Episode 81 – Bek Smith | Mental Fitness Expert

In this episode I chat with Bek Smith, founder of Smith and Wellness, speaker and subject matter expert in health and wellbeing. Bek has a background in psychology, spent ten years working as a physiotherapist, is a group fitness instructor of 17 years and was sponsored by Reebok for 5 years in her role as a dance program presenter. She was also the inaugural Lead Trainer for the Wellbeing and Resilience Centre at the South Australian Health and Medical Research Institute, and in 2019 did a TEDx talk on the importance of mental fitness.

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Transcript

Murray Guest  00:02

Bek, welcome to the podcast on a hot summer’s day. No, it’s still spring. Hot spring day in 2020. Summer starts in December, right?

Bek Smith  00:13

Indeed, yes

Murray Guest  00:15

It feels like summer, doesn’t it?

Bek Smith  00:16

It very much does. And I’m really appreciative on this warm day to be sharing some warmth with you. Oh, that’s

Murray Guest  00:22

the nicest thing to say to start a chat. Thank you. I’m looking forward to diving deep into mental wellbeing, mental resilience, mental fitness. How’s your week been? Because you have interesting things in Adelaide with lockdowns and non lock downs and all that

Bek Smith  00:44

Oh my gosh, I would say that my week has been positive. And it has given me cause to be optimistic. And it has also been really fluctuating. So yes, we went into lockdown for what was meant to be six days. And then we were told, after three days now it’s okay, we’re going back to easing restrictions again. And, you know, all the complications that came with that for many businesses, didn’t impact me directly. But I did notice that, interestingly, going into lockdown was not as difficult for me as coming out of it again, when they said we’re easing restrictions. I was like, I’m not ready. I was so mentally prepared to be in my house for the next three days. What do you mean, I have to go back to the world?

Murray Guest  01:29

I just bought all this pasta and toilet paper. What’s going on?

Bek Smith  01:32

What am I gonna do with everything in the fridge?

Murray Guest  01:38

Yeah. Do you analyze or assess yourself based on what you know, as that stuff happens?

Bek Smith  01:47

Very much so. And sometimes I feel like I’m over-analytical of myself, because of the nature of the work that I do. And, but I think that preceded the work that I do as well, I was always quite self reflective. And as a child, I wasn’t very social. So I spent a lot of time on my own. And I think that lends itself toward me being quite self reflective, and overly analytical. And that actually made me interested in studying psychology. So then when I go to university, you know, one of the fields and one of the parts that I took was to study psychology so I could get more of an understanding about myself. And I guess that internal reflecting hasn’t really stopped.

Murray Guest  02:31

Got you. And as you were going through that reflective process of coming out of lockdown, did you get to any breakthrough moment of what was going on as to how you’re feeling? Yeah,

Bek Smith  02:43

great question. I think it was, for me, the best insight was that I had a societally permitted few days to just stop and to stop the activity. And then when that got taken away, again, it felt like the permission to stop was removed. And so I sat with that and went ha, actually, the only permission that I need is my own permission to stop and to relax. And so the insight for me has been in, oh, maybe I do need to put the brakes on a little bit more than I have been recently and give myself that permission to take more time out without being enforced upon me.

Murray Guest  03:29

Yeah, it’s like, sometimes we need that permission to do something. But let’s give ourselves our own permission. And I know one thing we’re going to talk about is self care. And something I’ve learned over the years, I can’t remember who said it first, but self care isn’t selfish. Yeah. But like when you’ve said, okay, you need to stop, we’re going to stop for six days. This is what the government saying, Oh, okay. So I’m going to look after myself. I’m going to slow down. But how do we bring that into our day to day approach and behaviors?

Bek Smith  04:00

Yeah, absolutely. And there’s so much programming that I know that I have to stay productive and to stay busy. And that’s something that I’ve been consciously aware of for about 10 years before that the programming was there. And I was just kind of working to it without being aware of it. But the last 10 years, I’ve been making more of an effort to drop the attachment to being busy. And when I read some of Brene Brown’s work around busyness as a status symbol, and productivity as self worth, really hit me in the field, I was like, Oh my god, she can see inside my soul. Ever since reading that work, I have been more and more conscious of giving myself those permissions to slow down. However, my default is still to go back to busy and productive and I’m just continuing to work with that default pattern and trying to bring In a little bit more self compassion. And as you said, a little bit more self care over time.

Murray Guest  05:05

I was talking to my wife the other day, and I said, I’ve got a few emails to send. She goes, do you know how often you say that? Oh, okay. Let me just check in on that. Yeah, there’s this status of I’ve got a few emails to send. I thought, okay, there’s, there’s a pattern there that I’ve got myself into.

Bek Smith  05:23

And how useful is it to have other people, they’re reflecting back to you and showing that mirror too?

Murray Guest  05:29

I said, I can’t hear you. I’ve got to send these emails. No.

Bek Smith  05:35

I can’t possibly I’ve got important things to do. Because I’m important, and I need to go send important emails. Yeah,

Murray Guest  05:40

yeah. As I bash on the keyboard, yeah. I’m getting better at asking myself the question, is this the most valuable use of my time right now? Can this be sent tomorrow? And again, it’s rewiring my brain after using corporate roles. And but I’m still, as a human, I’m getting better at it. But I slip up and also back into the I need to be busy and serving and doing stuff.

Bek Smith  06:07

Yeah. It’s very interesting, though. I talk a lot about balance and trying to find the balance between different things, because it’s no use shutting off from everything. And it’s no use being completely engaged in everything all the time, you know, you need to have that right balance. So I love that question that you’ve just asked about, ‘is this the most valuable use of my time right now?’ Because sometimes, the best thing that you can do for your self care is to unplug and switch off. But sometimes the best thing you can do for your self care is to plug in and do those things, because they’re going to give you a sense of fulfillment. And so it’s just about what’s the most valuable thing right now? It’s a great reflection question.

Murray Guest  06:48

Yeah. And I had four chunks of work I need to get done this week. Each one was only about 20 minutes. And because I didn’t do them early on the week, I could feel the emotional baggage building on those because I kept on putting them off. And then when I stopped to get one done, I was like, Okay, I feel a bit better. Now I can do the next one. Yeah, that’s such a great insight that you’ve brought to the conversation around self care. Sometimes we just need to, to get it done. Other times, we need to tune out but actually being aware of where we’re investing our time.

Bek Smith  07:20

Yeah, definitely self care might be doing that piece of work for 20 minutes, not stepping out to have a massage, right?

Murray Guest  07:28

Yes, yes. Okay. So help me understand this mesh, this integration of psychology, and being a physiotherapist, how did you get to that place? And, why that?

Bek Smith  07:43

Yeah, sure. So to explain that, we’ll take a little bit of a journey back to my teenage years, and I was trying to make that decision about what to study at university. And because I had that self reflective nature, paired with some experiences of mental illness from a young person, I was really attracted to psychology because I wanted to understand more about myself. And in studying psychology, I actually decided that I was not in an emotional place to be able to help other people. So I got three years into my study pathway. And when I can’t go forward with clinical psychology, I’m just not in the most, you know, robust place for myself. So I actually diverted to a research career. And I left after three years of study after finishing my bachelor’s degree, and I went into research psychology. And that was wonderful because I got to study communication, and I got to work in a setting where I learned a lot. However, then I got really bored of sitting at a desk. And research psychology is a lot of number crunching, and a lot of report writing, and actually not a lot of interacting with people. So that year for me was really valuable in learning new things. And one of the things that I learned was that I would like to be more people oriented than that. So I decided to go back to university and study physiotherapy instead, and found out that there was a graduate entry pathway that I could take where I wouldn’t have to start the whole four year physiotherapy degree from scratch, but I could actually take some of what I’d studied in my undergraduate bachelor’s degree and apply that so I could finish the masters of physiotherapy in two years. And so then I branched off into clinical work and never intended to go into private practice. I always wanted to be in a hospital setting because I felt that that’s where I could make most difference. But I landed in this private practice job and loved it, loved it, and was there for 10 years. And funnily enough, one of the things that kept coming up in my physical therapy work treating my clients was all of their emotional baggage. It’s amazing what happens when as a therapist, you lay your hands on somebody, there is a barrier that comes down. And I don’t know how many patients of mine said to me, oh my god, I haven’t even told my psychologist this, but bla bla bla bla bla. And then I was like, I’m doing this counseling work that I never intended to. And I actually didn’t feel like I was fully qualified to do it, either. So, in 2016, I circled back to psychology again, and studied deployment of positive psychology and well being. And that lit me up like you wouldn’t believe. Because all of a sudden, I had found this field of positive psychology, which is about building on our strengths, which I know you do a lot of work in. And looking at how we can live our best lives, not just how can we recover from difficulties and trauma, but how can we actually thrive and flourish in our lives. And I feel like that was the missing piece that I had actually been looking for when I had been studying at an undergraduate level. So since then, my intention was to take that Diploma of positive psychology and wellbeing and integrate it into my physiotherapy practice. But then an opportunity came up to work as a lead trainer in a wellbeing organization. And I unexpectedly ended up taking this leap into public speaking, education and training and so long physiotherapy. So there was a little period of integration there of the psychology with the physiotherapy. But now it’s diversified into just a completely new career path for me.

Murray Guest  11:47

Yeah, and I can relate from similar journey around discovering strengths and the strengths based approach and impact that’s made on me and the people I work with, and the link between strengths and positive psychology. So I hear you, and I, high five, you.  I’m wondering though, when you reflect back on the 10 years of physiotherapy, what were some of the things that you now leverage and reflect on that’s really helped you and what you do now,

Bek Smith  12:22

I think a lot of the questioning, you know, the lines of inquiry with my patients, and the non judgmental approach that I took to my clinical practice. So whereas some physiotherapists that I worked alongside, would freak out a little bit, if there was a patient with complex conditions, you know, if they were presenting with a chronic pain presentation that was wrapped up in mental illness, or there were a lot of what we call yellow flags, where there were social behavioral issues that were compounding their pain presentation, those visitors would often hand ball the patient to me, “Bek’s really good with these kind of complex presentations” when there’s a lot of emotional baggage. And I would just always take a very open line of inquiry for those people, you know, and I would probably ask them questions that other physiotherapists weren’t brave enough to ask explicitly around, you know, their emotional state or their mental state. And I wouldn’t offer solutions, but I would just ask questions and open up conversations. And then in many instances, I was able to steer them towards seeing a counselor or a psychologist that they hadn’t been willing to before. So I think it’s that line of inquiry in the openness that I use that I still leverage from now.

Murray Guest  13:44

Yeah, gotcha. And what I’m also hearing there is knowing where your lane is, and when you refer and don’t refer?

Bek Smith  13:53

Yes, absolutely. And in some instances, people come in, and their pain presentation is compounded by loneliness. And, you know, in those instances where people have got very limited social connections, I try to steer them toward engaging in Pilates classes. And we had a thriving Pilates community in our clinic where because all these people would come together, and they’d make friends and they do their Pilates class, then go and catch up for coffee afterwards. So sometimes just staring in that direction was really useful. And more recently, I’ve come across the terminology around social prescribing, which I read about in some of Johann Hari’s work, they’re starting to do that more in Europe and in the UK, where doctors will socially prescribe community groups to people. Because the loneliness factor is so high, and such a contributor to depression for many people.

Murray Guest  14:46

And I was gonna just jump in and say and 2020 has highlighted that even more.

Bek Smith  14:53

Absolutely. And at the positive side of that is that it’s brought it more to the forefront of our attention, and I think that we now see the importance of social connection in a renewed way. So I’m hopeful that we can start to leverage from that understanding. 

Murray Guest  15:09

I’m wondering also just around when you were practicing and with what you do now, how are you aware and what tips you could possibly share around creating an environment, an environment where people open up, where you create that level of trust, and Brene Brown obviously talks about that pair of trust and vulnerability. But what do you know, really creates an environment where someone is going to open up to you when you ask those questions.

Bek Smith  15:34

I think it’s a combination of different things. One of them is body language, it will be being able to face the person but in a non confrontational way. So I found that I often used to sit facing my client, but on a slight angle, and leaning toward them, rather than sitting back and looking like I was retreating, giving them eye contact, but not staring at them, either. Allowing space in the conversation, which is so important, because I think when you’re having conversations around things that are emotionally heavy, your nervousness can sometimes make you want to fill the space. And so one of the skills that I learned was just being able to leave some silence, especially when it looks like somebody is pondering or trying to come to a conclusion or find an answer. And, again, just being non judgmental, and trying not to anticipate what you’re going to say next. But just letting things emerge, not trying to fix the problem, but allowing the problem to emerge. So that then it’s out on the table, and both people can then discuss it.

Murray Guest  16:43

Yeah, there’s something that’s sticking with me there too, about not trying to fix somebody, but partner with them to potentially solve a problem or to achieve a goal. But I’m not trying to fix you. I’m not making you wrong. So even before your work in positive psychology, I’m hearing that was just part of who you were in your approach back then as well.

Bek Smith  17:05

Yeah, it was, and it was helpful earlier on, I think it was around 2012. I did some study in coaching. So I went and did a wellness coaching certificate. And that strengthened some of that natural tendency toward inquiry for me. And it helped me to take those lines of questioning with people in a in a more skillful way.

Murray Guest  17:31

Yeah, I’m loving those tips that you just shared, because I think whilst you may not be a practitioner, or a coach, or a leader, but they’re just great tips for anyone that wants to really show up in a way that’s really present for someone else.

Bek Smith  17:48

Yeah, whether that be in a professional context, or just with your mates.

Murray Guest  17:51

Yeah. Tell me what’s the difference between mental health and mental fitness.

Bek Smith  17:59

For me, the analogy that I use is to come back to the body and to consider a healthy body and a fit body. A healthy body is something that we might do with a little bit of input and consciousness and awareness. So in order to be healthy, we might be aware of eating right, we might be aware of exercising, we might be aware of staying hydrated enough and getting enough sleep. And for some people, there can be a little bit of effort involved in staying healthy. For some people, they seem to be naturally gifted with a healthy body. And they just seem to be able to do anything, eat anything, not look after themselves, and they their blood pressure stays great, their cholesterol stays great. Those people who tend to smoke for decades and turn out to be fine. And so health I feel can be hit or miss. Yeah, you can be lucky to be in good health, you can be unlucky to be in bad health. Sometimes it takes more effort, sometimes it doesn’t take a lot of effort at all. Whereas with a fitness approach, there is always effort involved in fitness, there is always something deliberate, that you’re doing. And it’s the same with mental health, some of us are lucky enough to have a good foundation of mental health that potentially some of us might take for granted. Others are unlucky to not have great mental health. And there have been lots of contributing factors around that just like physical health, but to be mentally fit, we need to take deliberate action. And just like with our bodies, the more deliberate action we take to make ourselves fitter, the more likely we are to also be healthy along the way. And it doesn’t mean that we’re not going to occasionally get sick, right? So the fittest healthiest person will still come down with a cold or a virus sometimes. But the fitter we are, the less likely we are to be struck down by illness. So For me, that’s the difference between health and fitness. It’s just taking it to that next level of deliberate action.

Murray Guest  20:06

Yeah, I’m also thinking about the ongoing investment. So if I think about an athlete and their fitness that’s like, yeah, I’m fit for the season. I’ve done my preseason training, I’m done. No, there’s an ongoing investment throughout the season, throughout the year throughout their life. And that’s what I would add, tell me if I’m wrong, I’m thinking about, okay, how do we continue that investment, that growth mindset around my mental fitness?

Bek Smith  20:34

Absolutely. And there’s the question – do I want to maintain the fitness that I have, or do I want to grow and progress the fitness that I have, what level do I want to be at with my mental fitness. And that is also going to depend on what challenges you’re required to face, so if you decide that you want to go from one sport to another, you might need to change your fitness regime. And if you decide that you want to start to lift heavier weights, you’re going to have to start to challenge yourself a little bit more. So it very much depends on what you want out of your life. But I think that it definitely lends itself to conversations when we’re talking about mental fitness around what do you want? And definitely, what kind of investment do you need to make to get there?

Murray Guest  21:17

And back in 2019, you did a TED talk on the importance of mental fitness?

Bek Smith  21:23

I did.

Murray Guest  21:25

Before we jump into the actual content, tell me about what it was like to do a TED talk.

Bek Smith  21:34

Yeah, it was so bizarre. Because over the past three years that I’ve been doing, speaking, a lot of my speaking is a bit more free flow. And I tend to think about beforehand what I want to say. And so when I’m going into a presentation of some sort, I’ll often have dot points in my mind of these are the three or the five key points that I want to make. And the way that I express that I’m just going to get there and it’s going to flow, and it’ll come out however it comes out. But as long as I cover those key points whereas with a TEDx talk, we were required to write out our script word for word, and then practice that verbatim over and over and over again, until we had it exactly right. Then on the day, you just hope that it’s all going to come out the way you’ve practiced. And in my case, it didn’t. If you watch the TEDx talk, you might go, Oh, yeah, that all flowed fine. But behind the scenes, what was happening is I got about five minutes in and realized that I’d forgotten this huge chunk. And it had just went. And so I’m still talking and going, Oh, my God, I forgot that big chunk. Do I just chuck it in now? Will it make sense if I say it now?

Murray Guest  22:51

Your impression of a duck swimming on water was fantastic.

Bek Smith  22:53

I walked out of there, walked off the stage. And the only thing I could think about was did it even make sense. So I didn’t get to see the recording until it went live on YouTube. And so I had no idea that it would even make sense. And when I watched it back, I was like, Ah, okay, you can actually comprehend what I’m trying to say, good. It was not what I intended.

Murray Guest  23:23

And for anyone that isn’t aware, the TEDx process has the 10 commandments, don’t they? Which is like the 10 things you are not to do when you’re on stage type of thing.

Bek Smith  23:33

Yeah, pretty much and the things that they were coaching us to do, because we had a speaking coach that worked alongside us with the build up process to help us both and write our content and in practice, how to deliver it. And there was a whole bunch of stagecraft around that that I had not been privy to before. So things like instead of gesturing with, you know, hand gestures that you would normally make in conversation, you have to make them three times bigger. And if you’re going, you know, 1-2-3, you have to project and be a lot more animated than I’m used to. So it felt very unnatural. But when you do watch it back on camera, you go, Ah, that actually, I didn’t look as big as I felt. Yeah. And it’s just such such a bizarre process, but one that I learned a lot from, and I’m really grateful for.

Murray Guest  24:28

Yeah, well, I’ve heard about 20% more. But what you’re saying maybe it was 40%, right?

Bek Smith  24:37

Yeah, everything goes big.

Murray Guest  24:39

Yeah. I love what you talk about in your TEDx talk about bringing this mental fitness and physical fitness together. So this dream you have about when people go and get something looked at in their body or the physical body, that there’s those conversations that you and I have been talking about that are also happening from a practitioner or a coach, whoever it might be a trainer, around the emotional and the mental side. How do we get to that place? Do you reckon?

Bek Smith  25:11

Yeah, it’s gonna be a journey. First of all, thanks for watching the TEDx talk. I think that that perspective for me came from my work in the fitness industry as well. So I’ve been teaching group exercise for a long time, as you mentioned in the introduction, and I’ve noticed that even though I haven’t worked as a personal trainer, I have a lot of personal trainer friends. And they say similar things to me, like I was experiencing as a physiotherapist, that they get a lot of clients who will offload things emotionally onto them. And in their personal trainer role, they don’t feel like they have the capability to be able to coach their clients with what they need. And so the marriage between physical fitness and mental fitness for me was really born out of my experiences as a physio as well as listening to those experiences of personal trainers and feeling as though there is such a gap, when we’re talking about our health practitioners and our fitness providers in what we are able to provide for clients. And because I had done that coaching qualification, I started to think, my gosh, even if everybody just did a little bit of extra wellbeing coaching, and was able to then not solve problems for their clients, but lead them through that process of inquiry about, oh, what could my next step be? That would be so valuable. And then the next step after that is, well, what if we actually had some practical skills and tools that we could offer clients, which doesn’t fall into the scope of psychotherapy, however, stays within our lane, and helps us to help those clients more. And those things might simply be around, you know, some of the work that you do in asking them about their strengths, and how they can apply that to their fitness? Or to their recovery process, their rehabilitation? Asking people, instead of what’s wrong with your body at the moment, what do you want to fix? Asking them, what’s going right in your body? What do you appreciate? What are you grateful for in your body, and just getting people to think a little bit differently. And I don’t think that we need to be sitting on a psychologist couch in order to give people some of those skills and tools that they need to just think a little bit differently.

Murray Guest  27:35

And I’m thinking about how with all good intent, some people might be you know, ‘When all you’ve got is a hammer, everything looks like a nail’. So people come to your your class and you go, we’re going to do this program, and we’re going to force this out, we’re going to do this program, we’re going to do that program. But actually maybe based on today’s mental health or mental fitness of somebody, we actually need to do something a bit different, maybe we need to modify that, maybe we need to work with them a little bit differently, based on where we’re at today. Because where we’re at today might be totally different from where they were last week.

Bek Smith  28:13

Yeah, absolutely. And we can carry so many assumptions that what was okay last week is still okay this week. And just because I’m able to do it somebody else will be able to do it. And from a group fitness perspective, when I’m teaching classes, which are around, most of the stuff that I teach is dance based or yoga based. And I will always offer two or three variations of moves, because I don’t want to make an assumption about the ability of my client that day, let alone in general. And my classes have always been quite full of a range of diverse people, different ages, different genders, different ability levels. And it’s because I’m quite inclusive in the way that I teach. So if you can’t do it this way, just do it this way instead. And I encourage people to be non judgmental about themselves and to be compassionate about themselves and to really listen to their body. So I’ve always blended those kind of internal reflection processes into our physical practice, because I think it’s really important to marry the two together.

Murray Guest  29:24

Yeah, I heard about some research a few years ago, and I wish I could reference it correctly. But the research was around, if you have people do exercise that they love, they’ll actually have a better improvement, they’ll achieve better results than if you get someone to do exercise that they actually don’t like doing. So I’m not a swimmer. I can swim, but if you asked me to go and do laps of the pool, I’m just not going to get the results of someone else that loves swimming. And so I’m wondering what your perspective is there around that link between our emotional or mental perspective of the exercise and the exercise that we do.

Bek Smith  30:12

The connection is just enormous. And I’ve always encouraged people to explore different forms of physical exercise to find what works for them, and not just throw the baby out with the bathwater. So if they don’t like running, don’t give up on exercise altogether. If you don’t like that exercise at the gym, don’t give up on it altogether. But just keep experimenting until you find what’s right for you. Maybe it’s roller skating, maybe it’s weightlifting, maybe it is chasing your dog around the yard, or whatever it is, find what brings you joy. I think that the more I have followed my joy in my life, the more it has taken me to places that are not only making me happy, but making me more productive and making me more useful for other people as well.

Murray Guest  30:58

I love the link here to what brings you joy and what brought you joy as a child. And how can you do a version of that now? For me, when I ride my mountain bike, I’m thinking I’ve got my flannel shirt on my tracksuit pants, and I’m with the guys in the bush and I’m 12 years old. And on school holidays. And sometimes I can smell something when I’m riding my bike. I’m like, back there. And that brings me that joy. Where swimming takes me back to swimming lessons, of being screamed at with a kickboard. I’m like, Oh, no, no thanks. So what’s that thing that brought you joy when you were young? And how can you do a version of that now?

Bek Smith  31:45

Gosh, I love that. That’s something for everybody who’s listening to this to really consider and such a great takeaway.

Murray Guest  31:51

Yeah, maybe it’s go climb a tree?

Bek Smith  31:53

Yeah, yep. Go play with some hula hoops. See where that takes you.

Murray Guest  31:59

Not very far, my hips aren’t that flexible.

Bek Smith  32:03

I took up rollerblading again. And that’s brought me so much joy. I’m so terrible at it. And I feel like a baby giraffe and so uncoordinated. But I am just having so much fun with it and meeting new people. And yeah, I’ve been exercising at the gym for you know, two decades. But just adding another little string to my exercise bow has been so much fun.

Murray Guest  32:28

And you’re using different muscles.

Bek Smith  32:30

Yeah, absolutely. And different social connections, there was a very interesting opportunity we had at the gym that I work at this year, when we were returning from the COVID lockdown in South Australia, where people had to book in for classes and book in for gym visits. With gym visits meaning going to exercise independently on the treadmill, or do weights or whatever. And the uptake of individual gym visits versus the uptake of group fitness classes was extraordinarily different. So with people coming back, we had about 24% uptake of individual gym visits, versus 86% saturation of group fitness classes.

Murray Guest  33:16

Wow.

Bek Smith  33:16

And I think that’s because of the social connection that gets created when you’re exercising with others. And that’s what people were missing and wanting to come back to. So one of my big tips around exercising mentally, or exercising physically, is to also ask yourself, How can I incorporate others into this journey with me? Because the social accountability can be really powerful but the social enjoyment can be really powerful, too.

Murray Guest  33:42

Yeah. And we’re pack animals aren’t we? 

Bek Smith  33:47

Yep, absolutely. And I’m not going to get out of bed at six in the morning on my own. But if my friend Maria is going to come and join me, yeah, well, I got to get up because I don’t want to disappoint Maria. So we often do things to you know, keep playing along with the pack.

Murray Guest  34:01

Yeah, I totally agree. Now just to help bring together some of your insights, and to help my listeners around some of those tips to really develop that mental fitness. You shared a few things already, but what would you say are some of those key things that people can do to build that mental fitness?

Bek Smith  34:22

I think one tip comes back to my point around balance that I mentioned before, you know, so many things come back to balance for me. And with mental fitness training, it’s important to have a variety of strategies. The same as though we might cross train with our body. If you are only doing heavy weight lifting for one muscle group, you will end up creating an imbalance in your body. And if you’re not stretching, and if you’re not exercising other parts of your body and in other ways, then you’re going to lead to an injury or a dysfunction. So there are approaches within psychology, like cognitive behavioral techniques, for instance, that if you only work with cognitive behavioral techniques and nothing else, you might end up becoming quite rigid in only working with those techniques. So rather than just thinking about your thinking, maybe diversify and also use other mental fitness strategies like mindfulness, or cultivating positive emotion, or practicing stillness, practicing authenticity, and have a range of different mental fitness exercises that you do so that instead of only training for mental strength, you’re also training for your mental flexibility and agility and your mental endurance as well.

Murray Guest  35:37

Oh, I like that so much. Because I’m just thinking about how that looks in my life and the people I work with. And I think quite often, we can go down the rabbit hole of our I need to go and do a whole program of ‘blah’ to invest in my mental fitness and wellbeing but let’s try a few things and keep that balance going. So something that’s worked strongly for me is active meditation.

Bek Smith  36:15

Oh, I like it. Tell me more about that?

Murray Guest  36:18

Well, I used to think I had to go and sit in the forest with my legs crossed and harm my hands in a perfect pose and recite something. And I realized that that’s not what it’s about. That, by doing different tasks, I can get into that zone. I realize I’m quite meditative. And I can feel like my breathing comes back under control, I’m more focused, and my energy levels are better, my hormones are balanced out, and I’m much more relaxed and less stressed doing different techniques. And to be honest, it might be sweeping the floor slowly, mindfully, or, you know, taking the clothes off the line – I’m not going to rush and rip them off, I’m just going to slowly take them off, and take that time out. And definitely riding my mountain bike, I can get like that if there’s a trail I know where the risks are, I can feel like I’m resetting.

Bek Smith  37:14

Absolutely. I love that you’ve mentioned that because I was speaking with somebody this week around stillness and mindfulness. And she was saying, I really struggle with it. You know, she has a complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. And she said, sitting in stillness is excruciating. For me, it just brings so much up that I can’t handle and we were talking about exercise, physical exercise as a form of meditation. And because I know her through the gym, I said, What about movement? You know, are you able to get into the zone through exercise, and she was like, Oh, that’s the only way I can do it. So I will do more of that. If that’s something that you love, it’s bringing you joy, it’s helping you to clear your mind. Your body may be moving, but your mind is more still. And so you’re getting that balance, which is great.

Murray Guest  38:03

Yeah. And again, I think that leads to your strengths based approach or positive psychology approach, which actually helps tap into what works best for the individual.

Bek Smith  38:14

Yeah, because there is no recipe that’s going to suit everybody. Just like there is no recipe of food that you can make that is going to please everybody’s palate. There is no mental fitness recipe, or physical fitness recipe that’s going to suit everybody in every mind.

Murray Guest  38:31

And not everybody likes coriander. 

Bek Smith  38:33

I know.

Murray Guest  38:35

But they should. 

Bek Smith  38:36

I can’t stand coriander

Murray Guest  38:40

We have a problem now. I actually heard there’s a genetic disposition where people can taste coriander like soap. But it tastes fantastic. Honestly.

Bek Smith  38:58

I had a bad experience with a food poisoning dish with coriander, I just haven’t come back from it

Murray Guest  39:07

Yeah. Mine’s bourbon from when I was about 15. But that’s a different story.

Bek Smith  39:14

Some of these things we need to rewire and some of them can just be left well alone. 

Murray Guest  39:18

That one’s staying there. I don’t need that one at all. Bek, thank you so much for your time. It has been awesome. You are doing some amazing work. It’s been so great to connect and share your insights and your journey. And I’ve got a couple of quick questions to ask you to help us wrap up. One question is, what’s your vision for the future?

Bek Smith  39:41

My vision for the future is one where people take much more deliberate action with their mental health and one where we are embracing as a society, preventive mental health strategies, rather than waiting until we get in crisis before we do something about our psychological wellbeing.

Murray Guest  39:59

Now, this one I haven’t prepped you with. This next question, if you could hire a billboard, and on that billboard has a message and everyone in the world – all 7 billion – drive past and they see that message. You can hire that billboard for a while. What is your message on the Billboard?

Bek Smith  40:23

I think my message would have to be a question. And it would just be something to stimulate people to think a little bit more deeply around looking after themselves and others. So it might be something around, Who are you looking after today? Because I think we need to consider what we’re giving, as well as what we’re taking in this world. And we also need to think, you know, am I looking after myself? Do I need to look after somebody else today to really get over this epidemic of loneliness and disconnection that we have? Yes, that’s the first thing that comes to mind. Tomorrow, it could be different. 

Murray Guest  41:03

We can update the billboard every week. That’s okay.

Bek Smith  41:06

Oh, that’s exciting, I think come up with a whole list.

Murray Guest  41:12

Thank you so much. And for people to find more about you, I’ll make sure in the show notes is a link to your LinkedIn profile. I know you share some amazing stuff on LinkedIn. And also check out Smith and Wellness, your website, which has got lots of cool stuff. And to finish this up, tell me what is your definition of inspired energy today?

Bek Smith  41:35

A definition of inspired energy is around looking at, if you break down the word spire, a spire is a pinnacle, and inspire means to breathe in or take in. And people have often spoken about in ye olde days around inspire being taking in spirit or taking in higher knowledge. So my definition around inspired energy is around cultivating the energy or cultivating the momentum that nourishes our highest being. And that could be our highest knowledge, our highest physical presence, our highest spiritual presence. But it’s about that taking in to keep generating that energy and keep generating that momentum to help us be our best selves. 

Murray Guest  42:21

Oh, I love that. I love that so much. And I love your link to ye oldie times whenever it was as well.

Bek Smith  42:30

Whenever that was…

Murray Guest  42:33

Thank you so much for all your wisdom and knowledge and energy today. It is been such a privilege to spend some time with you. Thank you so much.

Bek Smith  42:42

Thank you, Murray. I really appreciate your generosity of time and your generosity of knowledge sharing as well and giving myself and all the other speakers that you’ve had on your show this platform to share a little bit of insight.

Murray Guest  42:53

I really appreciate the chance I get to meet lots of awesome people like you, wishing you all the best for the rest of 2020 and an amazing and fulfilling 2021.

Bek Smith  43:04

Thank you and to you and to everybody listening and thanks. You take care of yourselves and each other. Bye bye.

Episode 78 – Alessandra Edwards | Performance & Wellbeing expert for CEOs

In this episode, I chat with Alessandra Edwards. Alessandra is a high performance and wellbeing expert, coach and trainer. Alessandra is passionate about helping leaders understand their own genetic limits so they can achieve their maximum potential and reach exceptional levels of physical and mental performance.

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Transcript

Murray Guest  00:01

Alessandra, thank you for your time today. And welcome to the podcast. So looking forward to talking to you about the unique perspective that you bring to high performance. How’s your week been?

Alessandra Edwards  00:17

This week has actually been fantastic. As you know, I live in Melbourne. And about a week ago, we had this fantastic announcement that we got the out of jail free card. And so it’s been a busy week. But just having this renewed freedom has really brought about incredible sense of energy, momentum, and appetite for really going out and experiencing life again.

Murray Guest  00:46

Yeah, I’ve seen some footage on the news. And I’ve heard about on the radio about some of the, I guess, embracing back some of that freedom, which people have been needing. What’s it been like, living in Melbourne these last three months?

Alessandra Edwards  01:04

Yeah, it’s really interesting question. And I wish I could summarize it for all the other Melbournians, so I will just stick to what the experience has been for me and my family and some of my clients. To begin with, it was a little bit of a rollercoaster, the initial phases were really intense, and obviously, very much driven by a lot of fear of the unknown, what’s going to happen, personal safety. I have very close friends of mine who actually lost relatives. So there was this very much unknown quantity. And it really felt like, Okay, this is the right thing, let’s all go in, and let’s all rally, as we then re-experienced a little bit of freedom, and then went straight back into a much harsher lockdown. The experience that I had with my family was that the fear was no longer there. And so we’d already had the experience of being in lockdown with our kids, learning new routines, my husband runs his business as well. So negotiating who gets the office for the day, who’s on call for the children, donning the teacher’s hat, no longer having access to what we take for granted, or just being able to go out. So just the mental restriction of just having one hour, or one hour a day, even though some days, we wouldn’t leave the house, you know, back to back meetings and calls. But just having that potential for freedom, mentally, was quite a challenge initially. And then, you know, as the days went by, and we were in lockdown for basically four months, what I found, which really surprised me was that, especially towards the end of the last month, certain revelations came through. For me and my husband, they actually made us realize, you know, once we finally came out that there was a lot of good stuff that came out. And I think it’s really relevant for the conversations I have with my clients around really managing time in terms of aligning that to our purpose, and what’s important in life. And I wish I could say I’m perfect at that, I’m sort of the queen of high performance, and my life is perfect. And I always manage time with family and friends. But the reality is that that’s not true. And suddenly, I have more tools and awareness, perhaps that me and my clients have. But if you get sucked into that vortex, and if someone had actually said, you know, no stop, you’ll actually have to stop and take stock of what’s important. And it really struck me at some point that I literally looked around, and there was a sense of Yeah but I can’t see my friends, and I can’t do this. And then just realize, yeah, but everyone, and anything that’s actually really important to me, in my life, are within these four walls right now. And that they’re here, they’re safe. I’ve had an incredible evolution of relationship with my teenage daughter, that I couldn’t put a price on that. And obviously, as I mentioned to you earlier, I feel incredibly privileged that I don’t work in an industry that was really destroyed. So it’s easier to look at the higher self evolution. The survival aspect, in terms of Maslow’s hierarchy, right? We’ve got the food, money in the bank, and we’ve got safety, health safety. So, I can’t say it’s been the same for everyone, but that that was an incredible realization, and I am so grateful to have been able to have this be part of this huge psychological human experience.

Murray Guest  04:54

Yeah. Can I say I echo a lot of what you’re saying around that renewed perspective. My children and I felt like we got deeper connections through COVID. We went into lockdown, nowhere near the length of time in Melbourne. But we had that early on. And just doing things that we would not normally have done, some of those connections. I also remember watching my children work out in the backyard together, they normally go to the gym, but just working out and encouraging each other. And that wouldn’t have happened. My wife taught me to play backgammon, and we played every afternoon for like, two months. I’m still not as good as her. But it was just, you know, those things I think about and what you’re saying, I think we’re aligned here, is that renewed perspective around what’s important. And where do we invest our time to actually focus on those things that are most important.

Alessandra Edwards  05:46

And I think as well as the perspective, in terms of having a different way of looking at things, but also an increased level of awareness are really, truly and honestly taking a hard look at ourselves and go actually, you know, what, I was really trapped in a little bit of a hamster wheel. And I’m not sure that all of the choices that I made or the behaviors that I did, or the engagements I chose to say yes to, really served me at a very deep or high purpose level. Which is really the tenant of the philosophy that underpins the work that I do with my clients.

Murray Guest  06:28

Yeah. So just before we talk about that amazing work that you do, I’m going to just check in – what is one thing out of this process of the last four months that you are committing to doing in the future and keep doing?

Alessandra Edwards  06:44

At a very quick level, I would say, learning to have more space between committing myself, committing my time. Yeah, my mental IP and my service, and having more time, creating more space, in that moment of decision. So that’s a takeaway, practical tip. What sits behind this is actually a bigger commitment to aligning my why, with my what.

Murray Guest  07:21

Yeah, I love both of those. And I think as you’re talking through those, I’m thinking about what that means for me and how I’m doing that, I’m thinking about the power of the pause in some of those commitments and decisions. But, again, knowing our why and really linking the what we do back to that as an ongoing commitment. Yeah, I’d high five you if we could touch you know, like I agree totally. Now about this great work you do. And I know it’s about how science and nutrition affects our DNA and our optimal wellbeing and you help with high performance. But help me explain what you do even better than that to people that are listening.

Alessandra Edwards  08:05

I think that’s a that’s a great summary to get started. Perhaps I will just rewind a little bit to give a little bit of the premise of what genetics are in the context of high performance. I think that we tend to think of genetics still today as ‘what’s wrong with me? What’s wrong with my heritage?’ Yeah, there is there is something inside that might mean that at some point, I may develop some some kind of really bad disease.

Murray Guest  08:38

Yeah, yeah. Gotcha.

