Man Up / Man Down

Beau Marksohn joined us for an episode on body dysmorphia and eating disorders. He was born and raised in NYC and grew up in a household of severe abuse and neglect. As a result of this he struggled from the age of five from feeling insecure in his body. 

He was always scared as a kid growing up, never felt safe, never felt any sense of consistency and never felt loved. As a result of all of this he started using food to comfort him from a very young age, which then progressed to drugs and booze before his teens.

Suicide attempts, anorexia, bulimia, living an unhealthy life, ending up going from overweight to underweight.

Beau then became a compulsory exerciser and . Depression, anxiety, ADHD, addiction. In 2016 he started treatment, therapy and support to tackle his addiction issues as well as depression, anxiety and ADHD.

In lockdown he started cycling, first to help the vulnerable, then to help his mental health.

Beau starts by telling his story what body dysmorphia actually means. This is something David or Volker haven’t heard about, and I am sure not many of you either. The best way to explain it is going in one of the fairground mirror rooms, and one day you feel bigger, the other day slimmer. 

Whilst we often associate eating disorders with women, Beau didn’t find out that he suffered from body dysmorphia until he went into therapy. By sharing his story he makes sure that he doesn’t suffer in silence and other people don’t suffer in silence either. It comes back to our motto on the podcast that men need to talk more about what they do and what they suffer from. It doesn’t work for us to go into our cave every now and then and thinking it is all going to go away.

Beau’s enthusiasm went further during lockdown when he started delivering food to underprivileged people and started cycling a lot more. That led to him founding a group of men to cycle together, https://dadbodcyclist.com/. There will be more content on his website shortly, but for now you can sign up to his newsletter or follow him on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dadbod_cyclist/

He organises Sunday brunches for men, cycling laps around Richmond Park, and you can find him on Strava and everyone is welcome. The EveryBODY ride.

Beau has suffered many addictions which stems from his childhood trauma. It subsequently led to different therapies, including EMDR Therapy, Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing Therapy. Over the years he has tried a lot until he came to understand the ‘why’ he is doing things and what his purpose is in life. Even cycling turned a bit into an addiction, particularly during lockdown, reminding him of his childhood experience surfing in the USA. It’s about being in the zone.

His journey continues to get more people on bikes and talk about men’s mental health. An initiative that is very much aligned to Man Up / Man Down, and hopefully we will be able to do some events together in the future.

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We are all over social media, and feel like we have to be. FOMO, the fear of missing out, we are constantly connected and compare ourselves with others.

Volker had been on a social media detox for a few weeks at time of recording. However, he went back to ‘stalking’ others and finds it rather boring now to scroll other people’s images and show offs, if deliberate or not. At time of recording he said he might never go back on social media the way he used to. Scrolling Tiktok mindlessly, wasting time watching reels on Facebook or Instagram. An article recently highlights the negative effects of social media on mental health. 

David likes the groups on Facebook where he made friends. And that’s where Facebook adds a lot of value connecting like minded people. Whether it is the local selling group or the Jaguar fan page. 

However, the science shows that on social media we talk about ourselves 80% of the time however, in real life, during discussions we talk about ourselves 30-40% of the time. 

David mentioned the Slipknot singer who has recognised his social media addiction is as bad as his former addiction to drugs and alcohol.

This is because we build muscle memory and habit so easily - the mindless loop of constantly checking your phone. The content never stops and you need to realise that you can never catch up on all the content. That’s true for LinkedIn these days too, and again LinkedIn also showcases all the successes, and business wins too. 

Every parent has a Whatsapp group for football, classes, tutor groups or friends. The challenge with WhatsApp is that most people don’t know that they can turn off the read notifications, giving the sender no indication whether you have read the message or not. This puts less pressure on the receiver to respond, but the instant gratification and demand is horrendous. Some people however are really good at ignoring Whatsapp messages.

Volker has turned off notifications for emails and social media for a long time. There are only a few apps allowed to send him a notification, as he wants to be in control. Despite the lack of notifications, Volker is notorious for constantly checking Slack and is the first to respond to new threads as he is still checking it all the time.

