Episode 122 - Will Hawkins - Emotional Intelligence with a Therapist

Welcome back to the Seekin Insights podcast, a place to explore complete health, foster curiosity and brace uncertainty and step into growth. Today I'm chatting to Will Hawkins, a coach, mentor and therapist who uses therapeutic coaching to help people achieve life transformations. In this episode, expect to learn some more about values, what will things coaching actually is, as well as a deep dive on emotional intelligence and some of Will's favourite techniques. If you are enjoying the podcast, please remember you may not be subscribed, so if you're doing a step to date, tap that follow button and please leave a review as it helps way more than you realise. I hope you enjoyed this episode. Hello and welcome back to the Seekin Insights podcast and today I'm joined by Will, who I haven't been following for instance on Instagram for all that long, but I've heard very amazing things and I did follow along and I was like, "Shit, this guy is putting out some quality content, he's making me question a lot of things and as per usual I thought, well, I can learn a lot from this guy, let's get him on the podcast, Will, welcome, how are we doing? Very yeah, I'm fatic. Entrance for me, I'm sure, but I appreciate it. Yeah, hopefully you can learn some stuff together. Yeah, absolutely and I think I've always said this, like the podcast kind of self-serving and aware that I get to speak to amazing minds and just kind of learn your perspective and pick your brains a little bit, but the best it is, the people who listen along get that as well and I just want to dive right in and that is, I don't do the whole formal intro thing, I personally cringe speaking about myself, but I do like to ask a question to give us some context and that's one, what's one experience I'll define a moment that you've had that's going to give us that context for the common conversation, but also about who you are as a person. Well, this is going to go in quite deep, quite quick, if I'm going to be completely breathing on with you, but one of the defining aspects of my life has been my mum had Alzheimer's for 12, 12 years and early onset and she passed away 2016 and after that I was in a relationship which turned out to be quite toxic and with an element of narcissism within it which left me in a very shattered place in a very low dark struggling to understand the purpose and values and such and I was directed to a therapist by one of my closest friends who was going through by a tumultuous time in his lie and the therapy changed to my life, my perspective, it changed my coaching as well, it really changed, it gave me the point of understanding and the point of being able to reflect back and look forward and exist in that moment as well. So the therapy, the death, the break of a relationship and the therapy probably the short space of time that really began to change my life in a quite dramatic way. I'm really sorry to hear of your loss and any kind of experience, something that I've thought about myself is kind of this multiple phases of grieving, especially when it's something like Alzheimer's or dementia or my dad had a Louis Body Parkinson's similar and dementia alongside so similar and you kind of face the initial grief and then there's kind of multiple phases of that that keeps coming along and I understand how really challenging that is so thank you for sharing that and it's clear that that has had an impact on the way that you coach and on the way that you support people and I think therapy is one of those things that it's still spoken about more now and I feel like it's been advocated for more which is amazing but I feel like there's still an aspect of like taboo there where people are a little bit resistant to step in and step into that space for whatever reason that of course could be their own personal experiences of what was it in particular about therapy that really impacted you? I think that one of the most important things any therapist or therapeutic coach can do is provide a safe space for someone and you're just using it just to use an analogy of visual analogy. Imagine that you're there and everything's coming flying out of you and you're all swaying you down and you can't make sense everything's through the cloudy and foggy therapist or therapeutic coach whatever which you have a sense of who it comes in stands beside you presses a button and puts up a four-sealed that kind of just keeps everything off of you and allows you to be in that space with them and then you for example talk about certain topics or certain things and then comes through the four-sealed and you're able to then deal with it as a topic on its own or some of those things are linked to ultimately you have that safe space and that ability to be able to express yourself reflect in a very honest and authentic way with yourself and therefore be in a position to be able to eventually not need that four-sealed because when things come at you you're able to process them and understand them in an effective way and they exist they're not going to ever go away but that kind of resilience is built over a period of time working with therapists. I think that's a beautiful analogy and it really makes it clear. I think there's this it's so easy to become overwhelmed especially in the current landscape that is constant bombardment from things like social media potential like information overload as more people are starting to because we've got this like almost I want to and I can't remember a name cause it like pop psychology like this really popular