By Ricky Locke
3
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The podcast currently has 119 episodes available.
In this episode, Ricky Locke interviews Ashley Griffiths, a video expert and NLP practitioner. They discuss Ashley's struggle with being an ambivert, finding balance between introversion and extroversion, and the power of silence. They also explore the strengths of introverts and the importance of embracing growth and change. Ashley shares his journey of self-discovery and offers insights into how to connect with him.
Takeaways
Chapters
01:06 Introduction and Background
2:06 Discovering Ambiversion
034:18 Balancing Introversion and Extroversion
06:55 The Power of Silence
09:08 The Strengths of Introverts
10:41 Struggling with Finding Balance
13:06 Embracing Growth and Change
15:18 How to Connect with Ashley
Find out more about Ashley and his podcast here https://ashv5.podbean.com/
Or head to https://subscribepage.io/Lm3DfV
Patreon thanks!
Shout out to the amazing Patron supporters for keeping this podcast going; thank you Ant Howe, Chloe Wilmot, Cheri Brenton, Steve McDermott & Rory Barnes! You are all amazing!
Come Join the UNLOCKED community where you can receive...
To be a Patron and support the podcast just head to this link or head to https://www.patreon.com/theunlockedpodcast
I can't wait for you to be a part of this journey!
Free Resources
PODCAST MERCHANDISE!!!
It's officially here! Woohoo! You can now buy your own UNLOCKED podcast notebook. The perfect addition to share your thoughts, ideas, and inspiration from the podcast.
Available here!
A new episode is out every Wednesday. So make sure you hit SUBSCRIBE so you don’t miss out on any episodes coming soon.
And, if this episode brought some value to you, or even a smile, then please leave a review or a rating. That would be amazing!
Thanks for listening, I hope you enjoy this episode and I'll join you next week for another episode of UNLOCKED!
Ricky Locke (00:00.987)
Hey, welcome to another episode of the mini series of the Unlocked conversation cards with the Diary of a CEO conversation cards. Today, I am joined with my good friend Ashley Griffiths. Hello, mate. How's it going?
Ash (00:14.158)
It's going fabulous. How about yourself Mike?
Ricky Locke (00:16.763)
Always fabulous, especially talking to another podcaster and video superstar media expert. My long list of words for you there, but yes, tell us a little bit about you and what is it that you do?
Ash (00:31.054)
Well, I quite like your intro actually. So, right. So what is it I do? Ultimately, I work with clients to get them out of their heads and out into the world. So dropping all the shoulds, all the musts, have to's, I need to be a guru, I need to sing, I need to dance. And I help them focus on who they are.
what they're all about and then getting that across via video and out into the world so they can market their business and start attracting more of the sort of clients that light them up.
Ricky Locke (01:06.427)
I like that. Very nice. Very nice. Well, I'm looking forward to this one. So obviously we met through the wonderful van der Voel, sorry, I should say the van der Voel, Vaga, van der Voel, and through NLP because we're both NLP practitioners. So this will be a very interesting conversation. Are you ready for your question, Ashley?
Ash (01:16.972)
Yep.
Yes, we are in date.
Ash (01:25.71)
Oh, I'm a little bit nervous, but let's do it. Let's do it.
Ricky Locke (01:28.219)
All right. Here we go. So your question is, what is the unobvious thing that you struggle with?
Ash (01:38.7)
Oh my life.
Ricky Locke (01:39.195)
What is the unobvious thing that you struggle with?
Ash (01:42.702)
The unobvious thing I struggle with.
Ricky Locke (01:45.083)
Yeah.
Ricky Locke (01:48.571)
Deep question that one.
Ash (01:48.782)
Okay. I suppose. Yeah. I think actually, I think the people are often surprised. Anyone who's met me, anyone who's been in a room with me, anyone who's seen my videos are often surprised to find out that I'm not a natural extrovert. I'm actually quite shy. Um, I recently discovered, well, recently, probably less two years ago that I'm an ambivert.
Ricky Locke (02:10.243)
Oh.
Ricky Locke (02:18.829)
Oh, okay. And just for clarity for listeners, what does that mean?
Ash (02:19.278)
So there are time.
So I have both strong introverted and extroverted qualities. So that's why when you see me on video, if you see me in front of a class or a workshop, I'm bouncing around, I'm confident, I'm talking to everybody and all of that. But what you don't see is the next day I don't talk to anyone. Okay. So I need that space, but I also need.
Ricky Locke (02:29.659)
Okay.
Ash (02:50.606)
that environment where I can be social, where I can be around people, where I can be that center of attention and loud and bouncing around. Um, and I was just thinking about this yesterday actually, cause on Monday, um, one of my other hats that I wear is I work with kids that don't go to school. And Monday's quite a people -y day. So I'm talking to people from half nine in the morning.
Ricky Locke (03:18.715)
you
Ash (03:19.566)
all the way through until, yeah, seven o 'clock at night. And then on Tuesday, you're lucky if you get a word out of me until about four o 'clock in the afternoon. I literally just sit in a kind of daze until around lunchtime. And then I'm like, suppose I should probably talk to people again now.
Ricky Locke (03:40.275)
Nice, yeah. So interesting then. So where do you think that comes from then?
Ash (03:47.118)
What the ambivalent, I think I've always been quite insular in nature. I was always quite shy, but I was always fascinated with people. Always. And I liked observing and I liked sitting and I was often thinking, I'm not going to say anything unless I've actually got something worth saying. Um, so I, especially at school, I'd often sit, watch, and then whenever I was ready, I would pipe up. Um.
But yeah, I was, I was very shy as a child. Very shy. Um, the work that I do now, all the public speaking I've done, if you'd have said that even to my teenage, possibly even to my 20 year old self, that I would be doing that, I'd have been like, shut up. There is no way I'm doing that in front of all those people. Nah, thanks. It was too, it was too high stakes. Um, so I think there was probably a self -esteem. Um,
issue there for sure. Um, but over time, I think it just changes. I think you, I think one of the common misconceptions as well regarding that regarding introversion, extroversion, ambiversion, whatever is that to be a good public speaker, you need to be an extrovert. I think that's, that's some of the best public speakers in the world have been introverts. Um, so I think it's.
Ricky Locke (05:04.539)
Yeah.
Ricky Locke (05:10.043)
Yes.
Ash (05:13.582)
And also I think sometimes, you know, we live in a world that's determined to make everything binary. And it's just not that simple. I think we can flip between the two quite comfortably. I know I do.
Ricky Locke (05:19.161)
Yeah.
Ricky Locke (05:23.131)
Yeah. Yeah.
Ricky Locke (05:28.187)
Yeah, we have a belief in the Confident Club, same as you, that we believe some of the best speakers in the world are introverted people. But quite often the society norms is that you've got to be this great gregarious person on stage, you know, like Tony Robinson, you know, like, but actually it's the more measured approach, the people that have gravitas that can hold a room, you know, in the power of a pause.
Ash (05:37.292)
Hmm?
Ash (05:43.246)
Meh.
Ash (05:50.7)
Hmm.
Ricky Locke (05:55.931)
and taking people on a journey. Introverts, I think, are absolutely fantastic. So the fact that you have a balance, it's like a superpower. It's like your Clark Kent Superman, isn't it? I can kind of flick between the two. So that's a really good skill to have.
Ash (06:09.838)
I think again, yeah, with the, with the introversion, I like just kind of like come back to a point you said there about the silence, really the power of silence. I think we live in a society where that is being drastically diminished. Um, if you look at say social media with the way videos are put out, where you've got literally fit in your life story into a 30 second clip and the way that people edit that it's like, sounds like they're being bloody remixed.
Ricky Locke (06:16.315)
Yeah.
Ricky Locke (06:39.611)
Yeah.
Ash (06:39.854)
There's no room for the words to breathe. And, you know, purely from a processing power, a brain processing power, we need that time to let the words sink in and like figure out, okay, does this actually mean something to me? So silence is super powerful. I think in my teaching career, silence was crucial because sometimes teachers, I think like, okay, well,
Ricky Locke (06:55.961)
Yeah.
Ricky Locke (07:00.555)
Yeah.
Ash (07:07.95)
I asked a question nobody's answering. I'll go, Oh God, do I need to do something now? And it's like, no, let them think.
Ricky Locke (07:14.139)
Yeah, you, yeah, you've inspired me to think, I think about doing it. I do it like a video, like a podcast video. I sorry, like a little video on LinkedIn. I'm just sitting in front of the camera, not saying anything because the weight and the strength of what that could do to just be present in my own thoughts. But yeah, I mean, who was it? They were they, they are brilliant. They shared.
great post which was the word listen and listen is is silent just the word silent just jumbled up into different letters I thought yeah that's right it's very powerful isn't it that wonderful pause and I love the idea of what you just mentioned there about the the two extrovert introvert that you can both achieve the silence on both parts
Ash (07:46.188)
Yeah.
Ash (08:07.502)
Absolutely.
Ricky Locke (08:08.571)
So it's kind of like, yeah, there's strengths in using both, isn't there? Interesting.
Ash (08:13.134)
Oh, massively, massively. I think again, it's the, with, with, uh, with say a public speaking or when, w w w w w w w w w w w w w w w w w w w w w w w w w w w w
Ricky Locke (08:28.409)
Yeah.
Ricky Locke (08:36.731)
Yeah.
Ash (08:41.902)
You need to really emphasize that it's important to be listening right now. And even with the tone, the way that you're delivering that it's much more measured. And then there are times where you just going to get super excited because I really need to share this. And you know, you know that time when you know how it is when you get really excited about something, right? Absolutely. Absolutely. It really depends on.
Ricky Locke (08:46.299)
Yeah.
Ricky Locke (08:58.331)
Yeah, it's like cats and dogs, isn't it? From back on the NLP thing. Yeah, cats and dogs. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Ash (09:08.11)
It's fitting the right words and the right energy to whatever you're trying to deliver. Um, and yeah, there are times where I'll be bouncing around the room, super excited and talking a million miles an hour. And there's other times where it's like, right now we need to really focus.
Ricky Locke (09:13.007)
Yeah.
Ricky Locke (09:26.203)
Interesting then just to call back to the question. So what is the unobvious thing that you struggle with? So is it something because I'm not I'm not sure if it is something you struggle with or maybe I might be wrong, but I'm assuming that it's quite a nice balance for you. Or am I wrong? Is it something you really struggle with?
Ash (09:32.364)
Mm.
Ash (09:41.838)
The, no, the struggle is finding that balance. I think the, like, for example, say the, during the pandemic, for example, when I was just in this room, I mean, this was one of the reasons I started recording videos in the first place, because my extroverted side wasn't getting any love, wasn't getting any attention. There was no room. There were no people to entertain. There was no other energies in the room.
Ricky Locke (09:46.843)
Yeah.
Ash (10:10.414)
And that can be, that can be a struggle. And I've really had to work on a personal level, you know, when it can have an influence on say relationships, because, you know, there's certain people that want you to be there and present all the time. And I simply can't do that. And it's finding that it's finding that balance.
You know, I, I usually like when I, when I meet people for the first time or I get into a kind of romantic relationship, I usually give them a disclaimer. It's not personal. This, I am likely to disappear. Um, it's not personal. I just need to decompress and, and that can be, I think some people, I, if they don't have that, it takes some.
Ricky Locke (10:44.123)
Hahaha.
Nice, yeah, that's good.
Yeah, don't think odd of me, this is just me, yeah.
You
Ricky Locke (11:05.209)
Yeah.
Ash (11:05.294)
It takes a lot of conversations and awareness as well. And sometimes those conversations are hard and it's a learning process, but there are still times where it's learning to really pay attention to the signals and going out, you know, actually now time out, you've spent too much time here. So, so it's learning to find the schedule, learning to find the time. Um, so that's why like Tuesday mornings, for example, now I block them off.
Ricky Locke (11:13.339)
Yeah.
Ricky Locke (11:22.137)
Yeah, yeah.
Ash (11:34.316)
No one's booking a call with me. There's no sales cause there's no business. I get up when I get up on a Tuesday morning and I just, yeah, but that was a learning curve in the past. I would have just tried to crack on and in the end I've just ended up exhausted.
Ricky Locke (11:50.363)
Yeah, yeah. Wow. Well, knowing what you now know, obviously from this experience, from understanding about the, the obvious thing that you struggle with, what does this make you think and feel going forward?
Ash (12:06.126)
Oh, I like that. There was some NLP language patterns there as well, right? You just Milton'd me. Okay.
Ricky Locke (12:14.875)
Yeah.
Ash (12:18.19)
I'm right. So the, I think again, it's an ongoing process. I think the.
I think for me, when you asked that question, I lean towards kind of fixed mindset, growth mindset, the kind of the work of Carol Dweck there and...
Ricky Locke (12:40.771)
Yeah.
Ash (12:44.174)
There's, I think there's sometimes this notion really that you are always the same and you're not changing, but that is both physically and physiologically not true. You are always changing. You are literally if 10 years from, if you go 10 years in the past, you are literally a different person biologically and mentally. Um, and I think there's that notion that you're always changing. Um, the...
Ricky Locke (12:55.195)
Yeah.
Ricky Locke (13:04.603)
Yeah.
Ricky Locke (13:12.795)
Yeah.
Ash (13:13.742)
What is true now might not be true in the future. What was true in the past is made might not be true now. Um, so I believe it's, it's all about having that awareness and figuring out, okay, how can I make this work? So like I said a minute ago about the knowing I need to take time off. I didn't know that in the past and maybe there's stuff to learn.
Ricky Locke (13:16.955)
Yeah.
Ash (13:38.094)
moving forwards. Like recently, for example, I knew I had to start doing more face to face work for the extroverted side, not online work, actually in a room with people. I, but you learn that by going through the process, the process we call life.
Ricky Locke (13:53.115)
Yeah,
In this episode, Ricky Locke interviews Bev Holden, co-founder of the Clear Thinking Partnership. They discuss the unobvious things that Bev struggles with, focusing on confidence and asking for help. Bev challenges the concept of confidence, stating that it is not a real thing and that she doesn't believe she needs it to accomplish tasks. She also shares her difficulty in asking for help in certain situations, often due to a fear of judgment or a desire to maintain a certain perception. The conversation highlights the importance of questioning societal conditioning and living in the present moment.
Takeaways
Chapters
00:00 Introduction to episode
01:00 Background
02:40 The Unobvious Thing: Confidence
05:21 Struggling to Ask for Help
10:57 Takeaways and Conclusion
Find out more about Bev & Kate at Clear Thinking at https://www.clearthinkinguk.com/
Patreon thanks!
Shout out to the amazing Patron supporters for keeping this podcast going; thank you Ant Howe, Chloe Wilmot, Cheri Brenton, Steve McDermott & Rory Barnes! You are all amazing!
Come Join the UNLOCKED community where you can receive...
To be a Patron and support the podcast just head to this link or head to https://www.patreon.com/theunlockedpodcast
I can't wait for you to be a part of this journey!
Free Resources
PODCAST MERCHANDISE!!!
It's officially here! Woohoo! You can now buy your own UNLOCKED podcast notebook. The perfect addition to share your thoughts, ideas, and inspiration from the podcast.
Available here!
A new episode is out every Wednesday. So make sure you hit SUBSCRIBE so you don’t miss out on any episodes coming soon.
And, if this episode brought some value to you, or even a smile, then please leave a review or a rating. That would be amazing!
