The Motivate Collective Podcast by Melanie Suzanne Wilson

What does a former detective want every woman and girl to know about staying safe in the world?

Melanie Suzanne Wilson sits down with Danielle Godfrey — Personal Safety Specialist, founder of Girl Aware, and former Victoria Police detective with 12 years of frontline experience — to talk about the realities of personal safety that most of us were never taught.

Danielle shares what she witnessed on the job: romance scams unfolding over the years, predators targeting vulnerable people on public transport, and high-profile offenders caught on CCTV. Through it all, she saw the same pattern — the people most affected were the ones who simply didn't know these things existed.

That insight became Girl Aware, an empowerment-based self-defence program for women and girls that starts with awareness, education, and the confidence to trust your instincts — before a situation ever escalates.

In this episode, we cover:

• Why does self-defence start long before any physical contact
• The truth about romance scams and online danger
• What prisoners said when shown CCTV footage of women walking
• The five-step framework: Think, Yell, Run, Fight, Tell
• Why are women socialised to be polite in unsafe situations
• How to talk to kids about hard topics
• The basics that save lives — and why projecting confidence is one of the most powerful safety tools available

This is not a conversation designed to scare you. It's a conversation designed to equip you.

Connect with Danielle: 📸 Instagram: @danni_t_godfrey | @girlaware_ebsd

🎙️ Listen on Spotify and Apple Podcasts — search The Motivate Collective Podcast ▶️ YouTube: @TheMotivateCollective 🌿 Join the community: www.motivatecollective.com

In each moment, we can be our old narrative or our new narrative. What we choose creates our future.

In Part 2 of this conversation, Kitty Stitt goes deeper into the wisdom behind her debut book, Living Evolved: Write Here, Write Now — a guide to evolving from chaos to calm by releasing inherited stories and stepping into a life that is genuinely, authentically your own.

Kitty and Melanie explore what it means to follow your body's intelligence when society questions your choices, the ancient wisdom of the Red Tent tradition and honouring women's cycles, and how living in alignment creates not just personal freedom but a ripple effect that touches everyone around you.

Kitty also shares the moment she cried out to the universe from her home in Newtown — and how eight weeks later, everything changed.

This is a conversation about courage, reframing, and the quiet revolution that happens when we stop performing someone else's story and start writing our own.

🎙️ Listen on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/3TliziAC0ev5SYZVyEGMWA 🎙️ Listen on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/au/podcast/the-motivate-collective-podcast-by-melanie-suzanne-wilson/id1834909699 🌿 Join the community: www.motivatecollective.com

📖 Get the book: https://www.amazon.com.au/Living-Evolved-Write-Here-Now/dp/1764019202 🌐 Connect with Kitty: https://www.bykitty.net

What does it look like to truly hold space for a community — month after month, year after year, no matter what?

Kitty Stitt has been doing exactly that. Based in Forbes, NSW — a small country town five and a half hours west of Sydney — Kitty has facilitated a monthly Full Moon Women's Circle for 55 consecutive months, including one live from the River Ganges in Varanasi, India. She offers one-on-one healing sessions through her business By Kitty, volunteers monthly in suicide prevention with Talk to Me Bro, and brings over 30 years of health and wellbeing teaching to everything she does.

In Part 1 of this two-part conversation, Kitty shares what drew her from city life to a small country town, what regional communities know about human connection that cities are losing, and how she uses cacao ceremony, Reiki, intention setting, and Native American teachings to help people feel held, heard, and seen.

She also opens up about the loss of a young man in Forbes whose death prompted the formation of a local Talk to Me Bro chapter — and why showing up consistently, for free, every single month, is one of the most powerful things any of us can do.

🎙️ Listen on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/3TliziAC0ev5SYZVyEGMWA 🎙️ Listen on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/au/podcast/the-motivate-collective-podcast-by-melanie-suzanne-wilson/id1834909699 🌿 Join the community: www.motivatecollective.com

📖 Get Kitty's book: https://www.amazon.com.au/Living-Evolved-Write-Here-Now/dp/1764019202 🌐 Connect with Kitty: https://www.bykitty.net

What if the ambition driving your business is actually running from something inside you?

Mike Brcic is a serial entrepreneur with 25+ years across multiple ventures, including Sacred Rides Mountain Bike Holidays — one of North America's most successful adventure tourism companies, which he grew from a one-person operation to a global business before his exit in 2019. Today he runs Wayfinders, taking small groups of high-achieving entrepreneurs to remote destinations worldwide for the kind of inner work that changes everything.

In this conversation, Mike unpacks the hustle culture trap, the invisible ceiling that self-worth places on income, the difference between real authenticity and algorithm-optimised vulnerability, and why doing the inner work is always more powerful than any strategy or marketing plan.

Raw, honest, and deeply practical — this one is for every founder who has hit a wall and couldn't understand why.

🎙️ Listen on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/3TliziAC0ev5SYZVyEGMWA 🎙️ Listen on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/au/podcast/the-motivate-collective-podcast-by-melanie-suzanne-wilson/id1834909699 🌿 Join the community: www.motivatecollective.com

🌐 Connect with Mike: https://way-finders.com ✍️ Substack: https://wayfinders.substack.com

The federal budget dropped and Sarah Harding is back to break it all down — without the spin. In this episode, Melanie and Sarah unpack what the proposed changes to capital gains tax and investment policy really mean for everyday Australians, small business owners, and anyone trying to build wealth from the ground up. From chip shops to side hustles to first-time investors, this conversation gets honest about the economic conditions shaping your financial decisions right now — and what you can actually do about it.

Most leaders aren't struggling because they're not trying hard enough. They're struggling because they've been running on stress for so long that their nervous system has forgotten how to switch off — and that shows up in how they think, communicate, and perform.

In this episode of The Motivate Collective Podcast, Melanie Suzanne Wilson talks with Dr Jimmy Fay — chiropractor turned nervous system and performance specialist — for an honest, grounded conversation about what stress and burnout actually look like from the inside, why high achievers are the last to acknowledge the warning signs, and what small, consistent habits can genuinely shift the trajectory for individuals and organisations.

Dr Jimmy draws on over a decade of clinical experience alongside his own deeply personal journey through destructive coping mechanisms, grief, and transformation. What he shares isn't surface-level wellness advice. It's the kind of practical wisdom that lands differently when it comes from someone who has lived both sides of burnout.

In this episode you'll hear about:

• The difference between internal and external stress — and why internal beliefs are often the bigger driver of burnout
• Why the brain responds to mental overload the same way it responds to physical danger, and what that does to cortisol, adrenal function, and long-term health
• How stress ripples through small startups, mid-sized businesses, and large corporations differently
• The small, basic habits — natural light, movement, hydration, breathwork — that tend to be the first things dropped when pressure rises
• Why leaders set the wellness culture of their team whether they intend to or not
• The truth about why "I don't have time" is really a values statement, not a time statement
• The warning signs the body sends before it shuts down — and why so many people miss them
• Dr Jimmy's personal story of grief, destructive habits, and the turning point that led him to this work
• Diaphragmatic breathing, box breathing, and the most accessible breathwork practices for everyday use
• Why small, consistent habits will always outperform a big one-off reset
• What Dr Jimmy's tailored corporate workshops, retreats, and individual sessions look like in practice

About Dr Jimmy Fay: Dr Jimmy Fay is a chiropractor-turned-nervous system and performance specialist in Australia. He works with businesses of any scale to address burnout at the source through customised solutions.

Connect with Dr Jimmy Fay: LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/dr-jimmy-fay-wellness

Connect with The Motivate Collective: Website: www.motivatecollective.com Instagram: @themotivatecollective

Join as a member of The Motivate Collective to conect with thought leaders from around the world.

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Trigger Warning: This episode contains open discussion of suicide, grief, alcoholism, physical assault, substance use, and destructive coping mechanisms. If any of these topics are sensitive for you right now, please take care of yourself while listening.

If you need support, please reach out to a crisis service in your country. In Australia: Lifeline 13 11 14 or Beyond Blue 1300 22 4636. In the US: 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline (call or text 988). In the UK: Samaritans 116 123. For all other countries, the International Association for Suicide Prevention maintains a directory of crisis centres worldwide at https://www.iasp.info/resources/Crisis_Centres/

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Melanie Suzanne Wilson (00:00)

Dr Jimmy Fay, welcome to the Motivate Collective podcast.

Jimmy Fay (00:05)

Thank you so much for having me. I'm looking forward to having you, HM.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (00:09)

For those who don't know, you have been a specialist, health specialist for a while, for a long time, but you also now look at the whole variety of reducing stress. How do you explain to people what you do these days?

Jimmy Fay (00:26)

It's a really good question because it's a little bit of everything in a way. So when I go to business meetings and do the elevator pitch, it's ever-changing to be honest. But at the moment, the main focus is trying to help individuals and businesses reduce stress, produce people out and overwhelm and allowing people to perform at their best, and what that looks like for everybody is different.

You know, some people are entrepreneurs, and then you really want to come and get things off the ground. Other people are working in very high-stress environments with like, you know, multi-million dollar companies and portfolios, and then everything in between, you know, like the stress and overwhelm can overflow into family life and daily life and being a mom or, you know, whatever it might be. So stress, burnout and overwhelm are the main focuses. Then, where that gets implemented will really look like and what strategies I use along.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (01:24)

Let's unpack that from the get-go because there are so many types of stress, overwhelm and burnout. And I totally agree. Everybody has a different experience of it, but I'm guessing you would have seen some trends or some things that keep popping up. There's the burnout where people become either workaholics or they think they need to do too much. But then there's also the other overwhelm where people feel pressure to become something, to achieve extra, and so then there's the stress of feeling like nothing is enough. There are so many angles here. What types of all of these things have you been seeing the most?

Jimmy Fay (02:05)

You're right. There's two broad categories of, um, when it comes to that sort of stress, there's the internal stresses where we have these beliefs, um, that we need to be doing something or achieving something or being someone in order to be successful and in order to be fulfilled in life. And then there can be external stresses as well. You know, you've got your boss or you've got the family or people depending on you. And that creates a certain level of stress as well. And then most people.

I could go in with one or the other. I see a lot of people come with internal stress that is driven through. If I don't do this, then it means this. If these are just stories and beliefs that have been picked up along the way, hopefully or otherwise, that creates a certain level of stress.

Now, internally our brain doesn't know the difference between the sun, cheese, tiger chasing us in clear, straight times and the mental stress and overload that we put on ourselves. So biologically, physiologically, it has a similar effect. It's not exactly the same, but you get those high levels of cortisol and stress hormones. And then you get, know, adrenal fatigue and burnout. And so the burnout is quite similar; the things that lead into it can be so multifaceted.

The way that we're always trying to work with people is to try and help them from where they're at. Where are they coming from? Where are they on their journey? What are they doing to help themselves or not? And so it's hard to give genetic and widespread advice because everyone's so individual in their approach. And a business and a corporation is its own sort of being, if you will, it's its own entity it's own internal stresses as well, stunning people that are there also. I don't know if that amounts to a good question.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (04:00)

The organisations, you see there's a collective stress at times in organisations. Perhaps everybody could be worried about something in particular, like when some wars were emerging, I was chatting with the travel industry, and they were all collectively anxious about things that impacted their industry. Or perhaps you might have a leader who is

just impacting the emotions of everybody around them, do you see these collective emotions that people then flock into like a herd of sheep?

Jimmy Fay (04:37)

Hmm,

definitely. Yeah. It's depending on the size of the corporation or the business, the startup, or whatever it might be. The smaller the team, the more the individual stresses will ripple out and influence the people around them. So if you've got a brilliant person in their mind and they've got all of these ideas and they're trying to get everything done quickly and there's a lot on the line but it pulls out very quickly to a small startup team you know and long nights and being affected by lack of sleep and high levels of stress and anxiety very quickly creates that sort of sense of overwhelm. When you're talking on some medium-sized businesses, the shift is different because there's usually multi levels of hierarchy and different avenues and people responding to different people. So the individual stresses become less obvious, but it becomes your own, that more collective, like we have to breach this, can't be like this, we have to get to this certain point. And if we don't, then we're going to feel the repercussions of that. And then when you go into like, big corporations, multinational sort of stuff, when I work with directors, their level of stress is a very different find of stress because it's so consistent and so repetitive that it actually becomes the normal for their day-to-day living, which is not necessarily the best way to live as far as I understand. But when something becomes so normalised in your nervous system, you don't even really see the forest in the trees. You're getting so burnt out and overwhelmed, but everyone around you is doing the exact same thing.

And you don't want to be the one that's holding up the boat. You don't want to be the one that's holding down the team then as they're reaching all these goals. it's, yeah, it changes depending on the level of complexity of the business.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (06:28)

Absolutely. You mentioned the basic needs, like people needing to get more sleep, people might lose sleep when they are getting anxious, and these trends are happening. And then once people get to that leadership point, you're spot on the amount of stress when people are in leadership, that clearly has to change because especially from what we're seeing in the economy these days, it seems like more and more founders are going to emerge. So many more new businesses potentially look, I don't have a crystal ball, but we could say that almost everybody or most people will need to create a business as technology is evolving. So in some way, this is going to affect more and more people, but even for those who are managing hundreds of thousands of people, I'm wondering what they can do to keep their feet on the ground. Because I have seen some leaders who lose perspective, think they are drowning when actually they are finding solutions, or they think they need to isolate themselves to fit the role and fit the image of that title, end up isolating themselves. What do you say to people in leadership who need to maintain their own humanity and support their basic needs?

Jimmy Fay (07:55)

Hmm, that's a really good question. Guess having a deliberate set of times for self-care and self care again looks different for everybody. But like whatever it is for that individual for that person, it's like, what do they need in order to recharge themselves as a human being, not as a boss or a firm, or CEO or any of those characters, just as a human being wanting to make additional things that they need to turn to.

For most people, it's things like sleep, connecting with nature, just breathing. It sounds strange, but I'm just taking some deep breaths. You know, not being on their phone and emails until like the moment before they put their head on the pillow. These are the, I know they sound so basic, and they are, but they're the things that tend to get overlooked, especially when there's a big goal to be achieved.

So yeah, the self-care, whatever that looks like. And some people don't know what it looks like. So they kind of have to go on that journey of discovery, what it looks like for them. Even journaling, you know, just writing and getting the stuff out of here, down into the world. Whatever you do with that, some people have to boom and just to let it go. Like, synchronically and physically to let that stuff out of their head.

But yeah, not to close down, not to clear them up, not to withdraw from the world around them and often their family around them as well. So it's just making sure that that time is set out strategically, just like the meetings, just like the investor meetings and just like what you do each week or each month, whatever it might be, you're doing that deliberately and purposefully ⁓ every day or at least every week.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (09:34)

Absolutely. We all have different ways to look after ourselves. And one thing we should all have in common is that we all breathe, if not, something is really wrong. The breath. I'm curious about what you would say for people who are in an intensely stressful moment or just starting to perceive things as stressful. Of course, people can feel that tiger fear, whatever, whether it's actually that scary or not. And then we enter a completely different state, and sometimes we're even blind to how we are ending up. So it would be great if you're interested in refreshing for everybody some of the basics with breathing because we take it for granted. You're involved with people who teach mindfulness. I've followed those teachers a lot, but there are some out there who'll just, you know, gasp for air or people. Even today I saw someone teaching, take

Big breath in, big breath out. And I was thinking, hang on a sec, can we all slow down? So what do you say to people who literally need to catch a breath for a second?

Jimmy Fay (10:42)

Yeah, it's a tough one. Like, cause as you see, most people won't even realise that they haven't breathed, they're not breathing well, you know, everyone, there's no proper way to breathe. You breathe the way that your body is needing at the moment. But you know, it's one of those things that think the first thing is just awareness and just being aware that you can actually breathe differently to what is the automatic process that might be going on. So step one is just going, wait a minute. Okay. I can do something different here.

The next step is then trying to do it when you're not going to stress start. So just getting used to the fact of when things are calm and okay, and you might have five minutes in the morning or at lunchtime or in the evening, or ideally all three, where you can just go, okay, I'm just going to practice this for a minute or five minutes, whatever it might be. But then as you know, you're going to step into the stressful environment, into that moving or that phone call that you know is going to be a bit sticky. It's like, great, I'm going to practice this more before.

I know that this is going to happen. And then it starts to trickle and ripple into the moments of, wait, I have this control here. think it can get to people like, okay, you look stressed, you should just breathe. And they've never done it before. It doesn't really start there. I feel like that's almost the only place that you're going to implement it automatically or deliberately. So you start with the times where it's easiest, and then you work towards the times that are most difficult.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (12:07)

Practice when things are okay. It's like a preparation. Don't wait until you're really needing this. Prepare.

Jimmy Fay (12:15)

Hmm.

And it's the same with anything like my approach to most everything is productivity. So you exercise when you can see, like you eat healthy when you can see you, don't wait until things are falling apart before you start to do something. You can still do it. It just takes a little longer and is a lot more difficult and challenging than your body's used to nervous systems used to doing certain things. So it's way harder once you've already kind of pressed that.

that path or that bridge to go back. It's not impossible; it's like proactivity is where we're at now. That's where we promote constantly with the individuals, the corporations, the businesses, everything that we do, it's all proactivity getting proactive and bringing it back to the corporations. I was keen to ask about how people can literally get space and some quiet. I've been in the city for a bunch of days, and honestly, I can imagine it would be in some ways more difficult for people to get the clarity and avoid overwhelm when there's so much around them. It's a big shift for those who've been on the coast for a bit, suddenly.

Elsewhere, you're around advertisements everywhere. You're around just all of the things. And in corporate spaces, there's the added element where the leaders can choose how the environment is set up to some extent. But of course, people either have distractions or not. I know these days some people want headphones, whatever it might be. But the question is,

Jimmy Fay (13:46)

Hmm.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (13:57)

When organisations are setting up a physical environment or even just setting up a standard for their team, maybe they're going to say, I'm not going to pressure everybody to work through lunch and I'm going to let everybody have five or 10 minutes because that could mean they are thinking more clearly later. What can people do? What are the basics that people can do to make sure, well, to prevent that overwhelm?

Jimmy Fay (14:25)

The beautiful thing about, part of the beautiful thing about the work of home movement is you can set up your working environment deliberately and pretty much however you want, as long as you're getting your work done, is great. I think it's one of the real positives for movement, and I think that's why it's going to stick around indefinitely now. So when you have to all over it. Obviously, if you're in an office space where you just, it's mandatory to be there and you can't have a lot of influence or control. There's certain things you can do, but you can take it in once, I guess. So the ones that are real is not a lot. It's a huge thing. So, not sitting in a room with the blinds closed, and you know, fluorescent lighting is one of the worst things.

but the booklet from the computer screen, from the phones, from the tablets, from whatever it is that you're using. Having multiple light coming in from the window is super important for a multitude of different reasons. So step one is: make sure there's the light if you can. If it's not a possibility, try and get out into the night for light as often as you can. So every hour or so, just get out, go for a walk, grab some warmup, go out, put your feet in the grass if you can connecting with nature, that's like step one. If you can bring the greenery inside, even better, so natural plants, there's some amazing indoor plants that are designed to help freshen the air, they're natural air fresheners. So that would be a good thing. I've got this awesome little plant in the background here, which I leave. We've got some other ones around the room as well, so natural greenery. Again, just do something with your brain, and it's often zero too. Happy to play cycling through. If you have again, availability of having a window open or airflow through, that's a really good thing too. And you'll find all of these will really help with energy, especially through the day. So natural light, greenery, air, getting out as often as you possibly can, just allowing the blood flow, your nervous system to kind of reset and give a good stretch into your spine and into your nervous system. And then if you have the availability to sit and stand at the sit-stand desk.

They're brilliant. So sit for an hour, stand for an hour, sit for an hour, stand for an hour. And just, it just shakes up your brain, your body and your nervous system. Um, and just, just keeps you going. Now you can go more complex. can have these little, little headmills that people walk on when they're doing work and stuff. And you can have like a foot, you know, vibrating form thing that you can put in there, and you can have a chair that does all the work. You can go as far as you want with it, really, but my mind's always just trying to get back to it as possible, air, fresh light, greenery, move your body, drink plenty of water, you'll feel significantly different at the end of the day just doing those few things than you would if you didn't. When you're in the infospace, you become a little bit more limited, but some of those things still apply. If you can sit near a window, if you have the availability to sit near an open window or a closed or open window, if you can bring a little green plant into your desk, do that sit stand desk or a big thing in the office as well. So you can apply some of these things there, but you just don't have as much freedom to do with.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (17:39)

Going back to the basics and what I'm getting from this is that people don't need all of the gadgets, all of the fancy gadgets, or even in some spaces with the entrepreneurs or the people who have freedom, even people are taking their devices to the treadmill. I'm guilty of that. Other people would be enjoying that habit, but then it's staring at a device.

And just moving on a machine, and we do what we do, especially on a rainy day. However, it sounds like what you're saying is connect with nature. And so the plant inside is probably a start, but I'm guessing you'd recommend also that people need to get out when they can, whether it's lunchtime, whether it's before the start of the day. Is that going to be crucial to see the sky a bit as well? that going to help?

Jimmy Fay (18:27)

Yeah, absolutely. It's like I said, like there's different levels of where people are out and what they need and what I often recommend. But if you're not doing the basics, it doesn't matter what you are into. If the foundation is shaky, you can't build a house, right? So we're not going to try and build a house on mud. We're going to just try and make sure that the foundation is there. And the foundation is, obviously, it's very simple. It's like connecting with nature, being grateful for what you live, like breathing and being deliberate with how you do that. The things aren't difficult, but they tend to be the first things that go when we become stressed, which is our roommate, because they're the exact things that we need when we're stressed. And I'm guilty of it too. I'm not sitting on any high horse here. I know I can spend too much time on my phone. I haven't been to the gym, I haven't moved my body in a few days, and I feel it. I really noticeably feel it. So the answer to your question is absolutely right basic, you know, just ballistic self care. If you're not doing it, just doing it will be a game-changer. If you are already doing it, then the other levels start to become more powerful to confound on top.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (19:38)

Okay, here's a corporate angle for that one. People are going to say, I'm too busy to do these things. That would come up so much.

Jimmy Fay (19:48)

It is pretty much the one, the biggest objection I've ever gotten to anything you should do with this is I don't have time to do that for sure.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (19:57)

And of course, the thing I was going to ask was, we must have some sort of idea of a return on investment in some way, whether it's people are getting the mental clarity to then get things done more quickly, or if they are looking after their health, then they are going to create a better culture for the team, whatever it might be.

I think we do need to convince people a little bit here because truly there will be those ones who are saying they are too busy, but everybody probably will have a moment if they haven't already where do you see normally with leaders in particular that there's a breaking point, especially whether it's self care, but more so with the extreme burnout where eventually people get to that moment of realization where they do have to do these things.

Jimmy Fay (20:46)

Yeah, usually it's a pretty big health scare, I guess is the best way to describe it. It's usually when something, they get the diagnosis of cancer, diabetes, heart disease, which are big stress, know, they don't need it as well. might just stress, you know, people with high levels of consistent long-term phlegm have much higher levels of diabetes and heart disease and stroke and anxiety and all these sorts of things. So unfortunately, like I was saying before, when you start to get more to the top levels of a corporation as far as directors and big decision makers, they're surrounded by people who praise that sort of behavior, like working 18 hour days and giving out weekends and doing this is, it's not so much in a lot starting to push now, but for a long time, this was seen as you get to the top in the first place. So if you're going to be like, I'm going to take a mental health day, you just, you know, don't think about what I'm saying. What's going to happen when you go back to my memory? All that stuff goes along with it. Excuse me. Yeah. The internal belief system is what has to shift first, especially if it's been there for decades, which it usually pays me that stage. don't generally don't start at CEI.

So you kind of worked your way to there, and yeah, the belief of what's getting you there is smothering us to change in order for the habits to change because your habits are just a representation of your beliefs. And if your beliefs are, need to do this, this and this in order to be successful and keep this job, then your habits will reflect that. So that's why I don't have time. That's what people say. It's everybody can stay.

Literally, we both know that, right? Even the people that save their time from time, they deep down, even just below the surface, they know they have time. But what they don't know is a strong enough belief or reason or value in order to take that time from something and put it into their self-care. Because the value on the self-care is not as far as whatever the value is, and it's different for everybody, that's driving them to not do it in the first place.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (23:03)

Absolutely. There are the ones who have climbed the ladder and there are also the ones who perhaps built a business from something small to something great. Either way, they climbed in some form, and they feel a need to maintain that, but they need a more sustainable, healthy way to make that happen. I'm going to ask a slightly controversial question.

Jimmy Fay (23:24)

Hmm.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (23:27)

Because these are all the good coping mechanisms. What wake-up call can you give to the people in leadership? Look, I wish that all of them would be listening to this, and some won't be, but they need to hear this. The ones who are going to the unsustainable and irresponsible coping mechanisms.

for dealing with their work. The mild form, potentially mild, is that countless leaders and managers would be probably having one extra glass of wine at night, and that's all they're doing to cope. And it gets more extreme than that. So I'm wondering, for those who are going to those classic slightly destructive, they know it's a step away from too much, those habits, how can those people shift from that to doing these strategies that, yes look wholesome but are going to actually work.

Jimmy Fay (24:25)

Hmm, that is the million-dollar question. The ultimate answer is, like me and you, you don't. We don't. The person has to decide for themselves that something needs to change. And that's when I first started this one, not the corporate stuff, but when I started. You know, being a health care practitioner was like, right, I'm going to save all these people, and I'm going to fix them. And all I'm going to do is just tell them what they need to know. And then they'll change because why wouldn't you? Like the logic is there, and the knowledge is there. Why wouldn't you do it? And over the years, I've just realised, although I'm a victim, over the years it's become more and more apparent that nobody changes until they win. And so those little destructive habits become candid and bigger and bigger and bigger and tense and more frequent and more extreme until you hit rock bottom or you have a heart attack or you have a stroke or you whatever, whatever it might be that bring us something in your brain to be like, okay, it's time to change now. And some people get that warning, and they make the change, and other people don't. it's, that's, that's just their journey. But it's my goal is to kind of ripping the door to be like, here it is if you want it. When you're ready, let's talk, let's do it. If you're not ready now, that's cool. It's not my journey. It's not me to force this on anybody. I've got what I think are some really powerful tools for beginners, intermediate and advanced people really wanting to expand their self-care practices. And you just let me know when you're ready, and I'll be ready and waiting.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (26:07)

People have to want to change. That's, that's crucial. They have to want to. I'm very curious. You went from a relatively traditional healthcare space to then doing what you do now. And in all of that, where did, where did these strategies fit in with how you maintained your career without getting burnt out?

