The Motivate Collective Podcast by Melanie Suzanne Wilson

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keywords

meditation, spirituality, personal growth, mindfulness, self-discovery, work-life balance, gratitude, inner peace, spiritual awakening, holistic practices

takeaways

Govinda balances his work as a data analyst with his passion for meditation and spirituality. Meditation can enhance learning and creativity, making it easier to pick up new skills. Finding peace in a chaotic world often requires looking inward rather than relying on external circumstances. Different meditation practices can cater to individual needs and preferences, making it accessible to everyone. Meditation can help release societal and familial conditioning, allowing for a more authentic self-expression. Integrating spirituality into everyday life is possible without abandoning professional responsibilities. Gratitude practices can enhance work satisfaction and personal fulfillment. Self-discovery is crucial for finding a fulfilling career path. Meditation can provide clarity and freedom from the pressures of societal expectations. Spiritual awakening often comes after a period of existential questioning or crisis.

summary

In this conversation, Govinda shares his unique journey as a meditation teacher and data analyst, exploring the balance between spirituality and logic. He discusses the transformative power of meditation in enhancing creativity, learning, and personal growth. Govinda emphasizes the importance of finding peace within a chaotic world and the accessibility of meditation practices for everyone. He also addresses the societal pressures that can hinder self-discovery and the integration of spirituality into everyday life. The conversation concludes with practical advice for those seeking to navigate their spiritual paths while maintaining professional responsibilities.

Titles

Finding Balance: Govinda's Journey Through Meditation and Data The Intersection of Logic and Spirituality

sound bites

"Meditation can enhance learning and creativity." "Gratitude practices enhance work satisfaction." "Find a practice you enjoy and do it daily."

Chapters

00:00 Introduction to Govinda's Journey 05:42 The Impact of Meditation on Learning 11:35 Finding Peace Amidst Chaos 17:25 Govinda's Spiritual Journey 23:08 Balancing Spirituality and Everyday Life 35:02 The Search for Meaning Beyond Corporate Life 40:15 Spiritual Awakening and Identity Crisis 50:17 Practical Steps for Career Fulfilment

Transcript

Melanie Wilson (00:02)

Hi, welcome to the show.

Govinda (00:06)

Thank you.

Melanie Wilson (00:09)

Now, for those who don't know, who exactly are you and what exactly do you do?

Govinda (00:15)

Yeah, well, my name is Govinda, and I am a meditation teacher, and I do some I do some woo-woo stuff, you know, but I try to keep it less woo-woo for for those who, you for most people. But I do energy healing, and I also like to host tea ceremonies. I do also work as like a data analyst and programmer and work with health economists. So my brain can go in all the different directions and do whatever it needs to. But yeah, that's a little bit about what I do for my day-to-day.

Melanie Wilson (00:58)

was wondering about that. was wondering what else you did aside from the woo woo. Now I have seen so many spiritual leaders from various different schools of thought, different traditions, who are also quite mathematical. So how does that work for you? Let's start with that flicking between the mathematical things, the data and the spiritual side. Is there anything that overlaps, or how does that all work out?

Govinda (01:34)

Yeah, well, I think a whole spirituality actually connects both the sides of ourselves, that's more like woo woo and more intuitive and the one that's more logical. So I think for me, my life was very logical for a long time. And then some experiences broke me open in ways that I almost became illogical for a while.

And then I had to balance those two things out a little bit. So I guess in a way, I have to use more of my logical brain doing data analytics and programming, but sometimes I honestly like, I don't even have to think that much anymore. It's just intuition comes through, and I'm able to do stuff without having to really, really dig into focus like I used to.

Melanie Wilson (02:31)

In the data work, are you using your intuition in that?

Govinda (02:34)

Yeah, yeah, definitely. So I've spent months never having to think very hard because of you, just like follow the breadcrumbs of kind of what comes up in the work. But if I have to learn like a new language, I can change things. I've a new programming language.

Melanie Wilson (02:56)

Yes. Any new language. I can relate to that. I pivoted slightly from yoga to Matt Pilates, and they have different words for the same things. And I bet with data, there'd be totally different languages, and it's a whole different thing that your brain has to do. A lot of people say that it's easier to learn a new language when you're younger. I don't know if that's true.

Govinda (03:23)

for sure. Yeah. And what the weird thing is, the years of meditation I did, because I took three, four years off of working at all and meditated for three, four hours a day, plus some long retreats of more meditation. And when I came back to the role, I thought I wasn't going to know anything because a lot had changed. And all of a sudden stuff just popped up, you know?

And I was able to learn new languages a lot easier. It's the meditation that I learned kind of returns one back to this innocent childlike state, where the brain is much more fluid. And even, oh yeah, so I don't really know other languages too much. I'm American, know, like we didn't learn that many languages, and I grew up in a small town. So I just learned a few semesters of Spanish, and I never really was good at it. You know, I wasn't speaking to anyone. We're just kind of doing exercises on paper and for tests, and I was pretty bad at conversation. But then one time I met, let's see, it was like last year. I hadn't practised Spanish in seven to 10 years, and I met a Spanish person online, and we got together, and I just started speaking Spanish.

I was like, within an hour, we were conversing, and I was able to understand what they were saying. And it was, I very much think that deep meditation can help someone work back into that, that brain that is more childlike, and it's more fluid. And of course, learning languages is like that because most people struggle because they want to be a little bit perfectionist, but.

Melanie Wilson (05:01)

Yeah.

Govinda (05:17)

No child is a perfectionist about speaking. just want to be, they're very,

I mean, if it works, you know, then let's just say it that way until someone corrects them,

Melanie Wilson (05:28)

Yes, there's so much in that. I wanted to start with the easy, simple question. You mentioned you grew up in a small town. Which part of America are you from?

Govinda (05:37)

Yeah, I'm from Minnesota. I grew up in a town about an hour and a half west of Minneapolis.

Melanie Wilson (05:48)

Okay, so small place. And were you always around there? Did you end up somewhere else?

Govinda (05:56)

I did a lot of travelling. I went to college nearby. I wanted to get out, but it was a better deal to stay around. And then I did some travelling while I was in college and lived in different places. But afterwards, I did like a gap year type thing. I lived in Southern Africa and Swaziland at the time for a year. And then I came back to the state of Minnesota, hung out for a while, then eventually went to India for six months.

Melanie Wilson (06:34)

Amazing. And we'll get to that. I wanted to know more about your journey that led you to meditation, but you mentioned that thing the brain does, where you just remember how to do something after a long time. And I'm curious, how exactly did you find that meditation helped you to tap into what you already knew? What were you doing? Were you? Was this after a long retreat or?

Are you doing a simple, short morning practice every day? What exactly happened for you to then feel confident and remember things that you knew?

Govinda (07:16)

Yeah, well, part of the confidence comes from just being feeling safe no matter what, you know, feeling in whatever situation. So I'm just feeling comfortable. And I think

Yeah, so with meditation, it wouldn't necessarily be instant, but after all the practice I did, kind of it developed a very well, well grooved way back to this innocent place that I could return to at any moment. So, yes, yes, both long retreats that helped kind of teach me this groove and daily practice as well, because I just enjoy it so much that I still enjoy practising. And then, you know, even when a task or something comes up, you can kind of refocus in a way. And then it's almost emergent. It's almost like you don't have to go try to go through the files in the library of the head, something like that. It's not really like that. It's more like it kind of emerges and comes up as needed.

Melanie Wilson (08:36)

It just comes to you kind of like how some musicians have talked about how a song just came to them out of the blue, or a writer says that a story just arrived to them. It's like that external creative genius that Liz Gilbert talks about in a way.

Govinda (08:48)

Sure.

Yeah, maybe a little different in the case of if it's a skill I had already learned in the past, you know, rather than a truly like, you know, original. Yeah, a little bit, you know, but, you know, there are, I guess, programmers would know that creative genius comes out as well while you're programming because there's new ways of doing things you'd never thought of or never heard of or never been taught that might come to you while you're doing that.

Melanie Wilson (08:59)

Yes. External, it's an internal thing.

Okay, that's really important in this economy and this era of tech, because I think that everybody is wondering, well, with AI, what's going to happen, and how can we pivot our skills? I think that tech is now something that everybody has to evolve with. And there's sometimes an assumption that there'll be a set way to do things. So I've mainly watched the marketing path, and what I see in some spaces is people will be married to a particular platform. Someone identifies as a Pinterest marketer, a LinkedIn marketer. And to me, that's the same as saying I only want to use this form of programming. I mean, I knew years ago, app developers who just thought it would be so much more effort to create for Apple instead of only Android. People, wherever they are from, I think, they get stuck in one direction. So it sounds like a big thing that you are doing is staying creatively open to changing how you do what you do.

Govinda (10:41)

Yeah, I mean, this is kind of the way to not suffer so much in general in life, you know, is to stay open to what's gonna come and change. I mean, I don't know how anyone in this day and age is gonna be able to survive very well with such a rigid ⁓ self, a rigid identity even, because things are changing, I mean, especially since we have access to world news.

Everyone kind of sees what's happening, and you know it's very difficult if you continue to stay rigid on everything. I mean, I don't know, it would be very tough, I think.

Melanie Wilson (11:19)

There's a point, frankly, so much has happened in the news lately that we could talk all day about that. And at least the one thing I try to look for without trying to understand everything that's going on right now is, at least, how can we find literally some peace in all of this?

Govinda (11:43)

Yeah, well, it might be difficult to find it in the external world, to be honest. And if you have some nature around you, something that just gives you 10 minutes to go walk around in or see if that's possible. Even if you have a place, there are usually birds gathered even in the urban areas somewhere, you'll find some birds, know, some, those types of things can help. But of course, like I asked the same question in my life, even when things weren't as tough, I guess. And eventually it led to meditation, and kind of for me meditation, you know, a of people claim the other things help them too. Of course, yoga as well.

But yeah.

Melanie Wilson (12:30)

I know that some people will say they believe or perceive that they can't handle meditation. I personally think that everybody can find some form of meditation. I grew up with a tradition that I won't completely identify with right now, but it had the phrase be still and know, and even that

Govinda (12:39)

Hmm.

Melanie Wilson (12:57)

pause, I think everybody has a version of, let's just stop for a moment. And so I'm wondering, what advice do you have to people who are sort of on the fence and wondering if they can meditate and if it's going to work for them?

Govinda (13:15)

Well, I think they should find a meditation practice that does work for them. So if there is one that they've been trying and it's not really doing anything, well, they could switch. I found out pretty quickly that there's many types of meditation. This is a, and in terms of marketing, guess meditation is almost seen as one thing, know, sitting.

Melanie Wilson (13:37)

All right.

Govinda (13:42)

letting thoughts come in and just like watching them go by. Yeah, getting a mudra going. I like mudras, but you don't really need them. But yeah, mudras. Yeah, of course. like, found eventually, eventually I started doing like somatic practices that helped me. I meditated through that, you know, eventually body scanning is always a good thing. But trying different ones, body scanning is

Melanie Wilson (13:47)

You

What's that? For those who don't know.

Govinda (14:11)

Body scanning is simply like finding a comfortable position, know, could even be lying down. And then you start in a particular part of your body, usually at one end or the other, know, either top of the head or bottom of the feet. And then you just think through those spots very easily, not with a lot of effort and just see what comes up when you think through these spots, basically, and kind of

scan through your body to see if there's any sort of, I don't know, hiccups, I guess, along the way. So that's body scanning.

Melanie Wilson (14:52)

It sounds a little bit like yoga nidra because I know in some forms of that people focus the attention on the tip of the finger and then the knuckle, and so on. Is it kind of like that?

Govinda (15:06)

I suppose. I didn't do it too much longer after I discovered some other ones. So I'm no expert at body scanning. think maybe, yeah, well, you know, I went really woo woo, and I went and learned a pre-channelling meditation. So like a meditation to set myself up to like do channelling, which

Melanie Wilson (15:15)

Okay, which ones?

Govinda (15:33)

Honestly, I think it's just setting yourself up to find the source or to find the meditative state anyway. But that practice involved some chanting and then some scanning up through the spine, basically, like going from the bottom of the spine up to the top. And I found that those kinds of meditations can be really powerful.

Like even if you were to start, usually I would have someone kind of start in the heart and then they would drop down, you know, through their body slowly as they need to until they get to the bottom of their spine and then start going out like into the foundation of their home or wherever the building they're in is and then going into like the earth. And then we come back up from there and go back through the spine and out to the top.

That's a very simple meditation that can be effective. I found very effective and set me up for a lot of clear time to process what was going on in my life and in the world. But eventually I had to move on from that, too. I found a different one that ended up led the bulk of all my practice. It's got a fun name called Ascension Meditation.

It could even be called decent meditation. It really helps someone fall deeply into their body. And it's an effortless practice. So it's an effortless mantra meditation.

Melanie Wilson (17:17)

Effortless. You mentioned that your personal life led you to need meditation. What can you share about what happened?

Govinda (17:30)

Yeah. Well, you know, I guess it started, weirdly enough, it started when I was five. I was at this conservative Christian, like evangelical event, where I was invited to as a kid, you know, five-year-old, and I was invited to invite Jesus into my heart. And I was like, well, you know, why not? All these people are doing that. me see. And so I did that little.

Melanie Wilson (17:58)

And we'll keep in mind, hold on, we'll keep in mind some listeners might still be into that, and we'll respect wherever people are, but we'll follow your journey.

Govinda (18:06)

yeah.

Yeah, well, definitely, because at that time, I got an overflowing sense of peace washing over me. And so I was extremely like dedicated to Christianity from that moment until I was 20-something. And yeah, I was like, you know, reading the Bible and all the time and

I was praying all the time, and eventually I kind of had to analyse for myself whether that was really the right path for me. And eventually I found it was just a little too constricting. So I started to, I actually went like secular almost for a few months in my life, which I, pardon my.

Melanie Wilson (19:03)

few months.

A whole few months!

Govinda (19:04)

Yeah, for a few months.

For like six months, I'd stopped thinking about God. Yeah, I don't know. My whole life was thinking about God. Like, I had this thought when I was 13. I remember walking out into the street of my neighborhood and going, why, if eternity is something, like if this is, if there exists eternity in this world, like if there's this much time, you know, there's millions and millions of years.

What is the 70-odd years of this life? What am I supposed to do here? Is it just random? Yeah. And at that moment, the answer was related to Christianity. But it did also have, at that moment, had some depression in there, which kind of asked, why would I even go on with?

Melanie Wilson (19:38)

What's the point of it all?

Govinda (19:57)

50 more, I was like 13 years old, like 50 more, you know, whatever, don't know, 80 more years in this life if eternity is waiting. And why would I do that?

So I was like, oh, know, like heaven is coming up after. So yeah, I guess what I found in meditation was a release from that experience of feeling separate from all things. And that felt like drinking water on a long desert hike for the first time. And so that's eventually when I said, yeah, go ahead.

Melanie Wilson (20:38)

Okay.

So basically, you were focused so much on life after this one that you were wondering what's the point in anything now. It sounds like your core question was what's the point of this life, and meditating, was it bringing you back to the meaning and purpose of now? Was it connecting you with the gratitude for the

wider universe and environment around you? What perception shifted exactly?

Govinda (21:21)

The question faded once I, when I experienced what I experienced on meditation. It was like inherently obvious that like life is meant to be lived, and there's just like a deep appreciation, gratitude and some sort of inherent love in existence in and of itself.

that I was experiencing. And then over time, I wouldn't experience that. So then I would meditate more, kind of thing.

Melanie Wilson (21:57)

Right, okay.

So you just sort of found some appreciation for everything. And I'm really curious. This kind of leads to then with all the gratitude and integrating with the world, and just easing up on the question of what's the point of everything. I'm wondering, what can you say to people who are perhaps delving deep into a spiritual path? I'd say it happens quite a lot these days.

Someone might have a trip to India like you had, someone might just delve deeply into a school of thought, but then they still need to live in the world and do a nine-to-five or grow a business, whatever it might be. And there could be this tug, right? There's this tug between our purpose-driven existence and everything else. And for me, I had the tug between living sustainably and realising that the environment that I'm in doesn't always support that. It was, so I think that everybody has this negotiation between being completely focused entirely on these higher ideals and then existing in a flawed world. I'm wondering, how did you, how do you balance all of that?

Govinda (23:27)

Yeah, I mean, it's difficult to balance with a kind of logical mindset around it. Eventually, I think I find myself in the context of the world and somehow, the heart knows what it wants to do in every moment. And so it might not be the most sustainable action every single time.

I might need to go drive somewhere and do something, you know, right? But for some reason, there might be some inexplicable reason for me to go do something that the heart is wanting to tell me to do. You know, might end up saying something to someone along the way that helps change their day. So I think for me, meditation, it helped release the pressure of having to be and do something that I thought I needed to be or do basically releases a lot of conditioning of the society and of the family and of what someone has built up over time.

Melanie Wilson (24:42)

Right. It releases the conditioning of society and family. That is very crucial these days. I think that is because a lot of people are raised to become something in particular, not everybody, but maybe people's parents expect them to be something or even culturally

I'd say these days there's a bit more flexibility. A lot of people my age drop thinking, do a nine-to-five and that's it. And there's a big mindset shift going on now, for example, where a lot of people believe they need to do something to support themselves beyond a nine-to-five. So there are all these identity shifts. And it sounds like what you're saying is that meditation can help us to get freedom from the expected identities that other people, be it individuals or the culture we live in, it can free us up from those identities to figure out what actually feels right for us.

Govinda (25:51)

Yeah, and even to feel the pressure of having to succeed or achieve something. You know, at some level, I'm talking that there's an order of the universe that's happening without you being able to control it. And so meditation can help you tap into such an order where you start to see that I'm not really in control as much as I thought I was.

And that actually is a lot of freedom. It's a lot of release of like that need to do something. But of course we're talking also people need to make money. you know, but I'm not saying someone just becomes some sort of a lazy bomb. You know, it's more like you can literally watch the whole thing at play. You know, don't have to like, like you might even.

Just say the perfect thing, and all of a sudden you're in some sort of business meeting, and you're making a deal, you know, it's that kind of thing that can happen.

Melanie Wilson (26:58)

You can say the perfect thing.

Govinda (27:01)

But you wouldn't even know what it was. You wouldn't even be planning the perfect thing. But yeah, it's, I think one can be in a nine-to-five and still be spiritual and still be connected. Now they might need a few years of break, rest or something like I had. And that might be why they feel tugged to get out. But it doesn't mean they have to be fully gone from that life, you know, forever. So, or maybe they can kind of walk the line and do it both. There are good practices out there where we call it being a householder. And a householder is someone who's got a meditative practice or a spiritual practice, you know, sometimes we call them sadhanas. And they can be doing this and be working and having kids and having a family or doing whatever that stuff you know that kind of thing.

Melanie Wilson (28:07)

Yes, the break, the few years off, I feel very reassured hearing that you had that because I had a bit of a gap from doing mainstream forms of work. And I think it did seem very counter-cultural, and you hear some people online saying that they worried if they took a break, it would ruin their careers, things like that.

And although, although a lot of people read Eat, Pray, Love, that person, Liz Gilbert was, I know I've referenced that twice, but I feel like the whole pilgrimage thing applies here. I'd say she was still paid to ride in that time. So it's very different. And, and so.

I think, I think the thing I'm really wondering is how did you find that, um, how did you find that you could still integrate back and where are you feeling like a better professional? You mentioned you were finding your confidence after a break, but how did you get to that reassurance returning to what you do after a gap?

Govinda (29:32)

Well, yeah, it really depends on the gap, I suppose. But for my gap, it set me up to not have a stake in the game as much, which gave a lot more freedom to be more whole at work, even, and not have to worry about my image or anything like that, which

It didn't mean I was an asshole or anything, but it just meant that I didn't limit myself in ways that I would have in the past. You can write emails a lot more freely. It doesn't take an hour to figure out what to say. The work is a lot more free. I suppose it depends if you're on your... Ideally, this three-year gap would help you find your free-flowing path.

That is set up for your soul, and then things tend to flow a lot better. And so yeah, I would say you could, if you're going to go back to your old career, then things off for me were just fine and even better. was sitting in the office in a, know, sit in deep silence, even though it's an office and I'm doing work, you know, at the same time.

Melanie Wilson (30:59)

You could find the silence within.

And the self-image, did you, did you feel a pressure or an expectation before the break to do the, I don't know, the sort of mad men self-image or some sort of version of being what you were looking a particular way and becoming something instead of just, I'm doing work. I'm a part of something that's a machine, I'm contributing value, but I'm not depending on my identity on it. Was it that sort of shift?

Govinda (31:39)

Yeah, yeah, definitely. Before going on this kind of deeper journey, you know, every assignment, every thing that I would do kind of felt like it was being judged a little bit, you know, at least not by someone else necessarily. But like, you know, there's always a little bit of a feeling that I need to perform well all the time. And over time, I realised, you know, it's of course I want to perform well, but it's not going to affect my anxiety or something that would affect my life outside of work.

Melanie Wilson (32:21)

Do you think sometimes when we get high pressure or work, there's a primitive part of us that senses or assumes that things are almost life or death, even though they are not, we have that sort of dependence on what we're doing?

Govinda (32:41)

I think if you browse the internet enough and social media, you'll see tons of accounts of people feeling that way. know, feeling that every little thing they do is a little bit, is going to like ruin their life or not. And so that kind of subtle programming that I didn't realise I was operating under, released a lot throughout those years of break from that. That was probably

Yeah, the first like year of meditating without any work, you know, I just had a lot of thoughts went by around self-worth related to work. And, you know, am I doing the right thing in society and all these things that just kind of learned as almost subliminally up until up until my mid 20s. Those things came through very hard.

I mean, just imagine you go from like, I was one of these straight A students, you know, I was trying to get pre-med, was trying to go to med school, that kind of thing. And going from that to like, just sitting around every single day, you know, like, like not doing anything, like, it was a big shift. And it was wonderful, too, you know, so much rest and, and eventually, it was because I was meditating while I was working, you know, doing the regular kind of three times a day practice and that each session was getting so blissful and so wonderful that I wanted to go longer. And so I couldn't because I had to work. And so I eventually was like, well, I'll just quit work so I can just meditate longer. You know, I don't want to have any limits on my, I don't want to put an alarm on. I don't want to do any of that.

So, yeah.

Melanie Wilson (34:39)

Okay. So part of this was you needed to get out and be in environments beyond the office. I would say a lot of people want that these days, and people have been searching for a version of that goodness the last decade or two. There were schools of thought like the four-hour work week, which is more of a figure of speech than literally what people should be doing, but there were all these versions of, you know, fire, I forgot what that stands for, the freedom to do something financially independent. Yes.

Govinda (35:15)

Yeah, that's something about retiring early. Financial independence, retire early.

Melanie Wilson (35:20)

So there are all these versions, so many, whether it's that or the traditional gap year, there's this longing for people to get beyond the fluorescent lights and the office. So it sounds like for you, a change of environment did help you to just look beyond the corporate and just look within basically not being distracted by that for a bit of time. Do you think, have you known some people who have achieved that return to a fresh perspective without taking a whole few years?

Govinda (36:09)

I don't know if I know anyone that's done that. But yeah, you know, my generation, I think, also kind of sees some of the bullshit of corporate life. And, you know, so it's not necessarily the people around me are more similar to what I did than the other way around. I wouldn't necessarily, so some people don't necessarily need to leave their jobs because they're already happy in them. So it's different. If you're talking to someone that's deeply unsatisfied with their job, then they want to switch and take a break. I tried the hardest. I had stuff happening when I started my job, that's when a lot of spiritual awakening started happening. It was only in my second month of my first job after my master's degree. I like, I mean, I had taken a small dose of magic mushrooms and, and like, yeah, not at my job, but with my friends. And ⁓

Melanie Wilson (37:09)

Wow.

Govinda (37:24)

I like left the universe on that. And then I came back, and then it just persisted for weeks. And I was going into the office looking like just hanging out and experiencing deep bliss, like looking at the cubicle walls and just experiencing bliss off the walls. So.

I've like walked to the break room, and I look outside and see the sun peering over the trees, and I would just start crying. You know, this happened for many weeks in a row, and eventually it faded. Yeah, so I eventually it faded, and I'm like, well, and everything was working perfectly the whole time I could work.

When I needed to, I mean, I didn't have that much work at that time, so I was able to kind of relax. But when I needed to do some analysis, I was just able to do it and then present it. It wasn't like I was incapable of working. But eventually, for me, was like, OK, I got to find a way to have this without some sort of... Yeah, because I did do those for almost a year.

Melanie Wilson (38:33)

Mushroom.

Govinda (38:38)

Every few months, it was tough on the nervous system over time. But eventually, I found a meditative practice that provided the very same environment without the harshness on the nervous system.

Melanie Wilson (38:56)

Interesting that opening up a whole can of lamps, because most people at some point will turn to something external. And yes, those who are not pursuing an enlightened path might have a few drinks, whatever. But also, I had moments of I'm so stressed, maybe a whole lot of essential oil will distract me from how I'm feeling or whatever it might be. Do you think people do look for those external things, and I'm wondering, does it help a bit, but to some extent, is it just icing on the cake? All those bells and whistles.

Govinda (39:39)

Every person has to look for the external things until they aren't satisfied with them. That's how that's part of the path is continuing to look externally until you finally decide, nothing out there is helping.

Like nothing, even the most promised land of you know of s#$ basically even like that's gotta be like the most promised land of all the things you know like even then you're like this isn't really doing it you know and so eventually turning internally unless for some reason some people are already on a deep path without having to do that

Maybe I don't know what happened, but sometimes they're already living some sort of life that is evoking a deep sense of peace for them.

Melanie Wilson (40:27)

you

I'm glad you said that because I wanted to very respectfully reference the religious followers that I saw very early on in life, who are doing something meaningful, and it's all good, but the thing that I struggled with very early on was that so many people felt rescued, and although some things had been stressful or traumatic within my personal life to some extent, I was just wondering, I'm in the suburbs, what am I getting rescued from? I think it seems like some people need the great epiphany to find the spiritual meaning. You think that it really does, do you think that the spiritual awakening really does come to some people after a bit of an identity crisis or some sort of other pivotal moment later on?