Thanks for listening, I hope you enjoy this episode and I'll join you next week for another episode of UNLOCKED!
Transcript
Ricky Locke (00:00.61)
Hello and welcome to another episode of the mini series of the Unlocked Conversation Cards with the diary of a CEO Cards, where I interview a guest and ask them a question. I'll have a deep dive and connection with them today. I've got a very special friend. I've mentioned this wonderful lady on the podcast many, many times, but welcome again. I think second, third time, maybe. I'm not sure, but welcome to the show. Bev Holden, how are you?
Bev (00:24.283)
Thank you very much. I'm really good, thank you. Thank you for having me. Again.
Ricky Locke (00:27.37)
Oh, good to see you again. And I feel like we have many conversations like this. It feels like just like a normal office meeting. Bev, tell the listeners if they haven't heard of you, who are you and what do you do?
Bev (00:39.071)
Yeah, so I am Bev Holden. I'm half of the Clear Thinking Partnership. We make people think by what we do, so we facilitate and we coach. And when I say we, it's me and my partner, Kate. And we've been doing what we do since 2007. And we are approaching our 17th birthday on Thursday. So, cards, candles, fanfares. Thank you very much.
Ricky Locke (01:02.658)
Happy birthday. Yeah. Happy birthday. Well, yeah. Have a wonderful time. Make sure I have some cake. Bev, as part of the series, the ideas I'm going to ask you a question. And for clarity, you have no idea. Well, this question is we've not prearranged anything before this.
Bev (01:07.587)
Thank you.
Bev (01:17.343)
No, is that like one of those tricks where you say, I don't know you, do you, and would you like to pick a card? Yeah, okay. But no, genuinely, and I've never seen the card, so this is a complete mystery.
Ricky Locke (01:20.53)
I'll pay you later. Yeah.
Ricky Locke (01:27.218)
There was a big smile on your face like, should I say yes or no? Okay. All right. Bev, here is your question. Are you ready? What is the unobvious thing that you struggle with?
Bev (01:30.155)
What?
Bev (01:33.728)
Yes.
Bev (01:40.071)
Oh my goodness, what is the un- Who asked that question?
Ricky Locke (01:44.35)
It was Max Lugavere. I couldn't tell you who that is though. Unfortunately, I'm not sure.
Bev (01:48.835)
What is the unobvious thing? Ah, okay. Okay, so the unobvious thing. So it is something that... So it's not a real thing because I don't actually believe it's a real thing, but it's a thing that people talk about quite often and it is confidence. So the reason I say it's not a real thing is I don't think I need confidence nor does anyone else to be able to do something. It's kind of a made up concept. But I noticed that...
people will say that they see me as being very confident in certain situations and that they are not. So they're fearful of certain situations that don't feel as though they could handle it, but they see me doing it. And their assumption is that I don't feel, we'll call it lacking in confidence or wobbly or unsure or anything. So I think probably that's the first thing that springs to mind because I wouldn't say
but I notice it sometimes. And it's one of those things that it's not a debilitating thing at all. And I don't acknowledge that it exists. And actually that's been a really good strategy for me. So, you know, when people say, and you probably come across this quite a lot in the work that you do, and people say, I'm nervous or I haven't got enough confidence to do that, particularly in presenting and speaking.
And I have never ever, apart from once, acknowledged that might be a thing for me. And so it's not become a thing, which I think is just, it's really interesting how our brains work around this stuff and how we turn the thing that we think into something that is real and we act as if it's true. So it's not so much a struggle thing, but it is just something that I notice and it catches me unawares. So I will be doing something that I'm really
ordinarily sure of and then I just have a sensation or a feeling and it would be very easy to misinterpret that feeling and think that it's a bad feeling but more often than not I get it right and I interpret the feeling well so it doesn't get in the way of me doing what I do. I'm just thinking if there's anything else that I ask me the question again.
Ricky Locke (04:08.234)
Yeah, sure. Yeah. What is the unobvious thing that you struggle with?
Bev (04:16.819)
Mmm. Gosh.
Ricky Locke (04:21.197)
It's a different one, that one, isn't it?
Bev (04:23.187)
It is a tough one. And so I also think it might be contextual. So there are situations I think where I maybe find it difficult to ask for help if I'm struggling with something. Interesting, the struggle word, that was in the question. But if I am finding something difficult, depending, there are some situations where I have almost a default reaction, where I go, ah.
this is a time to ask for help from other people who may know better or have more experience to share or who I can just rely on and lean on. And then there are some situations where I think, oh, probably people would expect me to be able to handle that and so I shouldn't ask. And it's that whole thing of maintaining a perception that people might have of you. But it's not true. And it's much easier to go through life, I think, without all those masks on.
but I don't always remember that. It's all very well thinking you know what the dream is, but living the dream is something different. So I think that might be something. So asking for help at the right, asking for help consistently and being interested in what the people see that I can't see in myself.
Ricky Locke (05:37.838)
Hmm
Ricky Locke (05:44.99)
Yeah, particularly what is it about asking for help that is the struggle?
Bev (05:55.159)
I think it is maintaining that perception, you know that judgment that we often do to ourselves where we think, oh I should know better, I should know this. It's not even necessarily that I think other people will think, because I'm a terrible mind reader, I think most of us are. So I can't possibly imagine what it is that somebody is going to be judging me on. But it's that I think that's the thing.
thought that creeps in and it's the, I should know better, I should know how to do this. And that is probably the thing that stops me from asking for help. But it is an interesting question because it's making me think about times when I've rushed into going, right, help me now, I'm stuck, I'm struggling, I don't know what to do. And people's response is always so helpful and so encouraging.
Ricky Locke (06:32.535)
Yeah.
Bev (06:50.955)
that there's never any need to say that you can't, to believe that you can't ask for help.
Ricky Locke (06:56.654)
Does that come to a surprise then, when people are so eager to help you? It's like, well, why was I worrying about this, asking for help when people are so actively wanting to help?
Bev (07:07.792)
Yeah, I still think it's conditional though. It's conditional on me not judging myself first. But it's a lovely surprise and I think it's something that I know is true because people, humans like being asked to help other humans. I think we're wired generally to be helpful. And also I think...
It's great to feel that you can be somebody else's superhero. There was that bit of research, wasn't there, about people who do good deeds for others, get that real superhero sense in themselves. So it's not just we're totally generous and giving, we actually get something in return from that, apparently, self-affect. Yeah, it makes us feel good. And I think it's about human connection and...
Ricky Locke (07:47.102)
Yeah, it makes us feel good.
Bev (07:54.667)
And vulnerability, it takes us down that path of thinking about being vulnerable and how that endears us to other people because then you're a lot more accessible and people don't feel as though you're quite so unattainable.
Ricky Locke (08:09.234)
Yeah, totally. Yeah. There's a whole thing, isn't it? And I totally get that what you said about conditioning society, the way we're brought up, suck it up, Ricky, you know, or those sort of things. It is challenging, isn't it? Especially if you're in a very low point as well, where you might not have the courage to ask for help, because it's difficult situation that you're in. And that's, that can be a huge struggle. Yeah.
Bev (08:34.911)
Yeah, and if you're carrying around a judgment where you think it's weak to ask for help. So, so I think that probably is a thing that people, because I think I do talk to people quite often about just, you know, who around you could help you, you know, ask those people for help, who have you got in your network, who are the people at your table who support you. And yet, as with many of us, or even just speaking for myself, it's not always easy to take your own medicine.
Ricky Locke (08:39.135)
Yeah.
Ricky Locke (09:04.865)
Yeah.
Bev (09:05.571)
That's actually why I love doing the work that we do because often the stuff that we say and the stuff that we think when we're supporting someone else is often really good advice for ourselves and we're surrounded by that all the time so we have lots of opportunity to challenge our own assumptions don't we and to think of things differently.
Ricky Locke (09:15.893)
Yeah.
Ricky Locke (09:21.302)
Definitely. Well, this is exactly why like I love doing the podcast because talking to people like yourself, guests that come on, you're also I'm telling my own subconscious as well. Oh, yeah, God, yeah, I should go to that, shouldn't I? Yeah. Well, I love that, but thank you for sharing that. So a final question, then. So thanks for sharing your wonderful things there. And a question that you might know this language. But for the listeners listening, obviously, from taking this experience and maybe resonating with that, in a confidence, out of confidence balance and
Bev (09:32.247)
You
Yeah.
Ricky Locke (09:50.306)
the struggling to ask for help. But what would you want our listeners to think and feel from this experience?
Bev (09:57.951)
Oh gosh, I think that actually the big thing, and it's one big thing, oh no, there might be two things, there always is, isn't there with me? The first one is there is no requirement, there is no requirement on any of us to do anything other than just live a life. And the only rules that exist are rules that have been made up by us or for us. And that's to your point about conditioning.
Ricky Locke (10:06.754)
Hehehehe
Bev (10:23.887)
And we create our own conditions and other people create conditions for us. And that's how we sometimes accidentally live. And I think conversations like this help us to sort of jolt us out of that sleep walk and to start to think, Oh, actually, do I, are they the conditions that I want to have in place? Cause what if there weren't any, and people talk about living a life that's free and being complete freedom. And of course, immediately you think, yeah, but there's loads of constraints. Cause.
you know, we run a business, I have to earn money, and the kids have to go to school, and then there's university, and blah, and responsibilities, and this, that, and the other. But they're all conditions that we've created for ourselves. So there is no requirement on any of us, and that's really freeing. And whilst I think that's true, I don't always remember that in the moment. And the other thing is that whilst we're imagining all of these moments where we might not feel confident, or we can't ask for help, or whatever our particular struggle is, the only thing that really exists is...
reality, it's the moment that I'm in right now and that you're in right now. So nothing else exists. And what we have a habit of doing is piling in loads of things from the past and the future and our imagined anticipated future and our remembered past. And thinking that that's all real somehow. And none of it is, it's not happening. It happened or it's going to happen, but it's not happening now. And I think that gives me the opportunity to be really clear in the moment more often than not.
Ricky Locke (11:50.378)
Love that. Beautiful. That is very profound. I love that. And then so simple and so true as well. It is, isn't it? It's absolute that we are. Putting our own constructs in our lives because we get to choose, don't we, at the end of the day? But so many people out there hurt and struggling because of the barriers and constructs we're putting in our life are very profound. Thank you, Beth.
Bev (11:51.711)
Not always.
Ricky Locke (12:16.162)
Thank you for coming on to the mini series of the conversation cars. I hope you enjoyed it. Thank you.
Bev (12:20.515)
I did. Thank you so much for having me. Thanks, Wiki.
Ricky Locke (12:22.318)
Thank you.
This week, I'm shaking things up by sharing an episode where I was the guest on The Digital Circus Life podcast. I share my journey of breaking free from a small village mindset and pursuing a fulfilling life of wonder and amazement. We discuss the desire to be on stage and make a difference in people's lives. We emphasise the importance of learning, taking action, and embracing failure as a learning process. We talk about living a life aligned with our values and constantly striving for growth. I also reflect on the idea that there is no defined endpoint in this journey, but rather a continuous pursuit of a fulfilling life.
Takeaways
Chapters
01:00 Breaking Free from a Small Village Mindset
03:49 Creating a Fulfilling Life of Wonder and Amazement
10:31 Embracing Failure as a Learning Process
15:40 Living a Life Aligned with Values
32:11 Reflecting on the Journey and Encouraging Younger Self
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Ricky (00:00.078)
My life was very much a case of, and no offence to my mum and dad at all, it was very much a case of a small village mindset of, you'll go to school, Ricky. They didn't say you won't achieve much, but university wasn't on the cards, because the money wasn't there. It would be like, Ricky, you might go to school. You've got to get a job, Ricky. You've got to get some money. And I could see my life being played out in that way of, it'll be very small, in a sense, comfortable. And I was always the, why? I don't like that.
When we first met Ricky Locke on Instagram, we knew he was someone we wanted to be involved with. This was about three or four years ago now. And ever since that, we've done quite a lot of projects together. So it was fascinating today when chatting to him to hear things we'd never heard before. The desire to be on stage, to perform, to entertain people started at a very, very young age when no one else in his family was a performer or doing anything like that. And how...
He wants to fail. He's happy to fail. For him, it's just a learning process. And for someone who truly believes that, it was fascinating to kind of hear that perspective. If you've never met Ricky before and you don't know who he is, then his links are in the description below. And if you're new here and you're watching this for the first time, please do subscribe to our channel. It means so much to us as a small business, as we grow and we're trying to achieve what we're trying to achieve. Thank you so much for watching. Please allow me to introduce you to...
Ricky Locke. Right, Ricky, you know I'm one of your biggest fans. We've known you since pretty much the beginning of the Yellow Tuxedo adventure. So it's real privileged to get to talk to you today on the Digital Circus Live podcast, but we have to start at the beginning. And the beginning for everyone is we're trying to understand what you're trying to achieve, whether it be for your personal life or your business, or the blend of both of them together, life.
What are you trying to achieve at this point? At this point? At this point? It's a fantastic question. Amazing question. So what I'm trying to achieve. Well, I guess there's a plethora. There you go. Nice word there. Plethora of different things. Loads of different things to achieve. I think in the last two or three years, it's probably niching it down into something that's wholesome, that's fulfilling, that...
Ricky (02:20.686)
creates wonder. The biggest thing I think every day is that, and we've mentioned this before about this question, is this action going to produce the outcome I'm looking for? So everything I do, I have to ask myself that question, but I just have this massive, you know, a bit like a glass thing, you know, the glass, is it fill in my cup? You know, I think that's everything I'm trying to achieve. So whatever it is that I do, whether it's, you know, interactions in life, whether it's personal life, business, magic, confident club.
is it filling my cup? And if it isn't, then it's not part of that achievement in life really. So I think that there's a lot of things that I could kind of digress and go on further. But the main thing really, I think is to achieve just this fulfilling life of amazement and wonder. And, you know, I think one of my things I'm very conscious of is that I am, you know, I'm in my early 30s and I'm very, so old. Yeah.
I'm very impatient because I'm a millennial, you know, I grew up with the world of, you know, internet and everything. So I'm very impatient. I want things fast now, you know, that kind of thing, because I don't know where life will be. So I do try to, you know, make everything intentional, the old 4 ,000 weeks, you know, of an average human life. So everything I try to do, I guess, to achieve, your answer question would be a fulfilling life. Yeah. So would you say your cup is a pint glass or a shot glass? I think we know the answer already.
I'd like to say it'd be like a porn star martini glass. That'd be quite fun. Exotic. That is way cooler, isn't it? Yeah. It doesn't take too much to fill it up. There we go. No. You know what? I read this. So obviously with my daughter, I read this. Is it the Fox, the Mole by Charlie magazine? Oh, the boy and the horse. Yeah. With an Oscar as well as the video version. That's right. Yeah. And I think one of the questions was, is I think the horse says to the little boy, is your...
glass half full or half empty and the boy says, I think I'm just grateful to have a glass. It's great, isn't it? You know, like I think I can't remember the answer, the question now, but what was your question, Emily? There we go. I was getting off the side track. It was how big was your cup? I was going to say who cares? Just tell us what you want to tell us Ricky. We're enjoying listening. Yeah. Do you know what? I think, I think the cup never ends and I think that's because my interesting life, I'm sure it, I think it's a polymath.
