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Authentic gay conversations on personal development, life coaching, and mental health. Join Keegan Hirst, founder of Gay Man's Coaching and former professional rugby player, for weekly real talk about gay lifestyle, coming out, relationships, business, and authentic living. Deep, honest conversations that help gay men build confidence, find community, and create vibrant, unapologetic lives.
Hello and welcome to the Gay Man's Coaching podcast with me, your host, Keegan Hurst. Um, this is
the podcast for gay men who want to build a life that they're proud of. Look in the mirror and feel
proud of the person that they see. Um, I'm really excited. I want to I wanted to talk to you about.
I want to talk to you a bit about something personal, actually. Um, I've been diagnosed with
depression, and I wanted to talk a little bit about that. I also wanted to talk about, uh, a bit
of a perspective shift that I have had that I took from a guy called Peter Crone, um, who does a
lot of mindset work and talking about how we can often feel that we're lacking in areas of our
life, but actually we're not lacking we, for whatever reason, find out in ourselves,
intentionally blocking things out. So, you know, if you find yourself without maybe you feel you're
not having connection, there's probably a reason that you're blocking it. And maybe to do saved it.
I'm going to kind of get into that. Um, but I just want to share before I do that. Um, we have
got our leads event coming up soon. Uh, one on one coaching. Um, and a massive action
there. Uh, that's the GMT game. Sorry, the day after. And then we've got our massive action day at the
at the end of the month in Edinburgh. And I just want to say this last week I was in Belfast. I
flew over to Belfast on Sunday evening. Um, my, one of my mentors, uh, coaches, a guy called Phil, he
lives in Belfast and he had an event on for other business owners on Tuesday. Uh, and my
coach. Uh, because coaches have coaches. Oh, they should do. Um, he lives in Belfast. Uh, so I went
over early on the Sunday. I went over on Sunday and got in a session with him on, on the Monday.
I cannot stress this. I cannot stress it. It's so important to
connect with people who are in a similar spot to you or, you know, obviously I
my I have my coach because he's a great coach and he helps me improving things, but we're
able to chat about business. We're able to chat about life. You know, we have similar goals and
dreams and ambitions and challenges, and to be able to talk with someone on that level where
you can talk about how you want to challenge yourself, how you want to grow, or how you're
having particular challenges because you're stepping into a new identity or doing something
new and not feel the need to have to explain why you're doing that. It's such a it's
it's so empowering. And then being in a room with, you know, I was with other fitness coaches, I was
with other business owners with my mentorship. You know, again, it's really important to be in a room
where there are people who are in front of you, the people who are behind you, but you all have
that similar aspirations, goals, challenges drive a willingness to.
It's it's like being in a shared, uh, it's like being in a, in a team, you know, there's a shared
goal, and that shared goal is growth. Um, and you find that it's often not
the stuff that comes from the coach or the mentor. And we find this when we have our massive action
days. Obviously, there is a lot of value to be taken, and there will be things that are taken
away and that you implement. But I feel that the thing that always sticks with, with me and what a
lot of our clients say when they come to our in-person events, is the conversations that they
have with other people, because that realization that you are not on your own. That you there are
people doing what you want to do. There are people who have done what you want to do. There are
people that are trying to do what you've already done and being able to have that conversation. And
one of the best ways, in fact, the best way that we can solidify our own
learnings and understandings of things is teach it to somebody else, distill it down and give it
to somebody else in practical, implementable tips. And that's why there's that old adage that if you
can't explain something to a four year old, four year old. You don't really understand it yourself.
And so when you go through a process, a challenge, a growth, whatever it is and you
experience it and you're able to then see someone who's going through the same thing and be able to
relay that to them and say, my experience, I did this, this and this. This is what I found that help.