Govinda (41:30)

absolutely. Yeah, I mean, this would be the dark night of the soul, right? This is a, this is that deep sense of existential angst for life. It drives one to search. And so, yeah, not everyone actually is going through that, and that's okay. But those who are, you know, eventually they're gonna have to find out that like, the external world is not offering that in general. Yeah, and of course, like, I also found a lot of satisfaction through religion. And that's why I stayed, you know, that I just eventually found that the experience of, of God isn't isn't it isn't bound within one of the religions. It doesn't really make sense that the infinite, like some sort of ultimate, all omnipotent, omnipresent being would be bound within one thought system on the planet. And one of the things I always was interested in was like, if most humans don't switch religions based like from what they were born into. And so if most aren't, you know, switching, then then only the one you're born into, if that's the right one, then you got kind of lucky some level. And it just doesn't make that much sense to me. But someone's experience on being a Christian or being a Buddhist or being a Muslim or something, if they have experiences that are inexplicable experiences, those are totally true. That's not wrong at all.

Melanie Wilson (43:29)

No, no, it really, it works for people wherever they are. And I think that I've found a lot more of peace with knowing, okay, every tradition serves its purpose for its people. And I'm curious, did you see that within various religious traditions? There is some form of believing the divine is within you. And I'm wondering, with meditation, is it a way to tap into that divine, whatever people may call it, the divine within, instead of looking for those external things like what we talked about. So in that sense, meditation surely could overlap with all of these other traditions.

Govinda (44:22)

Yeah, it's really nice to have meditation alongside any other tradition. Yeah, and I think like contemplative prayer for Christians is a very positive form of meditation. I mean, the issue we're running into a little bit here is I grew up in conservative American Christianity, which has a very knee-jerk reaction to the word meditation. So that's what, yeah.

Melanie Wilson (44:49)

Really?

Govinda (44:52)

They're so anti. They put out these teachings that anything from the East is basically the devil. So you get all these people that get so afraid. And I guess if you have any listeners like that, just say you don't have to worry about it. You just got to try things. And this is why contemplative prayer is a good way to call it, because I would

Melanie Wilson (44:52)

What happened?

Govinda (45:20)

Personally say that's also meditation, but you know when you have these kind of conditionings knee-jerk reactions to words, then got to be careful. But yeah Contemplative prayer and that is good. I think Muslims do their five-day five prayers a day thing, which is pretty cool, too

Melanie Wilson (45:42)

Five would be, it's very disciplined. Yes. Applying the core intention to anything contemplative, it's a way to translate all of this. And I'm very reassured hearing that from you because I think the thing I heard from some of these traditions is they were reluctant about yoga, which overlaps a bit with meditation in some ways.

But when I finally actually visited yoga and stuck with it, the focus was on the breath and just how the one flow of air that's all around us goes through us, and it goes through all of us. And that wasn't worshipping some other gods, although some people do that. And I also found online a Christian yoga teacher. There is an overlap because people were able to apply those universal concepts of, okay, there's something that's all around us. Let's connect with that by slowing down. And I'm very concerned that it seems like some people out there in America, wherever it might be dismissing some forms of practice, not realising it could actually support their beliefs because slowing down, I know some religious people go to Pilates because they think it will avoid the wrong spiritual things more than if they did yoga, but then I've seen both of those and only one of these two things will really slow you down and make you focus on the spiritual side of whatever you believe in. I'm wondering, do you have any other advice beyond contemplative prayer to the people who believe in any traditions and are a bit reluctant? Do you think there is a way they can meditate without being worried that it could threaten their beliefs?

Govinda (48:00)

Well, you know, in a way, the beliefs could change. I have to be honest. I don't know if the beliefs would necessarily stay if you were doing meditation. mean, I was I was doing prayer, a lot of prayer. Right. I mean, as a kid and I started with some prayer called the joy. Joy prayer.

And it was started, was like, you pray thinking Jesus, J, J-O-Y. And then you pray for others, and then you pray for yourself, J-O-Y, joy prayer. And that's where I started. I was like, okay, it's an interesting prayer. And then eventually I started asking, what is good, what is the good of me praying to an all-powerful being and asking them to change something?

And then eventually I started realising, well, what it was doing was it was changing my heart around things. And it wasn't necessarily changing the reality of like some situation, or it wasn't changing all the things that were happening, but it was changing my view on things and changing, making me softer towards things. And eventually I started realising like, what am I even doing praying for hours and hours, you know, if nothing's coming up.

If nothing's coming up. And eventually, just like sitting in silence. I just started being like, well, I guess I just gotta sit here. Just wait, like pose one question and then just sit here. And so eventually, like for me, the prayer life led to meditation, right? Sitting in silence. And so...

I think like a lot of some sort of internal practice, it's gonna, it's gonna change beliefs. I don't know how it couldn't as in an honest way. You know, if it's not really changing anything in that, because we're talking about even the tradition should probably should help you, like, find God,

Melanie Wilson (49:56)

Okay. you

Govinda (50:14)

You know, even these traditions should help you find God. And I think most of the time, it's the conditioning on the person that is blocking that. And so, yeah, I guess, I don't know if it's gonna like root out the core of your belief, but maybe some of the side ones that you think were important might go away. Yeah, I can't promise that you're gonna stay the same if you start a contemplative practice, but I think you might be happier.

Melanie Wilson (50:36)

Some of the... Okay.

Right, you can find more happiness when you pause and contemplate, and I'm going to interpret that, at a minimum, some of the interpretations of our beliefs, the ways in which we assume our beliefs need to be lived out, could evolve.

Govinda (51:13)

Yeah, yeah, and I think, I mean, if you find a practice that you enjoy, and you do it every day, and you enjoy it very much, that's a lot of value. There's a lot of value in that. There's a lot of people that don't enjoy any part of their lives. And so if you're doing something that you're loving every day, you know, that's pretty valuable.

And so I guess if someone finds a practice they enjoy a lot, then it'll help coincide with their beliefs, and it'll be okay.

Melanie Wilson (51:50)

Awesome. And going back to work, because one of the main goals of this show is to look at how we can look after ourselves when we're doing work. I'm curious, people look at gratitude and various journaling or gratitude practices of various sorts for work and also manifestation. So I think that is getting into the mainstream, and you mentioned wondering how a particular practice in, in your story, was your phase of prayer and wondering, questioning whatever practices we have, how can we make sure we are taking action and actually moving ourselves in the direction that we need to go in, instead of only sitting in contemplation? Have you seen in your life?

Have you seen in your life that progressing from your years of contemplation to then acting on things and integrating yourself into your professional career, have you found that taking action without getting dependent on these forms of work for your identity? Have you found that that's as important at times as just meditating?

Govinda (53:17)

Yeah, well, you know, those years of meditating helped me be able to meditate eyes open as well. You know, the practice that I learned, it actually has both a closed-eyed and open-eyed component. So, you know, I guess you don't really there isn't a difference in action at some level. You're just like, I'm able to go out and do all the things that I would do, but I'm also meditating at the same time. And so... like I said before, the few years were kind of to help my nervous system calm down from all the stress of the 25 years or so of building stress, you know. And so eventually that just allowed a much more clear sense of the meditative state, even while working or programming or going to meetings or doing creative work, of course, that's much easier even. But yeah. So yeah, mean, yeah, 25.

Melanie Wilson (54:26)

25 years.

I'm just checking for a second. Was going to ask earlier, you did your master's. So, how many years were you at college? Was it a long time of stress at college before then even doing work?

Govinda (54:45)

I took some years in between my uni and my grad school. So actually, the most stressful year or something of my life was working as a medical scribe in a clinic where they were doing pain medicine. So every patient was going through a lot of pain and I was having to do like 20 or 20 appointments a day, like typing all the notes.

That was probably the most stressful thing. And that was in between uni and grad school. I didn't go straight through school and then go to my first job. It was just my first job after grad school, which was a much more chill job. It was an office job, you know, rather than like I had worked retail, and I was actually a youth pastor and doing like scribe work. And then I went into grad school and then.

Melanie Wilson (55:23)

Yes.

Govinda (55:44)

And then I started working as like an analyst at a health insurance company.

Melanie Wilson (55:50)

You were a youth pastor as well. Did you do a qualification for that?

Govinda (55:53)

Yeah.

No, I didn't do a qualification for that. My qualification was being a Christian, I guess, and doing the year abroad in Swaziland. They liked that.

Melanie Wilson (56:10)

Right, right. That would have given you lot of perspective being in another country for that long.

Govinda (56:18)

Yeah, I was in the rural part too, as well.

Melanie Wilson (56:18)

So.

That's a whole story in itself, but getting back to everything, it sounds like it was very much as a grad when you're sitting in an office quietly wondering, okay, what's now? What now? What's the word of wisdom that you can share? What are three things? I love to wind up these chats with three things that everybody can do. Maybe they are new in their careers, or maybe they have been working for a long time but wondering, okay what's the point of everything, or they're just trying to figure out who else can I be anything like that? What do you suggest to everybody?

Govinda (57:09)

Yeah, well, I would spend a little bit of time getting to know yourself if you haven't done that. know, getting to know what makes you a little different than other people. And then that'll help kind of evoke a path that fits you better. You know, if you're feeling somewhat disenfranchised or if you're feeling unhappy about your work, then getting to know yourself will help lead you to what you want to do, what you might want to do differently. And not necessarily, you might even want to go deeper than like Myers Briggs, and you might want to go a little deeper than that, you know. You could get into Enneagram, you could get into other things as well, but

Melanie Wilson (57:45)

You

Govinda (58:01)

Yeah, I would say do that and then also a little time, like figuring out what your heart really wants in life and then going and doing that even if it's a little bit scary. Of course it's going to be scary, right? This is kind of hand in hand with change. yeah, figuring out what your heart wants and even if you, you know, I know I didn't know what that meant for a long time at the

I needed advice from others, but I didn't want to take advice from just anyone because not everyone is that wise. I went to, you know, spent time figuring out who were good people to listen to and what advice they would have.

Melanie Wilson (58:47)

So look for advice from people and also look within. Govinda, thank you so much for chatting and exploring your experience and your insights about finding a spiritual journey and some meaning within when we are also working in mainstream careers. This has been very insightful. Thank you.

Govinda (59:14)

Thank you for having me, Monty. It's been a lot of fun. I enjoy it very much.

Melanie Wilson (59:19)

Thanks.

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keywords

meditation, transcendental meditation, chakra healing, personal growth, creativity, mindfulness, self-discovery, overcoming obstacles, intuition, photography

Summary

In this conversation, Daria shares her transformative journey through meditation, particularly focusing on Transcendental Meditation and chakra healing. She discusses how these practices have helped her overcome personal obstacles, heal emotionally and physically, and connect with her creative self. Daria emphasises the importance of solitude and self-discovery, and how meditation can align various aspects of life. The discussion also touches on the connection between energy, intuition, and creativity, as well as her background in photography and how it intertwines with her spiritual journey.

Takeaways

Daria's journey into meditation was inspired by her personal struggles and desire for a fulfilling life.

Transcendental Meditation has been a significant part of Daria's healing process, helping her find purpose and joy.

Healing through meditation can lead to profound changes in mental and physical health.

Chakra meditation has helped Daria balance her hormones and alleviate pain.

Intuition plays a crucial role in decision-making and can be enhanced through meditation.

Daria's background in photography has influenced her artistic expression and connection to meditation.

Solitude can be a powerful teacher, allowing for self-discovery and personal growth.

Meditation can help individuals align their lives and find clarity in their purpose.

Creativity often flows more freely when one is in a meditative state.

Listening to oneself is essential in determining the right path for personal growth.

Titles

Transforming Through Meditation: Daria's Journey

The Healing Power of Transcendental Meditation

Sound bites

"I can literally heal myself."

"I started enjoying my own company."

"Everything in your life will align."

Chapters

00:00 NEWCHAPTER

04:32 Transcendental Meditation: A Personal Experience

06:15 Celebrity Influence and Creative Flow

11:58 Overcoming Obstacles Through Meditation

17:15 Healing Through Chakra Awareness

23:06 The Spiritual Connection of Chakras

25:11 Energy Flow and Intuition

30:05 Daria's Journey into Photography

31:39 The Healing Power of Solitude

34:14 Art, Meditation, and Self-Discovery

Transcript

Melanie Wilson (00:00)

I'm really wondering what inspired you to start talking on podcasts about meditation?

Daria (00:09)

Well, I guess the main thing that inspired me was my personal journey because You know when I look right now on people who are in survival mode, I guess I've been there once and I was always like wondering how it is to be like like to live life of your dream, but not just like a dream but actually to have this is a reality and it's cool to have dreams, but it's also cool to create that reality that looks like your dream. And funny enough, like now I'm more active on threads, and I ask people, what would you do if you wouldn't be on survival mode? And I was kind of, well, maybe even shocked by the answers because a lot of them said, I don't know, because I never been on the other side. Let's say like I have haven't ever been not in the survival mode. So I don't even know how it feels. And I guess that was in the past, partially for me as well. Like I couldn't understand how it feels until I started meditation, until I started this healing process. And then actually something opened up, and like I, yeah, I just discovered a new world where it's possible, you know, to experience joy, to heal parts of yourself that were all the time judgmental or hesitant. And well, yeah, I've been as a photographer for more than 16 years, and it was like a big part of my life. And then I always struggled because I was like, yeah, I had this imposter syndrome, and I was always thinking that someone has to find me because yeah, you know, if everyone says I'm talented, so why wouldn't they hire me like to do all this project? But I didn't realize that I always like was hiding and I was still like very judging myself and my skills. And I was afraid like to show up, to be visible, to talk about my art.

And then again, with the meditation and with this healing process, I realised that it was simply about confidence. Like if you talk about your skills, your it's not being, it's not necessarily like being arrogant, yeah? It's necessarily like your ego talking about this. It's simply about being confident, and especially if you understand what's your purpose, then you are even more confident to talk about this.

And what happened when I started this healing journey and meditation journey is that actually, it was a beautiful process. I wouldn't say that everything started to unfold straight away. It took some weeks, it took some months, but then, literally, my depression, it just went away. Like if before I couldn't even get up from bed, you know, and I had epressive thoughts and then suddenly I started to have like to feel the purpose in life to meaning in life and Yeah, I think like lots of things change it was like 360 like turn And then I just realized how powerful it was and Of course, I continued my journey, but I kind of realized that this is so beautiful that I should bring it to others

Melanie Wilson (03:38)

Yes.

Daria (03:57)

It was basically the message coming to me during the ceremony of Transcendental Meditation. Meditation is like a medicine, like medication, and that I should just bring it to others. And then after some time, I started also teaching, guiding, and now...

Melanie Wilson (03:58)

Thank

you

We

Daria (04:24)

I felt like I would like to talk about this more and bring it on the next level.

Melanie Wilson (04:30)

Did you say you follow transcendental meditation?

Daria (04:32)

Yeah, I started practising Transcendental Meditation. It was kind of quite an interesting journey to get there because I have heard about this from David Lynch so many times. I have read in the book, and then I was like just curious. So, where do I get this mantra? How do I get there? And then I moved at that time to Portugal and I saw again I was like on YouTube and saw this video where David Lynch explains how transcendental meditation works and I was like my god this is so beautiful I just need my mantra where do I get it and then finally I saw like a window popped up and it says like find your teachers I was like wow like there is like it's just like a sign for me so I contacted straight away and they said that actually in the town where I live there are teachers and I could choose because some would speak English others not and then I found my teachers and like I went probably on the second day I just like went straight away they had like introduction you know they told me everything how it works and then maybe it was like third or fourth day it was a ceremony and it was like a beautiful.

For me, it was like a beautiful experience, this ceremony. And when I came to the ceremony, I felt like, okay, it's gonna be like a life-changing event for me, you I just felt it.

Melanie Wilson (06:00)

Thank you.

That's amazing. And this got my attention because I heard that a bunch of celebrities also follow Transcendental Meditation. It has some high-profile advocates. Have you heard about that?

Daria (06:31)

Yes, yes, definitely.

Well, actually, Ray Deleu is one of them, the businessman, right? And if I'm not mistaken, Cameron Dias and some other celebrities practice. I might be wrong if they practice exactly a transcendent meditation, but as far as I remember, these names.

Yeah, I know that it's great and I know that they have they mentioned also that it was quite life-changing for them because it kind of opens up some creative flow. That's what I also noticed, like from the very beginning. Somehow, you sit in this meditation, and then ideas just like start flowing, you know, and, yeah, at that time, I was still in photography, so it started to show up in my photography, like these creative ideas, I started to have like these projects. But then, interesting enough, my meditation scripts started to come in the meditation, in the transcendental meditation, you know?

Melanie Wilson (07:36)

You found that you had more creative flow after meditating.

Daria (07:51)

Yeah, there were like different experiences. So sometimes I remember my childhood, very interesting moments that I would usually not even remember. But then suddenly it felt like I was back in that beautiful moment, maybe somewhere walking in the forest or something like that. And then, yeah.

And then later, I started to experience these creative moments more and more. But yeah, you need to be quite consistent, you know, it needs to be like your routine because usually it's like meditating in the morning and afternoon. Sometimes when I can't fall asleep, maybe the day was very like exciting and all that. So I just like repeat silently this mantra and it also makes me to fall asleep like straight away

Melanie Wilson (08:51)

That's so good. You fall asleep that quickly.

Daria (08:55)

Yeah, it's amazing.

Melanie Wilson (08:57)

How long do you recite your mantra? How long do you keep that going during one meditation session?

Daria (09:04)

Well, usually they say you need to repeat it for 20 minutes, and sometimes, you know, I don't watch like I don't look at my watch. Just practice and see how long it goes. Yeah, there are times that I start and then my mind can be chattering, and then it takes a couple of minutes to adjust, and then it's quiet, and then you just see it.

Melanie Wilson (09:05)

I'm sure it is.

Daria (09:34)

So honestly, I don't even know if sometimes I do it for longer or for shorter time. I don't set an alarm because I don't just don't like an alarm sound. But yeah, what feels natural basically.

Melanie Wilson (09:49)

You go with the amount of time that you need. I really appreciate that. There's a flexibility, and I can share with you that today I tried a yoga practice alone, and I realised I was looking at the clock too much in hindsight. I just sort of pardon me. I should have set a timer. I'll edit that part. See, we can edit. If I'd set a timer, but with what you're doing, you're just doing the amount of time that feels right for you, isn't any expectation to do five minutes or 20 minutes, or I mean, you have the standard of 20 minutes, but it's very much what feels right on the day.

Daria (10:29)

Exactly. Yeah, because for example, as I say, when I want to fall asleep, and I simply repeat it, maybe just for one, two minutes and then I just like, whoop, went away. Yeah. So. Well, knows? Yeah, but I honestly, I simply don't like alarms. Even in the morning, I try like if there are no meetings, I just don't set alarms because I think

Melanie Wilson (10:40)

Instantly.

You must have been tired.

Daria (10:59)

I rather keep my, you know, natural rhythm. If I want to sleep a little longer, then I just, yeah, allow myself to stay in the bed for a bit longer. So, and I guess in the meditation it's the same. Like I used to look at my watch, but I think it's even more destructive just to look at your watch or to have that alarm. And sometimes you just feel that, okay, this amount of time was already enough for me.

And honestly, there are times that the ideas just like coming through and I'm like, okay, I just need to write down it right now. Or I need to write it to record because sometimes there are ideas that I want to speak, you know, to create this speaking videos and some messages like come literally. So I believe I just channel the message, and then I record it. Yeah.

Melanie Wilson (11:58)

Ideas come to you. I'm curious, how has transcendental meditation helped you with overcoming obstacles in your personal life?

Daria (11:59)

Hmm.

Look, it's quiet, it's a good question, it's a great question, but it's difficult for me to answer if it was exactly a transcendental meditation, meditation, sorry, or it was a mix because I was, let's say, experimenting with other meditations as well, right? So I sometimes mix them. I would say I could do a Transcendental Meditation, then I would do one hour of Chakra Meditation. And maybe that was even more powerful that I started combining them. And that's actually another message that I had during the ceremony that I shouldn't just practice one type of meditation, I should like discover them. Because there are tons of different kinds of meditations, and I was really curious about that, and I also got certified in mindfulness meditation. So for myself, I started also practising this chakra meditation together with transcendental meditation, and that's when I also noticed that, for example, my hormones balanced naturally and because I had this struggle for a long, long time, and they were prescribing me different hormonal treatment, all that. It never worked out.

Melanie Wilson (13:36)

How is that impacting

You, without going into anything you don't want to say, wondering where you're getting headaches, where you're feeling extra stressed? Were there things like that impacting you emotionally and mentally?

Daria (13:49)

Before you mean or yes, yeah, they definitely did. I mean, I didn't have like normal cycles, and that kind of disturbed me a lot, and also a lot of pain, so I've been using a lot of painkillers, and I just gave up

Melanie Wilson (13:51)

with the hormones.

Really?

Daria (14:14)

Honestly, like at some point I just like give up with that, and that's why I find it like I call it miracle because I didn't even set this intention. It just happened naturally, like at some point I noticed that I started to have a regular cycle, and it's now ready for a couple of years like that. ⁓ Yeah

Melanie Wilson (14:32)

Seriously, so are you saying you were even on painkillers? It was that? No? Did I miss here? Yes, so you were even on painkillers, and you didn't have the regularity, and then you were meditating, and things improved?

Daria (14:36)

a lot.

Yes, it happened. I would say I didn't like measure, but I would say after eight, nine months, that's what happened. Yes. And like right now I, I do sometimes have pains, especially if let's say I didn't like sleep well, you know, something so, but it's nothing to compare what it was before. Like, and yeah, I feel like I'm relieved from that experience, from that pain.

Melanie Wilson (14:59)

Wow.

Daria (15:19)

And it's a rare case that I would take any medicine at all right now. And yeah, it just feels like, you know, I can listen to my body better. Like I can literally sit, let's say in the morning and before meditation, after meditation, I just ask myself, okay, how am I feeling right now? Is there some tension? Where is it? And I literally can heal myself. And that's what we all have. We have...

Like we have this ability to heal ourselves, you know, we just, we think maybe people are simply not aware of this or maybe scared what they find there, but actually this process is beautiful. When you start discovering it, okay. At first, maybe you need to get this trash out, you know, from your mind, from your body, but then it's like, it's like a purification basis, and then you find that you can communicate with your body, you can heal your body, you can sense if there is any emotion stored and yeah. So meditation definitely helped me with that, and be it mindfulness meditation, transcendental meditation or chakra meditation. think like yeah, well okay a lot. I experienced for me it's a miracle, but again, I sort of think or I sort of feel that it was also thanks to energy centers healing because I started to kind of dig deeper into that and I started to learn more about each chakra and which emotions it stores and how it's connected, let's say with other safety or this or that like inner child healing and yeah, by practicing that.

Melanie Wilson (16:58)

Thank

Daria (17:15)

I basically healed myself on different levels, and it felt like easier to act from the place of love and joy, and I don't know, for me every day I feel like in a way I'm like a child discovering the world again and again. Every day I'm seeing something, and I'm like, wow, this is so beautiful. So I'm able to do that because I'm not anymore in this survival mode.

Melanie Wilson (17:21)

Thank

It sounds like relieving the stress and finding a way to maybe process memories or at least make peace with memories. It was, it was helping you physically.

Daria (18:01)

Definitely. Yeah, because everything was in a mental level. It definitely will affect to a physical level. And I've been just to make it clear, I've been the person, or actually, from the very childhood, I've been to the hospitals a lot. Like I always had something. And as I said, I just like maybe give up or maybe I just decided for myself, okay, I take care of myself right now. I don't put responsibility on someone or something. I, you know, I don't want to be any more a victim of these circumstances. I just want to heal myself, and I want to build that beautiful reality, which I believe is possible, you know, because also believing, I think it's a big part that it's possible. Yes, it takes time. Of course, it doesn't happen like this over the night, like, you know, just a magic trick, no, but with some consistency, with daily practice and at some point, you go deeper. Like actually, it was also quite a natural flow that I started with meditations, and then I went to theta healing, and it's, it also happened like.

I don't know how to say, would I say accidentally? I don't know. Or was it meant to be? Because I met like...

Melanie Wilson (19:27)

What are you saying? It might have been fate.

Daria (19:29)

Yeah, like I have no idea, but I mean, I guess it was meant to be like to find this method of healing, because I literally simply came to one event and then I met the person and on her profile I saw that she said like I'm a healer and I had no idea what's this, but I sort of knew that it's just talking to me, you know.

And I asked her like, okay, what's this and how can I learn or how can I become a Theta Healer? And then she just directed me to the teachers, to the instructors. And that was like a new step, you know, in my life. I felt like it was a profound experience. And in Theta Healing, also, at least that's how our instructor taught us, we also go into like chakra healing and because

Melanie Wilson (20:31)

What's the difference?

What does the chakra experience involve for you?

Daria (20:38)

So, if you understand, like, which like each energy centres and what they like what they connect us with, let's say root chakra. Well, basically, the word has already from the Sanskrit it means root and connection, I think, if I'm not mistaken, and it connects us basically to the Mother Earth and to the world and even to our ancestors. So one way you understand this connection that it's much deeper, and you start healing on that level, like healing the chakra, then you feel less fear, and you feel the support. You literally understand that there is something or someone, some energy supporting you, and you sort of build it inside of you, this support. And for me, that was so powerful because a lot of people live literally there, just there. They can't even elevate their emotions and go up to let's say heart chakraand they just stuck in this root chakra, but this is like the base, and when you heal this basement base, or basement is the correct word, base wow okay, thank you yeah

Melanie Wilson (22:08)

Basement is under a house base. So it's basically the base will be the end of the spine. And my understanding is that the chakras go along the spine, and getting beyond any sort of magical things that might be theories about it. can say that when you're standing up tall, sitting up tall, and your whole spine is aligned, you're upright with confidence. And you also mentioned having faith in the earth below you and your surroundings, and having faith in basically something greater than yourself, because the top of the chakra line pretty much refers to the universal, let's word this carefully, it's referring to the supreme, the supreme spiritual source, God, whatever you may call it. So any belief system might have a different name for it, but it's essentially to quote 12 steps that I'm not a part of. It's having faith in something greater than yourself. Is that aligning with your understanding of chakras a bit?

Daria (23:36)

Yes, and also I guess we need to, whatever you know, believe it is, but we need to understand it's also about this energy flow, and I think what's also happening while you're healing these chakras, that and actually people tell me like my students, and I can sense it as well, like energy starts flowing, you can literally feel the movement in your body. Sometimes people say I felt it maybe in my legs, or maybe like in the throat or even here. So it of course depends on which level they are and what they're healing right now. Right. So maybe in the heart. So this energy starts simply flowing, circulating. And basically, when we practice it, we help also with our minds. So clear that space and to start this energy to circulate, you know. So it can be done through the movement, through the breathing and also through visualisation simply. And yes, like when you start aligning these chakras, then you definitely are connecting with these energies from above and below.