Ricky (04:43.726)
is the word I've correct me if I'm wrong. Maybe you can edit that in if not. I think a polymath is somebody that is just interested in everything. Yeah, I'm fascinated with the wise and and the house of everything. So I think when I look back in my life and everything I've ever done with with magic, with playing instruments, with doing things and just learning stuff, I'm on this massive journey about learning. I love learning, I love growing. So I'm always interested in things. You know, curiosity, I think, is a massive value to me. So I think this cup is just growing all the time as I get older.
Who knows, maybe it will get to the point where I turn 60, 70, and then, you know, like old people just put the sign on the door saying, do not disturb, do not talk to me. Maybe that'll be it. That's my question. In the pursuit of filling up your cup, which from the kind of high level feels very good, fulfilling purpose, direction and everything else. But also that means you're taking action all the time. That means you're trying to find things to fill your cup.
And that means actually who's designed, you know, you have said it's a porn star, Mark Seeley, a bottomless brunch. This is bottomless, Ricky. So, so how do you know when you've achieved it? So one of the things about goals we all know is you need to be able to benchmark it. You need to be able to know when you're achieved it. So how, when does that stop? I mean, you've just talked about being old and shut in the door. So are you ever going to have achieved it? Yeah. So this goes back to, I remember like back in.
corporate days before I went full time in the business. We did this like define your purpose day, you know, which I think is incredible. You know, it's a really good thing. And one of the key things like they get to do is like a timeline of like key moments in your life that you remember. And one of the moments that I think very similar to you, this will be Alan, is that some of the key moments in my life was always in front of an audience. So as a very young person, I play music, you know, I play guitar in my room. I'd learn. And weirdly enough, when like
If like someone knocked on the door, like an electrician or someone like to come in, I remember I'd like crank up the volume a little bit louder, you know, a little bit loud to play. And it wasn't as a narcissistic thing to like show off. It was kind of like, oh my God, you know, I'm in front of an audience, that kind of thing. I want to show how amazing like things we can do, you know, like playing guitar and stuff. Funny enough, that electrician came around quite a lot, actually. But anyway, a long story short, yeah. But another one was like, you know, I remember winning the talent show when I was about
Ricky (07:10.638)
15, 16. And I love that adrenaline being in front of an audience. And I remember when I was in my corporate days being a coach and a trainer, national trainer for Argos and being in front of an audience. Magic. I'm in front of an audience. The Compton Club, we present people. And I remember distinctly, you've just made me think about it, laying on my bed when I was younger, I had a magazine called Total Guitar. And there was a big... Thank God he said Total Guitar and not something else there. Yes. Total Guitar. There was this big spread right in the middle and you could pull it out.
And it was a black and white photo. Now in hindsight, I'm guessing now, I don't know who it was at the time, but I'm thinking it was probably Kurt Cobain, like from Nirvana. And it just looked like the back of him standing on stage, probably in front of Reading Festival, just seeing this audience. It was black and white phone. I used to have it on the roof of my bedroom. So when I was laying down, I could look at it. And from an early age, I think there's always been that sort of a kind of legacy, I think, that what I want to do is to, not narcissistically, but to make a difference to people. So whether that is,
a magic trick creates wonder, whether it's like the Confident Club, we're reshaping and redefining people's beliefs so they not only can be confident presenters, but they can go achieve anything they want in their life. There's been something like that that's threaded through the answers to the question of what is I'm trying to achieve. It's being on a stage, but making a difference. So whether that is a video, a podcast, that's the thread that just kind of fits through it all, which if you look at everything I do, it's always in front of an audience. So.
Yeah, that's probably what it is. I think. Yeah, I get that. And I also sorry, just because the question was how you're going to know when you've got there. Oh, yeah. And I think I think it's okay sometimes to perhaps not know that answer because that that may, you know, as you quite rightly said in the beginning, the earlier part is like you might just wake up one day and go, yeah, I'm done. I'm happy. I'm fine. Not I'm happy. I can't say that. You know, I'm done is probably a better word or I'm there or something like that. So I get that. There's a thousand thoughts off the back of that.
Yeah, there's a massive presupposition which we know like in NLP and I've had this through my life before I understood what NLP was and it was there's no failure only feedback or you can say there's no such thing as fair as only outcomes and am I allowed to swear on this or not? Do we have to bleep this one out? Yeah. Okay cool. A mild swear word perhaps? I'll say and you can cut it out if you like after so remember this point. We're not doing any C -bombs are we? No, no, no C -bombs. Okay, that's fine. Alright fine, I might bleep it. So...
Ricky (09:31.406)
The word fear, right? Yeah. Fantasize exaggerations appearing real was what Steve told me from the Compton Club. It's a great story. Fuck everything can run. You know, that's the great phrase, which I love. So you might have to cut that out, but I don't really believe in fear. Yeah, there's things that might frighten me, but I'm just not afraid to like go do things badly because I know I learn. So, you know, I'm quite happy that it's not a failure. It's just an outcome. So I've kind of removed failure from my language. You know, my mom and dad have always said to me,
We've got no idea what Ricky, why you're a performer because there's no performance bone in our bodies. You're right. So, you know, you like the odd one out. So maybe it was the electrician. Who knows? Right. You know, one of the key things though is that it's just kind of I just want to go out there and I'm not afraid to fail. Whereas I think a lot of people are like, I don't want to do this. I'd love to achieve these wonderful things in life, but they're just not prepared to put in the time to go do something and fail. So if I remove failure from a language, then it's just an outcome. So.
So that's the kind of key thing really. Yeah, I probably don't know when it's going to happen, but I'm not afraid to make a mistake or do something because it's just an outcome and I can learn from it and then try it differently. So yeah. What I've always appreciated about you, Ricky, is that you mentioned about that you're always learning and you're always trying to fill your cup. It's the fact that in the four years nearly that we've known you, I've watched that journey of you going on and learning a new course or...
reading that book and so many people could say I read a self -help book or I saw this and they can drop a quote here and there but you actually implement don't you you're very much about learning and an implementation to see if it works for you and if it doesn't it's fine but you do give it a really good go don't you? Yeah totally I think I will get to a point one day where someone said to me Rookie should be a business coach but I think I think I
It's like I want to kind of be, you know, like a leader would go out and do it. Like I will go out there and do it first so I can understand if it works. And then I'll show you that it does work and you can follow me. Whereas I think a lot of people just are not prepared to step out and try it. Whereas I'm quite happy to go try it and then say, Hey, it works. And now go do this. So here's some, it works. It's an incredible character trait. It's semantics ultimately, but I feel that's more the mentor side than coaching side. It's like,
Ricky (11:47.758)
Isn't mentor like I've done it and I'm showing you how to and coaching is, you know, something I get that. It really is a good character trait because so many people, especially in the world of entrepreneurship as well, are either standing still or they're not growing any further and they want that growth. They want it, but they're
In this mini series of The Diary of a CEO conversation Cards, Ricky Locke and Alan Braithwaite discuss the common misconceptions people have about Alan and how it makes him feel. They explore the importance of being authentic and prioritizing fun in social situations. They also discuss the expectations people have of public figures and the responsibility to be polite and genuine. The conversation highlights the power of making a positive impact on others and spreading positivity in everyday interactions.
Takeaways
Chapters
00:00 Introduction and Setting the Tone
01:07 Question: Common Misconception About Alan
03:02 Being Authentic and Prioritizing Fun
05:27 Adapting to Different Social Situations
08:29 Misconceptions and Expectations
10:52 Authenticity and Responsibility
12:31 Expectations of Public Figures
16:00 Impact and Significance
18:59 Desired Impact on Listeners
21:39 Spreading Positivity and Making a Difference
21:45 Conclusion
Patreon thanks!
Shout out to the amazing Patron supporters for keeping this podcast going; thank you Ant Howe, Jasmine Barnes, Chloe Wilmot, Sara Kay, Cheri Brenton, Steve McDermott, Chris Lovett & Rory Barnes! You are all amazing!
Come Join the UNLOCKED community where you can receive...
To be a Patron and support the podcast just head to this link or head to https://www.patreon.com/theunlockedpodcast
I can't wait for you to be a part of this journey!
Free Resources
PODCAST MERCHANDISE!!!
It's officially here! Woohoo! You can now buy your own UNLOCKED podcast notebook. The perfect addition to share your thoughts, ideas, and inspiration from the podcast.
Available here!
A new episode is out every Wednesday. So make sure you hit SUBSCRIBE so you don’t miss out on any episodes coming soon.
And, if this episode brought some value to you, or even a smile, then please leave a review or a rating. That would be amazing!
Thanks for listening, I hope you enjoy this episode and I'll join you next week for another episode of UNLOCKED!
Transcription
Ricky Locke (00:00.785)
Welcome back to another episode of the Unlock podcast in my mini series where I dive deep into the diary of a CEO conversation cards to unlock some deeper levels of connection. And today I've got a great friend and a returning guest, Mr. Alan Braithwaite.
💛 Alan @YellowTuxedo (00:16.594)
Thank you, mate. Love being like this doesn't feel like a podcast I'm just having a chat with my mate Ricky. Do you know what I mean? And if it's just fab to be with you as always
Ricky Locke (00:22.035)
Yeah, I know.
Well, as my brain was going, just going to go off the cuff here and introduce, and I'm brave about it, I felt like then I need to probably post edit this and go, explosions there, you know? I think, yeah.
💛 Alan @YellowTuxedo (00:32.934)
Always explosion. Is there anyone who doesn't need more explosions in their day to day? Surely we all do
Ricky Locke (00:38.409)
Well, I agree. Yeah. Especially on a Thursday morning when, like we said, we could do a bit more energy, right? Anyway, Alan, as the premise is, we've got a question for you selected for you. Now, obviously you have no understanding, no awareness of what this is about. You got literally no idea. So, and that's just off the cuff. Yes. Brilliant. Brim. Yeah. It does sound, doesn't it? Like a, like a magic trick. Like you have no, you know, anyway.
💛 Alan @YellowTuxedo (00:45.282)
Yes.
💛 Alan @YellowTuxedo (00:57.67)
Yes, correct. I can confirm Ricky the magician. I can confirm. I do not know what you're about to do
Ricky Locke (01:07.177)
Alan, I've got a couple of questions selected, so we'll see if we get time and have some fun, but are you ready for your question? All right, here we go. The question is this. What is a common misconception that people have about you? And how does it make you feel?
💛 Alan @YellowTuxedo (01:11.891)
Yes, mate. Let's do this.
💛 Alan @YellowTuxedo (01:24.05)
Oh, common misconception about me and how does it make me feel? Um, I think I can answer the feel part before the misconception part. So the feel part is quite easy. I spend quite a lot of time kind of in my own head, thinking, working through stuff, I enjoy it a lot. So I think the feel part is I don't feel anything about the misconceptions. Cause I think if there is a misconception, it's usually because of what I'm putting out.
Ricky Locke (01:34.617)
Okay.
💛 Alan @YellowTuxedo (01:52.494)
Um, so I'm, I'm kind of okay, but I own that misconception, if that makes sense. So, so there's no point me feeling unhappy about what someone might think about me and everything else. The other part is, and there are misconceptions which I'll come to, because I understand what I put out years and years and years ago, like decades ago, when I was younger, I remember.
You know what you'll know? Well, I say you'll know what it's like. You may know what it's like. There was always your mates, right? When your mates were with you together, when you were with your mates, your male friends, right? You'd be like that. The second anyone was with their girlfriend or a girlfriend was there, everything changed, right? Everything changed. And I remember sometime in my early 20s, late teens going, why does everyone change?
Ricky Locke (02:28.213)
Yeah, yeah.
💛 Alan @YellowTuxedo (02:34.25)
Why wouldn't you want to be the same person regardless of whether you're girlfriend, because that means either your mates aren't getting the genuine you or your girlfriend's not getting the, or they're getting a version of you. Right. And, and, but I understand the kind of topics and conversations and language might be subtly different, that's different, but fundamentally there were people who were massively different. Right. And I remember looking at them and you know, everyone's in their own life. It's fine. And I remember thinking, I don't want to do that. So, um,
other than a few subtleties, pretty much I'm the same person with my friends and Emily, now my wife, which comes back to, I guess, the misconceptions part is I feel sometimes there's a misconception about me, but so because I'm rather gregarious and loud, the, the more kind of deep thinking overthinker I don't always think comes out because I don't want it to, because I want to prioritize fun.
Um, so I, I wonder, I wonder, I don't really know. No one's ever come up and when I was wrong about you, Alan, I wonder if that kind of the, the deeper side of me that I may keep for conversations like this doesn't always come out and some people may have that misconception, but fundamentally I've made a choice to be like that, so I'm okay with it. Does that make sense?
Ricky Locke (03:49.253)
Mm, yeah, brilliant. Yeah, a little bit. Yeah. So to tell us a little bit more about that, then. So does it does it affect you? So just to clarify again, like, how does that make you feel when people have that misconception?
💛 Alan @YellowTuxedo (04:03.626)
It doesn't make me feel anything because I've chosen to be in certain a certain way. And because their misconception will be based on what I'm putting out. So I'm kind of, I don't feel anything. Sometimes I might go, okay, I probably need to be a little bit less of a joker for a period of time. And perhaps a bit more kind of this kind of conversational Alan. Which interesting, if you get me by myself, you tend to get, if I'm with Emily.
then Emily's the straight person and I'm the joker or the dickhead, whatever you want to call it. And I'm okay with that because I feel there is an element, a balance and in a conversation like this, it's like when we do the digital circuits, we have walk on music, right? So when we open the doors on Zoom and everyone comes into music, if Emily's there, I'll be kind of singing, dancing. I'll bring my microphone down, pretend I'm a superstar DJ or an Oasis or something. If Emily's not there.
Ricky Locke (04:37.482)
Yeah.
💛 Alan @YellowTuxedo (04:59.73)
I actually feel a bit awkward and go, oh, hello, everyone. Welcome, welcome along, you know? So it's, I guess it's just a bit like that, but going back to how I feel, no, I'm okay. Because I think these are conscious choices I'm making and neither of them are, I'm gonna say bad, but I don't think that's the word. Neither of them are not nice versions, if that makes sense. They're all the same version. I just sometimes put that switch up more than that switch and bring that switch down.
Ricky Locke (05:04.352)
Yeah.
Ricky Locke (05:08.973)
Yeah.
Ricky Locke (05:23.341)
Yeah.
Ricky Locke (05:27.229)
Yeah, like a thermostat, isn't it? Like you might have to heat up a little bit, cool it down a little bit and tailor it a little bit, but it's still you.
💛 Alan @YellowTuxedo (05:28.983)
So I don't know if anyone...
💛 Alan @YellowTuxedo (05:35.306)
Yeah, yeah, of course. I mean, it's got to be the same like as a magic show, right? You know, you're not going to go on stage as a magic show and give the deep thinking Ricky Locke. You're going to give the presenter Ricky Locke, right? It doesn't mean the deep thinking Ricky Locke, the kind of specific version of yourself, the self-improvement doesn't exist. And it will be kind of intertwined, right? But you've dialed that one up, that Fermistats up to 100.
Ricky Locke (05:40.035)
Mmm.
Ricky Locke (05:50.175)
Yeah.
