I'll get a your bloody champs. It's the project that's you. Oh god, it's four minutes past midday, it's Tuesday. I'm sounding very much like a radio presenter right now, sitting on sixteen degrees in Hampton, heading for a top of twenty two joining me today in the studio, and by that I mean the virtual studio.
Tiffany and Cook, Hi Cook, Craig, Anthony Harper reporting it for.
Judy sir ah, who's Judy? Oh see what I did there? Doctor Jody Richardson is also in the studio, the virtual studio.
Hi Joe, Hi Harps, Hi tiv hi Ah.
I'll tell you what. The old radio days, I don't really miss them, but sometimes it's a bit of fun just to morph back into that bloody you know a little bit of FM magic, isn't it. You're still doing your weaving. Your not allowed to say magic because that's inconsistent with Christianity, But are you still weaving your skills over there at Light FM?
I am. We just had the Relate mental health events, so two events, one in Mount Evelyn on Monday night and one in West Meadows on Tuesday night. So yeah, and the weekly podcast is keep on, keeping on. I love working with the crew at Positive Media.
Yeah, they are very good, very good, and they do. They do push a lot of great stuff out into the world. And if ever we needed good stuff, positive stuff, positive mental health and emotional health being shoved down our faces better than something negative. Now is the time. How is well, Hello anxiety. How's your little potty? Well, not little? How's your big potty going?
Oh so good. We've had a change of potty artwork, which is really lovely. So I actually designed the artwork for the podcast myself, and that is evident when you have a look at it, like, I'm reasonably happy with it. But do you know, I was so anxious about starting. There were so many the irony bread I know exactly exactly. There were so many things that could have stopped me
from moving forward. And I thought, if I go down the rabbit hole of getting artwork done, I think I could probably push this thing out for another couple of months, which was where my head was at. So I just thought, you know, I'm just going to do it myself and get on with it. But yeah, I've actually just had a professional podcast cast artwork design, so that'll come through in the feed soon, which is nice.
So you're not changing in the name of the show, you're just changing the artwork.
No, they actually properly designed the logo using the same fonts and the same kind of look and feel. But the artwork, you know, the little tile, that little thumbnail that goes with makes the podcast recognizable. It's completely changing so that it's time and it looks beautiful. So podcast is going well. Had some really really good interviews, and just the feedback that I'm getting from people about the way it's really supporting them is really beautiful. So thanks for asking.
Well it is a good little show or a good big show. It's called well, hello anxiety, everybody, So just wright down a few things here as you chat that I want to talk to you about today. It's so funny when you talk about getting anxious about like the queen of anxiety, getting anxious, which we know you've spoken
about many times. Understanding anxiety doesn't mean that you've dispensed with anxiety, just like me talking about being a high performer doesn't necessarily mean I'm a high performer at any fucking stage. But it's so true though. I think that's what makes hopefully us. Hopefully I'll let the audience be a judge, but hopefully us. Three relatable is that we're all still works in progress and we're okay with that.
But at the same time, I can be a bit broken and a little bit amazing, and I can still encourage and support people while not waiting for all of my shit to be sorted necessarily. You know, we're not aiming for perfection, as they say, just a bit of growth and improvement, Jody.
And perfection doesn't exist really, and if you aim for that and wait for that, which a lot of people do, and I understand anxieties often at the heart of that, then you actually don't ever get anywhere. We just need to be consistent. And I honestly think like I relate mostly to people when they show a few kinks in
their armor and they're honest and open. And I actually shared something on Instagram last week because I won't do the gymnastics required to show you, but I'm in a moon boot at the moment, and it's been really getting me down. Like I'm actually really good now because I've worked out that I can go back to CrossFit and just do everything seated, not everything, but I can do a whole lot of stuff, and I shared I actually
just recorded a video. I was waiting to pick up the kids, and I just kind of shared that, you know, like you might see me traveling around the country, you know, speaking and doing work that I love. But you know, it doesn't mean necessarily mean like we're just that reminder that when we're just because you see stuff on socials
doesn't mean people aren't going through stuff. And I always like to kind of share a little bit, not from a real place of I don't like to share when things are super raw and it could be really like you know, unprocessed, and but yeah, just to say, hey, I'm having a bit of a hard time. It's frustrating, it's limiting, it's affecting my mood. I can't do the things I want to do, but putting into practice the
things that I teach so often. And then that afternoon, I just saw it stuff I'm going to go to CrossFit and I'm just going to see my mates and I'm going to do what I can. And it turned everything around. So I think, like I just think about if we can just be consistent and just keep working and persist towards our goals, you know, aside from injury and exercise and not talking about that so much. But
there's no such thing as perfection. We all struggle. We just don't always see that people are struggling underneath, you know, everything else.