And you understand that you're, well, in a way you're like a little human here, but at the same time you are everything because you are connected with all this energy. just become one, you know? So I think this is, yeah, amazing.

Melanie Wilson (24:56)

That's amazing.

So the chakras remind you that you're a part of the greater universe. And again, for those who are going to call out the woo-woo, we are all breathing in the same air. Let's face it. The same air is circulating for all of us in some way. There is a connection with everybody. And when you feel connected to something and to everything, then you can feel less isolated. You can feel more confident, and you can know that there is a strength beyond yourself to face what you are facing.

Daria (25:46)

Yeah, and also if you think about this, honestly, we feel these energies, even if we think we, not everyone has disabilities, but we do. Like, let's say you enter into the room and you might already sense to whom you want to be connected, to whom not, because maybe someone just, like, sense this, as we say, like negative or positive vibes. It's, yeah, after all, it's not woohoo. It's like real thing. And we know, we sense it, you know, on some level, this energy, and I can sometimes even see also the difference when I have been like very aligned and like meditating, and I just go for a walk, and then suddenly people like turn to me, smile to me like it's just simple, simple as well.

Melanie Wilson (26:33)

Can I tell you,

I visited a place today, I won't say where it was, and I just had a gut feeling. I just knew this is not where I should be, but I felt like I had to test it. I had to go there. And I know that sometimes our intuition tells us something before we have all of the information, because you just know, but also...

Daria (26:56)

Yeah.

Melanie Wilson (26:58)

There was information confirming, okay, here are some reasons why I should listen to my gut on this. But do you have that as well? Sometimes you can go into a space and you know, this is either aware I should be or not.

Daria (27:12)

Well, I actually tell you the real story. That was maybe a year ago, and I was working with them. I did like dog sitting for my friend, and I was working with the dog, and there was like a path with some construction going on on the pathway, and I felt like strongly I should avoid it, and basically what it meant to walk the road.

So, okay, I looked at there are no cars and I can simply pass it. The moment we passed it, the wall started falling. Like literally, like huge pieces started falling. Like they did some, I don't know, as a construction or whatever they did. And it actually was open for pedestrians, imagine. But I don't know how that happened, but yeah, literally the wall started simply like falling. Like, I don't know.

Melanie Wilson (27:50)

The wall was falling!

Daria (28:07)

like above and from the side. So I literally avoided that just because I listened to my intuition, you know? And I know this feeling that sometimes we have this feeling, but we are like still stubborn, you know, like, ah, I felt that, but I still do this. And then we often regret, like, oh, why did I do this? Oh, why did I do this? And...

Melanie Wilson (28:28)

My goodness, it is so true.

Daria (28:32)

Yes, so when you start training your intuition, okay, of course it also opens up to you strongly when you meditate because then it means that you aligned and you again listen to your inner voice or to your higher self and then basically the training is simply to follow this instance, let's say, yeah, that God feeling, that intuition and then it simply proves you, yes, like you...

If you feel that, okay, call this person right now, then just call. If it says like, I don't know, send this email or yeah, whatever. Sometimes I have the, like it just comes to me. Okay. I need to contact this person. That may be something going on. And then it just, apparently, I contacted just in the right time, and you know, maybe just say a word, whatever, and then the person says like, okay, it just made my day or whatever they are going through right now.

Melanie Wilson (29:37)

It's amazing when that happens, and I've even seen some people reaching out to me out of the blue, and I think this timing is spot on, and it sounds like you have that instinct to reach out to people at the right time when they need it.

Daria (29:52)

Yeah, exactly. That's beautiful.

Melanie Wilson (29:54)

I'm so curious. I wanted to know more about your background because the audience will be so curious. The photography, how did you get into photography?

Daria (30:05)

Well, first of all, maybe I should mention that I come originally from Ukraine and I started my photography path there. I guess it started because I saw my brother photographing, although it was a hobby for him. My uncle was photographing, so I had quite an artistic background, like my grandfather was a painter.

Yeah, I guess I simply got influenced by that. And although I went to study languages and literature, I had this interest into art and photography. So I simply took a camera and would take pictures of either my friends or landscapes. And yeah, it started from there. But then I was at first I was self-taught, but then later I had this idea that I would like actually to go somewhere abroad and study abroad. And finally, many years after that first education, I decided to go to Finland and study photography there. And yeah.

So it was also quite an interesting experience because it was a completely different country with different culture for me. But yeah, I guess I was just very excited. Although at the same time, I had to face some, well, difficult, you know, situations like challenges in my

Melanie Wilson (31:39)

so you basically got into photography because family did photography, and so I'm just curious, let's just near the end. It's been nearly an hour. I'm curious. What sorts do you still do photography now, or do you just focus on meditation?

Daria (31:57)

Well, actually, I found some deeper meaning in photography and except photography, I love doing filming. Well, just a days ago, I've been. Yes, yes. And just a couple of days ago, I've been to the forest like hiking and I took my camera. was like, OK, I should because I feel like I'm doing less. So I decided, OK, I'm going to start photographing and filming more and there was like a beautiful, beautiful part of the forest, like from a fairy tale, honestly and then I simply was filming that and in a way I felt that that was also my meditation you know I like could see every detail of that moss or some mushroom growing or a fern, whatever and just filming that process was very meditative for me. And then also I use this material later. If I want to talk about something on my ⁓ meditation page about meditation, presence, energy, whatever, I simply use this material. And I think that also, while I'm filming that in this meditative state, I sort of already bring the message just through this footage, right?

And yes, do also sometimes clients work because I noticed that somehow I started to connect with completely different people like who are also into mindfulness and meditation. We are a lot of artists as well, contact me, you know, so it's somehow connected, and I'm happy to. Yeah. I don't know how should I wrap it up?

Melanie Wilson (33:47)

So you're seeing a connection between art and spirituality.

Daria (33:53)

Yes, I think it's a very strong connection.

Melanie Wilson (33:58)

Very strong. Now I'm wondering what do you think everybody else should do? Do you think everybody should do something creative, start meditating, find someone to help them to meditate? What do you think is the first step for everybody else?

Daria (34:14)

Well, I don't know if I should, if I should use the word should, because I always tell that listen to yourself, what you actually really want to do right now. And from there, you will get answers if you want to do art, or if you want to start this healing journey, or you want to build healthy relationships, whatever.

Melanie Wilson (34:14)

No. I don't know.

Daria (34:44)

Although, by the way, if you, when we talked earlier about, you know, this root chakra and building a foundation. So I think when you build this foundation, you will notice that actually everything aligns, like everything in your life, relationships and like career, like purpose, whatever, everything will align. And so, yeah, if I would say what to start with, I definitely would recommend meditation.

For me, was a big difference also when I found the guys, the teachers, not simply doing it by myself. Yes, I do it now by myself, but at the very beginning, I found it very helpful when there was someone also helping me to understand better how to release those emotions, why they appear, you know. Now, when having this understanding, it's easier to do it on your own, all four. Even the healer needs sometimes a healer because there are blind spots, you know. And I find it normal. I find it actually very helpful. So yeah, definitely a meditation and whatever it can be, like focusing on your breath or if you can start with transcendental meditation or any other guided meditation, can be mindfulness meditation.

Again, the person just feels what's right for them because some people find it helpful simply start dancing, and for them, it's their kind of meditation. Great. If you feel that it's right for you to do that. Like for me, when I was like going through that time of depression, I couldn't, you know, move a lot or like I didn't feel like...

Melanie Wilson (36:26)

Thank

Daria (36:41)

I would maybe force myself to walk, not like dancing or anything. So for me, meditation was helpful because through this visualisation, I let my energy flow and heal myself from the inside. And then I felt that my body started actually to want to move and dance. And sometimes I would allow myself, just like, okay.

Melanie Wilson (36:45)

Thank you.

Thank

Daria (37:07)

I hear this music, and maybe I start intuitively, you know, just move. Again, there is no right or wrong movement or what you have specifically to do. You just feel that. So maybe the great thing to start with is simply to start feeling, know, start feeling yourself, what you want, what you feel like doing today. Yeah, how your body feels. Yeah.

Melanie Wilson (37:21)

Thank

start feeling.

Daria (37:37)

Ha ha

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Show Notes:

keywords

CFO, business, music, self-care, planning, public speaking, Beethoven, finance, entrepreneurship, personal growth

summary

In this episode of the Motivate Collective podcast, Melanie Wilson interviews Anne Plummer, a fractional CFO with a rich background in music. Anne shares her journey from being a classical musician to navigating the world of finance, emphasising the importance of self-care and personal goals in business. She discusses the role of a fractional CFO in helping businesses look forward, the lessons learned from Beethoven's chaotic life, and the challenges of overcoming the tall poppy syndrome. The conversation highlights the significance of planning, the impact of self-doubt, and the necessity of having a support system in business.

takeaways

Anne Plummer's journey from music to finance showcases the importance of adaptability.

Self-care is crucial for business success and personal happiness.

Understanding financial metrics can empower business owners.

Fear of success can hinder growth more than fear of failure.

Planning is essential for navigating uncertainty in business.

Public speaking can be a powerful tool for marketing services.

Lessons from Beethoven illustrate the chaos of creativity and business.

It's important to question decisions made out of fear.

Having a support system can alleviate self-doubt.

Embracing imperfection can lead to growth and learning.

Titles

From Music to Money: Anne Plummer's Inspiring Journey

The CFO's Guide to Personal and Business Success

sound bites

"This is my very first podcast."

"Sleep isn't a really important metric."

"You need someone to help you through."

Chapters

00:00 Introduction to Anne's Journey

02:54 Transitioning from Music to Business

05:53 The Role of a Fractional CFO

08:17 Public Speaking and Overcoming Nerves

11:15 The Importance of Preparation

13:52 Breathing Techniques for Performance

16:33 Navigating Chaos: Lessons from Beethoven

19:30 Linking Music and Business

22:24 Understanding Financial Metrics

25:18 Cultural Attitudes Towards Business

28:37 The Tall Poppy Syndrome in Australia

33:29 Navigating the Pecking Order in Creative Fields

36:27 Overcoming Fear and Embracing Public Perception

40:07 The Dynamics of Community and Online Interactions

41:02 The Value of Self-Presentation in Different Professions

45:52 Understanding Debt: A Tool for Business Growth

47:54 The Importance of Planning in Business

51:46 Self-Doubt and the Journey of Entrepreneurship

57:30 Finding Reassurance in Vulnerability

01:04:12 Final Thoughts: Analysing Decisions and Embracing Growth

Transcript:

Melanie Wilson (00:00)

And welcome to the Motivate Collective podcast. It is so good to talk with you. How are you doing?

Anne Plummer (00:07)

doing great. Thanks Melanie. Thanks so much for asking me on. This is my very first podcast.

Melanie Wilson (00:14)

Is it really?

Anne Plummer (00:15)

Yes.

Melanie Wilson (00:17)

You have been doing other speaking, so we met in a speaking group and not the one I'm known for, a different one. So let's tell everybody what you do with speaking, with other work, what exactly you do.

Anne Plummer (00:31)

Yeah, well, can I go back and just give a bit of background about where I'm from and what I do? It's all related to where I am today. So I started off, I grew up a little bit in the country in a one-room school or two-room school, actually and moved to the city when I was a young teenager and got involved in music and ended up quite quickly at the Conservatorium High School. And after that, I had a career in music, classical music. I was a freelance classical flute player, and I still play with the Penrith Symphony Orchestra, which I love very much. When I got to be, after a decade or so, a couple of decades, I, because of my rural background, I knew there was more things I wanted to explore with my life. So I did an MBA because I thought at that age I could, as they say, pivot and change career easier than starting off at the beginning and then working my way up in business. So I thought that'd be a nice thing to do.

It was really tough coming from a music background. Everyone else had actually there were quite a few doctors doing the course, which was interesting, but, you know, a lot of finance people, cetera, marketing people who were very comfortable in the business realm. And so I got through that and then worked in general management in music publishing.

And after a few years of that, I found it difficult because there's no particular one skill that you need for general management. So I decided to become an accountant. So I started off as a bookkeeper, then I became a CPA accountant. And then got broad experience, but with small companies, not with large multinational companies. And again, got restless. What do I want to do? So I became attracted to this becoming a fractional CFO. I had to Google it myself to see what a fractional CFO is not a well-known term, but a CFO is a Chief Financial Officer, and a fractional CFO means that I work for several different companies for a reduced amount of time. So spread across different clients. And a CFO really helps people in business look forward rather than backwards. So I help businesses, I try to get to the root of where they want to head. And I don't mean the business, I mean them personally, what their ultimate goal is, which, when it boils down to it, as happiness and peace basically, it might be covered and masked in a different... in different words, but basically that's what people want. And then do projections, and I help people sort of cut through the chaos of their lives. And it's really translating what the goals are into the language of business and what the business can do to move them forward to their ultimate goals. You know, a business can't do everything. It can't do all the heavy lifting.

And then we do meetings once a month. And what that does is that gives us space to just focus on those goals and make sure that every decision that's made moves them closer to their goals and not further away. And to rave on a bit more, I put the person first. So a lot of people talk about business people wanting to have great profits and all this amazing stuff, but neglecting themselves. I'm doing a talk in a few weeks at a convention, and the talk is going to be the metrics.

And one of the metrics is hours of sleep. It's not profit, it's not cash flow. Although we talk about that, and we talk about the effect on people of poor cash flow. You know, what's it doing to you? What are these business decisions doing to you personally? You might be making lots of money, and everything is fine, but you're just stressed out and...

I think sleep isn't a really important metric, but I've thought further about that, actually to take it further. It's not sleep because you might be worried about a whole bunch of things, and the business might be just one of those. So I've changed my slides for my presentation to look at how many hours are you worrying about your business every day? So that...

I think is something, you know, I don't expect you to quantify it exactly, but you know, that is probably cuts to the core of it much more effectively. And the reason I'm talking, speaking after performing in front of thousands of people over the decades, you'd think I'd be good at speaking, but actually, standing on stage and opening my mouth and words coming out, that's quite a different thing. So I've joined Toastmasters, and I've actually done okay with that. I only joined just over a year ago and won a little award already. That's for the best humorous, and so to promote my business, one of the things I'm not good at is marketing. So I've been advised speaking on stage is the way to go. That's the number one way to go for promoting my particular services, and I am so relieved, Melanie because that lets me off the hook from having to do Facebook ads and all this other stuff which just takes so much of my mental time, and I'm really bad at so I'm really happy to craft public speaking instead.

Melanie Wilson (07:49)

I'll tell you what, that's why I love podcasts, because I never set out to just talk to a camera. It feels like I'm talking to myself. I had talked to groups for a long time, but I know that I need to do more of the social media. I know how it works now, but it's a whole extra thing. With a podcast, we're having a conversation, and then those little clips from the conversation will go onto social media. It's a great way to do the version of communicating that feels natural and still get something out of there.

Anne Plummer (08:23)

Yeah, I think it's terrific. Yeah, that's great. I've been watching, doing my research on your podcasts, and they're really terrific.

Melanie Wilson (08:32)

That is so sweet. You've had such a journey. We have so much to talk about. So.

Okay, we did meet in an association as well. One thing I'm curious about, because of course, I grew up in groups where people were starting from scratch with speaking kind of like what you're doing. And then I saw you at an association. And I'm wondering what difference have you seen? We'll look at all the other career journey sections in a moment because I think there's so much to learn from all of it. But what has been the difference you've seen between that starting out stage or phase and the mindsets that you've seen in some of the professional speakers that you met?

Anne Plummer (09:17)

Yeah, so I guess for most people, getting on stage is terrifying. And for me, I think I've also got this to offer other people as well, because I've had such a long time performing music on stage. And to be honest, it's only been in the past five or six years that I've really conquered nerves.

And so it's been much easier for me to speak in public now and planning my first big presentation that's coming up because I know that I'm going to be nervous. That's just part of my brain protecting me. And I look confident, apparently, and that practising a lot is going to help train my brain so that when I got on stage, it will just flow smoothly. And the other technique I use when I'm coming up to a big performance, because I do some of the symphonies we play with Penrith Symphony Orchestra, are really demanding. So I know how to prepare really well for a big performance, a big scary performance. And what I do is I prepare so that I'm ready like two weeks before the actual performance. And then by the time the performance comes, my stress levels are going down all the time, and I'm planning for the day after the performance. How do I want to feel the day after the performance, not at the performance? Because once you get on stage for the performance, I let everything go and just let it happen because I've done all the preparation. If that makes sense.

So I don't have to worry when I'm actually doing it because I've done all the work beforehand. It sounds like I'm a real little goody two-shoes doing all this practice. But once I get on, you just let it go, and then it happens. Then, yeah, so that's my attitude.

Melanie Wilson (11:36)

The letting it go, that reminds me of the flow state that people talk about, and I really believe once you get in front of people, you're just, you are in the moment to borrow that phrase from acting. I don't do that sort of thing, but borrowing that phrase, you're just doing the thing, and that's one of the things I love about any sort of performance, even if it's a talk. Have you experienced that in the orchestra and in talks where it's like your brain is switching off and you're just doing things, and you don't have to think as much once it's happening?

Anne Plummer (12:15)

I wish that was true all the time, but I've got a too-active brain. So my fear today with talking to you is that you'd ask me a question and I'd just freeze and not think of my brain would freeze, and I wouldn't be able to think of a thing. And so I'm still worried about that, but I'm trying to because, you know, just trying to be in the moment. Yeah, but it's hard.

Melanie Wilson (12:41)

That is so sweet. Are you feeling nervous about being on a podcast?

Anne Plummer (12:45)

So but it's more like that I'll fail to say anything at all or answer the question properly or

Melanie Wilson (12:56)

That's what I love about talking. You can't mess it up too much unless you say something outrageous or, you know, completely wrong. But I think you'd have to go to an extreme to really mess it up to some extent. And the main thing is I have learned, I learned in theory early on adapt to the audience. But in some ways, I was often in front of similar audiences, but it was only later on when I saw country groups, and coastal groups and city groups, corporates. You really do need the variety. So I think that that's the other thing that could maybe change. And for this setting with the podcast, we really do focus on looking after ourselves when we're doing great work. And that's where I think so much of your work can give people insight. So that's one way we can just make the most of the conversation. So even you had a long career doing woodwind music, sorry, how long were you... You're still doing that now, playing in an orchestra, but you're doing that for work for how long?

Anne Plummer (14:04)

Oh, well, I guess I started playing when I, mean, performing when I was 16, 17. And then by the time I was getting towards my thirties, I was really restless, and I had done everything I wanted to do. And all I could see in my future was more of the same. And teaching a lot of my friends, you know, they teach. So you perform and teach, but I never liked teaching much. And not that I wasn't good at it. It's just whenever I got it booked for something for a gig, I dumped the students to the gig instead. So I know not very good, is it. So, you know, playing was my main thing, but I really was bored, and you know I'd get these great long-running gigs, and I'd just be, I just couldn't do it. You know long runs of musicals and things like that. I was absolutely going up the wall after three months of Les Misérables. You know I just couldn't take you know eight shows a week. That was fine, but I was just bored.

Melanie Wilson (15:23)

Was it?

So it's really intense having a career in music. And of course, everybody knows that music careers often don't pay that well either. So, but you were essentially having a decade and a half of a music career legitimately. But within that, something I wanted to ask about is you would have learned a lot about breathing doing that. And I think that people take for granted what everybody can learn from musicians about breathing because I basically really badly attempted to learn music when I was a teenager and I didn't end up as good as you were at all but I translated the breathing part to speaking where you need to slow down and doing a talk can have phrases just like in music you literally catch a breath at the end of a phrase I'm wondering did you find that taking the pace and the breathing, anything like that helped with your nervousness or keeping things steady when you were performing.

Anne Plummer (16:33)

I wish I could tell my younger self about that. Obviously, you know, I got through ⁓ quite demanding, physically demanding sonatas and things like that. But now I understand a bit and actually quite recently, I understand a bit more about the power of breathing to settle yourself down, settle down your brain.

Yeah, and I think that would have been extremely helpful when I was doing those big, scary performances of quite demanding solo works, because I would have understood that the nervousness that I felt would have been relieved a lot by deeper breathing and also planning, because my just to go off on a side note know my main huge recital at the end of my four-year degree I chose the biggest works and my teacher said to me are you sure you want to be doing that and I've got a very rusty recording of me performing and you can hear me just getting more and more exhausted like I got through I got a high mark and everything but you can hear me just going towards the end, you know, because I'd chosen such demanding pieces to play. So I think I know more now than I did back then.

Melanie Wilson (18:08)

One of the lessons we can learn from that is if you overstretch yourself, you can end up exhausted doing anything.

Anne Plummer (18:16)

Yeah, that's right. And through the ambition, you're taking on too much, really. Yeah.

Melanie Wilson (18:23)

I think I can relate to what you're describing because one of the things that I even saw in your career journey is you get the itch, you get restless. And I think there's something in those of us who are creative in some way or just fascinated by work, we want to try something else. And it sounds like even when you were doing one thing, music for a decade and a half, it was the challenge of a particular piece of work. And so it is that desire to push yourself, and then so going to finance, though, let's ask about that. Because that's polar opposites, you would think people say music is very mathematical, but you're essentially going from something creative to something very mathematical, even though you're now talking about how people can look after themselves in business.

I see a bit of a laugh. How did that leap match up, or how did that match with your personality?

Anne Plummer (19:30)

Well, it's interesting, Melanie, because for most of my post-MBA careers, I've tried to keep the two worlds very separate. And now at this stage, I'm bringing them together. So I'm talking about in this particular presentation I'm making, I'm talking about Beethoven. So just to, you know, let the cat out of the bag. And Beethoven's really interesting because the whole thing is about chaos and how to navigate through chaos in your life, and what the business can do to navigate through that chaos. And you think Beethoven, wow, what a genius. You think everything would have been easy for him.

And in fact, I've been reading about him. It's the opposite, absolute chaos of his life. And he started becoming deaf when he was in his late 20s. And by the time he was in his 30s, he was completely deaf. So how did he perform? How did he compose these amazing pieces?

And when you see what he went through, it's a lot of what we have to deal with in our lives as well. So he had, he was extremely messy with his, actually, you might be able to see in the background here, a framed picture. It's actually his handwriting on a score, and it's absolute mess. It's crossed out, it's scribbled out. He's digging through the paper, and you think, this is not going to sound any good. And so what I'm doing in my talks is then I'm then playing the piece that is shown on the picture, and it's this beautiful cello sonata. So how did he get through? I mean, he had probably ADHD. He was, he had irritable bowel syndrome. There's, know, you look back at the facts, and that's what he would probably was dealing with. He was had anxiety had depression. He was extremely his personal hygiene was terrible. And he was very untidy and messy. He had he was an orphan quite early on. And so he had a lot to deal with. And plus, the number one thing you think you'd need was his hearing, and that was taken from him. So how did he get through? Well, one thing was technical ability. He knew his scales, his chords, he knew how instruments combined together to make a great sound. He knew his harmony and melody. And he had templates to work with, you know, like sonata form or symphony form.

But the number one thing he could hear in his head, the music. So in a sense, when he became completely deaf, that was no barrier to him producing amazing masterpieces at all, because he could really just focus in. And so he knew what it was going to sound like pretty accurately. so after he became completely deaf, he wrote

his sixth, seventh, eighth, and ninth symphonies. So that's how amazing he is. So I will link that to my work of, know, in... So I'm a conduit between normal people and finance people. So the technical ability is just double-entry accounting, right? Debit SQL credits, that's...

It's that easy, I'm afraid. And then templates, we've got, you know, balance sheets, profits and loss. So it's my job to convert my client's vision into these financial templates and project forward into the future so that they can move towards their goals. But the forecasts I produce are linked. So the balance sheet and profit and loss is linked. And then from that, you put in these decisions you have to make, say, employing people, you put it into the model, and it projects forward what your cash flow is going to be, what your profits going to be, etc. So that gives the client a vision of the future, a graphical representation of what the future will look like, which is just like reading a piece of music. That's a great graphical representation of what it will sound like, if that makes sense. So I'm using the genius of Beethoven to inspire us to, you know, take action through our businesses.

Melanie Wilson (25:05)

What I'm learning from that is you can simply map out the likely outcome based on what you're currently doing, and it doesn't have to be complicated.

Anne Plummer (25:18)

No, that's right. will. And part of what I do is telling you how to talk to your accountant or whoever this person is going to be that's actually doing the forecasts, because they are technically challenging, you know, to do these forecasts. And so, you know, you have to use software. People say, yeah, I'll just link together some Excel spreadsheets. But, you know, that's full of hazards. So it's helping convert those ideas into, and I use rolling forecasts, so as we meet once a month, we look at what's happened, the reality, so the culmination of all those big and little decisions that you make, and that shows up in your profit and loss, your cash flow and your balance sheet.

And then we adjust going forward. So we roll forward an extra month, and then we stand back, and this Beethoven did this as well. He'd write and write and write, and then he'd stand back and say, does this still make sense? Is my musical idea still making sense? And that's what we do in business as well with the forecast.

Melanie Wilson (26:40)

This is really crucial because these days everybody has a creative idea, or people want to make something. It could be anything. And what we need to figure out is, okay, what do I need to do now? And also, you're saying that when things will get complicated, talk to an accountant, don't DIY. I'm getting the impression that it does help if people do find an accountant.

Anne Plummer (27:07)

Yep. But the thing is, Melanie, most accountants won't be able to do this work because their business is not really set up for this. I mean, you will find the odd one, so it's knowing what questions to ask the accountant and, you know, just to be very clear about what you want. I want this forecast going into the future. And then I'm going to teach just a couple of metrics for the people to go to their accountant and say, want you to I want to see the gross margin, for instance. Now, I'm going to teach what a gross margin is. And a gross margin is different from a net margin or gross profit percentage is different from a net profit percentage. So if I can get technical for a moment, net profit percentage is, all your income less all your expenses, right? And that gives you your net profit. But a gross profit is just your income from the essence of what you do. So, for instance, you're a lawyer. So it's the income you make from actually doing the law. It's not bank interest or anything else. It's just that. And putting that with the expenses that just relate to producing that outcome of law. So if you think of a, it's easier, I think, to think of a factory because a factory, you know, they produce an object. So what are the expenses that make that object directly? It's nothing else. It's not rent or anything else. So even though it's a service industry, I think it's a really helpful way of getting to the essence of what you do. And if you can get a gross margin happening, for that, that's appropriate for the industry, then you know that everything else can be fixed in a way. But if you can just get the appropriate amount of gross profit, that means you can scale your business much more easily. Just to explain gross profit once a little bit more. So say, you know, you're sole practitioner, and you're getting great sales, but you're taking, but your expenses, so your sales might be a million dollars, but your expenses relating to those sales are 999,000. You've got like an almost zero gross margin, and you're working 80 hours a week completely unsustainable, um so but if you can get

Anne Plummer (30:07)

People get like it's finances. You can get easily diverted away with other stuff, know, rental costs or just all this other stuff, know, staff Christmas party, lavish staff Christmas parties is one. But if you can get the essence of what you do right, then, in a sense, with some guidance, the rest really falls into… so it's a cultural thing as well because when I was a musician, well, professional musician, you know, there's great shame in doing businessy things. It, you know, it sort of meant that you weren't good at playing, and that's like completely untrue. But I think for service people, it can be the same thing as well.

that being a successful, you know, a business person.

