James Haskell interview: ‘You can lie to everyone else, but you can’t lie to yourself’

James Haskell is a rugby speaker who has lived the game from every angle: the collision, the comeback, the changing room, the media glare and the hard business of staying useful when selection, injury and public judgement are never far away.

Across a 16-year playing career, he earned 77 England caps, toured with the British & Irish Lions, won major honours with Wasps and played in France, Japan and New Zealand.

What makes Haskell’s story land is that he does not dress performance up as theory.

His answers come back to the things elite sport exposes quickly: whether your goals suit the team, whether you can control what is actually in front of you, and whether you are honest enough to confront the weak points in your own performance.

That is where his voice carries weight beyond rugby.

In this exclusive interview with the High Performance Speakers Agency, James Haskell discusses goal setting, selection pressure, injury, mental strength and why the fundamentals of performance still matter more than any quick-fix promise.

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Goal setting at the elite level

Question One: At the elite level, what separates goals that genuinely drive performance from ones that just look good on paper?

James Haskell: “Goal setting is important in making sure that it fits in with the team and what you’re trying to achieve.

“A lot of people retrofit goals on the side because they think it’s important.

“First of all, you have to get down to the fundamentals of looking at your team, the mechanics, the makeup of that business or enterprise, and say, right, what do we think we can achieve?

“Do we have the right personnel and people? Once you understand that, you can form the goals.

“Because they are coming from the group and they suit the group, they are much easier to achieve.

Micro goals

“You have different levels of goals as well. People need to consider whether it’s a long-term goal, which can often seem unattainable, but then you have to go back to the micro goals.

“What can we achieve today? What can we achieve by the end of the week? What can we achieve by the end of the month?

“Sometimes the pathway to achieving those goals might not have full clarity. So you have to ask, what are the areas that we can control?

“Normally, when you look at the things you can control, that will help you achieve your performance.

“Once you’ve reached one goal, you move on to the next one. There are no miracle answers about trying to set goals that have substance.

“They have to be goals that suit the team. They have to be tiered at different levels, and they have to be goals that you can achieve to show progression, show growth, and put you in the right direction, even if that direction is not clear at the start.”

Dealing with selection pressure

Question Two: How did you learn to perform consistently in environments where selection was never guaranteed?

James Haskell: “You come back to worrying about what you can control.

“There are four things you can control in life: how you treat your body, how you treat your mind, how you treat other people, and how hard you work.

“Selection is out of your reach. Selection is not something you can control. If you could control that, you’d select yourself every time.

“So it comes down to what you manage as an individual. What can you improve on?

“If people are honest with themselves, they often say, “I didn’t get picked,” and that’s where they stop.

“But if they ask, “Was I doing everything I could do to get selected?”, more often than not, the answer is no.

“So you then ask, what makes selection?

“As a rugby player, it would be fitness, health, nutrition, sleep, core skills and strength.

“Suddenly, there are six things to work on to help you perform and get selected. That should be where your mind is focused.

“It shouldn’t be about selection. It should be about whether, at the end of the week, you can say, “I’ve managed everything I can possibly do.” Then selection becomes an issue.

“All you can ever exert control over is what you can do and what you can do to be better.

“That is what you have to understand. More often than not, people will complain and whine because they aren’t where they want to be.

“But if they looked at why they aren’t where they want to be, there would probably be a whole load of things they could improve and sort out.”

Injury setbacks

Question Three: What was the toughest period of your career, and what did it teach you about yourself?

James Haskell: “The hardest part of my career was definitely injury.

“When you are unable to perform and do what you need to do, injury brings issues of lack of mobility, lack of ability to perform and seeing others do better than you.

“You want to achieve something, but you’re unable to do that.

“What it taught me was to drill down again to the things that I could control in that injury period. Could I do the most to make up that injury?

“Even if I couldn’t see the end of it and couldn’t see how I was going to get better, I could say, if I can be a per cent better today, did I ice it?

“Did I eat well? Did I sleep well? Did I do my rehab? Did I do something outside of my sport to self-develop and prepare if I wasn’t able to come back from injury?

“Did I take all the supplementation? Did I take all the medication?

“Instead of going into a big macro focus, it came down to that micro focus.

“It also taught me that you need to constantly upskill yourself. You always need to have a plan B and a plan C.

“Your mental health is very important in that period of time. How do you look after that? How do you reframe what you’re trying to do? How do you put the passion and interest you would have in trying to perform into something else?

“That is all you can ever do.

Resilience

“It also taught me resilience. When I woke up and felt annoyed that I couldn’t perform or couldn’t play, I would go back to doing what I could control.

“There’s a very important saying: where focus goes, energy flows.

“If you’re sitting there whining about your injury, moaning, feeling bad about it or focusing on your dark time, that’s where you’re going to end up going.

“You need to say, this is the reality. This is where I’d like it to be, but this is my reality. What can I do to be better now and to help me?

“That’s what you focus on. Then, before you know it, one month, two months, three months, four months, suddenly you’re at the end of injury and you’re back where you’re going.

“But you haven’t wasted your time. You haven’t lost yourself down a rabbit hole.

“You’ve looked at yourself holistically: physical health, mental health and dietary health. You’ve improved those areas, and you’ve upskilled yourself.”

This exclusive interview with James Haskell was conducted by Tabish Ali of the Motivational Speakers Agency.

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