It's hard when you're emotional, which we all are, especially when it's about ourselves. It's all well and good to go, well, just do this or we'll just you know. It's like I put a post up the other day about how unhelpful it is to tell a worried person not to worry, you know, like telling an insomniac just to go to sleep, you know, and it all like while the intentions are good, you know, like to put your arm around someone and say, don't worry about it. It's a nice intention and the
empathy is there, but it actually doesn't help anyone. It might make them feel temporarily or momentarily kind of cared for, but it still doesn't solve anything. And I think that, you know, when you're in that funk where you're like, I'm in a moonboot. This is not this is not what I want to be happening. It's not where I
want to be. This stops me from doing these things that make me feel good or it limits me, or like, in the middle of that kind of potential emotional and psychological spiral of whatever right for me, a couple of things happen really matter for me. Two is context. So I've over said this, but it's never not going to be true. When I do something to my back or I'm in a bit of pain or I'm having a shit time, I just think of Johnny, who I train,
Who's by the way, Johnny's in hospital. Everyone we love john john just had a skin graft yesterday and just he has ongoing, ongoing challenges and pains but never complains. I'm going to go see him later today. So I think of him, and I think, well, yeah, my problems are one. And then also I think about in the middle of my emotion and how I'm feeling, I think,
what's the best question that I can ask me? What's the best question that I can ask me in the light of what's going on in me emotionally, this is how I feel. So I think, tell me what you think about this. But I think, yeah, fully feel what you feel. We're not saying don't feel what you feel. We're not saying deny the feelings. We're not saying snap out of it. We're not saying harden up, We're not
saying any of that. We're going I feel shit also, And in other news, what can I do though, Oh, I can go see my mates at CrossFit, and I can probably figure out a few things to do for my upper body or my core or my one good leg, or at the very least I can have a meaningful coral conversation, or I can laugh or you know. So all of a sudden, we're not denying the feeling, but we're now focusing on something positive from a cognitive or a psychological perspective that we can do to move forward.
You must have watched that post that I recorded, because I did.
I Yes, I did. I totally ripped it off, and I'm just going to say that was all out of my head.
No, no, no, just because one of the things that I did say. And Carlie Taylor, who's been a guest for you and a guess for me, she has studied Japanese psychology and one of the things, one of the philosophies or one of the learning's teachings is arugamama, which is and I'm going to I'm going to like misquote this, but paraphrasing, it's kind of with things as they are, what can I do? So accepting the circumstances for what they are? How can I move forward? What can I control?
And that was something that that I shared. But you know, context is it's so it's so good because I sit here thinking, oh, I did have a bit of a like a bit of a down week and it was you know, pain and not being able to do the things you want to do and all that kind of stuff. But context what you just said, it's so true, Like we don't want to discount our experience of things because it is still you know, maybe a challenge for us.
But when you stop and think, think, if it's temporary, I've got the resources to be how to get the help I need. So I'm really privileged like that I know where to go, I know who to see, and yeah, and I because I needed to be basically off my feet and hadn't been, i'd been into state working and traveling and presenting, I'd kind of made things worse. And
so yeah, yeah, so I think throws. I just remember my psychologists used to just say to me that life throws all sorts of challenges at us and that is just part of being human. Like you can't avoid it, but if you can have some helpful ways of thinking about it, reframing it, and taking control of what you can do despite what you can't, I think that's really powerful.
I think, firstly, agree with all of that. I think the thing with anxiety and mental health in issue and sadness and depression and overthinking and all of these kind of intersecting psychological and emotional first cousins, right, that all kind of live in the same cognitive zip code trying to figure out you know, it's different for different people, Like for me, movement is a really big part of mental health and whether I don't know if it's correlation
or causation, but definitely since I started walking rock bottom ten thousand steps a day, you know, a year ago. Now it's over a year ago, like that's there's definitely since that time, my mental health is consistently better. And by mental health I just mean I'm just consistently happier now. I don't know if that's caused that or it's just correlated in some way, because there have been some other benefits too, But I also know that not just emotionally
but cognitively, my brain seems to work better. But I know that what will be optimal for me won't be optimal for TIF or you necessarily. And so this still comes down to this self awareness piece around trying to figure out not what works for everyone, but what works for me. And there are certain broad principles I guess where in general terms, a good diet doesn't hurt, and
sleep doesn't hurt, and movement doesn't hurt. But then when we get into the micro in the middle of the macro, trying to figure out how your brain and your emotional system and your body best responds. So yeah, I think there's that little bit of kind of self awareness and even self experimenting in there. I think I'll shut up after this. I think, like, when I'm feeling a bit shitty, I think, what's the best investment of my emotions now, Like,
in other words, what should right now? What should have my emotional energy and my attention or what could have it? You know? And it might be that I go and write, I go, I'm going to create a new whiteboard for Instagram, and then I just step out of my emotional state in or I try to step into my creative space because when I'm creating, I'm having fun. And even though I'm a scientist and a researcher, I am probably naturally
more of a creative than a scientist. I can do science, and science is cool, but I love the freedom of creativity, not the confinement of science. Yes, right, and I can straddle both, as can anyone who wants to. But yeah, and I think it's like some of the things that for me are like very emotionally psychologically liberating, like riding a motorbike, which for other people would instill fucking terror
and anxiety. That's isn't it funny? The exact same stimulus being on a motorbike can literally change the biochemistry of your body really positively or negatively depend on your experience or your interpretation of that thing.
