Creating Your Own Path: Anita Phillips on Big Goals, Time, and Mental Strength
Mindset · From Student of the Game
Creating Your Own Path: Anita Phillips on Big Goals, Time, and Mental Strength
Brad Noll and Anita Phillips share a brother without being related. Anita's brother, Greg Johns, lived with Brad's family as an international student, and Brad told Greg's story on an earlier episode of Student of the Game. Now Greg's sister joins from the French Alps, one week before attempting one of the most demanding trail races in the world.
Brad frames the episode for anyone with a goal so big it scares them, or one that makes friends and family think they are nuts. He likes to ask his team and his family a simple question: "Wouldn't it be amazing if?" Anita's answer is taking her all the way around Mont Blanc.
176 Kilometers Around Mont Blanc
The Ultra-Trail du Mont-Blanc, known as UTMB, circles Mont Blanc through France, Italy, and Switzerland. The course covers 176 kilometers with 10,000 meters of vertical gain, about 30,000 feet. The race starts at 6 p.m. in Chamonix, runners must finish within 46 and a half hours, and the terrain is treacherous enough that every competitor needs insurance covering search and rescue. For Anita, that means two nights with no sleep, on her feet going up and down mountains, while her husband meets her along the route in their camper van with food and clothing.
Anita is 48. She was never the sporty one growing up, she says. That was her brother. She ran her first trail race only three years ago, after moving to the Alps, and qualified for what she calls the most prestigious race on the circuit.
“I would say that the journey is the practice and the destination is going to be the race.”
Anita Phillips
A Life Built on Big Moves
Anita grew up in a seaside town in the southeast of the UK, studied in the UK and in Paris, and has been a lawyer for 22 years. Today she is also an executive coach. She caught the travel bug young, backpacking through Southeast Asia on a few dollars a day, and learned that the more she pared things back, the richer the experience became.
After law school she spent a year traveling through South America, New Zealand, Australia, China, and Southeast Asia. After she and her husband married, they spent a year traveling overland from Alaska to the southern tip of Patagonia, by train from London to Beijing, and across the United States in a 1986 pickup truck. Her career took her through London, Paris, and six years in Hong Kong. Eventually the family left Hong Kong for the French Alps, with two young daughters who did not speak French and no jobs lined up.
Brad sees the same thread in his own career. Every step in real estate, from starting his own company to joining new groups, felt like a risk at the time. At the end of the day, he says, "you have to believe in yourself."
Four Fundamentals for Any Big Goal
Anita lays out the fundamentals she relies on, and Brad points out that they apply just as well to someone who wants to start a business:
- Self-belief. Draw on things you have already done that once seemed impossible.
- A time investment. Big goals take time, and something usually has to come off the calendar.
- A plan. Break the goal into manageable chunks so it stops feeling too complicated to start.
- Support. People love to help, and your network is worth investing in before you need it.
For self-belief, Anita points to experiences many adults share. Learning to drive is a complex, high-risk skill that most of us master at 17 and then do without thinking. Childbirth is another leap into the unknown. Brad connects it to Duke women's basketball coach Kara Lawson's phrase "handle hard better." Life does not get easier, he says, but we get better at handling hard things, and remembering the hard things you have already done builds belief.
Time was the toughest fundamental. When she qualified in January, Anita audited her life: 20 to 30 hours a week of legal consulting on a big case, volunteer work, a rental property to manage, a coaching diploma to finish, and family time she would not give up. The math did not work, so she paused her legal work, a decision that took backing herself. "I think time is our most precious asset," she says. Brad compares it to a budget. At some point you cannot keep adding, and you have to take something away.
Her approach to planning comes from experience. The move from Hong Kong worked because she and her husband broke it into stages, from building some financial freedom to getting their girls into the local school, all tracked in her husband's spreadsheet. Her training plan, built from research and advice from friends, started with a 5K run and has grown to 190 kilometers in a week.
The Journey Is the Practice
There are no shortcuts in ultra running, Anita says. "I would say that the journey is the practice and the destination is going to be the race." She trains in four-week blocks, building for three weeks and then cutting distance and elevation roughly in half in the fourth, because the gains are made in the rest week.
That idea lit Brad up. He sees fitness in relationships the same way: the shorter the time you need to recover, the fitter you are. When he says something to his wife he should not have, he now apologizes within minutes, where years ago it might have taken him a day. He also looked back over 21 years in business and found about six plateaus, years when things were flat or down. Those years, he realized, were where he actually grew, and each was followed by a year of gains.
Anita also added strength work for the first time in her life, simple lunges and squats at home, along with stretching and regular visits with a physio, all to stay injury free on terrain where it is easy to roll an ankle. She practiced race fueling and pacing, too, since her trails are less rolling hills than steep climbs and descents. Brad sees a business lesson there. Real estate has a seasonal rest-run cycle, and knowing when to run downhill and when to hike up with poles applies to any industry.
Life Is a Mind Game
The most important piece, Anita says, is mental strength. Ultra running is about tolerating discomfort for a long time, and she believes we routinely underestimate how strong our minds are. Greg gave her David Goggins' book Can't Hurt Me, and she loves the idea that life is one big mind game played against yourself, because it means you are in the driver's seat.
Without a bank of trail races at this distance, she draws on tough work projects, challenging travel, and big life transitions. Her coaching model rests on a simple equation: performance is potential minus interference, and the interference is often inside our own heads. Thoughts, feelings, and beliefs are not facts, she says, unless we let them define us.
Brad agrees. He tells his kids that "the body has limits, but the mind is limitless." He points to Roger Bannister's four-minute mile as proof that seeing someone else do something can unlock what we believe is possible, and he says his goal is to help his team do in 10 years what took him 21.
What Does Winning at the Game of Life Look Like for Anita Phillips?
For Anita, winning means precious time with family and friends, a simple life outdoors, and meaningful, purposeful work. She is often happiest packing up the camper van and camping wild. Her purposeful work is now executive and life coaching with clients around the world. Winning, she says, is when those things are in balance, and she has built enough time and place freedom into her life to make that possible.
She sends her biggest flowers to her husband. They can squabble about small things, she says, but they have always been on the same page about the big changes, from London to Hong Kong to the Alps, and his support on race week will be its own kind of ultramarathon. She also thanks the friends who gave her the travel bug and the trail running friends who have guided her. Brad closes with a line that fits her story: you can go fast alone, or you can go far with a community.
▶ Listen to the full episode
Creating Your Own Path: Crafting an Extraordinary Life with Anita Phillips, on Student of the Game.
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