You think, no, that's not me. No, no, I'm a lawyer. I'm this, I'm that. But what I'm saying is self-care is part of a successful business model.

Melanie Wilson (31:18)

That is the mindset so many people are overcoming, and I'm glad that you addressed that. The performance side and how a lot of people who put on a show, it could be music, but I've heard this mentality from some people in the yoga world. Apparently, that space had this mindset a while ago, and I came from a speaking space where nobody told me at a young age I should value my performance in this way. There was none of that. I was doing so much for free. And I think that the right people will respect that you do have to look after yourself, and you do have to value what you do. So I think what you described with your experience in music, it translates to so many industries. And I have seen that it's worse perhaps in Australia, or at least there's a flavour of it in Australia with the tall poppy syndrome, and people want to... You think so?

Anne Plummer (32:25)

absolutely.

Melanie Wilson (32:27)

Okay. I'm so curious then about what have you... I'm curious about what you've seen with the tall poppy syndrome, especially because you were around performers. And of course, you're playing an instrument, but whether it's that or other people in your shows were at the centre of the stage and still probably dealing with a tall poppy syndrome. So I'm wondering where Aussies have... been in spaces where they were public-facing and trying to not be tall poppies, and where do think it's heading now?

Anne Plummer (33:01)

I think people understand a lot more. And I guess in a way, for me, it's always been a little bit of water off a duck's back. And I think also trying to bring people down can be just people surviving, people, I'm not justifying it, but... I've kind of ignored it in a way. Yeah, and also there's a pecking order in every profession. Certainly in music, there's a pecking order. know, violinists think they're the best. Flute players think they're the best, so.

Melanie Wilson (33:41)

Survive it.

Anne Plummer (33:58)

There's this thing, the violin, it's closest to the human voice. And then you hear flute. That's the closest to the, what's so great about being closest to the human voice. Yeah, there's picking orders everywhere. And I think this year, I'm like, have yearly projects. So this year is really cutting through fear, and it's a human instinct to worry about what people will think of you. And that's at the root of a lot of nervousness, know, especially public-facing. And just to jump in and do it anyway, cut through the fear, and people are gonna think what they're going to think. And just to realise that that's just part of being in public.

Melanie Wilson (34:51)

It is, this is so reassuring, and I truly hope that a lot of performers, a lot of people with public personal brands can see this because we are really identifying that you need to let go of what people think of you, or everybody needs to let go of other people's opinions, but also just do the things. The pecking order, I think, is an encouraging lesson to learn from because it has been called different things. I described so many industries as political. And although I observed years ago, actual politics, I found that some other communities felt more political than politics. And in some ways, I think it's what it's what you're describing a little bit. The, this instrument is more my experience of it was

Maybe I was in the wrong space when I was... and I'll be careful and loving towards my upbringing, but... but when I was in my early 20s, there were people twice my age calling me too young, even though I'd learned so much and I'd basically done the learning then that they were doing it that age. There was a lot of that, but then now I'm not a 20-year-old TikToker, you know, you're always something and not something else. And we really have to make peace with knowing we do what we do really well. And it doesn't mean that someone else's specialty is more or less, right?

Anne Plummer (36:27)

Exactly. I think that's so interesting and correct because back then, I mean, it's what people's motivation is too. And a lot of it could be, as my mother would say, they're just jealous. And that's, yeah, that happens quite a bit. I mean, what's the motivation for trying to bring you down? It could be the envious that they weren't able to do that at that young age, like you were able to.

Melanie Wilson (36:53)

My goodness, I think that's probably... I'm going to assume that that can describe why some people are trying to tear me down. I have to be so vague right now to be careful, but I think that in general, personally or professionally, someone can try to bring you down at any moment. And if you're saying in your diverse life experience that it's often that someone is feeling jealous or wishing they could be doing what you're doing,

I can actually pinpoint moments where that is really aligned with what you're describing. So we really have to make peace with knowing a lot of people who are public-facing say that if people are reacting to you, it means they're noticing you at all. You're not invisible.

Anne Plummer (37:44)

Yeah. And Melanie, I think, because I've lived through quite a few decades now and been through lots of technology changes. We talk about the online community. I tell you what, the real community that can be rugged, that can be, and that's been going on for millennia, right? Having to be part of a community. I tell you what, I live on the edge of Sydney. So, I live part of why we've got such poor connectivity today is that I live on the edge of a national park in a very small village. And I tell you what, those village meetings, they can be rough. You know, and I think it's just part of

Melanie Wilson (38:30)

Hold on. You're in a village, you're in the mountains? Where abouts are

Anne Plummer (38:35)

Well, Linden, which is sort of mid-mountains.

Melanie Wilson (38:46)

I was just going to add it's hard with the internet connection, but we need to explain to the people who are listening from somewhere else in the world. The way to explain where you are is people are going to have a holiday, go to Sydney and see perhaps Bondi Manly, CBD, city centre. This is not what we are describing. You go what an hour, hour and a half through Sydney, through all the and then you get to some mountains and villages.

That's what we are describing. It's the West of the West of the West out there. Is that how to say

Anne Plummer (39:20)

Correct. And there's some beautiful things up here. That's the thing. It's, you know, it's sort of a, come to see the amazing views up here. So, yeah. But I think this nastiness online, I think there's not too much difference between that and, you know, small English villages of, you know, a few hundred years ago. I think just got to build internal strength and not worry about it too much because they have a terrible negative effect on people.

Melanie Wilson (40:07)

So, have you seen those sorts of village mentalities literally, where you are?

Anne Plummer (40:13)

I think it's everywhere. It can be anywhere, but yeah, I think it's just part of life, living in groups of people.

⁓ yeah.

Melanie Wilson (40:28)

It's a-

Yeah.

Anne Plummer (40:31)

But it's interesting being in the financial world and being in the music world because people's attitudes to both is interesting. If I introduce myself as a musician, they go, how interesting. Tell me what you play. That's amazing. If I say, I'm an accountant, I've had people turn and walk away. So I think that's very funny.

⁓ dear.

Melanie Wilson (41:04)

It's about how you frame yourself. It's interesting that you bring that up because we all have to learn about how to present ourselves and how to describe ourselves these days. I think I struggled with that a little bit as well because I had to almost bring together a few things I was interested in, basically.

I got known as just a speaker, but then it made it really hard to get involved in doing other things, being just only a speaker. And I think what you're describing could also show how people value your work monetarily to some extent. It's fascinating because they'll be interested in the creative things, but you're probably building more of a business doing the financial side.

And they might not see that there's a lot of putting a puzzle together, and there's a lot of creativity in having to promote yourself when you are a business, even if it's in a technical field. I think people take that for granted. didn't do a lot in marketing with finance, but I worked with technical industries. Like, I actually did some writing for software as a service for a marketing agency for a little bit, did things like that. And it was like, it sounds so technical. Also, many, many years ago, I did some marketing for people who made textbooks and courses for people who installed solar panels. So they were very ultra. I can't remember most of the tech side of any of that, but it was the story behind anything. And I

I adore what you're doing with your speaking and your storytelling because you're taking something very numbers based of business and finance, and you're bringing this self-care story into it because looking after yourself that's an end goal of any field, including the technical ones.

Anne Plummer (43:12)

Yeah, yeah, I think people are talking about it more and more and it's, I just wonder how many businesses fail because number one, people don't have a safe space to look at these forecasts and see what a good business decisions to make along the way. You know, the people that need it the most don't get it. Yeah, and I think there's this persona thing about being a successful business person. Look at how much money I've made without really seeing the effect that it's having on them. I don't care who you are, whether you're running a multimillion dollar business or you're just working for yourself. That has to be factored into any decisions. And I talk about, you know, a decision you make, typically employing a new person, of course, step one is that your cash flow will plummet. But if you know that it will take up to 10 months for that person to either bring in more income or release you from so many hours a week work, you can see the value starting to rise and that you've got short-term pain but the long-term gain is bigger. So that's what I help quantify. Is the long-term gain more than the short-term pain? And what your attitude to that is, because if you make that decision, when you see the cash plummet, you'll go, no, I won't take on a new person. But you will make a different decision because you know, like later on, if you can see the value is probably going to happen, then all you've got to deal with is the short-term cash deficit, which you've got lots of levers to solve that. You could get a short-term loan. You could borrow off family or friends or, you know, there's a myriad of ways to short to just get through that dip. But always thinking what's the effect on you? Because, yeah, like even if you take on debt, there's some people who just get stressed out no matter how little it is, the idea of debt is just not on. So that all has to be part of the model, really in a sense.

Melanie Wilson (45:52)

That's something worth exploring for a second. I stumbled upon a whole lot of videos from Dave Ramsey and there are some people who never ever wanted to have any debt and I know that it's not good to drown in debt and struggle to sort it out but have you seen that a healthy debt can help some people?

Anne Plummer (46:13)

definitely. Yeah. Because if you've got it, and this is why the model is so fantastic, because, you know, if you can secure this amount of debt at four per cent or whatever it is, you can see that it makes sense. It makes sense to do it. Otherwise, you might miss out on the opportunity, for instance. But. Yes, because Dave Ramsey preaches no personal debt whatsoever.

But business debt is a different thing. It can be okay, for sure. But it has to be managed and planned for.

Melanie Wilson (46:58)

Fair enough. It needs to be planned out. So whatever you're doing, do some planning. That's something we need to remind ourselves of in an era where there's of course a lot of instant gratification and hopefully anyone who's running a business will be planning ahead. I will assume that it's sometimes hard to plan in the very early stages. I know for me, I... was starting to do some speaking business last year and that's starting up again now. And I know it's so hard to look ahead and say, okay, how do I think this business is even going to look months from now? There is, have you seen, there is quite an element of guessing and is your advice to be in the moment and see, okay, what is there now? How do you, how do you cope with predicting something that feels unpredictable?

Anne Plummer (47:56)

That is so true. And I think part of it is making short term decisions out of fear and uncertainty or trying to resolve that uncertainty. And that may or may not be in your best interests long term. So that is the hard thing. I think planning is business planning is number one sounds really boring.

And number two, you can't do it by yourself. You need someone to help you through, even though it's not that, it's not really that hard, but you really need someone to hold your hand and step you through. And also that helps keep you accountable as well. So, yeah.

Melanie Wilson (48:46)

You do. You need someone to be with you. It sounds like it's partly getting someone else's perspective and simply getting out of your own head, letting someone be a voice of reason for some of these decisions.

Anne Plummer (49:02)

Yeah, that helps or more show them. So what I love about forecasting is you can put in any wackadoodle idea that you might have as a business owner and see if it actually works, you know, and I think a lot of businesses would be saved or not even started if there was just that little bit of planning to see. I was just thinking of an experience about this, making decisions out of fear and uncertainty, which I do all the time and that this year I'm going to stop doing that as much as I possibly can. I was recently very lucky. spent a month in Europe, and I was in Switzerland. Sounds very glamorous, but it has been a long time coming planning for this trip. And I was on a train by myself heading west to the next town I was going to visit. And suddenly on the train it said, this train terminates in Hamburg and I absolutely froze because Hamburg's in northern Germany, right? And I love Germany, but I didn't want to go to Hamburg that day. And so I completely panicked, and I thought, oh no, like now I'm really not certain I'm on the right train. What do I do? Okay, I'm just going to get off the train at the next stop, which is silly really, isn't it? So I thought, right, I've got to get off, and that'll just, at least I'll be somewhere not heading to Germany. You know, I don't want to get off too late and end up, you know, eight hours away in Hamburg. So luckily, while my brain was whirring trying to solve this problem, the leaderboard listed all the stations between there and Hamburg, and of course, my station was there. So, like I'd gone through all this panic for nothing and if I'd got off the train, who knows where I'd be? I might be still stuck in Switzerland, which would be a terrible tragedy.

Melanie Wilson (51:16)

They're really...

I love that story. I love that story so much. We all have a moment where we think, I think things are going to be this bad. And honestly, I'm seeing myself in you so much because, personally, I think part of it is that I have moments of just being a delicate, fragile woman. And I'm willing to say that.

We live in a culture where it's assumed everything we do will be rational, robotic, and utilitarian, but I don't think we really function like that. And it doesn't mean we're less intelligent because you do great work, I do the things I do, and yet, yes, you've done so much in music, you're guiding people's businesses, it's good.

Anne Plummer (52:06)

Great work.

Melanie Wilson (52:14)

We're doing these things and yet we'll have moments of just this panic and especially when something is approaching of this destination is literally coming up then you will be wondering do I not have long to make a sensible decision I need to think and act quickly especially when there are unknowns I found that when I didn't know what was happening it was harder for me to make a decision so before you saw that leader of board you were just guessing that's such a metaphor for life. Hope you can put that story into a speech one day. Seriously. Because we all have a moment where we can't see the leaderboard and we're trying to figure out what's going to happen next. And we're doing the best we can. It seems like step one is to not panic. If we are setting up a business, then that is really crucial. Try to see the leaderboard somehow.

Think so?

Anne Plummer (53:13)

Absolutely. Yeah, definitely. And I think, well, we've got to balance when I mean, self-doubt. I don't know about you, like my self-doubt is ridiculous. And the amount of time I waste because I've set things up well. And then I think, is that right? No, that can't be right. And go back and check. I mean, it's ridiculous. And this has got to stop this year.

This year, Melanie. It's crazy, but also that studying a new business it's like a tragedy because you've got this, you know, you've got all the energy, you've got this fantastic idea, and you've got no way of mapping out the likelihood of what's going to possibly happen, and you pour everything into this.

Melanie Wilson (53:42)

Yeah

Anne Plummer (54:10)

And all your creativity, and it can be a disaster because you know, doing business plans it's extremely boring and dull. So you do need someone to help you put your vision and keep you excited and motivated, and get excited when you see the plan. Oh yes, this is probably going to work, or how about we do this six months later rather than right now, and that's you're going to have a better outcome. Yeah, I think that's.

And then your self-doubt will go down because I think that can be a very number one time-consuming, anxiety-producing. And the thing I learned about travelling by myself is that, you know, we're really good at surviving, actually, let go and just go for it. You know, all the crazy things I worried about before the trip, none of them turned out to be an issue. So, you know, for instance, you know, I was in minus 17 degrees at one stage, and I'd bought this $89 coat from Anaconda, and I thought, this is not going to be good enough. And it was fine. My $89 coat was enough in minus 17, all these stupid things we worry about needlessly.

Melanie Wilson (55:51)

You look ahead, and you think you won't be okay, and then somehow you are okay. I think that we need to surround ourselves with people who reassure each other. For me personally, I know that months ago I was in an environment where I was surrounded by uncertainty, and I wasn't, I think the podcast was the main place, whereas hearing things you are saying of just have some faith in yourself, and for you, with that travel, just doing it, getting out there, you did find peace. You didn't find reassurance from yourself, but it was, I think it's partly environmental. You were in a place where the solutions were in front of you, and you were okay. You're on a train. weren't in the middle of nowhere, not on a train. You had a way to get from A to B. You were okay enough. So that's a part of it. Put yourself in a situation where you have access to the solutions, but there's self-doubt. It's amazing how this is what we are coming back to seriously. And before doing this recording, was just having one of those days. I was curled up, thinking I'm just failing at everything. I...

This is why I sent you a link for the recording at the last second ride on 12, because I needed a moment to just feel sorry for myself and then get up and do another recording. So I don't know if anyone who performs or presents is like that. Give yourself a moment to feel terrible and then get on the damn stage.

Anne (57:30)

Yeah, that is absolutely brilliant, Melanie. I'm just so, I'm just so amazed by what you've just said. That's incredible. Yeah. Good for you.

Melanie Wilson (57:39)

Why?

Anne Plummer (57:43)

Well, just feeling, were you feeling down? Like, just a bit down, or I'm hopeless at this. And someone said to me once, if something is worth doing, it's worth doing badly. And that's coming into this podcast today. You know, I was like pretty nervous and then right at, you know, one minute to 12, I thought, let's say I'm hopeless at it. Fine. We can all have a laugh later about it. You know, what's the worst thing that can happen? And that you were sort of having your own sort of moment before the podcast as well. That's really funny, actually, that we were both suffering.

Melanie Wilson (58:30)

Now, we're both sorry for interrupting. We're both having our doubts at the same time and not telling each other. I don't get nervous about the podcast anymore. think I've done more than 55 of these since August last year. So it's been a bunch. felt sorry that it had been slowing down a little bit. It had been sort of weekly instead of daily, and I had to get over it and realise, okay, fine. I think some of the best podcasts started off weekly. It means I'm not

Anne Plummer (58:47)

Wow.

Melanie Wilson (58:59)

an obsessed fanatic, but I can be if I need to. But, you know, I think that I was having all the worries about everything else in life. And I just, I just kept thinking I need my whole life to be perfect. I don't know. It's in my own head. And I think the best thing you can do, I, this is the addiction of the podcast for me. It gets me out of my head. think everybody should do a podcast. Everybody should get on a stage because

To some extent, you're at least, you're not pondering your whole life when you need to just focus on telling a story to other people. It's, it's brilliant. You just get past all of those things. So knowing that you felt nervous about doing the podcast itself. Look, they're great fun. I know you could go on so many more podcasts, and the value that you are bringing to really reassure that is, is that you've been guiding people on what to do when they're figuring out the basic finances, especially starting a business. I learned something from you that, okay, the accountant won't do everything that you're describing, but people need to know the right questions to ask an accountant. And hearing this from a creative who was a musician for years, it's reassuring because when we have a creative brain, it can be even more of a leap to look at all those numbers sides, and we need to just catch our breath. I think a lot of us feel nervous about the numbers, the ways that other people might feel nervous about speaking, and we need to just reassure ourselves and to do it anyway.

Anne Plummer (1:00:38)

Yeah, exactly right, Melanie. And the thing is, when you look, I'm in a unique position because I've come late to accounting. So most people do, you know, straight from school to university and into an accounting firm. Well, I've gone the opposite way. My journey's been the opposite. And I think that is in a unique position. And I've been thinking about this, pardon if this is a bit rambling, but trying to put together the slides for this talk I'm giving, I wanted people to really understand what I'm raving on about with talking about cash flow and margin percentages, right, gross margin. And I was trying to explain it in the slides from an accounting point of view. But no, I've got to be on the other side of the fence with the audience, not the accounting side. And I can make the bridge between normal people and accountants, if that makes sense. What do the figures actually mean? What's gross profit? Gross profit's a number, but it's a percentage of the essence of what you do, right? It's the thing you make, the main thing for you, it's the impact you have on your audiences and what money you get from speaking in front of audiences and also what you have to spend to get you onto that stage to talk to audiences, and that's the essence of what you do. So that's what gross margin means.

Melanie Wilson (1:02:28)

Could actually use that as an example, and we'll wind up in five minutes. I gave it a little bit longer because the internet has been a bit funky, and I'll edit a couple of things out. But as a speaker, and I think a lot of people are forming something where they might be doing events, communities, retreats, all these things. So there are various forms of this. So my example would probably be that the gross, let me know if I'm getting this right, the gross would be that I will get the train to the location, and then the net might be that I used a website platform and so on to promote myself leading up to it. Is that the difference?

Anne Plummer (1:03:10)

That is exactly right, Melanie. So now you're good at numbers. That's great.

Melanie Wilson (1:03:17)

The internet, the internet is going to see that you taught me numbers. Thanks.

Anne Plummer (1:03:24)

It's that straightforward.

Melanie Wilson (1:03:25)

That's reassuring. And I like how literal it was because I heard a long time ago that someone explained net and gross to Richard Branson. And of course it was the old something about nets and fish and the ocean. And I think, okay, great story, but how does that translate? They could have said, okay, if Branson has a gym, the gross will be the dumbbells here, and the net is the other things. It could have been explained differently. I feel like the way you have explained this, you're going to be able to teach so many people because these are the practical things. And if everybody can know that we can handle the practical things, and that's how to put it. For those who like the practicalities more than pieces of paper, we will still be okay.

Anne Plummer (1:04:18)

Exactly right, Melanie.

Melanie Wilson (1:04:19)

And thank you so much for your time and your courage. I'm wondering if there is anything else you would like to teach the listeners as we wind up.

Anne Plummer (1:04:30)

Ooh, I think the biggest thing is taking pause and analysing your decisions just generally in life and see which ones are stopping you doing things. I think actually just enclosing fear of success can be more powerful than fear of failure. Just quickly, I'll tell you what I mean fear of growing your business because you think gosh that'll mean I'm going to have to employ all these people, how am going to manage? I'm not an experienced manager; it's all too much, I won't grow my business. Rather than having a look at well, I'll employ people that support me in my business that will free me up with my time and my energy. Questioning those decisions you make out of fear that are stopping you from doing what you really want to do. I guess is my closing shot.

Melanie Wilson (1:05:38)

And thank you so much for being on the show.

Anne Plummer (1:05:40)

Thanks Melanie, it's been really great. Thank you so

Keywords

healing, mindfulness, self-compassion, holistic modalities, emotional safety, military transition, anger management, creative expression, personal growth, therapy

Summary

In this conversation, Melanie Wilson and Victoria Duarte explore the multifaceted approach to healing through holistic modalities, emphasising the importance of self-compassion, emotional safety, and the individuality of healing practices. Victoria shares insights from her experience as a Semantic and Mindfulness Coach, discussing the significance of creating safe spaces for emotional exploration, the impact of family dynamics, and the role of anger in personal growth. The dialogue highlights the necessity of integrating creative expression and mindfulness into therapeutic practices, offering practical steps for listeners to cultivate self-compassion and navigate their healing journeys.

Takeaways

Holistic healing requires a blend of modalities tailored to individual needs. Self-compassion is essential for personal growth and healing. Creating safe spaces allows for honest emotional exploration. Family dynamics can significantly impact personal development. Anger can be a constructive force when channeled appropriately. Creative expression serves as a powerful tool for healing. Mindfulness practices should be adaptable to individual experiences. It's important to recognize and address stress in the body. Healing is a continuous journey that requires self-awareness. Everyone has the capacity to learn self-compassion and healing techniques.

Titles

Healing Through Holistic Modalities The Importance of Self-Compassion in Healing

sound bites

"There's no one way of doing anything." "Anger and sadness go together." "We are all storytellers."

Chapters

00:00 Introduction to Healing Arts and Holistic Modalities 02:59 The Importance of Diverse Healing Approaches 05:40 Mindfulness vs. Action: Finding Balance 08:46 Creating Safe Spaces for Emotional Exploration 11:54 Understanding Trauma and Its Impact 14:47 The Role of Self-Compassion in Healing 17:30 Navigating Anger and Grief Through Creativity 20:34 Using Senses to Ground and Create Safety 23:25 The Power of Self-Talk and Inner Dialogue 26:45 Social Media and Its Effects on Mental Health 29:09 Transforming Anger into Creative Energy 32:51 Finding Stillness Through Movement 35:15 Practical Techniques for Stress Management 39:00 The Journey of Self-Discovery and Healing

See more about The Motivate Collective podcast, events, and memberships: http://motivatecollective.com

Keywords

injustice, resilience, entrepreneurship, technology, personal growth, belief, optimal decisions, lifelong learning, transformation, hope

Summary

In this conversation, Dr C.S. Wilson shares his incredible journey from being wrongfully imprisoned for nearly 18 years to becoming a successful entrepreneur and minister. He discusses the importance of resilience, belief, and hope in overcoming adversity, as well as the role of technology in modern entrepreneurship. Dr Wilson emphasises the need for optimal decision-making and lifelong learning as essential components for personal growth and societal improvement.

Takeaways

Dr Wilson was wrongfully imprisoned for nearly 18 years. He emphasises the importance of resilience and belief in oneself. Technology has transformed the landscape of entrepreneurship. Optimal decision-making can lead to better outcomes for society. Lifelong learning is essential in today's fast-paced world. Hope is a crucial element in overcoming adversity. Dr Wilson's faith played a significant role in his journey. He believes in the power of personal transformation. The inevitability of change is like the butterfly effect. Everyone has a unique purpose that can be discovered through introspection.

Titles

From Injustice to Empowerment: Dr C.S. Wilson's Journey The Butterfly Effect: Transforming Adversity into Opportunity

Sound bites

"You don't judge a book by its cover." "Life is tough; it comes with it." "You have to learn new stuff."

Chapters

00:00 From Darkness to Light: A Life Transformed 05:52 The Power of Hope and Resilience 12:01 Embracing Technology: A New Beginning 17:16 Finding Purpose: The Intersection of Faith and Action 22:20 The Importance of Quiet Reflection 28:00 Making Optimal Decisions for a Better World

Transcript

Dr C S Wilson (00:00)

Thank

Melanie Wilson (00:01)

Dr C S Wilson

Not related, clearly.

Dr C S Wilson (00:07)

Yeah, I'm doing just fine. How about yourself, man? I'm so happy. I'm excited enthusiastic, I'm elated to be here with you on the podcast

Melanie Wilson (00:09)

How are you doing?

Awesome. Look, you have had quite an experience, and one that a lot of people would not believe is even possible. So I'm really keen for you to share what happened in your life to let people know what goes on in the world.

Dr C S Wilson (00:41)

Sure, yeah. I'm right here in North Carolina. I was born in Virginia in the United States of America. And at 17 years old, I was at the scene of a crime where a guy's life was taken. So a guy was shot, single wound to the chest. And I didn't do it, didn't see the guy. I can't say I'm 100 % sure who done it. But I was 17 years old. I was going to be sentenced to 88 years with 58 suspended.

That's an active sentence of 30 years plus life on parole. So I was sentenced to more time in prison than I would be on Earth. That I had been on Earth at the time, me. And yeah, it just kind of shaped my life. So was actually three weeks before my 18th birthday and approximately three weeks before my high school graduation.