Yeah, it's so true. And just one of the things that you said, I think is really I mean, so much is really interesting, But just that awareness that when you are not feeling good, that you can take a moment and kind of step outside of what your experience is in that moment and then have that space to think, how could I best move forward? What could I do
considering how I'm feeling and where I'm at. And I think that that is not easy for everyone that because you know how you can just get so swept away with how you feel and so overcome and overwhelmed that that is like, yeah, I just wanted to note that just the ability to kind of do that, and sometimes that means just slowing down, because sometimes when we're not feeling good, we just keep on keeping on, but when there's just a moment to go, this is what I'm experiencing,
what would help? And it's not like you say, it's not about necessarily feeling better. But this idea that I posted something on LinkedIn a couple of weeks ago about I might not feel like doing something, but it doesn't mean I shouldn't do it. And it's something I'm teaching the kids as well at seventeen and fifteen, that you know, like you get asked to do an extra shift, you might not feel like doing it, but should that be the thing that dictates your answer to the question from
your boss? And sometimes yes and sometimes no, depending of course, there's no flat rule. But I think this idea that we can take our difficult emotions and still do important things. Is so crucial because you know how we were saying earlier, and you were saying that you can wait till you
get all your ducks in a row. But if any of us wait till that happens, we'll be waiting the rest of our lives, and then there'll be a lot of regret that all the things we didn't do because we kind of waited too long for things to be okay.
Hate, Yeah, I think we repeatedly see like a similar thing play out, and that is when you know, it's like you said, the thing that we need to do is or the thing that we should do is not always the thing we want to do.
Right.
So the dichotomy is that virtually everyone who listens to this show wants to learn and grow and evolve and improve and be a better version of themselves whatever that means. Right, we want to be better. We want to know better health, the better mindset, more calm. That is, we want to change positively in some way. That's probably a pretty universal state of mind for our listeners, or hope for our listeners.
At the same time, most of us don't like discomfort. Also, change is uncomfortable, So the dichotomy is we want to be comfortable, but also we want to change. And so the challenge is what is the uncomfortable thing that I don't really want to do but my goal requires me to do? Like what is the what is my standard? What are my values? What is my potential? What do I want my life to look like in one year?
My relationships, business, career, mental state, physiology? Right, my one year version of me and my life, and what's required of me today day one of that year. If we're working from as we're recording October twenty one, twenty twenty five to October twenty one, twenty twenty six, So this is my day one. What are the things that I can do on day one to make day three hundred and sixty five where I want to be Like that projection or that theory in my head, how do I
turn that into reality? And a lot of that is really going to be well, Craig, you need to do probably quite a few things that you don't really want to do or enjoy, and that might not be comfortable, and there might be a fair bit of unknown and uncertain and unfamiliar. So all the best, right, and this is the well I mean, this is the never ending kind of conundrum really with self help, personal development, behavioral psychology is that growth is just fucking hard and uncomfortable,
and many people are perpetually looking for growth without the discomfort. Well, good luck. It's like getting strong without doing strength training. Fucking good luck, Brian.
That's it. That's so true. And muscle is one of those things you can't pay for it, you can't outsource it, You got to work hard for it. Yeah, it's and I think it's so it's very easy to put it off. I'm a personal Like my example this week was I really I've kind of overhauled my nutrition and feeling so much better for it, and I more or less kind of wound back a lot of the sugar I used to have, Like I just used to be just craving sugar a lot. Anyway, we had friends over on Saturday night.
Friday night. Friday night, we just Peter brought home some of my favorite ice cream, so we shared a little thing of ice cream, and then I'm like, oh, that's kind of it. I've sort of splurged. Saturday night, friends came over, and Saturday night ended up being a bit of a splurge, and then we didn't eat the apple pies that I'd purchased for Saturday nights desert. So Sunday night, I'm like, oh, I'll just have an apple pie. And then I realized it's that easy. It's that easy just
to say tomorrow. And now it's not like I'm starting a diet or anything, but I just to be true to myself and what I know works for me and my body and my mental health. I don't want to eat as much sugar, but it was just so easy to just go yes to the next temptation. And I think with that three hundred and sixty five days, like if literally you're just saying twenty first to the twenty first in one year's time, we do need to We can't keep putting things off. Yet it's very easy to
just say I'll do it next week or tomorrow. But the beauty of starting is that sooner you start, the easier it gets. But you only learn that through experience. You have to begin, and you're the only one who can do it one.