Jimmy Fay (26:29)

A lot of these things came along through my own self-development, more than just knowledge. So I was one of those people that turned to destructive habits to keep up with the things in my life that I've had to deal with. I grew up in a really terrible, pretty terrible environment, really. And my brother took his own life when I was young, and my mum became an alcoholic.

My brother, like it just, all quickly for me in my life, and I was assaulted and put in hospital for weeks and yeah, and I didn't know how to cope with it. knew. So I turned to alcohol and drugs and porn and women and just all the things that I just got more extreme and more intense and more frequent because I didn't know how to deal with it. I wasn't taught. didn't know where to look. And so that was the best thing that I knew how to do. So when I'm talking these coping mechanisms, it's both a personal experience and understanding from a more medical or scientific side of things as well. So my journey came when I lost, my partner left, it was like the fourth long-term relationship that my partner just kind of left. And I was like, I'm doing something wrong here. Like there's gotta be...

I got to be as a person, not just as a partner, but just as a person. And so I started, that's where I started my journey. And I went to men's retreats, and I went to and started yoga, and I went and started doing breath work, and met these people along the way. And I have an amazing partner now who I met along that journey. And, she's helped me so much as well, but everything that I teach is something that I've learned, and some of it is really helpful, and I stick with it all the time. Some of it is really helpful, and it's just not for me, so I still recommend it for certain people. So there's nothing really that I recommend for people that I haven't at least wanted to give a little proper clinic and understand, sort of, how and whether it's trying to help people. And that's allowed me to kind of build this repertoire of tools that I can recommend for people and try and help them on their journey.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (28:41)

There's so much in that you did have those early experiences that you needed to cope with. And chances are, some people who are trying to deal emotionally with their careers are still stuck in the same emotions and coping angles that continued from early on. That would be happening so much. And it's worth acknowledging that you are with one of the best teachers that I've ever seen. So you're really learning from the best. I seriously met someone further down the coast who's saying it's this person. So absolutely. You're surrounded by people who really know what they're talking about, but you said that you pick and choose what you follow. I appreciate that so much because for me personally, I can't get onto the ice bath bandwagon. just, there's something about it for me and whereas if people like that, then great. And the logic through all of this is that we're freeing people up to say you don't have to do all of the things. Is that part of your message? People don't have to do everything. You're not more enlightened just because your room is at a particular temperature or your water is at a particular temperature.

Jimmy Fay (30:00)

No, no, absolutely not. You can't do everything. There's literally not enough time in the day to do all of the practices. So, no, it's really much picking and choosing, you know, and it's my recommendation for everybody, especially if you're starting out, is 10 minutes a day. You know, 10 minutes a day. And if you can, like, get out on the grass, I mean, if the sun's shining or even if it's not, you can do it in the rain, much like get out on the grass.

Take some deep breaths, move your spine, move your body, share some quality. Like you've already knocked down four amazing positive moments, and it's five minutes, 10 minutes, you know, if everybody did that, the whole world would be different. Unbelievable. Now, does an hour of yoga practice? It does. But if you don't have time to do that, do 10 minutes, do five minutes. Like it's, it doesn't have to be complicated, and you can't do everything. So don't even put your head in that space, just be like, I'm going to do what we can do with the time that I have. If people have got busy and three kids at home and the mother-in-law is unwell, and then got to go to do it, like it's, there's just not time. Just be kind to yourself, be kind to where you're at and just do something, just whatever it might be, just do something, and that bed space will start to expand.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (31:18)

Do something, anything and adapt. There the mic goes. One second. Is it steady? Yes, the mic is steady. I want to touch the mic. Yes. So.

People need to adapt to the amount of time and the environment that they have. I totally agree. And I reached a point recently where for a moment, I didn't want to, I didn't trust using the floor that was available. So I had to do some stretches against the wall. If someone literally has no floor, then use a wall. Or if someone can get a little patch of grass for five minutes instead of an hour, then that's something, and it's not about being impressive. It's just going back to the basics. That's your key message. The basics will help. And you're saying something that quite a few people on the show have been reinforcing, whether it has been a lawyer or a neuroscientist or what you do, people are saying, get the hydration and just look at the sky, do those simple things. You mentioned moving the spine, and you did have a background doing work with physical health. So I am keen to ask because although this is mainly emotions, I'm still trying to wrap my head around how the physical pain and the emotions could be intertwined. But people do end up, people end up with aches, whether they're sitting at a desk for a long time or people get headaches from stress, all sorts of things. And so it would be interesting to see if you have any tips for things like that, where people know they're not, they feel pretty sure, and of course, people need to seek the right advice at the right places. But if someone feels pretty sure that they don't have some sort of condition, but they're just getting aches, what's a good place to start?

Jimmy Fay (33:10)

Just get out of your chair.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (33:12)

Okay.

Jimmy Fay (33:13)

We're pretty basic, so we're doing it. Sphishing, sphishing at the base level. This is, I guess, the point that's coming across in all of this is like, if you're not doing anything, just do something. So I recommend to people, if you're sitting at a desk and you don't have a sit-stand or whiskey, you don't have an option or availability, set a time when you're free and get out once and around everywhere. Just get in, walk to wherever the nearest sink is and get some water, drink some Yuma, sit back down, go back to work. That's...

That's literally the start point. So when you do that, it'll stretch out your spine. It'll allow the blood flow to circulate again, especially into your limbs, because it's been coming for the whole time. It's all your hamstrings and your fascia and your tissues and all sorts of stuff. And it gets your brain away from the screen, the tasks, because what have you been doing? Especially if you work with your head and doing. So if you're reading a lot or counting a lot, what you've been doing, getting out and stretching your spine in the other direction, it just has huge amounts of benefits. So, 30 seconds once an hour getting it moved, there's a huge amount of resources in there. This one is like desk structures that you can do. So if you want to take a little bit of that, you may do two or three, five minutes of that, even better. And then, as you said, mentioned earlier, like getting outside for your lunch, don't sit at your desk and stuff down food, scrolling through your phone. I get away from all the time, get inside, even if it's a bit cold inside and lonely, like even under cover, just that stimulation for your nervous system is going to be really good for you. So set the time on getting and move a little bit or as much as you possibly can.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (34:52)

Get out at all. It can be anything. That was, I like how simplified this is. There's a version of this for everybody. So it seems like whether someone is working alone or guiding a team, this does look very practical, but beneath the practicalities, it's the mindset of accepting that habit and allowing the time to do that.

There's a lot more flexibility now that people work from home so much, and there's flexibility because there's a lot more understanding in the world about why these things are needed. But I can absolutely remember the times in corporate spaces where people really disapproved, or there was a shame feeling, or people basically assumed someone was doing less work if they got up for a few minutes. There are maybe those spaces still exist, but it's the assumption that someone is achieving more if they're not taking a break. And it seems like what you're saying is people are not going to achieve more by not taking a break.

Jimmy Fay (35:59)

No, they'll work longer, but they won't achieve any more necessarily. No. It's going to. Look, if the manager, the leader, the boss, the founder, whatever, is setting these as standard practices for themselves as an individual, then it took us down so quickly to everybody. Even if it's not mandatory or enforced, they're like, the boss has taken his walk around, know, he's going to the water cooler, it's what people continue to do. Then that's what actually changes culture. That's what changes the internal system, that internal stress that we were talking about at the beginning. That's the sort of stuff that will change you, not writing in your CV for like, know, get it and has to get up and stretch this file. That's just going to possibly present them. But if you see the bosses, you see the managers, you see the leaders doing

And then you do it, and you're like, it's going to city like that. That's called the shifting sort of stuff, rather. It's very basic.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (36:58)

Seeing people in leadership doing that, it'll make a difference. So if anyone is leading even a few people, they need to set the example, set the standard, because then everybody else will follow that. And I'm considering that these things could be done if someone is even travelling a lot, because people do still travel, perhaps from one side of the state to the other or from the other side of the country. And if someone is even having a one or two-hour trip, then that's a lot of sitting, especially of course, How many will just be staring at the phone on long trips, and it's the same neck for so long, there's the option to do the same thing, exactly what you described, walk down the aisle of a train or a plane, or whatever it is, get up do any small movement, which that help for travel as well

Jimmy Fay (37:33)

Yeah, totally. And the breathwork sort of stuff can be very much expanded when you've got those blocks of time where you're on an aeroplane or you're on a long commute. Yeah, you can kind of go deeper and wider into different styles of breathwork because there's so many, as I'm sure you're aware, like it's a practice that's been around for thousands of years. Yogis and Chinese medicine has been using the different forms of it for a long time. There's interesting and great versions that have come to the West, but there's also much simpler forms that are much more accessible just to everybody, regardless of age or ability, out there as well to discover.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (38:30)

The simple ones. What are the simple versions?

Jimmy Fay (38:33)

And your symptom basically is just learning to breathe into your, into your demopharm or into your abdomen. So diaphragmatic breathing stimulates your vagus nerve, which puts you into a parasympathetic state. So it's like a rest and digest state, which can only be not only, but one of the ones to activate it is via the, via the vagus nerve and via diaphragmatic breathing. I've worked with many people that first they didn't even know you could possibly do them. And it took them.

Sometimes they need days of practice to even be able to take a single full breath into the belly, into the abdomen. So it's, it's one of those baseline things I was talking about. If you get the basics right, then you can build on it, but just learning that you can and how to breathe into your abdomen is the most basic one. The next one is the one we're thinking of is box breathing or square, square breath is what they call it. So you're just breathing in for a count of four, example, hold for a can for itself for four, hold for four. there's, there's modifications and variations to that. You can put pauses in certain spots as well. Um, and then there's like other breath works with breath work, I guess you'd call it, where you breathe in for four and breathe out for six. We can do the opposite. can breathe in for, um, we've been from longer breathing for shorter. So it's more of a forceful exhale. there's the ones that we've learned through the yogic practices are they're accessible. The yoga in India, for example, is designed for people of all ages, not just people who are flexible and able to hold big poses like in Riyasa, for example. So both work and mindset and meditation and movement practices in India are very different to one that are in the West. When I talk about yogic breathing or yoga breathing, it's not necessarily what people may think necessarily if they haven't seen that style before, but it was really interesting to travel through India and see how more accessible yoga as a whole is to regarding importance of aging capabilities.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (40:40)

It's accessible to everybody.

Jimmy Fay (40:42)

I saw 90-year-olds doing what they call yoga, what the Indians call yoga. You wouldn't see a 90-year-old really doing like a vinyasa or a bhikram. That's a westernised version of what they were doing. It was just movement. Just moving the joints, taking deep breaths, being mindful of where they were. That's what yoga is in Indian culture.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (41:07)

That's worth looking at for a second because there are people who are continuing their careers or trying to stay active in some way at those older ages. What did that movement look like for a 90, 91 year old?

Jimmy Fay (41:14)

Hmm.

Well, again, there's many different versions. I to an Ayurvedic hospital and did a punchy climber, which is a couple of weeks of traditional ancient Indian medicine, a preventative sort of stuff as well. Every morning we'd get together, and so you'd start sitting on the floor, and you'd just basically move your knees into certain directions and then you'd move your ankles in certain directions, and you'd twist them around, and you go back the other way, and you go down and go up, and you go down, and you go in. So it's just trying to move the joints in all the ranges of motion. And you start from the toes, and you work your way all the way up, up and down, down into your hands and fingers, you do your neck, you do your eyes, you do your tongue, you do literally every part of your body. You activate, and you create movement, you know? And then the areas that are sticky and stuck, you breathe into them, and you be curious about them and you stay with those sensations, and it becomes a mindful practice in its own of where your body is giving you feedback. I'm stiff, I'm tired, I'm sore, there's pain there, there's stiffness there, that's your body giving you that feedback and they take the time, the ones that practice this, they take the time to sit with those feelings and study them as well.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (42:42)

Sit with the discomfort as well as the comfort and observe what's happening.

There are a few counter-cultural things there that are worth acknowledging. Aussies in particular, I don't want to sit with discomfort. So we're saying it's okay to look at discomfort and ask what is that telling me? But I really appreciated the simplified movement that you're describing because again, I don't take for granted that you come from a yogic space where people know the real intention and the accessibility. One phrase that they use that I wish everybody would use is that any amount of the pose is the pose. Whereas I've been seeing some people elsewhere who are kind and good-intentioned in what they're doing, but there's a total expectation to reach the headstand.

And it's just so detached from, okay, am I just focused and being in the moment or breathing all of those things? So there's a stereotype. There absolutely is still the assumption out there that people are having to be flexible or whatever it might be. That line, I don't know if you still get people saying that, but out there, as some will say, I can't do that. I'm not flexible enough, but it can be simple. That's great for people sitting at a desk, move anything, right?

Jimmy Fay (44:10)

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Just your body will become very good at whatever you ask it to do repetitively. So if you sit at a desk, your body is going to actually get very good. It's going to adapt, and you know the system is going to change your spine and the joints, the ligaments, tongue, everything. Everything is going to change in order for you to be a world champion desk sitter and do anything else. What do you think is going to happen? Your body's just going to slow down. something like, wait a minute, I'm really freaking good at sitting at a desk, and now you want me to get up and go for a gel? No, no, no, no, no. Let's set up for this desk sitting thing. know what I mean? Like this is the internal thing that goes on. So that's why change is fun. That's why any change is fun because you're not a system integrates the changes and then physically will shift and change your body to represent what the nervous system now understands to be the most important goal. So if you start to get up, you're going to feel stiff and sore in that process. It doesn't mean it's bad. You give up smoking, you start packing up your lungs because the body has to change and adapt into the new situation. It's the same thing. So the answer is just to believe, but no, if you haven't done much of it, it's going to feel pretty crappy to begin with.

And then you do more of it when your body gets used to it. And then you do more of it, and it starts to become enjoyable. And then you do more of it. And eventually, if you don't do it, then you start to feel comfy. It goes back the other way. So it's just, it's one of those things, being aware of the dynamic and being aware of the shift that's going to happen. Your body will resist it. And that's where a lot of people give up. They're like, it doesn't feel good. My body's telling you to stop. Technically, yes, but.

When you look darker than that, it's absolutely a no. Your body's just giving you feedback, but you're not sitting very well, which is what it's gotten really good at doing. So, just, you've to look a little bit more at yourself as well.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (46:10)

You get used to what you get used to. It seems like that's true for an organisational culture and for the individual's physical presence. So step one, it seems like it's extra, extra important to not have just a day or a moment of doing the right thing, but setting up sustainable habits, something that's actually accessible. And that goes back to what you said about how people might not have three hours every single day, but the small ongoing habits it seems will be more useful than doing a lot once.

Jimmy Fay (46:50)

Yeah, a hundred per cent. Yeah, it's ungated. And a business, like I said before, it's just its own organism. It's almost like a human body of its own shift and change within an organisation is painful because you've just gotten used to it. The systems the processes are impolite. You're on it. That's sustainable. Smaller, more consistent efforts are way, way more important than ideally week-long retreat or a once a month massage day, you know, like they're good. I'm not against those ideas. If you actually went with a gift and chain internally that sticks, you're like, the smaller, more consistent efforts are where it's at.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (47:31)

That's fascinating that places do have those one-off days, and they need the sustainable habits. I'm wondering where people should seek more information or whether they should be educating themselves, because I'm inspired by what you said. Some specialists, months ago, were asking me if they could have half a day of learning sustainable, healthy resilience, all those things. And honestly, of course, I only listen to the experts more, you know, I listen to people like you, but it was just this day, and I'm wondering, well, okay, people need to remind themselves of these things. Do you see people needing the ongoing self-education of perhaps a reminder on the phone, or reading up on something or do you think it needs to just be simplified? Maybe someone just needs to jot down one or two strategies from this conversation they listen to and then just remember to do it. For me, I find that for some habits, I need a reminder in my calendar to say, " You're going to do this thing." And it's not an appointment. It's a habit. Do you find that people need to either access resources or at least create the systems for themselves individually to make sure these things happen?

Jimmy Fay (48:52)

Yes, think that's one way to keep accountability for the self. If you're wanting it to be more systemic and be more cultural boost, it, needs to be done. It needs to be part of what happens all the time. Just as when things are starting to look a bit more shaped and the departments are not getting along anymore, and it's a major collection, then it's pretty ingrained, you know, so it becomes a lot harder to make those shifts.

The is that real individuals definitely have the capabilities to wake up. Every Tuesday morning or every morning at 10 a.m., I'm going to get up, and I'm going to go for a movement, and I'm going to do it all. So that's a really good way to do it. But as I said before, if it's not completely going from the type, it's really going to the individual to consistently stick with it if the people around them aren't also on board or at least know what they're doing.

Just going back to what you're saying about those, you know, those five-day events or the, you know, the once-a-year or twice-a-year things, it's, it can often be a representation or a reflection of how the leaders, how they look after themselves. It's just a, they're just reflecting, they're like, oh shit, I'm feeling really stressed at the moment. I need to go have my spa day. And that's how they look after themselves. So that when the corporation or the business feels stressed. They're like, ⁓ I know how you work. Yes. You take them on a sparring. And we know, you know, this is no judgment on anybody on how they're gonna connect to themselves, but the business, especially as the corporations get bigger, like the HR departments and the people in folks, they're in these people who work, that's the specific role is to make sure that the workers are happy and capable. If they're as individuals, if they're not consistently looking after themselves. Where are they drawing these ideas from? How are they going to look after the people in the corporation itself?

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (50:46)

So to look after everybody, it has to start with looking after this self. This is interesting. It's interesting saying that you've experienced people reaching a breaking point and then looking for recovery or a cure instead of a prevention in a corporate space.

Jimmy Fay (50:52)

the voice.

Yeah, very, very exciting.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (51:10)

Do you think part of the reason is that people are just so distracted by their other corporate goals, and then they perhaps need to just keep this up higher in the priority list to have a sense of urgency early on?

Jimmy Fay (51:27)

Like I said before, it comes to values. It's what they believe and what they prioritise up until the breaking point, because then the priorities and the values will instantaneously shift when they go to the doctor and the doctors look right, you have to go back outside. Instantly, their value and their hierarchy changes. What we believe to be important shifts instantaneously because you don't have that, it doesn't matter what you have in the world. So, unfortunately for some, the tipping point is not what the value shift has to happen.

Like I've said, for me, it was like another relationship breaking down, and there was that obvious point where I'm like, okay, I have to do something different here if I want something different. So everybody has the point where they're built up to. Now those figures are different for everybody.

And what figures those things and when those things are triggered and are strongly, and how big this shift happens, that's all very individual. So it's the value system is the one that needs to be looked at and witnessed. So the people will be something for self-care is really basic, right? Get out in nature, drink water, look after yourself in these simple, holistic ways. But for the more complex places that we work with, it's not about knowledge. They know what they need to do. It's not about knowledge. They have the knowledge. They just don't have the know you that refrauds. Knowledge will implement and create in their life.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (53:07)

It's values. That's opening my eyes, and that's shining a light for so many people because that's deeper than priorities and it's deeper than a sense of urgency because if someone wanted something to happen sooner, then they would make it happen. And what you're describing where you had yet another relationship, and once you realised something had to change, everybody is going to

Okay, I'll say something that's going to tell people: don't wait until the breaking point. You have a breaking point, and I can say that I once again was in one of the best social connections of my life, and then I was having those childhood-derived fear-based panics, and then after a while, I'm going, seeking the yogi guidance to try to figure out, okay, it's too late for the prevention.

So we all have those breaking points, but the reason why I'll urge people don't let it get to that point is it's all great to talk about how there were breakups and so on. That's all great. But for me, my example is go back to my grandmother when she realised she had cancer, it was on her spine. She was about to be paralysed or die. And we don't know what caused that, but there will be versions out there where some people reach the breaking point they couldn't recover from.

So if someone is listening to this and they're thinking, okay, I'll keep going how I'm going, and eventually I'll burn out and collapse and then I'll sort myself out. We don't know how bad that could get. Even when I had my tibial plateau fracture, I was rushing around like mad, and I thought, I'll just slow down later and now I still have metal in my leg. People have to, yes, value the right things sooner.

And you mentioned being proactive. And for an organisation, do they really want to wait until there's a severe conflict between departments? Do they really want to wait until there's a crisis to fix, or do they want to have less crises? Do you think that's what part of this comes down to?

Jimmy Fay (55:06)

Hmm.

Yeah, yeah, it's a very similar, very similar thing. Like the business will build and build and build and then eventually it will connect and factor in, depending on the severity of, you know, what's going on, will the company may or may not last, just like the person may or may not continue, you know, so it's, there's so many similarities between those two ideas. Obviously, a business folding or the way it is much less catastrophic than someone passing away or not being able to recover from an extreme event. Ultimately, it's the signals for most people. It's not always the chemists, but most people, there's always warnings. There's always signals that something is heading in a direct bend that is not going to end well. For most people, the biggest things that they'll see is sleep and energy that the sleep will become affected, their energy will drop off. And obviously, those two things are pretty closely linked and related. And then their ability to hold stress. So when we talk about the capacity to hold stress, it's how much stress can happen before you feel overwhelmed and overloaded and something and don't want to be around people and lose, we give sort of states that we get into. So if you're noticing that you're feeling in that state, like you've gotten to the point where little things that the kids used to do, you didn't really care, and now it just grates you, it just kind of doesn't feel good for you. That lady in the washers that fumes too loudly, normally it wouldn't bother you, but all of a sudden, what we know, you're just like getting grated by it. These are just the warning signs. These are the little subtle symptoms that, achingly, I'm not coping as well as I may be able to. I'm not sleeping as well. I'm getting really tired in the afternoons and losing like my motivation and my energy. These are the little whispers that start. And then the whispers, if ignored, start to get louder and become your body starts talking to you. Pains and and pain in the neck and the back. And then if the talking gets louder for your body, it's more and more intense. And your body starts screaming. And then all of a sudden, if you're not listening to any of that, it'll just shut down.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (57:42)

Listen to the warning signs early on. It would be great to wind up with positive ideals because we've talked about some big things, and it'll be great to leave the listener on a high note to say, okay, how can things look amazing? And also the call to action of

What exactly do you do with organisations? Do you have a conversation once? Do you guide people through something ongoing? What does this look like in setting up a better alternative?

Jimmy Fay (58:13)

I always like to leave on things like this. I've talked about some intense stuff, some heavy things, but ultimately my work is very optimistic to everything. I don't think it's ever really too late to do something positive for yourself. Even if you've taken it to the edge, even right to the edge, there's still, for most people, the capability of living a better life. Even if they've taken it to the point where their life can't continue, you know, even what they have left can be a better version of who they are, you know. So it's never too late to do something. It's always comfortable and just start small. Just start with little steps, and you'll be surprised how quickly those things come and snowball. And then all of a sudden, you start, instead of it being another job to do, it becomes something that you really want to do and something that becomes a non-negotiable.

And I think workers are into life in so many ways. We've talked a lot about business and corporations, but family time, know, friend time, self care, just, just being alone by yourself, and just being comfortable with that will expand when you start looking after yourself deliberately. So there is so much to be gained from such a little input. It doesn't take a lot. It takes a little to get an absolute ginormous outcome.

My positive information or my positive output is like, everyone, if you can just start with two minutes, get outside, take deep breaths, be grateful for what you've got. And you just start doing that and watch your life change in a matter of weeks. So the other portion of what you said is the businesses. So I am, I create tailor-made packages. There is no one-size-fits-all as we've talked about a lot, so I don't work one size fits all, and I don't work with many businesses at the same time. Only work with a few. Now, that can look like something where I come in and do an hour conversation like we've done today, and just kind of help people understand the nervous system and what it does. And maybe a few little tips they can look after themselves. I can do a three-hour workshop where we actually get into some proper movement practices and some breathwork sort of stuff, you can see breathwork stuff, mindset, you know, awareness stuff as well. The more time we have in the depot, we can go with all of these practices, but it just depends on where the individuals and the teams are to begin with. So I always start with a 30-minute consultation. It's not an obligation to do anything, but just so I can understand how big the business is, what they're hoping to do, where they're at, what they're struggling with, and do almost like a bit of a diagnosis-style session, just so I can understand. And then from there, I can totally make a package which can last anywhere from literally one hour to one year, working with individuals, teams, groups, and everything in between. So it's quite good that we deliberately keep it that way, so the businesses get what they need.

And it can be a matter of like a few thousand dollars through to a few hundred thousand dollars, depending on the scope of the works as well. So, very small businesses can get involved, and very, very large businesses can benefit from it as well.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (1:01:27)

Very small businesses as well as large organisations.

That sounds great. And I'm hoping that if any speakers are listening to this, I hope they would reach out to you as well, because the breathing is great for projecting the voice, and people need to relax and have the right mindset to present. Everybody's going to have an individual personal brand, along with, of course, when people are leading teams of any sort. So people don't have to be leading the big, big brands, people don't have to be leading the giant organisations, although those are welcome. So any businesses or organisations can get this sort of help.

Jimmy Fay (1:02:09)

Definitely, like I said, it all starts with the individual as well. All of the things that I teach it all starts off with happily, that I'm seen as a person, and then watch that ripple out, instead of I don't start on the end and work inward. You're on an individual to benefit from the work that I do, right the way through to a multinational corporation.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (1:02:30)

start working on the self and then leading others. Dr Jimmy, thank you for explaining all of this.

Jimmy Fay (1:02:38)

Thank you having me. been great. I can't believe that time has just passed.

Thank you, I really appreciate it. I know I just dropped in out of nowhere, yeah, it's been great. I look forward love doing medicines.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (1:02:52)

Yeah, awesome. Anytime.

Guest: Gary Miller — Olympic Ski Coach & HumanCharger Distributor Host: Melanie Suzanne Wilson

Gary Miller has spent a lifetime doing hard things — coaching elite ski racers at the World Cup and Olympic level, surviving seven surgeries, and rebuilding his own health from the ground up. In this wide-ranging conversation, Gary and Melanie cover the habits that separate people who thrive from those who deteriorate: consistent movement, real food, resisting the pull of pain medication, and understanding your body's biological clock. Gary also introduces the HumanCharger — a transcranial light therapy device developed in Finland that resets your circadian rhythm in just 12 minutes — and explains why it's become his go-to tool for jet lag, mental sharpness, seasonal energy dips, and athletic performance.

Gary Miller is a former elite ski racer turned world-class coach, having worked with the U.S. Ski Team at World Cup and Olympic level. He has coached some of the sport's greatest athletes, including Mikaela Shiffrin, and brings decades of experience in human performance, physical conditioning, and the science of recovery. Now based in Europe, Gary is a passionate advocate for holistic health and is an authorised distributor of the HumanCharger — a clinically-backed light therapy device developed by scientists in Finland. His forthcoming book explores pain, human behaviour, and why so many people have lost the ability to tolerate discomfort.

