions I hadn’t had as a teenager.

I am proud of the consistency. I am proud that I overcame enough of my fear to begin and have continued releasing the show every week. I also feel grateful to every guest who has trusted me with their time and their story, and to every listener who has made room for these conversations. Whether you have been here from the beginning or found the show last week, your willingness to listen gives this work somewhere to land.

I still look forward to the next guest. I still want to know what shaped them, what they are wrestling with, and what they have discovered that might help someone else. That curiosity has carried me much further than the plan I wrote eight years ago could have predicted.

Somewhere in your own life, there may be an interest you keep putting aside, a question you want to explore, or something you have wanted to create for years. I won’t pretend that every desire needs to become a project. But I know what it feels like to keep explaining away one that matters. For a long time, I did that with this podcast. Five hundred episodes later, I am grateful I finally gave myself the chance to find out what it could become.

If these conversations have helped you think differently, recognise something in yourself, or reach for something you had put aside, then they have done what I hoped they would do. They have certainly done that for me.

This week, Stu and I get to add one more. I hope you’ll join us for episode 500 of Leave Your Mark.

Care to listen?