Hundred percent like once you My analogy is if you've ever tried to push a car in a driveway or a car park, when it's you know, it's not in gear, obviously it's in neutral, but it's stopped. It's really fucking hard to get it moving. But once the car is moving, like once it's moving at three or four or five kilometers an hour, then it takes so much less effort to keep the same weight moving because now you've got momentum.
And it's that initial kind of resistance, mental, emotional, physical, whatever resistance, that kind of I think it keeps people trapped. I think that that lack of willingness to just look this is going to suck. But I'm okay with it, you know. And for me as someone who has many of these conversations with a lot of people, and you know, I find it what's the word I was gonna say, sad? Sad, it's not the right I don't know what the right
word is. Not even frustrating, But like I see it with people who I know have got at least as much talent or more than me, at least as much intelligence, intellect resources as me, if not more, but constantly just not fucking doing what they could do for a range of reasons that are not really real but rather psychological constructs, you know, it's like, and it's not about self loathing. It's about self awareness, because everyone's going to wake up
at some stage. If not everyone, most people are going to wake up at some stage and go, fuck, this wasn't my plan. You know how many people have a health scare and then go, oh shit, I better do something. Well, okay, good, but maybe you could have done that five years ago before we got to this point. Or and again, this is about for me. This is about being proactive, not reactive, going well, you've got one body, let's not fuck it. Ahah. Let's not wait for the diabetes, Let's not wait for
the heart disease. Let's not wait for all of the associated conditions that come with maybe not looking after yourself. It's not about appearance. It's not about vanity. We don't care about the numbers. It's not about what you look like. You know. This is not a shallow thing. This is about you living long and strong and well. You know, so, what the fuck do you want to live long and strong and well? I do cool? What are you doing to make that a reality? Nothing? Okay? Right? And this
is the uncomfortable conversation. It's like, oh, you're harsh, No, I'm fucking honest, but we'd rather call me harsh because then, oh, he's just harsh. You don't want to call him honest because if he's just being honest, then I need to deal with it. So what I'm going to do. So I'm going to call Craig harsh and blunt and brutal because that makes me feel better because then I don't need to do anything because Craig's the problem, not my
inability to fucking take action, you know. And it's like what needs to happen for you to just fucking look after yourself? You know. For me, that's that's what I care about people, And I care about them actually not wasting the next ten years of their life bullshitting themselves and not not using what they've got to work with.
Yeah, I know, I know it comes from a place of love. And you know, well, there are people who you know, have have you know, barriers in their life that you know, the fundamentals like supporting their you know, psychological safety and putting food on the table and all those sorts of things that you know, those kinds of stresses. But for the for the vast majority of people, there's
I think if we're all honest with ourselves. There are things that we could do that would make a really significant difference to our mental health, our well being, our longevity. And I'll often say, if I'm speaking to a group, that put your hand up, if you can think of one thing that would make a really meaningful difference to your well being right now, But you're not doing it, and everyone's hands goes up, and those that don't put their head up are probably not being honest with themselves.
But it you know, I think about people I know who've had heart attacks, for example, like you know, I'm in my fifties now you're in your sixties. Sixties, yes, yes, yes, yes, and so you know now kind of demographic. You can start to see some health some choices catching up with people. And often when the heart attack comes or the significant health event comes, then that's the impetus for significant change, because all of a sudden, the life's on the line.
Some do, some don't, Some fall back into old habits. But I sort of think, well, if you can do it, then you can do it now. But to have the control and not be forced out of action for weeks with heart surgery or being laid up in hospital. You know, like I think the idea of thinking about if something terrible happened, if I got a diagnosis, what would I do Differently, we don't have to wait for that.