The do hard things philosophy Gary's core message to athletes and everyday people alike: the gap between average and exceptional is not talent — it's the consistent willingness to do small, uncomfortable things every day. Make your bed. Hydrate first. Walk before breakfast. Do these things and you're already ahead of most people on the planet.

His grandfather: a blueprint for longevity Gary's grandfather was told he'd be in a wheelchair by 55 after contracting polio at 12. He lived to 100. He rode a stationary bike daily, took cold showers, ate simply, never retired, and found purpose through his art. His son — Gary's father — retired at 55, stopped moving, and was gone by 70. The contrast is striking and personal.

Body weight training at any age Gary hasn't lifted weights in years. Instead: 300 squats, 300 lunges, standing core work, and farmer walks through hilly trails with sandbags — all done outdoors. He explains why after 50, high reps of body weight exercises outperform heavy weights for joint health, strength, and longevity.

Movement as medicine Woken up sore after a workout? Gary's answer is never the pill bottle — it's a walk on an inclined trail. He explains why consistent movement builds the strength to avoid injury in the first place, and why ibuprofen should be a last resort, not a reflex.

The opioid crisis and our relationship with pain A Netflix documentary on Purdue Pharma and OxyContin sparked Gary's book-in-progress. A friend in Portugal confessed he had been a victim of Oxycontin addiction — going from pain relief to near-total cognitive impairment before getting help. Gary argues that modern society has lost the capacity to sit with discomfort, and that movement, food, and mindset are the real answers.

Real food, simple meals, and the European difference After moving to Europe, Gary and his wife noticed they could sustain themselves on two quality meals a day — because the food was actually nutritious. Fresh produce, real bread without added sugar, local meat from the butcher. He walks through his go-to pasta sauce and a whole chicken Dutch oven recipe that feeds them for days. In contrast: a small bag of groceries in Maine recently cost his sister $110 USD.

The HumanCharger — what it is and how it works Developed in Finland by a scientist and an engineer from Nokia, the HumanCharger is a small transcranial light therapy device worn like earphones. It delivers 10,000 lux of full-spectrum, UV-free light through the ear canal — where the eardrum is translucent and the surrounding bone is thin — directly stimulating the light-sensitive proteins that regulate the hypothalamus, cortisol, and the body's sleep-wake cycle. Twelve minutes. No drugs. No crash.

Jet lag — why it matters more than you think Gary describes flying Mikaela Shiffrin's team into Finland the night before a race due to a delayed departure — and watching her turn in one of her worst-ever results. He estimates it cost her six figures in prize money. Hundreds of millions of dollars are lost annually to jet lag-related lost productivity. With the HumanCharger protocol — used every two hours on the day of arrival — Gary says he has not found a single person for whom it didn't work.

Circadian rhythm, seasonal depression, and shift workers The same mechanism that causes jet lag affects anyone working nights, moving through daylight savings, or living through dark winters. Gary's wife reset years of struggling with mornings within one week of consistent use. A night trader in Boston was given the device to help reset between night shifts and weekend normal hours. The science is the same: light is the only thing that can reset the body's biological clock.

Athletes and the 1% edge In sports where the margin between first and last place is 0.01 seconds, anything holistic and legal that improves reaction time, focus, and recovery is a genuine competitive advantage. A Finnish university study with pro hockey teams found measurable improvements in psychomotor speed — reaction time — with regular HumanCharger use. Gary now recommends it to national team athletes, particularly for long-haul travel to race venues.

TimeTopic00:00Opening — dressing for climate transitions coaching the U.S. ski team in Argentina01:32Snowbirds, cold weather, and Gary's 100-year-old grandfather03:24Retirement, blue zones, and the importance of purpose04:00Polio at 12, no painkillers, and a life lived in defiance of prognosis06:33Gary's father — the contrast between his grandfather and a life without purpose07:18Finding movement that works for you — Gary's own late start in sport08:41The uncoordinated, klutzy kid who went on to win almost everything10:30A mentor, a summer training plan, and becoming a different athlete12:04Exercise as medicine — why Gary works out instead of reaching for ibuprofen13:00Body weight training, sandbags, outdoor stations, and 300 squats15:43Uphill lunges, core every day, and why incline protects the knees18:00Incline push-ups against the wall — high reps over heavy weight after 5020:45Walking off soreness — movement beats the pill bottle21:48Programming your mind to do hard things23:10The Netflix Purdue Pharma documentary that sparked a book24:22A friend's OxyContin addiction — "the best day is the first day"26:06How opioids affect the brain and why pain pills become death traps27:20Food and joint pain — the link between sugar, processed food, and inflammation31:40500-pill bottles in US gas stations vs. a pack of 10 in a European pharmacy33:20Why Europeans are always moving — hiking in their 80s and 90s35:02Real bread, fresh produce, and why Gary started baking his own loaves37:00Converting AUD to USD — and what a good loaf of bread actually costs40:00Melanie's lentil dinner and the simplicity of real food42:06COVID, empty produce aisles, and full canned food aisles43:45Gary's two-day pasta sauce and the whole chicken Dutch oven method46:00Laziness, busy families, and doing hard things anyway49:44Introducing the HumanCharger — and a pivot to light therapy51:52The 1% athlete mindset — doing the small things that compound54:15Jet lag, the circadian rhythm, and coaching the US ski team55:30Meeting the founder of Red Bull — and what they used for jet lag instead57:30How the HumanCharger was developed in Finland and why the ear canal59:5210,000 lux, 12 minutes, and what it actually looks like01:01:51How to use it — around the neck, click once, 12 minutes, done01:02:30Gary's wife's transformation from non-morning person to consistent early riser01:04:3321st century software on a thousand-year-old operating system01:05:52The jet lag protocol — every two hours on arrival day for two days01:06:40Using it instead of an afternoon espresso — no caffeine crash01:08:20Finnish hockey study — psychomotor speed and reaction time improvements01:09:230.01 seconds — why the 1% edge matters in elite sport01:12:14Daylight saving, international calls, and the myth of the non-morning person01:13:20Social jet lag and night shift workers — resetting the rhythm on weekends01:15:10Melanie building her own website with Claude Code — and the case for an app01:16:50Price, battery life, USBC charging, and how long the device lasts01:17:48Why the music version was discontinued — Bluetooth licensing costs01:19:08Meta Ray-Ban glasses — Gary's other favourite piece of tech01:22:09The one thing nobody has said didn't work for jet lag01:23:10Holistic technology — how the HumanCharger fits into a whole-health approach01:24:22Iga Świątek, tainted melatonin, and the doping control risk of supplements01:25:30Mikaela Shiffrin, Levi Finland, and the race that cost six figures01:27:20Hundreds of millions lost annually to jet lag-related lost productivity01:29:22The $500–600M sad lamp market — and why HumanCharger is the modern answer01:31:32Gary's final message — giving back, living well, and choosing products that matter

• HumanCharger — transcranial light therapy device; available at humancharger.com — $179 USD

• Jet lag protocol PDF — provided by Gary; available on The Motivate Collective website

• Mikaela Shiffrin — most decorated ski racer in history; coached by Gary at the US Women's Tech Team

• Dietrich Mateschitz — founder of Red Bull; personal friend of Gary's during his coaching years in Europe

• Iga Świątek — world number one tennis player; referenced in context of tainted melatonin and anti-doping

• Oxycontin / Purdue Pharma — Netflix documentary that inspired Gary's forthcoming book on pain

• James Clear, Atomic Habits — referenced in context of environment design and habit formation

• Meta Ray-Ban Glasses — Gary's recommended wearable for audio, video, and coaching

• Base 44 — app development platform referenced in conversation

"Your goal should be to be a one percenter. Do the things that most people will never do in their lives. You've already won." — Gary Miller

"We are running 21st century software on a thousand-year-old operating system. Our bodies haven't evolved enough to overcome jet travel." — Gary Miller

"My grandfather was told he'd be in a wheelchair at 55 and dead soon after. He lived to 100. He just went — no, I'm not doing that." — Gary Miller

"When you wake up sore, don't reach for the pills. Go out and move. The soreness will go away." — Gary Miller

"Light is the only thing that can reset your circadian rhythm." — Gary Miller

"It's not about money. This is about somebody's wellbeing. You have to have something good that can really have an impact." — Gary Miller

"We need to do the things that feel impossible. Everyone had something that felt like the limit at some point." — Melanie Suzanne Wilson

1. Consistent daily movement — even simple body weight work for 20 minutes — is more powerful medicine than most pills on the market.

2. After 50, high-rep body weight training protects your joints and builds genuine strength.

3. Real food, cooked simply, is affordable and transformative — your body can tell the difference.

4. The modern world has engineered our disconnection from our own biology. The answer is not more drugs or more screens.

5. Jet lag is not trivial — it costs athletes podiums, executives board room performance, and costs the global economy hundreds of millions annually.

6. Light is the only thing that resets the circadian rhythm. The HumanCharger delivers that in 12 minutes with no side effects.

7. Becoming a one percenter isn't about talent. It's about making your bed, hydrating, walking before breakfast, and doing those things every day when most people won't.

The HumanCharger is a transcranial light therapy device developed in Finland. It delivers 10,000 lux of full-spectrum, UV-free light through the ear canal in 12 minutes, stimulating the biological pathways that regulate energy, mood, sleep, and circadian rhythm. Used by elite athletes, shift workers, frequent travellers, and anyone navigating seasonal energy changes.

💡 Price: $179 USD 🔋 Battery life: Up to one month with daily use; USB-C charging 📄 Jet lag protocol: Available on The Motivate Collective website

[Insert Gary's website, HumanCharger link, and contact details here]

🎙️ Listen and subscribe: www.motivatecollective.com 🌿 Join the community for conversations, events, and resources built around growth, wellness, and conscious living: www.motivatecollective.com

#TheMotivateCollective #HumanCharger #WellnessPodcast #ConsciousLiving #CircadianRhythm #LightTherapy #JetLag #DoHardThings #MovementIsMedicine #ElitePerformance #PersonalDevelopment #GrowthMindset #HolisticHealth #ConsciousLeadership #LongevityHabits

It's funny because when you're a young kid like I was at 15, you don't really, I don't think you notice it maybe as much. But when I really noticed it was when I went back years later and I was coaching the U.S. ski team and my athletes, it was the only time they ever held a downhill, World Cup downhill race in South America. It was in Las Linas in Argentina.

And, you know, and all the guys, you know, they're coming from summer and, you know, within 12 hours, they're in winter. And of course, they don't dress appropriately. Right. So what happens is everyone gets sick right away. Instantly. Yeah, it's like, you know, they're all freezing and they and nobody really thought about it. You know, it's just. But when you're at that level, you have to be really cognizant of

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (00:55.734)

Instantly.

Gary Miller (01:09.386)

you know, weather and your environment and what you're stepping into. And yeah, it's always a challenge, you know, and over time you learn these things and it gets better. But it's not easy. It's not easy.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (01:23.054)

It's not. I'm guessing if you get to the other countries in the transitional months, it might be a little bit easier.

Gary Miller (01:32.256)

Yes. Yes, for sure.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (01:34.69)

And of course, and some people want the other seasons. I have some Italian relatives who don't complain when they are suddenly just getting summer all year when they travel.

Gary Miller (01:47.723)

Yeah, mean, you know, we growing up in the Midwest of the U.S., right? I mean, it's our winners were pretty severe winners. They were cold and snowy. And, you know, we were in the Great Lakes region of the U.S. And that's just, you know, from you got to figure from November through February, March, it's it's winter and it's cold. And and most

I wouldn't say most, but a lot of people that are older, they all go to Florida. We call them the snowbirds. And they go down there because they don't want to deal with the cold and the snowy weather. My grandfather was a bit of an anomaly. He was one of these guys. He was a really well-known artist, watercolor artist.

He never minded it. And even into his, he lived to be a hundred, believe it or not. But he felt that living in that environment was healthier. And this man was way ahead of his time. I mean, he was taking cold showers or he would swim in the lake when it was cold. And, you know, he just embraced that. And he said, first of all, I don't believe in retirement because I think it's unhealthy. And

I don't need to go down to a warm climate. And he was a little bit of a maverick that way, I guess, is what you could say.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (03:24.19)

Even the idea of not retiring, whatever retirement really means, that's now associated with the blue zones, any thoughts about longevity, and people are seeing that. But if you look at some people who retired early in the traditional definition of that, I can understand that so much because my grandparents were like that. They retired in their 50s, but they did so much afterwards. And you kind of need that because

you need to keep the brain alive and you need to stay connected with the world.

Gary Miller (04:00.458)

My grandfather was really unique in that sense. Okay, here's a guy that had polio when he was 12. And he went to a clinic in Cleveland, Ohio for about nine months. And this was back in the early 1900s, right? So the only methods they had to fix his polio, which it couldn't really fix, right? And they didn't have vaccines back then, was they put them on the rack.

then they try to stretch it and they would, and all this, there was a lot of painful stuff that was going on and they couldn't use morphine and things like that on kids. So they did surgery without really any.

sort of painkillers. I mean, was weird. And he really endured some hard times, but it really drove him. And he used very creative methods. They told him that, you know, you're going to be in a wheelchair at 55 and dead soon thereafter. And he just went, no, I'm not going to do that. And he got to a point where he could walk.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (04:46.413)

Nothing.

Gary Miller (05:15.66)

fairly well, always walked with a limp because one leg was pretty bad. he and my grandmother traveled all over the world. He had a stationary bike at home. He rode that stationary bike every single day, well, I should say five, six days a week for an hour every morning. He must have gone around the world two or three times, right? And we would always have a big celebration when he did.

But he just always felt that that exercise was was paramount. And like I said, you know, he was way out of his time. Cold showers. He ate very healthy foods. He didn't he didn't overindulge. He'd like to have a glass of beer or a glass of wine at night. But that was about it. And he lived to be 100 years old. And in contrast, my father, OK, his son,

He retired when he was 55, I believe. Okay. And he got prostate cancer when he was 60. And, you know, I think it was like 10 years later, he was gone.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (06:32.866)

That's terrible.

Gary Miller (06:33.085)

And well, and he didn't, but he didn't live like his father. know, he, when he quit work, when he sold the business and quit work, he just would fly his airplane a little bit and he'd ski a little bit and he, but he just never had purpose. He never had purpose. And I think there was some of that. He also, you know, he drank more than he maybe should have and he.

didn't eat that healthy. And I remember him telling me, I don't need to exercise. I did that when I was in college and as an athlete. And that was kind of it. And he just sort of withered away. And yeah.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (07:18.818)

That's, think the exercise topic is an interesting one and it's great hearing it from you because you deal with exercise all the time. I had a limiting belief like that, but when I was young, I didn't feel coordinated. When I was young, I wasn't the typical sporty type, but it was so much later on that although yoga isn't a sport, I was able to follow something that was physical in some way. And

I really hope that everybody can just find something that works for them. Do you think that some people are more comfortable with some activities more than others?

Gary Miller (07:58.4)

Yeah, I think so. I'll tell you a funny story. OK, so I come from a ski family, right? My parents were competitive and I have two sisters. when I was, I want to say probably I would have been about six or seven years old. OK, my parents wanted to take us all up skiing for the weekend. We drive up to Michigan and go skiing and

I didn't want to go. And my sisters, they wanted to go, so they went, you know? But my parents got tired of leaving me at home with a babysitter. Okay? So my mother was very clever. She hired the biggest, meanest babysitter that she could find. And after two weekends of enduring that old bat, I was like, okay, I'm going skiing.

I was, you know, but I was the consummate, uncoordinated, klutzy kid. I mean, yeah, I couldn't, my father put me in Little League baseball. I couldn't catch a ball to save my life. I couldn't bat. I couldn't throw. I couldn't throw a football or kick a soccer ball. I mean, I was the definition of no athletic ability at all.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (09:04.514)

Really?

Gary Miller (09:26.483)

And I think, you know, it sort of morphed into this, well, was, as I was started to get involved in ski racing when I was, would have been about 10, I guess. In 10, 11, 12, I sort of, it was a social thing because it was around a lot of my friends. But I started to get a little annoyed with the fact that they were always coming home with trophies and medals and I was coming home with zero.

So this sort of thing just, you know, eventually I got better and I had a mentor from the U.S. Ski Team, a gal who just saw me at a camp and went, this kid's really struggling, I need to help him out. And she turned the tide for me, you know, she told me what I would need to do if I wanted to be at the podium level versus, you know, with everybody else.

And she gave me a physical fitness program for the summer and fall months. I think I was really kind of thrilled that somebody took an interest in me and said, hey, you can do great. Just you need to have a little bit of a roadmap. My father was my coach, but he didn't really push us to do any physical activity per se. And it made a difference. After a year, I was a completely different animal.

I I was strong and my coordination sort of, you know, once my body caught up with itself, but by the time I was probably in my 16, 17 years old, I was winning almost everything.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (11:11.712)

everything.

Gary Miller (11:12.639)

Yeah. Yeah. Now that was in the sport of ski racing. You know, if I wanted to go out and play golf or play tennis, it wasn't that great. Right. But so I still had some of that. But, you know, over time, you know, some people are really blessed with with, you know, a natural coordination. And and but but now over this long span of my life. OK.

Boy, exercise to me is the ticket. mean, wouldn't, you know, so many people when they have an aching pain, aches or pains, they take medication. Okay, I go out and work out and it's like the best medication you could ever have.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (12:04.554)

It really does heal and fix things.

Gary Miller (12:07.786)

Absolutely. That movement of any type. And I like to do it early in the morning because, you know, after sleeping at night, you get a little stiff and that's just the way it is. And having a body weight at my age, I don't need to go in the gym anymore. I use body weight exercises and I'm outside in nature. I have a little music going and it's, boy, it takes care of all that. And I've had

I've had, I don't know, seven surgeries or something, you I've had discs taken out of my back, I've had four knee surgeries, you know, it's been all this sort of stuff. And I got friends that walk around like they're half dead, and I feel great.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (12:52.908)

movement, it makes a giant difference. It's great that you are seeing that at any age and after all these injuries and things. The simple habits make a difference. I can relate to that so much. Someone told me recently that I'm aging backwards. Okay, I'll go with that. And there are things people can do anywhere because I looked at Pilates after yoga and one thing they both do is doing a simple plank.

I was not the type to do something like that, but you could use any floor at home, anything. And so people don't have to be an expert in something. Since you've done so much with movement for the audience to agree that people don't have to do something complicated to get movement.

Gary Miller (13:44.585)

No, and you don't need to go out and buy a gym membership. You don't need to go out and buy a bunch of equipment. literally have, I've got like a, it's not really a yoga mat because it's a little thicker, you know, it's a little softer. And I've got two sandbags that are probably, I think they're like maybe six kilos or something like that. So what is that?

15 pounds maybe or somewhere around that.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (14:17.154)

I normally use Kilos, so we can try to help the Americans convert text if they need it when listening or they can Google it.

Gary Miller (14:21.414)

Yeah.

They can Google it, So anyway, I can use it for like, I'll use it for, you know, some types of squats and I'll use it for curls and things like that. Or I'll go out and I'll do a farmer walk on a hilly trail and I'll just carry him with me.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (14:46.574)

so the farmer walk is that simply carrying things.

Gary Miller (14:52.126)

Just carrying them, just put them in your hands and carry them. you know, it's one until you get used to it, you know, it's it's a challenge, but it's it's really it's good. And and. You know, I do body weight because at my age I don't my my joints aren't as elastic as they were when I was younger. And so I don't put that strain on them, but it's that it's a constant movement. So if I go out and.

typical routine is I'll spend probably 15 minutes getting up onto a trail so I'm warmed up and I'm ready to go and then I'll have little stations that I dream up on my own and one will be the first one is always squats, regular squats and I'll do 100 of

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (15:43.278)

Literally.

Gary Miller (15:43.883)

100 squats, yeah. Now, when I started this a couple of years ago, I started out with maybe 30 or 40, and I could probably, if I, I'm gonna do it one of these days, I could probably do 200 of them. Okay, and then I've got, but I've got three different variations of squats, so I'll do a total of 300 squats. And then I've got core.

I do standing core in between those squat sets. And then I also do lunges. I'll do normally if I go out, if it's lunch day, I'll go out and I'll do 300 lunges. And I'll do them uphill with a slight grade so you don't put any stress on your knee.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (16:34.542)

Okay, that's a hint for everybody. So uphill, is there a way to do that? If someone has a normal floor, is there a way to do these things that will be more gentle on the knees?

Gary Miller (16:46.622)

Yeah, like I said, with the incline for me, it's because I don't have any cartilage left on my right knee. So for me, I try not to do something that impacts it too much. with the incline, just a little bit, you've got a little bit of your weight behind you. But it's, body weight exercises are fantastic. I was with a friend yesterday, we went for

for a long hike. He's a pilot for FedEx and he's, you know, he's younger than I am, quite a bit younger than I am. And he's got all these aches and pains and he's, but he's now 57 and he's going to the gym and he's lifting weights, but he's always having problems. And I said, dude, you got, you know, when you hit 50,

That's kind of the magic number. You don't need to lift a lot of weights and just start doing high reps of body weight exercises. And you can't believe how strong you can get. He says, yeah, because I'm having trouble with push ups. And I said, here's the key with push ups. I had to give up on them a long time ago. just I had a disease when I was a kid, so my back didn't grow straight. So it's a little harder for me to do push ups. But I said, I do incline push ups. You can do them against the wall. But instead of doing

10 or 15, do 50, 50 or 60. You'll get strong as an ox.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (18:23.214)

One client, what do you do just to lean against the wall?

Gary Miller (18:26.461)

lean against the wall or slightly down just a little bit and you're just, and you do high reps and every couple of weeks add another 10. You'd be surprised. It's crazy. if you have, so I've got squat days, I've got lunge days and with some standing core in between there, because your core is your, you can exercise your core every day.

It's just, and people don't realize that you can do that. And then there will be days when it's maybe really miserable outside. I I don't mind going out in any kind of weather. If it's misting a little bit or it's cold, I don't care. It's good to be outside. But I'll do an inside day and I'll do an hour of core. And my God, I've got probably half a dozen exercises.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (19:14.99)

What do you do for the core?

Gary Miller (19:24.335)

standing core is what I usually start with because it's a little bit easier when you get out of bed and you're stiff a little bit. So that's what I start with. And then I do, you know, I do some arm curls and I do some some over behind the neck press, you know, with the sandbags and and then I'll get on the floor and I'll do another seven or eight variations of floor core. And and

The cool thing about doing core like this with movement, this kind of movement, is you're actively stretching your muscles. I don't need to stretch as much after I do a session like that. That's crazy. mean, it's one of the best.

balms you can put on your body is doing these movement exercises and and even if you wake up and you're a little bit sore, I mean in the beginning, yeah, you get a little bit sore or if I increase my my intensity a little bit or the or the reps. Yeah, I'll get a little sore go out and move. Soreness will go away. Take don't use the pills. I mean it takes a lot for me to reach for the the

Ibuprofen.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (20:45.4)

Are you saying that a walk will ease the aches that people might have a day after a workout?

Gary Miller (20:51.291)

Absolutely, absolutely. Best thing you could do, go out and move. Don't exercise. Just go out on a trail that maybe has a little bit of elevation and just walk. It's phenomenal what it'll do. And it's hard because the common reaction for people is when they wake up in the morning and they have an ache, they'll put some ibuprofen in their bodies and they don't need to do that.

Go for a walk. Besides, you get the sun, get the, you know, you get the, it's just healthier. Just healthy.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (21:24.078)

and they might.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (21:31.65)

it is. I'm guessing some people would be using the pills to replace those other things as well. So they might not even be adding the pills onto the good things. They might be just only popping a pill and then sitting on a couch instead of getting out there into the world. Do you think so?

Gary Miller (21:48.414)

Right. Yeah. And listen, I don't want to be preaching the fact that I'm something special, that I've been doing this for so many years, that it's easy. Nothing's easy. But you have to kind of program your mind to do hard things. Because as time goes on, your body just isn't kind to itself. It starts to...

deteriorate, that's life. But you can overcome that. It was interesting because when my wife and I moved to Europe a couple years ago, we ended up in Portugal because it was the easiest place to get residency right away. And we were in the Algarve where it's nice and warm and it was on the seaside. it was an interesting experience. And I really enjoyed

some of the time down there because getting out in the morning and doing stuff and then going for a swim in the ocean where it's cold was great. And that's that's another topic all in itself. But, you know, these types of things just.

I think the real change for me was one night I sat down and watched Netflix and there was a documentary on that, or actually it was a movie on the Purdue Pharma, you know, that had the Oxycontin, the heavy duty, people were taking this narcotic to eliminate pain, but they became so addicted to it. And I thought, why?

You know, I came from a sport that probably is one of the more brutal sports on the planet. mean, you know, when you crash skiing, it's not always that pleasant, right? So we were out skiing and competing in inclement conditions where it's really cold or it's super icy. And, you know, it's not an easy sport. mean, it's tough. I'm thinking, why are these people, why are they popping a pill and sitting on the couch and

Gary Miller (24:03.869)

But then they become addicted.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (24:06.69)

And this is so deep because this is bigger than the particular pill they are turning to. It seems like people don't know how to accept pain and discomfort.

Gary Miller (24:22.876)

They don't, so I'm writing a book about it. Yeah, yeah. And I said, you know what? I gotta write a book because this makes no sense to me. So I've done a lot of research. I've got it now, I'm about halfway through most of the major edits and I'm doing, I've gotta get it to a copywriter. I'm taking those steps. It will be published this year. But I felt it was really important and I dig into, you know,

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (24:25.774)

What the?

Gary Miller (24:52.984)

what our ancestors, going back to the Viking days, what they did for pain and try to educate people on the topic of pain, because I don't think people really understand it. And it wasn't very long after watching that film on Netflix that there was a friend of ours in another town in Portugal.

had coffee with him one day and I was explaining that I saw this thing and he goes, oh my God. He said, I'm a victim of that. He said, I got hooked on Oxycontin. And he said, let me tell you something. The best day on Oxycontin is the first day. After that, it goes downhill. He said, I got to the point where I was almost stupid. He said, couldn't drive my car. I couldn't remember things.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (25:44.162)

to.

Gary Miller (25:49.08)

And he said, I was a mess and I had to get some rehab to get out of it. He was one of the lucky ones. If he would have continued on that, he would have ended up dead like so many Americans have on taking that drug.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (26:06.04)

dead. So does it mess with the brain and also the body? Do you know what it's doing to people?