Alessandra Edwards  08:40

And there have been celebrities which have famously brought to the surface in the media on specific genetic mutations that have that brought on different kinds of cancers. So I think we tend to think of genetics as the scary aspect that lies beneath. And whilst we are incredibly curious, because as a species, we are very curious about introspection and the journey within and learning more and more about who we really are. So I really get that. The dark side of it, I think, is for most people is the fact that they want to see it, but they don’t really want to know. So I don’t do that. I look at what’s called genomic wellness. So if you think that we have about 25,000 genes, I mean, that’s a lot. That is really, truly a lot. And some of these genes interact with each other. And this is really still an emerging science. So within the next five years, there will be an explosion of research that will look at the full 25,000 genes. Not only that, but also how several hundreds of thousands of them interact with each other. Now, we’re still at a stage where we’re looking at you know, maybe 30 to 40 genes that are really relevant in terms of personal performance and wellbeing. And we look at interaction of a maximum of three. So that’s to give you the scope of where this is really an emerging science. So I look at these genes and in consultation with my clients, or leadership teams, we first of all work out, what is it that you’re trying to access? What is it? What is that special thing, that you feel that perhaps you have, or you’re good at right now. But you want to be really better at, you want to really increase this level of self mastery over. With the genetics, then we can actually look at what these character traits are. Okay, so just to give you an example, someone says, I know you’re all about energy, okay. And it’s different guises. So someone is interested in having more energy. Okay, so tell me, what kind of energy would you like to have? Is it more physical energy, more stamina? Or is it more mental staying power, or the sense of increasing your ability to learn so really ramping up to cognitive ability is energy in the sense of being mentally strong. So we can look at all these different facets. And then what’s really interesting is that the genes that give us this blueprint, that becomes us, I’m kind of static in the sense that, you know, at birth you’re given a toolkit, okay? So you get what you get, and you don’t get upset. And that’s your toolkit. But then, within that, obviously, how we look after the toolkit is going to have an impact on how we use the toolkit, is the toolkit all greased up and left outside to rust? Is it kind of constantly breaking down hard rocks, all of those kinds of things.

Murray Guest  11:58

Well, yeah, and I think back to the genes, you mentioned about that we understand now, and we are seeing the future about, we’ve got a toolkit that’s quite big, but we’re only playing with a couple of the tools at the top.

Alessandra Edwards  12:09

Absolutely, then we can actually intervene. So that’s what basically the genomic wellness does, it tells you this is your toolkit. And also in some of the bigger conversations, especially with more experienced senior executives are, Okay, I understand that you really coming to me about energy, and you want to have more energy, and maybe you’re not sleeping well. So this is impacting your energy, or maybe you have the kind of brain that just doesn’t stop thinking, impacting your ability to create that pause, okay, which then allows you to access a more grounded state so that you make the right decisions in the moment rather than a brain fog of you know, overwhelm.

Murray Guest  12:54

Can I ask just on that? Do you think people generally know where they want to improve? Or is there even a conversation about helping them understand that in the first place?

Alessandra Edwards  13:05

Absolutely. So that’s what sits behind. And it’s very individualized, some people have already developed a great level of depth in terms of their awareness. And so they’re very much aware of the why that sits behind what is the purpose. And so they’re very clear and concise in terms of saying, the reason I want more energy is because I actually want to create this amazing thing. Okay. So it’s not the energy per se, but some people are very much like, I’m exhausted. And I know that in my teams, there’s heaps of energy gaps. We’ve come out of COVID over the last five months, and I need people to be like, let’s go, let’s go people. Revenue has been impacted, I need people to have their energy needle move from 10% to 80%. They’re very different conversations. But ultimately, the genetic interpretation is the same. There are a number of foundational pillars that are going to be affecting how well polished and how sharp you tools are.

Murray Guest  14:20

Can I just say, as you’re talking through that I’m thinking about the clients I work with and different leaders, and how they try to get the most out of their teams. And again, and tell me if this is where you’re at, it’s like the whole understanding of the DNA of people at an individual level is adding to the conversation about building on to other leadership approaches and investing in people’s development to help them get there at a real individual level.

Alessandra Edwards  14:51

Absolutely, yes, spot on. You’ve described it really, really well. And that’s the work I do and often I work it as part of a of a team with other leadership coaches, that then we do genetic testing for the team. And we work out where the energy gaps are, where the mental stamina gaps are. And also we look at character traits, I know you do a lot of work around strengths, so if you like, it would be the genetic aspect that underlies the different strengths. And so just this week I’ve been working with a leadership team in Sydney. And what we found out by doing the genetic testing is that some people, genetically-wise, have all the markers for perfectionism. And what’s happening is that they’re exhausted right now, their business has pivoted a zillion times over the last six months, to really try and fit into new niches, right, they’re really moving the needle to really fill the gap, and get back on top. And so what we’re finding is that a couple of people in the interviews with these high perfectionist traits are also very tired. And they’re having to change how they do work on a regular basis, but the high level of perfectionism on a genetic level is really holding them back.

Murray Guest  16:15

Yeah, gotcha. Yeah, that makes sense. And I can see 2020 with COVID is probably highlighting this even more, as you’re saying that perfectionism, or that need to change rapidly, and how we are pivoting so much.

Alessandra Edwards  16:33

Yeah, absolutely. So it’s actually really, I’d say, for your listeners, even without doing genetic testing, this is something that you can observe for yourself. Because high pressure, high stress environments, always amplify the gaps, always. So you will have experienced over the last six months, an increase of the gap. And so if you were not aware of it prior to COVID, now you have a very clear indication of where the polishing, the patching up, the rebuilding needs to come in. And it’s really important to start on that work. Because once those gaps get amplified, and really, let’s face it, we’re kind of in and out of COVID. I mean, really, there’s no vaccine, there’s no end date in sight at the moment, we’re getting better at managing it. But we don’t know for sure. So I think that a realistic expectation and a positive expectation is to think okay, we’ve entered this marathon under new conditions, it’s a new landscape, I’ve got no idea how to tackle it. So we need to, as we go now, start patching up these gaps, because we might still be here in six months or 12 months. And so if you leave these gaps within, what will end up happening is that you’re just going to have these leaks. Right? So energy leaks, resilience, leaks, motivational leaks, and then what are you left with?

Murray Guest  18:05

Yeah, and I think, to be honest, if I think about all what’s going on in the world, right now, if we think about inequalities that have been getting raised, and we talk about climate change, we talk about politics, we talk COVID there’s just a lot, you know, I’m hearing the heaviness that people feel right now. And I think about their compassion that people are feeling and adding that to burnout. And I love that the way you’re describing this gets me thinking about how do I actually know myself more deeply at the individual level, so I can invest in me, because as you said, I mean to strengths, we’re all unique, we bring that uniqueness. So I’m just also mindful of a question that maybe some listeners are wondering, I know of 23andme, which talks about our DNA heritage – this is not what we’re talking about, is it?

Alessandra Edwards  18:59

No, this is not ancestry DNA. And so currently, and also in Australia, if you’re doing genetic testing by 23andme, the TGA (Therapeutic Goods association of Australia) had declared a few years ago that you would not allow for the full medical interpretation, which partly is also highly controversial, even in the US. So with 23andme or ancestry DNA, what you get is a report based on where’s your heritage. So, this is different, this is wellness testing that will look at a number of things and look at neurotransmitter production and break down, it will look at whether you are a fat burning machine or actually if you would benefit on an energy level and also in terms of waistline level, from adopting a more leaner, more plant based kind of diet. It looks at how our cells produce energy. So it’s very comprehensive, but it doesn’t look at your ancestry at all. So that’s a good thing to bring back.

Murray Guest  20:09

Yeah, just to help people understand that difference. And you mentioned leaders. So what are the type of people you work with to help them understand this.

Alessandra Edwards  20:19

So I work mostly with CEOs, and particularly male CEOs. And that’s not because it’s a personal choice, I think, unfortunately, it reflects still the gender disparity. So I probably work with 70% male CEOs versus 30%. female. And also I work with leadership teams, and management teams, and also work with a number of business owners. So generally, people who are really passionate about their work and work is an important part of their life and their life’s purpose. And they are prepared to make an investment, they understand that the body (and mind) is their ally to achieve their goals. And you know, the goals can be for like a smaller level, which are related to increasing revenue, increasing productivity, those kinds of things, right up to bigger goals, like what does my life mean? What is my purpose here? I want to be a CEO. And at the same time, I want to impact my community, I want to impact my country, I want to impact the bigger conversation at global level. And I know that I need a decade still, of me, my body working optimally, in order to continue doing this great work.

Murray Guest  21:49

Can I ask why this for you? Like, why do you do this work? Because I have talked about your degrees early in introduction, but tell me how did you get to where you are now and doing this amazing work?

Alessandra Edwards  22:05

I think, and tell me if I’m wrong here, but my experience of having lots of really great friends and colleagues in the coaching space is that we tend to be attracted to the level of knowledge or IP that actually is going to serve us. Have you found that?

Murray Guest  22:29

Yeah, I have, I think there’s a bit of our own journey we’re on when we’re doing the type of work that we do. So yeah, I hear you on that. And I think there’s something maybe it’s also DNA related as well, which connects with us at a cellular level that we really love to do. And we’re here to do.

Alessandra Edwards  22:46

Yeah. And so, for me, the journey started quite early on. Probably surprisingly, I was brought up in a household in Italy, my mum was French, that was so anti wellbeing like, it was chain smoking, chain drinking, workaholics, don’t even mention yoga – because it’s for people who are actually mentally deranged. So my mum had an encyclopedic knowledge about pharmaceuticals – medication – we had an incredible cabinet. And she used to actually remember having arguments with our GP in terms of how much he should prescribe. So what happened is that unfortunately, my father passed away when I was 12. So he was diagnosed with a very quick advancing brain tumor. And what happened is that it came out of nowhere so seemingly, he seemed very strong and then he was literally felled like a big old tree within the space of 10-12 months. And then a year later, my mother was diagnosed with breast cancer. And then eventually she died of lung cancer. So I became really interested in this when I moved to England to go to university and I started to be exposed, as you do when you go to uni, to lots of different ideas of people that at the time with my mindset, I thought were complete flakes and hippies. So literally, a friend dragged me kicking and screaming to yoga because I had some back pain and I just remember coming out of that class going, actually, I don’t think that this is all rubbish. I feel a lot better and so I feel like this initial curiosity came about and then I started to understand a little bit more about some of the behaviors that I witnessed in my house growing up and incredible levels of anxiety that my mother used to experience and the self medicating and starting to put dots together. After uni, I worked in a corporate setting, and I was very much through the highly driven Type A executive. So first one to get to the office, last one to leave. I still have memories of a couple of nights sleeping in the office. Can I say way before Elon Musk did.

Murray Guest  25:23

And before, we didn’t have a sleep pod. You know, you were on the floor… So when you talk to these CEOs, it’s like, I’ve been there. I know what it’s like.

Alessandra Edwards  25:35

Yeah, I’ve been there. And I had, you know, the classic story, massive burnout, the doctors could see it coming, but I just kept going, it even back then – I’m 47 so this is quite a while ago – but even back then, I told myself the same stories that I hear CEOs today in Australia say to me, such as we just have to get through this merger or I just have to get the team over this hump, or, you know, I just had to get to December or I just have to get past COVID.

Murray Guest  26:12

And there’s always a ‘just get to’, isn’t it? Like, it just continues and continues?

Alessandra Edwards  26:16

Yeah, it continues. And we feel justified, utilizing those excuses, because they give us permission to not go and look in the dirty cupboard, the hidden cupboard of all the stuff that needs to be dealt with. So that was the end basically, with the burnout, I went to seek specialists, online practitioners, blah, blah, blah. And I just did not get the results that I wanted. And so that’s where the interest in genetics fits. I retrained in health science, I specialize in Clinical Nutrition. And then that’s when the genetics then came in. And that’s what really helped me understand why specifically I had burnt out. Sure, it was a matter of not sleeping enough and play hard work hard kind of scenario, but why specifically, did burnout manifest in that way for me? What was it?

Murray Guest  27:20

Do you remember the moment? Did you have like a light bulb moment where you’re like, Oh, my God, I now get this.

Alessandra Edwards  27:29

It wasn’t like that. It was gradual, because genetics are complex, and you have to have a really good understanding of also the biochemistry behind it, because genes do give these instructions, which then are decoded, and then are encoded into biochemical pathways. And so it wasn’t, it was more of a gradual effect. But what I do remember was really increased awareness of this sense of efficacy, and self agency. And for me, this is really important part of the piece, when we’re talking about wellbeing for personal performance. This is not about just give me a list of supplements, or give me the latest diet, or let’s look at the latest blog by Tim Ferriss about the 10 habits, or the 10 most successful, productive leaders, this is not it. It’s really about understanding self very, very well from that genetic and then emotional perspective and biochemical perspective. And then understanding that you can be the leader of you.

Murray Guest  28:37

Yeah. And correct me if I’m wrong, but combining that with some intrinsic motivation, some deep motivation, through the data and understanding to then have that motivation around investing in self.

Alessandra Edwards  28:51

Okay, I love love love this question. The reason I love it, is that yes, and that’s our usual understanding of we need motivation for action and implementing behaviors. What happens then, though, when at a genetic level, one has very, very low levels of motivation producing neurotransmitters, what do we do then? Does it mean that only the ones that have you know, high dopamine for motivation can then progress on to accessing personal power? So this is when then this understanding of, if you like, how do I hack the system? What do I need to do to then crank up my motivation? And then how do I then maintain that level of consistency, because we know that even people who are highly driven, you know, the motivation, just like incentives, only works for a certain period of time. So my interest then is around the psychology of behavior. So one of my mentors is Professor BJ Fogg, who’s created the behavior lab at Stanford. So I have been training with him and continue to train with him to really understand then, okay so we do the genetics, and we increase a person’s motivation. How do we then design the best personalized strategy to implement these behaviors over time so that they become automatic?

Murray Guest  30:24

Yeah, okay. I can understand what you’re saying. So I’m thinking out loud here, Alexandra, about the the deeper cellular motivation as opposed to some surface level motivation. Yeah. I can feel that one. That’s cool.

Alessandra Edwards  30:43

Exactly. And if I may go one step further, in terms of, if you like, from my perspective on the whole journey is, so I mean, that sounds good enough. And that’s good enough for me to sell my programs – that’s like, yep, give me that. I want to learn how I increase my motivation and how I make my behavior stick. Even when I’m traveling and working 80 hours a week, how do I stick to those while being happy. So that’s good. And then when we get to that, it’s like, Yay, but then the next level is about becoming truly and utterly comfortable with the idea that you’re actually truly only doing these behaviors because they are perfectly aligned to your why. So you no longer going to the gym, just because you want to lose the inches on your waist. You’re not just going to bed because you need energy for the meeting in the morning. You are truly doing those behaviors and living in a certain way because at a deeper level, your why is about complete self love, complete self acceptance, and living in a state where you have the highest possible imagined type of energy, because you are in this constant self serving self pleasuring mode, which is very controversial in this day and age, I understand. But that is where people really move on to you moving on to a completely different level of mastery. And that is where you really access sort of the highest level of personal power. When you’re in that stage stuff really starts to happen, you become completely magnetic.

Murray Guest  32:27

Yeah, and I loved on your website, I’ve been looking and having an understanding of some of the programs that you provide, and this level beyond energized, of being unstoppable. Tell me what unstoppable looks like. What does it feel like?

Alessandra Edwards  32:45

Unstoppable is about getting to this level that I’ve just described. So it I think that many people think in terms of Oh, that’s fantastic, so unstoppable is if I want to feel as if I’d have 15 coffees and I’ve got that kind of energy. No, it is more about how you get to really high energy and unstoppable is when you’re able to really take that pause with a gazillion things coming at you. And it’s a feeling of time stretching, you become the master of time. So because you have achieved such high level of mental and physical mastery that you can actually self regulate your biochemistry. So you can, and we do testing on this. So we’ve seen it with people’s heart rate variability, which is a marker of how the two aspects of the nervous system work, really expanding, doing specific techniques. So I like to think of it as like the Samurai state, I’ve never been to Japan but I have a real fascination with Japanese culture. So for me, unstoppable is feeling completely in your power, standing in your power for the right reasons, with your whole body and mind being right behind you like the highest performing team. And you being able to, you know, dodge bullets like in the matrix. That is unstoppable, obviously, without bullets, but being able to just reset. And as you turn around and deal with the next challenge or obstacle or difficult team member, that you turn around and your whole body turns, your body, your mind, your values come with you. So the decision that you’re making, the communication that you’re giving is coming from this place. And when you get there it’s a little bit like being in flow, the energy is self renewing, so you’re not coming home exhausted at the end of the day.

Murray Guest  34:45

And I’m thinking about alignment with self, alignment with your values. I’m thinking about resilience, to be able to handle and rise above the ups and downs, those types of things that people would be feeling through this unstoppable state.

Alessandra Edwards  35:01

Exactly. Yes, absolutely. And as you’re in that state, as you said, what happens is that you almost have double vision. So you start seeing things for the way they really are rather than the way they appear. So for example, I know many of my clients have become completely addicted to the news. And they may be aware, but perhaps not truly, truly aware of how that cycle of catastrophizing, negative news is actually affecting how they then affect the business.

Murray Guest  35:34

Yeah, gotcha.

Alessandra Edwards  35:35

Yeah. When you’re in that unstoppable mode, and you’re aligned, as you said, with all your strengths, your values, and then you’ve got the body and the mind, then what happens is that you can actually watch the news, but you can also see, okay, I see this is actually another cycle of really traumatic news and images. And this is actually going to speak to my brain, and then my brain, because genetically, I have high levels of rumination because my prefrontal cortex is super active, because I’ve got my dopamine receptors, genetically, are off the charts. I produce heaps of dopamine, and I don’t break it down, then I can see how that is going to start coloring my thoughts. Hmm. Isn’t that interesting? Okay, so you’re able to then distance yourself, have this pause, which is not just in time, but also from a space perspective. And can you imagine if you’re living like that the whole time? Incredible power.

Murray Guest  36:33

Yeah, I can I just say, just hearing you describe it, I’m feeling more energized. So to actually have that awareness. I can imagine then, that self awareness, that self understanding and that ability to have that greater awareness, and a choice then to shift.

Alessandra Edwards  37:01

Nailed it. Yeah. It’s about choice. Because we think we have a choice right now. But we don’t, we really don’t have a choice. And regardless of what job title you have, we think we do but we don’t. Whilst you’re still within this, the system, your body is at the mercy like a puppet of environmental challenges and stressors. And while you’re still stuck in your script, that you don’t have time, because you’re too busy, and that you will have time once you have got to whatever imaginary situation is coming – I call it the oasis in the desert because it always shifts – then it’s not freedom of choice. You’re plugged into the matrix. But the moment you step outside, you can see yourself and go, oh, there we go. Here goes Will, he’s doing his routine. He’s up at 5am. And he’s already on the emails at 5:30. I can see. So then you can make deliberate choice. And then you can say, Well, actually, I choose to answer those emails, for whatever reason, because it’s aligned with what I believe to be true and helpful.

Murray Guest  38:19

Yeah wow. Again, thinking about some of those other ways I was describing before, I want to add empowering, empowering about the the way I’m living my life to help me achieve that high performance. So I’m wondering if we’ve got listeners right now listening and they’re intrigued to tap into your knowledge and experience without getting the genetic testing, of course, which they can do through you, by going through one of your programs. But what sort of tips do you like to give to people to help them be at their best to actually invest in their wellbeing?

Alessandra Edwards  38:57

Yes. First, it all starts with an inventory. So you need to do an inventory as if like, you were commenting before about the books and doing this kind of thing. And I love Marie Kondo and the whole idea of clearing and tidying and all of that. So when you watch Marie Kondo… for those listeners who don’t, perhaps especially if you have mostly male listeners, Marie Kondo is a Japanese thought leader of tidiness. 

Murray Guest  39:28

Does it bring you joy? If it brings you joy keep it, if it doesn’t bring you joy anymore let it go.

Alessandra Edwards  39:34

Yeah, absolutely. So I always love starting with this idea of an inventory. So literally as if you were opening a closet and you look at it, it’s like there’s all this stuff you don’t know where to start. Just start writing down everything that comes into your head or surfaces at that emotional level that when you ask yourself the question, where am I right now? Who am I and what am I feeling? Just write it all down. Don’t question it, write it down. And then once you have this list, and for some people, this can go on like five, six pages, then take a pen or a highlighter and just just go through it, look at it and work out exactly what you said, Does this bring me joy or not? Okay. So say for example, I have a teenage daughter. And she is, much as I like my books ordered like this, she has a floor-drobe right. Yeah, you know, you’ve got kids similar age. I don’t know if yours is the same, but mine is. It’s like the Hansel and Gretel story, you can tell what she’s been because instead of breadcrumbs, there’s items of clothing.

Murray Guest  40:44

You know, it’s really hard to hang up towels in the bathroom as well.

Alessandra Edwards  40:50

Hey, in COVID, we’ve all lost muscle mass, so let’s not go there. So that is the thing that for example, I would write down like it absolutely drives me nuts. And I write it down. And then what I would do is I would look at it and say, okay, when I pick up the towels, or I have the argument with her, does that bring me joy? No, it doesn’t bring me joy. So does it bring me pain? Yes, it brings me pain. Okay, well, does seeing the towels on the floor bring me pain? Well, yes, it does, which is the greatest pain? Battle and have an argument with her, and then doing all of that? Or is it like, having a beanbag and just shoving things in or just pushing things aside? Which is the easiest. So you might want to ask yourself those questions. And then pick the ones that you feel gives you a little bit of a sense of yuckiness inside. Yeah, you read it and your heart sinks, so that you don’t want to go there. So that’s where you want to start. And you might want to ask the question, in terms of where am I, in terms of you write down, do the inventory of all the things that give you energy and deplete your energy. And then start looking at is there a pattern here, and what’s sitting behind it? So in terms of the epigenetics of the things that you can do that then influence your genes, you could go through each one of those and say, Well, I can see a little bit of a pattern here that I’m tired. You know, every Monday morning, I’m tired. But every Sunday night I’m having a whole bottle of wine. Okay, so start looking at what came before and see the pattern. Is it that the pattern is related to you going to bed very late? Yeah, is the pattern that you really struggle to fall asleep? So try and find these patterns and then work with your current knowledge or wellbeing practices. I mean, we’ve got so much information in terms of what’s a good sleep routine, right? Not eating sugar, etc. Just go start with the basics, because you’ll be amazed how quickly those basics work if you do them consistently without even worrying about the genetics.

Murray Guest  43:03

What I love through this process that I’m thinking about that’s really helpful is it’s not just blindly going to do some latest fad or routine or idea that you might have read about or seen online. It’s getting back to what’s triggering the need for those things to shift and and as you said, What are the patterns? What are the themes that are leading up to that? Bring that to your awareness then going now what can I do about those things?

Alessandra Edwards  43:24

Absolutely. And is it that the trigger, as you just mentioned, could it be that the trigger for you, maybe you don’t sleep well at night, because like many of my clients, you come home and after dinner, you just start picking at food, you can’t stop? You know, there’s a heap of genetics related to that, but you don’t need to know that. You will know deep down that actually that behavior doesn’t serve you because you always go to bed with the full stomach, and wake up at 3am feeling a bit nauseous. And then in the morning, I wake up as if like someone had died in my mouth. So then what you can do is start working out okay, well, okay, that’s interesting. So when you go and you know, pick your bag of chips, or whatever it is that you snack on at night, just pause for a moment, just pause and just see how you feel. What’s the emotion that’s behind it? Does it feel like your cup run is empty there emotionally? Maybe. Many of my male clients work all day. And they’re in a leadership position all day, they come home, they’ve been married for a gazillion years. And the wife is no longer waiting at home with an apron and go oh, my God, darling, I have missed you, you know, big kisses and make him feel like a man again, right? So for many men, the snacking comes from ‘I actually I don’t feel loved’. And it might take us five or six coaching sessions to get to that. So we don’t do things just because we do them. I mean, yeah, obviously, things taste nice and we eat them, but those repetitive behaviors that go against our highest self knowledge. They come as a way of bandaiding and pushing down very uncomfortable feelings and thoughts.

Murray Guest  45:07

Yeah, I invite listeners to go down that path and start to explore where those motivations or the awareness or the triggers that are driving some of those behaviors. And I reckon once you start to do that, you might need to reach out to Alexandra and have a chat to her and have a look at her programs to help you then start to shift that because as you’re talking through that, I’m thinking about my own behaviors and the little bit of chocolate I like to have after dinner, and then maybe it’s a little bit more, and then I think maybe I didn’t need all that chocolate, I feel a bit sick. But where’s that coming from? Why am I doing that? Yeah… But thank you, that’s been enlightening to just think about that process. Obviously, the genetic testing gives us a real depth of knowledge when we do that. And as you said, the coaching that goes alongside that, because this is not a ticking the boxes, that this is a journey you take people on.

Alessandra Edwards  45:59

This is a journey, and it’s not for everyone. And I think with any kind of choice that we make for ourselves, again, reclaim that sense of empowerment and self agency for yourself. I can confidently say here with a scientific background, there is absolutely no one diet fits all, there is absolutely no exercise, there is no program for everyone, that everyone should be doing mindfulness, absolutely not. So you pick things that you come across, and maybe sort of spark your interest and your curiosity, and really start opening this conversation, this dialogue with yourself. You don’t need to pay any money to do it. All you need to do is have a willingness to explore some of the difficult feelings that we experience. And then you’re off. And then when you get to a point where you go, right, I’m ready for the next level, I really want to go in depth, then this is what these programs are for. I don’t want everyone to contact me for this specific reason. So there is so much that we can do well before getting to the genetic testing.

Murray Guest  47:05

Yeah, of course. Gotcha. And going back to one of your first comments, 2020 is the best year for reset, isn’t it?

Alessandra Edwards  47:11

Yeah, yeah. Well, I tend not to work in years. Just because I always think is like, well, is it really this day?

Murray Guest  47:24

It’s like, why do we have to have a new year’s resolution, I could have a resolution any day of the year.

Alessandra Edwards  47:31

Any research is good. Anytime that you feel like there is, it’s almost like sort of a voice, or a little spark of something, of intuition, that comes into your ear that goes, now is the time, now is the time. And so that that’s a good time to do a reset, or just start opening this more kind of investigative approach. 

Murray Guest  47:58

I love it. Thank you so much for talking us through the amazing work you do, some of the background and the science behind it, and the impact that makes in people’s lives, and the leaders you work with, and then that self evaluation that we can start to go down the path of ourselves. So it’s been such a great conversation, I’ve got two more questions need to ask, before we finish up. Where is the best place online for people to reach out and find out more about this great work that you do?

Alessandra Edwards  48:29

Obviously, there’s always the website. I have to say that for all my organization, the website needs to be updated, it doesn’t reflect all the programs that I do. But you can certainly have a look on the website. There are some really good articles there. But generally, I’m quite active on LinkedIn. So if you’re interested in picking up tidbits and furthering the conversation, just connect with me on LinkedIn. And through the website you can download 30 tips for increasing energy and then I send out twice a month, a short note related to genetics and performance, which has a section called Smart Hacks. So they’re two minute smart hacks and we look at things like how to deal with anger, anxiety, sleeplessness, those kinds of things. And we’re related back to genetics. That’s a great place to start.

Murray Guest  49:18

Fantastic. And I’ll make sure there’s links to both LinkedIn and your website in the show notes. That’s awesome. So thank you for that. Now, just to wrap us up. This is the Inspired Energy podcast. What is your definition of inspired energy?

Alessandra Edwards  49:35

You put it at the end. This is a big question.

Murray Guest  49:40

I think you’ve already answered it in this conversation.

Alessandra Edwards  49:44

I think I have. So for me inspired energy is when our being, or our why, our purpose, then aligns with our DNA. Which is our ‘who’, who we are, which then aligns with our actions, which is the ‘what’. So it’s the being aligned with the DNA aligned then with behaviors and actions that reflect the other two. That for me is inspired energy. 

Murray Guest  50:18

I love that. And it links beautifully as a great summary to everything we’ve talked about today. Such a great conversation. Alessandra, thank you so much for your time. I am really inspired by the work you do and the people you help. It was such an insightful conversation honestly, thank you so much.

Alessandra Edwards  50:35

Yeah, the same I really really enjoyed it. I just loved it, actually I could happily carry on talking, I can see that there’s so many synergies and things that we could learn from each other. So I hope that we get to connect again.

Murray Guest  50:48

Well I’m sure I’ll have you on the podcast again in the future. All the best for the rest of 2020.

Alessandra Edwards  50:54

Fantastic, same to you. Bye.

Episode 77 – Kristen Ulmer | Fear Expert

In this episode I chat with Kristen Ulmer, who is a thought leader on fear and anxiety. Kristen draws from her tenure as the most ‘fearless’ female extreme skier in the world, from intently studying Zen for 16 years and also from facilitating thousands of clients on flow and peak performance.

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Transcript

Murray Guest  00:01

Kristin, welcome to the podcast. I’m actually really excited to talk to you today about fear, and how it shows up in all the different ways. And I loved getting to meet you two years ago in Bali. Man, it feels like so long ago. But I’m really keen to talk to you about it today. You’ve got such an important message. And just before we started recording, I started to talk a bit about what 2020 has been like, and this fear that’s in community in society at the moment. But before we get into that, how are you? And I hope you’re well and healthy today?

Kristen Ulmer  00:40

Well, the reason why you feel excited is because fear is an exciting topic. You mentioned the word fear, and people perk right up. I’m doing well. I’m in Salt Lake City, I’m healthy, going through divorce, which was unexpected, because I was very happily married. And so this is a strange time for me. And it’s definitely cracking me open towards greater learning and growing on the subject of fear than ever before. Which is that’s the that’s the bonus. All this shit in here, there must be a pony somewhere. That’s the pony for me.

Murray Guest  01:15

I like that analogy. Well, I haven’t heard that one. But yeah, I get that. And fear can show up in so many different ways. I’m sure it’s showing up in lots of different ways in your life right now, shows up my life in lots of different ways. So what are you tapping into right now from a fear perspective?

Kristen Ulmer  01:34

Well, it’s not that fear shows up in many different ways. It’s more that it shows up in many different places in our life. Fear is just fear, it’s very, very simple. It’s just a feeling of discomfort, it’s proven by science to first show up in the body. It comes from the amygdala, the the oldest part of the brain, it’s the manufacturing plant for fear and data is run through the amygdala. And if there’s a threat, it produces the feeling of discomfort called fear that’s supposed to lead to immediate, you know, physical reaction without thought. And, right now, this is a scary time for us all, actually, you know, just life is scary in general. And life has gotten scarier, not even, you know, even before COVID just because more happens in 24 minutes than used to happen in 24 years, like in our great grandparents era, there’s just so much going on and the amygdalas producing a lot of fear. And then now there’s COVID and some of us are fleeing COVID you know, fear is helping us flee it and sequestering at home. And some of us are fighting COVID, you know, the the fight or flight response, the scientists and the doctors and all that. And so we’re right on target with our fear response. And just added yet one more thing to be afraid of, in this crazy ride called life, this COVID thing is one more thing on the list.

Murray Guest  03:00

So just to help us all get on the same page, how do you define fear at its very simple, simplest definition.

Kristen Ulmer  03:06

People have a very complicated relationship with fear. And so we think of fear as being very complicated. But fear is actually very, very simple. It’s a emotion, a primary emotion, from which a lot of your human experience is created. And there’s been studies done, there are five basic primary emotions. And similar to three primary colors, red, yellow, and blue. The entire color spectrum is created like an infinite number of colors. There are also primary emotions from which the entire human experience is created. And these five are fear, anger, sadness, and those three are kind of considered the bad emotions. And then there’s joy, which is considered a good emotion. And then sexuality is actually labeled an emotion. I think that actually I prefer eroticism as the emotion and that includes the sexual but isn’t limited by it. And for some people, you know, eroticism or sexuality is considered good. And for some people, it’s considered bad. But these are the emotional experiences that form our lives as humans. And what we tend to do is we tend to want to create positive emotional experiences. And when we feel negative emotion, sadness, what do we do we apologize, we try to stop crying as fast as possible. We’re embarrassed by it. Anger, you know, anger management courses, or like, put a lid on it, you know, lock it in the basement, do not let that out. Fear, where some people are in denial of it. Some people avoid it. They don’t want to do anything scary. Some people fight it, they want to conquer, overcome it. So we have these incredibly complex relationships with the so called negative emotions. That makes them very complicated and fear is one of them. But fear, my definition of it, is just it’s a simple emotion, it’s just in our bodies, like I said, proven by science, a feeling of discomfort that leads to action. But then when things go wrong, all of a sudden you have fearful thoughts, and then your racing mind in the middle of the night, and you have phobias, and obsessive compulsive disorder, and PTSD, and depression and anxiety disorders. All of these are a result of the way that we subsequently treat that very simple fear response in our bodies. And most of us are trying to get rid of it. Like I said, ignore it, avoid it, etc, etc. And it’s like ignoring the truth about the human experience. And that’s what causes problems with fear and causing it to appear complex. But really, at its core, it’s a very simple emotion.

Murray Guest  05:52

So what I’m thinking about also is around that safety mechanism that we have to try and keep us safe. And that fear emotion is saying, hang on, the perspective that I’m giving you right now that you’re tapping into is that that is going to hurt you in some way. And so react to that, and it’s like, help me out here, but it’s like a future emotion. It’s like, I’m thinking about, as a human, that this thing in the future is going to hurt me in some way. So protect myself by fight flight freeze.

Kristen Ulmer  06:25

Right. And so what you’re referring to is just when people start to project in the future of things that they’re afraid of. You know, if people are in their heads around fear, you know, your body isn’t living in the future, it’s not living in the past, it’s just living in the moment. And so long as your fear response, you know, you’re just staying in your body and dealing with your emotions, emotionally, there’s no projection on the past or future or any of that. But the second, you start thinking about fear, and you’re in your head, and your head is always thinking about the past, projecting the future, you know, which is that also is a sign that something has gone wrong. And, I mean, there’s four basic ways that people deal with fear. And just as I outline these, you know, I want everybody to just notice which one are they, and I’m going to rank them from worse way to deal with fear, to the best way to deal with fear. The worst way to deal with fear – level one – is resistance to it. And don’t get too caught up on the word resistance, there’s many different ways to resist fear, but any kind of like, trying to get rid of it or denying it, probably the biggest form of resistance I see is being in your head, trying to understand it and think about it as a way to not have to feel it, like with a therapist or something. And then there’s acceptance, which is a step in the right direction, but it’s still kind of dealing with your emotions intellectually, like, Oh, you know, it is not a sign of personal weakness, it’s supposed to be here. Level three is where you start dealing with emotions emotionally, where you embrace it. And then level four is where you have intimacy with your emotion. And if you can learn to do level three and level four, then it’ll never wind up, fear will never wind up in your thoughts. And you’ll never be thinking about future fear or projecting, you know, thoughts into the future about things you might be afraid of. I’m like in relationships, for example, like, Oh, my gosh, I’ve met this guy, he’s really cute. But the last time, you know, I got in a relationship, it was a disaster, and I don’t want to fall in love with them. And then he could hurt me. And you know, next thing, you know, you’re in your head. That is usually the result of dealing with fear intellectually, and also being in resistance to it. And then it’s just going to persist and show up in wacky weird ways, as fearful thoughts.

Murray Guest  08:43

And even in that very quick example, I could picture someone’s mind jumping to the past, bring that emotional template framework around it, and then jumping to the future – what’s going to happen – as opposed to being in the present, and living in that emotion and embracing the emotion as you said.

Kristen Ulmer  08:59

Yeah, and let me just say, we’re starting off running like I’m introducing some really complex information like in the first five minutes of the podcast, I mean, we can simplify this and back way up if you want.

Murray Guest  09:16

Well, I’m loving this.

Kristen Ulmer  09:17

Going down this rabbithole. Like I said, I don’t expect people to really understand because there may be some missing pieces. But you know, it’s really interesting. Being a fear expert. It’s like I can just meet somebody. And when they start to say, Oh, yeah, this is my issue with fear. I’ll be like, Oh, yeah, I’ve seen it before. You know, that’s probably what’s happening.

Murray Guest  09:40

So let me just tap into something there. Why a fear expert? So obviously, there was the over 20 films that you’re a part of, and all these amazing jumps and experiences you had. At which point that how’d it lead you to going, you know what I’m going to really tap into and explore and help others around fear.

Kristen Ulmer  10:03

Being a professional skier was a very strange experience. I mean, it was very hedonistic. I had a massive ego trip. I mean, it was fun, fun, fun and dangerous and exciting and all of that. And I realized now, the whole time I was a professional skier, something felt off. Like I remember being on a chairlift at least five times looking at my skis saying, What am I doing? This is stupid. And, you know, I was the best in the world at a very dangerous, exciting sport. Nothing stupid about that from the outside looking in, but from the inside looking at them, like there’s, What is this? Why am i doing this, this doesn’t feel right. And I realized now that it was just part of my education, to be able to look at fear and anxiety from a new lens, from a different angle. You know, like be a fear and anxiety expert. My training didn’t come from a master’s degree or a PhD in college, I’m not like, kind of parroting things I learned from a professor or from another self help guru, like, I have come up with some really unique concepts and ideas that are actually the radical opposite of most of all of what’s out there. And I came to it just through 33 years now of just real life experience. You know, first, I mean, what is extreme skiing, it means that I was risking my life for a living, you know, the definition of extreme is the consequences of failure, and certainly in the context of extreme skiing, are death. And so I was making life or death decisions on a daily basis for 15 years, you know, dealing with a tremendous amount of fear, far more than the average public and I learned you don’t learn from experience, you learn from reflecting on the experience. I had enough of a curiosity sparked during those times, because I was considered fearless, to really reflect on those 15 years and figure out exactly what I did right by fear and what I did wrong by fear. And then studying is an approach to fear and then working with 10,000 clients now, like I have basically come up with exactly why people struggle with fear and anxiety and other people don’t. And what to do about it. That is currently not being taught by pretty much anyone. So this is, this is really new, super sexy information that comes from a, you know, from I mean, I’m, like, groomed by the universe for 33 years now to bring this message. And, and I see my ski career as just an education.