We speak about Molly Russell, who committed suicide. While her suicide might have not been prevented, it highlights how social media algorithms can target all of us with unhealthy content. Coming from a technology background, we feel there should be an easy solution to show “healthy” or helpful content (such as ads for Samaritans). But the greed and money made by the technology giants is greater than the need to help people. That’s how it seems to us anyway.

Evidence shows that there has been a correlation between increased depression and anxiety in teens, since the rise of the smartphone. Sadly this has also resulted in an increase in suicides. 

We discussed how social media leads you to compare yourself to others. However, this is not a true reflection of life. It doesn’t matter which social network you’re in, people rarely share a post that a project fell through or they are in financial troubles. You portray the positive side of things, and you brag about your wins. It’s a matter of how you share your success, and Volker spent 5 years interviewing people on Success on his former podcast Stories of Success.

And we need to consider that a lot of success comes with sacrifices, from divorce to hard work etc. It’s about balance, and we can not see how people got to their success. The pictures you share are happy pictures, yet how often do you share a sad picture or story? 

There was a story of the Crying CEO on Linkedin which went viral, and people had an opinion whether he was sincere or not. What’s your thoughts on that? David also mentioned how the war in Ukraine is used for social media attention whilst you can do good without posting on social media.

We also touched on Twitter, which was Volker’s go to social media tool but he fell out of love with it. David used to be very active there too. We shall see how Twitter changes once Elon Musk takes over. And what would have happened if Twitter had bought Instagram. Touching on Clubhouse, there was a hype for a while and both David and I seem to feel middle aged.

Another huge challenge on social media is fact checking. Fake news, and who is actually fact checking everything that they see and read on social media? And what’s the future of social media? Will we all wear VR headsets and talk to each other in the metaverse? Bodysuits? Web3.0? Or does our brain live in some sort of glass jar whilst we can be transferred into a body?

The data Facebook has is crazy, with them being able to predict divorces or break-ups. Volker and David discuss the case back in 2012 where US store Target sent vouchers for maternity products to a teenage girl.

It turns out that through data based on previous searches/purchases, Target had worked out she was pregnant before she or the family had.

What is your relationship with Social Media?

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In this episode we spoke to William Porter who is the author of Alcohol Explained and other books on addiction. We recorded this episode just before Christmas, when you couldn’t avoid the advertising and association of alcohol to fun and celebration.

Similar to Volker, William started drinking and smoking when he was 14 years old which escalated during his military and law career. But why would you give up drinking if it’s the last vice to hang on to, Volker wondered. However, after reading William’s book, Volker has started to question why would you continue drinking?

William takes a very pragmatic approach in his book and strips away all the myths around alcohol and urges us to ask the question: is alcohol a pleasure and is it serving you?

87% of the population drinks and seems to find it totally normal to consume this drug. Yet, while we should be able to enjoy events, such as Christmas or a birthday, without a drug, many of us don’t or can’t. 

We discussed how we would define someone being an alcoholic. Is it someone who needs a drink first thing in the morning or someone who needs a good bender at the weekend? Most people can enjoy alcohol without getting addicted. However you don’t need to be addicted for it to do your body harm,

The physiological effect of alcohol, which is a sedative and a depressant, results in numbing your nerves.  It’s a balancing act for the body to keep up a balance of hormones and chemicals which is called homeostasis  - but if you introduce alcohol to the body, the balance is out of kilter. When you consume alcohol, the body releases stress hormones. 

And if the alcohol wears off, an oversensitivity of the nervous system remains for a period, creating anxiety. You can either wait until the body stabilises itself again, or you have another drink to numb the imbalance….a vicious cycle, creating craving.

Sweating out the alcohol in the gym the next morning doesn’t work. You might feel better after exercising, but that’s because of the hormones released due to exercising, not because you sweat out alcohol. The challenge is that your heart rate is increased after drinking alcohol. Your body’s natural reaction would be to sit down and rest. Instead we go to the gym and increase the heart rate and body temperature, putting more strain and stress on the body. You are actually damaging your body.