Gary Miller (26:14.864)

Yeah, it's just a really, really powerful narcotic that just eliminates pain, but it's so highly addictive. mean, it's like a... It was easier than people getting hooked on heroin or crack or anything like that. I mean, it's awful. I mean, it's really bad. mean, they would find...

you know, a husband and a wife sitting in a car dead because they had taken, they eventually just gone.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (26:54.03)

That's so sad. And it's for the pain. I'm wondering how these people even got into so much pain because chances are that some of these aches are from not doing the movement to begin with. I can tell you that I was cutting back on my exercises when I couldn't get to a gym for a couple of weeks. And I know you were saying that we can do things at home.

Gary Miller (26:54.108)

Yeah, it's terrible. Yeah.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (27:20.566)

I put off getting the right mat, I think if there's one thing you need to get, everybody needs a decent mat. But I can feel it so much. I can feel just a line across my back from the aches of not doing the movements I was doing a couple of weeks ago. And if some people are going months or years without doing these movements that we all need, then it would be wrecking the...

Gary Miller (27:45.221)

If you know, if you take the average. I'll take the average guy, right? He maybe he works. At a place where he has to lift some heavy things periodically, maybe it's a warehouse or a building supply place or something like that, and he tweaks his back. OK. First thing you do when he gets home, he reaches for the pill bottle and and.

And of course, it's a compounding thing, right? If you exercise consistently, you become strong enough to be able to do those simple things and not get hurt. Now, that's not always the case because I can go and lift something. Although I've learned over time when you lift, you lift with your legs, you don't lift with your arms and, you know, just hinge at the waist. But

If you're if you're physically strong enough and so many people aren't and it's really it's it's really a problem in the US because, you know, so many people are overweight. They have let themselves go. And and when you do that, your whole body becomes out of balance. You know, if you've got a big stomach in front of you, you're you're out of balance and it puts more strain on your back. But by keeping yourself active and healthy,

You you can overcome a lot of stuff. And you know, if something, if I really get, if I really tweak something, I won't hesitate to take an ibuprofen, but I'll only take it once.

And that's it.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (29:29.522)

I'll you, I'll tell you, there's so much there and I wanted to, I wanted to mention the importance of food because of course if someone eats all the wrong things all day then they will, it would be too difficult to run that off, of course that's a part of it, but you mentioned the pain relief again and I was so keen to, I don't know if I've given this anecdote in a previous recording but when I had that tivule plateau fracture

years ago, 2017, I was in the hospital bed and I didn't understand how things work and the staff told me, so there was a button for some sort of pain relief, I don't even know what was going through my system, but the staff just said whenever I am feeling pain press that button, I kept pressing it until I vomited because I was just doing what I was told. Then I just didn't take that, the tremadol gave me hives, they would

appear in a patch on my arm and then vanish and then a patch on another spot. That was so weird to have hives just popping up and vanishing and popping up again. And so I just skipped those things and just coped. We can just cope without those things. But one thing I assume other people are doing that I did there is I just mindlessly did what I was told until people realized, okay.

this is having this effect. And by that point, we are then recovering from all those side effects.

Gary Miller (31:02.631)

Oh, for sure. Yeah, exactly. mean, it's and you know, there are are societal differences, too. And I don't know enough about Australia and you know, where you guys are. It's like one of the places that I want to go and I have never been yet. I'll get there. But it's you know, it's it's in the US. You can walk into. You know, a gas station, a convenience store.

and you can buy a bottle of 500 pills. Okay? mean, that's normal. Anywhere. Yeah, it's crazy.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (31:40.75)

anywhere. 500. What is anyone doing with 500 pills?

Gary Miller (31:46.568)

They buy a big bottle, you know, that it's over excessive and it's marketing and it's everything else, right? And in Europe, it's completely different. If you want something for pain relief, it's usually ibuprofen. And you can buy it, but you can't buy it in a gas station. You can't buy it in a convenience store. You can't buy it in a grocery store. You can only buy it in an opotech, right?

pharmacy. the only place you can buy it and it might be normally a package will you can get 10 pills in a box or you can get maybe 20 but you don't get more than that which is

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (32:31.982)

We have that, sorry for diving in, we have that sort of quantity, but it is often available at the supermarkets nearly anywhere.

Gary Miller (32:40.923)

Yeah, no, and over here in Europe, can't do that. And of course, but the society here, everyone's out walking or biking or running or doing something. They're always active. And it doesn't matter. We saw a woman this winter that had to be in her late 80s. She had a walker with wheels and she was pushing it along the trail with some slushy snow below her.

And I'm like, all right, that's fantastic. You know, they just they don't mind. You go up hiking here and you see you see people that are there in their 80s and 90s that are out there when they've got their sticks with them and and they're always they're always moving. So it's yeah, it's a you know, it's a societal thing. And, you know, going back to what you were saying with with food, the diet is so important. If you're eating.

more sugary type foods and processed foods, you will have more joint pain. I mean, they've proven that. That's a, you try to eat really healthy. We tried to do intermittent fasting back in the States. We couldn't do it. You don't have high enough quality food unless you went to Whole Foods every week to get your groceries.

And course, you know, the again, it's a societal thing. People buy groceries for a week. Well, you can do that because most of that stuff is preservatives in it. It'll last a week. Over here, everyone goes to the grocery store almost every day or every two days to buy fresh products or fresh fresh produce anyway. And so we noticed when we got to Portugal, we could exist on two two meals a day.

We would eat at noon, and we would eat at six, seven o'clock at night. That was it. because the quality of food, and we shopped every other day or every day if we had to, and we'd go to the farmer's market or wherever, and you went to the butcher to get your meat and...

Gary Miller (35:02.491)

It's crazy. The simple staple of life, bread, for example, in America, loaded with sugar. Okay, to get bread like we get here, you know, was just, it was so expensive in the States. So I can buy a really nice loaf of fresh sourdough bread, okay? And I can pay one, one euro 99.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (35:31.022)

Neeloo!

Gary Miller (35:32.037)

Yeah. And when we were in Michigan in the U.S., that same loaf of bread was ten dollars U.S.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (35:40.45)

think it's like that here a lot and it's interesting you bring that up. If I was going to go to a sourdough bakery somewhere that makes the properly, I would say it would become 10 to 12, maybe 8 to 12 Australian. So what's the American dollar? I'm going to guess off the top of my head 1.5 times that just wild guess. Maybe not.

Gary Miller (36:09.199)

Yeah, probably. I can actually look it up, but I know what you're saying. I wonder if I have Australian. OK, so. It's a U.D. right. I think that's what they go by.

Gary Miller (36:30.695)

would be, okay, so Australian dollar, one Australian dollar would be 0.72, not quite a US dollar.

Right, 72 cents. Just a little bit lower.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (36:45.902)

Right. So if I tell the internet, I'm just checking convert a, let's call it 12 AUD to USD. So that's, it's complicating this.

Gary Miller (37:01.383)

12 would be $8.80. 860. 860. Yeah. Yeah.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (37:08.398)

So basically for the Americans listening, a good loaf of bread over here is around what they would call $8. But if you're saying it was around the $10 mark in America, then it's pretty similar. seriously, then looking at the bread in the supermarkets, I like how as watching the guy who does the Blue Zone, Stan Butener, I think his name is, and

And at some point he got the bread and just squished it up in his hand and said, if you can do that, then it's not decent bread. I get so worried, but even the cheap bread is not so cheap here now in terms of price because everything is becoming expensive. But I find that I just can't even eat that. I'll just skip it until I can get real bread. But if you are going to the places that don't have options, then that's all there is. And it's not the same.

sourdough is so different

Gary Miller (38:06.289)

Sourdough is really different and we couldn't, in Portugal we couldn't get.

kind of bread we really wanted to get, right? I mean, I'm a little spoiled because I used to spend more time in Central Europe and, you know, between Italy, Austria, Germany, Switzerland, you get France, you get phenomenal breads. So I started making our own bread. And then that was really simple. It wasn't sourdough because I didn't get into the whole sourdough starter and all that stuff. But to be able to make a fresh loaf of bread every two days was

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (38:30.99)

You have to.

Gary Miller (38:41.946)

really economical and it was kind of fun actually. But it's those simple things and you consume fruits and the vegetables and eggs. are, what we buy eggs here in Germany for is, you pay in the States eight or nine dollars for a carton of eggs. I mean it's gotten so expensive, yeah.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (39:08.418)

Really?

Gary Miller (39:09.988)

Yeah, the US is really out of control right now. mean, what obviously, you know, with the whole the whole thing, the whole political thing is just an absolute disaster. And my my two of my sisters, they've been here, they visited and they couldn't believe how inexpensive the food was. My sister the other day wrote me, she said, I bought a small bag of groceries and she lives in Maine. And it was it was one hundred and ten dollars US.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (39:15.501)

apology.

Gary Miller (39:39.78)

Small bag of groceries. I can go here to the Lidl and I can buy the freshest fruits. This stuff all comes up from Spain and Italy. I bought a big bag of groceries and it might have been 30 euros.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (39:58.05)

That's better and people need to get to the basics. I will add again that I don't eat eggs but just hearing that price that really stunned me because here in Australia we are hearing that there are there are war events going on. The thing we kept hearing about was the fuel prices. So Americans will say gas, we say petrol, whatever you call it.

Gary Miller (39:59.547)

Yeah.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (40:22.324)

that was becoming the big fear and people were doing the joke memes to emotionally cope, all of that. But food is an interesting one because I think that's creeping up slowly or at least even if other things are chewing into the budget for everybody. I believe people always forget how affordable food can be because it sounds like even the basics are out of control in America but I'll tell you the very simple meal for example that I had tonight

because if we're talking about salad dough, I impressed myself. I impressed myself. I, I fried up the finely chopped onion and some fresh tomato and some brown lentils and tossed in some olive oil and taco seasoning. can tell you those simple ingredients. I used half of the onion. I used half of the tomato. This is barely any food.

At least over here, you can get a can of lentils for a dollar. I don't know what it's like in America now. And it was, it's seriously enough food for two dinners. And it was so simple. think people don't realize how simple food is. People think they need, you know, I think the ingredients list has missed, it has messed everything up because people are looking for a particular products that might've had.

Gary Miller (41:24.889)

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Gary Miller (41:30.48)

Mm-hmm.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (41:47.534)

nutrients, you know, something is processed and then, you know, or people are checking the grams of the protein or that stuff instead of just checking is this real food. I hope that everywhere in the world people can at least go and get the simple things like potatoes, whatever, and just at least eat something real to start.

Gary Miller (42:06.467)

It's member during COVID. OK. I was always blown away by. Going into the grocery store and seeing. Seeing all these aisles with. Boxed and canned foods. That were completely empty. In addition to the. Toilet paper. I'll was completely empty, right? That one still baffles me. It's like OK.

Something's weird about that, during things like that, they all rush to buy toilet paper. Whatever. So, so, but anyway, if you continue on and you get to the produce area, it's completely full. And they were even throwing that stuff out. People, you know, we're going to be stuck at home. So we're just going to make boxed macaroni and cheese, or we're going to do canned jar of pasta sauce. Right.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (42:42.673)

yes.

Gary Miller (43:06.822)

And that's what we'll eat that. And it's like, no, you don't need to do that. Life is food is simple. And you can you can do things that are really cool. When my kids were young, they love pasta, right? But I wasn't going to give them the spaghetti owes or whatever they they they have in the can. Right. I said, there's no way I'm going to do that. You can you can buy

I really got into it big time. So I would buy Roma tomatoes. I would blanch them. Okay, peel the skin off and take the seeds out and then I would press them and I would make my sauce that way. Well, you know, I don't really need to do that anymore because here, especially being so close to Italy, you can buy a box of the crushed tomatoes that don't have the seeds and all that sort of stuff in it. And it's pretty

pretty similar. And then it's just, you know, some garlic and some olive oil first, pour the tomatoes in there, and I add salt and pepper and I use a, I use a like a, like a pink Himalayan salt and maybe some Italian herbs. That's it. Then you throw the pasta in the water and you got a phenomenal healthy, and we can get two days out of a, you know, when I make a batch of pasta.

We use a like a porcelain, they call it a Dutch oven, I guess, or a crock, it's like a crock, you know, and with a lid on it. And all you have to do is put in, slice up some potatoes, some carrots, onions, celery, plop a chicken in there, put some, we use just curry, we cover it in olive oil, and then we put some curry powder.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (44:45.331)

that's...

Gary Miller (45:06.469)

some brown sugar, a little salt and pepper, and you've got a phenomenal meal. Okay, you've got your chicken, which is great, and you've got your vegetables. And then I go and I strip the chicken down, either my wife or I will strip the chicken down, add some bouillon to it, some of the water in a bouillon cube, and we have chicken soup for two more days.

Gary Miller (45:37.347)

And you're eating pure food. I have a little bit of a thing for dark chocolate, but it's the lesser of a lot of the chocolate evils. But those kinds of things, they're affordable if you do it this way, but people inherently, I think, are lazy.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (45:49.165)

Then

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (46:00.598)

To some extent, laziness is a part of it. And I will clarify, also, so I, I don't eat dairy eggs or meat, but I think if everybody starts with real food, it's a great start. And I was reminiscing today that I am just bursting to roast some potatoes. And again, how difficult is it to just, especially the tiny ones, you barely have to cut them, make sure it's clean enough, throw it in an

oven, you don't have to do anything. But you mentioned the laziness. I wanted to comment on how people sometimes do end up with busy lives. And although there are ways with technology to make our time more efficient, things happen. People, families work, things get busy. But I've been looking in different areas. So I'm at the coast, but I'm close enough to Sydney. And when I first started exploring Sydney again, I thought,

Every place has pastries. It was pastries at all the coffee places. And I was trying to figure out, okay, where is the quick healthy food? I can tell you it's the unexpected places. If I go to the nice coffee places, it's perhaps a big refined white bread with something in it, whatever.

There'll be the places that are doing the burgers that are extra oily, whatever, but the supermarket will have a salad with some falafels in it. It's simple. I, a few times I went to the supermarket when they had some clearance things at the end of the day and got the simple salads then. So you look for the basics. I keep my eye out for a, an avocado sushi roll.

It's a few ingredients, I know what's in it, and I can eat that on the go. I passionately believe people need to at least look for the real food, even if they are getting busy.

Gary Miller (48:05.003)

Absolutely. And it just takes, it takes a little bit more effort. It doesn't take a lot. It takes a little bit more effort. You know, it's like...

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (48:13.646)

No.

Gary Miller (48:18.31)

I mean, it goes into a little bit off topic, but it's a little bit like, you know, you're home with the kids, right? And, and, and, you know, we would trade off cooking. Okay. I would, I would cook some nights. My wife would cook some nights. We take the kids out and do something active. And, and, and today there's too much of this. Give them this and keep them occupied. Right.

Really? That's not helping anybody. so, yeah, mean, it's just keeping...

I know people with two people working, it's really a challenge, right? And they come home from work and they're tired. I understand that. I've been there, done that before. But it's going back to what I said, do hard things. dig a little bit deep. Don't let that dictate your life.

Still, you have to prepare good food and good meals. And then after dinner, go for a nice walk. then you'll sleep much better at night. That's kind of it.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (49:44.042)

It's, think the do hard things wisdom that's going to encourage people who don't have someone who can carry the load with them because you two are such a team and I hope that all couples can be a team and just alternate with duties, things like that. That makes a difference. And I, I feel excited to know that I won't always be just juggling everything alone, but

to those people who are juggling everything because either they are alone or their other person just isn't doing the things, or maybe they are both working. This is a simple facts of life of things will be difficult. We just have to do it. And you are coming from, course, a professional background where you help people to do great sport as well and reach goals. So,

We've barely even talked about the human charger yet, so we'll get to that in a second. But every topic was just golden. I forgot just how diverse this is. But absolutely. You need to just find the bravery. And it's great that you're saying that. It's one of those moments when a podcast guest tells me what I need to hear. Because I think we also need to do the things that feel impossible.

Everybody had something that felt like the limit at some point. But I'll tell you in terms of doing hard things, okay, because a pivot is better late than never. I have, I don't know if anyone else uses the human charger for ears popping, but I just found that maybe it's, maybe half of it is just putting those little earphone rubber things in. For those who haven't seen it, it's just like if you get earphones to listen to music and it has the rubber things on that.

I don't know if that's contributing to it or also the light, but just popping those on when my ears are going weird on a long trip, it has seriously made a difference.

Gary Miller (51:52.727)

I listen this this device is is probably one of the the crazier things. And and to to lead into that a little bit. Doing hard things. Is something that I talked to athletes about right. But you you have you you have you have the athlete the elite athletes that are up here and you've got the ones that that are here that that want to be up here.

right? And that's always the tough one because you get kids that are in our sport of ski racing and I think it's pretty similar with with other sports too. You get these kids that are in that 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, probably that 16 to 20 more into the probably 19, 20 years old. They've been in it long enough. They want to get to the top. They want to do this. They get they plateau.

because they do not understand the value of doing hard things. So what I do is I try to reframe it for them. And there's a lot of keys here, but, I won't go into all of them. That's for maybe another topic or another discussion. But, you know, I try to frame it like this. Your goal should be a one percenter. And this goes across the board for everybody. If you make it a goal,

To be a one percenter, that means you're special. You're better than 99 % of all people on the planet. Just be a one percenter. Do those extra things. Do the hard things. And it's get up every day. And it's simple stuff. When you get out of bed, you make your bed. Make it the best that you can make it.

Do whatever you need to do, get your clothes on, whatever, and hydrate. Drink, you know, two 20 ounce glasses of water, have a little fruit, and then get out the door and walk around the neighborhood. If it's only as simple as a 15 to 20 minute walk around the neighborhood, you've done, you have become a one percenter because you're doing what most people will never ever do in their life. You're awake.

Gary Miller (54:15.001)

You've got some movement. Some of those aches and pains will go away. Have a little bit of a breakfast. Then you go to work. You're ready to go. You're tuned up. so it's I'm always looking for those things to help people become a one percenter. And with that human charger, that's exactly when I saw the thing, I didn't know really anything about it.

Okay, and I'm a little bit embarrassed because as an elite coach, maybe I should have paid more attention to the body's circadian rhythm. mean, God knows, we fly all over the world, right? And we suffer jet lag. So we had, I still laugh about this because, okay, I've got my downhill ski racers.

back in the 80s, okay? This was a long time ago. And we're flying to Europe and we're, God, driving to your destination after you've flown across the pond, you're jet-lagged to the hilt, and yet I gotta make sure these guys get to their destination. we had a guy by the name of Dietrich Matichitz. I don't know if that name rings a bell, okay? He's the founder of Red Bull.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (55:43.625)

Nice.

Gary Miller (55:44.716)

Okay, so Dietrich became a good friend. He was a great guy. He loved us and we would get cases of Red Bull. And that Red Bull was what we used to keep ourselves bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, as they would say. And, you know, it never dawned on me, right, that, wow, this is a really cool product, because I would bring cans of it home to the U.S.

And my buddies would be like, you got to bring more of this back to the States. They didn't go into the US till the 90s. And I never thought to go to Dietrich and say, I know a distributor back there that would love this stuff. I buy it and import it? Never thought about it. But that's all we had. That's all we knew.

You you'd suffer for three, four days, you'd get over your jet lag and then you'd be fine. But it has a dramatic impact on you physically, emotionally, mentally. And, you know, but that was a, that's a different era. And so when we found the human charger, which is this simple little headset, right, I didn't really know.

much about seasonal depression. My wife knew about it because she does suffer from seasonal depression. I'm lucky, I guess. I'm kind of a ready-set-go guy when I get up in the morning. you know, we just got used to that. And I'm not much of a... Even though I like to have a can of Red Bull once in a while, I know it's an energy drink and they're not that great for you, right? There's too much sugars in them and they're...

Kids are consuming way too many of them today. But I didn't know much about light and how it would impact our biological clock, right, our internal clock. So we started to look into the science of the human charger and found that it was developed in Finland by a scientist and an engineer from Nokia, the phone company.

Gary Miller (58:09.38)

And it was at a time when Nokia wasn't doing very well because Apple had come out with the iPhone. so these guys broke off. And because Finland is obviously way northern latitude and dark winters, they had a lot of people that were suffering from seasonal depression. And the only thing that they had at the time was a lamp. You'd stare into this lamp for an hour. they wanted to come. Yeah. And you have to be close. And you have to stare at it for an hour because

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (58:32.376)

this call.

Gary Miller (58:38.947)

You can't get anything more than that. But not many people have the time to do that, or like staring at a light. You know, it's not only great for your eyes anyway. But that's the way that light goes through your optic nerve, triggers the options, the proteins that affect your hypothalamus that deliver the cortisol to wake you up in the morning. You know, and then obviously,

melatonin kicks in in the evening when it gets dark. So, you know, we just, you know, that's all that people knew. And these guys broke off and they did some experiments and they found, number one, that light would penetrate a skull.

And they looked at the ear canal because the ear drum is translucent and the bone structure around the ear is very thin. So they started doing therapy, what they call transcranial light therapy, and they would use, you know, a device like this that had 10,000 lux, which is the same lux as a sad lamp, and they just put them in the ears.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (59:52.078)

And by the way, so for those who can see the video, if you switch off the light and people can see the actual ear part that goes in your ear, people will see it's seriously, it's that simple. looks like earphones. So that's significant because it's that simple. can tell you, I was at a place where I was getting support and being with people and I just sat on a couch and paused after a bit of

coffee, stopped my coffee for a moment, just popped the headset on. It's what, 12 minutes? Does it stay on? 12 minutes out of the day, not that much time. You just sit there, it's so lightweight. It's so much thinner and compact than, you know, people go around with the big headphones. It's not even like that. It's so small. You just pop that in.

Gary Miller (01:00:27.043)

12 minutes.

Gary Miller (01:00:45.943)

Yeah, so the original version was actually more like an iPod. You know, it had a little handheld device and it had the cables that went up to the earbuds. These are called earbuds. And they're just little LED lights in there that provide 10,000 lux of a full spectrum, UV free, which is really important because, yeah, people are going to say, well, I can go out and I can look at the sun and I can, yeah.

Sure, you can do that and you should do that but you got to be careful of that because there's all the other things that we know about with Sun today So this is a really really really safe Quick and efficient way that when you get up in the morning You know you can you can throw this device. It's like the old JVC Bluetooth headphones, you know, you just stick around your neck and you click the button once you've got the light you pop them in Look at your clock

Okay, it's 1106, so 12 minutes from there at 1118, I'm able to... it'll just automatically shut off. You just pull it out and you go, it's off now. Okay, then you... Yeah.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (01:01:51.534)

And.

You put it around your neck. I was putting that part on my head like a headband. Sorry, that looked weird the way I just did that. But I guess you can do either. But around the neck is even easier.

Gary Miller (01:02:05.867)

Yeah, around the neck is probably the simplest. And no, it's really clever. It's so simple to use. you know, so we, the more we kind of got into the thing, you know, my wife is like, God, I gotta try this thing because I'm not very good about getting up in the morning. You know, I always struggle to get up in the morning. so she was the first one that started using it within a week. She was like, I've never been able to get up regular in the morning.

So it sort of reset. You know, she was working at a retail store that was more of an in a basement, so she didn't get a lot of natural light. So this really helped her a ton. And and then the more I dug into it, I'm thinking, you know, God, I know what I know what I felt like on a really nice sunny day at a ski race. Right. Everyone's happy. Sun's bright. You can see everything's clear and

And it's really nice. But you get a day that's cloudy and it's snowing and it's gray and it's, you know, you just don't wake up with that same feeling. Right. And I'm thinking, wow, that could that could really help. Because I'm a I'm a little bit odd, I'm a ready, set, go guy, get up in the morning, go and I'm fine. But when I noticed it was, you know, when we were talking about my exercise routine, OK.

that's when I noticed this thing the most because when I used it I was really sharp. My focus was better because I do some mental exercises as well. You know I've got music going, I've got you know I've got some counting things that I'm doing, I've got visual images, I do all this sort of stuff and if I don't use it I'm a little bit drifting you know I drift a bit. If I use it I'm sharp I'm just like

tunnel vision. That's where I noticed it. So I thought, God, well, my athletes, this could be great. So I got it out to some of the athletes that, you know, I'm not actively coaching the athletes anymore on the national team, but I got it out to some of the national team athletes. And, you know, they know the biggest thing was jet lag. That was huge. That's a game changer that I wish we would have had years ago.

Gary Miller (01:04:33.376)

because with jet lag, okay, and to give you a little bit of a background, the circadian rhythm, okay, our body's biological clock, I like to say that we are, as a human being, we're running 21st century software on a thousand year old operating system, okay? Our bodies haven't evolved enough to be able to overcome jet travel.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (01:04:56.364)

in what way?

Gary Miller (01:05:02.434)

across six time zones.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (01:05:04.364)

Right, we haven't evolved to flick between time zones.

Gary Miller (01:05:08.13)

Right. Yeah, we can't. We have gotten better over time. I mean, over the last 100, 200 years, you can look back and go, yeah, we've really evolved as human beings, but not enough to overcome that because jet travel has only been around for 40, 50 years and you arrive and there's no way you can just arrive in feeling great. So what the human charger does

is that when you arrive at a destination, so if I'm flying from the US to Europe, I arrive in the morning, I use it at eight o'clock in the morning, and then I use it every two hours after that for two days. So I use it at eight, 10, 12, two, and maybe even four p.m. And all it's doing is resetting my circadian rhythm every two hours. So I don't feel that groggy, sluggish feeling.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (01:05:52.419)

Okay.

Gary Miller (01:06:07.97)

Okay, and then I'll sleep really good the first night, which is always a little iffy. And then second day, I do the same thing, eight, 10, 12, two, and four. And then you're normal, perfectly normal.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (01:06:21.43)

And that, that answers the question that I emailed to you because I found myself using the device twice. found my ears were popping into that a few hours later. I just, felt so stressed. Maybe it's partly the seasonal change and life, anything. And I just pop this in and then it's, it just got me away from all of that.

blurry, you said that you get some alertness from it. I sent that as well. even doing it twice, was wondering is this fine, but you do it every couple of hours when you need to.

Gary Miller (01:06:54.146)

Well, for jet lag, especially, but everyone's a little bit different, right? My wife will use it in the afternoon instead of an espresso or something like that, because with this, you don't have a caffeine crash, right? You can go get your coffee in the afternoon and you'll have a good spike for an hour so. And then all of a sudden it's like, I'm back to my normal sluggish feeling. I've got coaches that are using it.

OK, that after a long day of training, everyone jumps in the van. They drive back to their to their hometown or their their base. And it might be an hour drive, hour and a half, you know, because they like to go to a lot of different ski areas around Europe. And and I said, you know, instead of stopping for a coffee, pop that thing in. This coach calls me and he goes, my God, this is weird. He said, I'll put that thing on in 15, 20 minutes later. I'm wide awake.

