ABOUT ME
MY STORY.
MY WHY.
With more than 25 years in senior leadership roles at organisations including PepsiCo, Office Depot UK and Topps Tiles, I understand what it feels like to work in a high-pressure, results-driven environment.
Working long hours, answering every email, phone call and believing I had to have the answers to everything. That thinking helped me build a successful career. Until it stopped helping.
I only realised this when my health collapsed and I had to rethink how I lived, how I thought, and eventually how I led.
THEN ANKYLOSING SPONDYLITIS CHANGED EVERYTHING
In 2009, I was diagnosed with Ankylosing Spondylitis (AS), a chronic inflammatory autoimmune condition that caused severe pain and extreme fatigue. I was bedbound for three months, on a cocktail of prescription drugs and unable to work or even look after myself properly.
I was told this was as good as it gets and, for almost 10 years, I believed that, managing my symptoms with heavy painkillers and immunosuppressant drugs.
Then in 2018 I discovered the mind-body connection and explored how the way we think can have a physical impact on our body. It was mind blowing to learn how our thoughts automatically activate our nervous system and how our response to threat, danger or pressure can trigger our fight-or-flight response. I hadn’t factored in how much time I spent stressing about my health and work, or the impact that was having on me. I began changing how I thought, lived and responded to my symptoms and within two months I had put my AS into remission.
That experience changed more than just my health. It changed how I thought about pressure and performance. I realised that pressure wasn’t really the problem, it was how I responded to it that affected the way I thought, decided and ultimately performed.
It also led me to create Kidda Body & Mind, initially focused on health, wellbeing and resilience. Over time, my work evolved towards leadership performance, with Kidda Body & Mind becoming the parent business behind what I do today.
That insight became the foundation for The Reset Loop®.
WHERE IT LED
What began as a personal reset gradually became something much bigger. I became obsessed with learning to understand how our thinking influences the way we respond, particularly under pressure, and how small, intentional changes can create more effective ways of coping.
Those insights and experiences, combined with more than 25 years of leadership, eventually shaped The Reset Loop® framework:
Awareness. Reframing. Resilience. Integration.
Four principles for recognising what’s happening, challenging your thinking in the moment, responding more effectively and turning those responses into consistent behaviour.
Those same ideas and principles became the foundation of my book, RESET: A Practical Guide to Clarity, Confidence & Control, and ultimately changed the direction of my career.
Today, I’m a Leadership Performance Coach, helping founders and leadership teams apply those principles to the decisions, conversations and situations that matter most.
WHY I COACH
My experience of pushing through pressure, and the impact it had on my health, taught me that pressure can absolutely change the way we think, respond and perform, often before we realise it’s happening.
That’s why my coaching focuses on the real situations leaders are dealing with, whether that’s a difficult decision, a conversation being avoided, competing priorities or just the pressure that’s making everything feel harder than it should.
The aim isn’t to remove pressure, that’s impossible as pressure will always be present in some form. It’s to help you respond to it more effectively so you can think better, lead better and perform at your best.
“I don’t teach resilience as a theory.
I know what sustained pressure feels like, and what it takes to respond differently.”
Jay Forden
Leadership Performance Coach
Creator of The Reset Loop®
Jay Forden | The Reset Loop® 