Murray Guest  12:40

Yeah, so I think, so my definition here that I thought I had as you’re talking about extreme skiing, or extreme sport, I think if the average person let’s just say anybody watches a sport and thinks, ‘I can do that’, that’s skiing, or that’s mountain biking, or that’s, you know, motorbike riding. But then when we add the word extreme to it, it’s like, straightaway, I can’t do that. I just, the average person can’t see themselves. So I watched a number of videos of what you were doing. I mean, the front flip in Wyoming. That was in Wyoming, wasn’t it? Yeah?

Kristen Ulmer  13:19

That was in Alaska.

Murray Guest  13:21

Yeah. And I, I’m, I’m watching that thinking, I hope she lands this. Of course, she lands it but I’m gonna hope she lands this and it’s just but it’s just magical, you know, landscape that you’re playing in as well. Like, just just beautiful as well. So this is popping into my head right now, how did you balance the ‘I’m appreciating this magical landscape, that’s just you know, that only I get to see and experience’, and at the same time thinking, ‘Oh, shit, this is pretty fearful stuff.’

Kristen Ulmer  13:52

Back in my ski career, I didn’t feel fear.

Murray Guest  13:56

Ah.

Kristen Ulmer  13:57

And as beautiful as the landscape was for me, that wasn’t the draw for me. For me, the draw was radical self expression. You know, yes, I noticed landscape, but it really wasn’t that big of a deal to me, you know, it was the self expression. I want to address if somebody feels fearless, like I did, what actually is going on. Like if they have a kid who seems to be fearless, you know, what’s the difference between that one kid versus the other kid that you know has a lot of fear. The difference is that that kid enjoys feeling fear, they’re not fearless. Neurochemically fear and excitement are exactly the same thing. And if you have, and I talked about the four levels, if you embrace fear, and if you have an intimate relationship with fear, it just feels like excitement and presence. It actually takes you into the zone and little else does, like extreme sports are notorious for taking people into the zone. It’s like you have to be in an altered state to survive some of these things, you know, and just be tapped into some intuition or instinct, because you know, you have to make instant reactions that will save your life or not save your life.

Murray Guest  15:13

So what’s the impact of calling someone fearless?

Kristen Ulmer  15:19

It sets our society up to live under an impossible ideal. Like, people would look at somebody like me and say, Oh, she’s fearless. I wasn’t fearless. You know, I was motivated by fear of not being special, fear of not being loved. That’s what had me do all these super sketchy things. The fear was the draw. I loved feeling fear, you know, I was addicted to it. It actually became an unhealthy addiction to me like a heroin addict. You know, I became a fear addict. And I mean that I was absolutely not fearless. It’s just that I, the part of me that became a world class athlete, I was having an intimate relationship with fear. And keep in mind, I have confirmed this with pretty much you name it, name the athlete I’ve talked to them. I interviewed 26 World Class professional, extreme athletes in the last year and a half for probably two hours each just on fear. And they didn’t even know that this is what was going on. But by the end of the couple of hours, they’re nodding their head so hard I thought their neck was gonna break like Alex Honnold who free solo’d El Capitan. Laird Hamilton, arguably the best big wave surfer in the world. What we are, we’re not fearless. And there’s a rumor going around that Alex Honnold had a damaged amygdala. That’s not the case. He thought that test that was done on him was not realistic and very stupid. What we are tapping into and make no mistake, this is not just with athletes, this is also with business men and women, people who you admire who are doing amazing things. What they are, is they’re having an intimate relationship with fear. And as a result, they come across as fearless. The people who come across as very, very fearful, actually, what they are, is they’re afraid of fear, which is different. Like they, they don’t want to feel fear, they are in resistance to it. And actually the awful feeling that we associate with fear, that’s not fear. Fear is actually I mean, it’s uncomfortable. But it’s, it feels more like excitement when you’re having an intimate relationship with it. The awful feeling we associate with fear is actually our resistance to feeling it. It’s I don’t want this I don’t want to feel this. What’s wrong with me? This is an awful feeling. It’s that resistance that feels so awful, not the fear itself.

Murray Guest  17:45

So at that resistance level, we’re fighting it, we’re pushing it away, or trying to run from it.

Kristen Ulmer  17:50

Right. And we’re actually taught to do this in our culture. Like, that’s where all the language comes from. You want to conquer and overcome fear. Well, look at that language triumph over it, it suggests a war, a mighty battle against this huge enemy. And that puts you at war with fear, which means it puts you at war with your own body, where the fear is, it puts you at war with the amygdala, you do not want to pick a fight with fear and you do not want to pick a fight with the amygdala, they will win every time.

Murray Guest  18:19

So fear’s good as well. And I’m not telling you, I’m just thinking this through.

Kristen Ulmer  18:26

Let me just adjust that before you move on. Fear’s not good ‘as well’. Fear is good, period. Like, I do not see good fear, bad fear. Like there’s good stuff, bad stuff about it. If you embrace fear, the good stuff is all you get. If you’re intimate with fear, it actually takes you into a spiritual place, an altered state, it’s a gorgeous experience. And the fear becomes one of the best parts of your life. If you are in resistance to fear, only the good stuff shows up. Like whatever your relationship is, with fear determines whether it’s like one of the best parts of your life or one or one of the worst parts of your life.

Murray Guest  19:07

For the listeners, how do they then determine where their relationship sits with fear?

Kristen Ulmer  19:15

I love that question. You know, I’ve done hundreds of podcasts, nobody has ever asked me that. That’s an excellent question. So how does one determine.. Well, you know, I bought a sat radio and went out to the mountains once, I bought it at REI, this is back in the 90s, the damn thing wouldn’t work. And I turned it on, it’s just static, just, you know, white noise. I brought it back to REI. I’m like, What the hell this thing didn’t work? And they said, Well, did you raise the antenna? I’m like, Ohh. It’s like our life is just static, like we can’t see or tell anything about what’s going on in our undercurrent unless we raise our antenna. And it used to be said that knowledge is power. But the guy who said that said that in like the late 1400s, when we also believe the world was flat, right? It’s kind of outdated. What’s more true in today’s world is that knowledge is power or awareness is power. And so it starts with just having an awareness practice, like, what’s my deal with fear? I mean, we are mostly living in denial about fear, like, we do not want to believe that fear is as big a part of our lives as it is. And actually, the amygdala is manufacturing fear all the time, it’s to the point where it’s actually with us every moment of every single day, in pretty much every interaction we have, I feel it right now. You know, because I’m aware of it. And, and so just becoming aware of the fear itself to start with, and then become aware of your relationship with that fear. Like I like to personify it, see it as a person in our lives, like a roommate that you live with all the time, like, what is my relationship with it? Am I in denial of this roommate? Do I ignore this roommate? Am I in a war with this roommate? Do I hate this roommate and wish he would go away? Like, just getting to know your relationship with fear is absolutely the crucial first step towards having a healthy relationship with it. Because you can’t change what you don’t acknowledge. You may think that fear is the problem. But you may actually learn by having an awareness practice that you are the problem, you’re actually picking a fight with fear. And then that leaves fear no choice but to retaliate. I mean, all gets revealed once you raise your antenna.

Murray Guest  21:35

Hmm, gotcha. And once taking the time to actually understand that relationship. And then let’s say I’ve realized, I’m actually resisting my feeling, I’m at level one. If there’s a simple technique to help me start to really accept my fear, to then move to that next level, what could I do?

Kristen Ulmer  22:01

The the first, well, it’s interesting how we’re just organically leaning towards my top three tips for people. The first tip is just become aware of your relationship with fear. The second Hot Tip is to change your language around how you talk about fear and less, view fear. And back to being a roommate, you know, if you’re used to saying, Oh, my gosh, fear is holding me back from doing the things I want to do. It’s not true. My unwillingness to feel fear is holding me back from doing the things I want to do. It’s like, okay, your fear is next to you. And your fear is only here to help. I’m going to say that, again, your fear is only here to help, like nature did not get this wrong. Fear is like the perfect design. Not only does it keep you safe, but it perks you up, makes you sharp, focused, helps you bring your A game to everything you do. It makes you feel alive. You know, it’s very exciting. If you’re ever bored, go and do something that scares you. And you’ll see, it’ll be the highlight of your day, maybe even of your year, like fear is only here as a resource, of source of motivation, all of that. It’s wonderful. And so, here you have this roommate, who’s like here to support you. And you’re like, you’re holding me back. It’s like, oh, wait a second. No, he’s not holding me back. I’m holding me back, because I’m unwilling to kind of see this roommate that I have is somebody that’s here to help me. So change your language about that roommate, like start talking about fear in a positive way.

Murray Guest  23:42

Our words shape our world, don’t they? Yeah, I totally agree.

Kristen Ulmer  23:48

Yeah, there’s just so much that comes from switching from a pessimistic or negative view of fear, to seeing fear as a positive and then changing the way you think about it and talk about it accordingly. It’s just like, you’d make that one simple shift. And you can’t even believe how much your life starts to become magic. You work through issues, scary things faster, like I’m going through a divorce right now. It’s a very dark, emotional time for me, a lot of fear, a lot of anger, a lot of sadness, you know, because I’m embracing it all. I’m in flow with it all. I’m moving through this difficult time much faster. I’m learning incredible lessons from it. You know, you don’t get stuck in a war with your own body and your own self. And it’s just, I don’t know, just having that kind of optimistic and positive view of fear will also get you taking more risks. You know, and then when you take the risks, like, ask me about Alex Honnold at some point, and I’ll tell you what we explored because I think that people are going to be very surprised by what he and I came up with is happening with him. 

Murray Guest  25:00

And can I just say if you haven’t watched free solo, it is such a fantastic documentary. I really enjoyed it. Well, it’s funny because as you were talking about the language and the words we use and how we describe our fear, I wondered if that was a theme that came out of your conversations with the athletes you’ve spoken to in the last 18 months? Did they consciously choose or were they consciously aware of how they describe their internal dialogue towards their fears? Or was that something that came out of some of those conversations?

Kristen Ulmer  25:38

What I found was, I interviewed 26 World Class extreme athletes, the best in the world at their sports, multiple sports. Similar to when I was going through my ski career, and people called me fearless. I believed my own hype. I felt fearless, I acted fearless. I wasn’t aware that fear was playing any part of my life. And I was also, you know, if you’d interviewed me when I was 24 years old, I would have had no clue what my relationship was with fear. And a lot of these athletes I interviewed who were in their 30s, 40s, or 50s, and they basically, they are the poster children, for people that do scary things with their life. And you think that they would have some sort of understanding of what their relationship was with fear. 23 of the 26 had no clue. Even when they were in their 50s, Alex Honnold had no clue what his relationship was with fear. And usually what they would start off the interview with would be just parroting stuff that they’ve heard from self help gurus, like, Oh, I don’t let fear get in my way, you know, I put it out of my mind, I’m, you know, I am able to conquer my fear. And so it doesn’t hold me back. Or, or they’ll say something like, I’m a scaredy cat. But I feel the fear and do it anyway. You know, like, the, the cliches were profound. It’s like, okay, everybody’s the same old, you know, that, that they’ve heard. But then I would say, Well, have you ever thought about it this way? And do you think that this might be going on? And what do you think about this? And, and I would, some of them, I would facilitate a conversation broker, that conversation between them and their fear. And, and one by one, we found out some similarities here that people were eventually were like, Oh, my gosh, that’s, I think that’s it. That’s it. That’s what’s going on. And that’s where I came up with the intimacy thing. And so Alex Honnold, you know, seemingly the poster child for what to do about fear. What we came up with is two things, basically. And so this is a great segue into that. He’s not fearless. And if he was fearless, he said he would have just tried to free solo El Capitan the first year he was in Yosemite, and in his words, he would have died for sure. Because we concurred that anybody that’s fearless just dies, you know, or perceives himself. And a lot of these extreme athletes do die. And most of the ones who die, walk around all cocky saying, Yeah, I’m not afraid of anything. You know that those people are super dangerous.

Murray Guest  28:17

Not just dangerous to themselves, but dangerous to the people around them as well.

Kristen Ulmer  28:21

Absolutely. Well put, and what was really going on with Alex, I mean, he spent 10 years before he free solo’d El Capitan, is that he is just willing to feel fear. He even enjoys feeling fear. And so he’s willing to step out of his comfort zone, where there exists fear. And so this is a podcast about business, it’s like, you know, the, the people who are willing to take risks and step out of their comfort zone, are also willing to have fear. Because where there’s risk, there’s fear. And so you, you know, like, imagine a circle, this is your comfort zone, you’re still gonna feel fear within your comfort zone. But if you’re willing to take on more fear, you’re willing to step out of your comfort zone. And you do that often enough, you know, put a dot outside your comfort zone, each time you take a risk, eventually connect the new dots, you have a bigger comfort zone. And so that’s what Alex did, every year is in Yosemite kept taking little risks, you know, the magical number is 4%, 4% out of your comfort zone, studied by science, right? Is the optimal flow state because then the fear takes you into a flow state, if you’re in flow with it, that is, if you’re intimate with it. And then so he just kept expanding his comfort zone bigger and bigger and bigger until the day he free solo’d El Cap. It wasn’t that big of a stretch for him to step out of his very expanded comfort zone and do what he did. And so that’s the secret of success with anyone who finds out their greatest potential. You don’t find out your greatest potential by just thinking about it. You find out your greatest potential by taking risks. So willingness to feel fear actually supports you figuring out what your greatest capabilities are. And so there’s a lot of people that are fear avoiders, which is a form of resistance to fear.

Murray Guest  30:12

Yep. Back to level one then.

Kristen Ulmer  30:14

Yeah, right, right. So willing to feel fear, embracing fear, you will take risks, you will step out of your comfort zone. And here’s the clincher with this, this is the bonus. Not only is there no learning and growing, without a willingness to feel fear, you know, because fear is very expensive for the body to manufacture. It requires a lot of energy, you actually support the amygdala and the body by expanding who you are, and and, you know, expanding your comfort zone, because then it doesn’t have to manufacture fear anymore. So here’s the conclusion of that – you cannot have less fear by controlling it. The only way you can have less fear is by taking risks, and expanding your comfort zone. And that comes from a willingness to feel fear. So the only way you can have less fear is found by a willingness to feel fear in the first place.

Murray Guest  31:11

That’s that’s gold, right there. Yeah, I love that.

Kristen Ulmer  31:15

Not just for business, anything, relationships, I mean, life, just finding out your greatest potential as a human being. And then while you’re out of your comfort zone, how do you deal with the fear? Well, you have an intimacy with it. And so it takes you into that altered state called flow or the zone. That was the second secret of Alex.

Murray Guest  31:34

Well, the thing I’m thinking about here, whether that’s what you were doing as an extreme skier, or Alex, free soloing El Capitan, that there’s it’s not like, as you said, this is bravado of just going in and doing it. And tell me if I’m wrong here. But the planning, the preparation, which actually sets for success. So I haven’t seen a video of you, because I haven’t watched all the videos of you and your preparation. But what I’m thinking about when I saw Alex, was all the preparation he did to make sure, yes, he’s embracing the fear. He’s intimate with it. And he knows how he can set himself for success. And the analogy I’m drawing here is, let’s say someone’s listening to this, and they’ve got to do a presentation. And they’re really fearful about that. Or they want to have a conversation with another leader within the business. And they’re fearful about that. It’s not like just pushing the fear aside and running in there. But there’s, How do I embrace that and actually prepare for success to actually achieve what I’m trying to do?

Kristen Ulmer  32:32

Right, it’s, it’s like, there’s two ways to deal with a speech, you know, or presentation or a job interview. You know, you’re slightly under prepared her or, anyway, anything that you’re going to do in business, you have two basic ways of dealing with it. And look at you as Batman and your fear as Robin. You could either punch Robin in the face, and feel powerful, and he’s laid out on the floor and just, you know, crumpled, and you go in there and you give the speech, right? And you think, ah ha! But guess what. Now, Robin’s pissed off, he’s gonna come back, and he’s gonna terrorize your life and seek vicious revenge, which is what fear does. The other thing is, you can bring Robin on stage with you, and you’re stronger together than apart. What that looks like, in practical terms, and this is gonna really shock some people. Because what most people do, if they’re about to give a speech, or have a difficult conversation, is the punching Robin in the face. And what that looks like is they rationalize fear away, there’s nothing to be afraid of, I’ve got this, I’m totally prepared. They take three deep breaths, they breathe in calm, they breathe out their fear. They just block it out by maybe cognitive behavioral therapy, you know, more positive, they replace it with something more positive. Like, all these things that we’re taught to do regarding fear, are just forms of resistance. And they work. They’re proven by science to work. In fact, scientifically, they work, they calm you down in about four minutes. And that’s why they’re taught. You know, that’s why everybody teaches this kind of thing. And they rationalize there’s nothing to be afraid of. It’s just false evidence appearing real. It’s just all in my head. That is absolutely not true. It is very scary to give a speech. So and then you start to distrust yourself. So there’s long term consequences of that. And there’s Carl Jung, whatever you resist persists. So yes, it works. But then the next time you give a speech, you have to do it for four and a half minutes. And then the next time it takes five minutes, and the next thing you know, you go home and you have an anxiety disorder, that seems unrelated. You’re like What’s up with this? I just had a panic attack or you’re picking fights with your wife. You know, because you haven’t dealt with your fear at work, and you’re just kind of throwing it at her when you get home, or you can’t sleep, you have insomnia because you didn’t deal with your fear during the day. It gets very clever. It hijacks your mind in the middle of the night when you’re trying to sleep and runs its agenda in your thoughts in the middle of the night, or you have PTSD from giving the speech, on and on. I mean, you eventually wind up with some form of weird depression or anxiety disorder. It’s like, next thing you know, there’s some part of your life that just doesn’t make sense. So that’s the first choice. You know, that’s the punching Robin in the face. The second choice is what I teach is a four step process of I mean, I feel like I’ve been talking for a long time. Do you have any questions before I move on to that? 

Murray Guest  35:47

No this is great. I’d love to. Well, the second choice is bringing Robin on stage.

Kristen Ulmer  35:51

Yeah. And it’s a little more nuanced than that. It’s more about honoring Robin. So that Robin isn’t hysterical. You know?

Murray Guest  36:01

Yeah. I’m seeing old Batman TV show here with a POW and a Wham. And that’s what I’m seeing.

Kristen Ulmer  36:11

Yeah, but usually they’re fighting enemies you know. Fear’s not an enemy, fear’s your Robin. So it’s how you treat Robin. How I deal with fear, when I’m about to give a speech is I go find, of course, I’m always super nervous before I go on stage and the word anxiety, nerves, worry, are just other names for fear. You know, we don’t like to call it fear anymore. We call it anxiety. Like nobody calls it fear. Like the guy on Wall Street, he’s like, Oh, my gosh, I’m pickled in anxiety. And we’re like, oh, yeah, yeah, that makes sense. But if he says, Oh, I’m pickled in fear, they’re like, Oh, my gosh, what’s wrong with you?

Murray Guest  36:49

Yeah.

Kristen Ulmer  36:50

It’s the same exact thing! Specifically anxiety is recirculating fear that’s stuck in your body. And it’s there because you’ve blocked fear from being in flow, and it’s stuck in your body and recirculating.

Murray Guest  37:04

Can I just say, and the bit that you said before, which I absolutely loved, and I want to make sure that people didn’t miss it is, if we push it aside, we don’t discuss it, we don’t embrace it. We don’t, you know, welcome it in some area, it’s going to show up and recycle and get, you know, like a volcano and show up in some other way in our life. And I think it’s so powerful.

Kristen Ulmer  37:29

It could show up as anger issues too, like, classic example is somebody that, like a kid that has a really scary home life. And fear makes him feel powerless, but he has to feel something. And so he feels anger instead. Because it makes him feel powerful. But fear and anger are very closely tied. In fact, when I mentioned getting the primary emotions, in some studies, anger isn’t even a primary emotion. Anger is mostly made up of fear. So yeah, like for for fight, it’s anger, for flee, it’s fear. Yeah, so anyway, it’s just God, it’s such a bad idea to resist fear. And yet, every single self help guru or psychologist or doctor will help you do that. Cause it works. Right.

Murray Guest  38:24

Yeah, but I think the bit that you’ve you’ve very clearly articulated is it works for a period of time, for a moment in time.

Kristen Ulmer  38:31

Yeah right. Right. And then, of course, people ultimately medicate their fear away. And 20 to 40% of their aliveness in the process.

Murray Guest  38:41

I have a question. Do you think you would have done anything differently when you were extreme skiing, if you knew what you know now, back then.

Kristen Ulmer  38:56

Yes, absolutely. And just bookmark the four steps. I will say that the reason why I know all this is because I did some things right by fear. And I did some things wrong by fear during my ski career. And what I’m explaining, you know, that people do wrong by fear I myself did. I was one of those really clueless, stupid athletes that walked around all cocky and arrogant, saying, I’m not afraid of anything. I’m lucky to be alive. I also burned out. You know, I thought I burnt out on the skiing but really, I burnt out on how much effort and energy it took me to block out fear, a tremendous amount of fear and I I crashed my adrenals, I wound up also having PTSD because I saw a lot of friends die and didn’t know how to handle the emotions there for my ski career. Another thing is I became such a rigid person in order to not feel fear and after about 10 years, like I was just in a sport as violent as extreme skiing, you need to be more slinky-like, and like we look at ski racers, for example, and they’re in their 30s. And they start having an injury after injury after injury. What is that? It’s not because they’re getting older. It’s because they’re very rigid in order to be quote, fearless, and you throw a tin can against a brick wall, it’s gonna break, right? Yeah, you throw a slinky against a brick wall, it’s gonna be just fine. They just become so rigid that the slightest, you know, issue, you break. So I had a lot of injuries. And it almost got to the point where every time I went skiing, and I did something difficult or dangerous, that required an impact, I wound up having at least a little injury from it. Not because of my age, but because of my compromised relationship with fear. But the things that I did right by fear is what made me a world class athlete in an incredibly difficult sport. So I had a real paradox going on, I both radically did what should be done regarding fear. And that’s what made me so great. And I radically did what shouldn’t be done regarding fear. And that’s what caused a lot of problems for me. And when I retired, I set to figure out what the heck had gone wrong. And that’s what led me to the conclusions that I’ve come up with today that have been tried and true with, you know, a lot of like, probably 10,000 people now. So.

Murray Guest  41:22

Yeah, and as you’ve said a number of times, and I totally agree, this is a human thing. It’s not an athlete thing.

Kristen Ulmer  41:29

Yes. Yes, it is. I mean, look at the statistics of anxiety disorders. They’re, they’re only getting worse and worse and worse, despite all these methods and modalities, you know, to punch Robin in the face, like, we’re only getting more and more afraid we’re only having greater anxiety, greater depression, greater PTSD. It’s like, one in five people in America have an anxiety disorder. One in four Europeans struggle with either anxiety or depression. Like it’s crazy. And the numbers are just getting worse every year. Despite all these meditation apps and breathing exercises and cognitive behavioral therapy, it’s not working. Right? Let me tell you what does work though.

Murray Guest  42:14

So I’m on stage with, I’m Batman, I’ve got Robin, I haven’t punched him. You know, we’re a partnership. What am I doing next?

Kristen Ulmer  42:26

Okay, so let’s back up. I was recently asked to give a speech, and it was in front of 10,000 people, it was last weekend. And it’s a lot of people. It’s very scary. And for me, I’m on the phone, they’re like, do you want to do this? They’re gonna pay me a lot of money. And I thought, well, the question isn’t, you know, do I want to do this, or make that kind of money? The question is, am I in the mood for fear right now? A lot of fear, because it’s going to be super scary. And the answer was..

Murray Guest  42:58

Can I just pause, because there’s a really good lesson here, which is, it’s not like tick, I’m done with fear. Because here I am talking to you. And you’re very open and vulnerable that it is an ongoing conversation relationship. And I think that’s really important that people don’t look at you or someone else and go, Oh they’ve got it sorted, they’re done. And I think this is really important that it’s actually an ongoing, help me if I’m getting this incorrectly, but it’s an ongoing relationship with our fear. And that ongoing self awareness.

Kristen Ulmer  43:31

Yes. And, you know, when my book came out three years ago, I googled it, you know, people that are fear experts anxiety, you know, fear. Everybody has an opinion about what to do about fear, but nobody on the planet that I could find anywhere. I mean, I spent days searching, was willing to call themself a fear expert. And why is that? Because I think that we expect our fear experts to a) be fearless and b) teach other people how to be fearless. It’s impossible. And it’s undesirable. Nobody’s willing to claim that they’re fearless. That’s just, you know, ridiculous. So yes, I’m a fear and anxiety expert. And I’m like, Oh, my gosh, this is gonna be terrifying. 10,000 people. And, and it’s way out of my comfort zone. Like the most i’d spoken to was 1500 people when I got the phone call. So then I hang up the phone. And I said, Yes, of course. Because feeling fear is my thing, right?

Murray Guest  44:29

Yes.

Kristen Ulmer  44:30

I’m not a fear avoider. I embrace fear. I know that it’s gonna expand who I am as a person. And I figured, okay, either I’ll do a great speech, and then I’ll feel amazing afterwards, and feel the cortisol high and all of that. And I’ll have felt connection to the audience and gotten my message out there. Or I’ll crash and burn. Right, humiliate myself and have another growth opportunity to know what not to do next time. So either way, it’s a win. So I say yes. And then I have three months with fear just nagging me, you know, Robin’s like, Hey, you better stop watching Netflix, you better get your butt off the couch and write that speech and memorize that speech, or else you’re going to be really embarrassed. So it motivates me, you know, there’s a saying in Zen, a good horse moves even the crack of a whip. So it was like cracking me like you got to get off your butt. So then I prepared, prepared, prepared, and I like to be just a little underprepared the day of so that the fear can be with me to help keep me sharp and focused. If I have the speech to memorize, I just blank out and just blah blah blah, right, and repeat it like a robot. So the fear, I know it’s going to keep me sharp and focused and on point when I give the talk. So I’m a little underprepared. So it’s 10 minutes before I’m going to go on, last weekend. And I’m terrified. I’m shaking, you know, I’m about to talk about fear and anxiety, and I’m practically having a panic attack. So this is what I did. And I went and found a quiet place to be by myself. And I did four steps, I closed my eyes, and I acknowledged that it’s normal and natural for me to feel fear. Of course, I feel fear, you know, I’m about to give a speech. It’s not a sign of personal weakness, it’s not a character flaw. It’s just a sign that I’m human. And that’s the acceptance part. You know, the second step is I found the fear in my body, like, Where was it, it was in my chest and in my throat. And I put my hand on it, and I noticed how strong it is. And then the third step is I then looked into whether I was in resistance to this fear. You know, I don’t after teaching what I teach for a really long time, I’m very rarely in resistance to my fear anymore. But certainly when I was just putting these concepts together, I was still in resistance to it. I didn’t want to feel it. And the resistance actually is the awful feeling, not the fear itself. So I then notice, am I in resistance to this fear? And what if it was there, what it would look like is I don’t want to feel this, I don’t want to do this, I don’t want to be here. This sucks. I hate this feeling. I hate this feeling. You know, it involves thoughts, but it wasn’t there, right. But you want to check in on the resistance, because you want to have that antenna up, you want to have that awareness. Suffering equals discomfort times resistance, if your discomfort of fear is a level 10. And your resistance is a level 10. 10 times 10. That’s a whole lot of suffering. But if your discomfort is a level 10, which you’re going to feel innately you know, and your resistance, which is, you know, is taught in our culture. Let’s say you get it from a 10 down to a one, what’s 10 times one, not a lot of suffering, you get the resistance down to a zero, there’s no suffering. And it’s that way with anything hot, cold… Wim Hof, like, you don’t resist the cold, it takes you into an altered state. You go into a sweat lodge, you don’t resist the heat, it takes you into an altered state. With fear, if you don’t resist the fear, it takes you into an altered state. Same with pain. That’s the reason why people love getting tattoos, half of them, they don’t resist the pain, it takes them into, like any kind of lack of resistance. It just takes you into a flow state. And then level four. And this is where the science comes in. I mentioned before that if you rationalize it away, you know, if you take breathing exercises, the fear calms down in four minutes. If you do step four, it’s been proven by science, the fear calms down in four seconds. And there’s no long term effects. Which is level four or step four. I just had an intimate experience with my fear. So I just put my hand on my chest where the fear was, and I just had kind of a like, put the Barry White on, right. It’s not sexual. You hear intimacy. It’s more like, like, have you ever had an intimate experience with a piece of cheesecake?

Murray Guest  49:12

Oh, yeah. Yeah, blueberry cheesecake.

Kristen Ulmer  49:16

Oh, yeah. So imagine putting your hand on wherever your fear is and having an intimate experience with that fear. And it calms right down. And anyone that has a child, if their child’s upset and has a lot to say, if you just spend some quality time with them, and just completely love on them. They always calm right down. It’s the same with your fear. And then I went on stage and I was very reasonable and Robin was there with me to keep me sharp and focused because I was a little underprepared and he wasn’t screaming or yelling, and it was a really beautiful practice.

Murray Guest  49:54

Yeah, well, and I’m sure you knocked it out of the park. The bit that I think I also take from that, as you said that underprepared bit is that level of underprepared keeps you on your toes, keeps you focused, keeps you aware. Keeps you curious, I would say.

Kristen Ulmer  50:09

And why is that, is the question. Well, because the fear is the very thing, that little extra drop of fear. It’s like the secret sauce to great performance.

Murray Guest  50:24

Wow, this has been so good. Thank you. This is awesome. And those four tips, those four tips, I think, whatever you are facing as a person in your life right now, I’ve got a mountain bike trail that I go to regularly and as you know, I ride, still. And there’s a name of this part of the trail called ‘the drop off’. That name, when I hear it, I can feel it in my gut straightaway. I’m like, it’s the drop off. And I’ve seen someone go over the handlebars down the drop off. And so I can now have a better way to approach the drop off, which I’ve been avoiding every time I get there. There’s the A line, there’s the B line. We want to take the A line. But you know, I’ll be taking the B line now. So how do I now prepare myself and actually stop future projecting myself into that situation? And and pushing the fear? As opposed to right, how do I prepare myself and be having an intimate relationship to where I feel that fear in my guts. I’ll get back to you on that one.

Kristen Ulmer  51:35

Okay, well, I’ll just real quick, you know, like anything, it takes practice, do the four steps before you go out on the mountain bike trail. So that you’re prepared.

Murray Guest  51:44

Yeah. But as you talked us through that journey of your presentation, this is a four step process you could apply to a difficult conversation or presentation. You know, facilitating a discussion in a meeting, you know, the list could go on. Because any of those situations, because I think, here’s a part that I think that I think you’ve mentioned, but I just want to make sure that we sort of mentioned it in that is that the level of fear that someone feels no matter what they’re doing, it’s their level of fear. It’s not, I’ve got to feel the same level of fear as someone else. Like it’s a very unique and personal thing, isn’t it?

Kristen Ulmer  52:26

It is and it isn’t. You know, other people are just really good at pretending they don’t feel fear. Like I think that I think that everyone comes with a basic kind of general comfort zone. Like Alex probably started with a bigger comfort zone than most and other people are, you know, maybe innately born to be more fear avoidant. But I think that pretty much all of us feel fear every moment of every single day in nearly every interaction we have. And there’s no exceptions to that. There’s one woman that had a damaged amygdala. And they were worried she wasn’t going to live for very long, like, imagine an animal that had no fear response, out on a freeway, like they don’t live very long. So no, we’re we’re all, like, if you’re ever wondering if you feel more fear than other people, I don’t think you are. You know, it’s all determined by how we deal with the fear. That makes all the difference in the world.

Murray Guest  53:26

Yeah. I’ve just thought of something. I’m gonna throw this out there. Have you seen the new trailer for the new Dune movie that’s coming out?

Kristen Ulmer  53:35

I haven’t.

Murray Guest  53:37

So I haven’t read the book. But my wife tells me I need to read the book. There’s a statement at the end of the movie, which is fear is the mind killer.

Kristen Ulmer  53:49

The writer of Dune is one of my, I mean, his quotes about fear are my least favorite. Almost.

Murray Guest  53:56

Yeah, and I’m just thinking, and I’m taking this way out of context, but I’m wondering what the intent of that is.

Kristen Ulmer  54:05

It’s just wrapped up in the same message that everybody is saying out there that fear is the enemy. I would modify. I’m really good at modifying quotes. I would modify that quote to say the unwillingness to feel fear is the soul killer. Or let me try it. Let me see. Thinking about fear rather than feeling it will kill your mind. I don’t like that one. 

Murray Guest  54:37

I like the first one. Yeah, that was good. That was good.

Kristen Ulmer  54:43

Yeah.

Murray Guest  54:44

So to wrap this up, I got a couple of last questions to ask and I asked some people this question and you’ve reminded me of the power of getting our message out because you’ve got so much to share. If I gave you a billboard on the side of the freeway that everyone’s going to drive past and see, everyone in the world, all 7 billion of us going to see this billboard. What’s your message on that billboard? Let’s just think we can travel by the way, because right now travel is a bit of a difficult thing, but you know.

Kristen Ulmer  55:25

Resist well, geez, your relationship with fear is the most important relationship of your life. So make sure it’s a great one.

Murray Guest  55:35

Love that. Love that. Yeah, I think, and I heard that from you in Bali, and that has stuck with me. And that I think takes us full circle with what we’ve talked about today around how important that self awareness is and how your relationship is, and we’re not punching our fear in the face. But you know, or that roommate of fear. But yeah, having that healthy relationship. Yeah.

Kristen Ulmer  56:00

And maybe the where we can leave it too because it we’re in times of COVID right now, right now, it’s really, really clear what people’s relationships with fear are. Like the people that ignore fear, ignore the Coronavirus. It’s like, it’s really becoming clear, like I can see everywhere what people’s relationship is with fear, if they’re, you know, resistance like I said, comes in many different forms. And the most common ways that I see people deal with fear or not deal with fear, are, they ignore it, they avoid it, they run away from it. Like one of the current techniques that people do, you know, to deal with anxiety or fear is they exercise a lot, you know, or go do yoga. And they see it as a way to deal with their fear. But I see it as their way for them to continue to not deal with fear, because then it makes their life tolerable, so that they, you know, can get by it’s like they get by another, I actually have a couple of friends that have to exercise like four or five times a day, you know, like four or five hours a day just to be able to sleep at night. They’re just, it’s just, it’s not helping them, it’s actually giving them just a band aid so that they don’t ultimately ever deal with the issue at hand, which is they’re not dealing with their fear in an honest way. And so right now, because it’s scary time, and we have the time like this would be a perfect opportunity to start a fear practice, and learn how to be intimate with your fear, and even just spend a moment to just be honest about how afraid you are of getting the Coronavirus. It’s not even the deaths, but it does incredible damage to your brain and your lungs and your taste buds like and on and on. It’s just, also somebody who’s losing their business that they’ve developed for 30 years, like, it’s a super scary time for them, can they just sit with their fear, instead of trying to drink it away or, like can we all just take a moment now that we have a pause, to learn how to find our fear in our bodies, notice if we’re resisting it, touch that spot and maybe not resist it this time, but embrace it, like give it a hug. Give it some love. If you learn how to love your fear, it’s self love practice, you know at its finest, and then learn how to be intimate with it. It’s like being intimate with the nature of life itself. And then just see what where that river takes you like, just be in flow with it. Until drop by drop by drop, you become a mighty river.

Murray Guest  58:40

Thank you so much. Thank you for your time, for your wisdom, for your your vulnerability of just your journey of understanding and exploring and helping us understand fear. And I’ll make sure there’s a link to your book, The Art of Fear, why conquering fear won’t work and what to do instead. Because it’s a fantastic book, and I’ll make sure there’s a link in that in our notes so people can check that out as well. It’s been so, so inspiring to have this conversation. So thank you Kristen, for your time. I do need to ask you, as this is the inspired energy podcast, what is your definition of inspired energy?

Kristen Ulmer  59:26

Well, if I were to keep on theme, the day that I am no longer interested in saying yes to scary things is the day that I lose my inspiration. It’s like fear is energy in motion. And by choosing to do things that scare me. It creates a lot of energy for me and it inspires me and it helps me expand to my greatest potential. And so the tie in for inspired energy and fear, it’s not at the denial of fear. It’s the inclusion of fear and you’ll find your greatest energy and your greatest inspiration.

Murray Guest  1:00:14

I think that’s going near, well, the top of the list of definitions. Thank you so much. Love it. Love it.

Kristen Ulmer  1:00:20

Last thing. I have a free fear and anxiety assessment on my website KristenUlmer.com. And if people want to start raising their antenna, it’s totally free. It’s 20 really fascinating questions and you can find out what your unique relationship is with fear that you may not be aware of.

Murray Guest  1:00:38

So I’ll make sure there’s a link to that because that is awesome. Also, the book plus also you run ski camps, the art of fear ski camps in Utah. So I hope that with all COVID and what’s happening and moving forward, you’re still getting to do those in the in the near future.

Kristen Ulmer  1:00:58

I am with safety precautions in place, of course.

Murray Guest  1:01:01

Yeah. Great. So I’ll make sure that’s all linked in our show notes for people to check all that out. And honestly, if you’ve got something from this conversation, as you’re listening to this, please make sure you tag Kristen and myself on social media and share that. And if you didn’t get something out of this, you weren’t listening. There was so much gold. What Kristen had to share. So thank you again so much. I really appreciate your time, your knowledge and your openness for all that you are doing to help us reframe and understand fear better.