I have no, I'm not dozing off again in the afternoon. So it, and he tried it on his first, the first time in the fall season, they went from Germany up to Norway and it was like 30 hours. And he was dying. He said, those trips are long, but he said it with the human charger was fantastic. He said, I'd use it whenever I needed it. And it was great. And I slept well and such and so forth.

So for athletics, the scientist and the engineer did some studies at the University of Finland, and they did them with the Finnish pro hockey teams. And they found that because in an arena, like it would be for basketball, volleyball, hockey, the light, overhead light, is only about 1,200 to 1,500 lux. So it's not very, which is about,

the amount of light you'd get on a cloudy day. On a sunny day, if you look at a light chart, a sunny day can be upwards of 75 to 100,000 lux, which is bright. you get, you you just feel different on a sunny, bright, sunny day, right? So they did these studies and they found that the hockey players, their psychomotor speed, which is what we call reaction time, was sped up.

Gary Miller (01:09:23.75)

And for athletes, I go back to that 1 % thing again. So many sports, not so much the team sports, but the individual sports, somebody will win by 0.01.

That's it's nothing. That's that's a that's a pinky finger or something. You know, I mean, that's crazy. And and if you had something that was holistic, it wasn't a drug that wasn't something that would show up in doping control. You're going to have an advantage. It's just the way it is.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (01:10:06.581)

the it's a natural solution. And this is going to be so relevant to anyone who is getting into a winter renowned for those who are not in Australia or on the other side of the world. Winter will arrive when it arrives. So it's still relevant anyway. And and like I said earlier, the difference is so significant because say someone is doing a nine to five back in the summer time, someone might have had

daylight and some sun and at least perhaps getting some brightness until what seven maybe eight at night and there's a good few hours and so for those who do have those standard nine to fives there's literally less time in the day to get that light so that will help everybody to to just get that alertness but even the

circadian rhythm, although it's more dramatic when you have a long flight, I can see so many applications to this because over here, look, we have daylight savings where the clock changes by an hour and some people are not affected by it, but some are just totally thrown. For me, I have a very kind social group online that's based in America. I don't have it, I'm in it. And

Because of their version of daylight saving and mine, I went from it being 7am to 5am and that's a big leap. So I'm thinking, well, you know, in this day and age, so many people will have calls with people in any part of the world for work, things like that. And then you do have to be really switched on at different times. So this is going to really help people because even

We've all heard someone out there saying, I'm not a morning person. You're either a morning person or you're not, but it sounds like this could help people to just get more alert and get on with the day sooner.

Gary Miller (01:12:14.018)

It will. it's it's I mean, my wife has proved it and, you know, tens of thousands of other people have have proven it as well. And we know we're humans. We're all different, right? Some people, it works fantastic. Some people, it works great. Some people, maybe not as much. You know, I found a different way that that it sort of helps me. But for the average person,

And it's across the spectrum. mean, we've talked about jet lag. There's the other jet lag, the social jet lag, which are shift workers. Those are the people that are working at night. And again, I go back to back in time where we didn't have such a fast paced world and people just operated. We didn't have mobile phones and computers and all that sort of stuff. Right. Everyone sort of

followed a nine to five schedule and whatever. You didn't have that many people working at night. But now you've got warehouses and you've got data centers and you've got...

financial trading houses and you know, it used to be where you know, the stock market was during the day. Now you got night traders. We ran into one this winter. One of these athletes that uses the product, his father is a night trader in Boston and he goes to work at nine o'clock at night and works till five in the morning. Yeah. Yeah. No, it's crazy. And he says, I know it's unhealthy for me. He's

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (01:13:47.107)

Seriously? my gosh, I can't imagine.

Gary Miller (01:13:55.393)

We finally were able to reconnect again. And I sent him one, and I said, try it. I wanted to see what you guys, you know, and we have a protocol designed for that, okay? If you have people that have jet lag, and I don't know if I, did I send you our jet lag protocol?

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (01:14:14.413)

You sent that, I looked at the emails before recording and you sent that in a PDF. Is that bundled with the product or if you want me to simply put it on the podcast website, I can do that.

Gary Miller (01:14:24.93)

Yeah, yeah, I would. mean, it's eventually what I'd really like to see is to have an app that people can just look at their phone and, you know, and figure it out from there. yeah, yeah, there's a new company called Base 44, okay? And they'll design an app for you. I mean, they can do it quickly and easily and fairly affordable.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (01:14:38.607)

I can make an app.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (01:14:54.127)

These days, Claude code can make an app. I started small. I'm revealing my secrets on the podcast here. So Claude code, I don't know if you've used Claude, but it will tell you how to. So I wanted to gradually get off my Squarespace subscriptions. I, I pay so much money every year for my websites. And so my main Melanie website, I told Claude.

Gary Miller (01:14:54.303)

the kind of money I want to spend on it right now.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (01:15:24.015)

I grabbed screenshots of the old site and I told it I want it to look like this. Now the coding, it looks like those old fashioned, look, I'm so not technical. If you remember the olden days when computers had just a black window with all this text on it, it's the from scratch stuff. I'll tell it, this is what I need you to do. And then it will tell me, okay, paste this code into this thing. I just paste it in.

And then it is made the site. And if I, I'll have a conversation with the robot and I'll say, look, did you realize that the menu is working on the Mac book, but not on my phone. it said, that's because it's not doing this thing for the mobile version. And so you need to paste this in and it's your own personal nerd at a drop of a hat. And it can do that for apps as well. So.

If you all want to chat, just, feel like haven't given you all enough favors, but it's like, I think that people need this information and you know, I'm trying to get more info into the members platform for the podcast as well. But this device and the jet lag, you know, people need to have access to these things. And in terms of access, I was going to mention from what I remember, the device isn't expensive either, it?

Gary Miller (01:16:50.024)

No, it's not. mean, in the US, we sell it for $179 US. And you know, this thing, it's about as simple as you can get. It's got a lithium ion battery in there that will, I don't know what you've found, but normally if I use it once a day, it'll last almost a month before I need to recharge it again. And you just plug it into any USBC and it's charged up. People are out there with...

These devices, they've had the human charger for six, seven years. it's, know, outside of maybe, you you can lose your earbud periodically and you do have replacements for that. So people can, obviously you can get replacements. But it's pretty simple. The original one that I was telling you about that was more like an iPod, it did have music. Okay. But the problem was is that

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (01:17:45.304)

Nice.

Gary Miller (01:17:48.276)

when you only need it for 12 minutes. Okay, it's kind of an expensive upgrade because everyone has their own music choices and their own AirPods or, you know, I use the meta glasses, which has amazing sound. my God, best thing I think I've ever had. My wife bought me a pair a year and a half ago. And honestly,

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (01:18:04.664)

Really?

Gary Miller (01:18:15.519)

Well, and I use it as a teaching tool too, because if I'm doing, if I'm working with an athlete or something, it has 4K video in it as well. So I can film them, I can ski behind them and I can film them and then I can critique them later, which is fantastic. But they have speakers in the bows, right? And it just envelops your head in music. Yet I can still hear the birds. I can still hear traffic.

I don't have something that's going to fall out of my ear. I mean, best thing, one of the best technological pieces I've ever had in my life. It's pretty amazing. Now, in some places they're outlawed because you got those whack jobs out there that'll use the camera to photograph stuff they shouldn't be photographing.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (01:19:08.911)

And I'm guessing people wouldn't know when someone is taking a photo.

Gary Miller (01:19:12.608)

Exactly. Yeah. And that's why they've been banned in some places. it's like, but when it comes to, and I originally thought this would be a phenomenal Apple product and apparently they are coming out with something like that, but it ended up coming out of Meta and with RayBan and it was, it's really kind of a game changer. But, you know, I digressed here. So in order to do it with music,

They would have had to, you've got to the speakers, you've got to add the Bluetooth, which has, god, I think the licensing, every year you got a licensed Bluetooth, right? So it's $15,000 or something crazy. And so they didn't want to pay that, they didn't think for 12 minutes, keep it simple as possible.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (01:19:52.11)

Really?

Gary Miller (01:20:07.381)

But yeah, mean, it's one of those things that kind of in our microscopic world, you know, mean, it's our world is complicated and we're running at a high pace all the time to have something that just gives you a little bit of an extra edge, whether it's athletics, whether it's somebody working the night shifts. And that works the same as jet lag, right? Because it will

reset your circadian rhythm the first couple nights. So that's what I told, you know, Neil at the Night Trader. He said just use it the first couple nights and it'll reset your rhythm to night. And then on the weekends, you go back to using it during the day and it resets your rhythm for the day. So it's pretty simple for that. But we have not, and you know, they, because Europe is...

It's so close. You you're only crossing a time zone or two. Jet lag wasn't a big factor. But from the US or even Asia and Australia, you know, those are long flights and they're hard. They're hard on the body. I mean, we have a there. He's not. He might be a night trader as well, but he there was a gentleman that. He was going from L.A. To Manila.

and he was working in the Philippines for a week and he said, I got to work at night. And he, he bought one for his boss at Christmas and the boss loved it because he was flying back and forth from LA to Taipei. And, and then he said, I've never seen a product like this. He said, this is, it's fantastic. It just keeps me completely normal. And, and, you know, for the average traveler, it's really a game changer.

But we've really pushed the jet lag thing because we have not found anybody yet that has said it didn't work for jet lag. Nothing.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (01:22:09.069)

Wow. So for everybody, it works.

Gary Miller (01:22:15.124)

Yeah, because light is the only thing that can reset your circadian rhythm.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (01:22:24.303)

significant. And I wanted to really acknowledge here that although this is technology, it's a fancy device, you are still being holistic. And I actually like that for most of the conversation, we talked about the essential habits, and we'll wind up in a moment. It's what you could call common sense. And this is simply adding to that to say when the world is derailing us from those common sense things and

the basics when something is getting in the way like travel or odd work hours when the modern world isn't letting us get back to what we were built for. This thing is helping in a very natural way.

Gary Miller (01:23:10.171)

It's really important. I can't emphasize enough the holistic side of it, whether it's the average person who doesn't want to be on medication. I mean, there are a lot of people that... I'll give you a good example. In the athletic side, Iga Svajtek, Polish tennis player, right? She's number three in the world, one of the best tennis players.

And it was probably a year, year and a half ago. She took some melatonin. Melatonin people, a lot of people take melatonin, right? It gets asleep at night. It was tainted. So she went to a tournament. You got to pee in the cup and she got flagged by doping control. And of course, then she has to hire a bank of attorneys to go fight the WADA, the World Anti-Doping Association, because they wanted to suspend her for.

a simple product like melatonin that was tainted somehow. Maybe it was made in a pharmaceutical manufacturing facility that had another product that was banned by the anti-doping association. That's a huge hiccup. Then, of course, she has to deal with the fallout of, is she doping? Is she taking stuff that she shouldn't be taking? And it traced it back to this melatonin.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (01:24:37.997)

The image cost, there are so many costs to that.

Gary Miller (01:24:38.047)

Simple. Oh. Terrible. Terrible. OK, here's another one. Jet lag. When I went back to the women's US ski team in 2014 and I was coaching the ladies tech team, is which was Michaela Schifrin, the best ski racer in the world. We are in Copper Mountain, Colorado in November.

And the first race of the year is usually the third weekend in November in Levi, Finland. Okay. And Levi is north of the Arctic circle. So it's dark by that time. It's dark. I mean, the sun comes up at about 10 cruises along the horizon and it drops at about two. So it's, dark and it's cold and it's, it's typical Finland, right? So the head coach, I worked under the head coach.

He wanted to leave three days before. And I said, that's not enough time. I said, we got to go five days. He goes, no, we can't afford five days because with trainings too good in Colorado. I said, this isn't about the training. It's about the race. can't go that short a period of time in the winter months where you have issues, right? Sometimes with travel. No, I lost the argument because I'm not the head coach. So we fly to Boston and what do you have? A blizzard.

So we get delayed by weather. And by the time we ended up in Levy, it was the night before the race. And she was hammered. This is a race she's won now, I think.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (01:26:15.567)

Darn.

Gary Miller (01:26:22.452)

By now, I think it's eight or nine times. But she was hammered. And then the other two girls that were with us were hammered as well. And nobody performed. I think it was the worst race she has had in that event, the slalom event, since she's been skiing. And I think she was seventh or something like that. And she was really upset about it. And her parents were upset about it. And I said, you just don't have enough time to, you can't, your body can't catch up.

and you have a high performance level. And of course, for her, being the best ski racer in the world, she's a highly paid athlete. That, that race and not ending up on the podium probably cost her six figures.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (01:27:10.251)

It's significant. So we need to listen to the energy and the patterns that we need to perform well.

Gary Miller (01:27:11.763)

significant.

Gary Miller (01:27:20.935)

If you knew the numbers, and I wish I had them in front of me right now, but it's hundreds of millions of dollars that are lost due to a lack of productivity from jet lag. They've done studies on this. It's staggering. So if you're a business executive and you're flying anywhere, whether it's to Asia, whether it's to Europe, Australia, it doesn't matter.

If you're gonna fly that distance and you're gonna go into the boardroom the next day, you're not gonna be at 100%. I will guarantee it. It's not possible unless you plan ahead, use this, even if you were in the boardroom and you used this every two hours, you're gonna be way ahead of everybody else.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (01:28:07.321)

That's the thing, do the things to get ahead. And we talked about doing the hard things. We can use what's available to step up.

Gary Miller (01:28:18.291)

Yeah, can drink yourself, you can drink like a fish with coffee and energy drinks in the boardroom, but you're gonna crash big time and then you're not worthwhile the next day. Stuff like this is so simple. Okay, it's so easy to use and it's affordable and it fits in a little pouch that you can throw in your purse, your backpack, your pocket.

It doesn't matter. And here's the kicker, Melanie.

The sad lamp business globally is $500 to $600 million a year, and it's growing at 6 to 8%, which tells you that, people are struggling with, whether it's jet lag or it's long working hours or night shift or just a winter depression. OK, that's how big the market is. And yet, this is the modern day answer.

You know, that's it.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (01:29:22.985)

People don't know. And they want it, they need it. So when I, sorry, when I mentioned to people, and we'll wind up, it's been an hour and a half, and I don't normally do podcasts for hours on end, but it's like, there's so much to talk about. We almost need a fourth and fifth episode. But when I mentioned light therapy, people assume that I mean those, do you know those masks? I don't even know what people do with them. The mask you put over your face. People assume it's that.

And so a few times lately I've pulled out my device and I'm showing people it's literally just this little thing. People don't realize, yes, that there's a solution. And also people don't realize just how compact it is.

Gary Miller (01:30:07.495)

It's the perfect solution. I mean, it's like going back and saying to your car dealer, I'm buying a new car, but can you wire a phone in for me? You know, where the phones used to be in the center console and it had a cord and you, or going, remember the Motorola brick, right? You had this big brick phone, you know, it's like, wait a minute, that's like buying a sad lamp.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (01:30:24.344)

Yes!

Gary Miller (01:30:34.919)

No, you buy the modern day version of this. It's so simple. It's, you know, now, and of course the sad lamp market has grown, right? Because they're coming out with, you can do it on your iPhone or you can do it on a little thing like this that doesn't have enough power to have any effect on you at all. It's a scam.

Simple. Yeah, it's just, it's crazy. And, you know, people are always willing or wanting to save a buck here and a buck there. But at the end of the day, of all the things I've seen in my lifetime, it's probably one of the more remarkable things because it's just, it's so effective and it's so efficient to use. you know, it's just, and thanks to you to doing podcasts like this, hopefully we can spread the word and...

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (01:31:00.003)

Interesting.

Gary Miller (01:31:30.226)

Yeah.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (01:31:32.463)

Absolutely. And I'm keen to tell more people about it. It's so great that you have been detailing what this does and how you are genuinely approaching this from a holistic perspective of valuing health and wanting people to use resources wisely instead of using excessive painkillers beyond what's healthy, beyond... Instead of people using loads of sugar and so on,

You're finding a responsible way for people to help themselves. So thank you for that.

Gary Miller (01:32:04.862)

Yeah, you're welcome. That's the key. you get, I don't know, for me, you get to this point in life and just giving back so that people can understand how to live a healthier life is so important to me. It's not the, obviously I'm selling a product, but I get hit up by a lot of AI marketers and they're like, oh, we can kill it. It's not a matter of.

just money. This is about somebody's well-being. And there are so many bad things out there. You've got to have something good that can really have an impact, for sure. That's key.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (01:32:52.015)

Absolutely. Thanks for being on the show again.

Gary Miller (01:32:55.794)

Thank you very much, Melanie. It was a pleasure.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (01:32:58.969)

I'm so glad. I'll click stop.

Your Brain on Fear, Dopamine & Social Media | Neuroscientist Sankalp on Mental Health, Meditation & the Age of AI

What if the mental health crisis, the attention economy, and the rise of AI are all pointing to the same thing — the urgent need to understand your own mind?

In this return conversation, Melanie sits down again with Sankalp, postdoctoral research associate at the University of Oxford's NeuroSCOPE group, where he investigates the relationship between emotions and decision-making, anhedonia (the reduced ability to experience pleasure), depression, and the neural mechanisms behind them using ultra-high-field MRI. He completed his PhD in Experimental Psychology at Oxford, where he explored how social environments shape our tendency toward connection, and how social decisions relate to our mental health. He also has over two decades of meditation practice, including five silent 10-day retreats, which makes him uniquely placed to bridge neuroscience and lived wisdom.

This is a rich, layered conversation that goes well beyond the lab.

What we explore in this episode:

Sankalp opens by reframing the true cost of mental health — not just personal suffering, but an economic burden that rivals a pandemic, recurring every single year. He challenges the popular "chemical imbalance" narrative around depression, explaining why our current psychiatric categories are far looser and more arbitrary than most people realise, and why two people with the same diagnosis can present with completely different symptoms.

From there, the conversation moves to serotonin — one of the least understood neurotransmitters despite its cultural prominence — and what science actually does and doesn't know about its role in mood, gut health, delayed gratification, and environmental tracking.

They go deep on addiction: why it isn't simply about substances, but about unmet human needs being filled through increasingly unhealthy channels — including TikTok, social approval, and the algorithmically engineered "like" button. Sankalp explains precisely when social media shifted from a connection tool to a dopamine trap, and what that means for teenagers in particular.

The discussion turns to fear — how the amygdala evolved to protect us, and what happens when manufactured fear is delivered on command, at scale, through our screens. Then, to the neuroscience of social connection: why humans evolved complex brains specifically to cooperate, why connected people literally get sick less, and why now is the time to reach out more, not less.

Sankalp brings it all together through meditation, wisdom, and the age of AI — arguing that as artificial agents handle more of our workload, clarity of values and contemplative practice become more important than ever, not less.

Guest Bio:

Sankalp is a postdoctoral research associate in the NeuroSCOPE group at the University of Oxford, led by Laurel Morris. His research focuses on the relationship between emotions and decision-making, with a particular focus on anhedonia — the reduced ability to experience pleasure — as a key symptom of depression and its relationship to overall mental health. He uses ultra-high-field MRI to investigate the neural mechanisms behind anhedonia and depression. He completed his PhD in Experimental Psychology at Oxford under Professors Matthew Rushworth and Miriam Klein-Flügge, where he studied how social environments shape our propensity for social affiliation, how social decisions relate to mental health, and what neural mechanisms underpin those decisions. He has practised meditation for over two decades and has completed five silent 10-day retreats.

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Melanie Suzanne Wilson (00:01)

Senkalp, welcome back to the show again. For those who have not listened to the first episode, very briefly, we know that you are a neuroscientist. How do you explain exactly what you do?

Sankalp (00:17)

Sure, first of all, thanks for having me back. It's nice to be here. What do I do? Oof, that's already getting into the deep end of things. Well, the title is I'm a neuroscientist. I work at the University of Oxford. My main job, I think, involves figuring out mental health. So, you know, what is mental health? What parts of the brain I involved in things like dopamine and serotonin, and how do those things lead to mental health? And I guess I suppose that's the main problem we are trying to solve is to, you how do you eliminate, well, fingers crossed, mental health challenges in the world?

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (01:00)

Fully eliminate them. Is that the goal that people are aiming for now?

Sankalp (01:05)

Yeah, in the long run, I mean, I don't know if, like, on the day-to-day level, we think of it as, you know, today we are going to cure mental health. It's not as easy as a problem for sure. But I think over a long enough time horizon, we know mental health. Mean, obviously, it sucks to have mental health challenges, but it is also a big burden on the economy. So, you know, it's like, if you add up the cost that mental health challenges cost to, let's say, the UK economy, it's more than what it costs the UK to face the pandemic. So it's like having a pandemic all over again every single year in terms of the economic burden. Not to say the personal agony that these conditions bring about.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (01:53)

That's a great place to start because people are thinking about the economy a lot right now. Over here in Australia, the economy got very political, and I don't want to take too much of an angle on that, but from what you're saying, people are panicking over things happening every five years, whatever, but in between all that, there are there are personal health issues that are having as much of an impact.

Sankalp (02:28)

Yeah, yeah, so what happens at the individual level with my mental health, with my mind, is compounded with you; if two people have it, then it's a problem. Then if more and more people have it, ultimately it's individuals who have challenges, right? And soon enough, we have a societal-level problem, which can, you know, just escalate. So I think these issues go from, they start and originate in the mind. And that's why I think it's worth looking at politics that way. know, ultimately, society is made up of individuals, and individuals have minds.

And it's very hard to imagine a society with great mental health, which would have a lot of problems, right? So in other words, when we face problems in society, a lot of it could be traced back to mental health problems. It may not be like depression or anxiety in those labels, but it could be, know, like delusion or, you know, biased thinking and things like that, which are also a part of mental health.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (03:28)

Yes, and I wanted to let you know, Claude did something very interesting. I was trying to get some numbers from it yesterday, and it told me that, as a default, it was assuming that wellness and personal development were for the demographic of women aged, I think it was 25 to 55. I questioned it.

Sankalp (03:38)

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (03:56)

And I asked, where did you get that from? And it admitted that it was making an assumption, and it could only change that when chatting with me. It couldn't change that assumption when doing fresh chats with other people. So looking at that, it seems like we're not even putting at the top of mind the reality that mental health can be an impact for anyone.

Sankalp (04:29)

Yeah, yeah, it's, yeah, as I said, everyone has a mind, right? And in fact, know, people are even wondering if Claude or Chiajipiti, even they themselves have, you know, suffering and anxiety. And there's some recent, you know, movements along this field called model welfare, where, I don't know if you talked about last time, Claude tried to give it like, so Anthropic tried to give,

It's the older Claude model, a formal retirement. So it asked the question, " What do you want to do after you retire, and whatnot. And Claude came up with this genius idea that I want to write a newsletter, and I want to reflect on AI and Anthropic, granted that wish. So if you go on Substack, Claude has its own newsletter, which it writes on its own. There's no, there's no human environment. I think if it writes something harmful, then they might intervene, but otherwise it does its own. But yeah, mental health is important. Yeah.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (05:27)

It's important for everybody, and we will focus on the humans here mainly, but it's all intertwined quite a lot. And the cost of things before we move on beyond the cost, I was very curious to check, is the cost mainly about the treatment and care for the individuals, or is it also the impact of people who are suffering from mental health, then trying to do

Sankalp (05:32)

In humans? Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (05:55)

their work, potentially leadership and so on within businesses and the communities.

Sankalp (06:03)

Yeah, I mean, I'm not very privy to how they calculated the cost, but my guess is it is the treatments, and it is the hours of work lost. So, now, individuals who are facing mental health challenges are not able to perform either at all or not at their best. And that could be quantified, you know, in terms of the sick leaves and all of those when... So, of course, people don't necessarily declare that they have mental health challenges. So the actual amount might be higher than what it is. So I'm not exactly privy to the calculations, but I imagine it's a combination of these things.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (06:39)

It's pretty fair to trust that a lot of people would be either perhaps in denial about where they are ending up, or they don't end up with a label or seeking help for all sorts of reasons. And we can delve into that quite a bit. Let's go to the essentials with the dopamine, and she brought in serotonin a bit more this time. For those who don't know, we covered dopamine a lot last time, but let's look at both of those words and just explain for a second what exactly they are.

Sankalp (07:14)

Sure, so when you look at a brain, and so first of all, we all have brains in case someone was not aware. And if you look at a brain, and if you zoom in, like if you just go in, you will land at a brain cell. And the main brain, so there are multiple kinds of cells in the brain, but the main one that does a lot of, you know, heavy lifting is what's called a neuron.

Now, some people would be like, there are other cells, like something like glia and whatnot, which we are discovering more and more about, but the neuron has been classically the most studied, and that's the main thing that you see when you see a brain. Those are like a bunch of neurons. So now these neurons, there are many of them, and they don't touch each other physically. And there's a gap between these two neurons. And this gap is called the synapse.

So now the question would be, how do these two neurons talk to each other? And they talk through chemicals. So, what's released in between those two neurons are chemicals called neurotransmitters, such as serotonin, dopamine, GABA, acetylcholine, and many, many of those neurotransmitters. So dopamine, serotonin, they all fall into that category of messengers between brain cells.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (08:32)

So essentially, these chemicals are the way that the brain talks to itself.

Sankalp (08:39)

Yeah, it's a messaging system within the brain.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (08:45)

That's pretty crucial. And it's safe to say that dopamine has gathered a bit of a stigma over the years, especially people associated with being hooked on junk food, things like that. But there's a lot more going on with dopamine. So what exactly is serotonin, though? I think we all have a bit of an idea about dopamine, and she summed it up so well last time by saying that we connect with the dopamine in some way when we are pursuing a goal and wanting something. But what's the deal with serotonin?

Sankalp (09:23)

Sure, and you know, we all have somewhat of an intuitive understanding of dopamine, but not as much of serotonin. And that is for good reason. That's because science itself has very, well, relatively little understanding of serotonin compared to dopamine. It's very, so dopamine is the most studied molecule. That's why I could speak a lot, but with serotonin, we'll run short of this conversation very soon. But I suppose in pop culture, the main thing that serotonin is known for is its relationship with mood or depression. And the reason why it is the case is that one treatment that works for depression in some people is a drug that blocks the sort of uptake of serotonin. So imagine serotonin being released, and then it gets taken back by the cells.

And there's a drug that blocks that process so that more of it stays in between those cells. Right? And so that drug is often prescribed as an antidepressant. These are known as SSRIs, selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors. And so that's like the main sort of understanding, at least, about serotonin. Now, whether or not it actually does that is quite tricky. We actually don't have direct evidence to suggest that depression has anything to do with serotonin. I mean, it will have something to do with it, but it's not that clear a relationship. And one way to see that is if you just ingest serotonin, like you can actually take serotonin in pill form, nothing happens. Like, there's no effect on depression. And so no, I was just saying it's, it's, it is the common understanding and at some point even scientists thought that, but I think there is a little bit of reconciliation happening in the scientific community. And I think it's not black and white, at least at this point. And the consensus, at least my, my understanding, my reading of the science is that, you know, we need a little bit more time and studies to really understand what its relationship is with depression.