Course like heart disease and diabetes don't give a fuck about your emotional state. It's like, ah, I'm not ready for diabetes. Will you fucking got it? Well, had a heart attack. I'm not ready to deal with a heart attack. I'll deal with it on Monday. No, it's today. Do you know what I mean? I mean, the bottom line is, yes, I'm all for protecting people and being aware and being you know, empathetic and understanding. But also life doesn't give a fuck about any of that. Like life is unfair,
Life is messy. Bad things happen to good people. This is why five year old kids get cancer. That five year old kid that gets diagnosed today, and there's probably a lot of them sadly that happens. That's horrible, that's unfair, that's fucking I don't even get that. If there's he and I'll have a conversation one day about that. I'm not sure. But the truth is, the uncomfortable truth is that happens. So you know, we need to go, Oh,
life is a bitch. You know, horrible shit happens. And I have one life and I have one body, and every day from now is one less day that I have to use what I've got and figure out what the fuck I'm about my life is about. And yes, we need to be empathetic and aware. It's like I care about people who have got body image issues and body dysmorphia and all of those things because I've had all of that. But at the same time, I want
you to be physically healthy. I don't want you to be physically healthy because I don't like the way you look or I don't like I want you to be physically healthy because that's going to help you have a good and a long life. You know, let's not wait another five years until you get over this issue or that issue before we stop eating KFC every fucking day, so you could stop that today. You don't need psychological safety to not eat fucking KFC. We can do both.
We can try to page your mental health and we can be loving and compassionate. Also, we can make radical changes. It doesn't need to be one or the other. But we live in this paradigm where everyone's like, Oh, we need to do this and then we'll do that. You know, think about all the people in the world right now who live in abject poverty and I mean real poverty, and people who live in war zones, and people who live under constant threat of death and bombing and all
of that. They're just doing what they have to do. Like, they don't get up each day and go wars not fair. They go fuck oar's here, what do I have to do today to survive? Now, I know that's melodramatic, but it's also the real fucking existence for millions of people in the world who don't have the luxury that we have to just wait forever to take action. Yeah, if you're in the middle of the war, you dealing with the war every fucking morning. Yes, you don't have that.
You can't go fuck the war. I'm not doing it. I'm going to start the war on Monday. And I just think that there's so much of this where mental toughness and resilience can coexist with compassion and self care. It can. They don't need to be separate things.
And with AI, with chat GPT, it's I mean, it's easy enough just to do it in our heads. But you can use a tool if you want to to start making small incremental changes. I think if people make significant changes. It's really hard for anybody to turn a ship. I mean we can't. You can't turn a ship around
on a dime. It takes time. And so even if it's just a swapout, it's just like, you know, instead of whatever you might normally have with you know, a biscuit with your tea and coffee, just have an extra piece of fruit in the day, or just start the day with a glass of water. And I always say, if the first step feels unattainable, just break it down a little bit further. It's like you say, just getting
that momentum, getting that momentum going. And we're certainly not at a loss for information and of what to do, but yeah, it's just putting it off until a significant life event or until it's too late, you know, until it's too late, when all of a sudden you haven't done any strength training, Like as a midlife woman, I like to think midlife, I like to think I'd be like tw one hundred and two spounds better than middle age, don't you reckon?
Definitely definitely let's go mid life mid life you bloody mid life woman. You.
But just like strength training, if you're not strength training you're a midlife woman, you might end up paying for it with your bone density, with your metabolism, with your mood, with your sleep. Like just that loss of muscle is so significant and so impactful. And my kids the other day, we saw a woman with osteoporosis, like a lady who was really bent over, and my daughter just sort of notice and sort of said, I wonder what that lady's you know, like, you know, I wonder what's going on
there kind of thing. And I explained to her why that happens. And you know, we talk about kelcium and she's at the gym strength training. She's fifteen. But I just think, you know, getting out of this pattern of especially in tiff Gosh, you know, you're all over it. Like so many women my age will just go for their walk and they run because it's about how do I fit in my clothes? And I had the pleasure of interviewing do to Stacy Simms, and she said they
end up skinny, fat, skinny in a size whatever. They feel comfortable in their clothes. But the fat distribution around organs, the subcutaneous fat, the just all the health implications that comes with that. But on the outside, you look at the person and they've got you know, I'm using air quotes a good figure. So yeah, it's just I don't know. I'm like you heart so I just get so passionate about it because I just know that starting is so hard.
But once you get going, you fall into a groove, it just gets easier.
I'm going to throw out a question, my question, is it so hard or is that just our story? It's like somebody has to do something today, they have no option. They start because there's no option. The problem is we go, I have an option. I don't have to start today. I think practically, you're right, it is hard, and experientially it's hard. But when you think about, okay, what makes
it hard? Well, you know for me to go and let's say i'm you know that whatever, somebody who typically walks two thousand steps a day, and they decide, well, I'm going to from today, I'm going to do four, I'm going to double it, and you might conceptually go, wow, walking twice as far as I normally do from now on that's hard. And then you go, no, cancer is hard. Yeah, oh oh, cancers hard, walk in two thousand steps if you can walk, of course, not hard. Diabetes, you know
hard like family tragedy hard. Ah, because we tell ourselves a story and you go, oh, two thousand steps, that's so hard. And then I go, oh, let me take you to Cabrini Hospital in malven Let me introduce you to John who's got a spinal cord injury, brain injury, all these other things, and he just had a skin a skin graphic. Da da da da, And then tell me about how hard your two thousand steps are. Now, I'm not trying to demean anyone, right, What I'm trying
to do is go, oh, yeah, that's right. It depends which fucking lens I look through. If I look through that, this is hard lens, it's hard.
