Mental Resilience at Rolls-Royce Submarines

This week, I had the privilege of delivering Masterclass 2 of my Mental Resilience programme to 50 members of the Nuclear Submarines engineering team at Rolls-Royce.
 
My sincere thanks to Kamran Shahzad, Head of Supply Chain Engineering at Rolls-Royce Submarines, for championing this work and for creating the opportunity for his team to invest in their mental well-being, focus and performance.
 
The feedback from the room was extremely positive – open, honest, and fully engaged, which tells me just how relevant these conversations are right now.
 
What we explored together
 
One of the core themes of the session was reframing – the ability to find something positive in every negative, even during life’s most challenging moments.
 
This isn’t about pretending difficult things don’t hurt.
 
It’s about asking a powerful question:
 
“What, if anything, can I take from this that will help me grow?”
 
When we can do that, tough times stop being wasted experiences – they become part of our strength.
 
Two personal examples I shared really landed in the room.
 
When my dad died, the loss was painful – but at his funeral, I reconnected with a relative I hadn’t seen for 40 years.
 
Out of something deeply sad came a relationship that is now a valued part of my life.
 
When Covid hit, I lost all my business at 66.
I could have given up and retired.
 
Instead, I: 

• Wrote my second book
• Created three powerful 1-hour online mental resilience masterclasses 

Those programmes are now used nationally and internationally to this day.
 
Without Covid, I may never have done any of that.
 
That doesn’t mean Covid was “good”.
It means I chose to extract something good from it.
 
That choice made all the difference.
 
 
Self-belief vs confidence – the ocean liner analogy
 
We also explored the difference between confidence and self-belief, because they are not the same thing.
 
Confidence is situational.
You can be confident in one area of your life and not at all in another.
 
I shared a very personal example.
 
I was confident playing basketball in front of hundreds of fans, yet I struggled to present to just four people. Same person. Very different contexts.
 
Self-belief runs deeper than confidence.
 
I describe self-belief like an ocean liner.
 
Along the journey, it faces waves, storms, rough seas and setbacks.
It doesn’t avoid them.
It takes every wave head-on.
 
But no matter what it encounters, the ocean liner always reaches its destination.
 
That’s what genuine self-belief looks like.
You may get knocked, challenged, or temporarily lose confidence, but deep down, you trust that you’ll get where you’re meant to go.
 
That mindset is incredibly powerful in high-pressure environments, both professionally and personally.
 
Practical tools
 
The team experienced: 

• A full-body relaxation exercise
• A guided visualisation of a happy place, using all five senses 

Simple tools. Powerful impact. Immediately usable under pressure.
 
 
Three key takeaways 

• You may not control events, but you can control the meaning you give them. Reframing doesn’t remove the pain – it gives the pain a purpose. 
• Self-belief carries you when confidence fades. Confidence changes with context. Self-belief keeps you moving forward. 
• Your thoughts shape your emotional state. Change the thought, and you change how you feel, and how you perform.

 
The Vertical Mental Scale
 
At the top: energy, optimism, confidence.
At the bottom: low energy, stress, and in extreme cases, depression.
 
The key message?
Our thoughts directly affect how we feel.
 
Positive thoughts = positive feelings
Negative thoughts = negative feelings
 
Learning to manage our thinking is not “soft” – it’s a performance skill.
 
 
Thoughts for the week 

1. What challenge are you facing right now, and what one positive might eventually come from it?
2. Where could reframing help you move up the mental scale this week?
3. What practical tool (breathing, relaxation, visualisation) could you use when pressure rises? 

 
Well, that’s it for this week. Have a wonderful week ahead, and keep believing.
 
Warm regards

John


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