This is what I found that didn't it? What that is, is then it's positive, um, reinforcement
about what you have done and it becomes more a part of your identity than it was before. So
everybody everybody wins. I always remember a rising tide lifts all ships. And if
I have always valued coaching because of obviously because of rugby and
I am I am where I am in life because of, because of the coaches that I've had in the mentors that
I've had. But even after rugby, I believed people when they said, you know,
don't, don't make your own mistakes, pay somebody else to who's made the mistakes and they can help
you save time. And I've done that. And when I first invested in Phil as a mentor, I
paid it was I think it was about 8,000 pounds to work with him. It was my entire life savings. It
was my life savings. And I thought, I'm going to take a punt on myself. And something that another
mentor of mine came and said to me. He said the cost to work with someone is part of the coaching
of working with that person, because you have to have some skin in the game and you have to take
that chance and bet on yourself. And that in and of itself is a big nod and a big movement towards
the person that you want to be, because you can sit there and go, oh, that's too expensive, that's
this, that's that. But the return, an investment in itself is never a poor investment. And, you know,
being in a room with other people who are doing what you've done or have done, what you want to do
is never a poor investment. And even now, with a successful business, um, you know, I've been a coach
for a long time. I know a lot of shit. There's still things that I'm learning. There's still ways
to improve. The world is always changing. Um, I cannot stress the importance of getting in those
rooms. And if you ever feel like you're falling behind in life, not fulfilling your potential, I
can guarantee you I'm not getting in those rooms, I guarantee it. I don't even know it. Need to know
anything about you. If you are feeling like that, you're not getting in those rooms and you're not
getting in them regularly enough. Um, so this episode I wanted to talk about, um, kind of
a bit of a perspective shift that I had from listening to a guy called, uh, Peter Crone,
and he was talking about how what we are missing in our life is
rarely absent. It's usually just just blocked. So, you know, you don't need to seek out love and
health and money and peace. It what has actually happened is, for whatever reason, we often build
barriers that Stop them coming into our lives. Our stop is experiencing them. So it might sound a
little bit woo wah, but I was recently diagnosed with depression and I've probably had it
for well over a year right after actually having that conversation. Um, and someone
saying, you know, a professional saying you are depressed. Um, you know, days where I've struggled
to get out of bed, where everything's been a slog, feeling bleak, you know, there have been times
where I've thought, I don't want to be here anymore. Not that I'm always going to do anything
about it, but, you know, it felt quite lonely, and. And I isolated, um,
I think, and so I've been something that I've been proactively doing is trying to talk about that
because I think it's my initial response to it was feeling shame, feeling guilt, feeling, you
know, I'm a coach, I should I'm supposed to have all my shit together. I'm a leader. I've got a team,
I've got kids. I've got, you know, I should have all my shit together and I shouldn't be struggling
with this, which is obviously bullshit because it's okay not to be okay. Um, so something that
shame, shame lives in the shadows and it lives in not speaking about things. So something that I've
been trying to do is talk really openly and honestly about it. I've spoken to a couple of
friends and it's interesting the different takes that people get. Um, and one friend talked to me
about, uh, Jim Carrey, uh, and he, he said that depression is, uh, a
symptom, a sign that an old version of you is living a life that they don't want to live
anymore. There's something not aligned there. Um, and another friend, slightly different take
said everybody focuses on trying to fix depression and remove depression, when really, if
you think about it, rather than trying to remove the depression. What if you try and add in more
happiness and contentment? And that usually comes down to alignment, right? What do you really want?
How do you want to achieve it? How do you want to live your life? But I thought they were for, for
want of a better phrase, two cheeks of the same ass, uh, in that they were saying similar things in
that it's, you know, it's our responsibility to get an understanding of what is it that's making us
feel this way, and what do we need in our lives to to change it? Um, and what have we
built into our lives, whether that's the systems, the relationships, the way we do things. It could
be our work. It could be where we live. It could be so many things that can cause it. Um, and then I
saw this, uh, I remember this by Peter Crone and kind of getting back into it. And he says when he
talks about love, he says, don't seek for love. Seek for the barriers that you have built against it.
And you can you can adjust that to anything. Right? So you can adjust that to health, money, peace,
connection in me talking about depression. You could say contentedness because I feel like
happiness is like a happiness happens in a moment. Contentedness is something that runs through our
lives. You know where we can go? Yeah. I'm happy. I'm okay with my life. You know, I'm content. And I
think that's something to strive for. Versus happiness. Happiness feels like a spot on a map
versus a level. So don't seek for contentedness. Seek for the
barriers that, in my case, that I have built against it. You know, a feeling of always having to
be on. A feeling of always having to put other people's needs ahead of my own, a feel of, you know,
being, being, having to present a particular way. Um, which, even as I say, that sounds hypocritical when
I talk about authenticity, but there's this dilemma that I find myself in where, well, you know,
maybe I'm supposed to have everything figured out and I'm helping people. Um, but, you know, this
episode isn't about chasing more and adding more into our lives
because we are constantly bombarded with news information. Do this. Don't do this. Add this.
You need this product. You need need. Need, need more and more and more. More. It's about taking
responsibility for the things that we've actually added into our life that are in the way. Um, and
the reason that we do that is the, the default behavior is usually that we are looking outwards.
We're searching, we're constantly looking to consume more content material.
We're looking to optimize. We're looking to make things efficient. We blame timing. We blame people.
We blame blame circumstances. But what we need to do is we need to flip that around and ask, what am
I doing, consciously or unconsciously, that keeps the things that I want in my life out?