Yeah.
If I go what about this? What about this? For a reframe? How exciting is it that I get to walk two thousand How amazing is it that I can walk two thousand steps? More, isn't it amazing that I have a body that can do that? How grateful am I? Now it becomes an experience of gratitude and an experience of something positive rather than ah thing, I have to do a hard thing, right, you know, it's like you
know this better than me. If you call something hard and you believe it's hard, that becomes your experience because you create your if you think something's you know, down to a really obvious example, if I say fuck and someone thinks the word fuck is offensive, well, they literally just got offended. I'm not saying they should or shouldn't. I'm talking it's not even about swearing. It's about psychology.
It's about stimulus and response. You know. And then even though I just said fuck twice, most of our listeners are not offended. Then you go, oh, what is that about. Well, it's not about the stimulus, it's about the response. Well who's that up to? It's up to the individual, because the individual gets to decide what things mean in their own life. Right. If your story is this is hard, this is hard, well guess what, you're having a whole lot of hard in your life. If you're like, wow,
I can walk, I can walk. What a gift? How greatful am I? How fucking amazing? Because you know what, a lot of people can't walk a lot of people can't get out of a chair. A lot of people don't live in a beautiful city. Like all of a sudden, we're reframing, and we're not pretending that it's not hard
at times. We're not trying to discount anyone's real feelings or emotions, but we're also saying, is there a way that I can reframe things so that rather than being managed by my mind, I can perhaps manage my mind.
Yeah. Well, one of the things that I've talked about before. I'm not sure if we've talked about it, but my training and acceptance and commitment therapy is coming to mind now, where we talk about values aligned goals, so setting something that's important, you know, like striving for something that might be really important to us, and knowing that despite the circumstances that we're in, we can take steps towards that
each and every day. Like you might think being a good parent means having a table tennis table in a suming pool for your kids and taking them on a couple of on holidays a year, Well, that might be out of reach, but if your value is being a good parent, you can be a good parent each and every day by giving your kids time and attention and listening and playing games and doing other things. And so I think sometimes we think about the big stuff and forget that the day to day kind of efforts that
we make can really align with what actually matters. But also this idea that we're in a world of instant gratification and everything at our fingertips, and you know, I find myself sometimes kind of twiddling my thumbs with my maintenet's a little bit slow, and then I have to think about dial up and how lucky we are to have access to what we've got. But I think when you are making change, like for example, cutting back on fast food or starting to walk those extra couple of
thousand steps a day, the immediate benefit isn't evident. You might feel a little bit better, sleep better. There's a few little things that you can be curious about notice changes, but it's again it's looking at the long term cumulative effect of those And for anyone who really needs that little dopamine kind of tick the box I'm kind of
getting somewhere. Just a brilliant thing to do is just to mark an X in a calendar each day that you do the thing you said you do, and all of a sudden, you've got three or four in a row, and you're building a streak. But I do think that one of the things that we're not used to is resisting urges and temptations and having the skills to be able to notice what's happening in our head and in our body when we have an urge to do something or to say no to doing something we said we do,
and how to move through that moment. Like you said earlier, about that moment when you're able to recognize not feeling good. Things aren't great, But in this moment, what can I do with what I've got? You And you'll go and you you know, create a whiteboard or do something creative perhaps, But in that moment that you've said to yourself, well, I am going to do my walk every day, but you've had a big day. You sit on the couch,
you get the remote. You know, obviously, all of a sudden you're into YouTube or Netflix or whatever, and you're like, I don't want to, I don't feel like it. It's having the psychological skills in that moment to first of all, notice that your actions are being influenced by what you're thinking, and then have the skills to be able to reframe it so that you can get your bum off the couch and get out for your walk and then come back and sit and watch your Netflix or whatever you
want to do. And I think that that is you know, we're obviously, you know, three quarts of the way into our chat today, but I think that little moment, that little you know, that little that little space, that little gap, like you know, mind the gap in London. I just recently in my head, I'm like, we've got to find the gap, Like just it's just being a bit more mindful.
And I think for all of us, if we can practice a bit more mindfulness and being a bit more putting our head where our hands are, then we can capture that moment and do something different with it. But you know, if you're in a habit, a pattern of doing something, awareness of that pattern, and what are you going to do when your mind says I don't want to how are you going to approach that? I think they're really really powerful skills.