Melanie Wilson (01:32)

This is astonishing. This is just shocking. I mean, realising you were a teenager, you were a kid, and you just happened to be in that space when it happened. Let's talk about that.

Dr C S Wilson (01:36)

Yeah

Yeah.

Yeah, so it's kind of like I have an honest we get a few schools and churches and stuff like that and that's kind of what I tell people you kind of got a light Know your environment know who you with know who you're around on Because at the end of the day humans are responsible for carrying out justice So the system sometimes works is just people are flawed and people are flawed all around the world so it's like you got people with important jobs and

a lazy day on the job, you misinterpret information, or someone looks like someone else to you, and then a kid loses his life. So it's a sad story in that regard, but it didn't end there. So I would go on to be in prison, and then I did approximately 17 years, 11 months, three weeks and two days. I filed every petition for clemency, rid of mandamus, rid of actual innocence. Virginia Supreme Court, the United States of America Supreme Court, and I found no relief, but I actually had an affidavit saying I didn't do it, so was going to Ralph Northam in Virginia, who was the highest seat in the land at the time. He signed an executive order to release me from prison. So I was executively pardoned in light of an affidavit stating my innocence after doing almost 18 years.

Melanie Wilson (03:20)

nearly 18 years. So that's a lot of your adulthood that you spent in that place.

Dr C S Wilson (03:23)

Yeah.

Man.

Yeah, absolutely. So I'm only 41 now, so I've actually spent more time in prison as a man than I have as a man in society. Yeah, so it's like, you know, people get it wrong, and then I happen to be the face of one that, you know, when justice goes wrong. But I'm not bitter, you know, I travel a little bit and tell that it's kind of like beneath me to be. That's the power of human potential that you know what's inside you won't let what's around you stay the same so I just kind of I didn't think that something like that could happen to me so I just always kind of believe you know that I would be getting out that's that's why I'm doing a TED talk we're recording it later this year but it's on the butterfly effect so the title of it is does the caterpillar exist you know the inevitability of the butterfly because the caterpillar is just a stage in the life of the butterfly. If you believe things will change, know, you just focus on that and believe that it'll happen for you. And that's kind of what happened to me. So I had different lawyers to file petitions, and the petition for clemency that the governor actually signed. I actually filed that myself. In prisons here in Virginia, they got what's called law libraries. I went in there and filed it myself because it was inevitable, you know, you don't judge a book by its cover, and then you don't know how a story is going to end, so it looked like

I was a caterpillar. It looked like nothing beautiful would come out of my life. That's a message for a lot of people that don't judge and don't close the book too soon. You keep going. You're building resilience. You're building what you need for the next season of your life. So, it's kind of that perspective that I had. That's what kept me sane in there in a place that prisons are built for a reason.

So, like I was raised around these people, know, murderers and thieves and rapists. So, they should be in this place. And I just wasn't supposed to be, but the guards don't know you're not supposed to be. So, you get treated as them, you eat the same food as them. You get the same verbal treatment as them. So, you just gotta believe that your life is gonna turn out, and then decisions follow from that place. So if you refuse to let bitterness take root, you just continue to believe, then life changes for you. It's like how the world is designed. It works that way. Justice will prevail in some way or another. Yeah, you just gotta refuse to think anything otherwise. So it's like in that place, you need hope, and it's hope that continues to shape and bring your future closer so that the time there will be up, yeah.

Melanie Wilson (06:20)

The thing that stands out to me is that you were surrounded by people who perceived you in a particular way, and you didn't let it shape your perspective of yourself. You still knew who you were. How did you maintain that perspective? How did you keep that belief?

Dr C S Wilson (06:44)

Yeah, so I'm a licensed minister. I actually attribute it to God. It's like you got to believe in something that you can't see because in the natural I had done all I could do. The help of man was useless for me. So, in that place, I actually earned my doctorate. So, I earned my doctorate in theology. So, it was kind of like I kind of got it that I was going to need help outside of myself, that people didn't believe me. So in there, you're a number. You're not even a human. I was 10 39 28 1 and in maximum security prisons. had actually given that production was going in for the movie of my life. The years they couldn't take. because it's almost kind of like hard to believe, you you don't I remember I was we's in North Carolina. I was speaking. They brought some kids in. I like to tell my story in the third person for those who hadn't heard me before. Don't know the story. And I remember then I said, hey, that young man is me and a little kid in the back said, no, damn, he's lying. You know, it's hard to believe, because the smell of smoke isn't on me. I have the honour of having my own little tech company and just kind of work from home. Life is good now, so it's like the narrative has been turned. The inevitability of the butterfly is real.

Melanie Wilson (08:02)

That's amazing. You mentioned a tech company. Let's flick to that before flicking back to your story because there's so much to unpack here. How did you leap from being in prison to being a minister to having a tech company?

Dr C S Wilson (08:08)

Chill out.

Yeah, so I was just kind of like, a couple nights ago, I was up reading the script of the movie that's going to be produced in my life. And when I was in 10th grade, I actually got the highest on my geometry SOL. And it's kind of like, I recognise shapes and patterns. So the world makes sense to me in that regard. I never did homework in school. I was just competent, you know, and I was a natural leader. So, going to prison was like, the purpose would be, you know, delayed, but purpose knows no postponement. So when I actually got out of prison, I learned business inside that place. And then when I got here, the numbers was like, wait, if you're do business, this is the future. The technology is moving here. So our first app is actually gonna be TurtlePay, BuyFast, PaySlow, and it's in the buy now, pay later space. And so we able to help low-income, we'll be in more countries than America soon. It's like, homeland to be a part of that because numbers make sense to me and seeing where this is going, people buy more when it's, you know, that firm type of payment, so just like that makes sense to me. That's like fail safe. That's what you know. So it was in me to be an entrepreneur. It was in me to succeed. You know, in prison, I couldn't take that out of me. You know, it's just like a dark chapter. I describe prison as like The Walking Dead. You seen The Walking Dead in Austria? It's like The Walking Dead. It's kind of like you're numb to the pain of that place. It doesn't feel good, but there's nothing you can do to alleviate yourself from it. Nothing but freedom scratches that itch.

Melanie Wilson (10:04)

Freedom is what eases everything. So you were able to study a lot when you were over there.

Dr C S Wilson (10:13)

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I had time to, and I just, it's the resolve, know, in America, only 50 % of the people in prison can actually read. So it's kinda, you take advantage of what you're able to have. Yeah, so I've ordered books. I used to read a book a week. I was ordering books every month from publishers and approved vendors. Cause it was like, I just to travel there is to do it in your mind, to acquire information. You can't apply it all, so you free yourself through reading before you can actually be free.

Melanie Wilson (10:49)

Absolutely. You read a lot. Okay. And the apps, I'm curious. You would be clearly seeing that it's easier now to get an app made than a few years ago. What has been your experience with the technology side, AI, all of that?

Dr C S Wilson (11:06)

Yeah, so that's an amazing question. don't think I've had that before, but AI has definitely changed the game. The speed at which a website can be done, the speed at which simple applications can be done. It's definitely a horse of a different colour. It's changing every day, you know. So it's kind of like exciting to be on this side. I was in Dubai in November. You're going to go back next month and just, you know, meeting with these different minds. We actually established a company over there. So we got to register the company.

Company in Dubai. Yeah, so it's kind of like technology can take you where other things can't it's like it's this you know AI is gonna be in everything like the utilization of it is what makes things efficiently done and so pretty soon everyone is it'll be the norm just like the internet you know everyone will be using it every day it'll be a part of everyday lives and people on the front end of you know, there's money to be made and others will just be on about it.

Melanie Wilson (12:07)

So is the AI simply intertwined into the work you do?

Dr C S Wilson (12:12)

Yeah, correct. So even my day-to-day life, now, my little AI subscriptions help me be efficient with note-taking, and I'm sure, you know, utilising the different platforms, content creation, so yeah.

Melanie Wilson (12:28)

Absolutely. Even the platform that I use for the podcast makes life so much easier, and it saves a lot of time.

So what sorts of tools? For one second, before we get back to the big questions, which tools help your everyday life and your work?

Dr C S Wilson (12:45)

Sure, so my own ChatGPT Plus account, they ain't paying me to say this, but it's kind of popular in America. So, you know, they incorporate Canva. with, you know, picture and video creation, PowerPoint creation, everything. It's just a matter of having the right prompts to utilise. Is it big in Sydney too?

Melanie Wilson (13:05)

Yes, a bit. I think people are getting into AI a bit more now. So it's getting there. I think there's sorry, I think there's quite a following. Because I've been following people who are in America and Canadians, and I'm just seeing people overseas who are using ChatGPT in particular and other tools.

Dr C S Wilson (13:08)

Okay.

And yeah.

Melanie Wilson (13:34)

And so, I'm experiencing the difference, and I found at least a subculture, if nothing else, a subculture in Sydney where some people are delving deeper than simply getting AI to perhaps write the social media posts. I think a lot of people get AI to just write something for them, write some content, but even in terms of calendar management, I think a lot of people don't realise what it can do for that.

Dr C S Wilson (13:41)

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. It's 100 % a part of the culture here. My little nieces in school had to ban the utilisation of it because they were just getting it to write the papers and stuff was kind of like, kids see they can do stuff with a touch of a button. And so it kind of like filtered down and watered down the education. Because now these kids aren't applying themselves because, you know, hit a button and chat GBT writing papers for them, you know? Yeah.

Melanie Wilson (14:32)

Yeah, so moving on from the tools, though, what made you decide to focus on tech and apps now? Because you were also looking at theology a while ago, what made you go from one to the other?

Dr C S Wilson (14:50)

Sure, so would say theology by calling, tech by occupation. So it's kind of the gifts and calls, I believe, without repentance. Like whatever you're called to do, you do that to the grave. It's just a matter of where you'll do it from. know, some people are in pool pits, some people in the marketplace, you know. So it's just, you take your belief system. If you believe you can enrich lives, you do that with whatever you have your hands to. So it's kind of like both.

So, remember when I was saying I did good in geometry? Numbers make sense to me. They have no opinion. And so those in this field, and you do things a certain way, then it brings, I believe, generational wealth. It's, you know, I'm trying to ascertain that and move in that manner, yeah.

Melanie Wilson (15:39)

Okay, here's a question about that. I've known so many people who had what I call a math brain, be it engineering or economics, something else, and they are very interested in theology. How and why do people who are very technical and mathematical and factual still end up with a very spiritual side?

Dr C S Wilson (16:05)

Wow, that's a really great question. Of course, I would have to answer that from my ideological side, but I believe it's because I think the creator can be proven. And the same way that I believe a painting is proof of a painter, a building is proof of a builder; these things are systematically done. And I believe creation is proof of a creator.

And the numbers bear it out as far as like the Earth on its, you know, axis. And if it were just slightly closer to the sun, we'd burn up. If it was any further away, you know, we would freeze and then we wouldn't have the seasons. If it didn't rotate, you know, to have the 24-hour period days, it's like this. The fine-tuning of the universe absolutely involves math. And those that can see that... I don't think you have to be a genius to see it, but it's like you get so close, it's usually two things. It's usually like so hard to believe that you go the other route. So it's like a line in the sand. But usually those that get close enough to see the numbers, it's like, it just kind of makes sense that the creator has built himself into this thing. Everything points to him.

Great question.

So you can see that there has to be a bigger picture.

Dr C S Wilson (17:35)

Yeah.

Melanie Wilson (17:36)

That brings us back to where you started in your adulthood, because are you saying some sort of bigger picture that brought purpose and meaning into where you ended up?

Dr C S Wilson (17:45)

Yeah, absolutely. Because it's kind of like, it's so bad what happened to me. Just don't wear it on my sleeves. It's almost unthinkable. And so when you talk about purpose, I believe in being purpose-driven and having an assignment. So the story was featured on the 700 Club. The TV didn't feature this particular part of my story as well, but was November 19, 2019. I was praying. I believe I heard two words, one name.

Birdie Jamison. Well, Birdie Jamison was a retired judge in Richmond, Virginia, during the time I had a petition for clemency and the only person that could release me was Governor Ralph Norden. So I had been petitioning since 2015. I didn't even think they was looking at these things. Less than 2 % of them get any investigation at all. So I heard his name, Birdie Jamison. I go and get on the phone. I call my mother. I said, mom, I don't know what it is. I think it's God, but I think you should reach out to Birdie Jamieson. I just want to see if she knows anyone in the governor's office. So my mother began to text me. She told me that I didn't know at the time. She hadn't talked to Birdie Jamieson in over 12 months. It was over a calendar year, the last time she even spoke with her. So my mother texted her while I was on the phone. 30 minutes later, she called my mother. She said, Ms. Terry, what made you call me then? It must have been God when you texted me. I was sitting in front of the governor, and the governor said, if what you said is true, we'll investigate those claims, and we'll get Christopher out of there. That was November the 19th, 2019. April the 2nd, 2020, I was released, pardoned by Governor Rob Norman.

Melanie Wilson (19:42)

Goodness. So your mom calls someone when that person is talking with a governor right at the moment when magic can happen.

Dr C S Wilson (19:47)

texture.

Stand in it for them.

Absolutely. Bigger than me. Yeah, I gotta believe in God. I'm here because of that encounter. I believe by her name. I tell my mom, she texts. She just so happened to be sitting in front of the government. We didn't know if she knew the government. Yeah.

Melanie Wilson (20:11)

Well, that right there, I think, is the magic story because I think most people have a moment eventually where things just line up. Sometimes that doesn't mean it started off; you're in the wrong place at the wrong time, but then something lined up. And do you think other people need to look out for those little moments of intuition that thought of

Dr C S Wilson (20:23)

Yeah.

Melanie Wilson (20:39)

I need to just follow this path. I don't know quite where it's leading, but I think this can get sorted out.

Dr C S Wilson (20:46)

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. You hit the nail on the head. I would say that you just gotta kind of follow, because life can drown out inner awareness and inner impressions. So, it's kind of like, you gotta get quiet enough to be led. And if you believe something's bigger than you out there, then it could get you to the life that you always was destined to have, yeah.

Melanie Wilson (21:11)

Right, right. So you need to believe in something greater than yourself. What were your first steps when you got your freedom back? How did you figure out how you were going to get back on your feet? How did you figure out how to connect with the world and community? What did you do next?

Dr C S Wilson (21:35)

Yeah, great question. I just remember one thing in particular when I got out, and you know, there was no such thing as a smartphone when I was incarcerated on May 16 2002. We wanted our phones to be as small as it could be. Yeah, 2002. And then when I was released April 2020, you know, you wanted the phone as big as it can be, you want a smartphone big as you can, you can get it so life was radically and drastically different. I think it was that gap in my life that kind of highlighted, wait, this is, if you go in this field, you know, things make sense. So business was always going to be the avenue. I kind of like got it, you know, being an entrepreneur, it was just a matter of what, you know, and so again, my relationship with God was that guiding, you know, light. And so being in this field is humbling. kind of like.

Like what I do, yeah. So it was just kind of like what was built in me there. Those seasons of quietness. And that's why I wrote my first book. I was laughing because in the script I told the story of how I was in prison and TBN, the largest Christian network in the world. I remember being on the phone with him. Because my sister who was my secretary at the time, by name.

They they was like the publishing company and said yeah, we wanted less, we'll talk to Dr. Wilson We want to talk to him, and they was trying to set up a time. She's like, okay, well, have Dr. Wilson calling you at that time, and so I called her, and then we called a public company on a three-way call. You know, got to do it within 15 minutes, you know 14 minutes, rather before the operator said you got 60 seconds left, and I'm so they but close the deal from prison. So as soon as I got out, I was on the path of having my book published by the Trinity Broadcasting that way. Yeah, via the phone in prison.

Melanie Wilson (23:32)

My goodness. So, part of finding your freedom and your voice is you dove in with a book. It's amazing to realise I think you are a lot more fearless than a lot of people who haven't gone through that. I'm wondering if perhaps we create our own limitations because you almost all the limitations in the world. You were literally confined, and yet other people have more freedom, and they have all these doubts about why they shouldn't do something.

Dr C S Wilson (23:57)

Yeah.

Yeah, I think that's so true, you know. So life is tough. It's kind of like it comes with it. But again, it goes to like the inevitability of the butterflies, like these seasons toughen you up. So the cocoon is necessary because wings are being built. So when you're in the cocoon, the strength that's built, you know, the inner fortitude, the fearlessness that you would mention, like this is needed and it's built in these seasons.

When it looks like it's dark, when it looks like God isn't there, I mean, it's those times that your wings actually being formed,

Melanie Wilson (24:41)

When it looks like there is nothing, that's actually when you are growing and building. So are you saying this sort of a hibernation? Is it okay to have a moment of hibernating away and rebuilding yourself to get stronger?

Dr C S Wilson (24:59)

Absolutely, I would say it's the greatest thing you can do is to level things, to get back centred as it were, know, and grounded, you know. So everyone needs a reset. It's a perspective gain, and you know, when a rocket ship goes to the moon, it's not a straight shot. It's perpetual changes, you know, it's constant course correction.

So it's that perpetual introspection to say, okay, we're going to the moon, but we gotta keep getting these degrees right. We gotta keep changing. So we gotta constantly look at ourselves to ensure we're on the right path.

Melanie Wilson (25:39)

Right, it has a course correction. I actually didn't know that. So we're not on a straight path.

Dr C S Wilson (25:44)

Yeah. You learn a lot of things when you're in prison, Melody. I had a lot of time, yeah.

Melanie Wilson (25:49)

You had time to read a lot.

During COVID, I learned everything about food because I was in my own little bubble and there wasn't much else to do. So, think one thing we're learning from this is if anyone has a quiet phase for whatever reason, use the time to learn.

Dr C S Wilson (26:03)

Mm-hmm.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So that is so like translucent. You see it all in there. It's like the place where crime is the worst are neighbourhoods. You go through a bad neighbourhood. When I mean by bad neighbourhoods, I mean a neighbourhood with low income and low credit scores. These places are noisy, nothing wrong with kids playing and stuff, but you go to a different neighbourhood. Like it's built for quietness. You've got to be able to think.

You know, it's not a lot of loud noise. I'm playing. Yeah, what is?

Melanie Wilson (26:49)

Right, so do you mean things like the physical noise in the surroundings?

Dr C S Wilson (26:57)

Absolutely. Yeah.

Melanie Wilson (26:58)

Okay, because honestly, personally, I was feeling a bit gaslit when I was in a space that was near a major road and I was always around noise. You're getting where I'm coming from. I'm trying to understand because then, in the peaceful, quiet spaces, you can hear yourself think more.

Dr C S Wilson (27:09)

Thank you very much.

Yeah, yeah.

Absolutely, absolutely. That's the place of creativity. That's where it comes from. The mind has the neurons got to connect, so you need that quietness as an incubator to put it together. Babies are born, and the stillness of the womb, that's the origin of life.

Melanie Wilson (27:46)

So, if you talk with people who are in a city, do you think it's good for them to get at least a moment out of the city or somewhere peaceful and quiet instead of always being around the rush and the noise?

Dr C S Wilson (28:01)

Yeah, I absolutely recommend it. And most people that I know, they make it their business to steal away, to get away, or create that quietness within the city. So creativity can be birthed.

Melanie Wilson (28:16)

I think that could be why the mindfulness physical spaces are so popular now, because I can go to a quiet room and just gather thoughts for a moment.

Dr C S Wilson (28:22)

Yeah

Absolutely, Yep. Great point.

Melanie Wilson (28:35)

So, looking forward and looking ahead, what is your message for everybody for the future? Because I was checking on that a bit before we started recording. I'm wondering, what do you wish everybody would be doing more to help themselves in the world?

Dr C S Wilson (28:55)

Yeah, yeah, no, that's a great question. I would answer that like this. So, my first book is called Your Piece of the Pie: How to Operate at Greatness. And essentially, the book is about making optimal decisions. So optimal decisions bear the most favourable, advantageous fruit. So it assures that the max amount of people are benefited and the least amount of people are sorrowed. So we don't have to be as smart as Bill Gates, or we've got to make optimal decisions like wealthy people. So more people in the world, the correctional officers, the police officers, those in government, if they make optimal decisions, decisions that take into effect the max amount of people to be benefited and the least amount of people in this hour, like our world would be a better place, but it requires a systematic change in a framework to make these optimal decisions. And they ought to be made from the perspective that you're gonna win, you don't lose, know, that human good will prevail. And so if there was one message to humankind is like, if that mindset prevailed, every area of life, you know, it's like, well, let's make optimal decisions. This could help more people, you know, then it's like, hey, you could cure the world. Like, world hunger wouldn't be a thing. There are enough businesses and nonprofits; they throw away enough food to feed people. But because of regulations, can't, you know, so that's just a matter of someone saying, hey,

Let's make a business. We'll have this non-proper. They signed the waiver. They can have the food. Yeah, we're hungry, kid.

Melanie Wilson (30:26)

If you can believe it, I had an idea about an app for food a few years ago. And after a few people turned it down, I just gave up, but you are bringing up food. And I think that's such a crucial issue because people need dollars. But food is a lot more abundant than we realise because of the issue you are talking about. So much of it was thrown away. There is.

Dr C S Wilson (30:39)

Mm.

Yeah.

Melanie Wilson (30:55)

So do you think that food is one of the top issues we need to sort out? I mean, you've seen disadvantaged areas, you've talked with communities. I'm wondering what you think people need right now?

Dr C S Wilson (31:10)

Yeah, no, that's definitely on the list. It's part of an old philosophical view that's called Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs. There's no self-actualisation until basic needs are met. know, food, shelter, clothing. And without these things, like kids can't learn in school, they can't be the best expression of themselves without being fed. Yeah, it's a real problem in the world.

Melanie Wilson (31:34)

Okay, I feel really inspired by what you're saying to get those things sorted out for more people. I'm wondering what other things do you think people need, especially do you talk with young people or people who have any background professionals? What do you find is missing? Are people not getting creative? Are people needing to be more entrepreneurial, or do they need to teach themselves more and continue learning?

Dr C S Wilson (32:06)

Yeah, that's a great question. I will go back to the optimal decision. So, it's being aware of how you're made and then how that'll be expressed to the world around me. So, if you are entrepreneurial, you stir that up on the inside, but everybody doesn't wanna manage. Everybody doesn't wanna lead. Some people just wanna be in the kitchen cooking the soup, know? So, it's like you have that and someone wants to build a kitchen for the soup to be cooked in, know. So, I fell on that side. I just kind of see, I believe you can help more people, but whatever it is that we can do, we want to do it, we want to do it optimally, so the maximum amount of people benefited and the least amount of people sorrowed.

Melanie Wilson (32:48)

Focus on how you are made. I hope we can translate that to those who believe in something, don't believe in something, wherever their beliefs may be. I hope we can all know that we are built a particular way. Have you found that everybody has an instinct to know that they are wired a particular way, or however it might be worded?

Dr C S Wilson (32:52)

Yeah, absolutely. I think it goes back to what you were saying earlier, you know, being able to get quiet enough to be aware of how you're actually wired, you know, and not how you're conditioned to be. Remember, we alluded to life being hard, and in prison, you see a lot of guys who come in one way, they leave another way, you know, it's because of how they were conditioned to be while they were in there, you know, on guard. They call it being institutionalised.

So a lot of guys haven't gone through that much time to actually get on what they call social security in America, because they feel like mentally they just can't adjust. They can't cope with living outside of that place that haven't been dependent on others for the meals and provision and shelter for so many years. It's kind of like you don't adjust properly, but it's because of how they've been conditioned. That place that that, it translates that, if you don't get quiet and see what's in you, what can you actually do, what skillset needs to be sharpened, then you don't grow, and you don't help as many people as you can.

Melanie Wilson (34:25)

The difference you had that others didn't, it's that you knew your strengths. And are you saying that people anywhere need to simply see their strengths, look within and see what they can do to value it.

Dr C S Wilson (34:42)

Absolutely. That's step one anyway, to see what it is that you bring to the table, to whatever that is, whether it's a relationship, your job, and then it's your responsibility to sharpen the axe.

Melanie Wilson (34:57)

Okay, sharpen the axe. What does that mean for you?

Dr C S Wilson (35:01)

So it's, know, whatever skill set it is, you make it better. So you read the books on that subject, or you take the class, you get a mentor, you study behind, you. Over here, it's really big. We watch YouTube a lot. You watch the YouTube videos, and you move in that direction, yeah.

Melanie Wilson (35:20)

Absolutely. The videos, the books, whatever works, but keep learning. So it seems like the lesson here is lifelong learning. We are busting the stereotype of the conditioning, actually, where a lot of people were told just go to school, then college, university, which I think is drifting a bit now. But do that, and then just do a job. And these days, though,

Melanie Wilson (35:50)

Do you think people are becoming more aware that we need to continue teaching ourselves throughout our entire lives?

Dr C S Wilson (35:56)

Absolutely. You hit it right on the head. So learning now is more circular than linear from the years past model. Because the world is fast-paced and moving. If people don't utilise AI and know anything about it, then they'll kind of be behind. So you're have to learn new stuff.

Melanie Wilson (36:19)

Totally, totally. We have to learn even because of where our technology is going. Where can people learn more about what you do?

Dr C S Wilson (36:25)

Absolutely.

Sure, yeah, so I'm DR C S Wilson. That's all my social media tags, LinkedIn, is it, Facebook, Instagram. My personal website is www.drcswilson.com, so just kinda doing my part to help as many people as possible, yeah.

Melanie Wilson (36:51)

as many people as possible. And you mentioned you're going to do a TED Talk.

Dr C S Wilson (36:57)

Yeah, yeah, that's exciting. That's something, you know, being where I've been and now to be, know, TEDx, that's the biggest stage in the world. So that's really humbling, yeah.

Melanie Wilson (37:09)

It is. Are you looking forward to talking to more groups and audiences anywhere?

Dr C S Wilson (37:16)

Yeah, absolutely. You just put it together, and I'm gonna come to Sydney, and you talk to them out there. Absolutely. Sure.

Melanie Wilson (37:24)

Okay, I'll send you something later because I'm collaborating with someone who moved from New York to Paris, and I think you have such a message. I mean, considering you have that theology and the tech, you have everything going on, this is going to be mad fun. I feel like I've learned a bit of everything from you, and I'm so grateful for your time.

Dr C S Wilson (37:33)

Nice.

Yeah

Praise God.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I thank you. I think you're doing a great job. It's been a great interview. And I know your listeners are being rich. Keep it up. Do 100 more episodes.