💛 Alan @YellowTuxedo (06:04.694)
conversation like this, dial the performance down a little bit and just maintain this. And I guess that's it. So like I say, any misconceptions outside of that, I probably don't even really know about, you know, and I don't mean this in a flippant way. I don't care because I'm happy with who I am, 99% of it. So, which I've put a lot of time and effort into being happy with who I am and making sure that people are getting me and things like that. So, yeah, I think that's where I'm at with that.
Ricky Locke (06:10.955)
Yeah.
Ricky Locke (06:17.854)
Yeah, yeah.
Ricky Locke (06:21.272)
Yeah.
Ricky Locke (06:32.865)
So just so to explore that, I totally agree. So like in Tesco's when I walk around the hours, I'm like, hey, it's magic, man. I'm picking up my chicken and my protein. Hey, no, of course not. It's like really grumpy. I quite often tell a lot of my customers, if you meet me around in Tesco, it's because a lot of people who book me where I live, I'll say, yeah, if you, if you see me in Tesco, I'm probably going to be in my pajamas. I'm like, who are you? You know, you know, because you have to. There's that human element, isn't there, of like.
the separation. So is there then just to explore that, is there a misconception that people believe that what I see, so the Alan I see on Zoom, I'm going to believe that that's the Alan I'm going to see in Tesco's or in the shops or at the school, the drop off. Do you think that that's what people see or do you think they have that understanding of, well, he's a bit of a miserable bugger, wasn't he? Like he's not the same that I know from digital circus.
💛 Alan @YellowTuxedo (07:22.886)
No, I get that. And actually the school runs are really good example of that. So we do the school run twice a day, we park in the park, we walk through the park, and there's a large amount of parents and children and everything else. So you don't want grumpy, Alan, you don't want kind of, don't want to talk to people, Alan. And also we're a big believer in like representing your business and your brand and all opportunities and all everything else. So
we have to make sure we're on it through the park, right? Not on it, because that makes it sound like fake. That version is there that day. But there are some days when the kids have come in for a chat at midnight and you can't work out why, or you're not feeling best yourself or whatever else, but you go, it's gonna be a real struggle today.
Ricky Locke (07:52.491)
Yeah.
💛 Alan @YellowTuxedo (08:11.862)
But so you have to keep your eyes down, right? And you kind of, perhaps you're not saying, because there'll be some days when I walk down the kind of the path through the park and it's good morning, good morning, hello you, how are you today? And it is like showbiz, you know, showbiz Ricky and Alan, I'm not in showbiz, so I don't feel I could say that then. But there are those days, but I think, I feel most people are reasonable enough to understand that.
Ricky Locke (08:21.943)
Yeah.
Ricky Locke (08:25.342)
Yeah, yeah.
Ricky Locke (08:29.583)
Yeah.
💛 Alan @YellowTuxedo (08:39.158)
You can't be a hundred percent, a hundred percent of the time. And everyone's allowed an off day. And if they're not aware of everyone's allowed an off day and then they're going, Oh, he's a grumpy bugger. Then if I'm really honest, that's their problem, not mine, you know? Um, and, and if someone is being a grumpy bugger, the first thing you should be saying to yourself, and it's difficult to remember to do this is. I hope everything's okay with them.
Ricky Locke (08:45.166)
Hmm
Ricky Locke (08:54.357)
Yes. Yeah.
💛 Alan @YellowTuxedo (09:04.67)
It should not be about you. It should be about them. It's really tricky at times to do that because you've got your own crud going on as well, but it should be. I hope they're okay. And I think it's still okay to have opinions and thoughts and, oh, they were a bit miserable today. But then when you've gone through all that, it should still come back to, drop them a note. And I think that's really important, Ricky, right? We're all different. There's, I like to talk about, there's like...
Ricky Locke (09:15.594)
Yeah.
Ricky Locke (09:26.846)
Yeah.
💛 Alan @YellowTuxedo (09:32.074)
There's something like eight or nine billion people in the world. I lose track, right? And, and I don't know if this figure is still accurate, but once upon a time I was Googling how many people we meet in our life and the suggested figure was 80,000, okay? So we are coming up with thoughts and opinions on life, on everyday life, but we have fundamentally put all 8 billion people in the same pot of our thoughts and feelings based on only meeting 80,000, which
Ricky Locke (09:45.437)
Oh, wow, that's quite small. Yeah.
💛 Alan @YellowTuxedo (10:00.074)
my maths isn't that fast as a percentage is ridiculously small. So why would we, you know, when we're in the right place and we're firing in the right place, why would we care in inverted commas about what someone thinks about ourselves because we don't know what their, you know, their belief structure and everything else I like that you talk to me about and I like to listen to is like, we just don't know. So look after yourself a bit more, make sure others are okay.
Ricky Locke (10:04.768)
Yeah.
💛 Alan @YellowTuxedo (10:28.89)
And it just doesn't really matter if some, if someone's got a misconception of you going back to the question based on something you're doing, that's not, Oh, I'm going to do a buzzword Ricky, that's not authentic. Then the problem lies with you. If someone's got a misconception of you and you are being authentic in this example, then, then there isn't, there is no problem, you know, or how does that, did I do that the right way round?
Ricky Locke (10:40.347)
Yeah.
Ricky Locke (10:44.569)
Hmm
Ricky Locke (10:47.799)
Yes.
Ricky Locke (10:52.297)
Yeah, no, you're absolutely right. Yeah.
💛 Alan @YellowTuxedo (10:52.574)
No, the problem lies with them. You know, it's yeah, it's like it's, if you're being authentic, it doesn't matter. You know, my dad always said, if there's a problem and you can do something about it, do something about it. So it doesn't matter. If there's a problem, you can't do anything about it. You can't do anything about it. So don't worry about it. You know, it's like, you know, so.
Ricky Locke (10:58.379)
Yeah.
Ricky Locke (11:07.801)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, so let's explore that because I totally agree that you've had the light bulb moment is that isn't it the authenticity if let's say me and you, what we do on Zoom...
In this episode, Ricky Locke interviews Glen McCoy, a scriptwriter and creative. They discuss the belief or behavior that has positively impacted Glenn's life in the past 12 months. Glen shares his belief in allowing things to happen rather than forcing them, and how this belief has led to positive changes in his life. They also explore the idea of living in a virtual simulation and the power of believing in the ability to change one's circumstances. The conversation concludes with a reflection on choices and the importance of connecting with one's inner child.
Takeaways
Chapters
00:00 Introduction and Background
01:24 The Belief that Positively Impacted Glen's Life
05:00 Challenging the Belief that Life is Set in Stone
08:12 Reflecting on Choices and Making Changes
09:35 Connecting with Your Inner Child
10:32 Wrap-up and Where to Find Glen McCoy
Find out more about Glen and his work at https://www.linkedin.com/in/glenmccoy/
Patreon thanks!
Shout out to the amazing Patron supporters for keeping this podcast going; thank you Ant Howe, Chloe Wilmot, Cheri Brenton, Steve McDermott and Rory Barnes! You are all amazing!
Come Join the UNLOCKED community where you can receive...
To be a Patron and support the podcast just head to this link or head to https://www.patreon.com/theunlockedpodcast
I can't wait for you to be a part of this journey!
Free Resources
PODCAST MERCHANDISE!!!
It's officially here! Woohoo! You can now buy your own UNLOCKED podcast notebook. The perfect addition to share your thoughts, ideas, and inspiration from the podcast.
Available here!
A new episode is out every Wednesday. So make sure you hit SUBSCRIBE so you don’t miss out on any episodes coming soon.
And, if this episode brought some value to you, or even a smile, then please leave a review or a rating. That would be amazing!
Thanks for listening, I hope you enjoy this episode and I'll join you next week for another episode of UNLOCKED!
Transcript
Ricky Locke (00:00.977)
Welcome to the Unlocked podcast in my mini series where we're using the diary of a CEO conversation cards to unlock some deeper levels of connection. Today, I've got a very special guest. Welcome Glenn McCoy. How are you, Glenn?
Glen McCoy (00:15.982)
Very well, Ricky. Thanks for inviting me.
Ricky Locke (00:18.289)
I'm really excited for this. Good to see it. And Glenn, just for the listeners, if they haven't heard of you or not met you before, tell the listeners who are you and what is it that you do?
Glen McCoy (00:28.174)
So I'm Glenn McCoy. I am a script writer, writer and creative in general, and I write for television, but also the corporate market.
Ricky Locke (00:39.955)
Yes, and I believe is there a couple of films or TV series that we are quite familiar with, I believe.
Glen McCoy (00:46.894)
Yes, if I mentioned them, I'd ruin my street cred immediately. However, you may have heard of EastEnders and Emmerdale. So that's where I cut my teeth writing on the soaps.
Ricky Locke (00:50.419)
Yeah
Ricky Locke (00:55.067)
Yes.
Yes, very, very good. Well, Glenn, as I've mentioned and for familiar listeners, this is where we're going to dive into just a random card for clarity. I know this sounds like because I'm a magician. This sounds like really forced, but you have no idea what we're about to say. I have not pre set this up with you, correct? It's a very classic magician line, that one. But I'm going to ask you the question. Are you ready for your question, Glenn? OK, Glenn, here is the question.
Glen McCoy (01:13.486)
No idea. That's absolutely correct.
Ricky Locke (01:24.979)
What is the one belief or behavior that has positively impacted your life in the past 12 months?
Glen McCoy (01:36.27)
Yes, I would say the belief that most impacted me is how I've noticed where I have arrived in the last 12 months. So in other words, in the last 12 months, I've moved from somewhere in the country that I was living for about 16 years. My decision to do it was on a whim and I now move north and I live in Clitheroe.
in Lancashire, and I reflect on the number of other changes that have happened to me, which all align with my purpose and the things that I want out of life. And I kind of think to myself, my belief structure around this is that the harder you try and make things happen, the worse it is. If you can kind of relax and lay back and...
still know what you want, but allow it to happen. In other words, don't chase it so much. It's more likely to come into your direction.
Ricky Locke (02:45.523)
Interesting. Now that I mean, obviously that sounds kind of counterproductive there, you know, by having a relaxed attitude towards it that things are likely to happen. So why has that happened for you?
Glen McCoy (02:58.51)
Because if you pressurize your belief system and you do put it under pressure, I don't think it functions as well as still maintaining the belief, but having that confidence and expectation that it will happen anyway.
Ricky Locke (03:16.755)
Interesting. So what are those beliefs that's positively impacted? Is there anything specifically? So you mentioned obviously about obviously working hard, you've moved. So what are those beliefs?
Glen McCoy (03:29.294)
Well, I've been looking at a lot of well -known scientists who are more like astrophysicists. And if you can go and check this out yourself. But a lot of the top people in this realm have come to the conclusion that we live in a virtual simulation. That kind of thing, yeah. Now, whether we do or whether we don't doesn't really interest me.
Ricky Locke (03:52.595)
Like the Matrix. Yeah.
Glen McCoy (03:59.064)
However, my thinking around it is that what if it was true that we are in this virtual simulation, it must therefore mean that you can construct just about anything you want in the future, because it's the nature of a computer program. You know, you kind of write the code, pop it in, and out comes the outcome or the result.
And by having that belief, I feel I've covered more ground and got more things done than having the belief that this is all very real and you can't change it and you are kind of there because someone's put you there and you have to just cross your fingers and hope for the best. That is kind of pushing your beliefs, but having the belief that you can change things suddenly makes it easier for you to have the confidence.
to make those changes happen in reality.
Ricky Locke (05:00.755)
I think that's fascinating. Yeah. And I agree. There's, there's a lot of, um, there's a guy, I can't quite remember his name now. He's very big on TikTok social media. And he interviews people in the street and says, what's your dream in the street? And they're like, completely like they're in the matrix completely, but in the opposite sense of like, their heads down blinkered, like, this is my life. You're right. So it's fascinating. But one of the things that is like, I think it's really difficult is a lot of people, you know, and I'm not going to name names here, but I know especially,
Glen McCoy (05:15.95)
Mm.
Ricky Locke (05:30.259)
family members, friends that have a belief that I can't change things, that my life is set in stone, cause and effect, right? I live at the effect of this. So for those people listening, it might be very easy for people like me and you who live in that world where, you know, we're an LP trained, we are big fans of learning development. But for those people that are listening that, no, no, I don't get it. I don't believe that. I believe that my life is set in stone. That is it. What would you say to them about giving them
Glen McCoy (05:54.486)
Thank you.
Ricky Locke (05:59.379)
belief that they can change things in their life, what they need to do.
Glen McCoy (06:04.014)
Reminds me of the very old movie Shirley Valentine, I don't if you've ever seen it. But there's...
Ricky Locke (06:09.683)
I'm a bit young Glenn, but yeah, I do know. Yeah. I think I remember. Yes. True. Yes. Yeah.
Glen McCoy (06:13.618)
Age aside, you can always do it tomorrow. You get that movie out and look at it. You've, without giving anything away that will spoil it for you, you've got a woman who is locked into a belief system created by her husband. And the...
Ricky Locke (06:31.333)
Wait, hang on a minute. I might remember this because I think Glenn and hopefully I'm not going to spoil this, but my mum used to love Shirley Valentine because is this the lady that goes abroad and lives in a... Okay, cool. Go for it. Sorry. Carry on. I know who it is now. Yes.
Glen McCoy (06:40.494)
Yes. Now she got to a stage where she had to make a decision. She could either carry on and make sure her husband gets his meat and veg on a Tuesday and fish on a Friday, or she could go off into the sunset and do something completely different. It's not that she, what could I say?
fell out with her husband as such. She just had had enough of being pushed down this path. And I think it's quite a good movie. You should kind of have a look at it. And that kind of reminds me that if you're on a path and you think you can't do anything about it, well, you have to realize that that's you for the rest of your life. Nothing is going to change. And that's the way it's going to be. Or today,
you could make some changes and step out of where you are and just play with this idea, even if it's just for a couple of weeks, of doing something completely and utterly different. And do you have the courage to do that? Now, of course, we all know that if we had to do that, we were forced into doing it, we would. So it is within our choice system to make that decision. And if you've never done that before,
It's something you should consider.
Ricky Locke (08:12.115)
very powerful, Glenn. And you've reminded me this always happens when I do podcast recordings with awesome guests like yourself, where we do like the quote tennis. I'm give you a quote and then I'll quote that. Jim Rohn, you know, he always used to say, like, if you want things to change, you have to change, you know, and it's the same thing, isn't it? And making a choice there. So for people listening to this, as we wrap this up, based on your experience over the last 12 months about the positive
belief that's positively impact your life, but also about this living in a virtual world or the matrix, as we call it, and we have the belief we get to choose what we do. What's one thing do you think that people should go away and think and feel after hearing your story?
Glen McCoy (08:59.918)
about the Matrix world or about anything.
Ricky Locke (09:02.323)
Oh, I think we should go for the beliefs about, yeah, you get to choose. Yeah. So what do you think they should go away and do?
Glen McCoy (09:05.326)
Please. Okay. So the one thing, the one thing you may want to do is get into a time machine and go back to when you were five or six. And go back to your five or six year old self and try and remember what that young person was expecting to be or become as an adult.
and ask yourself the question, if you were able to do that and you were able to show that five or six year old what happened to them, would they be proud? Would they be happy? Or would they be disappointed?
Now, if it's proud and happy, you've cracked it. If it's disappointed, then part two would be what could you do today to change that disappointment so that this time next year you could go back in the time machine and say, actually, I came too early, this is who I am now, what do you think? And they're just elated.