Volker can still do a bottle of red at night, but as he mentioned, a nurse told him years ago, that even if you don’t notice the effects as much, it still affects the way you sleep or does damage to your internal organs. It’s physical as well as mental damage that is caused to your body. Not getting good sleep, e.g. deep sleep, or having reduced REM sleep due to alcohol consumption, our brain cannot dream and process things as well. Usually this kicks in about 5 hours after going to sleep, we have an over sensitisation, and therefore we stop sleeping well for the remainder of the night.

David talked about rewards being handed out at charity events being alcohol, despite alcohol being classified as harmful as cigarette smoking or asbestos. William also elaborates on his alcohol problem with him calling in sick on Mondays and sometimes Mondays and Tuesdays. As he was very efficient at his work, he caught up the other days of the week, so never got into trouble. There are many, if not all professions, that drink. And success is often associated with a cigar and a whiskey, treating oneself.

It’s good to see the arrival of alcohol free in pubs and its acceptance, however Volker is missing an alternative for his vice: red wine. Particularly when he puts it into perspective with other things like ‘the armchair’ or ‘the fire’. All of those situations should be enjoyable without alcohol. If we start thinking about it, how can we really be in the moment with our mates or in front of the fire, when drinking alcohol.

To really give up alcohol, we need to change the perception of alcohol. And it takes us a while to get used to alcohol when we first start drinking. So the big question for us remains, does alcohol actually serve us?

If you want to find out more about William Porter, please check out his book Alcohol Explained on Amazon. You also find his other books there.

You can go to his website, www.alcoholexplained.com, where you can read some of the chapters for free.

Did this episode make you think? Did it inspire you to give up alcohol?

What do you think about your alcohol consumption?

Let us know!

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In this episode we speak about sleep. For David, sleep has always been an issue. We are both light sleepers, and if we didn’t have a good night sleep, we could be quite grumpy.

Volker loves getting up at 5 am. It’s quiet and he has a morning routine which includes exercises and meditation. But he has to be in bed between 9 and 10 pm, in order to get a good 7 hours of sleep. Plus, he loves a 10-20 minutes nap at lunch time. Particularly when he had a busy morning, the nap resets his brain and he functions better post nap. He trained himself to take naps during his university days, working as a warden in halls of residence. It also helped him to get a better degree. Weekends could see longer naps, but usually not more time in bed. Maybe a sauna and gym session and a nap in front of the fire, a real treat.  Another  treat is for him to meditate in bed when he wakes up early, and he can then go back to sleep for a while, being fully relaxed.

Nick Littlehayes became a sleep researcher and consultant for Manchester United and the Sky cycling team, helping athletes to sleep better. The more sunlight we get during the day the better we sleep as our body produces a lot more melatonin. He further talks about daylight saving time leading to seasonal disorders. Before we had electricity and light, we naturally got more rest,  because we couldn’t do anything else at a certain time of the evening.

Volker uses a daylight light to counteract seasonal disorder. Speaking about how things changed, Volker quotes how he grew up in Germany and it was common to have a 1-3 pm ‘siesta’ or ‘Mittagsruhe’ and shops closed at that period of time. We also mentioned Tim Ferris’ experiment from his ‘4 hour body week’ book, where he reduced his sleep to 8 x 20 minutes a day. Healthy or not, we only need a certain amount, but it has to be at the right time, and right intensity.

The days of burning the candle on both ends are over. It’s not a sustainable way of living, to only sleep 2-3 hours a night. In Psychology Today the CIA is described as using sleep deprivation to get people to talk. The results were hallucination, problems with speaking, and concentration. Tests on animals resulted in death.

Poor judgement is another cause of sleep deprivation. We all know the phrase ‘to sleep on a decision’ - but we are rushing in today’s world and don’t want to take our time and take regular breaks. You must take breaks in order to avoid burnouts and be able to function properly, being more productive than working without breaks (Book recommendation: Tony Schwartz, The way we are working isn’t working).

There is talk about creating ‘sleep rooms’ rather than mixing bedrooms with other activities, e.g. sex, or sharing a bedroom with someone else. Interestingly enough, in Germany every person has their own mattress and blankets, so there is actually less interference from the partner in your sleep cycle. How efficient is that?