Melanie Wilson (38:00)

Thank you so much.

Simplicity, Emotion, Visuals: The Modern Speaker's Toolkit

Summary

In this conversation, Dr Dan Young discusses his role as a force multiplier, emphasising the importance of authenticity and personal branding in public speaking. He explores the evolution of speaking styles, the decline of PowerPoint presentations, and the significance of emotional connectivity with audiences. Dr. Young shares insights on finding common ground, the journey of transformation, and the value of humility in effective speaking. He concludes with key takeaways for aspiring speakers, highlighting the need for authenticity, simplicity, and effective visuals.

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Keywords

public speaking, personal branding, authenticity, emotional connection, TEDx, audience engagement, transformation, visuals, storytelling, speaker tips

Takeaways

Dr Dan Young describes himself as a force multiplier. He emphasises the importance of building a personal brand. The shift to public presence was driven by financial necessity and personal growth. Authenticity is crucial for effective speaking. Speaking styles have evolved from formal to more authentic and relatable. The death of PowerPoint is a trend in modern speaking. Using visuals effectively can enhance a presentation. Emotional connectivity is key to influencing an audience. Finding common ground with the audience enhances relatability. Transformation is simple but not easy; it requires effort and time. Reassurance is important in a fast-paced world where instant results are expected. The journey of growth is essential for lasting change. Experience and failure stories are valuable for speakers. Humility leads to authenticity in speaking. Overcoming insecurities is a common challenge for aspiring speakers.

Titles

Amplifying Talent: The Role of a Force Multiplier Building Your Brand: The Shift to Public Presence

Sound bites

"I'm a force multiplier." "Humanity and society evolves." "Humility equals authenticity."

Chapters

00:00 Amplifying Talent: The Role of a Force Multiplier 02:54 Building a Personal Brand: The Shift to Public Presence 05:32 Self-Care and Authenticity in Speaking 06:36 Evolving Trends in Public Speaking 09:15 The Shift from Information to Emotion 12:16 The Death of PowerPoint: Engaging Audiences 15:06 Creating Memorable Presentations: The Power of Visuals 18:18 The Three Pillars of Influential Speaking 21:02 Crafting Impactful Stories for Your Audience 22:52 The Essence of Transformation 27:04 Finding Common Ground in Storytelling 31:49 The Journey Over the Destination 37:04 Authenticity and Humility in Speaking 41:49 Crafting a Unique Personal Brand

Keywords

public speaking, spirituality, self-care, burnout, community, AI, change management, personal development, hope, resilience

Summary

In this engaging conversation, Melanie Suzanne Wilson and James Jeffley explore a wide range of topics, from the importance of spirituality and self-care to the challenges of burnout and the impact of AI on our lives. They discuss the need for community and connection in an increasingly isolated world, the journey into public speaking, and the significance of adapting to change in both personal and professional contexts. Jeffley shares valuable insights on building confidence and navigating the complexities of modern life, emphasizing the importance of self-awareness and resilience.

Takeaways

James Jeffley is known as Reverend Up, promoting positivity. Hope is essential in difficult times, akin to a 'Star Wars' narrative. Everyone has the potential to be a hero in everyday situations. Social media can complicate our sense of privacy and self-worth. Spirituality is a personal journey, not confined to dogma. Public speaking can start from a young age and evolve into a career. Corporate training needs to address systemic issues, not just individual performance. Burnout is a serious issue that requires proactive self-care. The 'hamster wheel' mentality leads to neglect of personal health. The cost of living crisis affects mental and physical well-being. Self-sufficiency and community gardening can enhance resilience. Healthy living requires intentionality in a busy world. Community is vital for emotional support and connection. Adapting to change is crucial in the workplace, especially with AI. AI is transforming job landscapes, requiring new skills and adaptability. Human storytelling and connection remain irreplaceable by AI.

Titles

Elevating Lives with Reverend Up Finding Hope in a Chaotic World

Sound bites

"We can all be heroes." "We are living in some weird times." "Pick a thing and get good at it."

Chapters

00:00 Introduction to Reverend Up and His Mission 02:54 Finding Hope in Troubling Times 05:45 The Power of Choiceless Moments 08:43 The Role of Heroes in Everyday Life 11:38 Spirituality and Agnosticism 14:47 The Journey into Public Speaking 17:27 Corporate Training and Professional Development 20:15 The Challenges of Organizational Change 23:15 Burnout and the Hamster Wheel of Life 25:56 The Impact of Financial Stress on Well-being 32:13 The Need for Self-Sufficiency 34:02 The Impact of Modern Convenience on Health 36:36 The Grind Mentality and Its Consequences 38:20 Generational Support and Community 41:27 Finding Community in the Workplace 43:45 Navigating Change in Organizations 46:53 Adapting to Technological Change 52:46 Building Confidence in a Changing World

Transcript

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (00:01)

James, thank you for being on the show.

James Jeffley (00:04)

Melanie, thank you for having me. I'm excited to be here, and I hope I say something useful.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (00:10)

You will, you will. You seem to come from the public speaking world like I do. How do you explain to people what you do?

James Jeffley (00:20)

Sometimes I start by asking how much detail do you want?

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (00:24)

Well, let's see, we have an hour, or maybe a little bit more.

James Jeffley (00:27)

Okay, do you want the TLDR? Do you want the short answer? The short answer is I try to make the world a better place, and I do that through a lot of different ways. I'm known in spiritual circles as Reverend Up, and my catchphrase is up yours, which is not an insult. It's an invitation to raise every part of your life up to a higher level of peace, joy, happiness, and results. So, I try to help people up their lives through a lot of different ways, hopefully through speeches or sermons or through coaching work that I do or training work that I do or books that I write or music that I play. So I'm here to try and bring things up.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (01:13)

That's amazing. I didn't know that you are known as Reverend Arp. That's a great phrase.

James Jeffley (01:18)

Another hat, thank you.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (01:25)

I think that everybody needs to have faith in something or some form of hope in these weird times we are living in. Have you sensed that as well?

James Jeffley (01:38)

Yeah, I've sometimes thought of, are you a Star Wars fan?

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (01:44)

Yes.

James Jeffley (01:45)

Sometimes feel like we're living in the revenge of the Sith, right? Or one of the Sith focus movies where it's like the Empire is like coming and there's all the evil and terrible things. But there's also hope too, right? If we only focus on one part of the equation, then it's easy to get down. And there are a lot of people who are down and disenchanted, and I'm not quite sure how things are in your home country, but over here in the States, whoo, there's a lot going on.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (02:20)

Did you hear about what happened at Bondi Beach?

James Jeffley (02:25)

Did, and that was tragic, and I am so sorry. My heart goes out to people worldwide but also Australians that were directly or indirectly affected by that. It seems like we've exported some of our violence down under. So that was a shame. Go ahead.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (02:47)

It was...

Yeah, well, I was going to say that that was even more of a shock and surprise because we have more gun laws than America has.

James Jeffley (03:00)

Right.

Right. Absolutely. And what was heartening to see was what the people who jumped in to try to apprehend or arrest the shooters, right, to prevent more damage, death and destruction. So it's good to know there are still some heroes out there who trying to just step in. That's not an act of, well, should I do this or not? It's like that was what Osho once called a choiceless moment. Right. Osho was a great spiritual teacher. And one of the things he said that really struck me was that he said, " Choice only exists in a confused mind. I could do this, or I could do that. If I'm vacillating between two or more choices, I'm confused. But if I have a choiceless moment in that moment, I'm absolutely clear here's the right thing to do, and I'd do it. So for that person, here's the right thing to do: jump in and try to stop this guy, choicelessness.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (04:10)

Do you think that sometimes we have a clearer moment of knowing this is what we have to do?

James Jeffley (04:17)

I think most of us do, and we stop and think about it for a moment, there was probably a time in your life, Melanie, where you were absolutely clear in a moment and maybe you hadn't mapped out a plan for it, or you didn't debate it, or there was no spreadsheet involved. You just knew in that moment, I need to go here or I need to stop that, right? Have you had a time like that where you just have perfect clarity?

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (04:40)

Yes.

I did have a time like that. Actually, I can't say a lot about this to just be careful, but there were moments weeks ago when I just knew go and be somewhere else and reconnect with people who are somewhere else. And I felt so grateful that some people caught up with me for the first time in years.

James Jeffley (04:55)

Yeah, yeah.

Hmm.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (05:14)

So it was like this gut instinct, and maybe it comes from something beyond ourselves that's telling us this is where you need to be.

James Jeffley (05:24)

Yeah, yeah, there's a knowingness. I don't know if science has figured this out, probably not, but I think we all have this, this knowingness, this felt sense, this gut that's like, I need to go over here and do this thing or reconnect with these people or walk away from this situation. And we don't know what it means that our rational mind can't make sense of it in the moment. We just have this compulsion. I need to be over here, and you go over there. And later, you might get some hindsight that says, I'm so glad I did that because had I stayed, right, I might have been in that horrible mess, or I might have missed this wonderful opportunity, right?

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (06:09)

Yes, and do you think that other people can have their own small versions of the hero at Bondi Beach? Perhaps we have a chance to rescue the people around us, even if it's not in a life-or-death situation.

James Jeffley (06:27)

Yeah, absolutely. think we all have that capability, and I think many of us, all of us, have different levels of access, right? Some of us, know, I'm the hero, and we're looking for opportunities to jump in and save or help, and others are like, no, you know, if it directly affects me, then I'll jump in and there are some who are like, no, I'm not trying to get involved in anything, keep that away. I want a quiet life. But yeah, I think we all can be heroes, and it's probably a lizard brain function that fight or flight, you know. Are you a parent? Okay. So, if somebody were trying to, you know, harm your kids, there's no thought about that, right? You're jumping in and do whatever you can to protect your kids, your family, right? So, we don't need a

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (07:11)

Yes.

James Jeffley (07:26)

Your decision tree on it. Well, if this then that, and if not, should I? It's like, no, you jump in, and you take care of your family. So, but for some people, if it isn't a life or death situation, then the mind takes over, and we start to parse out, well, what's the risk to me and can I help it but not be involved too much and like what's the minimal amount of help I could give?

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (07:37)

Yes.

James Jeffley (07:55)

That's still helpful, but doesn't obligate me. I don't have to fill out reports or be on the news or, you know, can I just help anonymously, and sometimes the situation doesn't let you.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (08:08)

Interesting. I normally find a way to quietly get involved in something, but I wonder if there's any anonymity in this day and age. I mean, that's a whole thing in itself, whether we have any privacy in this day and age.

James Jeffley (08:28)

When people are walking around with, you know, video recorders on them, it's hard to be someone's cat in a tree. Let me just sneak over here and climb up and get the cat out of the tree. There's somebody going, and it's being live-streamed or posted on social media. Look at this kind person. She climbed up in the tree and got the cat. And they want, hey, what's your name? I want to put it on my Instagram. It's like, no, I'm just trying to be a good person. Yeah.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (08:56)

Yes, that's true. And the social media community is a very fascinating space because we have hundreds of people in common through social media. And I have, I've had a very fascinating, bizarre relationship with the online world for years because you share something and people think you are sharing everything. People have opinions. You should be more happy. You should be more sad. And

There's been something very freeing for me, at least, in saying, okay, I'll put what I wanted to out there, but I'm not going to obsess over it, kind of like what you were describing. I need to use the lizard brain a bit when I'm going online because otherwise it would just overtake my whole mental capacity and existence, if that makes sense.

James Jeffley (09:52)

Yeah, totally. I'm online a lot, but I'm probably not online as much as I should be, right? If I want to market and, you know, let people know what I'm doing in the world. But I'm also very, very careful about what I put online. I, you know, I want to curate what I put out there.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (10:17)

You have to.

James Jeffley (10:17)

part of its privacy, part of its safety, part of it, because there are some folks out there that are just, what? What do you mean? And next thing you know, they're throwing insults at you or threatening you, and so I'm not trying to attract that.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (10:32)

No, especially with politics. And I have been sort of neutral a bit. I mean, I feel passionate about wanting everybody to be okay, but I'm the weird person who has actually met good people in any part of politics. And I strongly passionately feel certain that there are individuals who are amazing and good in any space. And then there are the opposite ones who are doing the wrong thing in any space. But then I think there's a big belief. I didn't expect to make this so policy-focused. Yeah, sorry. Big day. I'll cut that out. I'll edit that out. So I didn't expect to make it so political, but I think that a lot of people want to categorise as particular groups are good or bad or even. It's always fun to bring in someone who's religious because you're a religious leader as well as a speaker. And how do you connect? What do you mean?

James Jeffley (11:39)

let's not go that far.

I wouldn't say I'm a religious leader. ⁓

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (11:45)

How do you describe it then?

James Jeffley (11:49)

I am more of a spiritual agnostic, if that makes any kind of sense. I'm not one who says, " Pick one of the major religious dogmas. You have to believe this because this is exactly how it is, and all other religions are bogus." I'm not that guy, right? No. My thing is I think there's something bigger than all of us.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (11:55)

Okay.

Okay.

James Jeffley (12:18)

I don't know what that is. I don't have enough awareness or knowledge to name that with certainty. Call it the is, the universe, the force, whatever you want to call it. I think there's something bigger. But I don't think it's an old white guy with a beard in the clouds somewhere. With his son, it's like a pure patriarchal kind of thing, that's that you should act this way or else.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (12:39)

No! No, no!

James Jeffley (12:48)

I don't buy that, and I'm not dissing Christians. Not at all. You can believe what you want. But here's the thing for me. Here's how I came to this because I've dipped my toes in a lot of different spiritual and religious waters over the years. And I did some digging. There was a book called The World Christian Encyclopedia written by a guy named (I think it was) David Barrett. And his job for 40 years was to travel the globe, interview people, and study religions. What do you believe in? What do you believe in? What do you believe in? How many religions, distinct religions, do you think he came up with?

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (13:28)

sure.

James Jeffley (13:30)

Take a wild guess. How many religions do you think there are?

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (13:32)

Distinct ones. Beyond the core view, there are a few more. So I would say eight to 10 perhaps, but it could be less.

James Jeffley (13:40)

Mm-hmm.

Okay, good guess, good guess. 10,000.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (13:49)

Okay.

James Jeffley (13:50)

10,000 distinct religions being practiced on earth. 150 of them have at least 1 million followers. So it's not three or four big ones and then a bunch of cults, right? Christianity alone has almost 43,000 different denominations.

I'm sorry, 4,300 different denominations. And so, you know, I'm wondering like, okay, if you put a representative from all the religions and all their various denominations and subgroups and sects in a stadium, and you ask them, please stand if yours is the one true religion, how many folks do you think would stand?

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (14:33)

Interesting because some groups do think they are the one and then others do accept that there could be a few paths to the same destination.

James Jeffley (14:43)

But you'd probably get a fair number of them. The third, the half, oh, I am absolutely, mine is it, and then I would just laugh because, right, how do you know? I mean, you can believe all that you want. Believe all you want, but belief only requires acceptance and repetition. Doesn't require evidence or scrutiny or peer-reviewed research. And so, don't speak about spiritual things with the certainty of those who are religious dogmatics. I don't know.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (15:26)

think we all don't know or we don't have the whole picture of it. Moving on from those beliefs for a moment, you have been in the public speaking world as well. And it'd be great to really delve into that. How did you get involved in it? In speaking in general?

James Jeffley (15:35)

Mm-hmm.

Gosh, it happened when I was a wee lad. Somebody identified me in kindergarten and said, " Hey, we'd love your son to say a speaking part in a Christmas pageant, the little drummer boy. And they go, " Can he learn the lines?" It's like, sure. And I practised with my mom. And I stood up, and I said my lines. And I didn't pass out. And it was fun. And so I was five years old or so.

And so I kept doing things like that through elementary, middle, and high school. And I kind of got the bug. It's like, oh, this feels good to stand in front of an audience and say things and recite things and whatever. And then I got involved in speech and debate in high school and college. then after college, I saw an ad on the side of a building for a seminar company.

And they were looking for speakers for trainers. And I said, well, I think I can do that. And I answered it. And then that began a long career of travelling the globe, speaking and training in corporations. Then I got involved in Toastmasters in 2013. And I'd heard about it. Somebody said, " Well, come to a meeting. You know how we are. Come to a meeting, right? So I went to the meeting. Like, this is fun. So I in my first year, I found myself in the finals

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (17:13)

Really?

James Jeffley (17:14)

Yeah, go

And then I got burned

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (17:17)

Did you get back into speaking after a burnout?

James Jeffley (17:24)

Well, still speak as part of what I do, you know, corporate training and that sort of thing, um,

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (17:32)

I love exploring other forms of speaking beyond that community to see what else there is in the world. So the corporate training, I'm very curious about that. And a lot of people want to perform some sort of a career training or doing keynotes. So, what has your experience been doing the training? Is there a common thing that most people normally want and need when you provide that?

James Jeffley (18:04)

It's in the professional development space. So whatever the hot topics are for organisations at the time, usually things around communication and team building. The last few years, there's been an uptick in managing stress, promoting wellness and resilience, right? Those kinds of topics that I know are near and dear to you change management, how do you deal with change? That's a constant topic. I think a lot of organisations are trying to find answers to things that are persistent problems. And a lot of the training does not work. And it does not work because it's not combined with follow-up coaching to ensure that people are actually what they are learning, and when they run into problems, how do they adapt, and so that's the first part of it. Training is helpful if you combine it with follow-up coaching and support. The second part is that a lot of organisations are trying to solve problems that are baked into the system, and until they're willing to change the system, they're going to keep having these problems.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (19:30)

Interesting. Do you think sometimes people think it's the individual that needs to change when really the whole organisation needs to change?

James Jeffley (19:40)

If you plant a seed in a flower pot, right, and you expect it to grow, and it doesn't, do you blame the seed or do you look at where you planted it and are you nurturing it? A seed can only grow in the proper environment.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (20:00)

What sorts of issues have you seen that organisations need to change?

James Jeffley (20:07)

Of a structural nature.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (20:12)

Sure.

James Jeffley (20:13)

It's something that most other countries have around the world except for the United States. We don't have guaranteed paid time off in the US.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (20:24)

None!

James Jeffley (20:27)

No, it is not a federal law that companies have to provide guaranteed paid time off. Companies do it on their own. So maybe you work for a company that offers paid time off, maybe you don't. It's on a company-by-company basis. You were today's years old when you filed out.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (20:50)

That is amazing. I mean, I heard so much about it. I heard about the healthcare system in America, but I didn't realise there are some companies where, so are you saying even as a full-time employee on a salary, full-time permanent, you could have zero days off paid?

James Jeffley (20:53)

Yeah.

You could, you could. Now it's a, it's a competitive tool. So if you are a good candidate, right, lots of skills and experience, and you're, you've got three or four companies lined up or competing for you, then whoever offers the paid time off is going to get, you know, greater consideration. So a lot of companies will offer it, but how much they give and to what degree that varies, it's a company-by-company thing.

The other thing is guaranteed healthcare. Healthcare is normally tied to a job, or you buy it yourself, right? But there's no Medicare for all. There's no government-mandated healthcare, provided healthcare. So if you have a job, you hope that it provides healthcare. And then what kind, right? Does it provide small benefits, medium benefits or big benefits? It's hit or miss.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (22:12)

Health insurance is so complicated everywhere. Even though we have something over here, I think when you do go for those privately provided options, you really need someone to explain it, and you never know exactly what's included. So that's a huge issue because healthcare...

It's going to be needed more and more. have obvious issues like the ageing population. I also like to think a lot about prevention. So I wonder if perhaps people are also getting stressed out or trying to figure out how they can keep a healthy habit when they are doing so much work. Have you seen that?

James Jeffley (23:02)

Yeah.

Yeah, I mean, there are a lot of wellness programs and initiatives that have sprung up in organisations over the last 30 years or so. Many companies will have what's called an EAP, an employee assistance program. So if you're struggling with things, you can call them. And there's a counsellor or somebody who can help you with things or help you provide resources. Some have yoga classes and meditation rooms.

Usually, some of the larger tech companies, which have trillions or billions of dollars to spend, will fund more of these employee wellness-type programs and benefits. But if you're not one of the big tech companies with billions or trillions of dollars, maybe you'll get something, maybe not. So the onus is really on the individual to go; I need to take better care of myself. What can I do?

The challenge with that is that so many people are on what I call the hamster wheel. Just running, running, running, running, running like a hamster just trying to, I gotta get it done. I gotta get all the things done and check all the work boxes and the personal boxes and the family boxes, and then where's the time for you for sleeping? The hamster wheel. Yeah.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (24:18)

The hamster wheel, the hamster wheel. Yes.

Does that to you, does that look like people getting into a workaholic habit of constantly doing things?

James Jeffley (24:31)

Yeah, yeah. And not just going to work and running all day, but coming home and still doing a couple of hours of emails or, you know, proposals or meetings or whatever, working on weekends. And then that's just if you're a solo person, but if you've got a partner, if you've got a family, kids, now you have all of those things you have to balance. And so you go from one wheel to another wheel.

You have two or three different hamster wheels you're running on. And when do we ever get off a wheel to stop and just take care of ourselves?

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (25:08)

Yes.

James Jeffley (25:10)

Sadly, for most people, it only happens when we have a breakdown.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (25:16)

Is that what you've seen? People finally do care for themselves when they are at a breaking point.

James Jeffley (25:23)

Well, yeah, you know, you have a heart attack or a stroke, and now you're in the hospital. It's like, well, OK, I guess there's nothing for me to do but take care of myself now. And I think the thing is, we shouldn't have to wait for our bodies to remind us in drastic fashion that self-care is important. But it's hard to do if we're in this grind mint.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (25:53)

Yes. The grind mentality. You mentioned burnout before, and I think people can get burnt out by employed work, by family, or from anything. And it's really showing us something because I'd say that a couple of years ago, I was the health nut who is having plenty of kale, but I realised that I was getting so busy and also wanting to give and give just everywhere to anyone that the burnout for me personally, I would have a migraine and two weeks later a cold and two weeks later another migraine and then two weeks later another cold. I realised this is a pattern. I was so sick. Have you seen people getting really sick from burnout?

James Jeffley (26:38)

Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah.

Oh yeah. And to be clear for all the viewers and listeners at home, burnout is not a thing that you get rid of in a weekend. I'll sleep an extra couple of hours this weekend, and that'll get rid of my burnout. No, no, no, that is a chronic to acute health condition that could wind up putting you in the hospital with adrenal fatigue or, you know, just horrible things. So you really want to avoid burnout.

But yeah, there are people who will just work themselves nonstop. And especially if you work at a job that doesn't pay you a living wage. So I can't make ends meet with this job. So once I'm done there, I gotta go to my second job and hopefully between the two of them, and then you may have a side hustle, you know, that's why I, you know, I sell things on Etsy or whatever, right? My Etsy shop.

And you write a book or whatever, right? You know, so it's, we're trying to make our lives work because our main source of income doesn't pay enough and costs rise faster than pay. There's a huge disparity between what it costs to live now and what we actually, what most people actually make.

So that contributes to the burnout culture. It's an existential crisis, right? Because we've tied money to basically everything we need to live. And if you don't make enough, now you're actually worried about living. That's why they call it a cost of living.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (28:28)

Yes, it is. Over here, the cost of a rental to live in is becoming so high that I would say if someone had bought property a decade or two ago, then they might be doing okay. But if they didn't, then the rental prices, really, for some people, one week of rental pay could be

James Jeffley (28:38)

Yeah.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (28:56)

Most of what they earn in a week. And so needing to work for someone else, and do a side hustle, or grow something to become bigger than a side hustle. It has become, it's been the standard now. So I think what you're describing is happening in a bunch of countries where there's now a minimum of you're going to work for someone else and yourself, and maybe multiply that work for two other people.

James Jeffley (28:59)

Yeah.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (29:23)

A few different things to yourself. I bet you there would be some people who are doing the Etsy and the book.

James Jeffley (29:28)

Yeah.

Yeah. A guy named Robert Allen wrote a book years ago called Multiple Streams of Income in the 80s, I think. And he said, you know, it doesn't work anymore just to have one primary source of income because what if that falls through, right? So you have to have multiple streams of income. But we talked about passive income, not multiple jobs you have to work at, right? So, and you look at, you know,

Airbnb, for example, right? Where people can rent a room out in my house to strangers and make money. I don't have to go to a job every day, I gotta clean the room, but right? It's different than having a regular gig. Or writing a book or a pamphlet or an ebook or creating an app and selling it online, right? People are monetising content they create on YouTube and TikTok, and you know, all the things, Instagram.

So people are being very creative. Technology has given new platforms for people to be creative in how they sustain themselves. But I think that sort of masks the fundamental problem, which is that society, business and government are not orienting us towards healthy, sustainable living. It's extractive and exploitive.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (30:51)

Yes. One thing you identified, and you said this earlier as well, is that money is tied to living so much, and money can be useful. can provide resources. But the example that I heard of weeks ago was that in an area, maybe half an hour away from me, maybe an hour, there's a small place where the council apparently

James Jeffley (31:04)

Mm-hmm.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (31:20)

Closed down the community garden where food was grown. And so the only option is then to go to the supermarket and spend money on something that could have just been growing from the ground. That sort of thing is going on, and it's not even totally safe to rely on these things. I saw a video this morning about how some fresh produce

James Jeffley (31:35)

Right.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (31:48)

Products are getting recalled at the supermarket, but then there are so many regulations around just growing our own food. So, whereas I think that years ago, there were different generations where you would grow food in a yard or whatever you had, and people made their clothes. Do you think that people need to become a bit more self-sufficient?

James Jeffley (32:16)

Probably. Whether that's having a little garden in back there, you can grow some of your fruits and vegetables, weather permitting. Or you learn how to do some of your own, you know, mending, darning, clothes making, home repairs and stuff. And, you know, YouTube University is great for that.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (32:42)

Yes.

James Jeffley (32:43)

I'm like, how do I fix this, YouTube? How do I fix a leaky faucet? Thank you. Right. I think how we've progressed economically as a society around the world, in many places, not every place clearly, has made us less independent. Right. Where does my food come from? The grocery store.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (33:06)

Yes.

James Jeffley (33:10)

Okay, yeah, but ask your grandparents where the food came from, depending on your age, right? Or your great grandparents is like, no, we had a farm, we had chickens, had, you know, planted things. So I think the more we get away from nature and being dependent, the worse off it becomes. Because now who feeds us? The corporation, the corporate farm.

Right.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (33:40)

Absolutely.

