I originally decided to do the Neurofit programme to help me with public speaking skills and as a trial to see how it could benefit our employees if we implemented it in the workplace. Having done CBT in the past, and being someone who considers self-reflection to be an essential asset in character building – here I was thinking that I was someone who always takes a proactive approach to keep “on top of” my mental wellbeing. 

Rico quickly made me realise I had no issue with public speaking, and actually had deeply ingrained narratives around my self worth and capabilities, leading to imposter syndrome. I had a huge fear of failure, or rather a fear of being “exposed”, and I hid behind my high performance at work and in my personal life as a protection mechanism. Rico helped me to dig to the bottom of why I didn’t feel good enough, providing me with invaluable tools to combat this unhelpful narrative that was subconsciously leading my life, which has changed the way that I see myself and ultimately behave. 

Prior to doing Neurofit, I avoided speaking my mind in personal and professional environments as I feared judgement from others, this included training my team in group settings because I would get anxious, feared saying one thing wrong which would end up making me look incapable, ultimately confirming to myself that I wasn’t good enough. I avoided confrontation in all areas of my life because this lead to situations that created a cause for fear in the past – confrontation is nevertheless unavoidable, but because I feared it, I would freeze up, get anxious and shut down. This meant I didn’t have a chance to voice my feelings, leading to me being annoyed at others for their brashness, but in truth I was actually annoyed at myself for reacting in a way that made me debilitated, highlighting feelings I hadn’t dealt with and was repeating from childhood.

I didn’t want to see a councillor as I didn’t want to get dependent and revisit my life challenges indefinitely, hence why I did self guided CBT in the first place, but Rico was this perfect balance of actively listening, not letting me waffle on for too long, just enough to identify the core issues and actually put steps in place that create lasting changes without the dependency. Fast forward to now, I don’t have any sort of anxiety, I feel confident in sharing my views because deep down I value them. The Neurofit programme has made me a ten fold better leader, I welcome confrontation and vulnerability and can see how beneficial it’s been for my team as well.

I think for absolutely anyone, you don’t realise the weight of what you’re carrying around until you have a chance to put it down. Neurofit is a programme I think absolutely everyone can benefit from regardless of your mental space. I’ve already referred two of my friends who have both said it’s been life-changing and I’ll continue to sing Rico’s praises as he’s created an incredible programme for lasting change.