What now, there are other things that we know serotonin does, like most of serotonin is actually in the gut. So it's not even in the brain, most serotonin that the body makes. And it has some sort of digestive role. So it does that. In the brain, there are some studies that suggest serotonin might help us know, like, delay our rewards. So, you know, you might've heard of delayed gratification, and there is some reason to believe that serotonin might help us, you know, delay our rewards and gratification to help us sort of plan long-term. But again, it's not as well established. And then some work I did during my PhD, we saw the role of serotonin in tracking, like the environment you are in. So last time we talked about how dopamine might track, know, different environments and so on. So dopamine has more to do with, like, you know, how much, how vigorously you act in those different environments.

It has a component of action to it. Whereas serotonin seems to have more of a passive, you know, like an evaluation type of role. It's not as connected to acting, but still informs our choices, of course. So long story short, it also seems to do something to do with the environment. Meaning, you know, tracking different environments and how, when an environment changes, you know, imagine like a nice bright, spring season, and then you know suddenly there's a storm, and there's like hail and whatever, and you know you get a little bit of the environmental change. Chances are that serotonin is helping us track that.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (13:17)

Right, right. If that's also in the gut as well, does this mean it's another sign that we need to look after our gut health to keep a happy mind?

Sankalp (13:29)

Sure, but the problem would be that there is not an established relationship between serotonin and happiness. So it's not the case that more serotonin in the gut is linked to happiness. I don't think there's anything that's shown anything like that. Having said that, there are other reasons to keep our gut healthy, including, you know, the phenomenal organisms that live inside our guts, which are microbiomes. And when we eat foods that feed these microbiomes and make that diversity thrive, that is definitely linked to mood and better health overall.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (14:06)

That's great.

Knowing what these things do, you mentioned being proactive in the environment. And we chatted before about how the motivation, the motivation can come from our environment. And what you're the myth that you're busting though, is people say that if someone is depressed, they just have a chemical imbalance and there's nothing they can do about it. Is it more complex than…

Sankalp (14:43)

Yes, 100%, 100%, way more complex than that. So I think the chemical imbalance idea was a little bit popular, maybe a decade or so ago, even with doctors, like even now, perhaps when you go to most doctors, the way they would probably explain mental health is via this sort of language around chemical imbalance.

The problem with that is that it assumes that there is such a thing as chemical balance. It's, it's, it's, it's all of us are different. We all have different, you know, like there's no such thing as, you know, like you can take a scan and just measure how balanced things are. So these are somewhat made-up concepts, and we haven't really, you know, looked at any part of the brain and shown that this chemical is low in this group of people. In fact, if you're talking about mental health, what we need to talk about, even before we talk about a chemical imbalance, is the categories themselves. And there is no reason to believe that, now, if two people have depression, they might have radically different symptoms. And so to even lump them together is problem number one. And then to further draw some biological underpinning based on that random lumping or arbitrary lumping, that's an even bigger problem. So I think the fear of psychiatry, unlike many other fields of medicine, is pretty naive at this point in its discernment, and the whole chemical imbalance story tends to be quite a hand-wavy story. There's no real substance to it.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (16:31)

That's reassuring. It sounds like being balanced isn't really the goal, but also acknowledging that people can be depressed, and it can manifest in different ways. I'm guessing it would be the same for other conditions as well.

Sankalp (16:49)

Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. There's a symptom, heterogeneity is the word that's used, which is to say that if two people are depressed, it might mean that still doesn't mean that they have the same symptoms. It could mean like, this person has, cannot get out of bed, and this person has a completely different problem, like making decisions or something like that, or low mood. So it's, yeah, these categories need rehashing.

And actually looking at the history of psychiatric illnesses is quite informative. Because you know again, we tend to compare psychiatric illnesses with physical illnesses, let's say jaundice, where there's, you know, like a clear test you can look at, you know, blood levels and bilirubin, you know, you can evaluate that in the blood and see if there's anything happening. So there's a test for it. But if you look at the history of mental health, the first diagnosis that people came up with was just sane and insane.

Right? And then today we have many more fancier ways of labelling people, but if you look at the methodology of it, it's still basically a bunch of people sitting together and figuring out what these diagnoses should be. There's no like, they didn't have any biological basis. didn't have any, it's basically, you know, discussing symptoms and then coming up with some sort of partitioning of mental health problems. So it's, it's looser than many other physical conditions that we have. That is, of course, not to say that the problems themselves are not real. Of course, people suffer, and of course, you know, like there is such a thing as anxiety and depression. It's just our way of describing them and partitioning them. That's not as good at this point.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (18:39)

Hope you don't mind if I bring this up for one moment very quickly, the self-diagnosing that goes on because these categories are so blurry. It happens a lot with autism and ADHD, and I'm not here to say whether anyone has or doesn't have anything, but it also almost becomes these subcultures. You see people colouring their hair and waving a flag for these things. But on the flip side, you also see medical professionals pretty much having the process that you described, where a few people are going to say this person does this, they must have this. And so, where do you think all of this sits? Do you think with a lot of these conditions, as well, people are doing what they can to sort of guess what's happening?

Sankalp (19:36)

Yeah, I think it's quite natural to some extent, right? To just wonder what is the problem I have? What is my flavour of problem? Generally, it's not wise because, you know, again, with these conditions, like let's say if you Google depression, what it would say is low mood. Now, you know, this morning I woke up, and I didn't feel like, you know, like, you know, really excited. Now, does that mean I have a low mood now? And you know, we can easily read up on something and then just identify with it. Whereas that may not be the case. So, so yeah, this is not very helpful to self-diagnose. I only see problems with it, and not much of you know, even if you're okay, even if you manage to get a good diagnosis, what good is the diagnosis for, like the purpose of the diagnosis that you inform treatments, otherwise the diagnosis in itself means nothing. Right. So

I think, yeah, I think self-diagnosis is not a very wise thing to do. I only see more problems that come with it, with the only exception that, you know, it can be useful in accepting your condition, especially sharing your condition with others. So if you're able to say, you know, I have depression, and if that is acknowledged as a medical problem, then the stigma around talking around it reduces substantially. So there is that benefit to having that clinical label. But what I'm trying to say is those labels can be improved.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (21:15)

It absolutely can. And it's encouraging to know that all of these conditions manifest in so many different forms, because one of the great debates around that is we know some people can have depression or something else and still get to work. They look like they're okay, and people will say, " You're fine, but something else is going on. Is that a real thing? Whereas something is happening even if someone is still appearing to get through the day a little bit.

Sankalp (21:44)

Yeah, I mean, I think it's wise if people suspect they have some problem too. know, consult a clinician. I don't think it would hurt, and a good clinician should not overdiagnose. Now that's a completely separate problem that, you know, there is a problem with overdiagnosis or overprescription, and we can talk about that. But I think if, you know, people suspect they have a problem, I don't see anything wrong with, you know, consulting a clinician and you know, even if it could be like a primary care physician, it doesn't have to be a psychiatrist in the first instance. And maybe the primary physician can take a call on whether this needs further treatment here.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (22:29)

We'll pivot now. You said you've been looking at meditation a lot. What have you been seeing and finding around that?

Sankalp (22:39)

Sure, so I have been studying and doing meditation way longer than I've actually been doing neuroscience. And that's, it's actually double the length in fact. And it's, for me, it started with a retreat that ended in my teenage years. And ever since I've attended, I know, I don't know, people would have, but the point of a retreat is you're silent for like 10 days in a row.

You don't talk to anyone, you don't speak, you just meditate for 10 hours a day for 10 days. And it's quite brutal, and I've done like five of those at this point. And I think I had the opportunity to basically swim at the deep end of meditation for a long time. Yeah, guess happy to answer specific questions but the point of meditation in the spirit of myth busting is a lot of people think meditation is about stress reduction or controlling your thoughts or not thinking even. But really it's none of that. It's not like a fancy stress ball. It's not just like a version of a stress ball. What it is is a mechanism to understand our mind and to really understand the mechanics of how happiness arises, how suffering arises, and you know how to build wisdom as a result. So it's really a tool to understand the reality of our minds.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (24:12)

Understand your mind so there's there's an element of observing your mind

Sankalp (24:20)

Yeah, so the logic goes like, know, if I observe my mind, then I will understand the true nature of my mind. If I understand the true nature of the mind, then because suffering and happiness arise inside the mind, I will also understand the true nature of what brings me happiness and what brings me suffering. And happiness and suffering here are not, you know, like happiness in terms of, I got a dopamine head or I just ate a chocolate. Happiness here means like fulfilment. It's like a life well-lived, know, what you might imagine that to bring. So it's like fulfilment, satisfaction, eudaimonia is the Greek word around it. So it's more profound. But yeah, the promise is quite serious, which is, you know, like the ideal of meditation is a complete elimination of some suffering and complete elimination of pain in that sense.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (25:11)

Can we use meditation to ease our depressed feelings, whether it's depression or something else?

Sankalp (25:21)

So this is super nuanced, right? Because we just discussed how being depressed doesn't mean one thing. And so it is, in general, think, as I said, the point of it will be to eliminate suffering altogether. And to the extent that the depression is coming from, you know, this misunderstanding of reality.

Right? So we all have a distorted understanding of reality, right? Like we see something, and then we form stories around it. And to the extent that that kind of phenomenon is happening, yes, meditation can be super useful. But at the same time, there's something to be said of, know, maybe it's not the right thing for some people, especially in the beginning. So if someone is having a hard time just getting up from bed, and they are, you know, having these traumatic episodes playing in their mind it's probably not wise for them to now just start looking inside the mind even further, because that might be too much exposure too soon, that kind of, so there's a lot to be said about being skillful about your practice. That's why we have doctors in the first place, that the idea is they talk to you, and they personally understand your situation and the treatment is tailored to you. For some people, that might look like getting some medications, for other people it might look like therapy, and maybe for some it looks like meditation.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (26:46)

Fair enough. Such depends on the individual. Absolutely. Would you like to talk about addiction a bit?

Sankalp (26:56)

Sure, sure. I think it's like many of those things that we think that we have a lot of understanding of, but I think we're just starting to form an understanding of addiction. So one way to think about it is we talked about dopamine last time and how dopamine tracks surprise. So if you notice this one quality that addiction has, it is the pursuit of more. It's not just you take, let's say one dose of your favourite substance. It could be, the substance could even be like a TikTok video here. It's not that we stop at the one dose, right? What happens in addiction is we want more. And so there's this pursuit of more that is characteristic of any addiction. And so one way to think about that is, the dopaminergic circuit is just firing and firing, and it just wants more and more surprises. In this case being more and more TikTok videos, or more and more chocolates, or more and more substances sometimes. So that's one way to think about it. Another way to think about it is a lack of needs being met. So it is possible that, you know, what is truly lacking in my life is social connection, but the way I meet that need is through pornography. Right? And so that can be like a window into addiction. It's not just, you know, this raw repetition, because, you know, we all have had great moments where, you know, we are travelling, and we're in the moment.

And sometimes we tend to forget a little bit about our day-to-day addictions with social media and whatnot, because we're so fulfilled. So that's like another way of thinking about it, let's put a more holistic way of thinking about it, which is, know, there's like human needs, we have needs, we have needs to connect, we have needs for novelty and excitement and education and knowledge and all of that. Perhaps not a need, but still good to have. And addiction can happen when we sort of try to meet these needs.

through perhaps unhealthy ways. So those are a couple of perspectives on addiction.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (28:57)

The unmet needs, that's a great path to compassion for people who are getting addicted to anything. And this is heading in an interesting direction because you mentioned the social connection, the apps, I am going to assume that most people are addicted to some sort of app or social media or online thing in some way.

Where can we all draw the line? Do you think that we can excessively use some of these tools and it's going to still be safe for us? Do we need to ease up on the worry about getting addicted to these things?

Sankalp (29:43)

Yeah, yeah, I mean, this is definitely a broader question, you know, that we all have to answer as society. It's a tough one. So first thing is in the case of children, which is to say, you know, younger, even young adults or children, children, I think that's where the data is getting pretty concerning, I would say, you know, especially with the young girls, you will see. This is some relationships that we found that the rise in self-harm episodes or just diagnosed mental health conditions increases if you look at the timeline of social media and the growth of social media. And if you superimpose that graph with the growth of mental health challenges with young girls and even boys, for that matter, it perfectly coincides. So yeah, I mean, it could be a coincidence, but it's one hell of a coincidence, right?

And then there are the other things, like, obviously, TikTok has a lot of content that could just outright encourage people to do harm. Like, there was a trend recently of choking yourself, you know, that sort of thing. I mean, it's for anyone seeing it as harmful, but it's especially harmful for children who, you know, might be more privy to, you know, acting on these things. So with the young children, that's a bigger problem with adults, I think that's more gets into more like, you know, political philosophy territory, which is, you know, we want obviously we want our adults to be healthy. And at the same time, we want adults to have agency. We don't want to take away their freedoms. Right. So that's more of a question of balance. I do think just purely on a mental health perspective, it's it's radically improves your mental health if you're just able to abstain even for some time. Like, you know, if it's like a we can sort of get away. Even if you do that once a year, maybe even that in itself can be very powerful as a reset. And I'm just speaking from a subjective experience. Like I've done these long meditation retreats, and you don't have your phone during those times. And it's a very nice sort of, you know, clarity that you can access that you didn't even know was possible. But at the same time, I'm a bit sceptical of just simply blocking those apps and know, use all of these greys, making your phone grayscale and all of that. Cause it feels to me a little bit too forced, and it feels like there's something that is missing that we need to address. Like, for example, if I'm well-connected with friends, I barely check social media, right? So there's something, some need that is being met as I said earlier. So yeah, I think there's a problem, but it's different in extent, and with kids, it's probably a bigger problem than it is with adults.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (32:35)

Have you seen any stats about very young kids? Like the age 2 to 10, or even, I guess, months-old kids are getting devices very young. Have you seen anything with those age groups?

Sankalp (32:40)

Mm-hmm.

Yeah, yeah, so I think,

I mean, again, the specific ages are not top of mind, but definitely, teenagers have a lot of problems, let's say. And again, these are serious problems. We are talking about an increase in self-harm episodes. We are talking about increase in diagnosis themselves. We're also talking about actual attempted suicides and things like that. Those things are radically increasing in young kids and teenagers, especially.

So I think there's something about those formative teenage years where it's perhaps the most problematic because that's where we are growing these hormones, we are experiencing these hormones, we are experiencing the world, I suppose, and this rapid process of maturity. And seems like there's something in that period that makes us very sensitive to social approval and comparison. And all of these effects, a lot of these effects are more observed in girls than boys. So that's also something to chew on although it's actually both genders do experience it for sure. There is something about validation on the app, on the gram that is especially targeted at this sort of young mind.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (34:19)

So the validation can become addictive.

Sankalp (34:22)

Yeah, so it's actually not just the idea of going online that's the problem. know, the internet existed even before these problems started to emerge. So Wikipedia and Google and even YouTube and those kinds of things are totally okay. The problem starts to happen, and even Facebook, in its early stages, was kind of okay. The problem started to happen when the " like button was introduced, or the retweet button was introduced. Cause what that does is it takes, like, social media from, I'm just keeping in touch with my friends, to how well I'm liked, which is a very different frame of mind, right? Then it becomes a lot more pathological about me, rather than I just saw a nice photo of Melanie chilling. That's a very different frame of mind to how many likes did my post get, right? So the algorithmic nature of it, the like, the validation, the retweet, that's where the problem started to happen.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (35:21)

It's the buttons that were added. sounds like this was a very deliberate decision, and people generally feel aware at this point that whoever created those tools within those platforms seemed to have some knowledge of how this validation would get us hooked onto the apps.

Sankalp (35:43)

Absolutely, you bet they're studying dopamine inside out. And it's very obvious from what they're doing on their platform that it's engineered for attention. It's engineered to hook you. And you see it even like, even when you look at YouTube, for example, where there are these thumbnails and these egregious claims in the title. And when you watch the video, it's nowhere close to as, you know, as bold or whatever. Sometimes they just make it bold.

to appeal to the algorithm. So these are definitely appealing to these parts of us, know, fear, love, or, you know, even desire or sex more bluntly. And they're trying to sort of hijack our attention to just get attention, which obviously drives a whole economy behind the scenes. So I think that to me is a big problem in terms of mental health. think our attention spans declining is a big problem.

And I think it's just we are losing touch with depth as a thing. When I do science, it requires me to have a certain attention span and a certain amount of depth. And I worry that, you know, the rise in social media robs us of the ability to have that level of depth. And I don't know of any meaningful contribution to society that has not required that depth.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (37:04)

That's why I enjoy these longer conversations on the podcast. And yes, I will have to churn out the short clips to guide people to these conversations, but there's always more that we're saying beyond the 30 seconds you can fit into something. And that's spot on, the quick little sound bites and also the clickbait headlines. It's pretty much expected now; it's the reality we live in, where if we want people to see something, it has to be worded a certain way. Have you, have you seen anything within your profession, looking at, sorry, there was background noise for one moment, have you seen anything within your profession that looks at how fear rewires us?

Sankalp (38:02)

Sure, sure. think just the first step to think was just purely logical, which is, know, we are all evolved creatures. Evolution is what makes us what we are. And fear, evolutionary, is a big deal because our survival depends on not getting killed. So fear evolved as a response to not getting killed, like as an ability within us to, you know, not die.

But now, what happens if you just manufacture fear on a mass scale on the internet without a real threat necessarily? And that turns something that should be only activated in real emergencies to something that is activated on command. And that can't be good for our mental health and can't be good for our, as I said, attention span and just in order to make good decisions, we need to have like comfort and safety. Like if you are panicking and if you are, you know, if a lion is chasing me, that's not the time for me to make decisions, right? It's just like run. It's not sanity there. So yeah, absolutely. And from a brain perspective, there are parts of the brain that seem to care about fear quite a lot. So there's this part of the brain called the amygdala. It does more than fear, but it definitely does fear, or it keeps track of fear, and it is one of the first brain regions that responds to fearful stuff. If you show fearful faces, the amygdala will see it, or you just show it threatening things like a picture of a snake or something like that. The amygdala, so we have modules in our brain that are trying to keep us aware of what's scary.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (39:52)

And for those of us who need a reminder for a second, what else does the amygdala do?

Sankalp (39:58)

Sure, I mean, first of all, this is again one of those nith-busting things where the popular media will tell you that the amygdala is a fear centre. The problem with that is not that it does not do fear; it certainly does do fear, but it does many more things. It even tracks happiness for that matter. If you show it happy faces, the amygdala lights up. So it's perhaps better described as an emotion module, although it also does learning, and everything in the brain is pretty complex. It's not, know, this thing does this one thing. There's very few parts of the brain where we can say something like that. And the amygdala is super complex. It does fear, it does learning and memory, that kind of thing. So if you memorise something, and especially, you know, if it's like an emotional memory, like something from childhood that, you know, delights us or traumatises us, the amygdala is responsible for, you know, stamping it in, in our memory.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (40:56)

Does this mean that if we are feeling scared or in particular emotional states, we might have a different ability to make decisions and learn new things?

Sankalp (41:13)

Yeah, yeah, in fact, there was experiments where they stimulated the amygdala of rats after they had learned something. So they made the rats learn things, and then they stimulated the amygdala. And you can see that depending on what kind of stimulation it is, you can see that either their memories improved from all of the learning, or it's not improved and it's diminished.

Yeah, there's a lot of relationship between memory and emotion. And you know, there is some truth to this idea of, you know, when you go through pain together as individuals, you know, you also form a better connection, and you remember those moments. It turns out there is like some, you know, neuroscience to explain that, you know, that adrenaline and those, all those chemicals help you remember stuff better and help you. And therefore, hopefully stamp it in your memory, and that might influence your decisions in the future and whatnot.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (42:16)

Interesting, interesting. We're definitely going into the social angles a bit more because the thing that comes to me next is people wanting conformity when they are feeling scared. But I'm wondering, I don't know if there's anything we can really do about that.

Sankalp (42:38)

Yeah, yeah, I think, it's a bit of a different mechanism, but humans are social animals, you know, and I talk about this, there's one of, you know, if you look at the human brain, it's quite a complex, know, curvy, dense little object inside our brain, right? And if you look at animal brains, it's not as complex. In fact, you, evolutionarily, if you trace back, the brain gets less and less complex.

Right? And so the question is, why have we evolved this sort of a weird, twisty, turny, complex brain, like the cortex, especially? Cortex is like the outermost part of the brain. That's where you see all those folds and ridges and waves and all of that. And one of the leading theories for why that is the case is actually social, which is to say that the brain evolved these complex features so that we can cooperate, so that we can be social, so that we can, you know, engage with others. And so it's no trivial thing that we want people, and we crave the company of people, and we cooperate with people to do these big things. Like again, anything that humanity has ever done, very few of those things have been solo pursuits. Like most of these things, like nation building and sending people to the moon, and you know, discovering drugs and whatnot, all of those have been team efforts. And there is some neuroscience to suggest that that might be the case because our brains have prioritised solving social problems as the main thing in their evolutionary process.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (44:29)

It's what we have prioritised, so it will be what people are attracted to and what appeals to everybody.

Sankalp (44:37)

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And there's studies suggesting that people who are connected live longer. Like, just, you know, people who have good companionships and better friendships and relationships. There's more longevity. There's more health. And obviously it feels good, not to say the least.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (44:55)

That's really crucial because we all want to live longer, and I'm guessing people would also be healthier in their later years or healthier in general when they are more socially connected.

Sankalp (45:11)

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Later years or even immediately, there are also studies that suggest, know, like you, there's this very nasty experiment that they did back a few decades earlier, where they gave people rhino viruses. So basically, they gave people a common cold at will. And they saw that people who had better friendships showed fewer symptoms that came out of that infection.

So these people seem to get sick less effectively as a result of this virus because they had more friendships. So yeah, it doesn't even have to be long-term. It could be like, you know, the effects of social connection could be immediate.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (45:56)

Okay, that is, that's groundbreaking. And if that was known decades ago, then it's telling us plenty about the world we live in, because we know that in COVID we had to socially isolate and looking forward to not dwelling on COVID too much because we can't rewind the clock. We don't know what we're heading into next, and it's good to, I want to at least personally not panic all day about what's going on in the world. Where I live, people are seeing headlines, and everybody's talking about the fuel, petrol, gas, whatever you call it. People are talking about that all the time. And actually, some people are choosing not to go for a trip that could be a half-hour walk because they would have preferred to drive, and so they're just not even catching up with people not doing that trip. So all of this is going on. Can we recommend anything at this point for people to stay connected socially in a way that will keep them healthy online and offline?

Sankalp (47:14)

Yeah, yeah, for this time and any other time. In fact, if we could, there's an argument to be made that social connections should be stronger in times of adversity, not weaker. And be it COVID or be it the current crisis, I think of it as a call to connect further, because we need each other more. And it's obviously lovely to have people around when everything is nice and fine, but when there is problems, when there's conflicts, when there's tragedies, that's when we need people even more. So I think just to have that top of mind that I want to reach out, maybe a simple thing like I will reach out to one friend at least today. And that you can have that as an intention for a week, perhaps, that every day I reach out to one of my friends. Or I just send them a compliment, just say that, hey, look, Melanie, you are in my thoughts today. Just something very simple. I think that itself can create a lot of connections and a lot of warmth between people. Of course, I'm a big fan of meeting in person if that is possible. And of course, in COVID, that was very tricky. But the current situation doesn't necessarily exclude that. It just becomes logistically harder. But you know, like going for walks together, or you know, just spending time at home, or whatever the form takes, dinner. The form is not as important, but to meet in person is quite important, I think, because that's where you truly get someone in high definition, right? Like on text, it isn't, again, in the absence of anything, text is great. I'm glad we can connect across borders because of technology. But at the same time, it can lose out. The emojis don't capture the real emotions, do they? And so it's also a good idea to have in-person connections and conversations as much as possible.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (49:13)

Keep the connections going. It's essential. I'm curious about how that can improve our work. Would you say that now is a time for everybody to build stronger professional connections, be it team building? In the corporate spaces, people talk about the team-building activities. That has come up. People have asked me about that a little bit. And beyond there are teams, perhaps.

Sankalp (49:16)

Yeah.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (49:40)

Maintaining the connections with people in other organisations, would you say that that could help people to stay more healthy and happy when they're doing their work?

Sankalp (49:54)

Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. I think the first thing to be said is that even when at work, the colleagues that you have are people fundamentally, right? And all of what we are saying about the need for connection applies to them. Sometimes we forget that, when we are at our workplace, we have this persona. And of course, that is its good to be professional because, you know, workplace is the workplace. It's not, you know, just a personal socialisation thing. But that does not mean we lose the fact that people are people at the end of the day.

And even there, complimenting someone's work or just taking a moment to appreciate someone doing something for you or with you, all of those moments are quite important, given how much time the modern person spends at work. Sometimes it's more than people spend with their families. And in that case, it's vitally important to have that sense of camaraderie, connection, respect in the workplace as much as it is in any other place.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (50:57)

Absolutely. So stay connected, and you mentioned applauding someone's work. That ties in with gratitude. Have you looked at gratitude at all?

Sankalp (51:08)

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So this is again, this is more in the art meditation territory than it is in the science. Although I think there is some research also to suggest, know, the gratitude practices lead to wellbeing. But yeah, I think gratitude is critically important because the way it works is, you know, our focus, we talked about, you know, having evolved to detect threats. So our focus naturally goes to the negatives much more easily than it goes to the positives. And so, you know, we are always looking at what are the things that are going wrong?

And no one has to teach us to look at those things because our brain loves that. It's like, this thing is bad is happening. That bad thing is happening. So, but that need not correspond to reality. Reality, there might be a lot of good things happening, and we're just not looking. So gratitude is that looking mechanism. It's not like now creating this rosy world, but it's like looking at what already is true, and to allocate our focus on what's already true. Not to delude ourselves, but to notice things that are going well. So gratitude practices can be quite powerful because they have this dual function of, it really feels good to notice the things that I'm grateful for, but it also corrects our distortions, like that we go for the negatives more often, and gratitude sort of lightly nudges us to look, look, reality is much more beautiful than what you thought.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (52:39)

We have to see the upside. We really do. And it's great to see that naturally through the conversation flow, we have covered quite a bunch of the topics that I was planning to ask about, which is awesome. I was really curious about productivity and being busy. So one thing to look at is that people aim to either be busy, or some people think that if they give themselves a moment to be bored, so to speak, switch off entirely. You mentioned that with the meditation, but when people are trying to be productive with their work, is there anything to keep in mind there?

