This is an episode all about bicep curls.... well not really! But rather what bicep curls represent.

To distill the essence of this episode down to one sentence I would say it's all about embracing the things that have indirect impacts on your goal rather than solely focusing on the most efficient way.

It's only been a week and a bit but I feel like I've been away for ages!

This episode is all about the mindset of looking for shortcuts, quick fixes, easy ways out etc!

In this return to the podcast we have a few new things, a new image, new intro music and a newly renewed sense of purpose for my good self!

For June I set my audience (and myself) a small mindset challenge to do every day.

This is a quick recount of what I learned from the experience.

How do we feel when we think someone is attention seeking? I think that if we understood that what they really want is CONNECTION we would feel completely different.

In this episode I talk about the truth behind one of the hardest experiences of my life where I reached for connection in the wrong way.

It's been a bit of a journey hey? Well for those of you following the book here is the end.

Was it what you expected? Let me know!

I've been burning out again recently... why? Because I want to be available to everyone 100% of the time.

I place immense pressure on myself to reply to people as soon as possible and this is something that has got to stop!

Communication expectations have sped up so fast and for a lot of is they have exceeded our capabilities to keep up.

But the simple fact is the only person who deserves 100% of your attention is you!

Fashion is not somewhere you initially think of when you think of industries that promote mental health awareness but Kyle Stanger wants to change that.

Kyle is the founder of the brand Boys Get Sad Too and he use his brand to raise awareness of male mental health, open up conversations and in the future hopes to use it fund larger projects.

This episode is based around an excellent post by a lady called Carla Borthwick.

Carla wrote a status a couple of months back thanking people for playing their part in many things such as environmentalism and mental health activism.

She highlighted what many do nowadays: the fact that someone can be making positive changes in one area whilst ignoring another. This is something that is often criticised.

Carla's post however was not about criticism, but compassion and the fact that we should champion people for the thing they do, not default to criticising for the thing they don't.

I couldn't agree more.

You know everyone shares mostly their highlight real right? But do you ever look at the lives of others on social media and immediately assume they have got it better than you have?

That things come easier to that person? Or that they have never suffered rejection?

Rejection is an inevitable part of life and it pays for us to see it not something to avoid, but something to be able to endure.

There's no such thing as an overnight success and if you want to get to the top of any field then you are going to have your fair share of this.

Self service tills, Social Media, AI based counseling, all these things are supposed to make life easier for us... and they do!

But they also make it easier for us to not interact with each other face to face, or in some cases not interact with each other at all!

This may seem like a great idea if you find human interaction difficult, but to me I see this as a long term problem. Interaction starts as difficult, but then through avoidance becomes impossible.