If you have a wank, you can also go back to sleep if you wake up in the middle of the night. It’s a relaxation method, similar to a body scan meditation or just a transcendental meditation session. David did the research on the wanking, and an orgasm does release a few chemicals that help you sleep. Volker’s old piano teacher used to have a few whiskeys before bed to make him sleep better. Whatever works for you.

The problem is that a drink before bed might result in worse sleep. If you can’t sleep, you can also just rest, have a tired day, and go to bed earlier that night. And the reason to go to bed early is not to make up for the sleep you missed, but to give the body time to relax and the body will give itself more deep sleep, and more deeper recovery. Volker is obsessed with his Garmin and its functionality to measure sleep. His sleeping app he used previously to have a Garmin now has sleep data for about 7-8 years. It’s fascinating to see the trend.

David mentioned Orthosomnia - when someone gets obsessed with sleep data🙂 Maybe we are, but the easy stuff is: despite us knowing that we shouldn’t drink before we go to bed, or sleep bad in new places, we go on holidays to relax and eat and drink too much, having bad night sleep in a bed we aren’t used to. Do cooling blankets work? Or pillow spray? There is probably not much we haven’t tried.

Nick has 7 KSRIs, (key sleep recovery indicators).

1. Arcadian rhythms
2. Chrono Type, with 30% being night owls and 30% are early risers
3. Recovery in Cycles
4. Pre- and Post routines
5. Activity and recovery in balance
6. Recovery Environment
7. Home and Away Sleepkit

Since Volker gave up caffeine, and David did recently as well, this has had a positive impact on sleep as well. If you get too used to coffee, as Volker used to be, he could have a coffee before going to bed, as the caffeine just wore off so quickly.

Let us know how sleep affects you. How many hours do you get?

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We welcomed Fiona McKinnon on the podcast, who is the CEO and Co-Founder of the Moment Company. Originally from the North East of Scotland, Fiona lives close to where David and I live, in Sussex.

She has over 22 years’ experience in the advertising, media & AdTech industry. From building start-ups to working in large organisations, she has worked and partied hard like many people in the media industry.

However, in 2014, she suffered severe physical and mental burnout. She had no wellbeing practice beyond extreme exercise and dirty martinis. She did not believe that meditation and therapy were for her.

However, burnout led her to learn Transcendental Meditation,  study Mindfulness & Breath-work and to become a Neuro Linguistic Programming & Reiki Practitioner. She is 4 years sober and it's fair to say the impact of her daily practises and purpose has been profound and life changing!

Her company Moment Company looks at how people turn up in life, at work and how we can be better people in our society. Running workshops, 1-2-1 coaching and mindfulness training are just a few things they do. Their product Moment Pebble helps to reduce stress and anxiety through a guided breathing exercise. Mindfulness is all about being focused on one thing at a time. 

We discussed how technology can be counterproductive for us, as it reminds us to meditate or take a breathing space. We are constantly picking up our phone, and get reminded about being mindful. And without technology or a meditation app, we cannot function. Which is massively counter-productive! How can we be stressed that we had a bad sleep according to an app rather than how we feel?

Technology only tells you what it measures but doesn’t understand how you feel. At the time of recording Volker was worried about turning off his phone on a retreat he went to. However, it turned out to be a relief to not be connected, and to be able to turn ‘off’ for a weekend. 

We experience 3,000 emotions and the more we practise mindfulness, the better we know how our body feels. And the body mind connection is important for us to understand ourselves and the control we have over our emotions.

Fiona also talked about her burn-out and how her time in the adtech industry led her to abuse alcohol and other substances to cover the stress she was feeling from work. Her body gave in eventually and her mind slowed down. It took her 8 weeks to recover and she quit the corporate world. She went from wanting to be the only woman in the boardroom to focusing inward.

We touched on the topic of how society is so alcohol focused in the UK, which means that people that drink a bit too much, get away with it or might not be noticed. As always, if you have any problems with alcohol, please seek appropriate help. 

In our discussion we touch on the change work life has taken. We are always connected and always online, we never finish and don’t take a pause. However, we have a choice of how to react to change and work in our life. Our body takes 90 seconds to react to stress for instance. After that, it’s our mind telling us we are still in “physical danger”, so our mind is convincing our body that we still need the flight of fight stimulus, even though “the danger” has passed. If we feel stressed, then this reaction is repeated. 