Kristen Ulmer  1:01:33

Thank you, Murray.

Episode 70 – Kirsty McCulloch | Sleep, Fatigue & Human Factors

In this episode I chat with Kirsty McCulloch all about sleep, fatigue and human factors. She literally wakes companies up, and helps employees get enough sleep and arrive at work full of energy to start the day.

Listen in your favourite app

Transcript

Murray Guest  00:02

Hey, Kirsty, welcome to the podcast. I’m so looking forward to catching up with you. How have you been? 

Kirsty McCulloch  00:07

Yeah, great. Thanks, Murray. How are you? 

Murray Guest  00:10

I’m doing really well. I’m actually in a place of gratitude and renewed perspective after these past few months, certainly, it’s been a challenge for lots of people. And you and I were quickly talking before we started our chat about, you know, what’s been going on in the world. But I feel like I’ve got a renewed perspective on some of those little things in life. And I’m really loving the clients I’m working with at the moment, what have you been up to?

Kirsty McCulloch  00:37

So the whole COVID situation has been different for me. So I’ve got two very young children. So originally, up front, of course, I had a lot more contact with them than I’m used to, which put a whole lot of different perspective on what’s important, where I’m spending my time. And it also may be quieter with work as well. So changed my perspectives on that. So that’s been quite liberating to be able to explore that and what that means for me. And coming out the other side of it, what does that look like now to that getting busier again, which is great.

Murray Guest  01:08

Yeah, it is a funny time right now, where there’s, you know, different countries in lockdown, different requirements for things we can and can’t do. I also think the appetite for learning has been changed quite a bit around online learning, and what that looks like going forward. And in your space, around risk management and human factors. Oh, wow. There’s just so much we could talk about to do with that right now.

Kirsty McCulloch  01:34

Yeah, it’s huge. And companies perspectives on it is changing weekly. Which is great, with increased focus on individuals especially.

Murray Guest  01:42

So we’re going to get into this conversation about fatigue risk management and human factors and those things that I know you for, that you’re so passionate about. But what I’d love to know is how did you get to be in this field in the first place?

Kirsty McCulloch  01:57

It was something that I fell into. So I studied psychology at university, I finished high school and saw Silence of the Lambs and thought, gee, that’s a cool movie. And I’d love to be like Jodie Foster and, you know, talk to some criminals and understand what how they became criminals and get into all that stuff. This is way before CSI became really hot or anything like that.

Murray Guest  02:19

Can I just say there’s only two movies that have given me nightmares and one of them is Silence of the Lambs. 

Kirsty McCulloch  02:23

So what was the other one? 

Murray Guest  02:25

It was Cape Fear with Robert De Niro. And it was a remake. And he was stalking this family. It was just yeah, put me on edge.

Kirsty McCulloch  02:33

Yeah, Silence of the Lambs and Misery for me. Anyway, so wanted to be a forensic psychologist. And then as I finished my degree, two things happened, one is that I realized we didn’t have that many serial killers in Australia to make a huge career out of. And two, I was a bit of a speedster in my youth. So I had too many speeding finds to get into the police force, which was the only really way to kickstart a career in forensics. So I thought, well, I need to find something else. Luckily, I had really good grades. So I got offered a scholarship to study sleep. And I thought, well, what else am I going to do, I don’t want to be a clinical psychologist, that much was clear. And so I went and studied sleep in a sleep laboratory, literally wiring people up and watching them sleep and what happens when they do sleep, and what happens when they don’t sleep. Did some alcohol comparison studies, which were quite interesting seeing what happens when people get drunk compared to tired and that was fun. But it wasn’t where my passion was. So I said to my professor at the time, you know, I really, really love doing this, but I don’t want to make a career out of it. So see you later. And I’m going to explore other options. And he said, Well, how about we get you out to industry. And so he got me into aviation, and looking at pilots and what happens to them in the real world setting when they get tired, what sort of mistakes they make. So I got to go up in, you know, big airliners, looking at actual mistakes that people were making that were quite frightening. Got to go up on hot air balloons, who you know, get up at the crack of dawn to get these balloons ready for pre dawn flights. And what sort of mistakes do they actually make and, you know, fueling errors and stuff that’s happening. And that’s, that’s life or death situation. So that was exciting to be out in. And something I could see I could make a real difference in. So that’s how I got passionate about fatigue and launched my career into what sort of mistakes that people make when they’re tired. And then Human Factors more generally, what sort of mistakes that people make in the workforce and how can we stop them?

Murray Guest  04:32

Can I ask when you got into that work, did it change your perspective around risk and what you would do and not do in life?

Kirsty McCulloch  04:40

It certainly made me commit to getting a good night’s sleep. I am an early to bed and early to rise kind of girl where I prioritize sleep over everything else probably.

Murray Guest  04:49

Yeah, I admit I’m older than you, I know that, and I’m also later to learning about the benefits of sleep and I totally, totally, you can see the difference it’s made in my life. And it’s interesting. I remember still being at the gym a couple years ago, and there’s a guy that had this body that I was like, Hey, I wanna look like you mate. And I said, so what do I need to do, what tips would you give me? And one of the key things he said to me is make sure you get your sleep. It was sleep, stretch, and eat appropriately. There was no exercise. It was all about sleep.

Kirsty McCulloch  05:23

Yeah, right. Yeah, we’re just not taught about sleep when we grow up. We were told all about what to eat. We know about the food pyramid. We’re taught about exercise, of course, because we were forced to do that, I hated exercise at school. I love it now but hated at school. So forced to do all this stuff. And we know all about that. But we don’t get taught about sleep at school. 

Murray Guest  05:42

Mmm true. No, no, you’re right. And also, I would have never had a conversation with my parents, I don’t think most people do, about sleep. It’s like go to bed. And that’s it type of thing. And, and even not, how do you get to sleep when you go to bed, either. You did mention over the years, you’ve seen some interesting, I guess, errors people have made. Early on, when you saw those, what type of errors did you see that you’re okay to share, that you went, oh wow, this is just something that needs looking at.

Kirsty McCulloch  06:14

So simple things like putting in the wrong altitude, missing a decimal place off of an altitude on an aircraft, and so they’re flying, you know, magnitudes lower or higher than what they’re expecting. And I saw practices in truck drivers where truck drivers would literally put Velcro on the back of their hats, and align it with a piece of velcro on the back of their seat so that their heads would stay upright when they fall asleep when they’re driving. So I’ve seen some pretty, pretty interesting solutions to to get around the sleep issue too.

Murray Guest  06:52

And over the years, you’ve worked in a range of different areas. And in different industries. What’s been the impact when people start to have a greater awareness around sleep? What like, you and I can talk from a personal level, but what does it really mean when there’s this focus on sleep?

Kirsty McCulloch  07:13

Yeah, it’s interesting. One of my first experiences, I was working with a company that had a whole lot of typically ego driven professions involved, so talking doctors, we’re talking pilots, and nurses as well. And there are a lot of egos. There’s a lot of clashes within this culture. And all of a sudden, we implemented a fatigue procedure, which made them look at, start to look out for each other. This was way before Are you okay, and stuff was in place. But it made them start to look at each other, and if they were tired, which they always were, because let’s face it, doctors and pilots and nurses work around the clock and they live to serve their profession, they started asking each other, Are you too tired to do this? Or, you look tired, how are you feeling? Can I help in any way? What sort of controls should we put in place? We started to implement that Are You OK culture and started to actually open them up a lot more. And that was one of my first real wins. And in this job, in this profession, to say, we can really change cultures by getting people to look out for each other more and actually looking out for the core values of you know, are you getting enough sleep? And why not? And what impact is it having not only on your health, but on the health of everyone that you’re serving as well?

Murray Guest  08:30

Yeah, and I think about when someone’s asking that question of a peer or a team member, or someone that they they are leading, it’s creating trust, it’s creating vulnerability, it’s creating connection. It’s creating all these elements of an engaged culture. When you see that sort of start to happen, and you’re starting to see that sort of play out, how do you think it, you know, stays in place? Because obviously, in our world, consultants, we have our part to play and quite often we’re not there to see it to fruition. How does it continue do you reckon?

Kirsty McCulloch  09:09

So I’ve seen a lot of companies that I’ve worked with, and everyone’s gotten very excited after the training that you rollout, everyone’s like, yeah, I’m gonna make these changes. And I’m going to roll it out to my kids and my husband, and we’re going to sleep really, really well. And they write these awesome policies and procedures, and some of them way too long, some of them some are not long at all. And they sit on shelves and they collect dust just like many other safety systems. So you’re right, a lot of a lot of companies do this stuff, get a lot of energy around it, and then they just don’t sustain it. And it’s only the companies that I’ve seen that have established well being programs where they, where they actually have this programmed in on an annual basis to talk about. Doesn’t have to be with a consultant, but they just have an awareness period every month where they’re talking about fatigue and other wellness issues. Just to maintain a sense of focus, so they revisit it and they might send out new resources. Like there’s some, there’s some really good web based talks and some really good free resources that they can share around. So just having that systemized scheduled process to maintain that works really well.

Murray Guest  10:19

Yeah. And I know that you’ve worked not just in heavy industry, and not just, you know, aviation or construction, when we talk about sleep, who does it not apply to?!

Kirsty McCulloch  10:33

Absolutely everyone. And increasingly, so actually, all of my jobs at the moment are white collar workers. And more and more so for their families as well, because companies are realizing that if families are not working harmoniously behind the background, it’s impacting on their workers.

Murray Guest  10:52

I still remember I was working with a site a few years back, and there was a number of guys that had young children or babies basically, and they were having trouble sleeping, and they were turning up each day overtired. And then with that over-tiredness, this also became grumpiness with fellow teammates, and we did a toolbox talk on how to get your children to sleep. Here’s some ways to help with that. And I still remember the impact that made because I think you’re so spot on, it’s not just about that individual. And, to be honest, even COVID-19, these past few months, has shown or highlighted that people have lives that are much more complex than just you know, home and work. There’s all these other elements.

Kirsty McCulloch  11:36

Even things as simple as teaching people how to sleep. So many people say they can’t sleep, or they don’t know how to sleep, or they just for whatever reason won’t sleep. And teaching people the importance of it and telling them how to and helping them to get around the obstacles that might be blocking them has a huge impact on company revenue and safety and on overall health as well.

Murray Guest  11:59

And that presenteeism so showing up for work, and that you doesn’t matter what your job is, I can imagine that you are there physically, mentally, emotionally to do the work ahead of you.

Kirsty McCulloch  12:11

Yeah, we’ve all experienced that, haven’t we, staring at the computer screen and nothing comes out. And you think, oh god what did I do today. And that’s growing increasingly in awareness in companies too.

Murray Guest  12:20

So if there was your top sleep tips, so if I can imagine if you’re at a barbecue, and someone says, what do you do? And you said, sleep. And they’re like, so tell me what are the best tips? What do you tell people?

Kirsty McCulloch  12:31

So dark, quiet room, make sure your room is as dark and as quiet as possible. And turn off your phone within half an hour of going to bed and don’t fall asleep in front of the TV. So remove all technology within half an hour of going to bed. Because that completely changes your sleep structure. Avoid caffeine within four hours of bed. Even if you can fall asleep with caffeine in your system, that shot of coffee before you go to bed. It still has a huge impact on your sleep. And so does alcohol and even sleeping tablets, they have a huge impact on sleep quality too, so avoid them as much as possible. They’d be the top four.

Murray Guest  13:05

Can I add one that worked well for me?

Kirsty McCulloch  13:07

Go for it. Are you going to say sex? 

Murray Guest  13:12

Well, yes, I think sex is good for lots of reasons. Of course. 

Kirsty McCulloch  13:18

It does help you fall asleep. 

Murray Guest  13:19

It does help you fall asleep. It’s good for immunity, for connection. You know, a whole range of things. It’s actually music. I’m a big advocate for using, Insight Timer is the app that I use, and it plays, I use different sleep music. So not guided visualizations, but just some music. And I reckon I’ve even trained my brain when I hear certain music, I’ll just switch off and get into some really good deep sleep.

Kirsty McCulloch  13:47

Yeah, that works tremendously well. Especially for using sleep based music and not the nightclub style music. We know with kids as well, you can train kids to fall asleep to a certain song. So your brain reacts to all these triggers. If you use it routinely, you can train your brain to hear something and hear a tune a song or a type of tune or song. And your brain automatically knows right it’s sleep time. So of course, that’s what it’s gonna do.

Murray Guest  14:13

It’s interesting, because when I had my accident, so about 18 months ago, and I was in hospital in the neck brace and I would listen to some tracks to help me really sort of tune out and deal with, you know, all the bits that were going on then. I accidentally put one of those ones on a couple of months ago. And I felt this recoil in my body of like, No, not that song, not that song! Yeah, that’s not the one I needed. Because I’d still, you know, train my brain back to those moments. My youngest, who’s 11 he does listen to rain sounds every night before he goes to sleep, and that helps him fall asleep. And I think if you’re a parent and having trouble with children, I think that’s a real you know, there’s ambient music and different music out there that’s all free that can really help to get them to relax and just train their brain. 

Kirsty McCulloch  15:00

Yeah, yeah, all those sleep associations are great. 

Murray Guest  15:04

You mentioned sleep and alcohol and that sort of connection, just then, but at the start of our conversation you mentioned, or you alluded to the correlation, or I guess, some of that similarity between blood alcohol content and you know, when we are tired. What do you know about that? What can you share about that?

Kirsty McCulloch  15:25

So this has been, this research has been really important for political lobbying, to say, you know, we’ve all well accepted for a long time now that it’s not okay to drink and drive, and pull up your mates if they try and drink and drive, take away their car keys. But from a political lobbying perspective, we started to do experiments comparing how people react when they’re tired versus how they react when they’re drunk. So we could actually say, look, this is as important as driving drunk. So when I very first started out in this industry, we were doing experiments comparing that and these studies have been done hundreds of times around the world now too so we know without a doubt that when you’ve been awake for about 18 hours, your performance is comparable to having a BAC of .05, which is a legal driving limit. So 18 hours awake, it’s not very long, it’s kind of getting up at 6am. And then getting home after a nice dinner at midnight, that’s 18 hours a week, point 05, then add a few drinks onto that, then your performance is going to be even worse. If you’ve been awake for 24 hours, which lots of shift workers do, they’ll get up to do school drop off, be awake during the day, go their first night shift and then drive home, 24 hours awake is not unreasonable for shift workers. And performance is worse than having a BAC of point one.

Murray Guest  16:37

Wow, wow, yeah. And I unfortunately, and I’m sure you have over the years heard about people coming home from night work, and you know, getting very close to home and having those accidents, having micro sleeps. And so I know that what you’re sort of starting to think of, that you do sorry, is in working with organizations, also, how are our shift patterns structured? How are we getting people to and from work? How does that look so that it’s actually supporting their overall wellbeing?

Kirsty McCulloch  17:09

Yeah, that’s right. And so driving is probably the biggest risk that any shift worker faces, from a life and death perspective anyway, and they’re likely to make a whole lot of mistakes during this shift as well. But you’re right, how we set these shifts up? How we support our workers to say, actually, I’m too tired to drive. Do we give them cab vouchers home if they’ve worked overtime, for example. There’s a whole lot of consideration that can go into that.

Murray Guest  17:34

Yeah, and I think, and then you sort of mentioned this before, too, it’s not just the employee and the company that they work for. But also, I can imagine family members, and let’s say if someone is working in an environment like that, and they’re working long hours, how well their partner knows the importance of sleep, and they’re supporting each other to get that sleep as well when they get home.

Kirsty McCulloch  17:55

Yeah, that’s right. A lot of shift workers get home after a night, and then they get their list of things to do during the day. And yeah, they don’t really prioritize sleep at all.

Murray Guest  18:06

So something we also spoke about earlier was about human factors. What’s your overall short description of when we say human factors? What do we really mean?

Kirsty McCulloch  18:17

Human Factors has really piqued my curiosity because everyone wants to blame something when things go wrong. So we’re trained and programmed to do this from such an early age. And I do it myself, when something goes wrong here, something gets dropped, something gets smashed, especially if it’s something of mine. First thing I want to know is who did it? And what are they going to do about it, and kind of want to tell them off. That’s my automatic reaction, even though I’m the Human Factors person. So human factors is understanding that we all make mistakes. And we’re all programmed to be lazy. So we’re all programmed to conserve energy and do things in the easiest way possible. And we’re creative individuals, or if we’re gonna find a way to do that we’ll do it. So knowing that is our nature that we will make mistakes, and we’re all programmed to do things in the easiest way possible, and it’s totally acceptable for people to break rules and to expect that to happen. So as companies, we need to try and preempt that and work out how can we make this doable in the safest way possible. And not judging or blaming people unnecessarily. There’s certainly times where you do. But trying to understand why was that done, and how was that done. Rather than jump to blame to start off with, so that we can prevent things more systemically.

Murray Guest  19:32

Yeah, and I think you raised the point that there is a difference around the conscious choice and the subconscious actions. Yeah. I can give you a major list of the times I’ve made mistakes. But we don’t have time for that right now. But I know rushing is that human factor that’s tripped me up quite a lot.

Kirsty McCulloch  19:54

Yeah, rushing, being slightly foggy, having multiple things on your brain. So you know, you’re trying to keep things like 10 things present in your mind so that you can jump straight into the next thing as soon as you’re finished. It’s another big one as well.

Murray Guest  20:08

So if someone’s a leader of a team or a business, and how do they actually start to even implement something like human factors? How do they even start to consider it’s okay for people to make mistakes and errors?

Kirsty McCulloch  20:23

It’s really, really tough, especially when you start to talk about, you know, potentially life threatening incidents or incidents that have cost a lot of money from an infrastructure perspective. So people have, you know, cost, you know, sunk a multimillion dollar plane or something. It’s really, really tough. But when you start to analyze incidents on the whole, and mostly companies will come to me and say, Look, we’ve had a lot of, I’ve just had one today, we’ve had a lot of crush injuries where body parts have been crushed in plant as a whole lot of different types of plant. But we’re having a lot of these injuries. So then when we look back, and we look at why they’re happening, the rules are being broken. Well, why are the rules being broken? Well, they were written 20 years ago, they haven’t been addressed. Staff aren’t trained in them. There’s a whole lot of reasons why people are breaking those rules. Not to mention, it’s so hard to follow them and be compliant, takes half the time. So of course, of course, there’s going to be workarounds. So the next step then is to say, Okay, well, rather than getting them to keep on breaking the rules, let’s come up with better rules, that’s actually going to be safe for them to do it. Let’s involve them in doing it. And of course, the only way that companies get engagement in that is if the employees are involved. And if they’re blaming them and firing them for making, you know, for not doing the right thing, then they’re not going to get that level of engagement. So it takes a little bit of time, but normally, there’s some good traction behind them and some good evidence that they need to do something before they engage.

Murray Guest  21:54

Yeah. And I think about the experiences that people have had over the years where they’ve started to create that sort of emotional frame around how they they feel about the work they do, and how important helping them reframe what’s going on in their, in their working life, so that they are going to embrace it and feel like they’re not going to be blamed.

Kirsty McCulloch  22:16

Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. And that, it’s all baby steps, you know, somebody gives a little bit of trust, it’s about this vulnerability word, again, that you use before Murray, somebody gives a little bit of trust. And then if that’s not broken, they’ll give a little bit more than next time. And if that’s not broken, they’ll give a little bit more. So it just builds and builds and builds as a culture develops.

Murray Guest  22:34

So when did human factors as a concept start? I wish I knew off the top of my head. I just can’t think right now.

Kirsty McCulloch  22:41

It’s in the 1980s. A guy called Trevor Kletz. Geico Trebek clips. And James Reason in the 90s. Really, really founded on human error, understanding why people make mistakes. And also understanding how to fix that. So people are actually unintentionally doing the wrong thing, making mistakes. retraining them’s not going to fix it, because they’re not consciously doing it. So telling them to do the right thing, or be more careful, actually doesn’t work if they’re unintentionally doing it. So, so these practitioners that talk around, Well, how can we better treat that with memory triggers? Or, you know, engineering solution so that people physically can’t get it wrong?

Murray Guest  23:22

Yeah, and I think you raised a really good point before too, about how do we create a system or a process that makes it easy to succeed? Like, where it’s not easy to not fight because it’s so bloody, you know, complex? What’s, what’s the, if we look the future way, what do you think the future holds for human factors and this sort of understanding of we actually do need people, we actually do have people doing the work.

Kirsty McCulloch  23:51

Yeah, I think it will be. We’ve seen that start to emerge in a lot of industries like space, aviation, and medicine, where systems are much, much better designed, and relying less on human intuition and more on systems to actually managing so it’s easy to interact and intuitive to interact. Even the way that we use phones now is intuitive. My one year old, when she was only one, started to pick up my iPhone and use it because it’s just so intuitive and easy to operate. Now, with minimal scope for error, there’s not much you can do to stuff up a phone these days. And when they were first introduced, you could easily delete things and wipe things. And it was hard to use anything. So the better we get with systems and engineering, I think the less scope for human error there’ll be. But also relying on individuals to be part of those solutions, rather than coming up with you know, engineers that have never touched an airplane to design an airplane, for example. And you know, that will become less and less of an occurrence.

Murray Guest  24:51

Yeah. Okay, gotcha. Again, I hope and I get the feeling that through this pandemic for last three months, it has again highlighted the importance of empowering people, trusting people, consulting them. We’ve had the biggest, you know, working from home experiment ever. And I guess lots of people have been delivering, if not the same amount of work, but more in lots of cases as well.

Kirsty McCulloch  25:19

Yeah, people are saying they’re way more efficient in their meetings, they jump to the point a lot quicker. And they’re using the technology that’s been at their fingertips for years now. But they’ve been forced to use it. And now they’ve embraced it. It’s this whole resistance to change thing that none of us want to do it if it’s new, but as soon as we have to we can learn to love it.

Murray Guest  25:39

Yeah, totally agree. Now, you’ve recently had another baby. Can we talk about your baby? 

Kirsty McCulloch  25:46

Oh she’s two years old now. She’s turning 2 next week, so she’s not that recent. 

Murray Guest  25:49

I’m talking about the recent one…

Kirsty McCulloch  25:51

Oh the even more recent one. Yes, yes. So that would be a fatigue app that takes fatigue management off the shelves and puts it into a real living breathing beast.

Murray Guest  26:04

Yes. And I say that because I know launching an app or releasing a book. It’s that birthing process.

Kirsty McCulloch  26:12

Yeah, Indeed, indeed, I’ve been working on for several years now getting all the algorithms right and testing it. So in conjunction with a company called Oz Health, is a really big fitness for duty company that do a lot of drug and alcohol testing and general employee wellness. So in conjunction with them, I’ve developed this app called Awaken. So that’s a fatigue app. And it gets, it gets individuals to measure how much they’ve worked, and how much they’ve slept, just using a Fitbit, so it pairs with a Fitbit. And it will be paired with other devices going forward. Basically, to tell you just how tired you are, or how likely you are to make fatigue related mistakes. So for shift workers or people that are on call, I do a lot of work in the water industry where people are called out left, right and center. So you can imagine if something goes wrong with a water main, you want water at your house when you wake up in the morning, so you can have a nice warm shower. So that has to be fixed immediately. These workers run in very lean teams. So they’re called out at all hours of the day to fix water leaks, and respond to things and the power industry is exactly the same. But any workers that do this ad hoc call outs, we want to make sure that they’re fit and safe to do the work, especially if they’re working with high risk, high pressure or high power tools, and infrastructure. So this app can track how they’re going, let their supervisors know how they’re going as well. And just make sure that everyone’s actually tracking on a day to day basis. So you said before, how do companies keep this alive? And I said, Well, they can refresh it every year just through awareness. But this is another way to keep it alive. By actively monitoring on an individual’s and also a supervisor basis, how people are tracking with fatigue on a daily basis.

Murray Guest  27:51

Yeah, well, congratulations on getting the app out, as you said, it’s been years in the making, and there’s all that work in the background, the algorithms to make it work. So tell me if I’m part of a team, I’m getting the mains on in the middle of the night, and do I get an alert? Or does it tell me some way to be mindful to watch out to, to get some sleep? What does it do?

Kirsty McCulloch  28:15

Yeah, so as soon as you tick over and into a moderate or a high risk zone, you’ll just get a push notification to your phone so it won’t have huge alarm bells that startle you out of the concentration of what you’re doing. But it will just give you a notification on your phone to say, Look, you’re in a moderate zone, you probably need to think about your risk, or you’re in a high risk Red Zone, and you probably think about stopping work very soon. Similarly, if you’re in a high risk zone, it can alert your supervisor to say, look, Murray’s really tired, he’s worked 24 hours straight. And he’s probably only had two hours sleep. So you should probably check in on him. And just make sure that he’s thinking about going home soon, or there’s other controls in place.

Murray Guest  28:54

And I can imagine that powerful tool to support leaders where they don’t have that direct line of sight with their leadership with their team.

Kirsty McCulloch  29:01

Yeah, well, very few companies track actual work hours. Very, very few, which is surprising, given the legal liabilities around actually managing it. So very, very few companies even know when or where their employees are working. So this is a really good way to track that as well. Every company that I’ve ever worked with where we’ve done reviews on rosters and working hours takes so much effort to gather examples of actual work hours because companies just don’t keep it or track it. And they rely on individuals to say how much they’ve done in a month for overtime purposes only.

Murray Guest  29:36

Yep, yep. Yeah. Well, fantastic. And again, back to some of your earlier points around sleep and fatigue. This app I assume is not suitable for just heavy industry, it could be suitable for any industry.

Kirsty McCulloch  29:52

Yeah, we’ve got a council, just a local city council using it at the moment to track their worker’s sleep and fatigue. And so yeah, and anyone can use it for individual purposes or for company purposes alone, some companies are just using it to raise awareness. So they’ll only use it for a month out of every year during their awareness month. And some researchers are using it to compare different rosters. So to say, you know, this Team A’s using a roster, Team B’s using a different roster, what do they look like? How does overtime rate on one versus the other? How do people sleep on one versus the other? If we swapped them around, how do the teams interact? So you can use it quite scientifically as well to get some data driven decisions made within your company.

Murray Guest  30:36

Yeah, fantastic. And I’ll make sure that there’s links to the app in the show notes, so people can check it out and and see how it can support them in their team in you know, managing their fatigue. 

Kirsty McCulloch  30:47

Yeah, it’s exciting to get it out there. 

Murray Guest  30:49

I bet. I bet it has been. So well done. Awesome work. Thank you. It’s been so good chatting with you and connecting and talking about the work that you do. I know that there’s a real impact on what you do through the companies that you partner with around the health, the wellbeing, and of course, the safety and productivity. So thank you for the chance to talk through all this with you. 

Kirsty McCulloch  31:12

Thanks, Murray. I appreciate you inviting me. 

Murray Guest  31:14

That’s okay. Now, I wouldn’t let you get away without you sharing your definition of inspired energy, which is something that everyone shares on the podcast. So what is your definition of inspired energy?

Kirsty McCulloch  31:26

I think this changes every time you ask me. But my definition is, is finding something you’re passionate about. And creatively pursuing excellence non stop so that you can deliver those learnings to everyone you touch.

Murray Guest  31:44

You know what? I think I might take that definition and put that on the website. That was beautiful. I like that one. Yeah, that was a good one. That was very good. Thank you. Again, thank you so much. It’s been great chatting, connecting. Where’s the best place for people to find you online? 

Kirsty McCulloch  32:03

On my LinkedIn page. It is that easy for people to find? 

Murray Guest  32:09

I’ll make sure it’s a link to your LinkedIn page in our show notes as well. 

Kirsty McCulloch  32:14

That would be great, I’m not tech savvy. 

Murray Guest  32:17

That’s fine. We’ll make sure that’s there. Great chatting to you today again, and if anyone got something out of today’s session, please share it on social media and or let me know and also check out the Awaken fatigue app as well. Thanks again Kirsty so much. 

Kirsty McCulloch  32:35

Fabulous. Thanks, Murray.

Episode 63 – Sharon Hespe | The Good Gut Girl

In this episode I chat with Sharon Hespe, a naturopath who is also known as The Good Gut Girl and who wholeheartedly believes that it is possible to change your life through good gut health.

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Transcript

Murray Guest  00:01

Welcome, Sharon to the podcast. Great to see you. Great to catch up with you, how you been? 

Sharon Hespe  00:08

Fantastic Mary, how are you?

Murray Guest  00:10

I’m good. I’m feeling good today, I am feeling a bit heavy hearted about all that’s going on in the world, that’s for sure, particularly in America, and it is spreading obviously, the protests and the awareness around just what’s going on, and the changes that need to be made. And whilst you and I both understand strengths, and I do joke around and say my empathy is low, and yours is high, I’m definitely feeling it at the moment that heaviness as well.

Sharon Hespe  00:36

Yeah, that’s understandable. There are major changes going on now all at the moment. And, and sometimes it’s a little bit hard to cope with everything, because there is just so much going on.

Murray Guest  00:48

Yeah, and I know that certainly you help with your clients that you see around how to handle that and do that. And similar to myself, I guess, the client I see quite often is coming back to what’s in your control, what can you do about it? And, having the conversation I think is really important as well.

Sharon Hespe  01:05

That is very true. And often I will say to my patients, there is nothing that I can do to control what’s going on around you. But there are lots of herbal medicines and supplements I can give you that will help you to relax into what’s going on and not be so stressed about what’s happening. So it gets you the herbs and supplements will help you to adapt to situations rather than reacting.

Murray Guest  01:31

And that building of resilience within the body with the work that you do so that we can handle what’s going on in our world. I’m sure that’s that’s what I’m hearing there. Now you are known as the good gut girl. Which I love. I love it such a great saying and a great perspective that you bring that people I know need to learn about on ask, Why? Why this focus on the gut? How did that come about for you in your area of naturopathy?

Sharon Hespe  02:05

Gosh, I remember many years ago, or around 12 years ago, when I was studying in a clinic, we had a supervisor and she was really big on food intolerances. And it was such a complex world. And I remember thinking, I’m not sure that I’m really gonna get into food intolerances when I get out and become a naturopath because it’s so complex, it’s so hard. Sure, there must be an easier way to make money. So I remember when I first became a naturopath and my very first patient had a food intolerance was like, Okay, I really know what to do here, because I’m really experienced because of my clinic supervisor, and then the next person and then the next person. So I did probably half my work in the beginning around food intolerances. And then a letter landed in my letterbox from the council, and they were saying that they wanted to help health professionals to build their business within the St. George, the St. George community. So I thought, Okay, that sounds great. So they, they created and ran a business course for us. And it was absolutely brilliant. And in one of those lessons, I can remember one of the facilitators saying, you really need to pick something that is that is happening now that there is a future to and you really need to nation, it was like, Huh, okay, I think I know what I need to do. So I said, Look, I really think I need to focus on food intolerances because I have a lot of experience in it. And more and more people are coming down with gut problems. So I did and that’s what I really focused on. And since then, that’s almost, in fact, that is the only patients I do see I’ve got problems. If I have someone with fertility or song with cancer or someone with some other problem, I will refer them on automatically because in my mind, I’ve got problems day in, day out. So when I sit and listen to somebody, immediately it comes straight to mind. I never have to go to a textbook, I never have to go and look something up because it’s just what I do day in day out.

Murray Guest  04:18

And your your depth of knowledge from seeing all those people and understanding their needs is this I can imagine this library that you have just ready access to in your head and from all those experiences.

Sharon Hespe  04:30

That’s correct. And there’s a lot of anecdotal symptoms with gut problems, lots of anecdotal symptoms that you see. So if, for instance, if somebody would would present with a fructose malabsorption problem, they would have pain high up in the gut, that pain at times will be really severe. There will be worse after garlic and onions there will be worse after fruit on an empty stomach. There could be anxiety there will be liver function problems just straight away before I even test, I will think, okay, it’s likely that there’s an intestinal absorption problem here, because those symptoms are very, very common in that gut problem.

Murray Guest  05:13

So for those people listening that may not have an understanding of the difference between a food allergy and a food intolerance. Okay, can you help us understand those differences?

Sharon Hespe  05:24

Yes, yes, they’re both mediated by the immune system. But an allergy is an IGE mediated problem. And an intolerance or sensitivity is mediated by the IDG part of your immune system. So with the IGE part, it’s like we almost saw that has a peanut allergy or a seafood allergy. So the reactions that you get will happen between around sometimes 30 seconds, up to five to 10 minutes, after you ingest that food, we’re any tolerance will happen, you will get a symptom between possibly half an hour and up to five days later. So it makes it quite difficult to, to work out what’s going on. So I do test a lot for intolerances, because it’s just the easiest way to do it. But yeah, there’s a big difference between an allergy and intolerance. And obviously, allergies are life threatening emergencies. And you, you will always have an epi pen, and there’s a huge difference. And once you either have an allergy or you have an intolerance, then you understand what’s going on.

Murray Guest  06:26

Yeah, I think that’s a distinction that I was aware of that an allergy is life threatening, whereas an intolerance is and tell me if this is incorrect it in causes health, I guess, concerns and problems and discomfort, but doesn’t have that same consequences that are that when you have the allergy it has?

Sharon Hespe  06:49

That’s correct. That is right. But it does create some really uncomfortable and really awful symptoms to people that they have to live with day in, day out. And sometimes people just tend to get used to it and their illness becomes the new, normal way of feeling that this is how these sounds always been sad people feel. Whereas an allergy it’s a totally different thing.

Murray Guest  07:13

I’ve heard some things in the media. Over the years of that there’s more people having food intolerances than the past. And they’re on the increase on wondering Is that what’s happening? Or are we just getting better at identifying them? Or is it a bit of both?

Sharon Hespe  07:30

Look, I do think it’s a bit of both. But there are a few things that really will contribute to a food intolerance or a gut problem, and that is stress. And you look at the world, especially since January this year, and look at the stress people have been on it. It’s been huge. But as well as stress, it’s poor dietary choices. So too much weat, too much dairy, too many processed foods. So people say oh, in my day, you know, my grandparents didn’t have that. They had a very different life than we have now. They had a community to help them they had family to help them. And they had food from the gardens, you know, or they had they had a lot of fresh food, they didn’t have nearly as much processed food as we have, or nearly as much stress. So both of those things are huge contributors to food intolerances.

Murray Guest  08:17

So if I’m walking around, and I think I’ve got a food intolerance, what should I do?

Sharon Hespe  08:25

Okay, first thing is you need to find a naturopath that is great with gut health, because they will be able to help you. I say to people, 

Murray Guest  08:35

Can I just go back a second? How would I even know if I’ve got a problem?

Sharon Hespe  08:38

Interesting. That’s true. That’s true. So you would have symptoms and all go really probably from the head down. You may be getting headaches, you may feel a bit foggy, you may have a terrible memory, you may be getting mouth ulcers, you may be getting indigestion or reflux, you may be getting gut pain, that gut pain may be high up on your ribs or it might be lower down. You may be getting bloating, you may be tired a lot. Your muscles may ache you may have. Your poo might smell all of those sort of things are symptoms that you may or may not have.

Murray Guest  09:20

I think that’s a quite a big list and actually I think brings attention that when we are out of alignment those problems you know got a can impact so many parts of our body can’t it. 

Sharon Hespe  09:32

Off course it does. Yes. 

Murray Guest  09:35

Okay, so then as you’re saying if we’ve got some of those complaints, or we’ve got some of those health concerns, and my normal is like that and I’m don’t want that normal anymore. You started to say then see a naturopath that has a knowledge and skill around gut health.

Sharon Hespe  09:53

Yeah, that is so true. And the key that our that the way that I like to operate. I’ve the way I do things is you need to find the cause of what’s going on. So and we’ve we’ve got problems, it can be really things, it can be a food intolerance, it can be SIBO, which is small intestinal bacterial overgrowth, it might be a fruit, just malabsorption problem, or it could be just too much bad bacteria in that gut. And you know, we all see that television ads where you’ve got the good bacteria dancing, and the bad bacteria dancing, and the bad bacteria tend to take over. And that just means there’s too much bad bacteria in your gut, it can be a Candida overgrowth, it might be a parasite, it could be a salicylate problem, it could be a histamine problem. So there are quite a few things that can be. But the key is, as with all health conditions, you need to find the cause, before you can treat it properly, there is only so much that you can do symptomatically

Murray Guest  10:49

it really is about finding the cause. And something you’re saying before about the timeframe that the symptoms can show up, Is there like a load that you can slowly build up over a period of time with those food intolerances or those problems, it’s not like a switch, and it just happened. So it could be a number of things going on to get to a point where you’ve got the pains and the aches and the symptoms. Yeah, that is very true, it’s a little bit similar to the perfect storm. And often what you’ll see when people have a food intolerance, they’ll have a stressful event. So then I’ll get married, then we’ll get divorce, that they bought a house or had a child or someone’s died. So they’ll have this really stressful event that happens to them. And they gut lining becomes in really bad shape. And if the food proteins are not being broken down or digested properly, those food proteins drop into that leaky gut through that leaky gut into the bloodstream. And you’ll have a reaction. So I’ll use myself as an example as to how this happened. And about nearly 10 years ago, now, my mother was diagnosed with ovarian cancer. And she had passed away within the week. And she was already she was 63 years old. So that’s a relatively young age. And then all of a sudden, she was alive, relatively healthy. And within a week she passed away. So it was a really stressful time for me. And I can still remember the stress of that time and about. So I went back to work and do the whole funeral all of the things that you’re supposed to do when somebody dies. And then about three months later was like, why am I so tired, I was so tired, I would set my phone alarm for 20 minutes and sleep on the couch between patients, because I was so exhausted. And it took me quite a while to work out what it was and then hang on a minute. Maybe I’ve got a food intolerance. But I’d never had any other symptoms, no bloating, no pain, no constipation, none of the other symptoms that are talked about at all. And I thought well just test yourself and see. So I did I did the finger prick blood testing clinic process at all, and was like, Oh my god, I there was about five or six foods that showed strong intolerance as well. Okay, I still wasn’t convinced. I thought okay, well just remove the foods and see how you feel. I felt terrible for the first four or five days as I removed those foods from my diet. But But that day forward, I six was like, I could run to the top of Mount Everest, I felt so good. And that’s when I knew Okay, it was a 50 chance but but those are sort of things you see with a food intolerance, you see a stressful event, and you will always I always had a little bit of hay fever. That’s it. That’s the only sign off into my head. And obviously, I had gotten to like other people. This is my new normal. This is how I’m supposed to feelwhen it wasn’t. So it’s quite interesting.  There are things that I’m thinking about too is when we’re under stress quite often we go to drinking and eating things which aren’t the best for us. 