aspects of psychology that aren't necessarily evidence based or a helping people so we've got all of these messages getting bombarded and that's space that's created within therapy I'm sure it really helps and I forget a lot of that as well as those personal struggles and I know Julie is Julie Smith she wrote she's an online person presence she was saying it was like crumpled up balls there was loads of crumpled up paper and there was loads of them being and being in therapy allows you to take one out and look at that one in particular and then you kind of fold them out and they take a place based although that was also a relatively great analogy but you mentioned there about this idea of authenticity and one of the questions that I wanted to ask you was when it comes to living an authentic life if it did have a recipe what would be the ingredients because I wanted to frame this in a way because right at the minute especially with the growing presence of social media one thing I have noticed is this message for people to be quote-unquote authentic however it's almost being pushed to the extreme where it's still inauthentic because it's more performative so from an authentic life perspective what are some of the key ingredients I think probably when you think about authenticity is living existing and being true to your core values and your beliefs as an individual and not acquiescing them to the whim of another person or an algorithm an Instagram algorithm which you know you kind of like find yourself in a position of well what do I want to get what or not achieve how authentic can I be in achieving that so there has to be some bend there has to be some a little bit of give and take here and there but ultimately if you're not living by your values and your beliefs as an individual for the vast majority of the time then you are slowly starting to erode your authenticity as a human as you as a person I think I often say when I coach when I coach my clients you know in various other scene how I do I always say about like how much you pointing at your North Star right now how much you have how much are you actually traveling along the ocean towards your North Star because ultimately sometimes you might have to go North-North West or North-North East because you might have to avoid something or you might have to engage in something in a certain way which ultimately will benefit you but unless you get back on track then you're heading towards your North Star over a long period of time that North-North West or North-North East does it actually take you further and further away incrementally from the how you want to be living and how you want to be existing and then you have things like pressure and anxiety you have like kind of resentment. bitterness all because these things build up because you just haven't been living who truly in line with who truly are in your end to play. I think that's that's huge and I love the analogy of the ocean and the North Star as this kind of, I suppose this journey that we're all on this thing that we call life can get really challenging at times, right? Like you say obstacles can crop up and sometimes we aren't able to live in a way that we feel true to us and those circumstances are very much out of our control. You mentioned values there and these came up earlier on as well when you were speaking about your own experience of therapy. Why are values so important for people and what can people do to explore them? I think when we think about values it's almost like you don't have values, you can only live through them. So that's the very first point, it's incredibly poignant to know that you can never attain a value, you can just live through it and you can, it's almost like an energy that you possess as an individual and your value is how you translate that energy as an individual to the outside world and how you exist through your values will determine ultimately the relationships you have, the success you have, the impact you have on people, all these kind of things really are driven through a value based approach and I often say to my clients, well what are your values? If you could say to me in three sentences what are the values that you will live by? And sometimes it's a clean bill, band-band band, they get these values out in a list or in a sentence. So then some people struggle, but either way it's about questioning them so actually we'll reflect on those values, do you really feel like you're living by them and do you really feel connected to those values, you feel part of that? It's almost like on a ship, you have a goal in a destination but the steering will steer which way you go so you're steering always like your set of values and you have to have those strong in your hands in order to be able to get the ship going in the right direction if you look at loose values and you don't really know what you want and how you want to exist, the steering is going to spin round and it's going to go in all sorts of different directions. So I think having a good set of values and also reflecting on the regularly in what you do, how is this tethered to my values, how is this action, how is this behaviour, how is this decision, how does it tether and how strong is it tethered to my set of core values as a human being, is incredibly important to do on a regular basis, from reflective journeys after a really important something that you mentioned there was about checking in with whether your values are yours and I feel the world is very noisy and it would be very easy to take on board other people's values or to have potentially