Ricky Locke (10:15.827)
Wow, that's very powerful, isn't it? It almost speaks to the inner child in us as well. Love that. Well, Glenn, thank you so much for this lovely little bite size episode. If people want to hear more or find out more about you, where can they go to learn about Glenn McCoy?
Glen McCoy (10:32.622)
just Google Glenn McCoy and look for a Glenn McCoy writer. There's a Glenn McCoy with two N's for Glenn, who is a cartoonist in America, a successful one, and very often I get mail destined for him. So it's Glenn with one N.
Ricky Locke (10:43.187)
Not that one.
Ricky Locke (10:52.627)
Brilliant. Glenwen one end. Fantastic. Thank you, Glen, for coming on. Thank you.
Glen McCoy (10:58.862)
My pleasure, thanks, Ricky.
In this episode, Ricky interviews Alex Williams, an emotional resilience coach and registered mental health practitioner. Alex shares his personal story of overcoming trauma and discusses the epidemic of mental health in society.
They explore the importance of taking responsibility for our responses to challenges and finding meaning and purpose in life. Alex emphasizes the need for society to prioritize mental health and provides practical tips for building resilience, including focusing on the basics of sleep, nutrition, exercise, and surrounding oneself with good people.
They also discuss Alex's Three Rs framework: release your pain, take responsibility, and develop real self-belief. In this conversation, Ricky and Alex discuss strategies for overcoming setbacks and building a fulfilling life. They emphasize the importance of taking responsibility for one's own direction and adopting a resilient mindset. They also explore the idea of aligning one's life with personal values and finding happiness in the present moment. The conversation highlights the need to prioritize self-care and surround oneself with good people and good experiences.
By listening to this episode, you will UNLOCK...
Chapters
00:00 Introduction and Background
02:50 Alex's Personal Story
07:09 The Epidemic of Mental Health
13:19 Taking Responsibility for Our Responses
22:13 Finding Meaning and Purpose
27:27 The Impact of Society on Mental Health
32:47 Supporting Gen Z in Building Resilience
39:47 The Basics of Mental Wellbeing
43:33 The Three Rs Framework
45:24 The Three Rs to Getting Back Up
46:23 Building a Life that Aligns with Your Values
48:19 Listen to Yourself and Find Happiness
Patreon thanks!
Shout out to the amazing Patron supporters for keeping this podcast going; thank you Ant Howe, Jasmine Barnes, Chloe Wilmot, Sara Kay, Cheri Brenton, Steve McDermott, Chris Lovett & Rory Barnes! You are all amazing!
Come Join the UNLOCKED community where you can receive...
To be a Patron and support the podcast just head to this link or head to https://www.patreon.com/theunlockedpodcast
I can't wait for you to be a part of this journey!
Free Resources
PODCAST MERCHANDISE!!!
It's officially here! Woohoo! You can now buy your own UNLOCKED podcast notebook. The perfect addition to share your thoughts, ideas, and inspiration from the podcast.
Available here!
A new episode is out every Wednesday. So make sure you hit SUBSCRIBE so you don’t miss out on any episodes coming soon.
And, if this episode brought some value to you, or even a smile, then please leave a review or a rating. That would be amazing!
Thanks for listening, I hope you enjoy this episode and I'll join you next week for another episode of UNLOCKED!
Transcript
Ricky (00:00.206)
The World Health Organization defines health as a state of physical, mental and social well-being. There is a huge epidemic of mental health out there, and I wanted to explore this issue further from dealing with my own mental health struggles over the last couple of years, and also try and understand how can we use this information to unlock the best version of ourselves. So this week, I interviewed Alex Williams, who is an emotional resilience coach and registered mental health practitioner.
from surviving a traumatic childhood led by abuse, which marked the murder of his own mother at the age of eight. He now is helping individuals to overcome those daily obstacles and hurdles and help them to deal with what he didn't have when he was young to help them understand how they can focus on their own wellbeing. It's a fantastic episode and we really deep dive into mental health and how we can apply some basic principles to start focus on our wellbeing. Now, if you haven't subscribed already,
please hit that subscribe button and leave us a review as well. It helps this podcast get shared to more people. But without further ado, enjoy the episode with Alex Williams. Alex, good to see you, mate. Welcome to Unlocked. How you doing? Yeah, really good, Ricky. Thanks for having me today. Good to have you. And obviously this is probably world first as well because obviously this is gonna be out to the world, but some exciting news has just happened for you. Yes, yes. Had my first baby. Not me, literally.
my girlfriend did but yeah, first girl came into the world last week so she'll be seven days old, 11 48 so now one of these parents who yeah people who is describing how old their baby is by days and hours so yeah but yeah it's amazing. Nice yeah yeah. Welcome to the club my friend, welcome to the club. Your iPhone or Android phone whatever will be full of every photo of the world, every angle now of your child so yes and a little girl was it sorry? Yes a little girl called Rosie yeah.
Yeah, this could be who knows Rosie might listen to this one day in the future the very first time you did a podcast when she's born Yeah, well, you know that I was I have been thinking about I think what am I putting out into the world now that my girl Is gonna see and yeah, this might be I'll say to her one day You only seven days old when I recorded this so hopefully you've learned something from it. It's not terrible advice, but I'm sure we could make well. Well, yeah, thanks mate for coming on really interested to talk about this You know
Ricky (02:22.498)
the epidemic of mental health and how I remember as a kid, it wasn't much about this. It was just like book your ideas up son, get on with it. We don't really talk about feelings in this household. But before we dive into it, because I think we're gonna go into quite a lot, I'd love to hear just for the listeners, tell us a little bit about you and tell us a bit about your personal story. So I'm Alex Williams. I am, my background is a...
registered mental health nurse for 19 years now. But I also on the side am a speaker and emotional resilience coach. I mean, essentially, it's all the same thing. It's just I use different tags depending on different environments. I mean, yeah, my background is 19 years working in the NHS clinically, which working with people with severe and enduring mental illnesses, assessing, treating, signposting, kind of just find general support.
helping people to recover from the things that essentially knock us down in life that can affect our mental health. From a personal perspective, what I add in with my speaking and my coaching aspect more so is that I share my own trauma that I went through. When I was a kid, I grew up in a domestically abusive household. This is following my mum and dad splitting up.
My dad had an affair, so my mum fell into an abusive relationship. Witnessed a lot of domestic abuse, especially around him beating up his own children and they were kind of threats towards me and my sister, which my mum managed really well. But by the, when I was at the age of eight, I was kind of living in this household, sleeping kind of in a way you don't realise this is stuff sort of going on. Very naive. It was the middle of the morning, police burst into my bedroom.
And I, I'm going to be honest, Ricky, I was, I was, I feel for my mom because I was a nightmare when I was a kid. But I think probably in retro, when I look in hindsight, it was probably because the environment I was in, but I was, you know, I just misbehaving a lot and stuff. So I kind of was like, well, these police, they might be here, you know, because I thought police were just there to arrest bad people. I thought maybe I've done something wrong and they're here to nick me. And when they were taking me down the stairs in my pyjamas and they put me in the police car, took me to this police station.
Ricky (04:45.878)
and my sister was with me at the time. That's kind of what I thought was happening. I just had no idea what I was about to walk into. But then these police sat me down and said, um, your mum's dead, Alex. To me and my sister. And obviously I didn't know much at the time, but then a couple of days later from watching the news, I found out she'd been killed by my stepdad. So then my world kind of went from being a very, well, it wasn't normal because of the environment I was in, but.
what felt like, you know, I had a mum, I had a dad, I had grandparents, I was at school. It felt to me relatively normal, but then to be suddenly the kid who everyone else has got a mum, I haven't. And she hasn't just gone like, you know, through something not normal, but you know, like an illness or something like, she's been killed by someone, you know, who I was living with, and she was in the room next door to me. So my world kind of changed in that sense. And, but...
Speaking about, you know, mental health and like you just said about how we used to get taught to just get on with it That was kind of how I was raised immediately following that situation And you know what on the outside I grew up in an environment where I had money. I had lots of money You know, my dad was a successful lawyer He basically his way of raising us was like right I'm gonna send give you everything you need financially You know materialistically big house loads of land
stuff like that. So from the outside, it looked like almost we've fallen into a dream scenario, given what I've been through. But that kind of attitude of, well, you just need to get on with it. You know, we didn't really ever speak about it. We never spoke about what happened whenever we were, I was upset about anything. It was kind of like, you just had to get on with it, be grateful for what you do have because I've been given all this stuff. I should be happy. So really all that kind of emotion.
and grief I was experiencing, I just stuffed it all down. Stuffed it all down and in a way, I thought I was being resilient, you know? But really I was just people pleasing. I didn't want, I wasn't sharing what I was really feeling with my dad and the environment I was with because I didn't want to upset them. So I wasn't really being resilient. I was just suppressing and repressing what I was going through. But I wasn't mentally unwell, you know? I was just cracking on with life. You know, I was good at football. I messed around at school, but I wasn't in the worst situation. And I kind of...
Ricky (07:09.662)
live my life like that but I didn't really ever know what I wanted to do with my life. You know, I kind of in underneath all this, this kind of seed that I never really, this wound that I never got to look at kind of became this kind of weed within me that I wasn't aware of where I was kind of, oh I've got a murdered mum, yes I've got this stuff but I'm damaged, I can't really do anything and equally I've got a dad who I just want to impress and please him as best I can. So I kind of the that...
that light within me that kind of had this curiosity to explore and try new things in the world, kind of just dampened out. So as I got, as I left school, left sixth form, I didn't really get any good grades because I just was messing around and I didn't really know what I wanna do in my life. And I fell into mental health nursing, which it turns out was a good thing. But people asked me, Alex, why did you become a mental health nurse? Why did you get into mental health? And I was like, well, they paid me to do it and I had nothing else to lose.
you know, and it wasn't a lot of money, but it was a bursary and it was good. So I was like, wow, this is great, you know? And I thought, well, if I do fail, then it doesn't matter. You know, I've got nothing to lose. And it turns out I loved it. And I was one of these people on my three years training where you have loads of different placements and different clinical settings and environments. You learn loads of stuff, you know, about biology, the psychology, social aspects, trauma, all this stuff. And it was amazing. And I come out and I was like, oh, this is good. But.
behind all that while I was helping everyone else, you know, doing all this stuff, my kind of that unaddressed wound and wounding I had growing up was kind of still there eating away at me and I, although my life again, feel like it felt like it was going good, that kind of wound would come unraveling like romantic relationships and stuff like that where I'd never been with anyone horrible, but like when things went wrong, it was almost like my life fell apart. It was like, I just felt awful.
I just felt like I was losing my mum, I was losing my dad, all these kind of relationships I had growing up. It was kind of almost, again, I wasn't aware of this, but that was what was happening. But when I got to the age of 34, 35, I had my own house, so I was engaged. It kind of felt like I was finally achieving something. You know, I never had any aspirations in my life because of what happened to me. I believed I just couldn't ever achieve anything meaningful, so to actually feel like I was
Ricky (09:34.006)
had my own house felt like, you know, you've done something with your life, Alec, you've, you've beat your trauma. But then that all fell apart. And then I went from having a house. I went from, you know, having this amazing, well, felt like an amazing relationship, it wasn't, but you know, it felt like it was at the time, um, to absolutely nothing. And that was the final kind of tipping point for me where I suddenly was like.
it made, I felt suicidal, I was making plans to end my life. I was like, who, you know, I felt like it didn't matter because I felt like no one around me, there was no one around me really, my mum was dead, my dad's relationship with him, it was conditional on me being who he wanted me to be and you know, the person I loved at the time didn't want to be me anymore. So I was like, well, I don't feel like it don't matter, I feel like I'm unlovable on top of that because no one, none of these people around me are with me anymore and also I just felt like I wasn't good enough because I couldn't.
I wasn't achieving anything, everything I felt I had, I just felt like it was nothing. So I was like, what's the point? I don't want to do this anymore. I don't want to be here anymore. But I mean, I don't believe, it's hard because it feels like one of these light bulb moments to me, but around the time, and this coincided with the work I was doing in mental health and leads me to do a lot of what I do now, is that at the time I was seeing so many people who were going through
awful things and you could kind of predict who was going to have a mental health challenge because of what was going on around them. So it wasn't like there was they with a problem, it's just like all this stuff's happened to them so of course you're going to feel awful about life, you're going to feel awful about yourself. But I was like wondering like well, what if we were taught how to respond to these things growing up, you know, education isn't the best, we know it can improve but there are good things about education but one thing we don't really teach is resilience, we don't teach...
how to get back up when life knocks us down. We literally get told, we go to school, we do our best if we get a bad grade, we kind of get put in a lower set of academic ability, and we start internalized. No one goes, oh, by the way, you might better go up. They kind of go, well, that's who you are, and this is what you're gonna be, and this is all you're gonna achieve, kind of, you know, not directly, but that's kind of often the message, especially when I was at school, what we got told. So I remember thinking, well, what if we could teach people how to do this?
Ricky (11:55.714)
how to approach, what does it really take to keep it really simple? But how can we overcome these setbacks? So that was already going on in my mind at the time I was really feeling low. And I didn't want to go down the traditional mental health route. Because as much as I think it gets a bad rep mental health services, it isn't like it's often portrayed in media. I equally knew that I wasn't going to get...
In this episode, Louise Miller, the productivity mentor, discusses her unique perspective on productivity and how it should be about creating space rather than cramming in more tasks. She emphasizes the importance of rest and taking breaks, challenging the notion that productivity is solely about doing more in less time. Louise also highlights the need to align productivity with personal values and regularly pause to reflect on goals and priorities. By slowing down and making intentional choices, individuals can achieve greater focus and fulfillment in their work.
Takeaways
Chapters
00:00 Introduction and Background
01:07 Controversial Idea on Productivity
02:56 Creating Space Instead of Cramming
06:13 The Power of the Pause
08:59 Balancing Productivity and Values
12:09 Reflecting on Productivity
Find out more about Louise Miller and her work with productivity at
https://www.bettylouonline.com/
Patreon thanks!
Shout out to the amazing Patron supporters for keeping this podcast going; thank you Ant Howe, Jasmine Barnes, Chloe Wilmot, Cheri Brenton, Steve McDermott, Rory Barnes! You are all amazing!
Come Join the UNLOCKED community where you can receive...
To be a Patron and support the podcast just head to this link or head to https://www.patreon.com/theunlockedpodcast
I can't wait for you to be a part of this journey!
Free Resources
PODCAST MERCHANDISE!!!
It's officially here! Woohoo! You can now buy your own UNLOCKED podcast notebook. The perfect addition to share your thoughts, ideas, and inspiration from the podcast.
Available here!
A new episode is out every Wednesday. So make sure you hit SUBSCRIBE so you don’t miss out on any episodes coming soon.
And, if this episode brought some value to you, or even a smile, then please leave a review or a rating. That would be amazing!
Thanks for listening, I hope you enjoy this episode and I'll join you next week for another episode of UNLOCKED!
Transcript
Ricky Locke (00:01.438)
Welcome to the Unlocked podcast in our mini series where I dive deep into the diary of a CEO conversation cards. And today, a very special guest. I have the wonderful Louise Miller. Hello, Louise.
Louise Miller - the genie for your genius (00:13.838)
Thank you for having me.