The corporate farm, or even trying to prepare our own food. I think that one thing I hope that any office worker could do is not rely on the fast food of whatever sorts in a normal day. People think they are saving time by getting McDonald's, whatever else, when it can take five minutes to set up something that will actually nourish us before going out for the day. And I think those things can really feed our minds and help us to have better careers.

James Jeffley (34:19)

absolutely. But if we're on that hamster wheel, we're running, running, running. Most folks don't have the energy to, I gotta go in here and cook. I gotta put things in a pan. I gotta mix. I gotta who's got time for that when you can just order something or go through a drive-through and pick it up, and there's hot food in a bag. Not always great for us, but we're not prioritising health or prioritising speed and efficiency.

and energy. I don't have the energy to cook, so let me just order some.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (34:50)

Yeah.

It's okay if someone has maybe a healthy meal prep that they have outsourced. That's okay. But I'm guessing people aren't even having the energy to think about that and find that. And so it seems like for the average person, there is that temptation to just go for the ultra-processed things. So it seems like the key underlying problem isn't simply what we're eating, but how busy we are and what

James Jeffley (35:01)

Yeah.

Right.

Yeah.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (35:24)

Time and capacity we have to even think about our lifestyles. Are you saying that basically, people are getting so burned out from work that they are not getting the opportunities to even think about the lifestyles that could sustain them?

James Jeffley (35:38)

Yeah. Because this grind mentality has become normalised. Well, this is just how it is, Millie. You get up before the sun, and you get the kids off to school, and you rush off to the job, and you do your thing all day, and you pick the kids up, and you come back home, you make dinner, and you do stuff, and you put the kids to bed. And now, what time do you have left for you? Maybe half an hour, maybe an hour. You know, what do you do? You binge-watch something on the TV, or you fall asleep on the couch, and you get up tomorrow, and you hit the repeat button. And that's life for so many people.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (36:11)

Exhaustion.

Is that part of the personal development you've been exploring in your training?

James Jeffley (36:22)

Yeah, I always try to work that in wherever I'm talking about, you know, the topic is project management. Yes, and self-care. The topic is leadership. Yes, and self-care. Because you.

What's the old line? Flight attendants, put your mask on first before attempting to help others. Enlighten self-interest. If you don't take care of you, who else will? And then can you do it before your body takes over and go, nope, sorry, we're just gonna heart attack, stroke, we're gonna force you to be still.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (37:07)

The question of who else would take care of you is significant because if everybody else feels just as busy, then do you think we're even becoming too busy to look after each other?

James Jeffley (37:23)

Yeah, I think so. And I think this is a, it's a growing problem for people who, you know, are experiencing later years of life versus, you know, younger folks like yourself. You're like, okay, you know, when I hit my sixties, my seventies, if I don't have that life partner there, who's going to even know if I die? Who's going to look after me if I fall down and hurt myself?

Right? Do I just go into some care facility somewhere, and then who can afford that?

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (37:59)

That's expensive. They are so expensive.

James Jeffley (38:01)

yeah.

Yeah. So it's a thing.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (38:08)

Well, that's even another thing that has tied money towards people's lives because there were cultures and times when generations helped each other collectively.

James Jeffley (38:22)

Yeah, they lived with each other. We have generational homes, called, we call them tribes, villages, right? Where, you know, grandparents were living with their kids and living with their grandkids or even great-grandparents. And so, you know, there was a sense that we take care of each other, right? It takes a village not only to raise a child, but to support a family, right? And so we didn't throw grandma in the home or grandpa in the facility, right? They were there in the house with us, and the grandkids could learn from the elders, right? Uh, it will support, but you know, over the last 5060 years or so, it's been this move towards no, go out, be independent, be on your own, you know, leave your grandparents and your parents, and you know, boom, and so we move further away, right? And here you are in the big city by yourself trying to figure things out, right? And so, yeah, we've become more independent, but also less secure and more isolated.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (39:32)

Yes.

I don't think I would want to live alone a lot of the time, potentially. I think some people like that when they think that they have what they need, but I, yeah, I do sense the vulnerability in what you're saying. What if something happened and no one noticed?

James Jeffley (39:59)

Yeah. Yeah. And it could be a simple thing. Like you fall down, right? You sprain an ankle or something, right? It's like, oh, okay. Who do I call? Do I have a friend that I could actually call who would come over and know what to do? I gotta think, how many of my friends know first aid? Right? Or would be willing to do that. I'd love to, but I'm at work right now.

Can you hold on? I get off at five. Yeah, I'll just lie here on the floor until.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (40:35)

So then the nine-to-five, or at least the grind and hustle, is getting in the way of people being available to help each other in moments like that. I feel so passionate about community, and I don't know if maybe corporate organisations are finding ways to create a sense of community within those spaces, or perhaps people are getting community outside of work. There are so many forms of community, and have you seen people who are doing better in work or life, who are finding those people they can rely on, be it friends or groups of any sort?

James Jeffley (41:19)

Think a lot of us tend to gravitate towards community or something that looks like belonging. If you think about Abraham Maslow, middle-level belonging. And so I don't think we're meant to live in this thing called life by ourselves. So work itself as a form of community, right? So if you don't have any family or friends, you go to work, there's your family, there's your community, right? You work on a team, all right? That's your close community.

Right? There are a lot of large organisations that will have affinity groups. So even though you go there and work there, you know, maybe there's the new mothers' affinity group, or there's a group for BIPOC, right? Or LGBT, black, indigenous and people of colour, or LGBTQ plus, there might be an affinity group for that, or people who like to run or bicycle.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (42:06)

What's that?

James Jeffley (42:17)

or bowl or whatever the thing is, right? And so, depending on the size of your organisation, there may be affinity groups where you have small family-like things focused around an activity, right?

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (42:35)

That's an idea.

James Jeffley (42:36)

Yeah. But I think work in general does kind of feel like it meets a belonging need for many people. See the same people, develop relationships, right? Which is why corporate restructurings, layoffs, and terminations affect people beyond just the org chart hierarchy. My gosh, I had a really really good mate that was on my team and now they're now they're gone right or I got moved to a different department I got to learn a whole new set of people you know it's highly disruptive so I think a lot of organizations don't consider the personal and relationship impact on people the psychological and emotional impact on people when they make these kinds of big sweeping changes

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (43:31)

Are there any

ways to make those changes a little bit easier or to adjust how the changes are done?

James Jeffley (43:38)

I'm glad you asked, and here comes a shameless self-plug. I just finished a book a few weeks ago called FECT UP, F-E-C apostrophe D UP, ⁓ how fear, ego, and culture sabotage change and what you can do about it. And what I talk about in that book is it's not a guide on how to do change in organisations because there's a ton of methods out there about that.

This is about why 60 to 70 % of most change efforts fail. It's because leaders don't understand what happens when the change that they're proposing or implementing triggers fear, ego, and culture responses in their people. And the book that I'm editing right now is a sequel to that, which is about unfecking yourself, right? How do you meet the fear ego and culture and address it from a more systemic structural place so you don't have fear ego and culture running amok? These aren't things to be fought against; these are things to learn how to talk with.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (44:50)

What is?

What is the ego-driven response to you?

James Jeffley (45:00)

So you go to work, and you're used to doing your thing every day, and you've gotten pretty good at it. And so you, I'm the expert on XYZ. Then here comes management, going, Melanie, we're gonna change all of this. Now we're gonna put a new system in. So the system that you were the expert of is going away and now you have to start all over learning a brand new system. You're no longer the expert.

So now, how does ego, which used to be an expert, respond to the change, which means you're no longer the expert? It will resist. It will say, well, this is a stupid idea, and I don't think we should be doing this. And what we have right now works perfectly fine. And so you will find creative ways to resist implementing the new system. And even if you can't resist it, it's going to happen anyway. You'll drag your feet on learning it.

You'll shoot it down at every meeting. You'll ally yourself with people who also don't like the change for whatever reason.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (46:05)

Okay, this is interesting because right now we are seeing the growth in adoption of AI, and I bet you.

James Jeffley (46:14)

We're covering all the big topics today: politics, religion, AI, culture, and woo!

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (46:19)

And you are coping, but there's always a change in some form with technology. I mean, early in my adulthood, social media went from being a fun toy to something that was running our lives. And it really was. Mean, I, my first year after school was in 2008, and social media was totally different then. So.

James Jeffley (46:34)

Yeah.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (46:48)

That has really grown, and suddenly everybody is expected to be a brand. Whereas we were early adopters before. So that's a change. Then AI, we're all trying to even wrap our heads around it. I'm sure in your generation, there would have been, well, there was a generation at some point where people were deciding, do I want to use email? There's always something.

James Jeffley (47:15)

I am pre-Internet old. I'm pre-personal computer old. I may not look it, but yeah, I was. When I enrolled in college, we had punch cards. You ever seen those? It's a card about rectangular about yay big, and it had little little punch holes in it, and you would stick that in some kind of a computer that would read where the holes are.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (47:21)

I see.

James Jeffley (47:43)

and that would get translated into some kind of language. I'm a punch card old. For registration, for enrollment, for data collection. Yeah. Yeah. So I have seen the personal computer, the floppy disk, all the things to now. It's been amazing how much things have changed in 40 years.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (47:47)

What were they for?

Yes, even when I was a kid, there were floppy disks around. Even at the time, the phrase was odd to me because it wasn't actually floppy.

James Jeffley (48:14)

Thank first ones were they were large and they were actually floppy. Then the three and a half's were not it just kept the term so but yeah how so AI and how do we adapt I read a thing where it said about 40 to 50 per cent of human jobs right now will be handled by AI in 2030

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (48:56)

That's not that far away.

James Jeffley (48:56)

Or well,

It's not. It's not. Not now whether they will or not, but they could be right. If you just make a list of all the jobs humans are doing, which of those could AI do with a little more prompting and programming?

You know, and autonomous things, robots and vehicles. But we saw this last week or so in San Francisco here, where sometimes those best autonomous AI vehicle ideas just don't go well. There was a situation yesterday or the day before where power went out in San Francisco in a large part of the city. And we have these vehicles called Waymo. Have you seen these?

They are autonomous vehicles. have cameras, you all around them. And you can just go to an app and you can say, I want to, I want to Waymo to pick me up. It'll meet you at that spot and then take you to wherever you want to go. It is a driverless taxi. The city is full of these now, right? Well, when the power went out, that meant all the traffic signals went out.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (50:02)

Okay.

James Jeffley (50:11)

The cars didn't know how to navigate with no traffic signals or lights, so they just stopped

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (50:22)

My goodness.

James Jeffley (50:24)

Middle of the road, middle of an intersection, where they just stop, and so it's like, did no one think of? This scenario is where, if there's a power outage, there are no traffic signals. What should the car do? Should it pull over to the first available? You know, parking spot or parking lot, or it's like does not compute

It just froze.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (50:54)

So no one had programmed that into say this is the contingency. That's a really interesting point because someone out there will need to influence what all these computers are going to be doing. I'm so glad that you told me that because I did not know that some cities are having driverless cars.

James Jeffley (51:22)

Yeah, it's a thing, it's a thing.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (51:23)

That much. I knew that it was coming, I didn't realize it had arrived.

James Jeffley (51:28)

Oh, it's here. They've been testing it for a while. We would see one or two of them, and now, you drive down the street, and it's oh, driverless car, driverless car. There was another story about Waymo, I think a week ago, where like four of them converged in a tight street, and I think they didn't know which one should have the right of way. So they just all sat there looking at each other to call the human out to go in the cars and move them so they can navigate again. So yeah, there's all the talk of AI and robots replacing everything. And then we have situations like this where doesn't look like it's that refined, refined enough yet.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (52:18)

Yes, the technology, some technology can do great things. I mean, we are able to have this remote conversation where you can tell me what's going on in America. And it's actually really refreshing because I started off bringing up politics, and then we can giggle at how the robotic cars don't know where to go. So it's nice to at least giggle at that, but looking at change and adapting to change.

James Jeffley (52:28)

Right?

Yeah.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (52:48)

then it seems like the ego is a part of how we all need to figure out how are we going to adapt and what are we really an expert in? Have you found that it helps being an expert in something beyond just a system or a technology, because you can do training for people for all sorts of

James Jeffley (53:14)

You can, but the challenge that AI presents is it can become an expert in something faster than we can.

So if I come in and I learn a job, let's say I learn accounting, right? I'm working at a company, I'm doing accounting, all the numbers. Well, they can just plug all that stuff directly into AI and have it do all the things that it wants. Profit and loss statements, balance sheets, financial modelling, and analysis. All of that's gonna take me a minute or like hours, right? But the AI just goes, spits it all out.

And then you can just keep asking it questions and then assuming you ask it the right questions in the right way, and it gives you accurate data, all right, you can get much more productivity out of one person asking the right questions in an hour than you can out of one person trying to figure all the stuff out themselves. So, if I learn, if I spend years, go to university, and I learn this thing, and I get a certificate or a degree in that, and I come out, okay, here I'm ready to be whatever the thing is, but AI comes in and can do it 10 times faster than maybe 10 times better. Okay, now, all right, where do I work for a company that can't afford AI? Okay, well, maybe that only lasts for a minute.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (54:47)

Well, some AI is pretty cheap. I know someone who is using the whole toolkit for 300 AUD a month, and you can get a lot out of ChatGPT, which is not expensive.

James Jeffley (54:50)

yeah.

No. So then what does that mean for me? So, okay, well, re-skill what? Re-skill doing what that AI couldn't do better, faster, or cheaper? Because see me, I'm going to need a living wage and health insurance and medical, dental and vision, and I'm going to need paid time off and vacations and a 401k plan. What does Chad GPT need?

20 bucks a month.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (55:34)

Watch that.

James Jeffley (55:35)

That's a no-brainer. It's like you, human, costs way more. Chat GPT doesn't get sick. It has outages from time to time. But generally speaking, it's going to be up more than I am.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (55:48)

The main value, the main value that I have been clinging onto for myself lately, is the flawed human storytelling. That's where it comes back to speaking because I could tell you a story, but if I stay unpredictable, then I'm doing something the robots couldn't do.

James Jeffley (56:12)

Right. They can spin a pretty good tale. I've asked it to do some creative writing projects with me, and it's like, " Ooh, that's really good. Wow. Have you heard of Suno? my S-U-N-O. Check that out. But be prepared to have your mind blown. Have you seen any? Are you on TikTok?

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (56:24)

No.

a little bit, but just for the podcast.

James Jeffley (56:36)

Okay.

Yeah, don't hang out there too much, that'll suck you in. It's a thing. There are some people who have released popular songs as remakes in different styles, all using these AI music apps, and it sounds amazing. So, Suno is one of these apps where you get, and I don't work for them, I'm not trying to plug them.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (56:42)

Why?

James Jeffley (57:06)

But I've used it, and I've seen musician friends who use it. You can go in and say, I want a song in the style of whatever using these instruments. And you can either feed it lyrics that you've written, or you can just say, come up with lyrics, and I want this lyric to be the hook. Go. Give it a minute. Boom. You got a song.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (57:29)

That's a whole thing in itself because the Australian music industry went against AI power players of some sort, because it was, I think, from what I heard, AI providers were using the intellectual property of the musicians. And I can just hope that, just like the raw storytelling of a speaker,

There's something very raw and human about the old-fashioned songwriting. I mean, I personally, I still listen to sixties music, even though I wasn't even from that time. And if you find a very raw recording of Bob Dylan, then sure, maybe the robots could replicate that. But I need to really trust that.

Perhaps there's a soul behind some of what we make that can be valued.

James Jeffley (58:32)

And I think that may be the saving grace is the human backlash against AI. It's like, is that human or AI? I want the human version. But AI is good. No, I want the human version. Like we order things, it's like, want the, there's an old saying, the real McCoy. I want the real human version. So I think that will maybe slow AI adoption for a while. Also, just the enormous ecological impact of building an AI data centre. All the water that's required for cooling, the land space, and all of that drains on the electric grid. In Arizona recently, a city council, I think, vetoed an idea to build a massive data centre there because of the water and power requirements. Like, who's going to pay for that?

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (59:31)

Actually, an engineer told me months ago that the great environmental factor for those centres is that the machines heat up and need to be cooled down. So it's probably air conditioning and other things like that. It's cooling down the machines.

James Jeffley (59:50)

Yeah, yeah, it's cooling down the machines, right? Because the faster you process things, the hotter the chips get. And so they need to cool that, but on a massive scale, right? And a lot of that's water cooling. And even if they're recycling the water, it's still a massive water drain and impact on the power grid, right? So does that make everybody else's rates go up?

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (1:00:21)

That's the whole thing in itself. Maybe we all need more solar panels. Don't know. I haven't used those yet, but let's look back because you help people to level up and boost themselves. So I'm wondering, with all of these things going on in the world, we live in some weird times. What are three lessons that you can give to people to guide people's confidence.

James Jeffley (1:00:53)

guide

Three things to guide people's confidence. Number one, stop comparing yourself to everybody else.

It's hard to do if you're on Instagram or social media and you're seeing everybody else, it looks like they're living this amazing lifestyle. My gosh, they're travelling all over the world, and they've got six-pack abs. You know, it's like, that's not the real them. Some of it's probably AI. So stop comparing yourself to other people. They have their path. You have your path. Focus on your path. Number one.

Number two, give yourself credit for what you have not only achieved but actually survived. Some people have been through some horrible things, right? Lots of trauma, all kinds of things. And so for them to still be here right now, hitting play and listening to this podcast, right?

Yeah, maybe it's been messy. Maybe it's been really hard, but they're still standing. You're still standing. You made it this far. It wasn't easy. Maybe you did a lot of it by yourself, but you're still here. So give yourself credit for that. And if you've been able to get along or even thrive, yay, up yours. You've been knocking it out of the park. Good for you. And the third thing I would say about building confidence is pick a thing and get good at it. Learn how to do that thing. You don't have to do all the things. Pick a thing and just get incrementally better. You don't even have to be the best at it in the world, right? That's comparing again. Pick a thing, learn how to get a little better and a little better at that, and the confidence will come from seeing the results of you getting better. So, that's what I would offer. You're a good interviewer.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (1:03:00)

Definitely.

James. ⁓

Thank you. I like doing this. It's great fun. And yes, I've liked how you've talked about almost anything and a bit of everything.

James Jeffley (1:03:08)

This is how it goes.

Was sending a message. What are we going to talk about? I'm like, whatever. She's an experienced interviewer. She's going to ask questions. I'm going to ask. We're having a conversation.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (1:03:19)

Everything.

Definitely.

Thank you so much for chatting.

James Jeffley (1:03:30)

My pleasure. Thank you so much, Melody. And keep doing this. This is great stuff you're doing.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (1:03:36)

Awesome. Okay.

Keywords

HR, psychotherapy, feminism, cultural bias, trauma, disabilities, multiculturalism, kindness, social justice, mental health

Summary

Menaka Iyengar Cooke shares her transformative journey from HR to psychotherapy, emphasizing the importance of kindness, cultural understanding, and the impact of feminism. She discusses the challenges faced by multicultural communities in Australia, the significance of addressing trauma, and the need for inclusive practices in bureaucratic systems. Menaka highlights the interconnectedness of humanity and the importance of self-awareness in overcoming biases.

Takeaways

Menaka's journey from HR to psychotherapy was influenced by her values of justice and fairness. Feminism has evolved through various waves, impacting policies and societal norms. Cultural biases exist in bureaucratic systems, often unconsciously affecting marginalized communities. Building bridges and understanding between cultures is essential for a harmonious society. Trauma can stem from various life experiences, and understanding it is crucial for healing. Kindness is a powerful tool, but it must be balanced with personal boundaries. Everyone has the potential for goodness; we just need to look for it. Education and guidance can help individuals navigate complex systems and overcome challenges. Storytelling can foster connection and understanding among diverse communities. Self-awareness is key to recognizing and addressing personal biases.

Sound bites

"I did good things." "We are all human." "We can guide them."

Chapters

00:00 Journey from HR to Psychotherapy 09:03 The Impact of Feminism 16:21 Cultural Bias in Bureaucratic Systems 19:05 Building Bridges in Multicultural Australia 24:12 Philosophy and Spirituality 25:42 Understanding Trauma and Disabilities 30:06 Unfinished Business in Therapy 33:26 Fostering Inclusion in Communities 36:34 Experiencing Cultures Directly 39:18 The Power of Storytelling 42:40 Three Universal Lessons for Humanity

Transcript

Here are the words.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (00:01)

I saw online that you have done very diverse work going from HR to psychotherapy and then helping crisis support. How did you, what made you decide to switch from focusing on HR to helping people in other ways?

Menaka Iyengar Cooke (00:22)

Okay?

Is aligned, if not aligned, but related to my life story. Okay, so are you okay if I give you a thumbnail sketch of what happened and how? I came to Australia about 53, almost 53 years ago and I...

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (00:39)

Yes, yes.

Menaka Iyengar Cooke (00:50)

I had a lot of domestic violence happen, which made me leave my home with my four-year-old daughter. And in those days, there weren't any refuges or no one helped you. And there was really no help. So with the help of friends and my own brain power, I managed to get a home with a woman and went into an admin job, even though my first degree had been in political science and sociology. But in those days, this was just at the end of the white Australia policy. No one was willing to a punt on you. You had to prove yourself. So I did this admin work and while I was doing admin work, I thought, this is boring. I did it very well. So I started studying at night. And one of the key motivators, two key motivators were the influence of my grandfather in India who had been an HR manager for a group of companies. And the really beneficial things he did for the workers over there, including crèches, educating the people, teaching them different sorts of, if not arts and crafts, giving them out of, you know, work hours, sort of social opportunities.

And I worked in a company where the personnel manager or HR manager was one of the worst people I could ever think of who terrorized union workers and kept the women down. So I thought this doesn't align. So, and I'm talking about 50 odd years ago. So that's why I went back to uni at night and I needed special permission from the lecturers at the uni whether I'd be able to fit in, which I did. And that's what started my journey. I know you're looking at me with big eyes, but, and I was the only woman in a class of 21 white men who then, I think, ripped me and carried on at me. I was also learning feminism at that time. So I was reading Betty Friedan and Germaine Greer and Simone de Beauvoir and using their words to fight back with these men until one of the lectures pointed out that they were actually ribbing me and they would be good, you know, compadres. But that started my journey. What is real HR? What should people be doing? What is the true role? And this started in 1982 or something or the other, and I finished about 1985. But my role was for organisational development and change. Then the MD of the organisation, a lovely, sorry to say, white man, gave me an opportunity. He said, " We're having an organisation development review, the first of its kind in Australia. We belonged to Rio Tinto Zinc at that time. Do you want to go on the team? And I said, yes. I almost fell on his feet. I hey, let me go. And that was the start of my journey.

I'm now going back to what I first started with. It's to do with my values of justice, okay? And equality and kindness and fairness. And I had a lot of that inbuilt into me by my parents and grandparents who really believed in fairness and social justice, even though themselves were fairly well-to-do people. And that created my journey. So when I got into HR and then after organization development, I went into real HR roles like recruitment and training and you know, workers comp and safety. I began to understand how we needed to put that into the policies and processes. And I'm talking about the late 80s, early 90s, you know, that was still, I'm the managing director and I'm quoting you words from a managing director. I'm the managing director and I can do what I like.

No, the law now says the Racial Discrimination Act in 1975 and then the Sex Discrimination Act in the early 80s. This is what the law says. So we really have to follow it. That then I began with the help of, and I worked out, I'm also a gluey creature.

Which of the managers were champions of change? So, getting them on board, we began to change policies and procedures and how to get this happening. Now, I'm going to say to you, Melanie, it was not easy peasy. It was a real uphill battle, but we actually won awards from the Business Review Weekly at that time for employing people with disabilities. This is the early nineties at the prime minister's award for, you know,

Employing people with disabilities when there wasn't, you know, we could have just carried on like other companies by involving people in our strategy and decision-making. So that gave me a lot of hope. But I go back to my values of fairness and decency. I began to get people from the organisation into my office who started talking to me, and it was almost like counselling sessions. And then I thought, one day, one of the managers teased me, ⁓ this is your surgery. You should, you know, go to your next client. And that made me start thinking. That's how, while I was an HR manager, I began to study psychotherapy and counselling. So that's the long story of the link between HR and therapy and counselling, because they are based on my personal values of compassion, kindness, justice, fairness, and it became actually a great help because I continued till 2010 when I retired and I was HR director for a multinational at that time. But I brought those same values into each organisation. I'm very, at least I can look back on my life and say, I did good things. I wasn't just your HR manager who sat and cycled on the spot on a particular, you know, just keep peddling, get people to fill in forms and do this and do that, but actually do something to enhance the way women and men are treated in this organisation. Be fair, be just, give them a proper process on how to handle a grievance. Or if we are breaking rules, let's do something to mend these rules. Okay? There's no point waiting, I am going to do what I like. Because what's the point? We are dealing with human lives. And so that brought me to start pulling in various bits of what I call psychotherapy and counselling, even when we were letting people go. We had to do it. But do it with kindness. Get people in to support them. Get people in to help them put new CVs together, send them to places where they might get a new job. And so that was the big link, the road to psychotherapy and counselling. And when I retired, I finished a master's in psychotherapy and counselling, actually taught for a while business studies, psychology and counselling. And now I have discovered my niche in life because I am a South Asian woman that

There is a lot of need for mental health support in the South Asian community. So that's the brief story of the last 50 years of my life.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (09:16)

That's amazing. And you've done so much. There are so many questions emerging from this. Firstly, you mentioned feminism, and everybody has an opinion on feminism. So you have seen a long history in Australia, more than I have. I'm wondering where would we be without feminism?

Menaka Iyengar Cooke (09:23)

Okay, go for it.

I think it's a wonderful opportunity, and I have belonged to the Women's Electoral Lobby, where they were the first ones to bring it to the attention of Bob Whitlam and the government at that time. And over the years, Women's Electoral Lobby and others like them have plugged away so that feminist principles are now almost becoming part of the way we look at policies and strategies going forward. And there has been a big shift, and I'm going to say that to you. Feminism has had not many faces, but tranches, people, it's, if you want to call it, not escalating, but moving forward. So we've had the first, second, third, fourth waves of feminism. And now we are into the fifth wave, which I feel is enormously important. And I will tell you why, Melanie. And that's to do with intersectionality. Now, you know that word intersectionality? All of us who are there, you know, 51 % of Australia's females, all right? But 30 % of them come from people from other countries. Okay.

