At The Wellness Oasis, three men whose careers have, in very different ways, been associated with performance, resilience and strength came together for a conversation that challenged what those words really mean.
Jason Fox is a former Royal Marine Commando and Special Forces Sergeant who served with the Special Boat Service before becoming a broadcaster, author and mental health advocate.
Bobby Rich competed in judo for Team GB before becoming a performance and wellness coach. He has trained figures including David and Victoria Beckham, Madonna, Jason Statham and Guy Ritchie, and is a Founding Ambassador for IM8.
And Jordan Stephens, best known as one half of Rizzle Kicks, is a musician, author and mental health advocate whose work includes the mental health campaign #IAMWHOLE and his book Avoidance, Drugs, Heartbreak and Dogs.
On paper, their lives look remarkably different.
Yet during the panel, “The Bravest Thing a Man Can Do: An Honest Conversation About Feelings, Vulnerability & Mental Health,” they kept returning to the same idea:
Perhaps strength is not about becoming invulnerable.
Perhaps real strength begins when we are willing to be seen.
We may talk. But do we really open up?
One of the most interesting distinctions raised during the conversation was the difference between talking about what is happening in our lives and actually talking about what is happening inside us.
Fox reflected on his experiences in environments where people endure extraordinary difficulty together.
You talk to your friends.
You ask what is happening at home.
You talk about your children, your fears, your lives.
There can be vulnerability in those conversations.
But, as he explained, that does not necessarily mean going deeper into how those experiences are affecting you emotionally — or understanding what to do with those feelings.
It was not necessarily that they had been explicitly taught not to talk about emotion.
Sometimes, they simply did not know that they were allowed to.
That distinction extends far beyond masculinity.
Many of us become very good at explaining the circumstances of our lives while remaining disconnected from our experience of them.
We can talk about the job.
The breakup.
The diagnosis.
The difficult year.
The relationship.
The transition.
But describing what happened and allowing ourselves to acknowledge what it did to us are two very different things.
Vulnerability starts before we speak
A theme that repeatedly emerged from Bobby Rich was the importance of something deceptively simple:
being honest with yourself.
Rich spoke about vulnerability and self-honesty as closely connected. It means asking yourself difficult questions and being prepared to listen to the answers, even when those answers are uncomfortable.
We often associate courage with visible action.
Taking the risk.
Walking into the room.
Pushing through physical discomfort.
Getting back up.
Performing under pressure.
But there is another type of bravery that rarely receives the same recognition.
Admitting that something hurt.
Acknowledging that you are struggling.
Recognising that the life you have built no longer feels right.
Accepting that an identity you once relied upon is changing.
Or simply being able to say:
I am not okay right now.
That honesty matters because vulnerability with another person often starts with the conversation we are prepared to have with ourselves.
When the person who is supposed to be strong struggles
For Fox, this became deeply personal.
His career had given him a particular understanding of strength. He had operated in environments where resilience, competence and the ability to function under extreme pressure were fundamental.
So when he began struggling with his own mental health, he did not initially know how to reconcile the two.
He described boxing things away.
He was not being honest with himself about what was happening.
Eventually, that became impossible to sustain.
Fox spoke about reaching a point where he recognised that something had to change. After previously being advised not to discuss his mental health struggles because of concerns that it could affect his future career, he ultimately chose the opposite path.
He started talking.
And in his words, becoming vulnerable was “probably the most empowering thing” he had ever done.
Looking back, he recognised that the version of strength he had previously understood had contained an emotional wall.
Vulnerability did not make him less powerful.
It changed his relationship with his emotions.
He began to understand himself better.
That is an important distinction.
Vulnerability is not necessarily the absence of strength.
Sometimes it is what happens when we no longer require strength to look a particular way.
What happens when one person goes first?
Bobby Rich shared another deeply personal example.
He and his partner experienced three pregnancy losses over a two-year period before having their two children.
After the first loss, much of what they were experiencing remained between themselves and those closest to them.
By the second, Rich described feeling that it had become too much to hold inside.
Even as someone who considered himself relatively open, he did not necessarily know how to express what he was feeling.
Then he began telling friends.
What came back surprised him.
Love.
Support.
And other people's stories.
By allowing himself to become vulnerable around an intensely personal experience, he created an opening for other people to share what they had experienced too.
It illustrated something Jordan Stephens articulated elsewhere in the conversation:
Vulnerability breeds connection.
One person's openness can give somebody else permission to stop pretending.
Human connection is rarely built through perfection.
It is often built through recognition.
You have felt this too.
You understand.
I am not the only one.
The bravery of loving again
Perhaps one of the most memorable ideas of the entire conversation came from Stephens.
When asked what bravery meant to him, his answer was unexpected.
He described one of the bravest things a human being can do — particularly something he sees in men — as having your heart broken and then choosing to love again.