Yeah, yeah, you raise a lot of good points there. One I want to circle back to, which is essentially delaying gratification. You know, that's that's a biggie, you know, because we are. We are the instant gratification generation. It's like,
we're the instant gratification culture. If you want to know, if you want to sell something, if you can make it a form of instant gratification where somebody gets a great reward without the work, then you'll be able to sell it, especially if it's got anything to do with appearance or weight or weight loss or muscle gain or yeah, and that's it is that whole kind of for me,
for me personally. This is not my recommendation for the world, but for me personally managing me, and I'm a fucking handful because my mind is extremely busy trying to and also the x only kid who needed attention or the only child I should say who needed attention, and blah blah blah blah, all those things like trying to separate between you know, what I'm doing because it's the thing that I think I really should be doing, and I'm doing it when no one's looking, when there's no accolade,
there's no approval, there's no instant gratification, no quick fix. It doesn't even fucking feel good. But I'm doing it because I know that I know it's the right thing for me. Not necessarily it's the global right thing, but it's the right thing for me.
Yeah.
And you know, we were chatting about my research my PhD before we came on here, and yeah, I mean there have been one thousand times probably more where I've thought why am I doing this? Like this is I don't need this? Why am I doing this? I'm lucky? You know, there are so many as you go, well, you chose that, and you can stop at any time. But if you stop, then take ownership and don't pretend you're not the problem, because if you stop, you're the
fucking problem. And if you get through then that's also on you. Well done. But it's like this. There's a guy called Jocko Willing who kind of polarizes people. He's an ex marine and he's written a book called Extreme Ownership, and you know, this is one of the ideas. It's like, well, if you create good outcomes, well done. If you create
bad outcomes, own them. You know, you don't have to hate you, you don't have to I was thinking before, and I'll shut up after this, but I was thinking before how much information just gets pumped out and people basically on the Internet and you know, reels and all the various platforms and all the various mediums that get used on those platforms where everyone's shouting a message and everyone thinks whatever it is they're saying that they're right.
And I just think, how often do people think with whatever it is that they think or believe or that they preach. I wonder if they think, oh, am I wrong? Like could I be wrong? I think about that. I think about that a lot, and I think I've been wrong a lot, you know, So, which is why when I say something, I don't go this is what people should do. I go, this is what worked for me. Yeah, this is what I think. This is my story, this is my experience, rather than putting out some global mandate
everyone who deals with anxiety should do this. No, no, I don't think so. But when I'm anxious and I do this, this helps me. It may or may not help you. You know, for me, success E calls ABC, but for you success might be d E F. But I just think that that being grounded, where you're okay to get shit wrong, you're okay to be scared, you're okay to be embarrassed, and you're just going to keep grinding and when you fuck up, you'll go I fucked up. And when you did great, you go, hey, I did great.
And there's no ego in either, there's no self hate in either.
Yeah, yeah, I agree. I think I think that just some humility and just and inherent in that word is just being human. None of us get it right all the time. Nobody does. But like you say, you know, and I think, I think what part of the problem is that there's so there's so much in There's so much that people can and a lot of it's conflicting, you know, and it depends on your belief systems and depends on your you know, kind of like what kind of floats your boat as to who you're going to
listen to. But sometimes it can it can feel like it's overwhelming and I don't know, I don't know where to start, I don't know who to believe. It's it's all a bit much. One thing that I found really helpful for me was that just a little in terms of making change is using the word I don't instead of I can't. And when I because I used to love Bailey's I know you're not a drinker, and I'm no longer a drinker. I've been about two years alcohol free. But when I was a drinker, my kind of kryptonite
was Bailey's. And I sort of said to myself, I'm contradicting myself because for a period time it did work. But I was just like, instead of saying I don't want to drink Baileyes, because once I start it's hard to kind of, you know, stop, like a jocotma, I would say to myself, I don't, I actually don't drink Bailey's. That was kind of like the reframe that I used for myself, and for months that actually really helped me
to make really good decisions, until it didn't. But sometimes it's worth trying these things on and seeing like if you consider, say I don't eat after seven o'clock, or I don't have dessert every night, or I instead of like I'm choosing not to, it's just reframing kind of almost your identity around it. And ultimately it worked for a while, so it's worth trying. But also that didn't last forever for me, and ultimately I just decided I'm just actually going to just I just don't drink now.
And actually that's stuck.
It takes because I mean, your subconscious programming isn't really tuned into your conscious decision making, or it's like yeah, in your conscious mind, you're like, oh, I do this, and I don't do that. In your subconscious mind's like no, you don't. You fucking drink. You're just diluting yourself and dreaming and again, yeah, this is just a story you're
telling yourself. And that's why you know, over time we're trying to I mean, it starts with a conscious decision and you know, the prefrontal cortex and you know, being strategic and all of those things, but ultimately we need to hardwire that shit into our subconscious so that it becomes our new normal. So once it becomes hardwired, once it's basically an expression of who we are. But this is just me. I don't need to get motivated to go to the gym. I don't need discipline, self control,
or willpower. I don't need any of that because it's just in my DNA. I don't need to try. I don't need nobody needs to compliment me for being fucking disciplined or anything, because I'm actually because there are other things that I probably should do that I avoid because I'm not disciplined or no, not that, but because that's not part of my normal operating system.