Ricky Locke (00:17.088)
Oh, my pleasure, my pleasure. I'm looking forward to this Louise. And I know that we were just discussing this just before recording about how excited we are about the unknown and the uncertainty of this. So looking forward to this. But first, if there's anyone that's listening who hasn't heard of you, who are you and what is it that you do?
Louise Miller - the genie for your genius (00:32.91)
So I'm Louise Miller, I am the genie for your genius. I'm a productivity mentor, founder of Make It Happen Club. I help solo business owners who have too many ideas and not enough time to stop faffing, stay focused, get the important things done and see tangible progress in their business. So yeah, that's me and what I do.
Ricky Locke (00:52.096)
probably do with your help actually to be honest after our conversation this morning when I said all these ideas in my head I need to overwhelm you're probably thinking yeah he's a perfect person for me we'll probably chat offline after this but anyway are you ready for your question?
Louise Miller - the genie for your genius (00:53.518)
I'm going to go to bed.
Louise Miller - the genie for your genius (01:00.526)
Yeah.
Louise Miller - the genie for your genius (01:05.422)
I'm ready, bring it on.
Ricky Locke (01:07.616)
OK, so my question I picked out for you is this. What is the most controversial idea that you believe that within your industry, most people disagree with?
Louise Miller - the genie for your genius (01:22.35)
or that most people disagree with. There's a count. So if we think about my industry and my world being the land of productivity, and I hate that word, which in itself is an interesting thing. I think my take on productivity, I don't know whether it's controversial, but it's certainly countercultural, which is that productivity,
Ricky Locke (01:22.848)
Controversial.
Ricky Locke (01:28.19)
Yes.
Ricky Locke (01:48.384)
Okay.
Louise Miller - the genie for your genius (01:52.812)
productivity's sake is a bad thing and that it should be about creating space rather than cramming in more and more doing and that one of the best things we can do for our productivity is actually to rest and that rest does not mean you're lazy. So I don't know whether that's necessarily controversial because I know a lot of people will agree with that in principle and will understand it in their heads but when it comes to actually doing it...
not so much. Does that strike you as a controversial thing? Has that answered the question?
Ricky Locke (02:27.776)
No, I, well, I totally get it, totally get it. Cause there's that whole thing about, I'm going be really productive today and I'm going to smash through my emails. But you know that once you get through your emails, you get more emails coming back in because people respond and you think, so it is kind of productive really, isn't it? It doesn't really make sense because you think I'm going to get, like you just said, I'm going do more and more and more stuff. It doesn't make anything. But I love this idea of what you mentioned about creating more space. So tell us a little bit more about that and what that kind of means really.
Louise Miller - the genie for your genius (02:56.046)
Yeah, so I think if you asked anyone to define productivity, they would say it's about doing more in less time. And I don't like that. And it immediately makes me get into panic mode because it feels like you're setting yourself up in opposition to or in battle with time. And you're never going to win that one because time's going to keep on turning. So yeah, that whole thing just makes me go, no, constricted don't like it. So.
Ricky Locke (03:17.674)
Yeah.
Louise Miller - the genie for your genius (03:25.422)
And that for me made me ill when I was looking at productivity that way. I spent 15 years of my working life before I started my business running around like headless chicken, rushing about, trying to do all the things. The more I did, the more people gave me to do, going back to what you were saying about emails. If you're good at what you do and you get it done quick, they don't tell you to go home and have a rest. They give you more. So that was kind of my experience. And that led to me burning out and getting ill, being signed off sick by my GP, which is
Ricky Locke (03:41.472)
Yeah.
Ricky Locke (03:47.328)
Yes, yeah.
Louise Miller - the genie for your genius (03:54.818)
you know, in hindsight was a good thing because that's how I've come to be doing what I'm doing now. So when I did start doing what I do now, I had a bit of an existential crisis because I was like, how can I help people be productive? Because I know that's what I'm really good at when I don't like the idea of being productive, because that's what made me ill. So that I really have to dig deep and reframe productivity for myself and for the people I want to work with to make sure that I am able to support them.
Ricky Locke (04:13.596)
Yeah.
Louise Miller - the genie for your genius (04:23.31)
and help them get stuff done so that they can make the impact they want to make, but without it feeding into this narrative that your productivity is anything to do with your self -worth. So whenever I give a talk or anything like that, I always start by reframing productivity as being it is about doing what is important as efficiently as you can in order to create space for the life that you love. So you're getting things done not to do more doing, but to go and live your life and enjoy the life you're living now.
Ricky Locke (04:49.856)
Mmm.
Louise Miller - the genie for your genius (04:52.152)
rather than wait until you get to some mystical magical destination before you allow yourself to enjoy yourself. So yes, that kind of underpins everything that I do.
Ricky Locke (04:58.366)
Mm. Oh, I ain't.
Ricky Locke (05:02.752)
That's really interesting because I've been looking into some of this recently with so I'm a big fan of Oliver Bergman's model of the 4000 week model. And he had a course, I think, on BBC Maestro. I might have seen a while ago. And he talks about the idea of intentions and stuff like that. And it just seems that the world is rapidly busy, busy, busy, busy, isn't it? You know, I think about my day, there is moments in my day where it's like I plough through the emails to that and then.
I'll quickly shiny magpie thing. Oh, quick. Go through Instagram, scroll through Instagram. And then just find that my day, even though like I'll say, I block out in my calendar and I call it deep work. Right. So like nine to 11, like to focus on like the big one thing, you know, I'm a big fan of Gary Keller, the one thing, the one thing that, um, you know, what is one thing I can do such as by doing it, everything else becomes easier and necessary. But I just didn't find like, even though I've got those blocks of free.
They get taken up and you get to the end of the day thinking, well, I plan myself a day here to focus on some really good stuff, but it didn't happen. What happened? So I don't understand, like, why does this happen? Like, we just need to be more focused. What is this top tip to, like, be super productive and, like you said, focus on the things that are important.
Louise Miller - the genie for your genius (06:13.934)
Yeah, I think the biggest tip is to slow down and to take a pause and allow yourself that pause so you're not immediately stopping one thing and starting something else because I think that's when we end up not being intentional because we're just jumping from one thing to the next and we haven't stopped to consider, okay, I've got an hour, what am I going to do with this hour? Getting really clear on what it is that you're going to do and if you can, I mean, it doesn't need to take very long, but link it back to what your vision is and what you're trying to accomplish and...
this doing this thing is going to help me move forward because, you know, try and find this bigger attachment to why that thing is important. And I think if you can do that, that will help you stay focused on what you're doing. In really practical terms, I had a client once who literally she would decide what she was going to do. And she'd write that on a post it and put it on a laptop or in front on the wall in front of her. So if she ever felt her mind kind of going over here, she could see she had a visual reminder of this is what I'm supposed to be doing. Yeah. And it would pull her back on track. So there's lots of things you can do, but
Ricky Locke (07:06.004)
Physically, yeah, physically, yeah.
Louise Miller - the genie for your genius (07:13.102)
I often talk about mindfulness in the same sentence as productivity, because I think the two things are very connected. It's just about being, taking the pause, making a choice about what you want to do, understanding why that thing is important, focusing as best you can. And if you feel your mind wandering, just as if you're meditating, feel your mind wandering, it's going to happen. Pull yourself back. And the more you practice, the quicker that gets.
Ricky Locke (07:35.264)
Hmm. I like that. So I guess in the same way then, yeah, so with productivity there's bound to be things that's going to confuse you, shiny magpie things, notifications, but that's okay. But it's just practicing going back to what's important. I love that. Yeah. And I love the whole post -it note. There was a phrase I used to use. I used it massively last year. A great NLP phrase, which is, is this action going to produce the outcome I'm looking for? If the answer is no, then stop doing it. You know,
So there was loads of things. So I actually pause the podcast for a year because I was like, Oh, you know, I've got my daughter to look after. She, she was one at the time. And there's loads of things I'm working on, you know, multiple strands. And it's like, Hmm, okay. Is this going to produce the outcome I'm looking for? And the answer at the time was no, it wasn't. But I've since come back to that. Cause I'm like, actually, yeah, you know, these are stories, they create content for speaking on the stage or a book one day, but also it fits the line. The values of fun.
So I'd love to ask you this question, Louise, about how can we balance productivity but still be aligned with obviously what's important around our values? Because I see so many people out there that just getting lost off the path, doing so many different things, overwhelming, burning out and not losing the losing sight of what was really important. The first part of, you know, I started this business to be fun. It's not fun anymore. So how do we how do we solve that?
Louise Miller - the genie for your genius (08:59.598)
Oh, God, magic one time. So, are you going to hate me for this? But it all comes back to the pause. I think the pause is the most important part of productivity. And we can't just do it once, we need to do it over and over again. So, well, obviously, the very first thing is to know what your values are, you need to take that step back first and understand why you started your business, what your values are, what you're trying to achieve. And to an extent, how you're going to achieve that, but that in a way is secondary.
Ricky Locke (09:01.28)
Ha.
Louise Miller - the genie for your genius (09:29.294)
But if you do that once in January, and then you don't think about it again until September, chances are you will have gone off on a wonk. And you will have found yourself doing things that don't feel good. So we need, that's why we make it happen. We need to pause every single month and go back to that first principles thing of, you what are my values? What am I trying to achieve? And if you do that often enough, it's much more difficult to find yourself suddenly way over here when you thought you were going over there. So I'm waving my arms around, that's not helpful.
Ricky Locke (09:38.738)
Yeah, I love that.
Louise Miller - the genie for your genius (09:59.118)
But you know what, I mean. Yeah.
Ricky Locke (09:59.616)
I just, I just tickled me there. Sorry. One, one convention on the podcast, but yeah, I've been on many wonks on this in these last couple of years in my business. I love that. So just to reprise what you said there. So to be like super productive, the power of the pause, realigning the value. So probably maybe I'm assuming that not just like you said, do it in January, but maybe every quarter or every couple of months just.
Louise Miller - the genie for your genius (10:05.646)
Hahaha!
Ricky Locke (10:28.628)
Let's go back to what was really important so you don't lose sight and go off on that wonk. Because I've done that before January super focused for this year. This is what I'm going to do. And then you get to like December. You think, oh, yeah, he is gone now. But I didn't do what I was set out to do. So making sure probably put blocks in my calendar. So right, quick pause. Let's review stuff. Anything else might add.
Louise Miller - the genie for your genius (10:48.59)
Yeah. I think the other thing that I know a lot of people find difficult, and you might relate to this as well as somebody with a very busy ideas, heavy brain, is the choice. So in the progress cycle, which I haven't got time to go into now, but the first three parts are pause, reflect, choose. So you take the pause, you reflect on your values and all that good stuff, and then you need to make a choice. And I think creative people find that really hard because it feels like choosing a favorite child sometimes. How do I pick which one of these ideas to run with?
Ricky Locke (11:17.408)
Yeah.
Louise Miller - the genie for your genius (11:19.086)
But I think letting go of the idea that there's a right or a wrong choice, letting go
In this conversation, David Thomas shares his inspirational story of overcoming a difficult upbringing and finding success in memory competitions and personal growth. He discusses the drive and ambition that has propelled him to achieve exceptional feats, and the importance of surrounding oneself with ambitious people.
David Thomas emphasizes the need for self-validation and the understanding that external validation is often fleeting. He also explores the competitive nature of life and the satisfaction of achieving the impossible. Overall, the conversation highlights the importance of personal growth and striving to be the best version of oneself.
In this conversation, David shares his insights on various topics, including being a people pleaser, embracing change, respecting others' choices, legacy and impact, teaching and sharing knowledge, the pursuit of comfort, presentation skills for CEOs, advice to his 16-year-old self, and relationship advice. He emphasizes the importance of being there for others and having a wide perspective on life. David also discusses the impact of his work in helping individuals improve their presentation skills and make a greater impact in their professional lives. He concludes by sharing his thoughts on the significance of relationships and personal growth.
Takeaways00:00 Teaser and why you should listen
02:27 Introduction and David Thomas' Achievements
03:55 The Perception of Achievements
04:52 David Thomas' Difficult Upbringing
05:50 Becoming a Firefighter
06:50 Discovering Memory Techniques
07:24 Competing in Memory Championships
10:32 The Drive for Personal Growth
11:32 The Rapid Improvement of Memory Skills
12:57 The Best Version of Yourself
13:57 Accepting Responsibility
15:54 The Drive and Ambition
16:52 The Competitive Nature of Life
18:43 The Challenges of the 40s
19:41The Impact of Hormones on Ambition
21:38 The Importance of Stress and Jeopardy
23:02 The Drive to Be Exceptional
24:36 The Best Version of Yourself
26:42 The Satisfaction of Achieving the Impossible
28:49 The Competitive Nature of Life
31:08 The Drive for Personal Growth
32:47 The Importance of Surrounding Yourself with Ambitious People
36:01 The Importance of Self-Care and Self-Validation
38:54 The Lack of External Validation
41:27 The Three Types of People
47:10 Adapting to Different Types of People
47:37 Being a People Pleaser
48:34 Embracing Change
49:17 Respecting Others' Choices
51:54 Legacy and Impact
49:16 Teaching and Sharing Knowledge
51:14 The Pursuit of Comfort
53:39 Presentation Skills for CEOs
55:43 Message to 16-Year-Old Self
01:00:03 Relationship Advice
01:01:09 Where to Find More Information
Find out more about David's work at https://www.creatingpresentationrockstars.com/about
Patreon thanks!
Shout out to the amazing Patron supporters for keeping this podcast going; thank you Ant Howe, Chloe Wilmot, Cheri Brenton, Steve McDermott, Chris Lovett & Rory Barnes! You are all amazing!
Come Join the UNLOCKED community where you can receive...
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Free Resources
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Available here!
A new episode is out every Wednesday. So make sure you hit SUBSCRIBE so you don’t miss out on any episodes coming soon.
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Thanks for listening, I hope you enjoy this episode and I'll join you next week for another episode of UNLOCKED!
Transcript
Ricky (00:03.13)
Welcome to the show, David Thomas. How are you? I'm alright mate. Everything's cooking on gas, as we say up north. That's what we like. That's what we like. Now, David, I know we've had like a pre chat just before we press record it, but I'm going to read this out. I've got some amazing achievements. I've done my research on and this is incredible before we get into the actual talk. But if I've got this correct, David, world memory championship medalist, international grandmaster of memory.
