I’m late for my interview with Peter Crone, also known as The Architect of Mind – or, as Chicago Cubs World Series winner Miguel Montero said: “The best mind man out there.”
My Zoom is playing up. I text his assistant. “It’s okay,” I say to myself. His clients include world-renowned celebrities and pro-athletes. He was the personal trainer of Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman. “I’m not A-list but this can’t be the first time he’s been kept waiting. Finally,   I’m in. It is stepless. “She is!” Afterwards, I am sent the Zoom recording, including the delay. A moment behind the scenes, if you will – and this is probably what tells me the most about him. More on that later.
Crone specializes in uncovering and then dissolving “limiting beliefs and subconscious stories” in people that “direct and shape behavior, health, relationships and performance”. It’s like a therapist and a spiritual guru rolled into one.
It’s not just for the A-listers, all kinds of people come to it, “from the 60-year-old billionaire to the stay-at-home parent” for a multitude of reasons; either “the possibility of becoming someone or something new,” or “overcoming problems,” be they “anxiety, depression, chronic illness, or addiction,” or “athletes or entertainers with unfulfilled expectations,” who b maybe trying to overcome “past failures”.
And boy, does Crone have fans. Gwyneth Paltrow says it can “help unlock your potential”. PGA Golf champion Charles Howell III says Crone was “without a doubt the biggest influence on my day-to-day life.” And recently one of the most famous faces in the world gave him a shout to a packed stadium. (He won’t say who. “He’s a dear friend. I don’t want to compromise that.”)
Most of what you want is just a reaction to something deeper that you don’t want
Peter Crone
He was also featured in a 2017 Netflix documentary HealGoop podcast, and Rangan Chatterjee’s Feel Better Live More podcast, with Chatterjee asking him back a second time, saying their conversation was “very powerful”.
The good news: Crone’s popular wisdom has just opened up to a much wider audience, with the release of the ‘Freedom Community’, a private online members’ community and app, where disciples can gain exclusive, “mind-blowing” access. content and insights, as well as monthly “Ask Me Anything” live streams by Crone himself.
And so what exactly is it about man that causes such a rapture? And what is it like to coach high-level performers around the world? Crone’s Instagram shows his 309,000 followers curated montages of his life (golf, workouts, mountain views from his outdoor tub) with videos and photos of head-scratching wisdom: “Most of what you want is just a reaction to something deeper that you don’t want,” and “the mind works by analogy. The soul operates from possibility. Big difference.”
Over Zoom, he looks exactly as he does on his social media: all chiseled cheekbones, big blue eyes, gleaming white teeth, and an energy that seems calm and buoyant. Meeting Crone has been described as meeting Buddha, Einstein, and Austin Powers all at once (author and journalist Edwina Ings-Chambers) and rightly so. I am an instant convert.
I ask what the people who come to him are looking for? “Freedom …” he cried immediately. “They think they’re looking for a better body, more money, better circumstances. But… they want freedom from suffering.”
He goes on to say, “I have observed that there are these fundamental limitations, what I call them, which I assert that all men are born with.” Like what? A person may feel “not enough,” or “not safe,” he explains. He goes on to say “we are here to collect more money, status, fame, a beautiful family. These are all wonderful, but we are really here to free ourselves from these restrictions, so that we can recognize … the depth of our greatness.”
I first saw Crone on Netflix Heal documentary and was struck by the power of his words and his charisma. I tell him how much his work has influenced me. “It’s really shocking to know that a little boy from St Margaret’s Bay, South Kent, who was orphaned at the age of 17, is sharing things that are really affecting people.”
Crone’s mother died of cancer when he was seven years old. His father had to “provide for a son whom he absolutely loved”. I wonder what it was like then. “On the surface, I was a good boy, I was very well behaved, I was shy, I was very quiet.” And what about below? I ask later. “I tried to do everything I could to make sure I kept my Dad happy.”
When Crone was 17 years old, his beloved father Bob went to work one day and never came home. He was lost in the Zebrugge ferry disaster of 1987. Crone remembers standing in his bedroom, “completely alone”. And he goes on to say, “I think one of the reasons I have as much influence as I have in my space is because of the depth of my compassion, which I would attribute to going to the depths. the despair with the loneliness.”
How did he get from this depth to where he is now? It gives me the run down. “Huge amount of skills in football… smart and, you know, a decent student…”
Despite being an excellent athlete on the fast track for Oxbridge, after his father died, one of his greatest achievements was failing to get into all the universities I applied to. ,” he laughs. It was after a gap year, another failed attempt, and a subsequent phone call (which he made) to Dr Ward in the human biology department, that he found a place in Loughborough – which felt “like home”, and where he also belonged. my Master. Here, he was awarded the Sir Robert Martin prize for being an outstanding student. “That was a nod to Mum and Dad up there. You know. Like, you did it.”   He succeeds. “I haven’t told this story in a long time.”
After university there was a steady stream of jobs in the United States (tennis coaching, bartending) before he was certified as a personal trainer, where he was “like himself”, often working 13-hour days on the trot. It ended with Cruise and Kidman, for “an incredible five years”, blaming their bodies. But he always felt that “as humans, we had a much deeper set of constraints that required architecture”.
I want to know the actual process he goes through with his clients? “There is something that he believes is a human problem or issue,” he tells me. “At first I see that as just a symptom. Any problem is a byproduct of their perspective. So, when I hear their ‘problem’, I usually understand straight away what subconscious restriction it is an extension of, or ‘sits within’. So I ask about their past and childhood. Usually, that’s about that same constraint, so I can see where and when that particular relationship with life started.”
Someone could be dealing with anxiety. That, for me, is usually an experience of the constraint of ‘I’m not safe’.
Peter Crone
He gives me an example. “Maybe someone is dealing with anxiety. That, for me, is usually an experience of the constraint of “I’m not safe”. I then inquire about their childhood to see where and with whom they first felt that. This allows them to marry their current life experiences with past injuries. That is the basis of that perspective. I then asked them to investigate the validity of that opinion. It is never the truth – and, when they see that, the material of that world (in this case anxiety) dissolves.
Considering Crone has been through it, I wonder if he ever struggles. “Sure,” he said. “Yeah, I mean, less and less over the years. I’m kind of blessed in that I get to do this work every day. And so there’s a kind of reinforcement.”
On to the lighter stuff. How does it work for celebrities and global sports stars? “Perhaps the fundamental reason I’m able to work with so many of them is that, in the most loving way, I couldn’t care less who they are in the world. I don’t care who they are as people.” And as for the many sports stars he works with – “Ironically, when they’re okay with failing more, it usually doesn’t happen (whatever they’re trying to avoid or overcome).
Back to the Zoom recording. When I look back at the delay, Crone is so big I press ‘play’ over and over because I’m sure the recording is stuck. I talk to his assistant Cambria. “Have you ever seen him angry? Emphasis?” I ask.
“No,” she said. One of his quotes comes to mind. “When you live from a place of freedom, life tends to flow in the most harmonious way.”
petercrone.com