So when we lack things, it's often an old protection
mechanism, safety mechanism that we have built up to keep people out. You know, often people feel
lonely, don't spend time with connection because they're terrified of rejection, or they're
terrified of not feeling enough or of having to perform. And so it becomes a self-fulfilling
prophecy. It's very rarely bad luck. And don't get me wrong, we all have bad luck and circumstances
and things that happen to us. But just really think about that question, whether it's whether
it's money that you maybe don't have as much money in your life as you like. What am I doing,
consciously or unconsciously, that is keeping it out, you know? Are you actively not going for
bigger jobs, better paid opportunities? Are you actively spending to, um, soothe
yourself? You know, take take another area? Uh, let's take love and connection. What am I doing,
consciously or unconsciously, that keeps it out? And think about what those barriers might be.
There might be emotional armor where you are dry and ironic and
witty, but you're never. There's no sincerity. You can't take a compliment. You feel like
when you do, when you give a compliment, they're going to think, um, that you're taking the piss or
something like that. Maybe you use humor instead of honesty, you know, and you're always the funny
guy, or everything turns into a joke. Um, something that I've certainly been guilty of when it comes
to this is using independence as avoidance. I'm an independent person. I don't need somebody else. I
don't want people encroaching on this. And, um, and the kind of byproduct of that is that we say that
we have high standards, but they become walls that keep people out. Um, we always and
again, as someone who's probably had depression for well over a year, I'm fine. I'm
okay as a reflex rather than saying, you know, I'm struggling, I need help. Um, I'm feeling a
particular way, you know, those are some just really simple ones that so many of us do. And
especially as gay men, especially as gay men, they are kind of built in into our chording
of why we are the way we are, because we've had to protect ourselves. But those old protections from
being kids and younger men, they do not serve us when we are trying to build love and connection
in our lives. As mature adults who are operating in a safe space, who have control over their own
lives. The issue when it comes to love and connection is that we don't lack love. We all have
a love innately in us and we will experience it at really weird times. I remember I've been
watching the Winter Olympics when they were on and I saw, um, the Swedish women's team win the
gold medal and I just burst out crying. Um, and I just thought about all the hard work and things
that they put into it, and I'm even kind of getting emotional thinking about it now. Um, like,
we, we have that humanity and compassion in us innately, and that love and that connection,
we just often block it out. And that's because we lack we feel that we do not have the safety of
being seen as who we fully are. Um, and then you can flip that around and you can look at
the, the barriers that we put up to, like health and well-being, which might look like self neglect,
and we disguise it as busyness. I'm too busy to go to the gym. I'm too busy to eat. Well, I always find
it. It's interesting when people say they're too busy to go to bed on time, or to not scroll on
their phones in bed. Um, you know, we use that as a as a barrier, as a block, as a
equals reason. We use food and we use alcohol as coping, whether we're coping with stress or
boredom or anger or frustration or whatever it might be. You know, that it's like driving with a
handbrake on when we do that. Or maybe we those people who need to fitness. These are punishment,
um, and we punish ourselves because we ate that pizza yesterday. So I need to train X amount of
times through the week and do this or, um, I've not done what I said I was going to do. So I'm going
to go on the starve myself and then go on the StairMaster and and bury myself. Or the classic
one when it comes to health and wellbeing, is those all or nothing routines I'm going to be all
on. I'm going to be perfect. I'm going to do that. And then and let's face it, when it's all on
nothing 90% of the time it's nothing. Um, and then we shame ourselves and we guilt ourselves and we
should ourselves don't should on ourselves. Guys, health isn't something you find again. It's
part of who we are. But it's something that we need to stop sabotaging. We get in the way of
ourselves. I'll never forget this conversation that I had with someone who joined GMC, and they
said if I was to join GMC, what would be the reason that if it didn't work, why wouldn't it
work? And my initial response is the response that I still stick with now
is you. Our job as coaches at GMC is to get people out of their own way, because we
can innately make progress and build the lives that we want. It's the stories that we tell
ourselves that get in the way of it, and we call that self-sabotage. You can look at money and
abundance and barriers that we put up there, things like fear of visibility, going for that job,
going for that role, being the leader, standing out, having high standards. We feel guilt around
wanting more because other people, maybe other people don't want it. And, you know, does that make
us, uh, you know, gold diggers or whatever it might be? Or if we come from maybe a less affluent
background, you know, people saying, oh, you've changed and we feel guilt about it. Well, maybe
you're a contractor or a consultant or a business owner and you're under charge. You're under
charging for your service. You devalue yourself. Uh, often a big one that stops people earning more
money and having just more abundance in their life is they're crippled with self-doubt and they
mask it as humility. Um, I think that's something I've done in the past is
do that, like dress up, pretend that I didn't have self-doubts. You know, people would often think of
me as a confident person and this forthright person, but I would often downplay some of the, um,
things that I've done, the things that I've created, the people that I've helped and mask. It