Guinness memory record breaker for reciting pie to 22 and a half thousand digits. I think I was back in 1998. World memory holder for memorizing reciting 100 packs of individually shuffled packs of playing cards. US memory record breaker for memorizing 160 digits in five minutes. And US memory champion in 2007. And obviously, quite recently as well, you've also become a competitive bodybuilder as well. That is an incredible.
set of achievements there, David. I'm absolutely amazed into that. That's incredible. Well, now you mentioned it. Yeah, I am. I can't deny. Love it. Well, I'm quite interested, yeah. But it is quite interesting because I think when you do things, when you experience things, or when you have these amazing achievements, I mean, and everybody does, right? Everybody has some amazing achievements. When you do them, you don't always see them as amazing
We always look at other people who do things like, you're a professional magician, you could do magic. And I'd be like, that's bloody brilliant. And you'd be like, no, dude, it's not that difficult. And then I go, all right, okay, maybe it isn't hard. But at the same time, we tend to have that mysticism that goes around things that we don't know or understand. And yet in reality, when we do it, we always pass it off a bit quick as...
is not being great. And yet, you know, I have done some good stuff, yeah. Yeah, absolutely. You've got an inspiring story I'd love to hear. So obviously in the intro that's been a part of the top list about what you actually do, I'd love to dive into your inspirational story because obviously we have a mutual friend in Steve McDonough and as I said to you on the pre-chat, I feel like I know you because obviously Steve shares your story. It's a wonderful story. So would you mind sharing, David, a little bit about obviously what it is you do,
Ricky (02:25.862)
your inspirational story? Well, my background was a bit difficult growing up. I had a very tricky upbringing at the hands of an alcoholic mother and a physically abusive stepfather. My stepfather was 65 when I was six and my mother used to do crazy stuff in the house and things that I wouldn't, you know, it's all out there, but it was, kind of think the worst of the worst and that's what my mother used to do to me when she was drunk. And that just led to a very difficult
kind of 10 year period, 12 year period between the age of four and 16. By which time I went off the rails and I started committing petty crime. I've got police caution, attempted suicide twice. I nearly killed a police officer one night coming out of a shop at three o'clock in the morning in Leeds. I got expelled from school and I got a criminal conviction. So at 16, my life was kind of down the toilet and the only job I could get was working in a factory, pound an hour, packing Christmas gifts into boxes.
but I wasn't gonna go on the rock and roll on the dole as they said it back in the day. And I got myself a job and I did that, then became a firefighter. And really becoming a firefighter was probably the most significant thing that happened because at the age of 20, I was in a mess. I was drinking very heavily. I wasn't alcoholic, but I was spending more on alcohol than I was on food, living on my own in a tiny bed set. And then all of a sudden I applied to become a firefighter. And...
only one in 40 got in back in the day and straight away I'm in the top two and a half percent and all my mates were brickers, sparkers, plasterers, working class manual guys and I'm a firefighter and it's like Dave's a fireman this is great and I got I had respect from other people but I also got a certain level of self-respect and that was utterly transformational and that
that made me get my act together.
Ricky (04:25.59)
Brilliant. Yeah. And then from that, obviously point, you met you saw something on TV that changed your life. I did. I was watching TV and there was a terrible show on with Philip Schofield talking telephone numbers. And the bottom line is, if they could register, sorry, if they would, they would, they would.
You see a memory guy, I can't remember the word. Generate, generates the word, right? So they would generate digits. And if they appear, if live TV shows, they could, and if those numbers appeared in your telephone number, then you could phone up and win 20 grand. And I'm like, well, fine, I need the money, right? So I'm sat there and a guy came on and one of the things he did was memorize a pack of playing cards and then got tested. And this was live. And so he got three minutes to memorize the cards and then they placed them up on the board.
And then he got tested 10 times. And so they say, what's card number three? And he goes, Jack of clubs. And he goes, where's the four of hearts? And he goes, card number 42. And you've done magic. And to me, this was magical. I'm like, how is he doing that? Because that's 104 pieces of information, right? And you know, with a card and a suit, and also the order, and also, you know, both the, you know, where they are and so on. And it all just was too much. But then-
I was in Waterstones in Leeds a few months later, walked in and I said to the guy behind the counter, I said, have you got any books on memory? And they went, yeah, because I thought it might be good for exams because I was failing my exams in the fire service. I went to bought his book and found out I could do it. Is this Dominic O'Brien's book? Yes. Yeah. Great. Yeah. So what's really weird is Dominic was the guy I saw on TV. It was his book that I bought.
And then eight months later, I went to the World Memory Championships and competed against him. And that was a real, you know, just where the hairs come up on the back of your neck moment. Because I'd be, I was, it's very difficult. It sounds all really kind of Hollywood cliche, but trust me, I was sat in a bed set in Halifax, mold on the walls. I couldn't get anywhere else. You know, I was a firefighter. I loved my job. And, but I didn't, I didn't even have a car. I had no money. I was...
Ricky (06:42.73)
And then I'm just watching TV. And then all of a sudden, you know, eight months later, I turn up to Simpson's in the strand, one of the greatest tea rooms in London. I go to this room where they used to hold world chess championship matches a hundred years before. And I go, and I go the day before the competition, just to check it out. I go to the, you know, to the glass door, look through the window and there's, and there's Dominic, the guy I'd seen on the TV.
and he's kind of got his head in his hands and he sat there concentrating, there's nobody else in the whole room. And I walked through the door and I'm like stuttering, you know, and I'm like, oh, you don't know me, my name's David, I saw you on TV. And he was just the most amazing guy and we became great friends and even went in 2014 to Iran to spend two days speaking at a conference together.
Ricky (07:37.599)
How life goes. How life changes. Yeah. Yeah, because obviously big fans of the Tony Buzan and the mind mapping and Dominic O'Brien is the, I think he gives the forward in the mind mapping book. But yeah, so obviously you, eight months later, you've gone from that position. What led you to even to get into this? I know a lot of people ask you why, especially within your pie, the 22 and a half thousand digits thing. But why did you decide to just go into that from obviously where you were?
I bought the book because I wanted to learn how to pass my exams. And then once I realized how easy it was to do the memory stuff, once you had a great process and technique and that really it had nothing to do with intellect, intelligence, education, background, socioeconomic factors, none of that, it literally was just a process. And I was like, I could do it. And then it was like, well, maybe I could do it a bit better. What else is in this book?
And then he said, you can memorize a pack of playing cards. And I'm like, okay, I saw him do that on TV, but that's probably gonna be a bit beyond him. But let me have a go and see if he can do it. And then once I did it with a bit of practice, I could. And of course, I mean, I go to the gym, I am a competitive bodybuilder now. I can only lift what I can lift. And I can't go again in two hours and lift it all again, two hours and lift it all again, lift two, and then lift, I can't keep doing that. You know, there's a limit. And so we are preconditioned to incremental progress. You know, you go and start a job and you know, you get.
5% pay rise or a 10% pay rise or no pay rise. But basically you move forward a step at a time. But when it comes to improving the brain and improving the, doing memory techniques, you can have exponential improvement. So, you know, I can go from being able to remember a list of 10 objects to like 50 to 100 in a matter of a few days. I could go from getting a pack of cars and being able to remember one suit, which is what I did. I thought I'd take out one suit.
just clubs and memorize those 13, see if I can do it, to be able to do two, three, and then a full pack in days. And then you go from one pack. So I went from being able to not memorize anything to eight months later going to the world member championships and being able to memorize 14 packs of cards in an hour. And you just go, it's incredible. And so what, so the question is why? And...
Ricky (10:02.338)
I suppose what I understand now looking back, and this isn't just hindsight, I've always wanted to be the best version of myself, 100%, and I enjoy personal growth. So whilst it was fun being able to tell other people I could do this stuff, it's how I felt about myself that was key. So a mate of mine pointed out the difference. Some people are internally referenced and some people are externally referenced. Most speakers are externally referenced. What they do is they stand up on stage,
because they want people to laugh at their jokes and clap them off and then come up and say they were amazing. And I'm not interested in any of that. I'm just interested in how I grow personally. I wanna be able to do things today that I couldn't do yesterday. I want to learn something new every single day that makes me a better version of myself. And that doesn't make me better than anybody else. It just makes me wired for growth. And every time I've had some success, the day after it's like it never happened. So that's a downside of ambition.
Ambition is a double-edged sword. It drives you on and you achieve great things. And for a guy with my background who had no money, no investors, no shareholders, no family help, no team to work with, no peer group, no mastermind group, no networking, before the internet, no Facebook group, to go out there and then start speaking on major stages, competing in memory competitions, doing all the other stuff I've done, is genuinely extraordinary, but it was driven by
the fact that I just like to do things that are hard and with a bit of jeopardy, I like it where something might fail because that's what makes my bits tingle. And then, you know, be able to come out at the end of it, a better version of myself and go, I could do that. And so the downside is, is that I'm always looking to the next goal. I don't have much of a rear view mirror, which is good because of my childhood. People say you've done well considering your childhood. And...
In this episode, guest host Steve McDermott celebrates the 100th episode of the Unlocked Podcast with regular host Ricky Locke. They discuss advice for young people entering the world, the importance of living life according to your values, and the role of parenting and being a role model. They also share tips for handling discipline challenges and prioritizing mental and physical health. The conversation concludes with a discussion on the best books and quotes that have influenced their lives.
Takeaways
-Live life according to your values and do what makes you happy.
-Be a role model for your children and lead by example.
-Validate your child's feelings and understand their perspective.
-Prioritize your mental and physical health to be the best version of yourself.
Chapters
00:17 Introduction and Celebrating 100 Episodes
01:17 Advice for Young People Going Out into the World
03:49 Parenting and Being a Role Model
07:23 Discipline Challenges and Validating Feelings
11:53Advice for Mental and Physical Health
18:20 Best Book or Idea of the Year
23:45 Favorite Quotes
24:23 Conclusion and Farewell
Patreon thanks!
Shout out to the amazing Patron supporters for keeping this podcast going; thank you Ant Howe, Chloe Wilmot, Cheri Brenton, Steve McDermott and Rory Barnes! You are all amazing!
Come Join the UNLOCKED community where you can receive...
To be a Patron and support the podcast just head to this link or head to https://www.patreon.com/theunlockedpodcast
I can't wait for you to be a part of this journey!
Free Resources
PODCAST MERCHANDISE!!!
It's officially here! Woohoo! You can now buy your own UNLOCKED podcast notebook. The perfect addition to share your thoughts, ideas, and inspiration from the podcast.
Available here!
A new episode is out every Wednesday. So make sure you hit SUBSCRIBE so you don’t miss out on any episodes coming soon.
And, if this episode brought some value to you, or even a smile, then please leave a review or a rating. That would be amazing!
Thanks for listening, I hope you enjoy this episode and I'll join you next week for another episode of UNLOCKED!
steve (00:01.843)
Hello and welcome to the Unlocked Podcast. Now you might have noticed this isn't Ricky Lock's voice. I'm the guest host, Steve McDermott, maybe more about me in a minute. And I've been invited in just for this one episode because we're celebrating 100 episodes of Unlocked, a podcast that helps you be the best version of yourself. And I'm very excited because I've got a very special guest who's in point of fact, the normal host of this podcast, Mr. Ricky Lock. Hello, Ricky.
Ricky Locke (00:30.006)
Weee! Hello mate, how's it going? This is quite cool, isn't it? A bit different.
steve (00:31.091)
Whoo good this is show other four isn't it? Yeah so what I like about podcasts right is to dive straight into the meat of it right so I'm just going to ask you a question because you're my guest right off the bat and it's at the front of my mind young person going out into the world for the first time so I don't know 16 maybe 18 what one bit of advice would you give them?
Ricky Locke (00:36.869)
Yeah, yeah, it's quite nice to sit here. Yeah, nice.
Ricky Locke (01:00.906)
Wow. Okay. That's a very good loaded question from the beginning, Steve. That's good. Okay. Wow. Let's get to me. Okay. So 16. So now putting my dad head on now, right. Thinking about Alma when she's older, right. Biggest thing piece of advice I think is to, I'm allowed to swear on my own podcast episode. Okay. We can do that. Yeah. I believe that because of what I've learned in and the last couple of years of doing these episodes,
steve (01:05.264)
innit? Let's get to the meat!
steve (01:11.666)
Yeah.
steve (01:20.123)
I don't think you can bleep it later.
Ricky Locke (01:30.274)
Fundamentally, this is all about living life to your values and just doing whatever fills your cup and not. And we'll talk about this probably a little bit later on, you know, the whole treading eggshells thing, as I mentioned. But this is all about fundamentally. Fuck everything. Look at what you know, everything else we know, but I'll bleep that out. But this is just about fundamentally understanding that to be the best version yourself, you've just got to go out there and live your life to your values.
not dictated by anyone else, not dictated by what we see society norms and all that, but fundamentally what makes you happy and doing the things that fill you with joy and fills your cup. Because I just believe that for so long, especially in my life as well from a lot of these episodes, that life is dictated by society, dictated by what we believe, which we know in what the work we do. Often it's not true. And actually you can just waste and coast so much of your life.
worrying about things that aren't in control and doing the things that just don't make you happy. So why would you wanna do that? It's very easy said to do it, then it's easy to say that than doing it.
steve (02:34.175)
Yeah. Okay, I think I totally agree. My switch on it being a little bit older than you will be that most 16 year olds, including me, have no clue what gives them joy and what the values are. And your values change. But I think it's like having that in your mind and saying you might need to go out there and try out a load of stuff. So if you're asking me that question, if I say 16 year old, go look, you won't have a clue. You might think it's this that you want to do.
Ricky Locke (02:47.298)
Yeah, true, true. Yeah, true.
Ricky Locke (03:01.535)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
steve (03:04.147)
might be chasing the car, the status, the whatever. You know this, if you've ever spoken in a school rickety right and there's a load again 16 year olds the only question they want to know is how much money do you earn? Comes up right they go well you know that's you got a fake mortgage but that's the kind of really low down on my thing so it's good advice i agree right so first question right and it ties in with the next one because what's in on my mind right now depending on when this podcast goes out
Ricky Locke (03:09.442)
Mmm.
Ricky Locke (03:15.253)
Yeah, that's it. Yeah, yeah. Yeah.
steve (03:32.731)
But as it's been recorded, we're two weeks away from my first grandchild.
Ricky Locke (03:39.146)
Oh, yeah. Yeah, of course. I thought you'd say two weeks away from my birthday. But yeah, that's important as well. Isn't it? Yeah.
steve (03:41.263)
And people, well, you know, so it might, you know, and it's interesting, a good friend of mine asked me, he said, I've been to see how you feel when your grandchild's born compared to how you felt when your three kids were born. That in itself is interesting. But the thing I was also reflecting on was, how, what advice would I give to my grandchild that I didn't give to my kids, right? So my next question is, how old's Alma now?
Ricky Locke (04:08.802)
She's two and three months or no, two and two months. Yeah.
steve (04:12.087)
Yeah, I don't know because I saw the little video on Instagram when you took a little adventure and you went to Bruce on your staff And he said that was it. I think he said the word fascinating, which is of course one of our favorite words in it, right? um, but knowing what you know now What would be your top tip to a? a parent What you believe makes a great parent and be a grandparent
Ricky Locke (04:18.438)
Oh yeah, yes, that's right, yeah.
Ricky Locke (04:24.141)
It was, yeah, yeah.
Ricky Locke (04:34.412)
Yeah.
Ricky Locke (04:40.206)
Oh, interesting, isn't it? Yeah. Okay. So let's go for that first one then for the parent thing. So for a lot of my studies in this personal development world and what we do, I've come to believe now through, I think just becoming a parent as you do, the question I often ask myself is what lessons am I teaching Alma? So whatever I do now, the thread that just runs through everything, if it's a piece of work that comes in, you know, one of our values is fun, right? We like working with fun people. If something comes in into the business and it's like, that doesn't
feel like it's really fun, you know, I don't want to do that. And I wouldn't want Alma to like go off and do things. It doesn't make her happy, you know, fill a cup and all that sort of thing. But I've now come to this point where it's like, okay, so if everything is Fred is that is what lessons am I teaching my daughter? The advice for me is like to be a role model. I'm a parent now. I've got to be a role model. So I can't expect her to do any of these things if I'm not doing it myself. So I'm now starting to really practice, you know, be my own preacher and practice what I preach.
you know, being a bit more honest, you know, my whole life as a kid, I was taught to say, yes, freebacks for we don't challenge stuff, Ricky, you know, just walk on eggshells. And it's just it just doesn't work. You know, it causes pain, anxiety, and all these sort of things. And when you then start self reflecting, go, God, the pain that I felt in my life, I don't want that on her. So the best tip I'd say about parenting is obviously, it's about role model, everything that you do now is asking yourself that question is what lesson am I teaching my kid or my child?
