Scolls & The Founder Of ‘Opening Up Cricket’, Mark Boyns

“It’s not weak to speak if you’ve got a problem or if there is something that’s bothering you but also, the best people in sport communicate well so we are trying to tap into that and say that it’s good to talk on a number of different levels.”

Mark started Opening Up in 2014 after his cricket club was hit with tragedy with the passing of his good mate, Alex, who took his own life.

Since then, Mark has been on a campaign to raise awareness for mental health issues and suicide prevention and travels around the world teaching people how every single person can improve their ‘mental fitness’, which is something that aligns with our message as coaches and mentors to our athletes.

As the name suggests, Mark and his now team of speakers, travel around the UK and more recently Australia and New Zealand encouraging and supporting cricketers to Open Up and talk to someone if they are struggling with their mental health.

Opening Up has won the support of many of England’s best cricketers who love the message it shares.

In this episode we discussed:

• How the best teams and people in sport communicate well and why it’s important to do that on a number of levels
• How mental health exists on a continuum with good mental health on one end and bad mental health on the other
• What people can do to improve their mental conditioning to improve their performance
• How to notice a decline of your own mental health or someone else around you
• How to be a good listener to someone who has confided in you
• How Mark suffered his own mental health issues and how he’s worked to overcome them
• What gratitude is and how you can practice it and how it rewires your brain to look for the positive in things…

Plus a whole lot more.

This is a different chat to many of the others we’ve published previously but there are so many great things that you can learn from it and implement into your life and help with others around you.

Mark is a very clever guy who is changing peoples lives around the world so I’m thrilled to have sat down with him and heard more about his story.