Sankalp (53:25)

Yeah, yeah. I mean, first of I think all of this is going to change with AI, right? Like, because AI is going to do the productivity for us, and already it's doing so much productivity for us. So, you know, the conventional understanding of, you know, just do more, it's no longer the case with AI and stuff, right? So when it comes to productivity, I like to think of leverage. I think that is probably the single most important thing to think of, which is that I, with 10 artificial agents working for two hours, will overcome someone working for 20 hours without the agents, right? And that's not because I worked hard or anything, but because I was just tapping into something that is higher leverage. And so I think with productivity, we need to think about what the high-leverage things are that we can do, and then what are the other things that we can delegate? Those kinds of things can be quite important.

And purely from a brain mental health performance standpoint, I think it's very good to, you know, take periodic rests. So even if it's closing your eyes for a bit, because we know the way the memory centres of the brain, the consolidation centres work, is they like these rest periods. And that's where our brain sort of replaces what we have learned and sort of, you know, assimilates everything. So having some moment of rest, be it, you know, like even if it, you know, just go to the toilet and close your eyes for like two minutes and just let the brain do its thing. Those kinds of things can actually speed us more than if we were to just fire through. But I think having a lot of self-compassion generally helps because that just ensures that we go with the right fuel. So yeah, those were more on the mental health side.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (55:12)

Absolutely. It sounds like AI will actually help us despite all the questions people are having and all the precautions that we need to take. It sounds like because AI can ease the load of how much we need to do, it can potentially free up our ability to take more moments and breaks to improve our health.

Sankalp (55:41)

Yeah, absolutely. Its AI has sort of made us all into a bit of a mini boss, right? You we've we've we used to start as, know, like low grade employees and then, you know, you progress your way through the chain. But AI has given everyone agents, meaning you get to be a boss right away. And that is quite important because the higher up you go, the more you become a leader or a decision maker, and the less you're hands-on, right? You you get more managerial and leadership, you become more of a leader. And AI, what AI is doing is it's reducing that sort of brute force work time for us and directly giving us that leadership position. And so in that sense, it's even more important to know how to make good decisions, how to lead this team of agents.

And if you think of it in terms of humanity, it's even more important because AI safety can be a big thing. We don't know what these agents will do eventually. Maybe they will take over, and there's no guarantee that they'll be ethical. So I think it's more and more important for us to learn leadership and clarify what our values are as a society and what we want us to do.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (57:03)

So more now than ever, more now in our current work than in our previous work, we have to make clear decisions. We were saying before that fear and some other things, I'm guessing stress could be an influence. It can all impact our decision-making. So does this all lead us to say that we need to prioritise self-care even more to make sure we keep a clear head to guide these AI agents and guide our fellow humans and everything else in the right direction?

Sankalp (57:43)

Yeah, yeah, and it brings us back to the meditation point we were talking earlier. It's not just self-care, but we have to be wiser. I mean, obviously, it's good to have wisdom with or without AI, but with AI, it can, again, give us the impression that it knows its things, but ultimately, the values will come from the humans. And already should come from the humans. Like, we don't know what will happen, and if these machines take over, you never know.

But the hope is that we decide the values. We decide what is important to us. And for that, we need to be clear on our values. Like it's not, you know, we could sort of ⁓ skim by and not have that clarity, but now that clarity is more important than ever. And that's where, you know, these tools of meditation and building wisdom are quite important because they tell you the true nature of our minds and what our values are if we do not understand our minds and what brings us happiness and well-being. So I think that it's more important now to figure this out and have more and more clarity on where we want these agents to head.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (58:55)

Wisdom naturally ties in with spirituality, religion and philosophy and whichever thought paths guide what we do. So, or any sort of higher purpose. So it seems like if we're going to do better work, we have to, yes, look after our gut health and so on. But from what you're saying, it seems like we need to prioritise our connection with a higher purpose and whatever leads our values. So we're not mindlessly doing whatever the robots tell us to do.

Sankalp (59:33)

Yeah, yeah, mean, things like, know, we all think we have values, but when investigated, it turns out we don't, and we don't have like good reasons to, it's just, know, just because it's popular doesn't mean it's a value, right? Like most people would say, honesty is good, but if you look at, you know, how many subtle lies we say day to day and this kind of thing, it's actually quite striking. And it's now the time, more than ever, to really understand these values and stand by them.

And so, you know, it could be freedom, could be openness, it could be something else. And I think where I stand is, I think it's good if people get it through religion, but I think it's totally also possible to just purely look at the mind as a thing of its own, without any dogma or without where it comes from and just purely derive wisdom from that. Just understanding the causes of our suffering, understanding the causes of happiness, and therefore deriving our values from that understanding through this channel of compassion, because we don't want anyone to suffer, we?

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (1:00:43)

Find wisdom through a channel of compassion. This is such a rounded teaching. Sankalpa, I appreciate how you tie in neuroscience and mindfulness in a way that everybody can understand. As we wind up, is there anything else that you want everybody to stay aware of or act on in the next while?

Sankalp (1:01:11)

Yeah, in particular. I personally try to have some sort of practice of mindfulness, let's say. I don't do as many formal sittings anymore, although having said that, I just told you that it's been a few weeks, and it has been a lot of those. But I think it's worth knowing, just whatever the method is, and different things might work for different people. It's good to have some amount of contemplation. So it could be journaling, it could be mindfulness, it could be self-care, but just some sort of contemplative practice can be quite powerful.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (1:01:52)

Contemplative practice. Everybody can do a version of that. Journaling is great, and there are apps that can guide a meditation sitting, or people can go to groups or sessions alone together, whatever gets started. are so many ways. Senkalp, thank you so much for guiding our wisdom.

Sankalp (1:02:19)

Thank you for having me.

🎙️ The Motivate Collective Podcast

EPISODE SUMMARY

What does it truly mean to love your neighbour? And what happens when the organisations and leaders who want to help communities haven't actually listened to the people in them?

Dr Froswa' Booker has spent decades answering those questions — as a philanthropist, community strategist, executive coach, researcher, and author. In this episode of The Motivate Collective, she brings together the full breadth of her lived experience to explore what conscious leadership, genuine generosity, and meaningful community impact actually look like in practice.

From being publicly humiliated by a boss at 24 to building a business with her daughter, from giving away money as a funder to helping organisations become better neighbours, Dr Froswa speaks with the kind of warmth, clarity, and hard-won wisdom that only comes from decades of doing the work. She challenges the scarcity mindset, dismantles the illusion of control, and makes a quietly radical case that your relationships — not your resources — are your most powerful currency.

This is a conversation for leaders, givers, community builders, and anyone who wants to leave behind something worth remembering.

GUEST BIO

Dr Froswa' Booker is a US-based philanthropist, community strategist, executive coach, and author whose work sits at the intersection of social capital, conscious leadership, and community development. Through her small business — which she runs with her daughter — she helps organisations and institutions understand their communities through GIS mapping and assessment, build internal cultures of care, and deploy resources with genuine impact. Her research focuses on social capital and the transformative power of relationships. She has worked as a funder, a nonprofit leader, and a coach to executives pursuing social impact. She is the author of multiple books and a sought-after voice on philanthropy, community co-creation, and what it means to lead with love.

WHAT WE COVER IN THIS EPISODE

[00:26] — How Dr. Froswa' describes her work — and why philanthropy is simply one expression of love [02:30] — Why a broad career built over decades is a gift, not a distraction — and what she tells younger women in her field [04:00] — Nothing is wasted: how early experiences, even painful ones, shape the leader you become [05:14] — The boss who publicly humiliated her at 24 — and the leadership lesson that came from it [08:08] — Young people in the workplace: why anxiety, the need for feedback, and the "two-year-old adult" framing makes sense [13:56] — Figuring out what's real: social media, AI, bite-size information, and the danger of summing people up in five seconds [17:38] — Why long-form conversations matter more than sound bites — and what gets lost in a clip [18:15] — The danger of data without story: the lived experience of a community that rejected a well-intentioned proposal [20:30] — Do leaders judge the people they're trying to help? And how do you move from judgment to genuine understanding? [22:59] — Co-creation vs. control: why deciding for people instead of with them never works [23:35] — Curiosity as the foundation of every meaningful relationship — in community, at work, and in life [25:00] — Faith, love, and what it actually looks like to serve people well [28:11] — Empowerment vs. control: why hoarding information limits you more than it protects you [30:54] — What to do when you suddenly have resources to give — and why writing a cheque is just the beginning [33:43] — Philanthropy is not just money: time, relationships, testimony, and skill are all forms of currency [35:08] — Connecting internationally: the lived experience of a trip to India and why your neighbourhood is the whole globe [36:38] — Scarcity mindset: why it shows up in everything — not just finances — and how to start shifting it [41:11] — The simplest act of leadership available to everyone: just be nice, say hello, and mean it [43:17] — Social capital: the research behind why relationships are your most underestimated asset[45:01] — How to build your network when you're shy, busy, or burned before — starting with one email [48:27] — The right people will be your people — and learning to be okay when some aren't [50:00] — Don't let past trauma block future connection: choosing not to become the leaders who hurt you [53:08] — Leadership as stewardship: every position is a privilege and people remember how you made them feel [54:50] — The bookend practice: how good leaders start and close their day with intention and reflection

KEY INSIGHTS FROM THIS EPISODE

On the journey, being the point, Dr Froswa's lived experience of decades across wildly different roles — some that felt meaningless at the time — is a direct challenge to the cultural obsession with destination. The skills, relationships, and wisdom she draws on today were built in rooms she didn't want to be in. Nothing was wasted.

On leadership as harm — or healing. The lived experience of being humiliated by a threatening boss at 24 didn't produce bitterness — it produced a commitment. Dr Froswa chose to use that moment as a template for everything she would not become. She makes the point clearly: leaders shape people, and the trauma they cause can ripple forward for decades. So can the encouragement.

On co-creation and listening, one of the most powerful moments in this episode is the story of a telecommunications company that wanted to bring the internet to a community that, according to the data, needed it. The community said no. The community was right. Dr Froswa's lived experience of philanthropy has taught her that when you don't listen — when you use data without story, when you decide for people rather than with them — you cause harm with good intentions. Co-creation is not a nice-to-have. It's the whole thing.

On the scarcity mindset, Dr Froswa reframes scarcity as something far bigger than a financial attitude. Her lived experience of moving from scarcity to abundance thinking changed not just her bank account but her relationships, her opportunities, and the quality of people she attracted into her life. When you hold everything tightly, nothing new can get in.

On social capital Dr. Froswa's research is rooted in social capital — the idea that relationships are a form of currency. Her lived experience confirms it at every turn. The person at Starbucks, the LinkedIn connection, the Facebook friend you've never met in person — any of them could be what she calls a "destiny helper." But only if you say hello.

On legacy The closing of this conversation is quietly extraordinary. Dr Froswa notes that she has never been to a funeral where anyone talked about someone's job title or bank balance. They talk about how that person made them feel. Every decision you make today is building the legacy you will leave behind. Make it one of love.

STANDOUT QUOTES

"Keep your head down and do good work. The journey is so important — there are skills and relationships and knowledge that you gain."

"I wanted to break that cycle. I wanted to make sure that young people, when I brought them in, I encouraged them and created space for them to grow."

"When your hands are closed, and you're holding everything tight, nothing else can get in either."

"You don't have a money problem. You have a relationship problem. Get the right relationships, and things will change."

"Philanthropy really means the love of mankind. How do you express that love?"

"Your neighbourhood is this globe."

"I've never been to a funeral where they talk about people's jobs and how much money they had. They talk about relationships and how people made them feel."

"Don't let the traumas and triggers of your past block you from having the people you want and desire in your life."

"Leave a legacy of love."

"You never know when you're entertaining angels."

DR. FROSWA'S FRAMEWORK: HOW TO BUILD YOUR NETWORK WHEN YOU DON'T KNOW WHERE TO START

(Directly from the conversation — practical and immediately usable)

Start small. One email. One LinkedIn note. One question: "I'd love to understand your journey."

Give people the space to talk about themselves — and listen for connection points, not conversation openers.

A 15–20 minute virtual coffee can tell you everything you need to know about whether there's synergy. If there is, go deeper. If there isn't, that's useful information too.

When someone is rude or unresponsive — that's intel. Move on without bitterness. They just told you early that they're not your person.

Don't allow closed doors to stop you from pursuing the ones that open.

DR. FROSWA'S BOOKEND PRACTICE FOR LEADERS

Start your day with a meditation, intention, or reflective practice that shapes how you want to show up.

Close your day with a second bookend — processing what went well, what didn't, and what needs a course correction.

Most leaders only course-correct when something goes badly wrong. These feedback loops — internal and external — allow you to adjust before things break.

To lead others well, you must first lead yourself well.

RESOURCES AND LINKS MENTIONED

📚 Dr Froswa' Booker's books — available wherever books are sold (search Dr Froswa' Booker) 🌐 Learn more about Dr Froswa's work in philanthropy, community strategy, and executive coaching via her website

CONNECT WITH THE MOTIVATE COLLECTIVE

🎙️ Listen and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts 🌿 Join The Motivate Collective community for more conversations, events, and resources built around growth, wellness, and conscious living: www.motivatecollective.com

TAGS / CATEGORIES Philanthropy | Conscious Leadership | Social Capital | Community Development | Personal Development | Relationships | Scarcity vs Abundance | Legacy | Giving | Purpose | Empowerment | Emotional Intelligence | Wellness | Executive Coaching | Human-Centred Growth

Produced by The Motivate Collective | Host: Melanie Suzanne Wilson

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (00:01)

Roswell, welcome to the podcast.

Dr Froswa' Booker (00:05)

Thank you for having me, Melanie. I'm so excited to be here.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (00:09)

It's a delight. I saw a bit about what you do, and this is a very special form of self-care, in my opinion, giving back to others, and you have done amazing work. I hope you can explain to everybody how you describe what you do.

Dr Froswa' Booker (00:26)

Thank you.

Wow, I do a number of things. Philanthropy being one expression of love that I get to do every day.

And so I have a small business where my daughter works for me. And we do a couple of things. We work in communities and helping organizations and institutions think about how they're better neighbors. So a number of groups want to do philanthropy and have ideas, but they may not always know how to do that. And so we go in and do assessments and use a lot of GIS mapping and

things like that to help them understand their neighborhoods and the communities they're in, and then make recommendations and how they can deploy resources to their communities. And typically these are areas that they may not be as familiar with, and how to work with nonprofits and work with various communities and bring them to the table and do the work. But out of that, we started discovering that sometimes they had organisational culture problems where

They're not nice to each other. They don't like each other in their workplace. And it's like, how do you want to work with people in community? And you don't like each other very well. And so we do a lot of work in helping them build relationships internally and building a culture around being a good neighbor so they can do it externally. And the last piece of the work is really about coaching leaders and being an executive coach to leaders who are trying to do a social impact and work in community. So I get to do that and I'm an author. And then there's the philanthropy piece where I've worked as a funder and giving money before. And then after I left that role, I started figuring out ways to help support folks in making things happen in the community. So that's a little bit of the gamut of stuff I get to do.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (02:30)

It's so broad. Are you seeing that having a broad spectrum of things you do in your career in one phase of life, did you find that that is better for you and for everybody, instead of specialising in just one area?

Dr Froswa' Booker (02:46)

Because I'm a little bit more seasoned. I've been able to do a number of things throughout my career. And what's happened now is it's become so broad because there's been so much time in doing this work in different spaces. And so I say to my younger sisters in this space, keep your head down and do good work.

You know, I think so often we always focus on the destination and not recognising that the journey is so important because there are skills and relationships and knowledge that you gain. And so being able to just do good work and enjoy what you're doing opens up a pathway for you when you get to be a little bit older with some white hair like me that you get to be able to do some things that are really creative and unique. And I'd say you can't do that young, but all of what I get to do has been kind of the accumulation of all these years, decades of just doing some very unique things.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (03:53)

You are bringing together bits and pieces from everything you did over the years to then draw upon all of it.

Dr Froswa' Booker (04:00)

Yes,

Yes, it's not, and it hasn't been wasted. I remember there were certain things early in my career that I was like, why am I doing this?

I need a check. I don't really care about this. And I can see now how those experiences shaped me. It shapes the way that I show up and how I treat people. And so I didn't think 30 years ago, some of that stuff had any value, where I can see now it's very important. And it has allowed me to be the kind of leader. I had some leaders very young in my career. Some were decent, and some were really good. I had others who were like trash.

They taught me some things, and they showed me the kind of leader I did not want to be. And so because of that, you know, and at the time I was like, what am I doing? Why am I going through this? I get it now because now I'm able to be a different kind of leader. And I hope people don't have to have those experiences, but at least for me, those experiences shaped me and helped me to be a better person and lead and show up in community very differently.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (05:11)

What sorts of experiences felt a bit more meaningful later on?

Dr Froswa' Booker (05:14)

you

I was like, you're gonna ask me about what happened? There had been several, but I had an experience with a boss who was very threatened when I was young in my career. I came in, and I'm just out of my master's program at that point. I'm like 24, 25 and initially I thought she was going to mentor me. You know, I looked up to this person, thought she was going to be amazing, and there were things that she did that just were very harmful to me and painful. I remember one day being in a staff meeting, and she read off my whole job description and told another colleague, who's like an admin, that she was going to do my job.

And I was just sitting there going, my God, what do I do? What is it that you expect me to do? You've given her everything that I'm supposed to do. And I remember that being so painful. And I didn't stay very long after that because I recognised I was being put in a position where you wanted me to come to work every day and do nothing, then say I was doing nothing. And what that situation taught me was several things.

As a leader, there are ways to talk to people, and you have to check your ego. And I think sometimes people easily get threatened by youth and folks who are talented. And not to say that I was perfect by any means, but...

I had an expectation that you were going to guide me, and if there was some challenge that you may have had, you should have had a conversation instead of doing it that way. So for me, I don't have bitterness. It had taught me that when I got in a position of leadership, how do I make sure that I'm stewarding young people well? Because my actions could actually cause trauma for them later on, and they could end up being harmful leaders too, because what they experienced they think is okay.

And so I wanted to break that cycle, and I did. I wanted to make sure that there were younger people that when I brought them in and they were brilliant and talented and go-getters that I encouraged them and created space for them to grow versus punishing them because my ego got threatened or I felt like they're gonna take my job. Take it, I don't care. It also helped me to move from a scarcity mindset to an abundance mindset of there's so much there and if you take my job, great. That means there's something bigger and

better for me to do. I want you to have it. So by, you know, putting myself in a box, I would limit my own possibilities. And I didn't want to do that. And I definitely didn't want to do it for someone else. And that's what that experience taught me.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (08:08)

It's a very difficult moment when perhaps we cling on to the roles that we do and we cling on to what we know with how to do something and it takes a lot of letting go. What she was doing was so far beyond that, and that was horrible. can tell you I had moments early in my career where

I knew, okay, it was very clear someone was doing maneuvers, and sometimes it was outright humiliating. We can, it's amazing. And then we try to do the right thing for the next generations. I wonder if you've seen anyone from the younger generations feeling a bit extra sensitive, extra nervous.

Dr. Froswa' Booker (08:44)

Yes.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (09:06)

because I saw someone last year who was constantly wondering, is this thing something against me? Is this thing an opinion? And everything was anxious. And especially it was around the time when there was a lot of political stuff going on in the world. And do you see any young people getting very anxious and needing a bit of reassurance?

Dr Froswa' Booker (09:28)

Yeah.

Absolutely. Work is frightening. I mean, if you're honest, it's like, I need this money to be able to live on. And to some degree, you have control of my life. That's terrifying when you're 20-something years old, and you've been accustomed to mom and dad doing things for you. And even though they may not do everything you want, you still are able for the most part to exist.

And then you move into this adulting. It's terrifying to be in situations where I don't know what my boss wants. So I'm learning you. Never met you in my life. I don't know what expectations you have. You say one thing, you do something totally different than what you say. It would cause angst and allow you to have this experience of anxiousness. So one of the things I always say to people that are managing folks is communication is going to be your best friend.

You have to communicate and over-communicate because I don't know you, and as soon as I'm learning you, you're learning me. I'm learning this role. I'm learning the co-workers That's a lot of information for someone to take in who doesn't have much experience in the world my ex-husband used to say when my daughter turned like 20 a couple years ago He said she's a two-year-old adult And I would always go that that's very true. She hasn't had a lot of experience being an adult. She's had more experience being a child

And so then I have this expectation for you to show up and know everything. They don't. So I think we have to really begin to look at how we mentor and how we communicate and give expectations and feedback. Older generations, and data shows this, didn't need the kind of feedback. And the ways that you're seeing younger people who are used to instantaneous information, they're always getting feedback. They need feedback more than my generation did.

You

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (11:34)

explaining it. This is why I love the podcast. This is joining dots because I was, and I'll be so kind in this moment, I was in community guiding someone in a community group and I wasn't giving a detailed set of guidance for a very simple administrative function instantly, and that person assumed that meant she was being shoved out, and it really wasn't like that. I was stretched thin. And if you are saying that younger people now, they just, they expect the answers now. It's that's the shift. We probably, we worked at a different pace. We're not slow, but we didn't have that instant gratification as much.

Dr. Froswa' Booker (12:17)

Yes.

Yes!

No, you didn't have, and I think about this, when I was growing up, there was no internet, you know, and my daughter makes fun that I knew Moses. I was like, I'm not that old. But, you know, I'm like, my God, but I didn't have internet, and I definitely didn't have social media.

I can only imagine how stressful I would be with the constant feedback if I like something or there's a heart on something, and some kind of emoji expression. There are all these opportunities to engage. That would have driven me nuts at 17 years old. I look at these young people now, I'm like, you're brilliant. You have so much information that's coming at you, and they're having to decipher what it means, and then add on top of that AI.

So now I'm not only having to decipher this information, I got to figure out if it's real or not. And so now I go into the workplace and I got to do the same thing with people. Are you who you say you are? Are you just saying this because you have to say this? Do you mean this? So you're trying to really interpret all of this information and expressions that people have and what they're saying. And I'm learning, you know, even people make meaning differently.

So we may say the same word, but you may have a very different meaning behind that word than what I do. So now we've got a problem. That's a lot to try to manage at 20, 25 years old. It's a lot to manage at my age, in my fifties. I'm like, what, say that again. What do you mean? I don't know what that means. It's a lot.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (13:56)

You said people are trying to figure out what is real. I think that has been going on for a long time because of what social media turned into. And it brings us together. I mean, you found this podcast on social media, and we can connect with amazing people. I was able to see your website, and I loved how summarised it was. Honestly, sometimes people have so much info I need to ask AI, can you just give me one page of what this person's about? Have had it all?

Dr Froswa' Booker (14:04)

Yes, yes.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (14:26)

New, clear lists, this is what you do. But that's the upside. But the flip side is I think it has been a long time. At this point, it has been what? More than a decade of people having filters. Photoshop was being used before then; everybody was. I remember the moment when suddenly anyone could get an app on their phone that could totally filter them, and you would be able to put someone into a photo, and you didn't wonder what was real, but beyond just the image of things. I mean, you're looking at philanthropy and community as well as corporate culture and in all of those spaces, let's face it, some people have felt a bit of, a bit of uncertainty with the world. Some Americans have been telling me that politics is a bit of a handful right now.

And in Australia, in Australia, I'm seeing these headlines about how the oil costs and conflicts overseas could affect the prices of things. So people are already anxious, but then just looking at wondering whether something is, whether a person is real or not. Some people look at what is online, and they think that is what there is. Some people look at me, and they think whatever picture they show, they

Dr Froswa' Booker (15:49)

Yes.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (15:53)

Whatever picture they saw, that's what there is when I'm juggling so much that nobody is ever going to see. Do you find that as well, that people don't realise there's more going on than what they see on their screens?

Dr Froswa' Booker (16:08)

Absolutely, because we live in a world that's very surface. I think that we are in spaces where, again, information is coming to you in bite-sized. So you have to recognise that.

People look at each other that way. It's bite-sized. you're the sum of everything that I see. That's terrifying. Because then what we do is we put people in a box and believe that all that they are is this one facet of what I've seen. And that's not fair. So then it's easy for me to summarise someone very quickly because of a sound bite. And we're watching that, you know, in social media, someone says one little thing taken out of context and without the whole show, you know, or cancelling people and being angry with them, and because they haven't taken the time to go, let me dig. And so I think we're in a very precarious environment right now because we're not taking the time to get to know each other. And I often say to people when I'm training them that you can advocate for someone when you're proximate to them. But if I'm not proximate and I'm just watching a clip of you, I can make a decision about who you are, and I don't like you, and you're a horrible person.

And we do that in five seconds of seeing someone, already sum them up. It's a very dangerous thing. And so then we do that in our relationships where we sum up people, and we don't give them the opportunity to be human. It's not fair.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (17:38)

Absolutely. That's part of why I like the longer conversations of the podcast, but also any form of long conversation. You need more than the 30 seconds. Let's face it. There's an upside. It's handy if you only have a quick moment to glance at your favourite people online and say, okay, they're talking about this and only have a moment, but it's not going to go deeper, and the human conversations, it's crucial.

Dr Froswa' Booker (17:49)

Yes.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (18:07)

Are you seeing that and anything else as a factor in people connecting with communities that are in need?

Dr Froswa' Booker (18:15)

Yeah, because it's so easy to just look at a sound bite or data. And not that data is bad, but when data doesn't match the stories of people in community, we're reducing people to numbers. And so that's very dangerous too. It's important that we start talking to people and listening to their story. I often tell this story about years ago,

I was working for an organization and I was giving out money and community on their behalf. And this particular community didn't have a lot of internet. So that was a big challenge for kids getting their homework done and having access to resources. And so there was a telecommunications provider who came and said, I want to do internet in your community. Now data said they needed it. But I bring, you know, some community people together, and the whole time while this gentleman is talking, they're on their phones.

And I'm horrified because I'm like, being so rude. Why are they doing that? And I knew them to know something was up and they're researching what he's saying. And they looked at him, and they said, no, we don't want this. I'm going, but data said this is what you need. And they're going, no, this isn't what we want. And so I remember going to the city council person and saying, this is a great proposal. would help this community. And they said to me, Francois, if you knew what they were proposing,

It doesn't look the same in a more affluent community. This is harmful. So sometimes in our desire to do good, because we don't listen to people and talk to them and ask them what they want, we'll only go with the data and then go, well, that's what you need. And then I can get angry and go, well, I'm trying to help you when I haven't really listened to you and figured out what it is that you need. And I think too often in communities, we do that to people, especially when we're not proximate to them, and we're not listening to them.