Also, 95% of our thoughts are the same as yesterday and 80% of those are negative. The (negative) storytelling mind needs reframing. Fiona recommended a daily gratitude journal. It’s about focusing on the bright sparks in your life, the positive aspects.

Sometimes it helps to put life into perspective. Whether it is the sea, the moon or nature in general. Whatever works for you, but finding your ‘happy place’ that gives you grounding and perspective is super important. Community is important and ‘magic’.

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This week’s topic is Volker’s expert topic. He started meditating over 15 years ago and after noticing so many benefits in his life, he wanted to pass it on. He now teaches the benefits of mindfulness to organisations.

Without his mindfulness practice, Volker thinks he has been able to better cope with challenges throughout his life, such as multiple redundancies. 

The difference between mindfulness and meditation is simple. Mindfulness is about being present in the moment. Buddhism principles are split in gratitude, self-awareness, compassion and mindfulness. Those are expressed through selflessness, generosity, moral conduct, patience, perseverance, strong effort and meditation. Therefore, you could argue meditation is just a tool to be more mindful, helping you to be in the moment and be more aware of yourself, giving thanks.

We discussed how we do so many things on autopilot. Eating is a good example where we just speed eat and try to ‘get it done’, rather than slowing down and enjoying the food, taste the different flavours and enjoy each moment. At time of recording David and Volker both subscribed to a course where they slowed the fork down.

Volker suggests that anyone should have a gratitude journal, sitting down once a day to focus on the bright sparks, the positive things in one’s life. Pascal Finette talked about that in his first episode on Volker’s former podcast, Stories of Success.

There are two major forms of meditation: focus meditation and transcendental meditation. Volker practises both and sets aside at least 20 minutes a day for meditation. There are a number of benefits to meditation, for example if you can’t sleep at night, you can meditate and go back to sleep. 

Another go-to meditation is the 3 step breathing space, which you can find on Soundcloud. Also, Insight Timer has a lot of free meditations, so no need to buy a subscription straight away.

David has been meditating on and off for a while, and it helps him to keep his anxiety in check. There is no need to start off with 20 minutes. As long as you start somewhere, with a minute, then 2 or 3 minutes and eventually you can expand to 20 minutes or longer. 

The important thing is that it works for you, and the more you can bake it into your daily routine, the more likely you are to stick to it. And, if your meditation is more about cycling or running, so be it. 

Volker also tries to go on retreats regularly. Mindfulness can also help with depression, there is a course called ‘MBCT’, mindfulness based cognitive therapy, which was invented by Mark Williams. Mark actually wrote the course Volker teaches, and the book that goes with it is called ‘Mindfulness, a practical guide to finding peace in a frantic world’. 

Volker also talks about MBSR, the mindfulness based stress reduction course, is a course invented by John Kabat-Zinn, and it’s a great course to take in order to start becoming familiar with how mindfulness can help to reduce stress.

David discusses research that suggests mindfulness shrinks the amygdala (the part of the brain that causes the “fight or flight response) and strengthens the hippocampus (“the control centre”) which helps you make better decisions under stress.

We discussed the storytelling mind, and how your monkey brain keeps telling you a mostly negative story. We worry a lot about things we cannot control. Hence, meditation helps you to stay calm and focus on the things that you can control, and how you can control your monkey brain. You start worrying less, and you bring more of a balance to your life.

Talking about Viktor Frankl and his theory of ‘between stimulus and response is a gap’, a gap that you can use to actually stop our urge of our autopilot reaction. But we have a choice, we always have a choice and make decisions and jump to conclusions without thinking properly about it. George Mumford, author of the ‘Mindful Athlete’, calls it the ‘eye of the storm’ where you have peace and quiet to be still and decide what you want to do.

Volker’s passion is to get more people into mindfulness and make this world a better place!

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Our first female guest, and the first guest of 2023, is Lurata Lyon.. Many of us start the new year, with the goal of getting healthier and fitter. So we invited Lurata along to talk about nutrition and give us hands on tips.

