Matt Young is a peak performance coach, endurance athlete, and founder of Made in the Mind, a coaching platform dedicated to helping high achievers unlock their full human potential. A former professional footballer with over 100 professional appearances and eight years in the game, Matt built his early identity entirely around sport, training from age five with a singular obsessive focus on going pro. When a five-day period of personal collapse stripped away his career, his relationship, and his home simultaneously, it became the catalyst for a profound transformation. That journey — from performance-based identity to values-driven living — is now the foundation of his coaching work with athletes, leaders, and individuals navigating change, including organizations such as FIFA, Google Cloud, Shell, and Tottenham Hotspur.
WHAT YOU'LL LEARN
Why high performers often tie their entire identity to achievement
How a devastating five-day period became the catalyst for Matt's transformation
The difference between performance-based success and genuine fulfillment
Why self-worth should be brought into achievement, not built through it
How to build resilience through intentional growth — not crisis
What peak performance actually looks like when rooted in values
Why becoming more fully yourself is the greatest goal of al
LEARN MORE
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June 11, 2026
Matt Young
Who Are You Without the Title? Identity, Purpose, and Peak Performance
"The substance of me I can carry everywhere."
TIMESTAMPS
00:00:33 — Introduction
00:02:51 — Football as Identity
00:09:25 — The Razor's Edge
00:11:17 — Shell vs. Substance
00:21:36 — The Five-Day Collapse
00:25:25 — The Book That Changed Everything
00:29:22 — Can Change Happen Without Pain?
00:36:32 — Gratitude for Rock Bottom
00:40:24 — Redefining Peak Performance
00:44:26 — Voluntary Growth
SHOW NOTES
In this episode, Dr. Dan sits down with Matt Young, former professional footballer, endurance athlete, and founder of Made in the Mind, to explore one of the most important questions a high achiever can face: who are you when the thing you've built your life around is gone? With over eight years as a professional footballer, 18 marathons, seven ultra-marathons, and training rooted in neuro-linguistic programming, hypnotherapy, and life coaching, Matt speaks from hard-won experience — having worked with organizations including FIFA, Google Cloud, Shell, and Tottenham Hotspur. When a devastating sequence of events stripped away his career, his relationship, and his home within five days, he was forced to build something far more lasting than a title: himself.
Matt and Dr. Dan explore the dangers of tying self-worth to performance, the difference between using achievement as a substitute for identity versus an expression of it, and how adversity, when met with awareness, can become the beginning of a far more meaningful life. Matt shares the unexpected book that sparked his entire personal development journey, the concept he calls the "shell and the substance," and how he has channeled hard-won resilience into a mission to help others unlock their potential. Whether you are an athlete, a leader, an entrepreneur, or simply someone navigating change, this conversation will challenge you to look beyond the title and discover the human being underneath.
LINKS & RESOURCES
Matt Young
Website: mattyounglc.com
Instagram: @mattyoung.mindcoach
Key Concepts
Performance-Based Identity. When a person's sense of self-worth becomes fused with external roles, titles, or achievements — creating fragility whenever circumstances change.
Shell vs. Substance. The distinction between the roles we perform (the shell) and the core human being underneath — the part that remains when circumstances are stripped away.
Voluntary Growth. The practice of choosing awareness and intentional development before a crisis forces change — building resilience proactively rather than reactively.
GUEST BIO
Matt Young is a peak performance coach, endurance athlete, and founder of Made in the Mind — a coaching platform dedicated to helping high achievers unlock their full human potential. A former professional footballer with over 100 professional appearances and eight years in the game, Matt built his early identity entirely around sport, training from age five with a singular obsessive focus on going pro. When a five-day period of personal collapse stripped away his career, his relationship, and his home simultaneously, it became the catalyst for a profound transformation. That journey, from performance-based identity to values-driven living, is now the foundation of his coaching work with athletes, leaders, and individuals navigating change, including organizations such as FIFA, Google Cloud, Shell, and Tottenham Hotspur. Since that turning point, Matt has completed 18 marathons and seven ultra-marathons, five of them over 100 miles, and is currently four months from swimming the English Channel... approaching each challenge not to prove his worth, but to discover what he is capable of becoming. Trained in life coaching, neuro-linguistic programming, and hypnotherapy, he works with clients internationally from his base in Malta.
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