Sharon Hespe  13:49

Always. 

Murray Guest  13:50

Which then compound the problem, I guess.

Sharon Hespe  13:52

Yeah, that’s true. And too What happens is people think, well, I feeling really bad anyway. So why would I do what I want to wait? Because how much worse can I really feel?

Murray Guest  14:03

I’m feeling crap. So you know what, I’m just going to drink some more so I can not feel it. And then I might eat a whole bunch of, I don’t know junk food or comfort food? Because that’s what I’m feeling like, and then that’s not helping as well.

Sharon Hespe  14:15

That’s correct. That’s exactly what happens. Yeah, it’s a huge, vicious cycle that sometimes you need someone just to step in and intervene and say, let’s look at things in a different way.

Murray Guest  14:27

So you mentioned good and bad bacteria. What are some things which help us build that good bacteria in our gut?

Sharon Hespe  14:36

Okay, with the good bacteria you need to, for really good gut health you need around 40 different plant foods per week, which is a lot of plant foods per week. Ideally, if your gut is in great shape, you will cope with those sorts of plant foods. And that will keep your gut in fantastic shape. So it’s about variety. It’s about brightly colored foods and things such as that

Murray Guest  15:00

Okay, and I’ve heard that drinking doesn’t help those good bacteria. When I say drinking I mean drinking alcohol.

Sharon Hespe  15:09

Yeah, alcohol, alcohol and caffeine can be really detrimental to the gut lining, it’s really quite inflammatory and you’ve got it that lining you can imagine, it’s like having. If you can imagine your fingers, your hand and you open up your hand, and you can spread your fingers out beautifully. And that hand works really, really well. So then imagine, if three of those fingers were stuck together and only one was open, your hand won’t function very well, like that. You’ve got the same if it’s not in great shape, it can’t function well. And, and then you’re in flaming that one little part that is still open, then it just compounds and becomes worse and worse and worse.

Murray Guest  15:51

Yeah. Okay. So this is a bit of a reset for me. Thanks, Sharon. I mean, I’m now drinking less drinking less coffee. You’re just ticking off these things, maybe what else am I gonna cut out next your going to tell me, no chocolate!

Sharon Hespe  16:07

Ah, I see. The problem with chocolate is the dairy. So I think he is people always forget that chocolate has dairy, but it’s dairy milk chocolate. So look, dairy. A1 dairy in particular is the probably the food that is most problematic for most people. But you can have dark chocolate, because that doesn’t have any dairy milk in it. You just need to be careful when you read the label that doesn’t say it contains milk solids.

Murray Guest  16:38

So I do have I do like my dark chocolate. And I am mindful also of enjoy life in moderation. So having those small bits of dark chocolate. But I you know, I think we all slip up and that’s something maybe which I wonder about too, and about being kind to ourselves when we do slip up a little bit because we got to be kind to ourselves, maybe to get back moving forward again, don’t we? 

Sharon Hespe  17:02

Yeah, of course. And I often say to people, you know, when they come in for their second or their third appointment, They say, look, I need to be honest. I haven’t, you know, haven’t done what you’ve asked me and I feel terrible. And I say, Look, you’re human, it’s okay. You know, just get back on the horse. And let’s start again, it doesn’t mean that you’ve ruined all the work that we’ve done. It just means that you’re humans. And and, you know, just don’t be so hard on yourself. Let’s give you find ways to help you to do it better. 

Murray Guest  17:34

Yeah, great, great. I need to ask about the emergence, if that’s the right word about kombucha in the last must be last couple of years, I guess. And I admit, I don’t mind, if I’m at the shops or if I’m getting some petrol from the service station, I might grab a bottle of kombucha. And I’m, I’m telling myself, that’s a better alternative, and I haven’t drank coke and things like that for years, that I’m telling myself that’s a better alternative and it’s doing me some good. How much good is it doing me? Really,

Sharon Hespe  18:09

Kombucha is a little bit like sauerkraut and it’s a little bit like all of the so called functional foods. Now that probably 60 is probably a good word for them. Now, with your gut health, they say that things like kombucha and sauerkraut, give your gut good bacteria. In fact, they don’t give your gut good bacteria. They are like all other foods and they are transient. But one good thing about them is that another food so that’s another source of variety for your gut, which is also good. So I said, Look, you know, maybe one kombucha week is fine, but a kombucha everyday is too much. And often I will see patients that say okay, I’ve been on this huge health kick. I’m having kombucha I’m having sauerkraut I’m juicing everyday. And they’re just getting worse. And I’m thinking yeah, no, you’re just getting worse. So it doesn’t mean that those things in large quantities are better for you have those sort of things in small quantities. And I always think that water is probably the best thing. Just get a sparkling mineral water one time. Get a kombucha the next we want to have a treat. A kombucha is fine, but treat it as a treat food. Not a normal food.

Murray Guest  19:19

Yeah, not an everyday food. Yeah, I think that’s a really good point. I’m also thinking about what I’ve learned over the years about listening to my body, and how powerful that’s been around my decision making or what it’s telling me or if I need to slow down. I’d love to know your perspective around how much we do and how much you see the power and listening to our body.

Sharon Hespe  19:44

Listening to your body tells you a lot. And I find when a patient first comes in and I ask them a series of questions. They have no idea what is going on in their body. But once we remove problematic foods, whether they be intolerances or SIBO foods or fructose foods or foods that are bad for the bacteria in your gut, people then start to listen to their body. And then they’ll have a food that they’re not supposed to have. And they can feel exactly what’s going on. So sometimes it needs for somebody to say to you, let’s look at things in a different way before they actually do stop and listen. And once they do, stop and listen, they go, Ah, now I can hear. Yeah, it’s like that whole, you can’t see the forest for the trees until someone points out that particular tree and what that will do for you, and then you Okay, now I can see.

Murray Guest  20:34

Yeah, that awareness now and then taking more notice of it as you consume different foods and what the reaction is that your body might be had this yeah, gotcha. Okay. Shaz I’d love to know, I mean, you’ve shared a couple of stories about yourself. But is there a story or some insights around someone you’ve helped, of course, mindful of, we don’t want to know their personal details. But I’d love to know the impact that you’ve had in some of the people you’ve worked with.

Sharon Hespe  21:00

Yeah, I think the biggest the biggest stories that I do see, come from young children, and from people that have terrible diarrhea. And often I have people that come to see me, and honestly, it’s sometimes it’s heartbreaking, and I almost feel myself in tears. Because for these people to get to work, they need to take medication, such as gastro stop, because if they don’t, they actually won’t make it to work to get to the toilet in time. So as often, it’s as simple as it might be an egg intolerance. It might be a fructose malabsorption, it just might be too much bad bacteria. And just a small change in diet makes a huge difference. You know, so with adults, I see that a lot. And I love that. But it’s with children. It’s so you will see a small child that will come to see with one of their parents, or their carers, and they tell me pain is terrible. You know, and actually, there is one great, great story that I will tell you about a child that once came to see me, there was a lady, she came to see me she had four children, and her youngest boy, was the one that was unwell. And I don’t like to test children. I like to if I do need to send the probiotics I will, I do prefer to set up let’s remove a couple of foods first. So we removed these two foods from this child’s diet. And the mother came back in I think was probably a month later. And she said Sharon, she said, Thank you so much. She said, I thought I just had a quiet child. She said the three of my boys were like, bouncing off the walls and the chairs and the counters like energetic children. And she said, My fourth child, she said, I just thought he was quite he used to like lay on the couch. He says sit around, he never had any energy. He didn’t used to do much. And she said now I realized he was just unwell. And because he was only two, he couldn’t tell his mother he was unwell. And as soon as you remove the food, she said, he just became what the other three children and he was. So things like that make such a huge change in people’s lives and and then his poor mother felt so guilty. She said, Oh my god, I thought I had this quiet child, but she said he’s been on welfare the whole two years of his life. So so that was that was a nice heartwarming story,

Murray Guest  23:20

That is beautiful. And your many, examples of the child but also the adults where you’re changing and working with them to change the quality of their life. So that they can live a better quality of life and a better day to day life. And as you said not have to fear going to work or wondering where the next toilet is, or worrying about even that I can imagine some people in that situation to have like a day to day management of what are they going to do and organizing their life around that.

Sharon Hespe  23:52

Yeah, often people’s day to day management is okay, I’m going from here to and I live in hurstville Grove in just south and city. So a person Saturday management, if they will go into North Sydney, they would know where every public toilet was on the way. That’s their way of managing it. Which I can understand if that’s the way that that’s the only way they can do it. But that is how people do manage their lives when they have something that’s happening like that, which it’s sad because it’s just not necessary.

Murray Guest  24:23

Yeah. And I can imagine then, if we’re taking that out of the day to day management, that then opens up attention in the consciousness to focus on other things and enjoy life much much better. Yeah, of course.

Sharon Hespe  24:36

Yeah, that’s right. It’s life changing. Yeah, getting your guts in great shape. is life changing for many people? Hmm.

Murray Guest  24:44

Is there a saying a question just popped into my head and that is, is there different needs? Like, generally that guts need through different life stages. So as we get older, do we need to think about things differently for our gut, or is it more on an individual level,

Sharon Hespe  25:01

It’s more of an individual level. But as we get older, we get we have less stomach acid in our gut. That is probably one of the things that happens when we get older. And often you see in elderly people, they just, they’ve been cooking for 70 years, and they just don’t want to cook anymore couldn’t be bothered. So they will tend to have tea and toast and things like that, which are not great for anybody. But it is more of an individual thing, rather than what you see for the over the lifespan.

Murray Guest  25:35

And there trends within families, you know, is that genetically, that that sort of influences some of those intolerances as well.

Sharon Hespe  25:45

Often, often you will see a parent and a child have the same, exactly the same intolerances. And often people will ring me and say, Look, I want to bring myself and my children and I say, pick the person that is the most unwell in your family. Let’s get them right. First, let’s remove the foods that showed to be a problem for that person. And keep everything else the same in the family. And you will find that that comes that that they will all come together as well. So yeah, it’s often something you see that does run in families. And often if a pregnant mother has poor gut health, that child will as well have poor gut health. Not always, but it’s a common common thing.

Murray Guest  26:25

Okay, gotcha, gotcha. Okay. Yeah. This has been fantastic Shaz, I love your passion for what you have for the work that you do and the people you are seeing. How’s it been? I just want to ask for the past couple of months with COVID. And a change of working. How’s that been working out for you as well?

Sharon Hespe  26:47

Look, it’s it’s been I’ve had to pivot and move online, like many people did any fact as naturopaths, we were told our association said, Look, you actually don’t have to go online, you can still see people if you want to. But my thoughts were and especially in the beginning, it was such a panic with that with the COVID. My thoughts were, I didn’t want to catch the Coronavirus and give it to a patient then to give it to their patient to to give it to the whole family, if that makes sense. So I said okay, I’ll just move online, like everybody else did. And it was great. But my biggest skill is empathy. So it’s quite difficult to speak to somebody on a screen and look at a camera and, and get a great understanding of what’s going on in their life. So it can be done, but it’s not as ideal as it is in person. But I do notice what I have started to see now is people that now have to go back to work. And they say, Oh, no, I have to get back on that train. Now. I better fix my gal has seen a host of people in this last couple of weeks, realizing that they actually do need to go back to an office environment. And the I’d better get my updates before I go back. So they don’t have to get off at work right. Get off at all these stations on the way to find the nearest toilet.

Murray Guest  28:05

Yeah, gotcha. You just reminded me of something I did want to talk about. And that is with their own immunity and gut health. What’s the relationship there?

Sharon Hespe  28:14

Look, with immunity and and gut health. It’s, there’s this huge, huge relationship because about 70% of your immunity is within your gut. So if you don’t get your gut in great shape, then it makes sense that your immune system also will not be in fantastic shape. So and like I discussed before, the gut barrier is suppose contains a whole bucketload of immune complexes and it’s a really complex situation. So I suppose the basics are if you want your immune system to stay in great shape, you need to keep your gut lining in great shape. It’s as simple as that.

Murray Guest  28:53

So whilst we thinking about in coming into winter in the southern hemisphere and the flu and obviously COVID-19 looking after our guard to increase our immunity is really important.

Sharon Hespe  29:07

It’s it’s super important and not only will it help your immune system, but you will feel fantastic. Absolutely fantastic. Yeah. And there are a few things like I said to people, like you know, try and limit your wheat and dairy intake to once a week. Try limit your alcohol content to two servings a week. Make sure you really really increase those immune system features such as zinc, so your seafood, your red meat, your nuts and seeds, your vitamin D foods like fatty fish and eggs. Your vitamin C foods, capsicum, strawberries, citrus are fantastic. So your vitamin C, vitamin D, vitamin A food so all yellow, orange fruits and vegetables that pumpkin, carrot, oranges all have great amounts of vitamin A in there. You can get this great variety in your diet. It will really really help to keep your gut healthy.

Murray Guest  29:58

I think that’s such a beautiful list of the rainbow of colors that you mentioned earlier. And that variety. And if you’re seeing that, that rainbow, you’re seeing that variation on your plate. Not the beiges, you know, the browns, the whites. That’s going to obviously make a difference. Yeah. Yes, it does. That I think that’s such a great list of foods you just talk through, for people to think about and think about their color. But if someone’s listening, before we wrap up, shares, I want to know if there’s a little strategy that you know, would help everybody what would that be?

Sharon Hespe  30:45

Find out what’s going on your gut? Get tested, find out you need to Yeah, yeah. And you can guess. And you can put in this way you could put in that food and you can try this, you can try that. But don’t guess get a test?

Murray Guest  31:00

Oh, I like that. Okay, now, I want to ask you, you mentioned empathy a couple of times empathy, number one, in your top five strengths. And in the past, through a program, you found out your top five strengths. And with Tammy and I are working on that. I just want to check in because I love the impact strengths is made in people’s lives. What was the impact for you knowing those strengths for you.

Sharon Hespe  31:35

It makes you understand how you think about things and how you view the world. And and I know sometimes when you can over dial your strengths, that’s also not great, either, it’s important to understand, okay, this is what my strength is, this is what I’m good at. But also to remember that there are other people that have other strengths, and you need to work together. And it’s important to understand where your strengths lie. So you can use them responsibly and ethically. And understand what your weaknesses are. So you can work on improving those.

Murray Guest  32:13

Fantastic, I love how you’ve referenced your empathy a couple of times, and I can imagine that something you need to need to be conscious of in the way that you are empathetic, but also not getting fully involved in the emotions of your patients as well.

Sharon Hespe  32:29

 I must admit I’m quite good at that and what I say to patients, and this is one reason why I don’t do fertility work. And this might sound a bit strange, like, if I was to do fertility work, I would feel that it’s more responsibility to give you a baby, we’ve got work, it’s more responsibility to find out what’s going on to say to you, I need to do this, this and this and this. But when you decide to go home, and you decide that you’re not going to do that, that’s not my problem. I’ve given you all of the information. I’ve given you everything I can can. But you need to now take responsibility. And I will cut myself off there and say this is now your responsibility. I’m here to support you. But I need you to do something. I can’t do everything.

Murray Guest  33:12

Yeah, people need to do the work themselves, don’t they? 

Sharon Hespe  33:15

That’s correct yes. And that’s what I said, when I do that work. They feel fantastic. You know, people say to me, oh, thank you so much. Thank you. Let’s look, I’m just doing my job. You’ve done the work. And this is why you feel so good.

Murray Guest  33:29

I cut out dairy. And that was a challenge for me, particularly cheese. I love my cheese that I’d shifted my type of milk in my coffee some time ago. And also I cut out meat for some time, but I am eating some more meat there was what he was eating salmon and some other fishes might through that. But the way I felt was a lightness, I felt lighter. And my being. And I think there’s that, that heaviness with some foods and it doesn’t, it’s not just the heaviness in the gut. There was a heaviness over all my energy. So that lightness was something which I found, to be honest, the lightness I found addictive. I wanted to have more of that and feel like that and not feel the heaviness. 

Sharon Hespe  34:17

Yeah, that often that happens. Yes, yeah. 

Murray Guest  34:19

Yeah. Now, Sharon, Tell me please, what’s your definition of inspired energy?

Sharon Hespe  34:28

I think it’s inspiration to do things that are going to give you energy. 

Murray Guest  34:36

Love it. That’s such a beautiful, I think summary of what is all about for these conversations. And I think that anyone listening to this great chat with you, the good gut girl is going to get some inspiration to find out more about their gut and to feel that lightness and their energy and I love how you I talked about a new norm, not the norm that we have now that we get used to have that heaviness and changing that.

Sharon Hespe  35:06

That is so true, you know that the way that people can feel and do feel once they discover what’s going on, they got and they make those changes. And sometimes it’s as small as removing one or two foods and doing things like eating three meals a day stop snacking, just sometimes it just takes a small shift in things that no set of people there. So all that people sometimes do, I feel so silly should not know that. I say no, you know, you know what you know best. I know what I know best. And it’s up to me to share with you my knowledge so that you can learn how to get better yourself.

Murray Guest  35:43

Fantastic. Now, I love that nice a great way for us to wrap up. If someone wants to find out more about you and the work that you do and how you work with your patients where’s the best place to find you online. The best place is my website which is www dot the good girl.com.au I have quite a large Facebook group as well a quite a large following. And I post daily on Facebook and I’m in the middle at the moment of 50 tips in 50 days so I’ll be popping a gut tip a day up on Facebook so people can have a look on Instagram the good girl the underscore good underscore, underscore girl and just by email naturopathic Sharon his.com delay you so they some great links and make sure all those are in the show notes. And particularly I think that Facebook one where you’re sharing at the moment those 50 tips in 50 days for a good guy i think that’s that’s fantastic. So lots of information there for people. Make sure all those links are in the show notes and thank you again for your time and your knowledge. shares. This has been awesome. So thank you. I also want to encourage anyone that’s listening to this conversation with Sharon if you got something out of it and you want to share it online, I’d love you to do that. Please tag the good get go. And myself Murray Guest hashtag inspired energy because every time you share that everyone else gets to get your insight as well. So we we share the knowledge and inspiration. So shares Thanks again so much for your time and energy all the best for the rest of 2020 and for your health and keeping warm because it’s getting cold down here. But again, awesome chatting with you. 

Sharon Hespe  37:27

Thank you Murray was great to chat with you again too.

Episode 54 – Julie Jones | Productivity Ninja & Scuba Diver

We are currently in the throes of COVID-19 – Coronavirus – and in this episode my discussion with Julie Jones is centred around how this virus could help us all innovate, create better work environments, and utilise productivity in a much better way.

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Transcript

Murray Guest  

Julie, welcome to the podcast. I’m so looking forward to chatting to you. I mean, we talk all the time, but it’s great to get on you on the podcast. How are you?

Julie Jones  

I’m wonderful. Thanks, Murray. How are you today?

Murray Guest  

I’m doing pretty good. I mean, we were chatting OFF AIR about what’s going on in the world right now we have, obviously a pandemic, which is in the news quite a lot. And it’s impacting people in lots of different ways. What’s the the sense that you’re getting? And how you feeling about it at the moment?

Julie Jones  

Yeah, it’s been a really interesting time, I guess. I see so much happening around the world. As you know, I’m a scuba diver, I spend a lot of time underwater, and I’m seeing things changing under the water as well. So the oceans are seeing effects from obviously the bushfires we’ve had here, from the floods, from all of the temperature changes. So we’ve had really weird temperatures lately. 16, up to 24 degrees. So it’s really affecting everything. And I think that as human beings, we don’t realize that all of these systems are interrelated. So it’s really interesting to watch what happens when a pandemic is is kind of happening. The pandemic itself, I think it’s going to have far reaching consequences on all of us in terms of how we live our lives day to day. And I hope it will take us back to a bit of a grassroots movement, you know, some really basic stuff around how we work, where we work, and how we communicate with others. I think it’s really interesting to watch that play out. Yeah, you’re right. I think it’s interesting around some of the shifts of behavior, in a good way. I like that you’re saying we hope it’s something that inspires people to think about the way that we connect and work with each other, even how we travel to and from work as well. And we’re going to talk in this conversation shortly about your passion and knowledge around productivity. Because I think there’s so much to learn from that around the the isolation and working remotely and how we can learn from that so that we can still feel connected and be productive and feel inspired as well. Yeah, absolutely. It’s it’s a real, as you say, passion area of mine. So yeah, fire away. You’ve got some questions? Of course, always do now. But I want to get back to this whole scuba diving silliness. And I say that because we have different passions, of course. Now, why scuba diving for you? Well, I’ve always had a bit of a thing going on for biology and animals and science. And I started scuba diving, when I was about 18. Just sort of on holiday, I’d go and have a quick dip under the water and see what was there. And just found this world so exhilarating and exciting. I didn’t dive much during the years when my kids were little. But then as they grew a bit older, I started to get back into it again. And now I’m diving pretty much every week, I just find it the most wonderful place to be from an exploration point of view. But also, it’s just the most calm and wonderful place to be I find that when I’m in the zone, I’m completely in the zone. And it’s an amazing way to manage stress, which is obviously a really important thing for our society and culture today to be able to control stress and be able to, to work through how to manage our own physical reaction to that environment.

Murray Guest  

And I remember a conversation we had some time ago about when you go underwater when you are scuba diving and you see a shark and I was coming from the angle of Oh, I’d hate to see a shark because they’re so scary and you’re like I love seeing sharks.

Julie Jones  

Absolutely. Yeah, we don’t often see big dangerous sharks. We see small, beautiful sharks, we see sharks like gray nurses, we see swell sharks, we see Wobbygongs, Port Jackson sharks, and they’re all just the most amazing creatures, they’ve evolved over, you know, millions and millions of years. They’ve been around for a long, long time, a lot longer than us. And they are apex predators. They’re really there for the purposes of keeping the oceans healthy. And the biggest sharks, even the scary ones. I’ve dived with the tiger sharks over in Fiji and they are the most amazing creatures. And they’re there for a reason. And they are really not there to eat us. So it is exhilarating. It’s wonderful to see these creatures in their natural environment. And yeah, just I don’t know, I think once you’ve done it, you get the sense of or that comes through from that, rather than any fear because you start to learn more about them. And you understand I think it’s like anything, isn’t it? When we don’t understand something, we’re fearful. It’s a natural human reaction. So once you know more, and you start to educate yourself on who they are and what they are, and it becomes a lot less frightening.

Murray Guest  

I also wonder about that sense of our place in the world as humans and how maybe how small or insignificant we are when there’s that whole bigger world around us, as you were saying earlier about how much of obviously the world is covered by the ocean, seven tenths and do you you sometimes get that sense of, I don’t know that that sense of how big the world is, or even how much is going on around us that we just don’t know about.

Julie Jones  

I absolutely always and specifically and especially underwater, when you’re there yet, it’s you are such an observer, I do a lot of underwater photography too. And I try to capture those moments of, you’re looking at tiny ecosystems, you’re looking at huge ecosystems, you’re looking at how different species interact with each other. And it’s, it’s really quite fascinating. And I guess I feel really blessed that I can see that in such a way. You feel tiny, you feel really insignificant in that space, and the zone of the blue that stretches on forever. And it’s even more, I guess, I mean, it’s unknown, we I think we’ve been to the moon more than we’ve been up into space than we’ve we’ve actually explored our oceans, there’s so much more to know about what’s under the ocean, and the interaction that we have with it. So it’s really important to understand that otherwise, we you know, we damage the oceans, we damage the whole world.

Murray Guest  

So speaking of that interaction, and at the start of our conversation, you were talking about some of the changes you’ve been seeing, what do you see is going on? And what are your messages, I guess, that you’ve got about what you’re saying? 

Julie Jones  

Yeah so we’re seeing really weird stuff happening at the moment. So with all that, obviously, in Australia, the fires the floods, we’ve had temperature fluctuations, as I mentioned, we’re seeing things like we do every couple of months, we do what’s called a sea slugs census. And sea slugs are these tiny little creatures, they can be quite large, but mainly, they’re very small, sometimes really tiny, like half a fraction of the size of your fingernail. And these little guys, we’ve seen, you know, 200 – 300 species in the area that we’re diving up at Port Stephens in Nelson Bay. Yet yesterday, the census, normally I would get probably maybe 30 species out of the 300 or so that have ever been recorded in that area, yesterday, so forth. So we’re seeing big changes in the biodiversity, the number of species that we see the actual, we should be seeing, like at this particular point in time, masses of eggs hatching. So I guess I’m wondering whether there are changes in whether it’s the water temperature, whether it’s the freshwater coming into the salt water zones, that are impacting a lot of the number of species as well as the actual number of individuals in those species. And that impacts right through the food chain. And we see things like you know, jellyfish blooms, which are a sign of an unhealthy ocean, things like that, we see just such big changes in the oceans at the moment, which impact everything, the health of our whole planet.

Murray Guest  

And so as people listening to our conversation, when we consider then our impact on the ocean, I mean, I think about plastic and waste in the ocean, as you know, one of those big things that you see. But what I’m getting from this conversation, and I have people listening to is there’s all those other things we do which impact in the ocean that we just don’t even see as well.

Absolutely, yeah. So all of the toxins, and anything that we do around the water’s edge, things like our excavation for building sites, that kind of stuff, topsoil, erosion, runoff, chemicals running into the water. There’s so many elements that impact the oceans that we don’t even think of. So yeah, there’s waste, and there’s plastic. And there’s those kinds of things happening. But there’s so much more than that. I know, in our local area here at Terrigal, there’s a lot of sewage that’s going into the ocean at the moment, which makes the water dangerous. And there are toxic algal blooms, things like that that happen. So yeah, any of the things that we do on land impact the oceans, whether we think about that consciously or not, we are having an impact on every part of our ecosystem. Sorry, we’re getting very deep.

Murray Guest  

No, but I think it’s a really important discussion. I know how passionate you are about not just the activity of scuba diving, but the environment you do it in, in the ocean. And I think it’s an important awareness that we all need to have, as you said, there’s the day to day things that we can do, whether it’s the as we, you know, developing a property, for example, and how are we making sure that secure any toxins or waste going into the water? But obviously, there’s a big link here to, as you said earlier about the temperature fluctuations and climate change. And what are we doing to impact climate change to reduce that impacts so that there isn’t that foreign effect, obviously, to the oceans?

Julie Jones  

Yeah, absolutely. I think it’s going to be very interesting as we see how the pandemic plays out too. As we reduce the amount of air travel, we reduce the amount probably of travel, even on trains and things like that. And a reduction in our carbon footprint footprint potentially while all of us are in in lockdown, if that happens, it’s going to be interesting to see how we impact the planet in that way.

Murray Guest  

I saw a story the other day that the space station has identified a reduction in air pollution in Italy and China, due to the reduction of travel and business.

Julie Jones  

Yeah, isn’t that interesting?

Murray Guest  

Which obviously links to our conversation we’re having shortly around productivity and the, I guess the benefits that we can still have and the real benefit, it can be from working in these potential lockdown, but certainly working from home in different situations as well. But before we talk about that we’ve known each other for I’m trying to think, Julie, it’s got to be over 20 years easy.

It is over 20 I think I’ve been in Australia now 27 years? I think so. Yeah, I think and I was down in Victoria for five, six. About 22 years I think, Murray since we first met.

Murray Guest  

Yep. And so you used to be a marketing manager at Master Foods, which is a part of Mars Incorporated. And I had a role in quality. And I think we got along most of the times, I think quality and marketing generally get along don’t they, I think?

Julie Jones  

Generally, generally. Yeah, I think so.

Murray Guest  

But I honestly, I haven’t talked about this a lot on the podcast series, just a how many good memories I have, from my time at Master Foods working for Mars Incorporated. They’re regularly on the list or at the top of the list of great places to work and the culture they have. I just want to check in what’s your memory of your time at Master Foods?

Julie Jones  

Yeah, well, I, I actually started with Mars over in the UK. So when I came over, I think I spent 16 years at Mars in total. And I felt like I kind of grew up at Mars. And it was an amazingly entrepreneurial kind of culture, and very into risk taking, creativity, doing new things, you know, so that some of the stuff that I did in marketing was just cutting edge. I loved doing it. My boss was particularly inspiring, in terms of really moving out there and doing new things. So yeah, it was a great culture to learn about being creative and driving a brand through new and interesting ways. So the advent, obviously, of the internet, of things like Facebook, was really interesting to watch that evolve over time. I feel really old saying this.

Murray Guest  

It’s funny, I remember, because back in back in the day, when I used to manage the Consumer Services team, and it was pre social media. So it was a very different, as you’re saying, from a marketing point of view, and that connection with consumers, it was a different connection than what it is today.

Julie Jones  

Yeah, absolutely. And Mars very, I mean, forward thinking in terms of things like shared working spaces, co working spaces, that was always the way at Mars, they were always open plan. And that is now obviously becoming much the norm. But in our days working there at Mars, that was just the way it was, I think.

Murray Guest  

I’ll say we probably had 150 odd people in one office, didn’t we, an open plan?

Yeah absolutely. And literally no screen dividers, nothing. Clean desk policy. So just very, basically open plan. So lots of collaboration, lots of communication around the office. And, but that, consequently, I think also makes it hard to get stuff done. It’s one of the things we talk about in productivity terms is, you know, open plan is great for collaboration, but not so good for doing the work. So I think we have to have to find ways to balance that kind of environment out.

Murray Guest  

Yeah, I think that’s a really good point. And I’ve noticed in my clients and some of those that have created new workspaces or new offices that have moved in the last couple of years, they’re trying to find a balance between the very old office setup of people in offices and very separate to the very open plan. And I’ve placed between those two, where it is open, but at the same time, there’s a bit of segregation, there’s more breakout areas and areas for those collaborative conversations as well.

Julie Jones  

And it’s critical, it’s really important to get both of those things as our business, as you know, Murray is called Think Productive. And we teach productivity, with our gorgeous little productivity ninja characters. And, and one of those areas that we talk about is stealth and camouflage, which is where we want to go and get stuff done. So we have to have time when we’re collaborating. And we’re sharing, we’re in meetings, always spending time with others during work. But it’s really critical for us to be productive when we are able to get stuff done on major projects or pieces of work that we have to do. And so being able to step away and create that environment where we can do our best thinking is really critical. And certainly in in co-working spaces. It’s very hard to do that. So I actually think it’s going to be really interesting to see with the potential lockdown how people respond to working from home for two weeks, I’m personally really excited about the idea of being home and getting so much stuff done. So, yeah, it’s gonna be really an interesting environment to see how technology can support us in this space as well. Just as we’re doing now, you know, Skyping, zooming, all of those kind of technologies can really help us to stay connected, and to keep business environments working and working well. But I think people will realize the power of creating space for themselves to actually get good work done.

Murray Guest  

Yeah, I think that the thing that I think about from a cultural point of view is the culture of trust and empowerment that’s so important in these situations. So if you’ve got team members working from home, and a couple of my clients have already implemented split operations, whether divided their teams into a&b, and taking turns to work from home and the office are week about. And that’s a strategy to reduce the impact on the business if someone does become a carrier of the Coronavirus, or one of the strains, of course, but what I think about from a leadership perspective and a culture perspective, and I love your I’d love to get your perspective is we actually need to trust our people, we need to trust our teams, and empower them and hold them accountable to do what they need to do when they are working from home and working remotely. And I think unfortunately, in some cultures, the this is going to highlight where some of that is missing.

Julie Jones  

Yeah, I agree completely. Murray, I think that there are certain businesses that are already embracing this kind of environment. And you can certainly see if you have a business that has offices in different states, they will be much more trusting of their, their teams, and they will have already sort of worked through how to communicate best between team spaces. I have one client that I work with a lot in the ninja space, who are just they’re amazing at how they’re embracing a lot of the productivity kind of techniques and tools, they have a Melbourne office and a Sydney office. And every Friday, they have what they call their Friday catch up. So a bit of a Yay, kind of environment where they’re they’re sharing the wins of the week, they’re spending time and it’s all done over zoom or Skype or Google Hangouts in a way that creates trust between the teams. And they encourage their teams to work off site work from home, they have other shared working spaces that they can use, but they’re really becoming a lot more open about expectation. So it’s shifting that measure of, you know, you are productive if you’re sitting at your desk from nine to five every day, to a much more results based culture. So these are the things that we achieved in this week. How amazing is that? Doesn’t matter that you weren’t sitting at your desk from nine to five. So I think that’s going to be a big shift that we’ll see.

Murray Guest  

Yeah, and again, shifting away from this. I guess this approach that we are robots, you need to be a desk from nine to five, the siren goes at morning at 1030 back to work, you know, clock in clock out. It doesn’t sound inspiring, doesn’t sound engaging, and nobody I know, do people really want to work with it? I don’t think so.

Julie Jones  

No, exactly. And all the research we see is showing that the more trust we have in our employees, the more we give them freedom to achieve results and show them what is expected. And obviously modeling great behavior from from the leadership team down is critical to making sure this works, that the research is showing that that’s where the most productive companies are. They’ve already moved to this model of working. So you know, a lot there are going to be companies out there that think Yeah, working from home remotely for two weeks. That’s no problem. Teams are going to be great. They’re already set up for it. Others will be rushing around, I heard somebody saying the other day, no, they’ve got to go through and work out what sort of computer you have at home, what sort of internet you have at home, is it possible for you to work there. So there’s going to be a lot of catch up, I think there’s going to be quite a few people trying to figure out how to make this work for their organization. But hopefully it will be a big shift that will help everyone to feel that in an environment where we are, you know, technologically, we have so many resources available, how do we best use that to create productivity, produce work.

Murray Guest  

And whilst there is a very serious element to what we’re talking about with the health of people, and the well being and obviously, there’s been cases that people haven’t survived around in the world. So yes, there’s a very serious element. But I think what we are exploring is through what is going on right now there is such a great opportunity for organizations to think about how can we use this as a way to leverage our innovation. Setting expectations, as you said, is so important, and creating a even deeper and stronger culture of trust and empowerment.

Julie Jones  

Yeah, I agree completely. And I think the other thing that as individuals, so I think organizationally, those things are going to be really critical. And I think giving individuals within the organizations, the tools to help them feel that this isn’t a bad thing, this is actually a really great way to maybe hone in on all of the work that I’m currently doing reflect on the projects that I’m working on, reflect on the goals and objectives I have for the year. You know, if it’s if it’s two weeks, and I’m isolated for even a month or even longer, you know, how do I best use my time? How do I start to become much more proactive and responsible for my own workload, my education, my interactions with colleagues? How do we structure around that? And I think there are loads of things that we can do to keep people connected even when they’re not together? Yeah, so yeah, lots of opportunities there.

Murray Guest  

I totally agree. And I think that it’s interesting, the way that some people are responding and others are seeing it as I guess, a bit of a threat. And I think what I love to know, Julie is from a productivity ninja perspective, how do you see the work that you do and Think Productive does, helping people the best it can through this?

Julie Jones  

Yeah, it’s, I see, it’s really funny. For me, I guess, as a productivity ninja and, and using these tools every day, it feels kind of innately that this is just going to help everybody just to smooth the waters a little and move through easily. So in terms of our ninjas, you know, we talk about boss thinking versus work mode, getting people to really understand that they need both kinds of thinking. So boss thinking, it’s the planning, it’s the organization, it’s the prioritization, it’s the setting goals and objectives and measuring against them. Everybody if they can work, if they can work to encourage their employees to be very boss driven. So self starting, proactive, really organized around these things I think we can see that will help people in the home environment be able to really focus in on what do I need to do rather than being told what to do. And then the the counter mode to the boss thinking is the worker mode. And that’s where we actually get the work done. So really making sure that everyone has a clear view of what needs to be done in the week in the day is going to be much easier if people are more start self starting to do that. As I mentioned, I think the stealth and camouflage Ninja, which is often the bit that we struggle with in in modern businesses, my dog has just come out of the bedroom, probably hearing moving around.

Murray Guest  

And a gorgeous dog as well.

Julie Jones  

Yes, I’m just I’m just gonna let him out Murray. Cool. And now dogs barking. And so yeah, so stealth and camouflage. So really being great at going dark and getting stuff done. I think, employees, managers, everyone in business is going to learn how to actually be productive in this quiet environment. So becoming used to their own environment in the home space, I think is going to be interesting. I personally love my home space, I’ve set it up, as in a way that just inspires me. And I love being at home and working from home. I think having the flexibility to be in your own environment where you know it really well is going to be great for a lot of people and others it might take some time to adjust to but I’d really encourage everybody to, to really love their workspace. So surround yourself with the things that inspire you know, I’ve got I’ve got little signs on the wall saying do what you love every day. And I’ve got pictures of my diving around me, I’ve got all of my work stuff on the desk that I love to be around in terms of Ninja, and being really focused on that can really help I think, create a space that gives you some boosting energy for your productivity. And…

Murray Guest  

Can I just add, Julie, I think what’s also really important is the conversations that people need to have at home, when they’re creating that space, just like you would have work around getting that clarity around expectations and how you going to work with each other. You need to do that at home as well. So when you’re setting up that space, and when you need some time to be focused or to be really in boss mode and and thinking about what’s on your plate, or that deep thinking whatever it might be that the people you spend your time with at home, understand those boundaries and setting those up. And sometimes they can be a bit difficult. But I think setting those up is just as important as the physical environment.

