Why Growth Starts With the Right People, Habits and Mindset

Research from the World Health Organization shows that 12 billion working days are lost each year to depression and anxiety, at a cost of US$1 trillion in lost productivity. In the UK, the Mental Health Foundation says that in 2022/23, an estimated 875,000 workers were suffering from work-related stress, depression or anxiety, resulting in 17.1 million working days lost.

Those figures help explain why conversations around personal growth, self-awareness and balance continue to resonate. For many people, the issue is not a lack of ambition. It is building the right environment, habits and support system to grow without burning out.

Scott Thomas has built his platform around that side of performance. As a mindset speaker, founder of True Self and The Social PR, host of the This Is Manchester Awards at the AO Arena, and a content creator with more than 1 million followers, he brings a perspective shaped by personal growth, balance and lived experience.

In this exclusive interview with the Mental Health Speakers Agency, Scott Thomas reflects on the role environment, visualization and balance have played in his own journey, and why he believes the right mindset, habits and people around you can make all the difference.

Question 1. How can people deliberately shape their environment to support personal growth and bring out their best?

Scott Thomas: “I think your environment is so crucial if you want to become the best version of yourself and reach your true potential. Number one, you need to have the right people around you. A lot of us have people in our lives who bring us down, but we keep them in our lives simply because we've known them for years.

“I've had to let go of some of my closest friends recently, not because I don't love them, and not because I won't be there for them, just because we don't align anymore. I didn't feel good when I was in their company. Sometimes, when you're trying to make a change, it feels really uncomfortable for the people closest to you because you are no longer the image of the person they have come to expect.

“So, you need to be willing to create new friendships and a new circle. I'm not saying you just cut everybody off. All I'm saying is that you create an environment and you're really conscious of how you feel in certain places with certain people.

“Because if you want to get to where you want to get to, you need to have winners around you. I don't mean people who are financially successful on paper or anything like that. I mean people who've got a winner's mentality, who want you to do best, who want you to do your best.

“Sometimes, if we're not aware and we're not conscious, we can have people around us who zap our energy. It's so important that you feel energized and you are full of fuel if you are going to go where you want to go.

“The other thing I would say is if you want to practice self-awareness, you want to practice visualization and you want to get excited by your future, you want to create an environment where you can operate at your best. That could be something simple like creating a space in your house. For example, when I work from home, my kitchen has to be immaculate. I want to create a space where I can get the best out of myself.

“Same with my office. When I go to the Social Power office, I'm always talking to the girls, like, I want it to be a safe environment where I can be creative and I can feel motivated. But if you are going to the same places and expecting to get a different result or bring out a different version of you, that's going to be really difficult if you keep doing the same thing over and over again. So, for me, being around the right people and creating an environment where you can thrive is so important.”

Question 2. Visualisation is often talked about as a performance tool, but what role does it play in your own life and how can others use it in a practical way?

Scott Thomas: “I'll be honest with you. I used to think visualization was a load of crap until I kind of developed in my own journey. I just went to Dr Joe Despenser's retreat in Nashville and his saying is believe, behave, become. Basically, he teaches that everything that we are and our identities is based on the past.

“But the past doesn't really exist. The past is just a set of emotions and feelings that we've attached to a moment in time. Half of the story that we told ourselves about ourselves didn't even happen. So if you flip that on its head, if you can imagine with so much emotion your future self and you get so excited by this vision of yourself that you act as if it's already happened, right, and he talks about doing this in meditation, this is something I've been doing a lot.

“Not only do you start being pulled towards your goals because you are so gassed when you wake up in the morning, you're no longer whipping yourself out of bed because you've already seen it. You've already become it. You are already that person. You know it's going to happen. But you just need to make the right steps every single day.

“He talks about stop chasing and start choosing. This is a much healthier way for me to reach my goals. I used to use pain as my fuel. I need to prove everybody wrong. I need to show everybody I'm not that person anymore. Whereas now, I'm so excited about being the number one motivational speaker in the UK. That's my goal. Not because it's based on ego or anything like that. It's because I want to put all my work into this craft. I'm so passionate about it. I want to hold myself to that standard.

“I can see myself on giant stages like Tony Robbins. Because I can see that, it allows me to get really excited about my routine and building a routine that's going to help me get there. So, I think visualization is so important because if you don't know where you're going and you're not excited about where you're going, it's going to be so easy to be diverted and to fall into temptations. That's what happened to me for the majority of my 20s. I was just following the crowds. I didn't really know where I was going.

“Whereas now, I'm super clear and it's made everything so much easier.”

Question 3. Work-life balance is something many ambitious people struggle with. What does balance actually look like for you?

Scott Thomas: “Balance is the holy grail for me. I've actually got my only tattoo in the world, a really faint word which is balance, on my arm. Basically, all my life I've lived in extreme highs and extreme lows. I actually found familiarities in the lows just as much as the highs.

“So now I'm massive on living life in the middle lane. What that means is I don't have to go at 100 miles an hour all the time. Because a lot of people who are high achievers, and I do class myself as one, we feel this pressure to always be on, to always be charging at 100 miles an hour. What happens is we tend to burn out because we can't keep up that pace. So I talk a lot about middle lane mentality.

“A middle lane mentality to a lot of people might seem boring, but it doesn't to those people who know that they are constantly either always on or fully off. What happens in the middle lane is that you still get to where you want to get to. You still achieve all your goals. It just might take you a little bit longer, but you are going to enjoy the journey a lot more. That's something that I'm massive on because I no longer want to live life in the fast lane and constantly burn out.

“Don't get me wrong, as part of being in the middle lane, I can drop into the fast lane every now and then, drop into the slow lane if I want to, but overall, I keep moving towards my goals at a steady pace, and it means I'm more present, more self-aware, I enjoy the journey, and I don't hit that burnout point.”

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This exclusive interview with Scott Thomas was conducted by Tabish Ali of the Motivational Speakers Agency.