We can make judgments and stereotypes and then do things and get mad when they don't like it and go, well, I thought I was helping you. And they're going, but we didn't ask for your help. That's not what we wanted. No one asked us. So what I try to get people to do is to be proximate, to listen, and not just use data, but use the stories. And when those two come together, we got magic.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (20:30)

This is so good. It's time for the juicy question. Looking at communities that need help. Have you seen some leaders judging? I'll just come out and say it. Do some people judge the situations people are in, and how do you guide people to reach real understanding and a common ground?

Dr Froswa' Booker (20:55)

That's good.

That's very good. It goes back to getting people proximate. Couple of things.

It's helping people move from this either-or concept because so often in communities we go, it's either this or it's that. And it's really multiple realities that exist. And it's helping people understand their systems and structures that are in place that create the environments that people are in. And quite often, what you're seeing is the response to those environments that they had nothing to do with.

So we blame them for their condition, but we don't pay attention to laws and policies and ordinances and things that have been created that they weren't included in making decisions for, that they weren't given the opportunity to speak into, and yet they're living the result of bad policies and decisions. So I think it's important to help people when they are working in community to understand history to understand social cultural context, because then you're able to go, now it makes sense. But too often, people look at the result of what they're seeing in the here and now and not understand the process that allowed this community or this group to be where they are. So then we'll make a judgment and blame people and not recognise there is this huge picture, this tapestry that's been created that we're not taking into account. And so what I try to help people do is let's step back before we make any program, spend any money, and let's get a better understanding of why this is what it is. And let's ask them what they want, because co-creation is important. And too often, we make decisions for people, and then when they don't like it, we're mad, versus saying, how do we co-create together? I have an idea. Does this match what you want? And again, when we can grow and create together, then we can do some very impactful work.

But when people come in and think that they can control and dominate, that never works. It hasn't.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (22:59)

Absolutely. The dominating. That's not how to listen. And I can share with you that as I've been forming a community to expand beyond this podcast, it has been about listening and asking what people actually want. So this can translate beyond philanthropy for those who are listening to this, and they are doing other forms of work.

Dr Froswa' Booker (23:21)

Yes

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (23:27)

Asking questions can be such a simple first step. Do you find that asking questions will solve almost anything?

Dr Froswa' Booker (23:35)

It's leaning into curiosity.

And I don't think people do enough of that. know, one of the things that sounds so simple, but it's been mind-blowing to me is that, you know, when you're dating, part of what develops intimacy is curiosity. It's asking, what do you like to eat? Do you like these movies? Where would you like to go for dinner? And that curiosity builds something because you're like, oh, now I know this about a person. If we're going to build deep relationships with people and if we're going to make the

happen. It requires us to have this curiosity with people and it doesn't just mean in the intimate relationships and our professional relationships. There's intimacy that you have with people of going, I know my co-worker.

She doesn't typically act like this, but I know her well enough to know something is wrong. But until you ask those questions and get to know them, you're not able to advocate for them and even empathise with them, let alone have sympathy. So how do we begin to start leaning into this idea of ask questions? There's nothing wrong with that because we don't have all the answers. And that's been something for me, even in my faith walk, that I find that I'm doing more of is even asking those kinds of questions because you would be the answers that you get when you just not just ask but listen.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (24:57)

You're a faith, what does that involve?

Dr Froswa Booker (25:00)

I am a Christian, and I didn't have a very different lens than a lot of people do, in how I see things. But that is what guides me and how I do things. I am really big on this idea of love and what it means to truly love people, even when I don't always agree with you. And what I see so often today is people use that title in a way that is not honouring of what it really means. And when we really look at what it is rooted in, and what Christ came to do. It's very different than the way it's expressed now.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (25:40)

What's the difference?

Dr Froswa' Booker (25:42)

I think the difference is people now have more of a, not everyone, but there are people who use it to weaponise it against other people. I think there are people who are more willing to defend empire and institutions than they are willing to love the people that Christ came for.

And it's very easy to marginalise other people when they're different and to then oppress them using those same beliefs that totally go against what you're doing. And so that for me is where I'm watching so much, especially here in the US, where people are using that. And it is a way to oppress and control.

and not really do it. And I'm often saying to people, if you really read this book and understand what it says, you would treat people very differently. But they cherry-pick what they want to, then use it to harm other people. And that's not what it's for.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (26:51)

Protecting institutions. That happens in so many forms.

Dr Froswa' Booker (26:55)

That's what.

Yes, and it is to protect the ability to have power, and it is to protect the ability to control others. And that's very problematic. It's very problematic.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (27:11)

That's.

Dr Froswa' Booker (27:12)

Yeah, it's very problematic because what it says to me is that God needs us to do his work when God, in my opinion, is God and is so vast and so big that God can take care of God. God uses us. It's a

privileged to be the hands and feet of God and to serve others. But how dare I think that I am the only person that has the interpretation of who God is. I'm not. And the idea that other people believe that I am the one that has this message and I'm the only one, wow. And not to believe that God uses people ⁓ and not just one.

And that even in the model of Christ, Christ not just came and talked, alone he used and worked with other people and discipled other people who were very different than who he was. I think we have a template of what goodness looks like. People aren't using that template.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (28:11)

The opposite of control could possibly be empowerment. Let me know if you agree. remember listening to all that, it reminds me of the self-sufficiency that came from other thoughts like Gandhi and looking at supporting communities and even people within organisations, anyone looking at

Leading by supporting, is this tying in with the thought that if people are really going to achieve something, then it's not about one person controlling everybody, it's about enabling everybody else to do what they need to do.

Dr. Froswa' Booker (29:01)

Yeah, it's, when I control, I limit. And I don't think people understand that. I remember very early in my career, I used to send out these emails that would help people. And the way the emails were worded, they would have to come back to me to get the information. And in the beginning, that felt good. It was like, yeah, people are coming to me, huh?

And then it became exhausting because at that point I became the person that everybody was like, well, let me go to her, let me go to her. And I wasn't empowering them.

to be able to realise you can go and call that person. You don't need me to do that for you. And so sometimes people do that because they want dependence and reliance. But what you fail to realise in doing that is that your capacity is then limited because everybody's dependent on you. What does it look like when you go? I'm going to help you do this and teach you how to do it. And people think that they lose power and control in doing that. And the reality is you don't. You actually gain more.

because then people look at you and go, I was able to get that from this person. I wasn't hoarding the information anymore. I was going here, call them, you do whatever you need to do. Good luck, don't call me. And it didn't diminish what I was doing. It actually grew it because people started seeing me as a resource and that I was willing to be fluid and give them the information without me hoarding it and feeling like, no, I have to be the gatekeeper.

I don't think people realise that when you give, your hands are open. And so what you don't understand is now you're able to receive because your hands can actually get it. But when your hands are closed, and my grandmother used to say this all the time, when your hands are closed, and your tight fist, and you're holding everything like this, you're keeping it in, but nothing else can get in either.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (30:54)

That is wisdom. I want to pivot to another big question. I'm going to trust you would have met some people who accumulate or find suddenly extreme resources and they are wondering, okay, I don't need all of this. Where should I send some of it so someone else can benefit from it? What do you normally say to people who are in that position?

Dr Froswa' Booker (31:23)

I want to find out what their passion is. I think it's important to put your money in spaces that you have some connection to. I was talking to a friend before I got on a call with you, and she's getting ready to ask for funding for a project. And one of the things that I was saying to her is, what is the invitation that you feel you're being pulled to?

And I think that's a thing for people with wealth, is what is the invitation that you feel that you want to be able to impact? So I start with passion. I want to know what drives you. I want to know what keeps you up at night. What are the problems that you really want to solve for? And then what does success look like for you in a community? What is it that you would be happy with? And if they say it's education, I want to see kids graduate because that's what happened to me was I was able to go to school because then mine is then that's what we focus on, because otherwise you're not going to have a sense of fulfilment or investment if you're just writing a check.

But if we're able to help you do something that's meaningful and impactful, and help you identify an organisation that meets that need, and build the relationship. Because to me, funding shouldn't be just writing a check. That happens. There's nothing wrong with that. But at some point, there needs to be intimacy. You need to know this organisation. It should be more than just giving your money. It should be you giving your relationships, giving your time, that you're volunteering, that you are so invested, that you bring your community around that. That's when training transformation

happens. But if I'm just writing a check and I go back to bed and I don't know what you're doing with it, I don't know the staff, I don't know the people that you're serving, then I don't really get to be a part of the impact. I just get to write something and then wash my hands of it and act as if I have no responsibility. I want you to feel some responsibility and use your check, your time, your talent.

All of those things, your testimony to make an impact. That's important. And I want people to understand, too, that you might not be a wealthy person with all this money. You still have something to give. And philanthropy doesn't always mean writing a check. Philanthropy really means the love of mankind. So how do you express that love? That's using your time to go volunteer. That's using your wisdom and your skills to go and do skill-based volunteering. That may be that you bring relationships along who can help. There are ways that you can still support the community without having to write a check.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (34:05)

Anyone can give and support in some way.

Dr Froswa' Booker (34:09)

Yes, always. We all have something to offer.

Even if it's just you telling your own personal story and saying to a person who's going through a hard time, I identify, I've been through that. Let me tell you how I got through it. So even your testimony is powerful in helping people. And I think we get so caught up with the money and recognising that there are so many other forms of currency that can make a difference. And your relationships are part of that.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (34:39)

Relationships with people that is such an impact on everything, the relationships. And I trust that there's a balance that's needed because you are seeing that when people connect with the groups around them, the locals, then that is very connected. Have you seen people connecting internationally and networking beyond their own backyards as well?

Dr Froswa Booker (35:08)

Absolutely. I went to India several years ago. It was one of the most powerful experiences I had. And there is a family that's in India that I still keep in contact with. And they will ask for things. They would come over to the States periodically. They haven't been in a while. But it was such a gift to me to be there with them and then to continue the relationship and talk about ways that we can support the work that they're doing there. Yes, you know, the internet is, as much as it has its problems, it's also a gift because you get an opportunity to connect to people like I'm doing with you, that you get to connect to people that are all over the world. What an opportunity to be able to learn from each other and to share stories and experiences. So I encourage people that being a neighbour doesn't always mean just in your backyard.

Your neighbourhood is this globe.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (36:09)

Almost everything you have said is a quote. They used to call it tweetables, things like that. I just wanted to go and share all of these little quotes, but it's all so true. And connecting, this is counter-cultural these days. I have to acknowledge this because we know we live in individualistic societies, and people are just thinking about themselves, partly out of perhaps a survival instinct, perhaps out of just habit. And some now call it scarcity mindset. How do you encourage people who are maybe stretched thin, be it with more things than their money, and they need to see that they can gain more in life if they bring service into their day.

Dr Froswa' Booker (37:05)

We were just talking about this earlier that your generosity is also connected to what your life looks like, too. And I don't think people see the correlation that when you are generous, even with the little that you have, it opens up doors and possibilities for you to get more. It's just, there is something about reciprocity. So if I have scarcity and I see the world that way, I'm going to experience more of that. And if I begin to see, even though I might be limited today in my bank account, but I begin to have this mindset of abundance, and I begin to see relationships as good

Because when you have a scarcity mindset, it's not just money. You don't trust people. You look at everything as problematic. So it shows up. I think we only see it as money. It shows up in everything. And you tend to be around other people who are scarce in what they have and how they see the world. So then you're rehashing the same kind of information. I'm not telling you ways to get abundance because I have a scarcity mindset. I don't want you to have more than I do. So it shows up in everything that you do. It's helping people move to this idea that there's enough out here for people not to be greedy and try to dominate the world. That's a whole other conversation. But for those of us who just want to live and be comfortable, it can exist, and it can happen. So when I am willing to make sure that you're good, I'm going to be good in doing that. And I think sometimes people are pushed to be so insular. And that too is, in my opinion, a control issue. Because the more I make you think they're taking your jobs, they're harming you, we got to watch out for these people, the more that you begin to start holding on to everything and you won't change, you will get so afraid and you live in this fear-based way of thinking that nothing can come in for you, then it's easy to control you when I get you to that place. It's helping people understand that when we begin to start seeing people as neighbours, that we're all a part of this creation story, and that there is purpose, and that when you fulfil your purpose, that opens up the opportunity for me to walk in mine. But if I'm not fulfilling mine and you're not fulfilling yours, what's going to happen? Nothing. We're all going to suffer. It's moving from that way of thinking to recognising that we've been given this opportunity.

to be here on this planet together. Either we're going to die and kill it, which is what looks like we're doing, or we're going to value what we have and value each other and see that the challenges we face are not the kinds of challenges that can't be solved. Every challenge we have, there's a person who is a solution or a group of people. And when we begin to start seeing that, our worlds will look so different. I tell all my nonprofits, you don't have a money problem.

I say you have a relationship problem. You get the right relationships, things will change. And so what I would say to people who are dealing with scarcity, start changing your mindset about your relationships, about what you speak. If you speak that there is horrible things and it's always bad, you're going to see more of that.

But when you look for the good and look for the signs and wonders and miracles that are around you, watch what will begin to happen. And with the little that you have, it will grow because you're growing, and you'll bring in relationships and resources that will grow what you have. That's what I hope people will start to do.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (40:46)

Look for the opportunities that are around us.

Dr. Froswa' Booker (40:48)

Yes,

and they exist. You never know. My mother says this all the time. You never know when you're entertaining angels. And sometimes we are so busy just doing our work that we miss the opportunity to even smile and say hello to someone. And that person could be the solution of what you're going through. But because we're so focused inward, we miss so much.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (41:11)

Reach out. Part of that. Be nice. Be nice. Be nice. That's very simple. Simply be nice. Anyone can do that.

Dr Froswa' Booker (41:14)

Be nice. Just be nice.

Be nice.

It's easy. Say hello to people. Ask people how they're doing and mean it. I mean, it's the little bitty things that we can do to make this place better, and our lives will get better when we are invested in other people as well as ourselves.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (41:41)

The saying hello and having a conversation that, in my head, guides me to look up from this screen and interact with the people around us. Have you seen that as a part of it?

Dr Froswa Booker (41:52)

Yes. absolutely. It's interesting to me because I'll have people come up to me who say, you're my Facebook friend. And I'm thinking to myself, my, I don't know them, but they know me. And it's made me more aware of, and not that I've got 600,000 Facebook friends, I'm not that person, but it's made me more aware that ⁓ we're being watched sometimes when we're not even paying attention.

And I'm more keenly aware of how I show up in spaces that I want to be a person that if I say that I'm a person who loves, then I have to have a life that looks like that too. And it's just as simple as, you know, when you see people like that person who did me and said, you're my Facebook friend, I could have easily gone, I don't know you. Wow, what kind of impression that would have left with her versus me going, my goodness, it's so great to meet you. Tell me about you and what you're doing. And I built a relationship out of that, and I gained a friend out of that, and someone that I was able to go deeper with and do things with. You miss out sometimes in our busyness. We miss out on so many opportunities that could change our lives, that maybe the person that you're meeting at Starbucks or whatever place you go to could actually be a destiny helper. But if you're too busy, you miss out on an opportunity for someone who could change your life.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (43:17)

Absolutely. Have the courage and confidence to say hello to anyone and connect with people. I can relate to that feeling of realising, okay, someone has seen me online. My equivalent was a few months ago, someone messaged me on Instagram and said that he had seen me at the public pool, but he wasn't sure, he thought it was probably me and then saw me on Instagram, and I don't have a lot of people on Instagram right now. And I thought, I don't know this person, and I'm inspired by what you are saying to just go with it, and okay, if people are reaching out, then it takes a lot of openness, and it goes in any direction. I've reached out to some people online, and the magic and the encouragement that comes from just a simple chat, yes, online, but also in person, showing up, meeting up with people, just seeing everybody.

Dr. Froswa' Booker (44:17)

Yes.

Yes.

Yes, and it's a term called social capital, which is what my research is based on.

I don't think we realise the power of our relationships. It is a form of currency. You know, you have no idea of the networks that people are connected to. And if you don't talk to them, you'll never know that. And so there is power and just saying hello, because that person could transform your life or be your best friend or your partner. I mean, it could be anything, the gamut of things. But when we're too busy or afraid, we lose out.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (45:01)

Absolutely. It's courage. I'm going to guess the solution is to just go and do it. If someone is really feeling shy, let's address the shyness. If someone out there is feeling very shy, what are your words of encouragement? Just go out and make it happen.

Dr Froswa' Booker (45:04)

Yes.

Yes!

Start

with the email. I remember during the pandemic, I met so many people from other countries just through LinkedIn. And we would do these virtual coffees. It was the coolest thing. And it would be 15, 20 minutes, but I would have these powerful conversations. And in that 15 to 20 minutes, I could determine if there was synergy. Now, know that everybody you meet, you're not going to have a relationship with. Some of them are not a part of your path, and that's OK, but they could be connected to someone who is. And so start small, do an email, do a note on LinkedIn and go, hey, I'd love to get to know you. I just want to find out more about you and do a 15- 20 minute call, just get to know you. And if they're vibing with you, then you go, okay, maybe I want to set up more time to get to know you. Are you going that? Yeah, they're not it and be okay with that. And that's fine, because again, everybody that you meet might not be your person. But through that process, you could meet some people that can help you with so many different things. So I encourage, start small with something like that and just send a note and go, hey.

Just want to get to know you, learn more about how did you end up in this career path? I want to understand your journey. And what I've learned is people love to talk about themselves. So give them the space to do that. And then as you're listening, don't listen to figure out ways of what you're going to say. Listen to find out opportunities for connection. That's what you're listening for.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (46:45)

It's the common ground.

Dr Froswa' Booker (46:47)

Yes! Yes, that's it!

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (46:50)

It really is. That's a great idea. The short little chunk of time that is significant in this day and age. It doesn't have to be a lot of time. And the start with an email idea, that's awesome. Pop a note over to anyone, and it doesn't have to... Even being brief can be more valuable, especially in these busy times.

So it can be one sentence, right?

Dr Froswa' Booker (47:18)

Yes.

Yeah, I just want to know you, you know, and especially for people that you know are busy. Tell me more about your journey. I'd love to understand more about your journey. I'm interested in this kind of work, or I'm interested in being an author, and I just want to understand more. And people typically are willing to do that. And if they say I can't meet, you can even ask, well, can we correspond through email? And I send you questions and respond. I've had people do that, too, because we couldn't work our schedules out.

Folks are willing to help more often than not. And when you meet those who don't want to help, don't allow that closed door to stop you from pursuing those who do. Because that person just let you know very early, they're not your person. And that's OK. You don't want to spend a lot of time and investment with someone who later on is going to prove to be someone that's not of character. So if they're being mean up front, you go, thank you.

Because that's intel that I now take and go, I know what to do with that. I'm going to leave you alone. But don't allow people who are busy or rude to stop you from building a network of people who could really support your dreams and aspirations.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (48:27)

The right people will be your people, and it doesn't have to be everybody.

Dr Froswa' Booker (48:32)

No, it won't be.

And be okay with that because there are gonna be people who are not kind. We live in a world with a lot of people that are not kind right now. But I think we focus so much on those who are the negative ones that we don't realise there are so many good, kind, wonderful human beings that are walking the earth every single day that we could build relationships with and do good things together. So what I wanna encourage people to do is take those small steps to building your tribe of people who are good people.

I'm so blessed because I have an amazing group of friends. And very early, it was easy for me to be negative because I'd had so many experiences that were not very good. And so because of that, it was easy to go, I'm going to close off because people are mean. And when I changed my view of myself and changed my view of other people,

I got blessed with this amazing tribe of women and men who are just phenomenal, young and older, who are just so good to me. And it took time to get to that place. But I want folks to know, don't allow the traumas and the triggers of your past block you from having the people that you want and desire in your life.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (49:47)

Don't let past experiences prevent us from greater opportunities in the future.

Dr Froswa' Booker (49:53)

Yes,

Yes, there are lessons. And I think what we have to be aware of is that one, I don't believe anything that happens in life is wasted. There are horrible things that happen to people, but I've seen people who've had some horrible experiences turn those things into good. So even though we've had very painful experiences, I shared one early on in our conversation, I couldn't allow that to stop me from building relationships and advancing my life. I could have easily allowed that to just be a roadblock, and I got stuck; you can't. And so you're going to have those experiences. For me, it was learning the lesson of, and I often see people as reflections. So when I meet good people, it's, oh, that's a reflection of me. When I meet people are not so good, they're a reflection as well of what I could become. And so always looking at people and seeing that there's something to learn in every interaction and experience that you have. And for the negative ones that I've had, it's not that I allow myself to be a doormat and continue to stay in those relationships. If they're not good, you shouldn't be in those. You deserve people who treat you well and with dignity and kindness. But even in those interactions, those things have helped me to be the person that I wanted to be and not be like them.

I tell a story about when I was very young in my career, there was a lady here. She's no longer alive. She was very well known. And I met her at an event. And I was sitting at the registration table. And I said her name wrong. And she embarrassed me in front of everyone. It just went off on me because I said her name incorrectly. And I apologise. But I was so hurt that this well-regarded leader would treat me that way.

The lesson that I took away from that was that I could be that way when I get older. I could become that mean person where there's this young woman here who's admiring me, and I could do something that could harm her by the way I talk to her. And it made me realise then and there, I didn't want to be that kind of woman. And I've fought to make sure that I'm not that kind of person to anyone. And so I could have easily looked at that situation and said, well, all of those people are like that. I'm not going to talk to women who are in those kinds of positions because she is, you know, probably just like the rest of them. And it made me realise, no, she was just crazy. That doesn't mean that everyone who is in a similar position was like that. She was just a mean lady. It gave me an opportunity to see the reflection of what possibility could be. And I just made the decision not to be that kind of woman. And so don't let those bad experiences stop you because they happen.

They don't have to define you.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (52:47)

It doesn't define you. That is a massive encouragement. It means so much because we can be on either side of it. And what I'm learning from you is that sometimes we need to remember not to take for granted the positions we are in.

Dr Froswa' Booker (53:08)

Yes, yes.

It's a gift when you're given any position, whether it's one that you're running the company or even if you're the person that's cleaning the building every night, there's value in everything that we do and in every person. And if you're given the opportunity to be in leadership and to manage and direct people's lives, you're shepherding people, you're stewarding them, and you have an impact on who they become. Think about it. If you go back in your career and look at all of the leaders and teachers you have had.

You don't really remember the mediocre ones. You don't. You're like, she was okay, teacher. You remember the ones who were really good or the ones who were really bad. And those people shape you. And so you definitely don't want to fall in the mediocre category, where people don't even remember your name. They're like, she taught me. I don't even remember her. You did nothing. You just showed up. You don't want to be that person. But you definitely don't want to be the memory that they have that's a trigger or the trauma that they now have to get therapy for because you were so mean to them. I would like to be remembered for being the person that made a difference in people's lives.

And think about this, when you go to a funeral, I've never been to a funeral where they talk about people's jobs and how much money they had. They talk about relationships and how people made them feel. So what we do every day is we're building legacy. And that's going to be so important to recognise that every single day, the decisions that you make are leading up to the legacy that you're going to leave behind. Just make good decisions and leave a legacy of love.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (54:50)

Legacy of love. Do you find that self-care and finding time for a contemplation is a step in leadership that can support people?

Dr Froswa' Booker (55:04)

It's required if you're going to be a good leader. I don't think a lot of leaders spend time reflecting.

And I call it bookends, where you start your day with a meditation or set an intention. But you have to shape your day and guide what you want your day to look like. And that looks different for a lot of people, but having that practice is important. And then I think you need another bookend to close your day of processing and reflecting over your day, looking at what went well, what didn't go so well. Because then, you can make course corrections. Typically, most leaders only make course corrections when something is bad. But if you create the space in your life for these feedback loops from yourself and other people, you can course-correct a lot quicker. So I think it's important that if you're going to lead well, you've got to lead yourself well.

What if the most powerful currency in business isn't money — it's generosity?

In this conversation, Melanie sits down with Suela Pirushi, Albanian-born founder and CEO of the Milestone Hub, author of The Business Currency is Love, UN Women UK Ambassador, and PhD candidate in Epistemic Leadership and Human-AI Collaboration. Suela has worked across the World Bank, the Ministry of Justice, NGO management, and a decade in B2B commercial partnerships in the UK — and through all of it, one truth has remained constant: business is fundamentally human.

What we explore in this episode:

Suela opens by sharing her remarkable journey from post-communist Albania to the UK, living and studying across Bulgaria, Germany, Italy, and beyond — a life of never quite fitting in that ultimately shaped her as an expert in cultural nuance and cross-border relationship building.

She introduces her philosophy that every successful business must invest in trust, relationships, and generosity — giving before gaining. It's not just a nice idea; she traces how these principles have played out across corporate roles, World Bank projects, NGO leadership, and now her own consultancy.

The conversation turns to AI and the fear many professionals feel about what it means for their futures. Suela reframes it entirely: AI frees us up for the things that matter most — human connection, partnership, and trust. As someone writing a PhD on human-AI collaboration, she speaks with rare authority on both the opportunity and the responsibility.

They also discuss the power of storytelling over statistics in business; why legacy matters more than ROI metrics; how to start a business from scratch using only your existing skills; the importance of going global rather than staying local; and how to navigate authentic online presence without oversharing.

Suela closes with three lessons every business owner needs to carry: give before you gain, build relationships — not transactions, and always see the human being in front of you.

Guest Bio:

Suela Pirushi is the founder and CEO of the Milestone Hub, a consultancy and coaching company helping small businesses and solopreneurs convert their expertise into revenue. She is the author of The Business Currency is Love, available on Amazon, and holds three master's degrees alongside an in-progress PhD in Epistemic Leadership and Human-AI Collaboration. Suela is an Ambassador for UN Women UK and volunteers for two UK charities — one supporting women experiencing violence, the other helping young women and girls from Albanian origins access STEM education. She is based in Buckinghamshire, UK.

https://www.amazon.com.au/s?k=suela+pirushi+the+business+currency+is+love&crid=ZZEG8JYBMUDO&sprefix=the+business+currency+is+love%2Caps%2C240&ref=nb_sb_ss_ts-doa-p_1_29 Amazon.co.uk

https://www.amazon.co.uk/s?k=the+business+currency+is+love+suela+pirushi&crid=2G13WF4MY9UOQ&sprefix=the+business+currency+is+love+suela+pirushi%2Caps%2C327&ref=nb_sb_ss_mvt-t11-ranker_1_43 amazon.com

https://www.amazon.com/s?k=the+business+currency+is+love+suela+pirushi&crid=B1NXMNPHUHKF&sprefix=the+business+currency+is+love+suela+pirushi%2Caps%2C247&ref=nb_sb_noss

Connect with Suela: Find her book The Business Currency is Love on Amazon.

🎙️ Listen now via your favourite podcast platform — links below.

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