Julie Jones  

I agree completely. And certainly if you are sharing a home space and you’re all on lockdown together that is going to be a challenge. So having really clear understanding of who’s doing what on the day, whether there are meetings or appointments, things like this, where we’re doing zoom calls, and where we’re going to need quiet sometimes, you can allocate certain spaces in the house that work for people. And I’m very lucky, I have two teenagers in the house that tend to spend a lot of time in their rooms. So it doesn’t really worry me. I’m working. And but yeah, making sure that others understand the environment that you’re working from home in as well. Like, for me, the dog barking for most of the time, that’s fine, because I’ve got clients on the other end of the phone or on a zoom call that understand I’m working from home. So just being clear on those things can really help everybody just to connect and feel a little bit more relaxed about the environment that they’re in.

Murray Guest  

Yeah, I think that’s a really good point, too, that you want to feel not just comfortable at home, but also feel really confident in what you’re doing. And if you’re talking to someone on the phone, and the dog barks or you know, the door opens, I’ve been in my office at home, and we’ve had a delivery from a toll from a delivery company have had to answer the door. It’s just, that’s just reality of the situation. It doesn’t make it any less professional. It’s just being really clear and honest about what’s happening at the moment.

Julie Jones  

I agree completely. And I think the number of interruptions we probably have in the office far outweigh what we will have at home. And that’s one of the big things that shifting to home based working really showed me was that my productivity boosts through the roof, I get so much more done at home because I have lots of great focused thinking time. So you know, as ninjas, we teach people to be really weapon savvy, and find the things that work for them things that actually boost productivity. So things like the Pomodoro Technique, 25 minutes sprint, five minute off. And this is a focused period of time where you go, I’m going to do this one thing, and I’m going to do it really well. If you can do that, you can do that more easily at home, when you have big periods with that with no interruptions. In a workspace where you have colleagues around you all the time, that becomes much more difficult, much more challenging. So finding the right tools and techniques and ideas that can help you be productive, and stay on track. I know being home can be distracting in that, when you first get used to it, it’s like all I can just put some washing on while I’m doing stuff or I can just go do something else. Or for some of us, it may be that we get into procrastination mode, and we don’t focus on getting started. So that’s really good, too, is to really focus in on what gets me started in the morning. Is it the morning, or am I better off in the afternoon, working out how we are most productive helps us to then hone that into the work that we need to do from home.

Murray Guest  

So I’ve developed and it may have been from conversations with you, or from Matt at Think Productive before around setting myself small little rewards. So sometimes I might have something that I need to do. And I’m a little bit like I don’t want to do this. But I love my morning coffee. So what all sort of say to myself is get this done, then you can have your coffee. So I set those little rewards. And it seems to get me focused because I have trouble staying focused, to be honest.

Julie Jones  

Yeah, it’s absolutely critical Murray. Rewards are great. Most importantly, I think is, as you said, making it small as well start small, just build on that energy, you just get little things done. And you’ll find that what happens when we get things done, if if somebody is a list writer, and they like to tick things off the list, ticks on lists can become addictive. So it releases an endorphin hit into your brain, which is a feel good hormone. And those things help us to just keep that little journey of productivity building and building and building. So yeah, working on those things is really important. I think, also Murray, what I’d say is that there’s a saying, which is just know thyself, I think we need to know how we best work. So being mindful around productivity is really key. If I’m a morning person, I’m gonna get started early, I like to get up I get up really early, I can work from like six till 10, I’ve got half a day done. And I can get so much done in that day. It’s almost like doing a whole day in the office. So know if your productive time is in the morning, the afternoon, the evening, plan around that, know where you work best. And make sure that you have that all kind of scoped out so that you can make that environment happen for you. It may be that the coffee shop, you know works really well for you. Maybe we won’t want to go and sit and hang out in coffee shops coming up in the next little while. But find other spaces that connect that for you. So is it having your coffee on your desk? Is it making sure that you’ve got things around you that inspire you to be productive? Try techniques, try things that help, check out our website thinkproductive.com.au lots of little ideas on there. And if anybody wants to talk more about productivity, just give me a yell. I’m really happy to chat through just different ideas and techniques on this stuff. Big question, Murray. And it’s been a big shift for me. So we’ve said, you know, I worked at Mars for a long time, I also worked at Sara Lee McCain for a long time. So the corporate marketing space for me was always a bit of a passion, too. I loved working there, but very high pressure, and lots of hours, and really very stressful. So, as you know, Murray, over my last 10 years, I’ve had two incidences where I’ve had a friend called cancer in my life, which has really impacted how I’ve looked at moving forward and what I do with my life. And finding ninja was a really big one. For me, it sounds like I found God, but it’s almost kind of the same thing. And it’s really got me to focus on how I do things and being mindful around taking care of myself at the same time, which I think a lot of us don’t do, we tend to get more focused on productivity from I’ve got to squeeze more stuff in. That’s not what this is about. This is about doing the right things, it’s about being focused on creating momentum in a way that’s sustainable. And in a way that is, is inspiring, and exciting and fun, and doesn’t mean that you burn out. And that is just the biggest issue that people are facing in today’s society. So yeah, for me, it’s been life changing. And it’s why I am passionate about it, why I love to share what we do, because it’s really important to understand our physiological responses to that stress, which can make us very sick. And I think more and more businesses are becoming aware that by having a balanced approach to productivity, work life balance, if you want to call it that, it’s critical to employee satisfaction, health and well being and moving forward, it’s how we’re going to be more productive as an as a world.

Murray Guest  

So Jules, I know. And I hope everyone’s hearing it as well how passionate you are and knowledgeable about productivity. And what we’re talking about today, for those that aren’t aware, and I probably haven’t covered this, my apologies, is from the work of Graham Allcott and his book Productivity Ninja and you obviously are now helping people, individuals, teams, students become more productive through some of the key insights and tools from Productivity Ninja, which is part of Think Productive. You’ve been doing this for a few years, I would just love to know what it’s meant for you to have this understanding about productivity? And how has it impacted your life? And I love the insight that I got back when I read Productivity Ninja around, it’s about attention management, not time management. And I’ve heard you say a number of times time management is dead. And where we invest our, our attention, our energy, and how we do it more consciously is just so important, isn’t it?

Julie Jones  

It is absolutely, and one of the big areas that I I’m kind of personally focusing in on at the moment and developing as part of our suite of tools is to ensure that people start thinking a lot more about dreaming, then doing, so thinking about, we often have a bit of a dream, we might do a vision board personally, at the beginning of the year, we might have an idea of kind of the goals and objectives that we have from work that we need to focus on for the year. But then converting that into action is a really big step. So helping people to understand how to do that, I think is really key. And being able to connect the dots so that we have a holistic approach. So it’s not that, you know, we have a vision board at home. And that’s the that we only look at that now and again and say, Oh, I wish I’ve got those dreams to happen this year, is connecting everything together and saying what does my world look like? What does my life look like, from the perspective of all of the dreams that I want to come true? And how can I integrate that into our daily way of working, so that we achieve our goals that we step forward into a space that’s really positive. And that’s a bit of a personal passion for me at the moment.

Murray Guest  

I also think that link between that vision board those dreams we have as a person and what that means in our day to day work we do. Because I think the whole idea of work life balance just is just ridiculous. There is no work life. It’s all life, and work is part of our life and to even say work life. It’s sort of saying all the good parts of life are part of work, isn’t it?

Julie Jones  

That’s exactly right. And I think that you absolutely can do both at the same time.

Murray Guest  

Yeah. Jules what’s been the impact you’ve seen on teams that you’ve worked with, helping them understand these characteristics of being a Productivity Ninja, how’s it helped them, what it meant for them?

Julie Jones  

And I guess this is where it gets really exciting when you see people talking the language of productivity ninja talking about things like stealth and camouflage or being human, not superhero, or being an agile ninja. It’s really exciting to see teams embracing these ideas and concepts because they start to have fun at work. They start to be a little bit unorthodox, they start to have fun as a team which boosts productivity. This is scientifically proven, you know, some of these concepts and aspects really help people to to survive, not just to survive, but to actually thrive at work and that’s a really important one for me. So I find that really exciting. We have actually some clients last year down, would you believe they had a team day at thredbo down at the snow. And we did a whole day of ninja workshops down at thredbo. And that was an awesome way for them to connect as a team. And these guys are the guys that work remotely in Sydney and Melbourne. And they all came together, they had a great ninja day. And afterwards when I caught up with them six months later, they were still talking about ninja and they were still talking about the the concepts, the language around it, and they’d had actually had one guy that’s kind of their ninja champion within the business. And he’s helping and encouraging other team members with things like technology that they’re challenged with or concepts of how to be more productive. So it you see this flow through in teams and it becomes an a language that’s easy in art. It’s articulated through everything that they do. And it’s yeah, it’s really I find it very exciting to see teams get, I guess, a better work life balance, if we want to call it that again, or just life you know, they’re doing life now with an energy and a fun aspect to it. That is really inspiring.

Murray Guest  

I’ve just got to share. You’ve inspired me, I think I need to run my next workshop in Thredbo. Mountain Biking with my clients. Absolutely. Just putting it out there anyone listening if you want to do that? I heard you got some skiing while you’re down there too. I hope.

Julie Jones  

I did. I did. Yes, absolutely.

Murray Guest  

You’re pretty good on the skis from memory.

Julie Jones  

Oh, I’m okay. I’m an intermediate, I think.

Murray Guest  

So, from a productivity point of view, we’ve talked about a few of the different characteristics of being a Productivity Ninja, which one haven’t we covered at this point?

Julie Jones  

Well, the one I think I will talk I would love to just mention again is unorthodoxy ninja. And this is I think in the current climate one that we all need to embrace a little bit more. And unorthodoxy ninja is about doing things differently. It’s experimenting, and it’s actually telling, challenging ourselves to go with the flow a little bit, and not be scared by trying new things. So I think all of us are going to need to be a bit unorthodox about embracing the current global situation and try things like working from home, even if you’re not on lockdown, give it a go see what happens. Try setting up, instead of a meeting, I’m supposed to be flying to Melbourne tomorrow for meetings for two days, which I don’t think is going to happen, to be honest, given the current climate. But how could we do that differently? How do we set up Skype calls that are interactive? Can we send materials ahead of time so that we can still all be working on certain things together? How do we create environments for our clients, for our customers, that allow them to still be immersed in our brands or our conversations or our businesses in a way that’s engaging, so really thinking outside the square? To do that, I think it’s going to be really interesting. So I’d encourage everybody to be a little bit more unorthodox, build with a mad scientist and just try some new things. Even if it’s for a day or a week, try something different, and have some fun doing it. This will help us to really boost our productivity and find new ways to remain productive in an environment that’s a little bit challenging.

Murray Guest  

I love that. And can I just add one I’ve been thinking about as well. I’m sure it’s the same in many cities around the world. I’ve seen it in Sydney whenever I’m in there and just how jam packed the transport is, the train system is, when everyone’s going to work in the morning and the afternoon. What does it look like to actually start work earlier? Or start work later? And how can you set that up so that you were spreading out the contact with other people but also that we are making it easier on the system as well. So I wonder what that could look like in someone’s workplace. 

Julie Jones  

Yeah brilliant idea, Murray. Inventing a little bit of a like a mini shift system could be could work really well.

Murray Guest  

Yeah. I think so. And of course, operationally, these things need to happen. But right now with what’s happening with this pandemic, I think the number one has to be people’s health and well being and I love what we’ve been talking about, Jules, around how the the traits, the insights, the tools of Productivity Ninja and can be applied right now to help people deal with what’s going on in a real productive way.

Julie Jones  

Yeah, absolutely. I think you know, the world doesn’t stop. We all have to work. We all have to be involved in some of the stuff that we probably don’t want to be involved in with the the Coronavirus, but it’s really great to have tools that can help us to just be a little bit different with it not not just sit back and kind of go, Okay, well, I’m stuck at home for two weeks, but take a more proactive and positive ability to influence our environment.

Murray Guest  

Oh, so and I know that you are sharing out with your clients in the coming days. From Think Productive, you’re sending out some information around some of what we’re talking about. So I would love to share that with my people as well. So I’ll make sure I get that. And of course, we’ll have links in the show notes to Think Productive, and to you as well. I want to ask you a question. I just want to go back to your point around a vision board and someone’s personal goals. And this question popped into my head, I didn’t want to miss the chance to ask you. I guess I’m thinking about what’s on your vision board, what’s on your goals of maybe where you want to dive or maybe some other things you want to experience?

Julie Jones  

Yeah, my vision board is full of a lot of blue, blue underwater shots of things like diving with whale sharks, which is still on my list this year. And it’s also though it’s quite a an interesting mix of things on my board this year. We are due to actually go to a balloon, hot air balloon festival in April. I’m hoping that will still go ahead, but who knows. And so yeah, being up in the sky in a hot air balloon is also a bit of a goal and passion of mine, and lots of other elements on my border around keeping focus on my health and well being. So keeping balance, and really focusing on not getting sucked into, I guess, working all costs, and not having some fun along the way. So really balancing that out. One thing I wanted to mention Murray too, was was something that’s just recently hit me in setting goals. I’m pretty focused on being quite goal oriented. I like to be action oriented too and get things done.

Julie Jones  

I’ve just recently been exploring more with smart goals. So as we start to set objectives and goals for work or for home, and personal life, what struck me with smart goals? So you would remember Murray, SMART goals being a specific goal where we set some target for ourselves, measurable, attainable, is it relatable? And is it timely? I think we often in business set goals like this, to make sure it’s very measurable. However, what I’m finding is they’re not very inspiring. So for me, I’ve actually made my goals smartie goals. So I’ve added an i and e at the end, so is it inspiring? Is it exciting? Does it really energize me and get me moving. And I think if we can ensure that we set goals that really do that, for us across every aspect of our lives, we’ve got a better chance of actually delivering them. I know that for myself, smart goals, to me are pretty boring, it’s all about measurement, it’s all about being very focused in on getting stuff done in a certain timeframe. But smartie goals to me really energize me. So that’s just something I’d love to challenge people on thinking about.

Murray Guest  

I love that. And I’m just picturing the smarties there and how I feel when I eat Smarties and but I’ve heard of smarter goals, which has the E and R. But I like the smartie a lot. And it does link to inspired energy with that being inspired, and you’ve got some energy, and yet it’s energizing, and you want to take action on it. So I actually like it being at the end of the smart process too. Because let’s say if you’re looking at setting yourself a goal, or as a leader, you’re setting your team or people on your team a goal. You can, at the end, do that final check and say so after we’ve been through this, is it really inspiring. And are you motivated to go and do it?

Julie Jones  

Exactly right. Yeah. And I can tell you right now, some of my work goals in the past have not been very inspiring or energizing. So yeah, I think having that lens on, it really helps people to get connected to achieving results and being more productive in that way.

Murray Guest  

Yeah, love it. Thank you. Now just to double check, though, is there anything else that you would love to add in your definition of inspired energy? Oh, and you can’t say scuba diving.

Julie Jones  

I did, I did sort of my head did go there. But I think what it, what we have to look at is what is our long term vision, our long term goal. So for me, as you know, Murray, my goal is I’m going to work three days and dive for four, so my week does revolve a lot around diving and being underwater and spending time in the space that I love. But I also am so passionate about productivity. And I see that my workshops, the work that I do with with corporates and individuals around productivity is still so much part of who I am and what I want to be able to help with in the world. So that’s how I guess, is my sense of purpose. And so being able to always ladder back to that bigger objective, I think is really important. So we need our energy to be inspired. We need our energy, energy to be focused on that laddering right up to that very holistic, top level goal. That really inspires us. And so yeah, making sure we do that I think will help us to all be much more productive on a daily basis.

Murray Guest  

Wonderful. I’ve absolutely loved to talking to you today, Julie about scuba diving, about ways that we can take action right now with what is going on in the world, about your insights around productivity and what it’s meant for you and the people you work with. It’s been such an inspiring chat. And I’m so glad we’re able to do it right now. So to help people with what is going on in the world. And besides right now, there’s so much that we just covered I think that helps people no matter where we are and what time of the year. But obviously, it’s a bit of a an interesting time in this moment. So thank you very much.

Julie Jones  

You’re very welcome, Murray, thank you for having me. And I just want to extend that offer. If anybody needs to chat about working remotely, please Murray feel free to put my phone number and email address and everything on the contacts. Because yeah, it can be a bit scary and daunting if you haven’t done it before. So really happy to chat.

Murray Guest  

Yes, that is such a beautiful thing to offer Julie. Thank you. I will make sure in our notes, you’ll find links to Julie-Anne Jones on LinkedIn, Think Productive and Julie’s email and also the Facebook page for Think Productive Australia. If anyone has got anything out of this, and I’m sure you have there’s been so much we’ve covered, please share it on social media on Instagram or LinkedIn or Twitter and make sure you include Julie and myself and link us as well. Again, Jules so great to chat. Look forward to seeing you again soon. And I love your passion for what you do. And maybe one day just maybe one day I’ll get in the water with you.

Julie Jones  

That would be awesome. Thanks very much for having me Murray.

Murray Guest  

Thank you. Have a great week. Bye everyone.

Episode 53 – Stef Loader | Passionate about rural NSW, company director, geologist and former mining executive

Stef Loader is a company director, geologist and former mining executive. Stef’s career has seen her work in seven countries, but now calls Orange, NSW home.

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Transcript

Murray Guest  00:01

Welcome, Steph to the podcast. I’m so looking forward to chatting with you today how you been?

Stef Loader  00:07

And well, thanks, Murray, thanks for having me. It’s been a long time in the planning hasn’t it

Murray Guest  00:11

it has been a long time in the planning. I’ve known you for a number of years. And I’ve always loved chatting with you and catching up and working with you, of course in the past. And you’re right, it has been a long time coming. But certainly something I’m really looking forward to tell me what’s going on in your world at the moment.

Stef Loader  00:31

Well, I’m at home, which is just outside of orange, and we live on a small farm, and it’s dry. So I want to remind everybody out there that the drought hasn’t broken out here in the Central West. So a lot of my I guess I spent a lot of time thinking about rain and weather forecasting and where the water is going to come from and, and when we might be able to productively use land. So that’s a preoccupation. But other than that, I am focused on a number of things locally, about contributing to my local regional economy, and and a couple of roles that I have in the mining industry and how I continue to contribute there as a director. So that’s what’s going on in my life.

Murray Guest  01:16

Yeah. Well, I’m looking forward to talking about those roles and the work you do these days. But for those people that don’t know, orange, would you say is three hours west of Sydney, New South Wales?

Stef Loader  01:27

Pretty much. exactly three hours directly west of Sydney. Yeah. So so it’s a long weekend or a weekend trip away?

Murray Guest  01:34

And it’s known for its wine and a few other things as well, isn’t it?

Stef Loader  01:38

wine, food, natural locations, heritage, both Aboriginal heritage and a long has a long history of occupation, but both from back in from Aboriginal settlements all the way through to, you know, pioneers coming over the mountains and settling over here. So lots to offer.

Murray Guest  01:58

Yeah, well, my memory of oranges is a beautiful town has that history. Unfortunately, my memory of orange is sitting in the car one, my wife had morning sickness and was throwing up in the toilets at the visitor center or somewhere. So not the best memory. So it means I need to get back out there. We need people to go out to regional user files anyway. But I definitely need to get

Stef Loader  02:20

Yes. So now you could sit in a really nice cafe in the town square while your wife was well, and have some lovely coffee.

Murray Guest  02:32

So you raise a good point, though, that we can quite often forget about the things that aren’t directly in front of us. So where we’ve had rain on the East Coast, and for those international listeners, you’ve all seen the fires we’ve had drought for, you’d say a good two years easy in Australia. And the war, we’ve had rain on the east coast of Australia in different parts, it’s still a real issue over the over the mountains, west of the mountains. what’s the what’s the feeling like in the community at the moment? How are people reacting at the moment to what the conditions are like?

Stef Loader  03:10

So I can answer that from a couple of perspectives. So you’re right, it’s it’s over the mountain side, the other side of the Blue Mountains in really the Central West District of New South Wales, which is continues to be drive. So I sit on the orange 360, which is the Tourism Development Board. And we met this morning and we were talking about the impact of not only the fires, which prevented people from crossing the mountains and coming out here over the normally relatively busy summer season. That you know, that impact alone is, you know, somewhere between 20 and 65%. People’s sales are down cellar door, sales down visits, visitation numbers are down. But we also have the added travel restrictions. So while we, the tourist economy, while we have a lot of domestic tourist economy, we also have an international tourist economy. And that’s sort of a double whammy. So the tourism sector is very worried because we’ve had a number of years now we’ve had about five years of almost double digit, I think it’s it is kind of double digit each year, if not close to double digit growth of visitor numbers into the orange region. And that’s, you know, sort of the broader region. And so that we’re looking at that and say, Well, maybe that isn’t going to continue. And that underpins, you know, that there’s there’s all the ancillary businesses, which that underpins, and these are mostly small businesses, right? Yes, you’re worried. So the, you know, there’s there’s that the sort of direct impact on the small businesses, but there’s the things the other things we were talking about is how does the health service respond? And that is consciously being talked about, because there will be small businesses that will go under or will come up against quite difficult times. There needs to be mental health. Services ready to to be there for people, we need to be referring people to those services. So the community is kind of responding in a whole raft of different ways. And what I really like is, you know, the enthusiasm that was there for the buy from the Bush campaign. So a lot of people in Australia would know that, that the hashtag buy from the bush, which really highlighted do your Christmas shopping from regional centers and regional businesses, you know, we really need to somehow keep that campaign going. Because, you know, we need those regional businesses to continue to thrive, and now we’ve got the hashtag stay in the bush, you know, mdscs stuff that they are really important. For not, it’s not just the economy, but it’s for, you know, for the well being of the community and how they feel about that, how we feel about ourselves.

Murray Guest  05:49

I can imagine the flowing effect, as there are people in the streets, there are vehicles in the streets, the small business owners in the community, seeing more people out there that even just lift people’s spirits as well.

Stef Loader  06:01

That’s right. So if you hear the story, Where have you come from? I’ve come from x, y, Zed, and I brought my SK, and I’m doing that that sort of thing. But the other perspective I probably want to raise is the is the farming perspective. So I live in, you know, I’ve got neighbors who are farmers, and that is their primary income. Now, it’s not my primary income. So whether we have stock on our ground is is No, it’s not. It’s, it’s, it’s, you know, if you think about it, but it doesn’t damage our livelihood, long term, but you know, I’ve got neighbors who, who that’s what their livelihood is. And, you know, the conversations that you have around the decisions that the really difficult decisions that they’re having to make, the milestones they put in place. Well, if we don’t have rain by this date, then I’m going to have to make this decision. And those things are really, really difficult. In fact, I was having a coffee with my neighbor yesterday. And he he was even at the point of I just I just don’t know, if I’ll continue, I might give up now. Yeah. And that’s an awful conversation for somebody to have. Yeah.

Murray Guest  07:01

Is there a solution around pumping water from the East Coast over to the Central West? And I’ve, I’d say a very big question. But I hear people say I’m talking about how we manage water as a country. And I certainly don’t have the answer. But I wonder if people talk about that. And is there a bigger long term infrastructure solution that helps to deal with climate change? And how we get water to the areas that need it?

Stef Loader  07:27

So I don’t know the answer to that either. I’m not sure it’s about pumping water. I mean, there will be aspects to that, look, there’s there’s been an I have the benefit of having a fortune in I’m on the board of a company that actually looks at water, right. So I guess I have just won’t disclose that. So you know, part of what I say will also be, you know, from the position of being a director on a water focused or a water treatment company, but there is definitely investments that can be made around water loss in the water infrastructure system. So I know that the local councils here are using grants that they have at the moment, whereas water moving between different water bodies, dams, or whatever it might be open channels, now they’re replacing those with pipelines, that makes a huge amount of sense, because you reduce water losses. The The other thing is, is investing in water reuse infrastructure, because water is scarce, right? So this single use of water mentality that we have had in the past in some towns, because it’s been plentiful, you know, potentially, there’s a there’s a lot that can be done with water reuse. And so some very progressive councils, flatpacks, Shire Council have put in water treatment plants ahead of you know, not when when it wasn’t urgent, you know, and they are, and they, they have the benefits of that now. So I think there is there is definitely water treatment technology out there. And I think that’s where some investment needs to go as well as building up the infrastructure, so that we’re more resilient, because we know that we’re going to have more frequent and potentially longer duration droughts, that the past is no longer a key to the future. So we really just need to start planning for, you know, more frequent drought years and maybe longer duration droughts as well. And we can do that I think we’ve got the technology yet does require investment. We need to value water. Yeah. I sometimes think that the value of water, the amount we pay for water per liter, or per kilo later, is just doesn’t represent the importance that it has. So I know that we would, as a society, say water is an essential service, we’ve got to have a water provision into our household or whatever it is, and it shouldn’t cost us very much. But if it doesn’t cost very much, there’s no price signaling for how valuable that commodity is and how scarce it is.

Murray Guest  09:55

You raise it is an interesting thing and I actually hadn’t thought of this before, but there’s been lots of talk over the years about how the price of electricity has been going up in the country and Australia’s price of electricity per kilowatt versus other countries, you know, is the cost of living here, you know, higher because of that, but, and I can’t rattle off the the numbers around water and the cost of water and where we sit with that and what we pay. And if we did pay more a would we respect that water more and appreciate it and be how that extra levy could be used? For the treatment infrastructure we’re talking about?

Stef Loader  10:32

Well, I think there somehow needs to be a Connect action between them, right? So, you know, I recently we got to the point where we’re not on a water grid, we got to the point where we needed to have water delivered, the cost of the water in the truck was tiny. In fact, we didn’t even get charged for it, we just paid for the truck to bring it. So that’s the sort of differential but I do think there needs to be a better link between water infrastructure costs and the cost of maintaining the infrastructure to deliver the water to you. And to treat the water and all that stuff. And and the price we pay for it. If there’s a complete disconnect, I think we don’t know i, i market, the market signaling and the pricing, I think, I think that that that is an important component of how we value things.

Murray Guest  11:20

I’m gonna change the subject a little stiff. 

Stef Loader  11:25

We’re gonna start talking about water economics. 

Murray Guest  11:28

But what I’m thinking about is Who would you have thought 25 years ago when you were studying geology and working as a geologist would you have been sitting here now talking about the passion you have for water? So I actually would love for you to share your journey of how you got to be where you are now and the work you’ve done. Because you’ve had an amazing journey worked in some really interesting places around the world.

Stef Loader  11:54

Yeah, okay. Why would I worry about water and what economics? Okay, so you’re right. I’m a geologist, and I grew up largely in wv. And so I studied at university. In fact, it’s probably worth mentioning that I didn’t intend to study geology when I went to university. I intend to intended to study maths and chemistry. And so

Murray Guest  12:18

what was the transition? How did that happen?

Stef Loader  12:20

Well, I am I was fortunate to have a scholarship with one of Rio Tinto is what’s now called Rio Tinto elementium companies, it was called melco. Back then, and they had instituted a scholarship for women in science, which was extremely helpful for me and go to university, not only from a financial perspective, but also because I got to work for basically four months of the year from the moment that my exam finished until the sometimes after the first test supposed to be back at uni, in businesses around the CRA group as it was. And the first job I had was at Boyne smelters in Queensland. And it was as a chemist, and the project involved working alongside a geologist who took all the samples outside environmental samples. And I had to stay in the lab. And I realized that a chemist spends most of their time in the lab. Yeah, wasn’t gonna suit me at all. So I went back to uni and thought, thank goodness, I did this extra subject that fit into my, into my timetable of geology, and I really enjoyed it. And the other side, I really I changed my focus. I did chemistry and geology. And and I don’t think I did any max beyond first year, I don’t think so. I changed my focus and I got I got Kemal COVID changed the scope of this, because it’s a science of good, yeah. And and so I continued on and you know, I was able to work, as you know, go and work and do my vacation work as a geologist, which gave me that exposure, and it was absolutely the right thing to do.

Murray Guest  13:57

So I happen to so we’ve got similar background, because I worked also at Tomago Aluminium, which is part of the group buying is a lot are they the largest or second largest aluminium smelter, I think in the, in the northern, sorry, the southern hemisphere, I believe.

Stef Loader  14:13

I don’t know, I couldn’t tell you that anymore. But at the time, they were very new. It was early days of boring. So they were one of the most advanced in terms of using technology. You know, they were one of the newest smelters

Murray Guest  14:27

Do you remember what do you remember what it felt like? Or how you how you felt actually when you first walked onto that smelter, and you saw the technology and what was happening in that sort of facility.

Stef Loader  14:40

So for context, my contrast was Bell Bay. So I’d been to Bell Bay, you know, that would have to be one of the oldest smelters in Australia. I don’t know. But it’s it’s old, 

Murray Guest  14:50

Down in Tasmania,

Stef Loader  14:52

down in Tasmania. So going from Belle Bay, which was probably 50 I’m guessing I don’t know, up to boy Boy was a dramatic difference just in, you know, just in the, in the, you know, you kind of think about it, bell Bay was kind of like what you see on old movies is, you know, being chains everywhere and you know that sort of dark and you know, it’s harsh and all that stuff that’s not really hot down there in, in Tasmania. But that’s the vision I have in my mind is big old sheds that are sort of rusted and colored. And whereas you go to boyan, and it’s a beautiful layout, and there’s, you know, it’s not big chains and things, there’s overhead cranes, and, you know, it just looks newer, and sparkly. And everybody was wearing uniform. And you know, there was just so many aspects to it that were it just felt like it was high tech. Yeah. And I think it’s always been, there was always really well, maybe I’m making this up now, because that, you know, in hindsight, you always remember the good things. But there’s always been an improvement culture at Boeing smelters. So there was always an improvement, there was a focus on continuous improvement in its various forms. And so that certainly was very, I felt that when I was there, and part of the project, what I was doing was investigating whether there was a more efficient and cheaper way of doing a particular type of analysis that they were doing in the, in the lab. So you know, it was if it was focused on improvement, so yeah, it was a great place to be.

Murray Guest  16:24

So when you finished your degree, and you’re a geologist, where did you head off to then.

Stef Loader  16:30

So I started my career with CRA in the goldfields in the, in the western or the Murchison goldfields NWA. So, to the, to the west of the, you know, more well known Eastern Gulf hills, which is cat where Kalgoorlie and boulder said, and really, I spent two years you know, most of it in the bush, most of us running as a to yc, to the project geologist, running the programs in the field, you know, chasing around drill rigs, and, you know, planning your programs and managing your contractors and talking to farmers and, you know, making sure that we will be using their land and, you know, basically working remotely, and I loved it, I absolutely loved it. Most of the time outside very little time in the office. But you know, the time in the office was high value, we had a really great bunch of geologists, who were very interested in talking about the geology. And so really, the the, you know, one of the attractions of geology is that, you know, the rocks will never tell you how they formed. And they were formed a long time ago. Yes. So you, you’re, you know, you you’re unpicking it, you’re picking up all the pieces of information. And you’re putting together the story of why the gold might be here, there or somewhere else and why you might drill it. So it’s constantly about taking information, looking at it from a first principles perspective, and telling a story. And then in the case of expression, you need to get somebody to buy into that story so that they’ll give you the funds to drill holes or do whatever works.

Murray Guest  18:02

So I , thank you for that insight, because I’ve never thought of it having a story. And I love the way that you describe the story of the rocks and the story of how it got there and where we’re going to go next and then engaging people in that story.

Stef Loader  18:18

Yep. And that’s really, I think, what I loved about and why I continue to be fascinated by that. Because even when it comes to it moves on from exploration to resource definition, so when you found something and you need to, you know, convince people that the model that you’ve put together make sense, and it really is all going to be there. Again, that’s the story, right? You’re telling the story of how that mineralization got there, and you put it in context of, you know, this is the environment that we’re in, you know, we’re in this belt or whatever, and this belt was formed in so you can go down from a very large sort of continental style, or country scale or terrain scale story all the way down to how this deposit got there. And, you know, one of the things and I reflected on this, I was telling somebody else recently about my interest in and how I came to be interested in geology. But one of the things I recognized in that conversation is a lot of I spent a lot of time reading papers and just if I, if, you know, I was involved in a discovery in Wales, I was part of a team that that converted what was an interesting bit of copper that everybody was interested in, but we we put a story together so that we could get the funding and we actually drilled it out. And that became the basis for the step on mine which is now which has been developed and changed hands a number of times now but you know, quite a significant copper deposit up in Laos and you know, to a lot of the things that I realized is your I read everything I could get my hands on about that style of deposit. I think I used to drive the people who were in the CRA library, a bit mad although I think I secretly loved it. Because I would read the most, I’d find the most obscure references, like I found master’s thesis from 1968, or something that was about the middle energy of chakras that I said, you got to find me this. And they went and found it, you know, they went and found it and sent it to me, you know, so are these to love that, you know, I’d be in Laos, and we get this package once a week from from Melbourne, and I rip it open, they’d be my interoffice envelope, and they’d have all these photocopies of papers that I just devour, and then come up with stories, you know, and sometimes I got told off for being a big fan. But you know, a couple times I was right, so you know, um, but yeah, so that’s that. So you want me to continue on?

Murray Guest  20:47

Now I’m just thinking about the beauty of what I’m feeling in that process of taking the theory, the thesis, the research that people have done, and then the practical boots on the ground work that you’re doing, and bring that together to tell a story about what you’re finding? And the role of doing that?

Stef Loader  21:08

That’s right. And, you know, to be, I’ll just be, you know, something that I’ve learned about myself is, and that is that I actually do i do that relatively well, is I actually saw a note from someone, I don’t know why I read it again. But you know, someone said to me, you know, the the text was you talk, you’ve taken technical issues and take complex technical ideas, and helps me understand them, even though I don’t have a technical background. And I think that’s probably something that I’ve been doing that geology has taught me to do, because most of the time the people you’re asking for the money from aren’t necessarily as embedded in this strategy. And I do recall a bit later in my career, when I was so you know, from there, I got involved in I got very interested in statistics. And I was working at a mine in Canada. And I was doing, I was an analyst. So really, it was all about the data. And looking at the data, everything from data about the ore body all the way through to the diamonds that we sold, and the value that was placed on it by customers. And I remember doing a presentation from one of the senior executives in Rio Tinto and talking through that whole what I had learned about where we were, and I do remember, really, I don’t know exactly what he said, but he said something along the lines of I’ve been working in this stuff, or I’ve been listening to this stuff for a long time. And and I thought I really understood it. And now I really do you know, you’ve given me that extra level of understanding. And I you know, it’s only when you think back on that you think Yeah, that’s pretty good.

Murray Guest  22:45

It’s good. Yeah. 

Stef Loader  22:47

Be happy about that skill. So 

Murray Guest  22:50

And what I, from my experience working with you when you’re at northparkes mind, which we’ll talk about in a minute, the, the need and the ability to also translate that technical knowledge down through an organization as well. So people get the strategy, that organization where we’re going, why are we going there? And what does it mean for them? So I can, what I experienced from you is it’s not just doing it as that technical expert, but also from a leadership expert. And Alicia position is just so important as well.

Stef Loader  23:21

Yes. And I would extend that to Yeah, so as a leader, I think one of the key things is being able to engage people in the story, you know, the future of whatever it is you’re leading, help them to find their place in it, which is about tailoring the story to them. And I think it extends to hate the word stakeholders, but it is a good collective word for those outside your organization. So whether it be government, whether it be regulators, whether it be just your community leaders, engaging those people, and also being able to tell them that story, and in a way that they understand and that well, that, you know, that means something to them, and they can find their place in it.

Murray Guest  24:03

I heard that marketing expression a couple of years ago, and you just reminded me and it was something along the lines of how people are going to have this story anyway. But it’s better for them to have the story you want them to have than the story they’re making up?

Stef Loader  24:18

That’s right. Yes. You want to insert the story into their head.

Murray Guest  24:23

So you’re in Perth. So what was the journey? Because then you mentioned Canada.

Stef Loader  24:30

Ah, so I left I left Australia at the end of 1995, beginning of 96. And I didn’t come back until 2012. Okay, there’s quite a lot of hops along the way. So I went for four years I went to Wales. Yeah. So all of that was with Rio Tinto and the precursor CRA. So I was working in xpreshan mile so talked about that. We made a discovery, copper discovery, but we’re working on a gold project as well. I then went From there over to Chile and spent two years in Chile doing greenfields exploration, so that’s sort of very conceptual, where you’re, you’re saying, okay, you know, I want to explore here because I think that maybe what I’ve seen over there might be repeated over here or something along those gotcha. So real greenfields stuff, and I did a couple of years of that. And then well, partly because the opportunity opened up, but also because the person I was about to marry was living in Peru, I moved to Peru. And so we were able to get married and live together. And I worked in Peru for a couple of years. But that was a that was back back down at the at the at the deposit scale. So we had, we actually had a mineralized system, and we were defining it. And that actually is still, you know, I think it’s been developed into a mine. It’s taken a while because it’s relatively small, but it’s taking a while. And that’s, that’s quite exciting to know that that’s been developed. And then I went to Canada. And that was the first time I’d worked actually on a mine. So really, for the first decade of my career, maybe even Yeah, pretty much a decade, I was on exploration. And you know, the mining side, I’d worked on a mine site as in vacation work, but I really didn’t appreciate the mining aspect of it. So then I really it was, it was a really great experience, because I understood that metallurgy was important and how the rocks were going to behave as they went through a plant, but really going to mindsight. You thought yeah, okay, I really get this. And I had a really fantastic role, because I got to work with the resource geologists, the metallurgist, and processing engineers and maintenance engineers on the plant on all the way through the people who sorted the diamonds and sold the diamonds. So I really worked with the whole value chain, and was able to understand, you know, what was important? Where were the constraints, where were the Where were the bottlenecks in the process, where were all our data bottlenecks. I haven’t worked with auditors because it was when the Sox regime was coming in. So we had these internal auditors trying to get us ready for Sox audits. So you know, really wide ranging and very database, data focused statistics focused roles. Yeah, fantastic exposure to the whole mining value chain.