old beliefs, limit and beliefs that would keep you stuck to a value that might not be your own, are there any key indicators that would say actually yeah this does feel really true to me, how would someone know that they've identified that thing that says yeah this is really this is my value and it's not kind of a pseudo value but you know I mean like sort of masquerade or it's someone else's pressure or maybe a societal pressure, there's a lot of cultural narratives as well, what can we do to really hone in on that? So one of the things I work with quite a lot of clients is emotions and understanding what an emotion is and how it exists and what it's trying to tell us as an individual. So if you're living by a set of values and you're absolutely bang on the money when you say about how society has strong influence, your environment, your environment has you know a gabel matte, I read a lot about ending history, so in your environment it is an orchestrator of your values but that can be for the good, but in some cases it can also be the bad you know and so you as an individual have to have autonomy within that environment to decide what values are true to you and a lot of that goes back to how you feel and connecting to your emotions and you know if you've gone okay I'm going to try and think of an example which is probably a data saving, it's a week to evening, so let's say for example you you've got and you're sure you've had clients that are like this where you've had someone who's going out every Friday Saturday night going out and piss getting drunk and enjoying themselves quite unquote enjoying themselves and then they value their friends and they value their like socializing and such but then you say well actually how does that really feel to do that, how do you feel before it, how do you feel after it, is that really truly in line with your values? Now you might get like 20 to 30 year old or 20 to 25 year old, a younger generation person who's like yes that's in line with values and having an absolute bang in time, we're having a great laugh and a great joke about it, when we see each other next and so forth, fine, because there's a lot of joy, there's a lot of excitement, there's a lot of positive emotions that come from that, even though it might necessarily be the healthiest choice, that's obviously someone's own own property, but when value start to change or adjust and some of my value, like their family more and spending time in their family or setting down with building a nest and not going out on Friday and setting up, if they are still doing that, you then ask the question well how do truly feel, you know they might be feeling anxious about leading up to that Friday night because they don't really want to go, but they don't let them make it down or it's the norm so they're carrying on that way, and then afterwards you know you fall into a bit of a slump or a bit of a downturn of emotion and that's negative because actually you kind of regret doing that, you didn't really need to do that, you didn't need the 10th pint, you know you could have gone through a couple of social beers and then gone home, I think that just as an archipelago an arbitrary example there of how values change and how connecting with how you're feeling about your values and how those actions are representing your value really does kind of conceptualize how working with someone they can kind of create change, create, create behavior change based on values that they have and reflecting on them in a very authentic way. Yeah, I think that was a great example, people are really going to resonate with that one for sure, and there was a couple of things I wanted to pick up upon the first, there was actually that your values can change, that they can adjust so whether or now might not be the case for the rest of your life, for example, and obviously big life changes like having a kid will probably impact those, but you mentioned about emotions and this is something that I will hold my hand up and say I have struggled with previously and I'm only working through and that is being able to identify and say this is how I am feeling, this is the emotion that I am feeling right now and I don't know, I believe to be more common in men but I don't want to make broad generalisations about an inability to actually identify how we feel, to be able to say oh well, I can either say I'm mad, happy or sad of those, that's the limit of my language when it comes to emotional experience and for someone that is right actually, I need to check out my values, I know that I'm maybe not living in alignment with them, but I'm also struggling from the emotional granularity perspective, like I'm not that great, I don't identify in how I actually feel, which will be the priority, which do we want to work on first and what are some steps that we can take to explore that into more depth? As in would you work on understanding your emotions first or your values? Yeah, so they're very symbiotic, I don't really think you can split the two and in order to ensure that the values are right values, you have to see what the emotional connection is with them and you're living by your values, you're kind of acting like your actions, saying to the values that you're stating to have, then the emotions that will come with that will be contentment, joy, happiness, peacefulness, all these kind of descriptions of different emotions that people have and obviously conversely if you're not then you're going to get frustration you'll get a disgust, anxiety, you know, and they will feel into fear and anger and so I