However she also gave us a lesson in resilience, gratitude and strength of human spirit. 

As a survivor of civil war in the former Yugoslavia, Lurata endured the trauma of being held captive, starved, tortured and abused. Eventually escaping to the United Kingdom, she had to retrain herself to eat properly. She worked hard to educate herself and is now a qualified personal trainer and nutritionist. 

Working with charities to tell her story, she is now also a motivational speaker and written a book about her journey - “Unbroken” - which comes out soon.

Our conversation largely centred around how we should treat our bodies when we reach  middle age. How do we best fuel our bodies? How can we reduce or avoid the dreaded beer bellies?

A lot for her is about the mindset, e.g. do you go to the gym to build muscle and lose weight or is it about having fun and getting fit? Are you manly enough, having enough muscles? How can you use language differently to make a difference? 

In short, the focus should be using exercise  and diet to feel good, with weight loss a side benefit.

Food is so important to compliment a good exercise regime. She explains how we cannot function without carbohydrates or protein. The combination of both is important, and to calculate how many calories you have eaten to understand how much you eat and which food carries how many calories. 

And even small amounts of exercise like 30 or 45 minutes are enough to go to the gym. But with anything, it’s fine to have ‘bad food’ in moderation, like bread or even alcohol. The quality of food is important.

Even Lurata advised us to let our hair down and enjoy ourselves every now and then. We spoke about salad, and she said if you only eat salad you wouldn’t get all the nutrients the brain and body needs. The brain needs carbs and fat to function.

Regarding supplements, Lurata suggests magnesium but also predominantly black seed oil. On our episode on nutrition, David and Volker spoke about their various supplements at length. 

After the age of 30, we lose muscle mass and it is our job to maintain muscle mass. Small changes, e.g. taking the stairs instead of taking the lift, will help you to grow and maintain muscles. Being active is key to a long and healthy life.

Drinking is another topic in terms of ‘empty calories’, as beer and wine contain a lot of calories. Unfortunately, we often want to eat with booze, as it increases our appetite because it contains so much sugar. As Lurata suggests we can go for it but then be more reasonable on other days. Again, it is all about the right balance, and building the right habits. She also gave us some hints on intermittent fasting.

Unfortunately we had to cut it short, as we ran out of time. Maybe we will get Lurata in again sometime soon.

You can find out more about Lurata on her website or contact her via LinkedIn.

As always, please let us know what you think and reach out with any guests we should get on to deep dive into this topic?  Any feedback is appreciated, just email [email protected] 

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Not a lot of notes, just a big thank you for your support.

Have a great Christmas and holiday season, and a Happy New Year!

David and Volker

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This week’s podcast follows on from our discussion with Matthew Knight, discussing the future of work and how things are changing. David and Volker thought it would be good to discuss this topic as a ‘special’, looking at the changing world of work. Particularly for freelancers, people with mental health and middle aged men.

Poor mental health costs the British Economy £118bn a year, according to LSE. And the Financial Times is warning that we’re heading for a Mental Health Recession, with support phonelines, provided by employers in the private sector, being swamped. 

However, according to Deloitte, there is not enough investment in mental health, to combat the impact of the pandemic. 

Are we all doomed?

We discuss our history of employment and whether a full time, PAYE, job is more secure than a freelancer job. The bigger question however is, whether we will still have a job in 10 or 20 years time. 

As we get to midlife, we should have job security, psychological safety and should not have to worry if our skillset is still relevant in a few years time. If you’re a freelancer, does it make sense to go back to a full time job to tick more boxes on a CV - and is a CV still the right document to demonstrate your expertise?

And how have things changed since the pandemic? We are working longer, the employer gets more time from us, yet we have less of a commute. With us working longer hours, we are more prone to stress and burn-out. Not like other countries, with us being able to go shopping every day, and not having a rest day like a Sunday, we seem to be in this hamster wheel all the time.

We touch on productivity, e.g. notification, different tools we use trying to connect people, and trying to find the perfect solution. And the question is whether we are too old to keep up with new technology and processes, or  are we trying too hard to stay relevant? And as a freelancer, do we want to be part of the team, or stay on the outside?