Murray Guest  27:25

When you look back and reflect on those different places you lived as part of those different operations. Do you have more fun memories of living in one space more than the other? Like, because I think about Peru or Chile, or Laos or camp? Like? What what one, do you say? I just, you know, had some great moments of living in that sort of country in that space. All of them? Oh, excellent. No, I can’t I can’t tell you what I prefer. That’s like asking what’s your favorite child? I know, come on.

Stef Loader  27:58

I know. It’s like asking, what’s your favorite ice cream? All of them. No, all genuinely all of them. Yeah. You know, I think I think I’m a good expert, right. I’m not an expert, that pines from my home country, I get in there. And I get, I just love where I am and make the most of it. And you know, it’s always easy to look back and say, oh, but you didn’t have this. And you didn’t have that. And you know that I’ve lived in India, right? We might talk about that. You know, India is a very, very different way of life than it is in orange. Yes, Central West views as well. So, but no, I absolutely loved every part of living in all of those places, and would go back and live there again. And I love going back to visit because you see how much it’s changed. And you have all this nostalgia.

Murray Guest  28:45

Yes. I also, I mean, it just shows you the opportunities that are out there for people. When you follow your passion for what you love doing. And then part of a large organization. We don’t have to be part of a large organization, but there’s just these opportunities out there to go and see the world. Follow your passion. And as you said, and learn in the process as well.

Stef Loader  29:08

Yeah, and embrace your environment, right? embrace the constraints, you know, there’s always going to be constraints about what you can and can’t do when you’re not living in your native culture, so to speak, where you grew up. So just embrace the constraints. You know, and I think we’ll get we’ll get maybe this rabbit hole. But, you know, I see, you know, I’ve lived in a lot of places and been part of expatriate communities, and I always feel slightly sad, although I can understand where they’re coming from, when when there’s people who, who kind of butting their head head up against those constraints. You know, they’re constantly wanting to push them out of the way and you think you know, that society is bigger than you, you’re gonna move it on your own, embrace it, you know, or try to find a compromise or a way of living within those constraints. So,

Murray Guest  29:53

You have done your strengths assessment some time ago, and we have talked about your strengths before And I know positivity is up there. And this is shining through right now. 

Stef Loader  30:04

Yes, it is. 

Murray Guest  30:07

And that positivity, I’ve always loved that you bring to your leadership around. Okay, how can we make this work? What does it look like and bringing that energy? And I guess the belief that it’s going to work out within the environment and the constraints we have?

Stef Loader  30:22

That’s right. Yeah. And that’s, you know, there’s a, there’s a dark side to that, of course, as well, which is, you know, not being able to see the, you know, the rough the rough pattern on the path. But definitely, that’s been something that has served me well, because I will know people often say you always see the bright side, you’ll always see the positive. I have had to work hard in my current role as a director where it is sometimes advantageous to be skeptical. So I’m alert. I’m constantly challenging myself about being skeptical. And, and the task, the trick that well, the trigger that I use is if there’s something I’m just makes me doubletake, and I want to, I think, Oh, I could go over that. But now I won’t, because my role is not to allow myself to gloss over that I might have glossed over that in the past. But my role now requires me to understand that a bit more, why am I uncomfortable? You know,

Murray Guest  31:25

So can I ask in that moment? Is that a feeling in your body? Like, is it a gut feeling type of intuitive type feeling? 

Stef Loader  31:32

Yes. It’s a physical feeling of that’s not quite right. You know, it’s it’s kind of, it’s almost like a physical phrasing. It’s a mental phrasing, actually, it’s your brain, my brain, I can feel myself mentally freezing at that point, and not being able to move on to the next thought. So I kind of have to go, Okay, I know, there’s something I need to look into there and ask some more questions. And what I’ve learned over time, is sometimes I haven’t had the confidence or known how to ask the question, so I haven’t. And I’ve often regretted, because it’s come out later that that was actually something that needed to be questioned. And I thought, you know, I had that feeling. I knew that, why didn’t I do. So I’ve kind of taught myself to pay attention, to do something about it. Not everything turns out to be of substance. But you know, a lot of the time there is something that actually does need to be, you know, sort of uncovered or investigated at least or too fast.

Murray Guest  32:29

And I think that is such as a leadership lesson that I’ve learned. And I’ve heard other people talk about around listening to your body, listen to that reaction, that instinct that’s coming up and pausing. The pause might be very short. But there’s power in that pause and saying, Well, what do I do with this? Instead of just pushing through?

Stef Loader  32:49

Yes. And what am I really feeling? Yeah. Yeah, that’s right. I think that’s, you know, the physical is actually interesting, you say that, because that, that reaction, that bodily reaction can actually also happen, I recognize to, to a person to something that comes from a person. And that’s actually more challenging, because if you’ve had, I try to truly believe that most people are capable, and they’re not actually deliberately trying to deceive you, right? Most people are actually quite good at what they do. And they’re not really trying to deceive you. But if I have, somehow have a trust deficit with somebody, I will have that reaction to, and it’s really important to separate the trust deficit from Is this really a problem? So that’s something and that’s hard. That’s really hard, because I do have that same response with you know, I and I find myself thinking, I betcha that such and such who I have a trust deficit with. And I think well, hang on, hang on, hang on, nothing to do with the person put the person aside. Let’s pretend that idea came from somebody else. Now, you know, so yeah,

Murray Guest  33:55

I think that what what in my language that’s testing our assumptions, or going back to our bit earlier around the stories we create, and the stories that we we use to influence other people, we’re also creating our stories internally anyway, around situations and people and validating that story? And is that going to help me in this moment or not? to kind of get in my way. But, again, I think it comes back to that pause, and how often in life and in leadership roles of all the business, we’re not pausing to actually go, Well, what does that mean? What does that tell me? Am I going to pause I’ll just keep pushing through. 

Stef Loader  34:32

Yes. And when you’re in an operational environment where there’s, you know, the, the day to day sort of churn, I don’t know if that’s the right word. But you know, the day to day constant constant, it’s constant activity. And it’s hard to pause, because there’s always the next thing, you know, the next meeting to go to or the next thing to read or the next person who wants to talk to you or whatever it might be time to pause.

Murray Guest  34:58

So I’m gonna ask Kennedy geologists make decisions based on their gut instinct. Of course, I think everybody in the technical realm of things I’m just wondering is that the challenge right now needs to be data based?

Stef Loader  35:11

No, no, I think that’s the beauty of geology. As I said, you know, the rocks won’t pop up and tell you, you’re wrong. Yeah. So and, you know, no one has been there when these rocks were formed, unless you’re looking at very recent stuff. So. So yes, you can, right. I think I think it’s legitimate to based on your experience, I might have said, I’ve seen this before. And when you get that feeling, you know, I just have this feeling, that’s what I’m going to find, or that’s how it’s going to turn out. And I think it’s absolutely should be, you know, I actually think most people should sometimes make decisions based on that, because that’s what we, where we are. I don’t like making the analogy between humans and computers, but we we collect experiences and information. And that is, that is our brain, or our person telling us that, you know, there’s something that I’ve collected together all the information that are processed in the background that you may don’t even consciously process. That’s, that’s our brain telling us. Hey, I found an answer for you. Yeah, yeah. Based on the experiences and data that you have up here. always worth testing.

Murray Guest  36:24

Yes. So looking back on your career, where, as you said, you’re overseas until 2012. I think he said 12. Yep. And then when you move back to Australia, you are then the leader of northparkes, golden copper mine. Okay. When you reflect on your journey, what, what’s been some of the leadership lessons that stand out to you? And my listeners, this is a curveball when you just throw someone?

Stef Loader  37:03

Um, okay. Leadership lessons from northparkes are from the whole journey.

Murray Guest  37:10

Well, I’m happy for either, because I know that both are going to be valuable that went because you were the angle leader in different titles over what was it five, six years at northparkes?

Stef Loader  37:24

Yeah, pretty much one title, I changed for myself, um, in between time, when I felt that the business was getting a bit small within a large organization. Okay, so possibly, but I have learned is that I don’t know how to express this. But I didn’t recognize how much people leadership exposure I had had, I find it much easier now to look back and talk about the things that I have done and talk to other people about how I’ve learned from them. Whereas when I was in the moment, I didn’t really recognize those things as being formative.

Murray Guest  38:09

Gotcha,

Stef Loader  38:10

Okay. So that’s probably being able to recognize where my experiences come from, and why I have particular beliefs, I suppose, or I have particular tendencies. As a leader, I can look back on my career now. And I can see some of those things that I’ve learned along the way.

Murray Guest  38:27

So what I think what I hear from that is your skills ability capability, as a leader don’t just develop when you’re leading people, but through your whole journey. And that’s right. Whether that’s influencing other people, managing stakeholders, as you said, selling a story, getting people to understand some information or that lead you to that leadership role. When you’re actually leading people, let’s just say,

Stef Loader  38:54

That’s right. And and you the experiences that you have, where you may be not didn’t have formal leadership. accountabilities, you know, they really have actually taught you a lot about when you do take on the formal leadership accountabilities. So, I think I’ve learnt to be more humble, though, over time. So I sometimes shudder to some of the arrogance that I think I my memory tells me that I would have displayed in the past both technical arrogance and arrogance around what others were thinking. So I actually catch myself now, you know, I really try to while I try to put myself in the position of others, and in the past, I would have said, I know what they’re thinking and I would have been quite sure about how they would think about things. Now I I try to be much more cautious. Yeah. Because, you know, people are all different And trying to I mean, the most common place that I find myself responding to this is when you’re recruiting somebody, and you look at their profile, and you look at their history, and somebody might come up in that in that in that panel, and they might say, oh, but you know, they will. And they’ll make this assumption. Yes. But But this, you know, that won’t be important to them. And I find myself saying, well, hang on, actually, how do we know that there’s nothing here that tells us that that’s a fact about them. Let’s not make that assumption. Because I think that’s the dangerous thing about assuming somebody else’s attitude or opinion on something, or what might be important to them, when you’re trying to give them a job offer, you know, and make it appealing to them. Don’t. It’s very dangerous to make assumptions about individuals, it’s safer to make assumptions about groups, because groups are therefore, you know, they’re made up of a collective of individuals, and the group may behave in a way that is much more predictable that, you know, you’ve learned because all studies that show millennials, right, would they’ll tell you that it’s really important that millennials, as a group, really care about the social responsibility aspects of a company before they, before they join them. That doesn’t however, mean that every millennial

Murray Guest  41:13

No, that’s true.

Stef Loader  41:14

Yes. And so, and they might have a completely different view, and what they value might be completely different to the other person that you’re recruiting. So if you repeat, if you want to attract a group of people, you know, a generalized group of people, yes. But if you’re within that group, and how you talk to them, and how you attract them, within that group may actually be quite different. So I don’t know if that analogy has worked very well. But you know, you know what I mean?

Murray Guest  41:37

Yeah, I get what you mean. And the holding assumptions loosely, takes focus or takes attention. But I think it actually also prevent making errors and mistakes. And as you said, in a recruitment process could actually be tuning you in to pick up stuff, because you were trying to have that confirmation bias and say, that’s, that’s what I’m thinking it’s there. But actually stepping back and going being open to what is ahead of you. And that is really powerful. I think that’s just a good general leadership lesson for everybody to consider about how much are they doing that, as opposed to just running off their assumptions they’re making, because it’s a natural human tendency to save energy and make those assumptions but they can get in our way?

Stef Loader  42:23

Yeah, that’s right. So the other leadership lesson that’s come to mind is that you don’t have to be liked by everybody. Like, you don’t have to please, everyone. Yeah, I think that I spent a fair bit of time, even up until, you know, when I left northparkes. Now, maybe, maybe I’ve kind of started on a scale of going down. But I spent a lot of time as a leader wanting to be liked or wanting to please everyone, not just within the organization, but all stakeholders. So there’s some positive aspects to that, you know, and that is that, you know, you when you’ve got lots of when I first came to northparkes, there was some competing stakeholder sort of views. You know, we had an internal strong culture at northparkes, which was very much about northparkes, we are northparkes, we’re independent, you know, we don’t care too much about Rio Tinto, we’ve got our own culture, and this is the way we do things. So it was a very strong pride in northparkes as a as a, as a entity as a brand as a, as a, as a as an existence, you know, yes, loyalty to your class. But then, you know, Rio Tinto really wanted to have northparkes within the fold, is it own off parts for quite some time, never really felt that it had been integrated into the systems and all that sort of stuff. So that was good. That was a way of positively using that attribute that I have that wanting to play is because I was looking at ways of Okay, how do we, how do we do both? Right, how do we value the local, but also value the global and or valleys a national approach to something and how do we make it all come together and make it work? So that was a positive way of, of I thought, I thought, you know, applying in retrospect, now I look back. Good that I wanted to please, because had I been, you know, about? It’s all about me, it’s all about us? I could have really got very engaged in that. You know, we’re okay, go away. Yes. Yeah. Which is not helpful wouldn’t have wouldn’t have been helpful in that case. So, so positive aspects to wanting to please everybody. But I do think that, you know, I wasn’t as decisive as I could have been, because I was spent too much time considering how could I make everybody happy in this particular circumstance, rather than doing what was probably best for the majority?

Murray Guest  44:44

Yeah, yeah. And I think I can totally associate with that. I understand that from my own journey as well. And lots leaders I in a workshop this week was talking to some leaders and I said, Would you rather be liked or respected and there was a resounding yes respected. And so what does that look like? And sometimes that’s some of the tough conversations and some of the tough decisions. But I think it’s a lesson that does come with experience.

Stef Loader  45:13

Yes, it does. And you kind of wish that you could accelerate the experience, experience my daughter, because she’s kind of she has this trait, too. She wants to please everybody. And make sure everybody’s happy to her own detriment. Unfortunately, that’s what she goes. But you know, she’s just hanging in there. She’s quite resilient. So yes, it’s a it’s an important leadership lesson. So that’s probably the one.

Murray Guest  45:39

Yeah, great. So in your role now, as a director on a number of companies, and different sort of format around non executive director, ship, what’s that feel like being in a director role versus leading an organization?

Stef Loader  45:55

It’s very different. And it’s been, it’s been a transition, right. And each company in a director role at each company is slightly different to right. So smaller companies, you know, a director can get quite involved in some of the day to day activities and management. You know, I want to say, I’m going to do the positive, it’s quite liberating, right, because, as I referred to, before, there’s the day to day activity, there’s the intensity of day to day activity, which actually lots of really urgent things that aren’t necessarily important to us that language. So there’s lots and lots and lots of urgency, and there’s lots of things. And there’s always a surprise every morning when you wake up sort of thing. That to be free of that. And to be able to spend time, pretty much exclusively focused on long term questions. Yeah, and long term risks, is liberating. Yeah. Now, the downside of that is that you don’t have that day to day interaction with people, you don’t have that day to day when that day to day, you know, sort of, now we’ve we’ve, we’ve sorted that out. And yeah, that, you know, and, and in particularly the interaction with people and the opportunity to work with people on a day to day basis, that’s the kind of downside of that. So that’s the way it’s really dramatically different is your principally focused, really, you can list on the one hand, the three or four or five things which are really important to that company, at that point in time, and they usually won’t change that much over the course of the year. And you know, what it is, you know, I find that I’m constantly thinking about so one of the big issues. To give you an example, one of the big issues from for all of the companies I’m on the board are really up for the mind, I think is coming through for the mining industry is there’s just a lack of expertise and people in the in the mining professions, like the mining related professions, and we know that, but what I might tell me the risk is, it’s not just about the lack of people, it’s actually meaning that we’ve got much lower quality decision making and in some of our operations that are quite technically difficult, and that really need really good decision making. Now, for me, the implications are not tomorrow or next day, they’re three years down the track. So the mind design decisions that should be made now will have implications three years down the track. I’m really, really concerned that we’ve got we haven’t we’re making decisions now. But because of the status of the industry that we are going to find only here this three or four years down the track. And so that’s a problem statement. But I don’t know, if it’s a risk.

Murray Guest  48:45

Do you think there’s part of that risk? Is the talent attraction and retention in mining, as it being a desirable career path from what it used to be?

Stef Loader  48:57

is part of it is that yes, part of it is that part of it is the the career trajectories that we’re offering people within the industry. I think, and this will be a bit controversial, but I think there’s too much acceptance of giving people probably haven’t raised this correctly, but we’re having people who’ve got you know, they’ve worked on one mine, maybe two, not very drastically different. And then they go into a consultancy role expert role. Yeah, actually, I don’t actually think we should be allowing that to happen. Now. They have oversight from people who’ve got 3040 years experience and it’s not about the years of experience, it’s actually about the complexity of experience. So that’s what I was taught from somebody who’s worked on lots of different things. But I don’t think that we are providing career paths or or really emphasizing because it doesn’t have to be long. It doesn’t you don’t have to spend years and years but you do need to get exposure and get get in and solve some really meaty problems in an number of different environments or a number of different challenges in order to then be able to use that experience, and and do it. So I’m afraid that we’re really somewhat, you know, we’re putting a bit too much confidence in people who really, or don’t have the breadth of experience that we are assuming they do. Yeah, I think that’s a problem. So and that’s partly to do with attraction and retention, but it’s also to do with career development pathway.

Murray Guest  50:29

Yeah. And in a director role, then, like, you’re saying there’s a top two or three things, three or four things you’re working on, at the board level, where you’re thinking about, okay, what’s the strategy for us to make sure that we’ve got the right people in the right positions with the right skill sets experiences down the track in that future?

Stef Loader  50:50

That’s right. Yes. And, you know, we’re positioning ourselves appropriately for what our future might look like, you know, we, we we have the I mean, just one company I was thinking about recently, you know, will it have the capacity to actually raise capital in the future? You know, given all these things that are happening, you know, will they be able to raise capital into the future? And what will they do about that? So, you know, these are all you know, longer term, it’s not, it’s not an issue now, but it might be an issue for this particular company. I’m not on board of this company, but it might be an issue for this particular company in five years time.

Murray Guest  51:26

Yeah, gotcha. This has been so awesome chatting with you. I’ve loved I know you quite well, Steph, and I’ve known you for a while but to stay here. And to celebrate and to reflect on your journey to this point. It’s been awesome, I really appreciate it. No problem, it’s been fun to talk to you tomorrow. I do know, something you did raise with me in the past was about the role of technology in the future of work. And that’s something that you are thinking about and considering is, when I say that, what’s the first thing that comes to mind.

Stef Loader  52:06

So I feel like a bit of a broken record on this. But I do think the future of technology and work is, I think starts with defining the role of the human versus technology. And I think that so many times, and maybe maybe the conversation has changed, and I haven’t got with the program, but the conversation is so much about the technology and what the technology can do. And and I really think that the key, my view is the way, the way to think about this is to start with the human at the center, and really understand in with respect to your business, what part does the human play? What’s the competitive advantage that a human has over everything else, basically. And then if you start with that human at the center, then you can determine where you might be able to where does the human machine or human technology interface belong to your particular life for your particular context?

Murray Guest  53:03

So from my understanding that sounds like human centered design, which I think is in contrast, unfortunately, what I hear on the other side often is, okay, what’s the latest, greatest new way of technology? And then how do we fit the people around that? Yeah, which we want to turn that around,

Stef Loader  53:21

we want to turn that around. And we also need to be very clear that it’s got with so many things, actually, the context of the organization and the social context matter. So the context of the organization and the the culture of the organization and how things are done in that cup in urine Coke, definitely drink culture, the way things we do around here, do we do things around here, but also within a company, there will also be local cultures, which is social have a social context. And I think that is so many times lost, when, especially in big companies, because it’s all we’re all the same. You know, I mean, everything from you know, I think, Mary, probably something that we can, all we can both relate to is the safety, the site, what we do about safety. So what you do around getting people to live and breathe safety and think about their safety and the safety of others at one site is not going to be the same as what you do on the other side of the country. You know, and to make a very clear example, you know, most people live next door to the mind site, you know, their families, sort of, they have constant connection and touch points with the organization like at northparkes. You know, everyone’s in the community, you play sport with people. Everyone knows somebody else from the mind. So there’s a very community based, you can have a very community based safety culture. Yeah. Whereas if you’re on a flying flight mine, you know, it’s a very different social context.

Murray Guest  54:45

That’s a good point. And whether it’s its safety, it’s continuous improvement, it’s innovation, it’s technology, it’s customer service, you know, we could go on, but being mindful of the culture at the local level, And not made, again, making assumptions, let’s just roll it all out, because that’s the way we do it in other parts of our business or what other companies have done it, let’s just do what they do, because it won’t work or won’t stick.

Stef Loader  55:10

It won’t stick. So I am about to have my reading list because the wg EA have just released it, the University of Queensland has done best practice when it comes to gender equality. I can’t wait to read that, because it’ll be interesting to see whether that is recognized. Because there will be best practices that work beautifully in some organizations, but don’t work in others. And I think we’re getting to that point. I mean, there’s some basic hygiene stuff. And we often talk about that there’s some hygiene stuff that you that you need to do, or that all organizations can do, which is usually about creating a construct. But you know, the the difficulty with all these things is the social and the organizational context is what like you say what works in one organization won’t necessarily work in the same way.

Murray Guest  55:55

Because the point, the point that that organization’s at right now, is different to the journey that another organization has been on to get to that point. That’s right. Yep. And the trajectory is going to be different as well. That’s right. Yep. skews, excuse me, Steph, I just got a couple of last questions. And one is reflecting on all of the things we’ve been talking about today, what some that you’re proud of, in your journey.

Stef Loader  56:28

Okay, I’m so enormously proud of, of northparkes. And we’re at seats and its reputation. You know, I built on a reputation that was already there, when I arrived, you know, northparkes had a good reputation, I think I built on that helped cement it, you know, we did a little repositioning of the brand, but I’m really proud of that has been maintained that that the way that northparkes, the brand, the the positioning, the image that it presents to the outside world really is a continuation of the of what it was like under my leadership, which says to me that it wasn’t the identity, there was not links to me, it was actually truly links to the strength of the organization and the people in the organization. And that that’s given it longevity. So it’s three years have been gone. And that still continues, you know, I’m really proud of that. So I look back on that. And, and I’m really proud of, of, of when or proxies, and we’re more parts continues to be and how it’s it’s perceived by a bunch of stakeholders and its own employees and the community

Murray Guest  57:39

And from the perception locally, nationally, or internationally. That reputation is in a great position. And I think you should be proud of that for how you built on what was there and continue that through your tenure and to where it is now. And also throughout their time implemented and supported and led some major cultural change as well.

Stef Loader  58:05

Yeah, and through and through changes in ownership to right. So going from being part of a Rio Tinto to being part of Sema, which is not known, there was an unknown quantity to mine. And I think I’ll say that I am. I hope I’m I think I am proud of making what, in hindsight really was a quite bold decision to to try this director career thing out. And, you know, it has it’s not it’s still working progress. So I’m not, you know, I don’t feel completely comfortable that I’ve made the transition yet. But I do think I have been told, you know, I’ve talked to a lot of people about the process, and I’m in a mentoring program at the moment. And I have been told through that mentoring program, one of the pieces of feedback I have got is, you know, maybe you adjust one role too early, maybe you should have done another CEO type role first, and then jumped out, and, you know, that kind of thing, or it gets me down a bit. But, you know, I’m here, and I’m doing it just thought that I’ve actually potentially got over the hurdle. So to be, you know, considered, and I, you know, I have to give myself a little bit of credit, you know, the companies that talk to me, who are, you know, potentially considering whether I might be applicable to their board, the fact that they’re actually considering me says, Well, you know, I’m, I have some reputation, or there’s some credibility there for that. So I’m kind of proud of myself for doing that. For backing myself to do it. Although it took a great deal of strength at the time.

Murray Guest  59:46

I’m sure it wasn’t, and I know it wasn’t a split decision one afternoon. I’m just going to do this because that’s not how it happens. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, I understand that. Thank you for sharing your journey, your leadership. expertise and knowledge and experience also insights into your technical knowledge and experience and your journey. I feel like we could talk for a lot longer. But I’m also mindful we getting towards the end. So thank you. It’s been absolutely wonderful idea. Mary, I do want to ask you, Steph, what is your definition of inspired energy?

Stef Loader  1:00:24

Well, it’s really easy. I know, you asked that of all your podcast guests. Inspired energy, to me is the energy that you draw from others. That’s what it means to me. When you say inspired energy, it’s the energy I draw, I should talk about me, it’s the energy I draw from my interaction with others, whether that be you know, in the workplace, or whether it be in the community, or whether it be in my local supermarket shop, you know. Alright, that’s my inspired energy.

Murray Guest  1:00:54

I love it. And I totally aligned with that and agree with that, from my own personal experience as well. So thank you.

Stef Loader  1:01:02

Thank you for your inspired energy give me some.

Murray Guest  1:01:05

Awesome, thanks, Steph. I also want to make sure we don’t forget some of those fantastic initiatives. You mentioned earlier around, buy from the boys visiting the boys going with your MTS key, spending time in areas that need it. So in the show notes, going to make sure we’ve got links to all of those, because that’s really important, whether that’s across Australia, but honestly, around the world, if you can get out of the cities and go and visit rural areas and support the people that live and work there. That makes a huge difference. But we’ll make sure I’ve got the links across for the New South Wales ones, because there’s quite a number of those that want to make sure we support. Also, if there’s anything that you found really interesting and inspiring in my wonderful chat with Steph, please share it online. Use the hashtag inspired energy. And if you want to find out more about Steph and the awesome work she does, you can find her on LinkedIn and I’ll make sure there’s a link to that as well. So Steph, thanks again. It’s been absolutely awesome. And I look forward to chatting to you again soon.

Stef Loader  1:02:13

Yes, thanks, Murray. And thanks for your energy. Yeah,

Murray Guest  1:02:16

thank you. Bye 

Stef Loader  1:02:18

Bye.

Episode 52 – Dave McKeown | Author of The Self Evolved Leader

In this episode I chat with Dave McKeown – the founder of Outfield Leadership plus author, speaker, leadership trainer and business advisor.

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Transcript

Murray Guest  00:01

Dave, welcome to the podcast. So looking forward to catching up with you and talking about your new book, the self evolved leader. How are you?

Dave McKeown  00:10

I’m just wonderful. Murray. Thank you for having me on. It’s good to get the we did a couple of months ago where you were with me.

Murray Guest  00:18

Yeah, I do remember that we had a really good chat with Becky around Leaders who Give A Damn and your podcast. And I’m looking forward to chatting about your book, how’s life in So Cal at the moment

Dave McKeown  00:30

It is going wonderfully where we are in a way, which means that I have a sweater on.

Murray Guest  00:48

Dave, Good morning. Welcome to the podcast. Looking forward to chatting to you about the self evolve leader. How are you?

Dave McKeown  00:55

I am just wonderful. Murray. Thank you so much for having me back on. It’s great to talk to you again.

Murray Guest  01:00

Yeah, I’d love to chat we had last time on your podcast, which is all about giving a damn in your leadership. How’s life in So Cal

Dave McKeown  01:10

Life over here is wonderful. We’re in winter, which means that sometimes I have to put a sweater on. But other than that, I can’t really complain.

Murray Guest  01:19

Well, I am looking forward to chatting to you not just about this book, but you have the gorgeous, amazing accent so I could listen to you talk for the next four hours, mate.

Dave McKeown  01:29

Well, I mean, likewise, you know, there’s I think, you know, foreign accents are always more amusing to somebody that doesn’t come from a place. So your wonderful dulcet tones are are equally listenable too?

Murray Guest  01:43

Well, maybe you are like me, I don’t go back and listen to the podcast too much, because I’d much rather listen to your voice than mine. But not, I actually want to just just want to understand a little bit about your background and share that with people. Give me the higher level your journey to this point. From a business and leadership perspective.

Dave McKeown  02:08

Sure, happy to share that. So I’m originally from Northern Ireland, as I’m sure you and your listeners are picking up. And I started my career many moons ago back in the UK working for Accenture it consultancy company, which is a big global company. And during my time there, I realized that it was not necessarily those leaders who were functionally good at their job that had the greatest impact on the team that they were leading. But that in fact, they had something else that this ability to set a really cool vision of where they wanted to go and then bring people along with them. And it sort of set about for me a lifelong desire, get a deep dive to be an excellent leader, and then ultimately help other people develop skill set to get there. And to move to the States about 10 years ago and joined the families this company called predictable success, or national growth consultancy company, and focused on on helping senior leadership teams create creativity and innovation that you need to grow up with the processes that you need to scale it and it gave me just a really good idea in what effects, an excellent leader like I worked there for years with a nice little size. And then I stepped away from that a couple of years ago book really was that we were doing the most senior leaders, I wanted to be able to do that at any level. Because I feel a number of of leaders out there who are just crying out for a memorial effector. And so over the last number of years of dedicated kind of my professional life to making that happen. And I guess the outpour of pouring of all of that past experiences the self evolve leader.

Murray Guest  04:12

Now we spoke a bit before about this book. And I’ve read the book, I’ve had a deep dive into it. And I think I told you I’m a little bit jealous, a little bit inspired.

Dave McKeown  04:25

Well Thank you. It’s always good to hear one of your peers that you hired tell you that?

Murray Guest  04:30

Well, the jealousy comes from the fact that you have have invested the time and energy to put into this book and I’ve had a vision of writing a book for some time haven’t got around to it, but certainly something which you’ve inspired me to really do again, and even more. So when I read what you’ve put into this book, your lessons, your experiences, your understanding around leadership made is fantastic. I love the way that you’ve put it together. And you build as you go through the book to help people understand what being a self evolved leader means. And the other part is, I think it’s relevant, whether you’re a new leader, a leader that’s, you know, struggling or later, that’s actually doing quite well, that wants to do better. So it’s applicable for leaders of all stages of that development.

Dave McKeown  05:22

Yeah, and that was really my goal. You know, it’s funny, you pick up most leadership books, and they say this is this book is for leaders at any level. And actually, in most cases, that isn’t true, just because it’s kind of hard to write something that’s that’s applicable for such a broad audience. But it was one of the kind of core principles that I started out with, I really wanted to make it to be as accessible as possible for as wide a range of a group as possible. And I just also wanted it to have, you know, a balance between some interesting new ideas and philosophies on leadership that I think that that we need to adopt in our workplaces, but then also the practicality of what somebody can walk away and literally begin to implement some of the lessons right. And I kept thinking that somewhere between the poignant and the practical lies progress. And that was still in the book as I wrote it.

Murray Guest  06:17

How would you describe the process of writing a book?

Dave McKeown  06:23

It’s funny, so I give myself a deadline to do it a really tight turnaround time, because I knew that no matter how long I give myself, I would just, I would just fill that time. So I should give myself three months to write it. And actually, that boiled down to two months, because in the middle month, I got married. And so most of my time was kind of dedicated to making all of that happens. So I wrote the first half of the month, took a break and got married number, the second half. And it was just, I think there was something put in those constraints around me, that meant that I had to listen, this is gonna sound a little bit more mean it to but I really just had to listen to what the voice inside me was saying, and get it out on paper. overthink what I mean, and some high end just as magical way of all came together and stuck. And I look at it now. And I’m like, if I sat down to write that again, now, I don’t think I would do as good a job. It just sort of beautifully came together.

Murray Guest  07:26

Yeah, I can imagine those moments. And I’ve had those when I’m writing a blog or putting together some information for a client and in a way that feels like you’re channeling just the information just as coming from flowing out. And I can sense that in your writing in this book. It’s just, again, I think it’s fantastic. Now I’ve got to ask, Where did the name come from. 

Dave McKeown  07:49

So the name came, from a sort of belief over the last couple of years, as well, a belief in the observation all rolled into one, which is that across the world, we spend billions of dollars every year in an attempt to develop our leaders. So whether it’s workshops, or keynotes or webinars, or podcasts or books, and there’s a lot of great stuff out there. And I think that our organizations hope that their people will avail of it. But the reality is that those leaders who truly, truly move into excellence and, and high degrees of effectiveness, recognize and understand that they are responsible, and quite frankly, only them are for their own growth and journey and development. And so starting from this perspective of wanted, I am developing as a leader legacy that I’m building and the impact that I’m having on my people. And for me, that really is the crux of self evolution, because it’s not happening to you, you’re driving it, you’re you’re the engine of growth, you can happen. So that that was how, I kind of came around with that idea.

Murray Guest  09:04

So, and again, when I had to look through the book, and those levels of development as a self evolve leader from some of those foundations through to really sustaining that self of leadership, I was actually thinking about one of the models that really connected with me, and I’ve seen it so many times in leaders, unfortunately, that I’ve worked with, and I’m sure myself actually and that’s probably why it rang true to me when I’ve slipped into it as well. far from perfect as a leader myself, that’s for sure. And with leaders I work with now I often say and this is the cycle of mediocrity. Just want to tell us a bit about that. Because I think that that was such a great way for people to start to think about in the book when I read that what it means for them and how that’s showing up.

Dave McKeown  09:52

Right and it’s a pattern that I see happening all the time, which is that in today’s day and age because we’ve given Anybody the ability to interrupt us in any time in any way and in the way in which they deem appropriate, we’ve essentially made everything in front of us urgent, everything needs to get attended to right away. And we don’t spend enough time thinking about the truly important with long term direction of our team and development of our people. When we’re walking around with a mindset that everything’s urgent, it means that everything becomes some sort of an emergency or crisis that needs to get dealt with. And for a lot of leaders, the fastest, most effective response to that is, well, I need to fix it. So he comes with a team member comes with a problem and you say, Or you say, ‘I’ll just handle that for you just leave it there, I’ll, I’ll fix it’. And what happens and it starts from a place of good intention, which is, I know that I can probably do that quicker or more effectively than you you’re it, you know, I’ve got the the tools at my disposal to do that. But over time, as you start to lead through these acts of heroism, which is the ultimately our die making the diving catches, you’re saving the day happens in bottleneck because everything just ends up with your brain you tick on more and more. And then the reverse of that is people aren’t developing, they’re not learning, but you’re not given the opportunity to do that. And so they develop learned helplessness for a period of time, although some in this question of saying anytime that there is a challenge, they’re faced with snow, my boss is gonna kill it. So I’ll just go and say, “Hey, boss, here’s another, you know, to your list, and causes you as a heroic leader to, to save the day even more”, because more and more items are left at your door, and it gets a video call an appointed or a bad leader. Definitely not good leadership, but keeps very much good in the weeds at the runway level, and doesn’t allow us to elevate our focus towards that stuff that’s truly important.

Murray Guest  12:09

I also think about that sense of heroism, and being the hero and the rush of endorphins that happens when you’re saving a day. And you’re saving that and I think there can be a bit of an addiction to that happening sometimes in in our leadership, because we’re the ones that are doing all the good work and showing up and saving the day solving the problem. And we feel good about it as well. And so we get into that soil

Dave McKeown  12:39

100% and it feeds our teams dependent upon you then it feels the moment. And so we do it again and again. And also there’s a set that that’s where a lot of that comes from, you know, I’ve been through this organization knew the answers because I do solve problems, things. And at some point you kind of have to miss shift the wave to recognize and understand when your more harm than good. And you’re not giving yourself the head to think creatively you’re robbing your people of that opportunity to develop comes from is quite often, once in any aspect of your life and leadership is no day can can be in so tough that we’re talking about at times the most See, whereas chasing the most recent your crisis. Because I can actually, you know, I can go in and save the day and Effie. And and part of the message in the book is that if you if you really want to build a legacy, excellent leadership, so you got to do stuff that just bit more mundane, a little bit more boring?

Murray Guest  13:52

Yeah, I am. I’ve had conversations with leaders that I’ve been coaching over the past year, which certainly, I’ve noticed, and they’ve noticed that they’ve slipped and slipped into this process slipped into this sort of mediocre cycle of mediocrity. And the thing that I was thinking about, and this is something which I’m sure you cover in your programs, as well is once we’re changing our approach as leaders, we need to actually talk to people about that, because the people around us have been expecting the same behavior. So once we start to make the change, we actually need to let everyone know that what that means for them and bring them on the journey.

Dave McKeown  14:34

Now, huge, it actually there’s a line philosophical shift that’s happening in leadership, which is, you know, we used to uphold our leaders who was so sure on the direction that they’re going in and we’re all in line and bushwhacking through the jungle and just never, never aeverine for from our oil and you know, I think back into that notion of heroic leadership and heights that’s filled into our organizations. But the reality is, in today’s day and age, the world is too complex for me to be completely sure of anything, really. And, and I think that people recognize that lie. And so what we’re looking for from our leaders actually is, is a bigger or higher degree of vulnerability that says, you know, what, I don’t 100% know that this is the direction that we should go in, it looks good to me, based on my experience, and what I’ve gone through in the past, what thing do you want to go with me on this journey? I think it would be awesome, I think we can really achieve a lot of good stuff, but just being a little bit more vulnerable in that, and into your question, which is when as leaders where we are going through a period of growth or development, or we’re trying something new, you know, the worst thing that you can do is go back to your team and just start using a whole bunch of jargon or new vocabulary or a new model, and your team will look at you and go, who are you and what have you done with my manager. And I think that that, that tying those two things are going back to your team with a bit of vulnerability and saying, hey, just read this book, or have gone through this program, I’ve got a lot of value out of it. And I actually think it could really help how you and I interact with each other, and how we work together, here are some things that I learned and hear things, some things that I’m going to try with, with you over the next couple of weeks, will you let me know how it’s going for you and and what’s working in here and what’s not. And when you do that, then you’re making your team co conspirators into success in your own success of your own development, which can really help push it through and maximize the gains that you’re getting from.