don't think, I think they almost exist in parallel because if your values start to change and you're not living by them, then your emotions will ultimately flux as well, but being and connecting and understanding the relationship between the two and also the fact that your emotions have changed and you're not oppressing or burying or deflecting or numbing those emotions. is a really important part of awareness of like increasing emotional intelligence. I work a lot with people with emotional intelligence and build their their caliber of that up over time and it's really important to stop and go and on my emotion has changed or my my feeling is this now where it wasn't before and I think that I don't think you can put one. I don't think you can really move in a positive forward trajectory with one and not really bring the other one along with it. That makes sense. Yeah, absolutely. And I love how you mentioned there about emotions kind of being like the lead if your values are changing that could be at least being indicator. I'm facing with a lot of these frustration, a lot of these feelings have discussed potentially around how to have easy worth checking your values. If that's a regular occurrence like and that would be a nice way to potentially look at that. And I just think there's some again like there's so much out there that people talking about values. Whereas it's all very surface level. It's all very or check and meet your values. Whereas even in this conversation now what five minutes on values, we've peeled back a couple of layers. So for anyone listening, it's like, well, actually this is the connection between emotions and values, which is a bit there. I don't think enough people are discussing so that we're missing that potential nuance and that potential learning that we can get from that. And I know that obviously you eventually there about helping people with their emotional intelligence and explore and that some more. What are, what is emotional intelligence as a whole and what are some of the most common components that are the people struggle with or that we can work on as a collective? Well, emotional intelligence is kind of like split up into like framework. Some people consider it in four parts. Some people consider it five part, but basically you've got the first part, which is awareness of your emotions and how they're existing. In your body and where you feel them, tightness, short breath or a bit of your stomach, you know, so there's that kind of like emotional awareness and how that translates into then obviously thoughts and then in actions and behaviors. So you have your awareness bit and then where it translates into thoughts and also then behaviors. It's almost like the regulation part. So your emotions and how you regulate the awareness and then how you regulate them on like two parts of the framework and then you have the existence and how you notice emotions in others. And I think that that's probably one of the most intricate and very nuanced as well, you know, when you look at what is an emotion, some analysis of a speculative thing like so you see an emotion, someone else or is someone like see something something completely different. So there is there is a perspective that you have taken to consideration, but generally speaking, the third part is being aware of emotions in others and at least being able to process them to a certain degree. And then the fourth part is about like relationships and being able to be an emotionally intelligent aware of them and also then facilitate either performance in others through good emotional regulation or just like having harmonious existence with people, you know, whoever you have friends, family, lovers, whatever, you know, having that kind of ability to have synergy through emotional understanding of one another. So it's kind of like a, you know, you can bring in resilience and change and stuff like that as key compote motivation, as key compoteants of the kind of linking with emotional intelligence as well. That I think again, it's one of these things that, especially within the court in the space, I feel isn't spoke about a lot and that is just emotions in general. We've got, it's becoming more common, which I think is great. However, you mentioned there how emotions and our ability to be aware of our emotions and therefore regulate them can impact things like behavior. So surely this is a huge component of behavior change and arguably from a coach in space, one of the things that we're supposed to be supporting people with these behavior change. So this would lead me onto the aspect of coaching that is, we see a lot of at the moment and that is, here's something to follow. Here's a workout plan. Here's this, it's 12 weeks, it's fire aware and actually it's missing all of this component that you've just discussed, which is going to make it much harder to make change happen. So I might say something quite controversial here. So just fair with me and if you want to edit this out, I'll really do say, no, sorry, to say what the podcast is best to speak. What you've just described there is actually online instruction. Do this, do that. You're actually, you're not a coach because coaching is a lot about synchronous conversations where you have back and forth that create insight between the coaching, the coaching, not an online training program that you follow and do voice note check-ins and that's me just speaking my mind. There is a clear differentiation within literature, scientific research, what constitutes as coaching and what constitutes as instruction. And the two, there's