is humility or the classic one when it comes to people not having the
finances and the abundance that they want is that I'm not that type of person. I'm not the type of
person who sets up a business. I'm not the type of person who goes all in on something. I'm not the
type of person who's willing to go for that promotion and put themselves out there. Again. It's
bullshit. It's limiting beliefs. Abundance and earning is not blocked by ability,
it is blocked by identity. It is blocked by the. I'm not that kind of person. That's not meant for
me. That's bullshit. It's all the stories that we tell ourselves. It's. It's the stories that we tell
ourselves that get in the way, you know, and we can look at. Lastly, you know, when it comes to our
piece, I know lots of people in 2026 have said that they want to focus on peace and fulfillment
and feeling connected. So what the barriers look like that stop us from doing that constant
stimulation, scrolling notifications, going into emails late at night, looking on our
phones for problems, getting overly invested in politics. And listen, I know the world is a fucking
shit show at the minute, but as an individual there is only so much we can do. Now, don't get me
wrong, everything that we do as an individual matters. But once you do your bit, you've done your
bit. Do what you can and then, you know, rather than constantly trying to stimulate yourself, it's that
it's that like that other barrier noise, just adding things into our life that we don't need in
there. Distractions, noise, um, news that isn't going to really impact
our life. There was a story the other week about a monkey, a macaque called punch that had been, um,
abandoned by a group of other monkeys in it. As much as, like, it was really cute to see him
dragging a monkey teddy around. I was also like, this is really fucking sad. This is really not a
nice thing. And I mean, I felt like I was invested in so much of my time and energy into worrying
about, is this monkey going to be okay? And it has absolutely no bearing in my life. And I'm not
saying that we should cut ourselves completely, but there there is a tipping point where that
just becomes noise that distracts us from the things that we want. Comparison is a huge barrier
to peace and fulfillment. One of the first and best piece of advice that I ever got after I came
out from my very good friend and a very wise man, Anthony Cotton told me. He said, the day that
you can wake up and not give a fuck about what other people think about you, is the day your life
will change. Um, because comparison does hold us back and it stops us and it makes us
do things, performativity and worry about things and do things for the sake of other people rather
than what we want. Um, and, and the last barrier that we have to our peace and
fulfillment is just not sitting still for long enough to feel peace and fulfillment. Peace scares
people. Peace scares people who learned early that calm and stable means danger. And I
totally relate to that. You know, I my life has always been chaos. Um, whether it's to do with
parents or family or being repressed and repressing my sexuality. Um, and so when I
got we find this with clients all the time, they start to get a handle on their life. And, um,
stillness kind of comes in and we take the chaos out and they suddenly go, fuck, this is really
alien. This is really weird. Um, and we need to we need to allow that peace to
come into our lives. So, you know, obviously our past plays a role in this. You know, we
build barriers to survive, to get through things. They are things that kept us safe once upon a
time. And the thing is that they are not wrong. It's easy to look at them and go, oh, I'm a fuck up.
I made these systems that are blocking me from from my life. They're not they're not wrong.
They're just outdated. And you know, whether it was love feeling conditional or success feeling like
approval or rest, feeling like it was laziness or asking for help felt dangerous at some point,
those protections become limitations. So let me say this really clearly.
This is not about blaming parents. This is not about saying that you were broken. This is about
taking responsibility. Responsibility is not punishment. It's power. And I had a conversation
with someone who John GMC last week and he said, I feel really shit that I have made all these
decisions. And I'm at this point in my life where I don't like where I am. I have done this to
myself. And I said, the flip side of that is that if you have had the power to get yourself into
this position, you have the power to get yourself out of it. And I wholly believe that, um, and you do
not remove barriers by hitting yourself. You remove them by becoming aware of them and knowing
that you deserve love and starting to move them out of the way. So. To round this up, I want
you to ask yourself, you know, whatever you feel that you're lacking, is it love? Is it health? Is it
confidence? Is it money? Is it peace? Ask yourself, what am I doing? Or avoiding that
keeps that out? Are you avoiding difficult conversations? Are you avoiding consistency? Are
you avoiding rest? You are avoiding avoiding visibility or authenticity. And then ask yourself,
once you've got an answer there, you know, I'm avoiding consistency or I'm avoiding visibility
and or difficult conversations. Ask yourself, when did I first learn that this wasn't safe?
And go back to that and you will start to see a pattern, and then you can start to build it. You do
not. As I always say to people, you do not need to become somebody new. You just need to stop
protecting yourself from the life that you actually want. I think that is really important. So
I hope me sharing a little bit about my story. I hope this has helped. Um, guys, I'd love to see
you at some of the events that we've got coming up. Um, you know, if you're part of GMC, everything
is in the hub. If you're not, you can just reach out, uh, support@coaching.com, but otherwise I
will see you next week. I will speak to you then. Stay safe. Don't eat and drink and behave at the
expense of how you want to look and feel. And I'll chat to you soon.