Murray Guest  16:42

I think that unfortunate cycle of buisiness, that I think a lot of leaders feel that they’re on that they, what I’ve experienced is I don’t have time to have those conversations, I don’t have time to talk through these. So we’re just gonna get on with it, I’ve got so much to do. But it’s those conversations, which change the culture which change the way they work. And it’s changes the the interactions that people are having. And I love how the book, and your approach is about actually you got to stop and actually have those conversations, because then you’ll get the bigger impact about actually what you’re trying to achieve.

Dave McKeown  17:17

Yeah, and I think part of the reason why leaders are hesitant to quote unquote, have those conversations is because whether you’re talking about having a coaching conversation, or a difficult conversations conversation, or a feedback conversation, or you know, a new approach to leadership conversation, we sort of feel like we’ve got a store everything done until the next time that we have a big long one on one where we’re together for 45 minutes, or 60 minutes, or whatever it is. And we talk through this stuff. And the reality is, that’s just not a very fluid way to do it. There’s a great book called the coaching habit, which was written by a friend of mine called Michael bungay, stanier. And his perspective is, if you can’t coach in 10 minutes or less than you’re never going to coach, and that you have to view every interaction that you have with your team as an opportunity to be more coach like, and I think that extends to all areas of leadership. Like if you don’t have the the, you should look at every interaction that you have as the ability to be building a stronger culture to be to be building your leadership, strengths, your skills, your behaviors, to be investing in the people that are around you. So that you don’t have to feel like you need to wait for a big, lengthy meeting to do just every every interaction is an opportunity to be a more effective leader.

Murray Guest  18:36

So if someone’s listening to us talking, which I hope they are. And I’m sure they are what’s your, your message then for people that are listening to this and they’re thinking, you know, what, I’m just got so much on my, my plate, you know, I’m juggling so much in my leadership role, I don’t actually don’t have time for this, what would be your first recommendation for them to consider?

Dave McKeown  19:04

I think that a big overarching perspective shift that needs to happen is to be ruthlessly focused on what you can control and don’t focus on what you can’t. And often that statement of I’ve got too much on my plate, it lives in the world of what you can’t control if people pass it off. And they pretend like it lives in the world of what I can control. But, but I think it’s it’s more people slide more into that sense of victimhood, which is I’m just too busy. I’ve got so much going on and start to think about, well, you know, what would it look like if you had the time? What would a leader who has the time to do the things that we’re talking about how would they structure their day? What would that look like and, and just to pick one or two things that you can do to slowly make that happen? For me, all of that start With the overarching mindset shift, as all good behavioral shifts tend to do, and I talk in a book about a new leadership mantra, which is this. And I think if you just adopt this into the way you lead, it can be really helpful to start to make the shift. My focus is to help those on my team achieve our shared goals, and in doing so to help them become the best version of themselves. And the reason that I like that so much is the focus is to help our team achieve our shared goals. So if I succeed, and you fail, then I fail, if I succeed, a couple of other people in our team succeed, and you fail, I fail. It’s about collective shared goals. And, and, and using that word coconspirators, again, making your team co conspirators in that success. And then the second part of it, which I think is just as if not more important, which is to help them become the best version of themselves as they’re achieving those goals. Because that means that it strips out any room or any space for those acts of heroism, because you know, you’re not helping your team develop into the best version of themselves. And the greatest thing that you can do in any of this, once you adopt that mindset, is just to begin to just pause for a split second before you rush to action on anything. And just think about that mantra, how do I best do that in this moment? How can I help my team achieve their shared goals? and become the best version of themselves? Pause, think about that. And then approach whatever it is that’s in front of you, rather than just rushing to action right away?

Murray Guest  21:35

Yeah, I was I actually loved the mention of having a pause and the power of the pause in the book, and how powerful that is, you know, the business that I’m sure lots of leaders feel, I felt in the past, that we’ve just got to get on to the next thing and got to jump in there. But when we actually stop and think, you know, is this the best use of my time? Is it the most valuable thing I could be doing? How does this impact the team, just considering some of those things? And like you’re saying, think about what what’s the impact on our shared goals? Just has such a great reset of the way a leader is going to invest their time in that moment, and the flow and a focus on that as well.

Dave McKeown  22:19

Yeah, and it just it helps to strip out the signal from the noise. You know, I think that in the buisiness of our world with, we just react to all of the new ways and taking a pause, just for a split second to say, okay, is this a conversation that we should have now? Or could we deal with this in our next one on one? Is this an issue that I need to jump in on? Or can I empower you to go go fix that? Is this just something that you know, is going to subside by the end of the day, and we actually don’t need to do anything about it or not just taking that moment and evaluating what’s in front of you and what the appropriate reaction is, to achieve that overarching mantra. It can be huge, it it, funnily enough, you would think that taking a pause would take time away from you. But what it does is it gives you much more focus time on the things that are true to spend on the things that are truly important, rather than getting stuck in what what you deem to be urgent.

Murray Guest  23:17

The other part that I love that is an underlying sort of approach through all of this is it’s making the COVID over, I think so often in in life. And in business. There’s lots of assumptions that are just running. And we think people know or understand that having these conversations, having these pauses, brings all that to the surface, and just makes it clear, and everyone’s on this on the same page.

Dave McKeown  23:42

And I think it’s hugely important. We overestimate the appeal to an individual or a group to have Well, we overestimate the ability of a group to have a discussion and come to a conclusion. And walk I completely aligned on what that conclusion was. And again, back to that whole notion of well, we just got to keep moving. The problem is that, you know, a typical example happens, a team has an issue that they need to solve, they get a bunch of people into a room, they have a discussion, they agree what they’re going to go do. And the leader thinks that everyone’s aligned, and they’re going to start implementing, but everybody in that room has got a slight nuanced understanding of what it was that was just agreed and what their role in it is. And so as a result, there’s a whole bunch of slightly different interpretations on how we’re going to solve this problem. And if you take a pause right at that moment, and I love that phrase, make the couverte overt, so just getting a shared getting everybody to share their understanding of what we just agreed in their limit. It’ll take you two to three minutes, but it’ll save you all the time in the world whenever you go to implement. And I think that’s part of a job of a leader today is taking the time to ensure that everybody in the room understands what all of the positions are in the room that we don’t have a nuanced understanding whenever we go out To work,

Murray Guest  25:00

Hmm, I actually remember years ago, I was in a meeting. And a leader came in and talked to hold about a whole range of things and then left, and we looked at each other. And we said, well, I don’t know what I’m doing. We just went

Dave McKeown  25:14

or, or even just, this happens all the time, you know, a group will leave the room and go, that was a great meeting, you know, we’ve got some really good progress done. What did we actually agree on? But what are we gonna do? And, you know, it’s, it’s just hilarious to just say, well, it would be funny if it wasn’t such a waste of time to then have to come back together again, and actually say, Okay, what did we agree on? What are you going to do? And what are you going to do by and how will we know if you have achieved? And what do you need from us to support you and your success? Like just those four questions, we’ll see if you all the time in the world on in on implementation, you know, slowing down your decision making process, just a hair can really accelerate the implementation side of it, because you do have true alignment at that point.

Murray Guest  25:59

And for everybody listening at the back of the self evolve leader book, Dave has provided some guides, some frameworks for you to actually look very practically at how your meetings are structured, what’s their purpose was a frequency having a look at those to make those more effective. And, mate, I love how you’ve done that.

Dave McKeown  26:18

Yeah, thanks. It’s a basically a sum total of a lot of the work that I’ve done with leadership teams over the last 15 years and trying to iron out some of the issues and obstacles that I see. And what I wanted to do, you know, it’s funny in in our sphere, a lot of times somebody will write a book, and then 12 months later, they’ll write the field guide, or the workbook, you know, companion. And I mean, to me, that’s just, it’s a nice marketing ploy. But I wanted to, I wanted to give the readers everything so that they truly can implement what I’m talking about, and put it into practice.

Murray Guest  26:49

So what’s your hope for the book,

Dave McKeown  26:54

my hope is that it’ll have impact. And by that, I mean that when somebody picks it up, I am them to just have two or three really clear things that they’re going to go put into place. And, and, and implemented. And I can do that on whatever scale or, you know, I, I know that I’ll have succeeded, and I’m already starting to hear people write in either on their Amazon reviews, or send me an email to say, Hey, I really find this book valuable. And I’ve been able to put it into it right away. And my response is always, that’s awesome. Like, go do that next six months, or three months and return to the book, because then there’ll be another Golden Nugget in there for you to take away. I really do think that if people refer to it again, and again, over time, it will take them on a journey that they can just continue to grow and evolve.

Murray Guest  27:51

Yeah, and I think you raise a really good point there, which is quite often people are looking for what’s the perfect solution, and I’m gonna wait till I’ve got that to implement something. And in leadership and in life, let’s just try something. Let’s just start something and review it.

Dave McKeown  28:08

Yeah, definitely. I mean, there’s Don’t let perfection become the enemy of progress. If you just put something out there, see how it works, evaluate, you know, ask people around you, what didn’t? What should we do differently? Again, just goes back touches on a lot of those themes in talking about, you’ve got to have the vulnerability to do that. You’ve got to have openness and transparency with your people, and you’ve got a high level got to have a high level of trust with them that they’re going to, you know, take for with which it was intended.

Murray Guest  28:40

Yes, my total agree this has been so valuable to chat and to talk through this. I feel like you and I have got a lot in common in the work we’ve been doing and the people we work with, and and our line of thinking. And when I was reading the book I just saw Yep, I understand that I get that. I can see how leaders get so much value from the practicalities that you bring in the book. So again, well done on the launch of the book this year. Thank you very much. And I think to that, you know it The truth is truth is truth. Right. And so what you’re seeing and experiencing over in your part of the world, what I’m seeing experiencing here, you know, I

Dave McKeown  29:22

think there is just an underlying truth of the of the overarching shift and transformation that we’re trying to our leaders develop and get through. And, you know, I kept going back to this thought that we know what, what came before us doesn’t work anymore. We’re not 100% sure what the future looks like in terms of leadership. But we know we’ve got to shift our leaders the some way along that path on that spectrum. And, and so my hope and goal is that the self evolve leader will will help help leaders do that.

Murray Guest  29:55

Yeah, yeah. So I also want to ask Dave, what does 2020 look like for you.

Dave McKeown  30:04

So I’m kind of smack dab in the middle of promoting the book. And I’ll continue to bet for the next couple of weeks through various podcasts like this and other bits and pieces, which are fun. And then for me just to continue the work that I do with my wonderful clients, you know, one of the things that I feel very grateful for is I get the opportunity to work with leadership teams, and see firsthand how all of this stuff comes together and the impact that it has. And so I’ll continue to do that over the next number of years and episode X number of months. And I got married last year, as I said, in the middle of writing the book, and that meant that we weren’t able to take a lengthy honeymoon. So hopefully at some point towards the back end of the year, we’ll the to do that.

Murray Guest  30:49

Fantastic. I mean, I think that should be one of the big rocks that get in the calendar before it’s too late.

Dave McKeown  30:55

Yeah, I think that’s a good idea.

Murray Guest  30:58

Yes. So I have love talking to you about the book, but also just to help people understand in the work that you do, what else can they do with you? What’s the type of work around self evolve leader?

Dave McKeown  31:13

Sure. So when I work with a leadership team, I typically start a process where we’ll come in, we’ll do a diagnostic on the strength of the leaders, the leaders in the room and the leadership team as a whole. And we’ll take a look at how far along the team is towards making the shift towards becoming a self evolved leader. And there’s usually then one of three camps that we that we need to focus on. Either we need to spend some time with that team, helping them craft a compelling vision for where they want to go and what that means for their team and their organization. Or they need to get better at building that implementation rhythm, which is, when do we meet? For how long? What do we talk about what are we review? How do we bring clarity to our decision making? And then the third aspect is how do we develop the set of disciplines that we as a team need in order to navigate that process and starts for the one one and a half day session? And do those in high sales who do them publicly? Twice a year. And you can find out the details of all of them. If you go to self evolve leader.com there’s a bunch of information on the public workshop on the in house workshops.

Murray Guest  32:21

Thank you, Dave, so much for talking through that. I love that it’s a process. I think too often people think their leadership or their team is in a place. And it’s like, oh, let’s go and tick the box. We’re done. Right. And it’s the client I love working with where it’s actually a reality around, if we’re going to make some changes, we’re going to develop as leaders or change our team culture, there’s a process, there’s a series of things we need to do to get there because we didn’t get here overnight. And where we’re going is going to take longer than just ticking a box, that’s for sure.

Dave McKeown  32:55

Absolutely. And as you know, that the that you face as a business and as a growing business, you know, they enjoy over time when there are challenges that you need to face. And you know, as Marshall Goldsmith book, got you here won’t get you there. And I think that the saddest thing that you can see as a leader or leadership team who have had a period of past success, and just rely on that they’re just so comfortable with that. And they say, Hey, we’re done. We don’t need to continue to grow and evolve. And the most exciting group to work with is a leadership team that says, hey, we know that there’s always room to grow and to better ourselves.

Murray Guest  33:35

Yeah, totally great. Totally. Great. Now I want to ask a couple last questions. Dave, first thing is tell me a bit about something you like to do. That’s not to do with anything we’ve been talking about, and putting the vulnerability spotlight on you.

Dave McKeown  33:51

Sure. So two things that I love to do. One is cook, cook a lot. Whenever I can at home with my wife, we both love cooking. And particularly like just trying to think of something imaginative that I want to make and then go and find a bunch of different recipes and kind of bring it together into one. I also play the guitar just learn to play the drums. So that’s kind of interesting and fun.

Murray Guest  34:21

Fantastic. I’ve been learning the drums for some time. And I would unfortunately admit I don’t practice enough.

Dave McKeown  34:33

It’s interesting. I think that one of the key things that is really going to help leaders as we continue to evolve as a species and the workplace changes is we’ve got to get really good at learning how to learn and being able to take that learning process from one part of our life and apply it to another. So you know, learning how to play the drums. Okay, well, how do we take that and then apply it Learning how to surf or learning how to be a better leader or learning how to be a better parent, the end of the day, it all comes down to a couple of key characteristics, one of which is right. And no matter what you’re doing, if you want to get better at it, you want to master it practicing. And I think it’s it’s, it’s for the whole reason why I’m kind of going through of these things that I’m trying to learn is just to get a better sense of what that means and how it the process and apply it. So

Murray Guest  35:31

yeah, I totally agree. And I think with the access to so much information at our fingertips and just jumping to get the answers, whether it’s Google or whatever else it is that our ability to learn. And how we learn is, is getting lost. So I think tapping back into that and our own preferences and styles of learning, and understanding that and and doing the work. Oh, definitely. Yeah. My other last question, Dave. So this is the inspired energy podcast, I just want to check your definition of inspired energy, what would you say that is?

Dave McKeown  36:08

I would say that inspired energy is committing to make the most of what you have in front of you every single day. So just making that choice to own those things that you can control and not worry about those things that you can’t like, think for me that will be inspired energy.

Murray Guest  36:31

And for our listeners, I’ve just thrown Dave a curveball on this one. So you’ve done awesome answering that one on the spot my friend. Now, either, thank you. Now, as you mentioned earlier website, their self evolved leader.com has lots of great information about the book about you about your programs. So if you want to check that out, go there books also available in lots of bookstores, and online. Of course, you can buy it. Dave, it’s been fantastic talking to you today really appreciate the chance to talk about something we’re both passionate about around leadership. And again, congratulations on a fantastic book that is a really valuable, much needed resource for leaders.

Dave McKeown  37:21

Thank you so much, Murray. It’s always nice to talk to a kindred spirit and really appreciate the chat.

Murray Guest  37:26

Yeah, thanks, Dave. And now if anyone if you’ve got anything from today’s podcast, please don’t hesitate to share that online. Make sure you tag Dave and myself and share that and go and check out the self of of leader and have a great day.

Episode 51 – Heading into the Roaring 20s | Charlotte Jameson

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Transcript

Murray Guest  

Welcome Charlotte to the podcast as we head into another decade, I’m so looking forward to talking to you about wellbeing and digital wellbeing. How are you?

Charlotte Jameson  

I’m really well, thank you, Murray, how are you?

Murray Guest  

I’m fantastic. I’ve been loving these conversations we’re having with people about the past decade and what’s coming up for this decade. And hearing all your insights, and I know connecting with you, you’ve got a lot to share as well. And I’m actually really looking forward to this 2020s. And what they hold for us.

Charlotte Jameson  

Yeah, it’s, it’s, it’s going to be interesting, I think. I actually hold a lot of faith in the youth, to be honest, for 2020 and beyond. I think there’s consciousness that that the youth can bring to society. So I’m looking forward to seeing that really unfold.

Murray Guest  

Yeah. Well, I think in the last few years, we’ve certainly seen a lot more activism around climate change and around inequality, and people standing up and making sure those voices are heard. When you think about the youth, and what’s going to be ahead for them going forward this next decade, what do you think is going to be some of the, I guess, the challenges going forward?

Well, I kind of think that there’s going to be two, sort of two types, there’s going to be those who have really been fortunate enough to understand the brain and understand themselves, understand what modern day life really holds. And then there’s going to be the other the other sort of group who haven’t had those opportunities to understand those sorts of things. And they’re not going to be privy to understand, it’s like diet, you know, and smoking, a lot of people just did it, and they didn’t realize, well, I think there’s going to be a group that don’t realize the impact that technology is going to have on our brain, on our eyes on our muscles, on our mental health. They don’t realize that how, how sleep is such a priority for life and for the ability to actually thrive in life. And so by just by pure unawareness, they’re not going to prioritize sleep, or they’re not going to prioritize downtime, or switching off for, you know, time in nature, just simply because they don’t necessarily know. And then there’s going to be that group that do, are privy to that information, and have the opportunity to actually take the time out and to do those things. And to be, you know, to socialize with people who are like minded in that sort of way. And I think that they’re really going to, you know, take things forward. So it’s a bit of a mission for me, too, for anybody who wants to hear about it, to let them know these things, because I think everybody has, you know, everyone has a right to information. Yeah, they don’t have to take it up. But I think everyone, you know, has a right to know what they’re doing. When they, when they’re actually involved in these sorts of technologies or, or deprioritize, sleep and that sort of thing. So

Murray Guest  

Yeah, and I actually know that in the space that you play in, working with different organizations and helping them improve their culture and that understanding of digital well being, that there’s a big push in a lot of organizations to share that information with people as well, which is great to see, isn’t it that it’s not just something that’s outside of those initiatives within organizations?

Yeah, yeah, the the push for it, even in the last sort of five years, I’ve noticed is really, we’ve been in the last three years, to be honest, Murray that, there, it’s really everyone’s starting to get on the mental health bandwagon. And it’s not just a stigma of, you know, let’s just stop depression and anxiety. It’s, hey, we can actually have well being, we can actually go to work, or here’s, here’s a thought, let’s go to work and actually be better as a result of going to work. Let’s improve our mental wellbeing, by actually going to work and that’s, that I think, is really cool. Because that taps into people tapping into their meaning and purpose.

Murray Guest  

Yeah. And I think, imagine a world where it’s not we work five days, and then I’m just living for the weekend for those two days. But I’m actually loving going to work each day. And I feel better when I go home each day, not worse. And I’m just then waiting to go and party on the weekends.

Yeah, and I think it’s, it’s even more pertinent now as we move into the 2020s. Because it is, you know, on the increase. And just by having technology, you know, being able to access, having work so accessible, the lines are blurred, as we know, so it’s, yeah, it’s, it’s, we’ve got to navigate this really carefully. There are some people, so for me, I’m, I like to sort of go in and out of things. And so it doesn’t, it doesn’t really bother me, I sort of put this hat on, I put that hat on, and I kind of do it seamlessly. But, you know, for other people that either that all or nothing, they’re like, Today I’m in work mode or today I’m in friend mode or parent mode or whatever mode. So I think it’s, it’s yeah, people are going to really work with this differently. And I think organizations have to be really mindful of, you know, how we how we navigate those, those blurriness. But I think if people have true meaning and purpose, then that helps a lot.

Murray Guest  

Yeah. 100%. Now, I want to come back to thinking about the upcoming decade, but also want to just tap into a minute with the about this past decade. Yeah, and what that’s been like for you, and some of those things that we can celebrate and acknowledge, because let’s be honest, there’s not enough acknowledgement and recognition in the world. Yeah. When you think about the past decade, what some things that stand out for you? Let’s take a moment to reflect on and celebrate.

Well, for me, personally, a lot has changed. I mean, the time of my life where I got married, I had kids, my career went from, you know, me sort of just absorbing, absorbing, absorbing to actually providing and actually being able to sort of give back, as well. And it’s sort of finished with me being in a bit more of a mentoring capacity with some of my colleagues and, and that’s been a huge growth. And pretty cool to kind of go back and be like, Wow, I’m actually the person who people people ask now. So that’s, that’s, that’s been a really big movement for me. I think organizations have have gone through a pretty, pretty big growth, I think, just tapping back into a conversation before about well, just the the focus on mental health and well being. I was, I was very much in the safety, as you know, in the safety industry. And that was, you know, that changed the decade before. And I think it’s been solidified this decade. But what I’ve seen, and maybe it’s through the work that I’ve been, you know, doing, but is safety is still there, but it’s more common sense, like it’s people, it’s not just oh, you’re doing safety now. No, we are safe.

Murray Guest  

And I love the evolution when you talk about safety, that it’s not the physical safety. Yeah, 10 years ago, it was, How are we managing our risks, managing our hazards to make sure people go home physically safe, fingers and toes. There’s now, if you say safety in a corporate based environment, and people think about the psychological safety, which I think is fantastic.

Yeah. And we, the program I was working with, we were talking about this notion of being safe to be well, and well to be safe, because you can’t have one without the other. And, yeah, and especially when you sort of think about the psychosocial factors as well, the play on that. So it’s a really juicy, juicy area, and we’re only sort of putting more and more focus into it. And I think everyone’s benefiting from that. So yeah, there’s been a huge transition for organizations to really think about that.

Murray Guest  

Yeah. And how does it feel going back a second to the mentoring sort of sensation, and you had a bit of pride talking about that, which is fantastic, though. So how does that feel when you share your knowledge and experiences with others now? Your work colleagues and other people?

Well, I’ve always, I mean, I’ve always thought of myself as more of a coaching kind of person, someone who, you know, who gives but I guess I never really thought that I had much to give. It was more sort of a listening thing. But I can I can really see now that you know, I guess with juniors, sort of coming up in the role of facilitation, when I when I facilitate workshops, things that I just feel a common sense or just just a natural thing. It’s actually taken a good decade of hard repetition and focus and practice for me, for me to actually get to that point. So having having the juniors sort of come up and and, you know, helping them understand, you know, facilitation one on one kind of thing has, yeah, it has it’s been, I think it’s been a record of the journey that I’ve been on, but also this idea of, there were so many people who helped me get to where I am and now I get to do that as well. So yeah, yes, that’s pretty cool.

Murray Guest  

Yeah, it is. I can hear that from you as well. And I think it’s great to acknowledge that and that you’re passing on that knowledge, that experience, and as you said, and like a quote that we’ve heard before, sometimes after treading the boards, you need to do that so much as a facilitator to actually experience it and to actually really understand that and pass that on. So it’s great you’re doing that. Any lessons you’ve had in the past decade that stands out to you that you’re happy to share?

Charlotte Jameson  

I think and I was reflecting on this, because I mean, I’m all about sort of setting intentions for the for the for the new year. But I think, when I’m true to myself, that’s when things work.

Murray Guest  

Yeah. And what does that look like for you?

It means, it means that I honor what I need. So motherhood has been a very, very big adjustment. In terms of I used to do a lot of physical exercise and a lot of just stuff for myself basically. And when you become a mother, or a parent or whatever, you know, that time gets less and less and less. And the importance of prioritizing that. And so I’ve had a big journey. I always talked about Yeah, you’ve got to put your oxygen mask on first, and you got to, you know, look after yourself first. But it’s really become apparent. If I’m not if I’m not going, if I’m not working, nobody else is. Yeah. So I’ve really, I’ve really started to become okay with prioritizing what I need. So I need to go to yoga. All right, I need to do, you know, exhibit A, this, this podcast, I need to do these things. Because it makes me, it’s it’s meaningful for me, and it makes me happy. And I’ve got to be okay with that. And that helps other people. So that’s being true to myself. What do I need to operate in, in in Charlotte, you know? 

Murray Guest  

A quote I heard last year that I absolutely loved and you’re reminding me of it right now is self care is not selfish.

Yeah. Well it took me so long to work that out. Yeah. And I still struggle with it. But it’s yeah, it’s it’s not selfish at all. In fact, it’s selfish not to, it’s yeah, it’s silly not to.

Murray Guest  

Yeah, and particularly when you frame it up, that you’ve got people in your life that need you, that you need to care for, that you need to provide for in some way, that if you don’t look after yourself, how are you able to do that for them?

And even when you think about it from a work perspective, as well, one of my one of my dear colleagues, she she’s a real giver, and she’s a real, you know, goes 100 miles an hour, and has spent sort of the last year sorry, the last couple of months, actually quite debilitated through through some illness and that sort of thing. And she’s not able to, to give. Yeah. And, and so it is it’s that recognition of now, a lot of things going on here. But the you know, the thing I’m pulling out is, if you’ve run yourself into the ground, you can’t, you can’t, you can’t do what you want to do.

Murray Guest  

Certainly one of the biggest lessons I’ve gotten in the past decade, and I think it links to a lot of the things we’re talking about at the moment is listening to your body. And those little signals that your body gives you that something’s a bit off or not quite right, whether that’s mental, emotional, physical, and quite often as humans, we just push through and we keep going. Yeah, but actually listening to those signals and taking action on them sooner. And they’re there and let’s listen to them. Because when we don’t, we push through, that’s when we get to a situation of being so unwell we can’t actually do the things we want to do in our life. Yeah.

And it’s not about slacking off either. I was, I’ve done a lot of reflecting lately, but I was in a yoga class and, you know, the teachers sort of saying, don’t push yourself too much, or whatever. And I was just thinking, Yeah, I think that’s a really, it’s a, it’s a really good thing to think about, especially in this world when we go you know, we just stay on that treadmill the whole time. But also something that I’m working with is knowing when I’m taking the kind of the easy way out as well. And it’s just a fine, it’s a fine balance between pushing yourself to kind of strive and thrive and not burning out. So yeah. I always like to think about taking that with a pinch of salt. It’s like yes, you know, be kind to yourself, but also be kind to yourself by like, by really sort of pushing yourself as well, in a way.

Murray Guest  

Okay, so if someone’s listening to this conversation, and they’re thinking, Okay, I feel so busy with parenting, with my partner, with work, with life, how do I actually do something about this, this sense of being on the wheel and go go go but I’m not looking after myself. What’s a tip that you’ve got, that you’ve realized that you would pass on.

Charlotte Jameson  

Prioritize sleep.

Murray Guest  

Okay, so that’s it?

Having had it ripped from me for like the last six years. No, I think I mean, I think if you if you have a good night’s sleep, everything, everything works works better and you’re able to do better. Like you’re able to challenge yourself in a healthy way more when you have had that rested sleep. So I think, the one thing that I would I would say is prioritize that sleep. So I give myself a sleep curfew. Because I find it really hard. The only time I get to see my husband is you know, for about 10 minutes at night time, basically. And you know, sometimes TV is like a way that we I know it sounds stupid, but a way we connect. Because we just sit together we just go oh my gosh, what a day kind of thing. Yeah. But sometimes that that eats into my ability to go to sleep.

Murray Guest  

So what time is your curfew?

Charlotte Jameson  

Mine is nine. Yeah. Well, five, 530. Yeah, so.

Murray Guest  

I’m similar. I’m 9:30. But I seem to wake up five, 5:30 as well, every morning. And even just recently in this sort of holiday period have stayed up a bit late to watch a movie or other things, I still get up my body clock is five 530. And honestly, it is such a, an a magical time of the day, if you know that early sunrise time.

It is. Mine is not so magical, mine is sort of screaming with kids. Look, I can’t wait to have my Miracle Morning back again. And it’s just, it’s just not feasible at the moment because my kids sort of wake up. But, you know, I have faith that it’s going to happen soon, they’re going to get to that 6am mark, and I’m going to have at least 20 minutes to kind of meditate by myself or go out for a cheeky run at the beach. And I think that’s the whole the whole point about mental fitness is we all have different things in life that sort of provide different challenges. And it may not seem horrendous to hear that you’ve got kids who wake up at five 530. But for me it is because I usually have the morning, well before kids, it was all about my morning. And I’d go and do the exercise and I’d get in the right frame of mind. And I just you know, the rest of the day sort of unfolded. Whereas now I don’t, I don’t have that, which is why I need to prioritize my sleep. Because that, you know, that’s gonna get me me through that. But it’s also sort of saying, I’ve got this great quote that I keep sort of saying in life is, pain is temporary but glory lasts forever. And it is pain is only, this sort of pain that I’m feeling right now, you know, with the kids that are waking up and ruining my morning. It’s only temporary, you know, it’s not going to last forever. So I just have to find other ways in the day to get what I would get out.

Murray Guest  

I also think what you’re saying is focus on what you can do in the situation you’ve got right now, focus on what’s in your control. But also who was in your life that helps you do that? So I know in our house, what we talk about as well, okay, so with three children, with my wife, well what’s the conversations we need to have to create the environment so that we can all be at our best? And what does that look like? And I can imagine this to be a conversation you have in the near future, my youngest who loves his devices, so devices that he’ll get up at 530 but it’s no device until seven o’clock. Yeah. And we let that slip, and then we can see the impact it has on him. And so we then say, ok now bring that back. So I guess what I’m thinking about is it’s such a conversation that needs to involve everybody, not just on looking after my sleep and not everybody else. Like how do we all support each other in that is really important.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. And I think when we get lost in the day to day, or we just sort of go along in life. You need that map. You need that map to guide you. Because otherwise it gets a bit too. Yeah.

Murray Guest  

It does. Now looking forward, 2020s, roaring 20s… Maybe some cool clothes, cool hair, maybe prohibition? Who knows what’s gonna happen? 

Charlotte Jameson  

Hey the possibilities out there.

Murray Guest  

But there they are. They are. What is some of your hopes or goals for the next decade that you’re happy to put out? I’ve had some conversations with people in this series where they’ve been putting out some personal goals as a way to sort of make it real. Or it might be career goals, or it could be just some hopes you’ve got for the work that you’re doing going forward. What does that look like for you?

Well, I, I have, I’m going to start the sort of the school system soon, with my daughter entering school. And I see myself as being a quiet role model. So I want to I really, I mean, okay, let’s face it, I really, really want to change, I want to, I want to change this, this, this need for everybody to be over committed, and being the best at everything. And I think that if we can just help everybody tap into our strengths, and, and see how we can sort of develop our strengths further, and do it in a way that’s not going to over commit ourselves, I think, when we have so many, and I’m, you know, I was one of those over committed children. And I think it worked to a degree because it kept me out of trouble. And it helped me sort of prioritize things, but there wasn’t a whole lot of time for downtime. And I think that’s really important, especially as we’re now competing with technology and, and those sorts of things, we really now more than ever need to help our children and help each other, give the give our brains the time it needs to, to make those memories to consolidate those memories and to innovate new things. That only happens when we have that white space. Yeah, we’re going from activity to activity. These kids are exhausted, we’re exhausted taking them there. And, you know, dinner gets pushed back a bit later, homework gets pushed back late later, sleep gets deprioritized. And it’s that that sort of vicious cycle. So whilst I’m I’m I definitely think there’s, you know, there’s room for people to notice, okay, what are their strengths? What are their really big interests? Let’s, you know, let’s nurture that and commit to, you know, I’m not against sort of extracurricular activities, by any means. But it’s this, it’s this busyness, it’s this, you know, oh, we need to do, you know, this code of football, this code of, you know, this musical interest and this and this, and this, it’s sort of, I’d like to think that I, and you can check back in with me next year. Just sort of, to go, Okay, what, you know, let’s just choose a few things and sort of get really good at that. And if if you want to change your mind next year, sort of just trying to nurture grit a bit more as well, sticking to something and, and building on that. 

Murray Guest  

I think we’re totally aligned in parenting approaches there. And I, I agree with you, I have had conversations with some parents over the years where I hear what’s in their calendar, and not just the busyness, but the rushingness that comes with that as well, like, we’re going to this and we’re going to rush to that, and rush to that, and they’re filling up all that time. And I totally agree that importance of whitespace doing nothing, or actually having some just time with the children or the children being by themselves. I totally agree with that. And I think that starting that off, while your daughter’s starting high school or sorry, school now is such a, you know, start start early and start those habits early to go along with as opposed to trying to create those 10 years from now.

Yeah, but I think I think it starts with the parents as well, because, you know, we’re so busy doing this, I mean, work is just it can just take up so much time, especially because we’ve got we’ve got the ability to work from home and everything, just all the all you can to do is is and I you know, I speak generally, but it’s all consuming. And so we’re always rushing to a meeting or to a work or to this or to that. And it’s and it’s really putting the onus back on on us as the adults and sort of think, Okay, well, how can I create whitespace for myself? And that, that generally rubs off on people. And how that will affect them.

Murray Guest  

I totally agree. And I am far from perfect as a father and get this moment recently that I just want to share where my son said to me, I’m bored, and I said, Good.

Yes. Yeah. Rejoice in that.

Murray Guest  

I’m glad. He’s like, What do you mean? And I said, well, like if I was if I said that to my parents when I was his age was like well go outside and play you know, off you go, go play in the street, on your bike, whatever it is. And I think that too often these days, it’s easy to slip into, well, what can I give them? What can I feed them? What sort of bit of attention can they have? A device or whatever it might be? So don’t feel that boredom is bad. That being bored creates space for reflection for creativity, of innovation, whatever it might be, for them to go searching for something, as opposed to just giving it to them.

Yeah. And you think, you know, you’ve gone out to lunch or, or something with someone and they’ve gone to pay or they’ve gone to the toilet and you’re sitting there, you know, what do you do? Do you stare and sort of just blank out? Or do you reach for your smartphone or, or whatever? 

Murray Guest  

And more often than not yeah it’s on the phone. And you see it on public transport all the time, as well. Yeah, yeah. So linking back to what you’re talking about earlier, and that digital well being. What do you see as some of those things, we need to be really mindful going forward? I mean, that’s a real simple tip, right? There is don’t go for that first instinct to pick up the device when you’re by yourself. But thinking about these this next decade, and the digital impact, what are some of those things that you think we need to be really mindful?

Charlotte Jameson  

I think doing one thing at a time, I think it’s really hard in this day and age to be okay with doing one thing at a time, we need progress we need to achieve. But I think doing one thing at a time helps us do it better. And helps us be more effective. And it also it’s what our brain is structured for. So we can certainly do a few things at a time. But we’re just we’re just toggling our attention. When we’re not, we’re not, we’re not able to do two things at once. So not multitasking, doing one thing at a time and meditate in your own way. So, you know, there’s doesn’t we don’t all have to sit and be a yogi on a rock on a mountain. But it is helping our brains focus our attention. So for me, the most easiest thing to do is, is just focusing on your breath. And that has an amazing impact on your parasympathetic nervous system. So helping people to actually engage in that, that, that calming, that’s going to happen when you do a deep breath. But also, it also helps train your brain to focus on one thing at a time. And you can do that by sitting on a rock in a mountain. Or you can do that while you’re going for a run or a walk. Or while you’re listening to music. Or while you’re waiting for your coffee. It doesn’t have to be in the traditional, you know, sense of being a yoga yogi, you can just tune into your breath at any given moment. And that’s going to help your brain focus its attention.

Murray Guest  

And a phrase that I’ve learned in the last few years is active meditation. I previously thought it was I had to go and sit on a rock and close my eyes and be in that perfect pose cross legged to meditate. But no, this idea of active meditation, like you’re talking about focusing on your breath while doing an activity. I’ve heard people say it’s when they’re washing up the dishes or when they’re vacuuming the floor, or they’re in the garden or whatever it might be. But it’s that that focus coming back to them on that one thing.

Yeah, well, we’re all different, different strokes for different folks. And I’m different at different parts of the day as well. So sometimes I like to sit and just stay still. But other times I need to move. 

Murray Guest  

Yeah, gotcha. Yeah, yeah. Now I’m going to give you the opportunity to hire a sky writer, and they’re going to put a message across the earth. And this message is everybody’s going to see it, everybody can read it, they can’t avoid it. What is this one message you would love everyone to see, and to get to help them be successful in the next decade?

Wow. I think I think it’s I think I think to give, to give meditation a go in its own form, because where we really need to look after our brain and our mind. And the way we’re going to do that is by by giving it some time to actually do its job. And if we’re if we’re we’ve got technology and we’ve got busyness then we’re taking that job away from it. So I think in meditate in your own way, I think is is possibly one of the key messages.

Murray Guest  

Love it and that’s totally different from all the other ones I’ve been talking and getting a beautiful one. I think it, I like the not meditate, because I can imagine people seeing that on the sky and going, Yeah, sure. But meditation your way, find your way. I love that. Yeah, yeah. And that empowers people again to to focus on their strengths and what that might line up for for them the way that they want to to, to get back that focus. Thank you so much for all your knowledge and sharing and inspiration and tips. It’s been amazing connecting with you Charlotte. Thank you.

Charlotte Jameson  

Thank you for the conversation. It’s been very fun.

Murray Guest  

No, that’s no trouble. But now where’s the best place online for people to find you and find more about what it is that you do?

Okay, well, my Instagram is quite active. So Charlotte Jameson is just one word, is my Instagram. But I also have a web page where you can find some blogs on Charlottejameson.com.

Murray Guest  

Great, fantastic. We’ll share the links to those in the show notes and it’s been awesome connecting with you. I’m going to check in with you at the end of this year to see how you’re going with your, your goals around parenting and busyness and balancing that. And of course, wishing you the most successful 2020s coming up as well.

Thank you, you too Muz. It’s been a real pleasure talking to you. 

Murray Guest  

Thanks, Charlotte. See ya.

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