a lot of people out there that go, I'm a coach, I'm, you know, I deliver that. When in fact 90% of what they deliver is instruction and a very small percentage of what they deliver is actually true coaching. And I think that that's a huge, basically people being ripped off with this like, you know, we're delivering this coach and I might begin results to a degree but they are really being ripped off. It's a huge hoodwink of the fitness industry that I'm an online coach, I'm delivering it so we're naturally, you're not your delivering instructions and if the people don't follow them or can't follow them, guess what? You just knock them off your books because you can't manage that, you can't actually coach. And you know, conversations where you do have depth, you do have curiosity, you do, you know, go deeper with that client and then support them is effectively coaching but you can't scale that, right? You can't scale those conversations, you can support but it gets very knowing obviously that the requirements to do and be a successful coaching in that sense, it gets frustrating sometimes. I've gone off on a tangent about that but I do feel quite passionate about it. No, I agree. So it wasn't actually that controversial because I think I've mentioned something about this previously on the podcast but I think there's a really, a really key thing that you mentioned here and it was about that depth, that communication, that creating space for in the same way that you discussed earlier on from a therapeutic aspect and I know obviously you include the therapeutic aspect in your coaching as well. So when we look at, for example, you mentioned about scale, people are currently falling to the trap of signing up to a programme that is led by a quote and quote, that there's 50 other people in more than 100 other people and like you say actually that's coaching on that level that you've just described isn't all that scalable because from a time demand, from an energy demand, from a capacity demand for yourself as well. The demands are huge compared to what we're seeing now which is coaching but you know you said yourself instruction, I would argue product, just a product, like this is a product, you buy it, you follow it and if you can't follow it then the fall is all on you. And this was obviously a lower tangent on the podcast so this is fine but where does then personal responsibility come into this because these narratives grow in at the moment where people are like take personal responsibility and whilst obviously responsibility is great, no one is denying that. There's also an aspect of that being used as a way to shame people that can't stick to the quote and quote plan that has been sold so there's a lot of people that are entering the space trying to pursue for example something like fat loss and they feel like failures because they can't stick to the thing that wasn't actually coaching and a lot that's been thrown back and they're well you need to take personal responsibility, where does that come into this coaching sort of sphere that we couldn't be exploring. The personal responsibility I think is a different one because often people aren't necessarily aware so the thing is with awareness as soon as you become aware of something then your personal responsibility goes through the root problem. because now you're aware you've got to make a decision, I'm actually going to do this where I'm not, right? So if you have people which are effectively just, they're not aware of the troubles that they're having, the reason why they keep unable to stick to a nutrition plan or healthy lifestyle decisions and make good choices around that, it's not about taking personal responsibilities about being aware of why you're not able to do that. What's your blocker, what's holding you back, what's, and again, I actually think that probably fat loss, if you're going to go on a fat loss journey, I think probably the majority of people would benefit through having some level of therapeutic coaching first because actually then you realize, I'm eating all this because I'm numbing emotions or I'm deflecting emotions out on the pitch because I feel depressed about X, Y and Z. Well, you're always going to be in this complete battle of doing and frothing until you actually gain some sort of awareness and emotional equilibrium in order for you to then make decisions based off of a stable foundation of emotions. You're always going to be, kind of like struggling backwards and forwards between the two. And I think to say that someone should take personal responsibility of that. I mean, at some point, yes, someone does have to take personal responsibility, but I think that if someone can go in and try and get a result, and not really have to go and stare at the demons in the mirror and actually talk to them, they'd much rather do that, but sometimes you do have to go and do the hard work first before you can get the result that you want. And I think the coaches, probably on COVID say, well, this person just didn't want it enough or this person didn't assume personal responsibility or wasn't following X, Y and Z like I told them to. It was like, well, if you're a coach, you're fucking job to figure out why not. And if it's out of your scope of practice, then you need to go and refer to a therapist or refer to someone who has the ability to go and have those conversations and understand why that person keeps making boundaries and they keep getting smashed out and they can't keep them or why is that? And I think that it's just a bit of a cop out for a coaching online coach to go, well, they