Because pain teaches us things.
Sometimes useful things.
But it can also teach us to protect ourselves.
Rejection can teach us not to try.
Heartbreak can teach us not to trust.
Failure can teach us never to place ourselves in the same vulnerable position again.
Stephens spoke about the intensity and non-linearity of heartbreak and the courage required to decide that, despite having experienced that pain, you are still prepared to open yourself to love again.
His point reaches far beyond romantic relationships.
There are moments throughout life when we have to decide whether a painful experience becomes information — or a permanent barrier.
Perhaps resilience is not becoming so strong that nothing can hurt us.
Perhaps it is retaining the ability to participate fully in life even after discovering that it can.
Who are you when the title disappears?
Another powerful theme running through the discussion was identity.
For Rich, elite sport had once provided an incredibly clear framework.
There was training.
Competition.
Rankings.
The next goal.
The next performance.
He described reaching a point where sport had become deeply intertwined with his identity. When that chapter ended, the absence of that structure presented a very different challenge.
Who are you when the thing you have spent years becoming is suddenly no longer what you do?
Rich described it as a process of rebuilding and asking:
Who am I? What do I want?
Fox experienced something similar after leaving the military.
He had not felt ready for the career to end.
When it did, he described losing not only his work but also his sense of belonging, camaraderie and identity.
Over time, something shifted.
He began to recognise that his career was something he had done. It was part of his story.
But it did not own him.
“I own my identity. I belong to myself.”
That idea feels particularly relevant today.
We live in a culture that frequently encourages us to locate our identity externally.
Our profession.
Our relationship.
Our achievements.
Our appearance.
Our productivity.
Our status.
Our followers.
Our performance.
But external identities can change remarkably quickly.
Careers end. Relationships change. Bodies change. Children leave home. Status shifts. Success evolves.
And eventually we may be faced with the question beneath all of them:
Who am I without the thing I have been using to tell myself who I am?
Where do we place our power?
Stephens took that conversation about identity somewhere different again.
He described becoming increasingly conscious of where he places his sense of power.
Earlier in life, external validation, access, recognition and status, could influence how he felt about himself.
Now, he joked that he identifies more with a tree than with being a celebrity.
Behind the humour was an important idea.
The more completely our self-worth depends upon something outside ourselves, the more power we give that thing to determine how we feel.
An invitation.
A promotion.
Recognition.
A relationship.
A room we are allowed into.
An opinion somebody forms about us.
Stephens' increasingly close connection with nature had offered another reference point: an identity that was not entirely dependent on external validation.
For a conversation ostensibly about vulnerability, this became one of its most interesting underlying questions:
Where have we placed our power?
Vulnerability doesn't mean telling everyone everything
There is also an important distinction between vulnerability and indiscriminate openness.
Being vulnerable does not mean sharing every part of ourselves with every person.
During the audience questions, the panel discussed what happens when vulnerability is not received well.
Stephens reflected that after doing significant personal work, if he opened up to someone and they responded in a way that felt dismissive or uncomfortable, he would try not to automatically interpret their reaction as evidence that he should not have been vulnerable.
Instead, their response gives him information.
It can tell him something about that person and about the relationship he wants to have with them.
Rich similarly acknowledged that another person's response can influence how a relationship develops, while recognising that we also cannot always know what someone else may be going through.
This may be one of the healthiest forms of vulnerability:
openness without self-abandonment.
The courage to be honest alongside the discernment to recognise who has earned access to that honesty.
Strength may need a new definition
There is an old model of strength that many of us have absorbed in one form or another.
Carry more.
Need less.
Push harder.
Remain composed.
Do not let anyone see the struggle.
And there are moments when endurance is necessary.
But perhaps that is only one expression of strength.
Strength can also look like recognising when something has become too heavy to carry alone.
Asking for help.
Questioning the identity you have built.
Allowing yourself to grieve something you have lost.
Choosing love after heartbreak.
Starting again after failure.
Being willing to have a conversation without already knowing how it will be received.
Allowing somebody to meet the person behind the performance.
Jason Fox, Bobby Rich and Jordan Stephens came to The Wellness Oasis from three very different worlds, Special Forces, elite sport and performance, and music and culture.
Yet their stories repeatedly returned to the same place.
Honesty.
Connection.
Identity.
And the courage required to stop hiding behind the version of strength we think the world expects from us.
Almost all of us build armour somewhere.
Around our careers.
Our relationships.
Our bodies.
Our families.
Our achievements.
Our health.
The goal is not necessarily to remove every protective layer.
Some exist for good reason.
The more interesting question may be whether we have been wearing them for so long that we have forgotten who we are underneath.
Because perhaps bravery is not always about becoming harder.
Sometimes, the bravest thing we can do is remain soft enough to be seen.