You know, yeah, when I'm not losing my shit. Yeah.
steve (06:08.763)
Okay, give me a specific, right? Because we've had this conversation off my phone, which is, that's great, isn't it? When they're behaving. Whatever behaving looks like, right? And we've got to be careful with labels, you know, terrible twos and all that, and you know, terrible teenagers, trust me, my mind all grown up, there's not a real age when there isn't some challenge, right? But let's get really specific, so we might have some young parents listening to this. And as I said, my...
Ricky Locke (06:36.632)
Yeah.
steve (06:37.019)
my son and his partner Danny about to have their first grandchild, going against the convention at the moment, which is to know the sex in advance. They've gone all school, so we don't know if it's going to be a boy or a girl. And there's some labels there as well, in there, between boys and girls that we've got to be careful as parents, right? So when I was a parent first time round, the number one thing, because it was what was taught on the telly really was if the kids were messing about, you put them on the naughty step. Right.
Ricky Locke (06:40.051)
Yeah.
Ricky Locke (06:46.75)
Ah, nice, cool. Yeah.
Ricky Locke (07:04.374)
Oh yeah, oh yeah, yeah.
steve (07:05.895)
From my three, I will remember Megan on the top step, Philip middle, Tom on bottom. I'm assuming that we've moved on from that. So let's say it's not normally Monday's yours is daddy daycare, innit? So say what's the worst? Well, give us a real example of one time recently when Alma can have maybe got out, what was your parenting thing for dealing with discipline challenges while still being a role model, right?
Ricky Locke (07:18.31)
Yeah, yeah, Monday Fun Day.
Ricky Locke (07:27.919)
What? And daddy, yeah. Well, when daddy lost his shit. Yeah. So, so baboon mode, right? It's very hard, right? As, as parenting firstly, right? It's definitely challenging, but it's fun as well. It's very magical as well. So to Tom, you know, you know, good luck, mate. It's going to be fantastic. Wonderful. Right. What I've come to realize is that,
Alma and, and obviously as she has Tom will now start to understand and yours having a grandchild, they, the children haven't developed the logical part of that brain, that left kind of side of thinking. And it's just baboon mode, freeze, fight, flight. So quite often where I have lost my shit recently, where Alma's in this mode now, toddler throwing stuff, chucking stuff everywhere, but she doesn't sit there and go, daddy, I'm going to really piss you off right now and chuck things at the telly to make you angry. Cause I just want to.
No, it's just like, hey, I'm just in baboon mode. Like I want to have fun. Let's explore, but boom, wow, you know, out of the cage. And she hasn't understood that. Okay. That's daddy's very expensive television. I should not throw things at that. She doesn't understand that. So what you have to realize is like, okay, let's just, you know, take a step back there. Great book here. You might want to read this as well. So you're probably Tom as well. Recommendation out here is called, there's no such thing as naughty. Fantastic book. And the first thing she teaches you is the SNOT principle. SNOT, S-N-O-T.
steve (08:49.343)
Okay.
Ricky Locke (08:50.818)
which means it's not about you. They are going for like massive feelings, huge feelings, and it's very, very important. So as a kid, it'd be like, Ricky, pack it in now, stop it now, get that bloody naughty step right. But actually it's about validating the feelings then understanding what they're actually going through and trying to be a little bit less hard on them. But I have done, Steve, I've had to take Alma onto a timeout. I did do the naughty step and I roared my eyes out after because I was like, what the hell have I done? I've upset my child.
steve (09:17.287)
Ahahaha
Ricky Locke (09:19.822)
But what happened was, um, you know, she was throwing stuff and I told her, you know, in a really calm voice, Alma, those toys are for playing with, not for throwing. And then she goes, and starts it again. I'm like, I'm fucking pissed off now. You know, one more time, you know, Alma, I told that he's told you, you know, and one more time. So I said, well, okay, we're going to time out, but I had to like drop a boundary and say, daddy's taking the toy away from you rather than saying, give that to daddy, cause she's not going to, I said, I'm taking the toy away from you.
and I took it to the time out and she was crying. I said, look, daddy, you know, just in a really calm voice, I'm going to get down to a level. I'm not going to like get shouting over bearing. She's going to talk to you in a really nice level and say, Alma, you know, toys are for playing. It's not for throwing. Okay. You understand? And she went, yeah. I said, should we go pick them up? She said, yeah. And then she did. And then we made it really fun. So I started like to distract a brain, distract that pattern and go, Oh, let's make it really fun. Let's pretend we're animals. And she did it. And it was really great. Now the quickest way, easiest thing to do is to just go.
On that naughty step, I'm going to tell you off because of conditioning parenting. That's what boomer parenting my mom and dad used to do. Right. But it's about now understand this new world is about. Let's validate what's going on. Let's understand Tom and you will do this and Cammy will do this quite a lot. I often say this. It's okay. Daddy understands. Even if you don't understand at all, you just go, daddy understands. And she goes, yeah. And you say, you got some big feelings, Alba. And she goes, yeah. And then you go, okay, let's do it. So yeah.
steve (10:37.251)
Okay, great, great tip. Yeah. It's a massive topic. So all I would say to you with the gray hair of experiences, you've got to be easy on yourself as a parent as well, because you're not always gonna get it right. And even though you've read all the books, they still don't always behave what you expect. My number one tip actually, seamless response, whether it's that, I understand it's just, and it's cliches, often cliches, because they're true, counting to 10 before you go to Def Con.
Ricky Locke (10:45.367)
Mm.
Ricky Locke (10:48.746)
Yeah, it's coming. It's coming.
Ricky Locke (11:05.175)
Yeah.
steve (11:06.503)
You know, I remember years ago with Megan, who's now 28, when she was maybe four, five, and she was kicking off, I remember saying, got quite angry, didn't create that moment, and went, if you keep doing that, you're never going to the cinema ever again. Right. I think consequences for your behavior are important, but you've got to just count to 10, right? We need to move on, right? We've got two more questions for you, and then we'll see how we are for time, right? On my podcast, this 100th episode.
Ricky Locke (11:10.431)
Yeah.
Ricky Locke (11:22.598)
Yeah.
Ricky Locke (11:28.146)
Yeah.
Ricky Locke (11:32.698)
All right.
steve (11:36.475)
Right. Let's talk about mental and physical health next then. You can pick...
Here's what we can expect this season for the UNLOCKED PODCAST.
In this bonus episode, I share all about what you can expect this season on the UNLOCKED podcast and also why I am using the diary of a CEO conversation cards to strike up the importance of supporting each other and improving well-being in life through deep conversations.
The main topics we will be covering this season will be
- Mental health
- Personal development
- Confidence.
I also discuss the new video aspect of the podcast and the three different formats that will be featured.
How the Diary of a CEO conversation cards are being used in my mini-series of deep and meaningful Conversations" with The Diary of A CEO Conversation Cards.
I also share about the patron community and how it's way to drive conversation and a way to support the podcast. The episode concludes with a call to action to subscribe, leave reviews, and join the community.
Come join the Unlocked Patreon at www.patreon.com/https://www.patreon.com/theunlockedpodcast
Takeaways
Chapters
00:00 Introduction and Welcome
00:58 The Purpose of the Podcast
02:52 Topic 2: Personal Development and Confidence
03:47 New Format and Video Episodes
04:41 Three Formats of the Podcast
05:40 Diary of a CEO Conversation Cards
06:09 The Patron Community
07:38 Investing in the Podcast
08:08 Conclusion and Call to Action
Come Join the UNLOCKED community where you can receive...
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Thanks for listening, I hope you enjoy this episode and I'll join you next week for another episode of UNLOCKED!
Transcript
Ricky Locke (00:01.07)
Hello and welcome to this very special episode of What to Expect in the Unlock podcast this year. If you are a returning listener or now brand new watcher because you're on YouTube, yay! Welcome back. I know it's been a long while. Been over 15 months, so I do appreciate you sticking around and supporting the podcast. Now, if you're watching this on YouTube, there's a little card up here on the top right of the little screen where you can go back to the episode and it explains why I've been away, but why it's been a driving force for me to return the podcast.
Equally, if you're brand new to this, then welcome as well. It's lovely to be in your ears or in your eyes. Then, yes, thank you for clicking onto this podcast. It's lovely to have you as part of this journey. So I want to share with you in this little special episode why you should listen this year. It's this brand new season of the podcast, but also what to expect. Now, firstly, the big reason why is because this is really fun. Now, there's more explained in that first episode, but the reason you should listen to this podcast is because why not? No.
I mean, joking aside, the reason you should listen to this podcast is because I'm on a bit of a journey myself. I mean, life can be extremely tough, let alone being a parent is quite difficult. So throughout this whole podcast, we're going to be diving into subjects to help us just get through life and get through all these obstacles that stick in the way. Because let's be honest, it can be really challenging sometimes. Business, whether you're in a career, juggling parents, juggling hobbies, just getting through life, achieving the goals we want to achieve.
can be really, really hard in today's society when mental health is like on the rise. It's quite difficult. Let's be honest. So in this podcast, I'm going to be sharing tips and stories from my life about how I've started to now change my life and realizing at 34, I get to choose my beliefs and now how life can be, how exactly I want it to be because I get to choose. So with that in mind, we're going to dive into a couple of topics. The first topic we will be diving into is mental health.
huge, huge importance to me. I've suffered with my mental health for many, many years now. So we're going to dive into this because I think it's really important. We get some experts on to talk about how can we deal with those inner feelings and those things that just bring us down and just drives us a little bit crazy and actually start less suffering, but actually just starting to improve our wellbeing through some mental health coping strategies. So that's going to be one of the things we're also going to start obviously continuing, obviously the personal development theme and looking into.
Ricky Locke (02:22.19)
How can we unlock the best version of ourselves through speaking to experts, authors, favorite books, and what can we learn from these people to help us get to where we want to be? Also, we'll also be diving into improving confidence as well, because as a confidence coach and working with the Confident Club, we have a wonderful adventure where we can help people improve their confidence. It's not just about presentations, it's also about beliefs. So we're going to share some stuff that we talk about and how we help coach people, because everyone could do with a bit of improving their confidence, right?
So those are kind of the three main topics we're going to be talking about. There'll be other things such as resilience mindset, but ultimately that's the three things we're going to talk about. Now, why I want you to listen to this podcast is because I'm a human being. I'm trying to achieve loads of great things in my life. I'm trying to get to that next level where I want to go. So this is a real human live experience. I'm not some big celebrity. I'm not this like famous YouTuber yet or famous podcaster yet.
It's a bit of a journey and I'd love for you to encourage and support me on this journey. And I would love to support you as well by building a bit of a community where we can help support each other, get to where we want to be and just equally improve our well -being in our life and get everything that we want to get in life. So if that sounds like that's something for you, you're in the right place. What to expect this year. So the first thing is that obviously, hey, we're on YouTube. Hey, we've also partnered up with Riverside FM, where now you can start to see all these video recordings coming to life.
I always wanted a video format podcast, but Zoom was great. But obviously it had some challenges and obviously the format that it gives you can be sometimes quite clunky and a bit difficult. Riverside has come into my life now and I've been batching loads of episodes over the past couple of months. And what it's done is create some fantastic content we can use for YouTube or even for shorts, reels and TikToks as well. So that's the first thing we've leveled up, we've upped our game so you can now watch if you want to. If you listen to this,
just on your commute on the bus, you can also go on YouTube channel and watch this exact video as well. Yay. And there'll be a video episode every single week as well. The second thing to talk about is the brand new format. There are going to be three formats that we are going to talk about on this podcast. The first will be a continuation of me doing my solo episodes, where I'll be talking about my stories as a confidence coach in the Confidence Club, being on stage.
Ricky Locke (04:41.134)
Would you like to hear about when I was on stage with Nelson Mandela's bodyguard and it was a bit of a car crash. Good. Well, I might be sharing that as well on this podcast. Also, I'll be sharing tips about my favorite books on personal development. The second format will be a continuation of getting guests on. So speaking to experts such as Alex Williams, mental health, resilience coach, talking to productivity coaches, all these wonderful people that can help us get to where we want to get to in life. And they will probably be a little bit of a longer episode, about 30 minutes to about 40 minutes.
The third concept is this one, which is the diary of a CEO conversation cards, massive fan of the driver CEO podcast. And this is a fantastic game changer for driving conversations. We'll be talking to loads of guests and just randomly pulling out a card and having a deeper, meaningful conversation with zero prep and just seeing the magic that comes out of it. I've already got some episodes pre -planned where we talk about productivity, mental health, resilience, and even took that out beliefs and the things that we let as a kid and how that stopped us.
getting to where we want to be in life. So very exciting stuff. And that's the three formats. And last but not least, the patron community. Yay. Firstly, a massive thank you to all the patrons that have continued to support this podcast when I haven't released an episode for about 15 months. I really do appreciate your support in that. The good news is that the patron community is still live, but now you can experience it on the app and it's really, really user friendly. You can even join the patron for free. And I would love to encourage you listen to this episode.
Join the Patreon podcast for free. You don't have to pay for it. It's completely free, but you'll be able to see some of the content that we share backstage, exclusive access, that kinds of thing. But you'll be part of this community where we can help and support each other. Be the best version of ourselves. Now, equally, if I know times are tough, but if you have a cup of coffee spare or a cup of tea spare, I think it's like three quid in Costa, maybe it's four quid nowadays. Who knows? There are other brands available as well. If you have £3 spare, you can now support me and invest into this podcast.
by making better technology, better video content. I'm outsourcing a lot of my editing now to people in other countries to help me get this podcast to where it needs to be, because this podcast has so much value to share and it's just everything I'm investing back in. So if you have a cup of coffee free, you know, if you find one episode really gives you a lot of value, then you can invest just three pounds of your money and it will help bring this podcast into life and just create the best version of this podcast. We can make it and I'll invest everything into tech.
Ricky Locke (07:08.494)
studios. There's a few studios in London that I'm going to be bringing the podcast down, taking my road caster and be meeting guests I've always dreamed of speaking to. And that's because of the investment. So if you have spare couple of pounds, um, that you can just kind of forget for a, you know, each month where you can still get some exclusive access, get all the episodes released early, you'll get your name shouted out on the podcast and also in the description as well. I'd absolutely be thrilled if you want mine supporting the podcast. That is what to expect this season.
very, very excited. The video format has been a game changer, although quite difficult and challenging. So, you know, I hope that you're getting a lot of value from watching these as well as listening as well. But this is what to expect this year. So I hope that you are excited like me and ready for a wonderful journey this year. And if you are, don't forget, hit that subscribe button on YouTube, hit the subscribe button on your podcast player and leave us a lovely review as well, because it will help this podcast get shared to more people. But thank you for joining me on this journey. I can't wait to.
See you join the community, whether that's on YouTube or in the Patreon as well. But I hope you enjoy this season and I'll see you soon to help you unlock the best version of yourself. See you soon.
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