As Matthew Knight said, in the future we might all be freelancers, but at the very least there will be a more dispersed workforce - possibly with us all working with Meta headsets. Or we work in co-working spaces closer to home, just for company and mental health support for that matter.

What do you think? Please let us know what you think of the future of work. We will have more guests on this topic in 2023 and are open for more experts on this topic.

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Our first guest, Matthew Knight, joined us on this episode to talk about his journey as a freelancer, his mental health challenges and the Leapers network, which he created. Leapers is a community for freelancers to support each other and Volker has been a member for many years.

The support is for anything from mental health to tax questions, IR35 and technology. A community that understands the challenges all freelancers have, they ‘just get it’. It’s sometimes a bit like a virtual water cooler where you can meet and discuss almost anything.

With the pandemic, at least in Volker’s mind, the community grew closer together, and the peer support got even stronger. 

One topic we discussed was about coworking space and the new way of working. Freelancers are often working from home and don’t have the community of the office. Hence finding like minded people to work together can be a huge benefit to your mental health or might just get you out to bounce ideas off someone.

Volker enjoys the daily chats and being able to support with advice but also gaining advice from other like minded people. His most enjoyable interactions are the ones on days when no one else is working, like a Sunday morning. There is always someone who offers you a virtual cuppa.

Leapers was founded prior to the pandemic, when flexible working and working from home became commonplace. Matthew is a thought leader, challenging the traditional models of working and presenting our work to companies. The Leapers community (hosted on a slack channel), now has many thousands members. This allows members to openly share their vulnerability and be open about the common challenges they face - whether that's needing emotional support, a pep talk or the opportunity to vent about clients not paying on time. In short, it’s a safe place.

Matthew had two reasons to focus on mental health support. The first was that there were no support groups for freelancers, and there was a hussle culture around entrepreneurship, about working 80 hours a week. The second reason was that he had been struggling with mental health himself.

Research shows two thirds of freelancers don’t know where to find support when struggling with bad mental health. To be honest, we believe even ‘companies’ don’t have the right support yet, and we would argue Leapers offers a better, free of charge, support for freelancers than many companies do for their employees. Now imagine how things were like 5 or even 10 years ago. 

Deloitte’s report on mental health at work highlights the impact mental health has on work, including stats for ROI and money lost to businesses. We cover that in a later episode in greater detail. Isn’t it sad that only when we put a money value on something that corporations pay attention to it. Is that how life should be? Isn’t that one of the reasons why so many people quit their jobs and go freelance?

One of the challenges of freelancing is that you never really get any downtime. You constantly worry about taking time off, as you need to earn money, or you look for your next project. There are a few habits you need to unlearn when coming out of full time employment. 

Matthew used the example of comparing a freelancer to a laptop: If you don’t recharge your laptop overnight, don’t upgrade the software and look after the machine, you aren’t able to work the next day. There are no sick days, or if there are, they aren’t paid. And with freelancers looking after themselves better, looking after their mental health in particular, you could argue they are more self-aware and more resilient. 

We also touch on whether older, middle aged, freelancers should seek paid employment again for security and support. On average self-employed people are about 10-15% happier (net-happiness), e.g. the wins are all yours and the failures are all yours too. Correlation and causation is a tricky one when we look at self-employed and mental health; there are a lot of people going into self-employment because of mental health issues. 

As you get older, particularly as a man, it gets harder. Men have more issues with being open and vulnerable, and isolation increases. Their sense of identity can dwindle a little bit, and their support network might decrease too. Suicide rates for men at a certain age are higher than for any other age group. One reason we started the podcast, to openly talk about the vulnerability of men and how we can counteract it by building a support network.

Matthew believes that the way we are working in the future will be more fluid, e.g. we fluidly go from self-employed to employed to part time. As work becomes more flexible Mtthew believes the focus will not be on the employment status but on the work we can deliver, coming back to us all being treated as humans rather than merely “workers”.

You can find Matthew on Linkedin or on Think Play Make you find his latest projects and articles he wrote. As a freelancer or self-employed, feel free to join Leapers.

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