Menaka Iyengar Cooke (11:08)

and their needs and what they need from policies and systems are different. I'll give you a small example, and I use this example quite a lot. And this has been very helpful to women. Okay, domestic violence is one. So white women, and I'll say Australian women, may know now that you go to some of the DV organisations, and they'll find you a refuge, and they'll help you get away, and they'll help you get into Centrelink, blah, blah. But brown and black women don't know that. They are afraid, actually afraid. And part of their culture says, " Don't leave your husband. So they need more support to get them to do something because their safety and that of their children is very important. So we are not telling them, don't give your husband a slap on the head and run away. We are actually telling them if your life is in danger and those of your children, these are some things that can help you. And sometimes that's a lot of guidance and counselling and support. I call it socio-psychological education. That's another, you know, you don't have to work. So that's one bit. Here's another bit about health. Lot of we have heard recently that ⁓ menopause, which is going to affect each one of us, is

Not well understood, or you know, women just say it's the pause, it's the change, blah blah blah, carry on and only recently we have had government health and others saying, you know, we need to look at the after effects of it, the side effects, what can you do, you don't have to endure it. There are ways of getting through it, but in multicultural societies, it is known by a different name. It's the same thing is continuing.

It's an affliction. In some societies, they say that's when you stop having children. Another multicultural society says it is the desperate age. Now, we know we need to have some ways of educating these societies. All right. What? It's not a desperate age. It's just part of your life and growing older.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (13:17)

The disparate age.

Menaka Iyengar Cooke (13:33)

Just like, you know, getting menstruation was a part of your life's history. So let's understand it, and we need to give them education in that. And this is something I talk about, intersectionality. right? Everything is not an equal playing field for women of all colours and ethnicities. The other part is with the huge multicultural society, most and a lot of my time goes into that. Most do not understand the systems. Say of Centrelink or MyGovAgeCare. I don't know what to do. I don't know what to do. So you literally need to take them by the hand. This is how you apply. This is what you need to do. Because otherwise these are people who are getting left thrown by the wayside. We can't afford to lose even one woman, child, or man, for that matter. We need to explain to them and some things are not easily understood. I give you one example of a male who did not, who's doing his driving test and failed four times on the online. What did he fail? Because he didn't understand what it meant to, you know, a camper van or, you know, one of those caravans.

He thought it was like a camel caravan, okay?

This is a cultural difference. So you have to explain to him and show him a picture. You know, when you tow a very large vehicle behind you, you need to know a few things about it. ⁓ and when he got it, he passed the exam. He was not going to tow caravans, but he needed to know that there are some rules that go with that. So this is what I mean by systems. If the systems are opaque, are going to fall over it.

And I could continue on and on, I'm sorry, about bullying, about harassment. know, it's sometimes it's one step at a time journey. And the reason why the culture is different, let's call it South Asian and even various countries of Africa, their culture is be respectful. But sometimes you just have to ask. I don't understand what that means. Tell me. But that almost says to people, ⁓

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (15:42)

Good for it! Good for it!

Menaka Iyengar Cooke (16:07)

Then people will think that you're an idiot because you say you don't understand. No, you just don't understand the system here So ask respectfully but kindly so these are some of the things I'm trying to this is what I'm engaged in and writing in and I bring my therapy into it because I think That gives me an underlying Basis of kindness and compassion and I'm here to help you Okay, go and ask more questions

Sorry, I don't need to babble too much, know, but tell me.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (16:37)

That's amazing. I'm letting you go.

No, it's great, it's great.

I think what's really amazing is suddenly realising just how culturally shaped the systems are, the bureaucratic system. So do you think that there's a cultural bias in our bureaucratic systems?

Menaka Iyengar Cooke (16:58)

Correct.

Cultural bias in what? In our country?

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (17:07)

in our

bureaucratic systems.

Menaka Iyengar Cooke (17:10)

Yes, and I think a lot of it is unconscious. You know, you don't know what you don't know. But sometimes I need to bring it to your attention. You know, this is quite opaque or un-understandable to these people. Let's make it more open. I think governments are getting better, but then there is also an overwhelming work burden on many of our bureaucrats.

So then they go to the first thing that occurs to them. No, I don't understand it. Go somewhere else. Which, for a person of multicultural origin, is like, he told me that he doesn't know what this is, and I should run away, you know? So I think there is an educational issue making our systems. And I think there are, you know, places like Centrelink and others are trying to bring more multicultural and multilingual people into the arena, which is good. But then there are delays which may act to frustrate people of multicultural origin. But I'm not saying that there is, but I think we need to check the biases we have. And to say that we have no biases is not the truth. Even I can tell you about my own biases. I'm not telling you that I have.

But I need to keep on top of them, you know? I could have biases about all sorts of things, you know? yeah. That's so...

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (18:40)

Do you think that we all have biases and we don't know what our biases are?

Menaka Iyengar Cooke (18:45)

We

don't know what our biases are. But there's, you know, not ways of checking, but I call it the self-awareness thing. Why did I suddenly get triggered today? You know, that sort of thing. So and so sort of that multicultural origin passed me in the car, and I felt angry. Yeah, you know, work it out. What was it? Because a person of another colour or somebody who was, you know, wearing a different type of dress, pushed past you, got suddenly angry. So work out what your triggers are, okay? Because I think as good people, we all want to be, I think, kind and fair to everyone around us.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (19:30)

Yes. And looking at multiculturalism, that's a very sensitive topic after what happened in Bondi. I want to ask you about how Australia can move forward. You have worked in organisations to really try to make sure that people are okay at work. You have helped people's well-being in psychotherapy.

Menaka Iyengar Cooke (19:42)

Correct.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (19:59)

And through all this, you've seen that people have biases that can impact the peace and respect between Australians. What can Australia do?

Menaka Iyengar Cooke (20:14)

I go back to self-awareness, but it's not the domain of most people. I take that point. It needs to be, but it's not, you know. So many of us are brought up in cultures or households which are very narrow-minded, okay? And part of it is due to wanting our own personal and psychological safety. But we are all part of a whole organism. I can't attack my leg or my arm without hurting myself. And that's how I see. In Australia, are people of an eye. While there are some who sort of just stop and lick their wounds because I got attacked on the road, because I was wearing a certain head covering. I sort of think to myself, why was I attacked? You know, and how do I build a bridge?

With even one or two people, because that is the start. That is the start of understanding on all sides, which is why I write on LinkedIn and Facebook and whatever else it is, so that we build understanding. We're all part of the one organism. You remember that old verse from John Donne, a poet from the 17th or 18th century, who said, no man is an island, but of the continent a whole.

And that's what we are. are part of one whole continent, whether it's Australia or Europe or whatever, or a whole world. And what hurts me will hurt you. So if you came along and shot me and my brothers and sisters, somebody from my brothers and sisters is going to come along and shoot you and your brothers and sisters. So that is the knowledge and understanding we need to have. We are all part of each other. You don't have to be best friends with me, but you can be respectful of me. You can be respectful of my customs. If you don't want to share in them, that's fine by me. If I'm celebrating Hanukkah or Christmas or Diwali or whatever, just give me some respect, say hi from a distance, but then keep walking because you've done enough to just show that you accept me into this country.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (22:32)

Yes, we can allow space for anyone to believe and celebrate. Everyone.

Menaka Iyengar Cooke (22:38)

everyone to be. Everyone.

This world is so huge, this continent, this whole globe. Why are we attacking it for the space? Why are we attacking each other for the space? You know, for the lot of, you know, 10 square feet? You know, we don't need to do that, you know.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (22:56)

Are you saying that part of the problem is that people see differences instead of the one organism that we all have in common?

Menaka Iyengar Cooke (23:11)

Say that again, Melanie. Part of the problem is what?

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (23:13)

Sorry, do you think the problem is that people are seeing the differences and separation between each other instead of seeing a collective whole?

Menaka Iyengar Cooke (23:22)

Yes.

Yeah, rather than seeing a collective whole, rather than seeing our humanity, our collective humanity, they see the differences, and they think those differences are somehow in opposition to them. And they're not, they're all part of the same thing. You and I may like to eat different foods, but we still eat food, and we like it. You like roast beef and veg and I like something else, you so it doesn't mean that we hate one another.

We're just ordering our own stuff at a restaurant, you know.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (24:01)

I don't eat meat, and so because I don't eat meat, I have seen people reacting to that, but so what if I want tofu instead of chicken, so what?

Menaka Iyengar Cooke (24:14)

Exactly. So what you know so what it's just fine that's what is filling not just your belly but nourishing you as an organism why am i worried you know i have something different that nourishes me as a person you know but we are not here in opposition to one another that's i believe in the live and let live philosophy even if you don't like me it doesn't matter you live in your space i'll live in my space we don't have to sort of

live next door to each other or know in each other's whatever you know next rooms next to each other.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (24:52)

Do you have a philosophy or a spiritual belief that influences this?

Menaka Iyengar Cooke (24:59)

I am not a religious person. I am very much a spiritual and philosophical person. Philosophy? Only recently I begun to understand the meaning of stoicism and eudaimonia. I don't expect big deals of happiness in life because I wasn't put on this earth, but I find happiness in all sorts of little things.

Mostly it's contentment, know, and having food to eat and a place to live and that's good for me. So my philosophy is very much, and you can look up Marcus Aurelius and Stoicism and eudaemonia. That's what I believe in, and living other people, letting other people live their lives, just as I want freedom to live my life, which is I'll take it down to why I'm glad to live in Australia, not in an extremist society. I don't want to live there. I want to be allowed to do whatever I like as long as I'm not hurting anyone else. I'm just pleasing myself and finding joy for myself in this life.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (26:15)

Yes, definitely. We should all be able to live how we want to live. I'm wondering if you have seen similar issues with disabilities and people overcoming trauma. Have you seen a learning curve with organisations or communities trying to understand what people need with trauma and disabilities?

Menaka Iyengar Cooke (26:40)

There is, I tell you, there is so much trauma in this life. There is, and part of my work when I deal with clients is also understanding where that trauma comes from. Some of the trauma is almost like in their non-verbal years. Some of it, what has come through over the last few years, but they don't recognise it as trauma.

And that is why part of my, I won't say brand, but my mode of psychotherapy includes psychodynamics, which is understanding how you were brought up, what happened to you, why you are on this particular journey, which I take back to my thing we first started. I was brought up with values of fairness and justice. And so they continue this refrain in my life. So I think, yes, there is trauma, some of it, in going back to your disabilities, some of it is physical disability, which is birth-related or genetic-related or whatever. Okay. Or you've had accidents or something that has helped you, but which has taken you on that path. Trauma is a very big issue. And so in therapy, I like to understand.

What are the traumas this person has been through? Let me tell you a very, very interesting thing that I'm now following through. I often get people relating to me their dreams, and they want to know what it means. Now, there is not a particular meaning to a dream, but often a theme will appear, a theme that they keep sort of re-dreaming about, but it appears in many of their dreams. And recently I read that nightmares can be a diagnostic signal and they can be clues that there is an unfinished story in your nervous system. Okay, it's unfinished. I sometimes think about my own dreams, which I can classify. won't say nightmares, but... And so what's the theme? Sometimes...

It is often unfinished business. I didn't finish that properly. Now, life experiences or missing someone, and I didn't do enough when that person was alive. So those are the sorts of things that can be traumatic, which our unconscious self keeps visiting and wanting to make an end, a nice finished end to it. Maybe never, it never happens, but during therapy, it can begin to help the person to understand. I had a person six months ago who came to me for hypnotherapy. And I said, before we go in there, let's understand what your story is. And because she was afraid of different things. And then it turns out that she had a brother who had a profound disability.

She happened to drop him. The child died at seven. Her mother then left shortly thereafter. The father brought her up, and she has... Those are unfinished businesses in her life. And when I helped her to connect all those together, she understood that her being afraid of needles or this or that was just a small thing. It was just part of the bigger trauma. So...

I say that to you, we need to understand all our lives threads are connected and the thread is leading us somewhere.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (30:42)

Okay, I'll get to this gradually as...

Menaka Iyengar Cooke (30:43)

I hope you are, I'm

not overwhelming you with all this talk.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (30:47)

No,

Sometimes, I hear the thing that I personally need to hear from a podcast guest, and it's amazing. With the unfinished business, what was your path forward for this person after identifying that the unfinished business exists?

Menaka Iyengar Cooke (31:10)

You know, when you bring some unfinished business into the open, then the story starts about finishing it. And when I linked it to some of the things that had happened in her life, post the seven, eight, 10 years old, she began to understand that there was a link or a story all the way through down to the present day. She's in her seventies now. Huh? So, and why she behaves in certain ways, et cetera.

So it wasn't like giving her, here is the finished conclusion and stick it on your wall. She began to then understand her own story. That's why I've been like this, and that's why I've been like that. And part of the fear of some of these other things, whether it was, I don't know, I can't remember, it was fear of needles or fear of doctors. Where does it come from? It comes from this. And you really need to understand that you have had so much of, you know, unhappiness when you were... because she was never told why her mother left, and she always felt my mother left because I was a bad person, or my brother died because of me or my father dragged me around because I was an idiot. No, none of those. If somebody had sat down and worked with you.

One of the other things she told me, it gave me so much sadness. When she got her period, her father took away all her toys and threw them in the bin. Now you don't need these anymore. Now that's a very tragic, I call it, very abrupt way of telling her your childhood is over. You know, there is always a gradual change from one thing into another.

So then she, yeah. And there are bits of you which will always remain a child. There are bits of you that are grown up. There are bits of you that, you know, still in their 20s. And that's okay. That's part of the journey for each one of us. Yeah.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (33:26)

Yes, I can't see your video, but there it is. You have a word back. But I could hear you.

Menaka Iyengar Cooke (33:29)

You can hear me, okay. So does that give you some clues? It's just part of one's story, you know? And once you make sense of the story and you say, yeah, that's part of me, there's nothing wrong with it. There's lots of us who are like that. Life becomes easier. You sleep easier. You interact with others easier. It's just saying I'm human like the rest. It's part of the same story we talked about, you know, Bondi and others. We're all human, okay?

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (34:04)

We're all human. are. and looking forward now, I know that you're working with communities. I'm wondering other community groups that you're not serving that, that might be on a learning curve. There is so many organisations and membership groups out there. What can everybody else do as communities to encourage a culture of inclusion and recovery?

Menaka Iyengar Cooke (34:42)

Very small. Now I start with a very small thing. When anyone says anything to you, don't start your sentence with a but. Start it with and. When you say but, you're pushing the person away. But, which means your opinion is not that worthwhile. Accepting what they're saying and saying, this is the way, I'm just telling you how I do it.

That's an interesting way of looking at it. You don't have to say that I agree with what you're saying. You may not, but at least you're opening your mind and saying, that's an interesting way to look at it. I must think some more about it or tell me more. And that way, you open up the conversation in communities. You don't divide, you include by saying, and tell me more how things going. You know, I love those words my one of my bosses, an engineer, taught me the values, and I'll talk about it some other day. What 5W1H which is who, what, where, why and how. One of those W's I don't like, which is why, and I say to you, don't use it too much. Why? You just then make the person you know, come up with some specious reasoning, you know, why puts us into the left part of our brain when we have to come up with some, ⁓ why do I do it? Because my mummy taught me, or my granny used to say that to me. But if you say, how does this work out? It's much more, you know, calm and soft. How does this work out for you? You told me you celebrate eggs every whatever March. How does this happen?

What do you guys do? Where do you do it? Can I come there too? That sort of thing is much more beneficial than saying why is this and then they go, " Because our religion says so or " My culture tells me to do so. Leave that alone. Just ask them as people how they experience it. And if I can also come and experience part of it. That is if you're interested. Don't be a shallow person.

You know, just getting in there, ⁓ you know, no, can I also experience it? Can anyone else experience it? You know, those are the ways we can be more inclusive. And I'm just giving you practical hints.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (37:18)

Are you saying there's potential for people to experience other people's cultures more directly?

Menaka Iyengar Cooke (37:27)

Absolutely, I've been to, you know, I have been to, you know, people when they are doing the end of Ramadan, and there is a big feast. been to a few of them. I've been to Diwali. I have been to many Christian churches, many, actually, and this goes back to my childhood. My father was a Hindu. My mother was a Christian. And they decided that their kids had to learn about all religions before they chose.

Okay, so lots and lots of churches. Okay, my brothers and sisters have, you know, at least once, a couple of my sisters have decided to follow Christianity. My brother is more like me, though he's much more Christian in beliefs, whereas I think there's good in every religion. Okay, so we were all allowed to think for ourselves and follow our own dreams.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (38:19)

Yes.

Yes. Have you seen in all of those religious experiences, have you seen a spectrum in which everybody expresses their beliefs differently?

Menaka Iyengar Cooke (38:34)

Look, have seen ethics are the same in every religion. Honesty, courage, caring, compassion, etc., while I don't know how to put this, but I will say one of the Indian sages, I think it was Vivekananda over 130, 140 years ago, said, all religions are paths leading to the same destination. What we are trying to do is live good lives, and we are hoping in the other world that we will find some kind of relief or merging with a God who loves us. I think that's okay for me. Each one to remain kind and compassionate, and helping your fellow man is just it's a great way of being. not going to, I will express my sorrow that if you go to one of the extreme brands of religion, which say you got to kill this sort or that sort of person, then that's not on. That to me has become a terrorist brand of that religion. And that can happen in Christian religions, Middle Eastern religions, and Eastern religions. So don't go there. But most of the brands that have grown up, they are of the live-and-let-live variety, and I believe in that.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (40:07)

I understand, I understand so much. I'm curious, your LinkedIn profile mentioned radio as well. Are you still doing that?

Menaka Iyengar Cooke (40:18)

Yeah.

Yep. I do volunteer radio on our pH, and I read the New Yorker once a month because there's another person who reads it on the alternate fortnight, and I also do newspaper reading from time to time, and that's on one of the Saturdays of the month. So yeah. Yeah. And at one stage, I was doing daily newspaper reading. So I'm not doing that at the moment. And I did a podcast on that radio station called Colours of Australia, similar to what you're doing, where I took people of other nationalities and talked to them about their life history and how they came to Australia and the barriers they faced and how they overcame them and what led them into doing what they're doing.

There were very fascinating interviews, very fascinating.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (41:19)

They would be. I personally believe that storytelling can bring everybody together. Do you think so?

Menaka Iyengar Cooke (41:25)

Absolutely, yeah,

yeah I agree with you, I agree, yeah.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (41:32)

What difference have you seen? What benefit have you seen in helping people to share their stories?

Menaka Iyengar Cooke (41:41)

I tell you, even one person changes makes me so excited. Just, you know, the person I was telling you about, who had all the trauma from six, seven years old onwards, had an email recently, and she's so grateful. Just six or seven months ago, she started discovering this bit, and it has helped us so much. Just the understanding and the discovery. And for me, just one person changing is a huge thing. And for me, wherever I've brought that change into one or two or three people's lives, just a little, little change, because we can't change somebody entirely. They have to take it up and run with it. But if I have been a helper to open a door, that's good enough for me.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (42:34)

That's a reminder for everybody, do you believe we can't change people, but we can guide them?

Menaka Iyengar Cooke (42:41)

No, we can guide them. We can guide them. We can open a door or two or three doors and say, " Have a look inside, " " Have a look inside. It's something that's wonderful. It's beneficial rather than allowing them, and allowing is a bad word, rather than letting them stay in the belief that there is no outlet or nothing outside this for me, but we can show there is, you can.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (43:04)

You can. like to wind up the, the episodes with three lessons. I, I see that so many cultures see something in having three of something. They see the benefit in the number three. And I'm wondering what are three lessons, wise lessons that everybody can learn from that can be universal to help everybody to.

understand each other to help everybody to be okay.

Menaka Iyengar Cooke (43:38)

Three lessons that I might have learned, is that what you're saying, in my life that have guided me? ⁓ One of my earliest lessons was the value of kindness. Even as a child, I was known by people up and down the street where we lived as one of the kindest persons in my family, and I lived in a household of very kind people, and I also saw their role modelling. that kindness has stayed with me. But my therapeutic knowledge helped me to also understand that sometimes my quality of kindness can be a way for people to manipulate me. Okay. Because people who have known me to be very kind have manipulated me to get money out of me or some other thing. So.

It's also knowing that you need to have some boundaries as well. Okay. You can be very, very kind, but you don't have to give away the station. You don't have to give away your cattle station or whatever it is. So that's the one big lesson I've learned in life. The other one that there is goodness in so many, in everyone. We just need to look for it and come at that basis from the common humanity each of us shares.

We have a common humanity. We can appeal to people about, you know, how to behave in a nice and kind way. Third lesson, ⁓ I don't know. Third lesson, third lesson, what can she... I came to it late in life, is loving animals and how much they add to my life. I don't know why I only got a couple of cats, but...

15 years ago, and they have brought so much joy to my life. Now, animals do give us something back. So those are some of the lessons of life, my humanity, being in touch with the animal kingdom. I get great joy from just watching birds from my veranda, seeing them fly away, and, you know, come and pick whatever seeds on the ground and being a kind person.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (46:00)

Yes. I just wanted to ask about one of those things as we get near the end. You said there's kindness in everybody, and some, some people do seriously bad things. I'm wondering how can we see the goodness in everybody, knowing that some people are going to do seriously bad things.

Menaka Iyengar Cooke (46:04)

Yeah.

Mm.

Yep, very good question, very good question. How do I see something? I'll just use Hitler. How do I see the humanity in him? I don't know. Maybe that was a small part of him. He loved his dog and he loved his girlfriend, but he lost the way. So these are people who have lost the way to stay in touch with their humanity.

can't do anything for them. But for ordinary people that I meet in my journey, I can extend my humanity to them. It's up to them to take hold of my helping hand that I give them. And if they don't want to, then that's their independence. That's their, you know, whatever road that they're choosing to go on. You know, and that's okay for them.

That's okay for them. I look, and I extend a helping hand. Do not sort of say to them, you're okay. Because if they're not doing okay things, then they're not okay. But I'd say to them, you know, there's a better way than this, rather than being like that. But if that's what they want to do, then I'll let them go. You go in peace, do what you like. And here, I don't know, you can use it as the ending of my own story is I learned a long time ago and I think it's from a book by a very famous author F Scott Peck I don't know if you know the road less traveled so we come to a fork in the road and sometimes it's easy to go down that road if you want to you know just be things for yourself and do things for yourself or you want to hit and beat and squeal and carry on. Well, that's all right. But I have chosen the road less travelled. And for me, that road less travelled is also to look at what I'm doing every day. Am I doing something that's good for me and good for my community? I can't influence the world, but I can influence the people around me. If they give me, I would say badness, but they give me anger or rage or know snipey comments. I don't have to reply in the same way. I can just say okay you're in a bad mood today and walk away from there until I find them in a better way. But I don't hold that grudge against them. I just walk away in a different direction.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (49:13)

Thank you for the wisdom. I wanted to make sure I'm pronouncing your name correctly. Is it Menica? Am I saying this right?

Menaka Iyengar Cooke (49:21)

Manneka,

Manneka, Iyengar and Cook is an ex-maridame, but you know that's what it is.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (49:29)

It is what it is. Meneka, Meneka Iyengar Cook. Thank you so much for sharing your knowledge, wisdom and expertise into your personal story. I appreciate this so much.

Menaka Iyengar Cooke (49:43)

appreciate it too. Thank you for choosing me. Thank you. Okay, see ya.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (49:47)

Thank you.

Bye.

Keywords

heart attack, stroke, recovery, podcasting, personal growth, marketing, resilience, health challenges, storytelling, life lessons

Summary

In this conversation, the guest shares their profound journey of overcoming a heart attack and stroke at a young age, detailing the challenges faced during recovery and the impact on their career in marketing. They discuss the importance of storytelling, the role of support systems, and the lessons learned from adversity. The conversation emphasizes resilience, personal growth, and the desire to help others through shared experiences.

Takeaways

The journey of recovery can redefine one's purpose. Health challenges can significantly impact career trajectories. Support systems play a crucial role in recovery. Sharing personal stories can inspire and help others. Resilience is built through overcoming adversity. It's never too late to pursue new passions. Life doesn't follow a linear path; timelines can vary. Embracing change can lead to personal growth. Finding humor in difficult situations can aid recovery. The importance of evolving and adapting throughout life.

Titles

From Heart Attack to Healing: A Journey of Resilience Rebuilding Life After a Stroke: Lessons Learned

Sound bites

"This is my first time as a guest." "I was on the verge of collapsing." "I could have been dead."

Chapters

00:00 Introduction to the Journey 02:54 The Heart Attack and Stroke Experience 05:41 The Impact of Health on Career 08:36 The Road to Recovery 11:42 Life After Surgery: Challenges and Triumphs 14:49 Navigating the New Normal 17:29 The Role of Support Systems 20:24 Lessons Learned from Adversity 23:28 The Importance of Sharing Stories 26:22 Looking Forward: Future Aspirations

See more about this episode and The Motivate Collective Podcast: http://motivatecollective.com

Summary

In this episode of the Motivate Collective podcast, Jon from Belleauwood Coaching shares his insights on executive coaching, leadership, and personal growth. He discusses the impact of social media on people's expectations and satisfaction, his journey from military service to coaching, and the importance of mentorship. Jon emphasizes the need for authenticity in leadership, the redefinition of work-life balance, and the significance of setting priorities and a clear vision for the future. He also highlights the role of trust in leadership and the necessity of elevating others to foster a positive environment.

Takeaways

People are less satisfied and less happy due to unrealistic expectations. The best leaders care more about their people than their ego. Work-life balance is a myth; it's about counterbalance. Growth should align with personal values and goals. Authenticity is crucial for effective leadership. Trust is foundational in all relationships, including professional ones. Setting clear priorities and non-negotiables is essential for success. Vision setting should be emotionally connected to personal milestones. Leadership comes with a cost; it's not always easy. Elevating others is the key to personal and professional growth.

Titles

Unlocking Leadership Potential: Insights from Jon Belleauwood Navigating the Challenges of Modern Leadership

Sound bites

"Trust is in every relationship." "Authenticity is key in leadership." "Elevate others to elevate yourself."

Chapters

00:00 Introduction to Executive Coaching 02:43 The Impact of Social Media on Mindset 05:41 Leadership vs. Management: The Importance of Caring 08:47 Navigating Growth and Personal Development 11:31 Redefining Work-Life Balance 14:30 The Addiction to Work and Finding Joy 17:28 Setting Goals and Visualizing the Future 26:29 The Pursuit of Happiness 29:28 Authenticity in Life and Work 32:27 Navigating Corporate Structures 38:24 The Balance of Freedom and Structure 42:08 Trust and Leadership 50:57 Key Lessons in Leadership