Right.
So it's that, you know, just trying to figure out over time, what is the thing that is a needs to become just hardwired into who I am and how I am, not a thing that I do because I'm in the zone or I'm disciplined, or I'm doing a program or i'm you know, And I mean, that's not a three month process. That's sometimes that's a three year process, especially when you've been doing something for thirty years a certain way and now you can't undo that or you
can't write new code by Wednesday, you know. So it's a journey. It's a psychological, emotional, behavioral, and physiological journey. And when you tell people, I get asked often in talks how long does it take to break a habit? And I go, well, there's no answer to that, and it's it's I wouldn't say this to them, but it's a really ignorant question because it's assuming there's a number, which is completely unscientific. Are we talking about giving up
sugar or heroin? We you know, are we talking about I've been having sugar in my coffee for six months, or have been you know, addicted to drugs for twenty five years, and my life is you know, not in a great way, and I'm not in a great way. And this is a very very very complicated issue. Well it's different, and you know, and nothing but love and empathy for people with addictive challenges, right, but it's well this, you know, you're not gonna you're not going to fix
that quickly. You know that that doesn't get fixed quickly. Also, and in other news, that's fine, that's fine, you don't have to you know, you can change your behavior straight away. You can change your decision making straight away, you can change your lifestyle trade away, straight up way, but you can't change your default setting straight away. Can't rewire your brain straight away. No, this is a journey. So be patient or you're going to be disappointed.
I share occasionally the idea of kind of rewiring. If you think of like a field of like neck high grass that's really thick and lush and you're walking through it for the first time. It is so hard to do. There's a lot of resistance. It's difficult. But the more you walk that path. The more you lay down that grass, the easier that path can, you know, take you from A to B. And that's kind of what can happen in our brain, building those new connections and creating those
new patterns. But something you said before too is that we do have a choice, and we can make a different choice. And I think when we remind ourselves that we have a choice, that can often be quite liberating because we can choose to stay. You know, you can choose to have I'm just trying to think of an example. I can't think of an example at the moment. KFC
keeps coming to mind, which I hate. But you know, like you, when you do have a choice, I think it shows you that you've you can do something different and that ultimately we are the ones that are responsible. But yeah, I don't know, I've lost my train of thought. Actually, perhaps I'm not sure where I'm going with that, but I just know in personally in my own life, like when I was teaching and I needed to move out of teaching, but I chose to stay because I wasn't
sure where I was going. But I was finding it really hard because my mental health hadn't been good. I just remember my psychologist saying to me, you've got a choice here. You could go and get a job at Woolly's. You could go and work in a cafe. You know that back back in the day, there was no shortage of work. So we said, if you're staying in teaching, you're choosing to am I right in that, And I'm like, yeah, I absolutely am. So. I just felt so liberated by
just this recognition that I have autonomy here. I can make a choice. I don't have to do the things that I'm doing. It's what I'm choosing to do. And I think when it comes to behavior change, I think just recognizing that we have a choice about what we do, and that every day we don't do something that's a choice too.
Yeah, one hundred percent, and that's yeah, let's not beat ourselves up over that. Let's just acknowledge that. I mean, there have been times in my life where there were things that I really needed to do and for a range of reasons that we don't have time to explore, I didn't do them, and you know, and then I got to a point where I was ready and I did it for me. I try very hard to once I go. I'm doing it. I need to make sure that I'm really really ready because I don't want to
do it and then stop. Yeah, you know, Hey, Tiffany and Cook's got to go. I've got to go, You've got to go. Well. Hello Anxiety is the name of Jody's podcast. Dr Jody's podcast where Else. Yes, let's pump that if we could tell people what you're holding. Because I'm the world's worst friend, I haven't promoted that yet. I promise you I will do it on my socials this week. Tell people about what you're holding.
Oh my gosh, My Anxiety Toolkit a seventy card deck that is designed to support parents and educators with supporting anxious kids and teens. So available on my website, Dr Jodiichison dot com.
Perfect And there's a few books on there that bloody sell like hotcakes too. So if you be very good, she might sign one for you and write a little message. Would you do that? Would you write a little hello?
Oh yeah, if somebody would like for me to dedicate it to someone in particular, then yeah, I sign every book I sell. Yeah, definitely, very good.
Well, say goodbye a fair but Dr Joe thanks. Dr Tiff, Thanks, audience, thanks thanks guys Mite, thank you.