didn't make it because they didn't take responsibility of their actions. At some point, yeah, they do need to take responsibility. Everyone does have to take responsibility. But they have to understand that I kind of like something that I use with my clients is when I talk about reaction and response. So people react in a certain way because whatever trauma or experiences they've had, so their reaction will be angry or projecting stuff out while everyone will make bad decisions about eating and drinking and exercising. But the fact of the matter is that if you can build and change that reaction to a response, so it's almost like you have a stimulus response, right? We know that if someone does something and then they respond in a certain way, but if you can create this filtration system, which is basically your emotional intelligence where the stimulus happens and as you go through this filtration system, you have the time, the ability to instead of react, it then creates a response. Well, if you have that and you now know how you want to respond, then you do have a responsibility to make the right decision. So it's almost like the coach needs to change it from a reaction to a response and then it's the client's responsibility to make the right decision. Yeah, I think that's beautiful. The description there of actually moving that from reaction to response, so when you've got the ability to respond, then that is when it becomes your responsibility. When you've got all the skills, when you've got all your awareness, when you've got everything you need to build up that space between reaction response, that was. And that's just something I want to cover because I know from I've spoken to people, I've had people come to me and ask for help and they've struggled with this and I've been told previously that I just didn't want it in or find out for you like I'm unable to change. That you know, it's really easy to get stuck in that place and I'd personally argue that anyone who has been on any kind of your diet and has been exposed to diet culture for any amount of time needs some support beyond nutrition, simply nutrition. Like there's something else that needs to happen there, whether that is therapeutic support, whether that is some support around relationships with food, with body, with self, there's something else that needs to go on there simply by being exposed to that perpetual cycle of your diet. And again, I think that's an aspect of the industry that we're enormously missing at the moment and I just really wanted to get some clarity for the people listening. And something else that has kind of came up without was intending it and that was this discussion around I wanted to ask you more about language and how important language is, whether that's from an emotional aspect, to being able to speak about language, but you seem to use language a lot. I was looking through some of your testimonials on your social media and language came up. There was a feature on language and I feel already we've had like this emphasis on like responsibility, some of these common words. How does language feature in your practice? Well, languages, languages means in which you transfer your, the Holy Trinity of coaching skills, which is the idea of questions feedback and then your ability to listen to language of the other person. So, you know, without, you know, that language is, tells them everything and tells you everything. So, without a good understanding of language, you know, and that's also things that are, things are said and things are aren't said. That's sentences that aren't finished. That's parts that we've known more after it, you know. And, you know, the kind of idea of what does that mean, what stories it's telling, the languages away in which someone tells the narrative of their life and how it's going and how it's proceeding. Sometimes how it's gone, but that, obviously, we don't always know that's a perception of their own, own kind of like existence of how that's actually, but the language part of it is the only way in which we can really get to grips with understanding and its body language as well. It's not, it's verbal, it's communication through, but, you know, verbal language also, body language as well, which is huge. It's so important, especially like, I can, I can be delivering it. More therapeutic coaching, some coaching sessions as well, but mainly the therapeutic coaching, I'll be delivering it and I can tell, like, I can ask, I can ask a question or a client can be reflecting on something, and you can tell by their body language, like where they're going, the journey that they're going on, they're going for a walk around their head thinking about things, and they're actually talking to me whilst they're doing that, right? It's just that they, so you have to, you have to take into consideration all aspects of language, and actually what it's a medium for, you know, questions, listening feedback and then how you can bring those three things together, and, and, and, and utilize them effectively when you are coaching, you know, and having those conversations. What about from the coachy perspective as well? How much of shaping or informing the language that the person uses to describe their experience can impact their ability to make change happen, or their ability to actually accurately describe what's going on? So I assume with regards to like negative, like negative, negative self-talk, for example, is probably the most. Yeah, that could be one example, yeah, absolutely. Yeah, I mean, like when you, when you think about like negative self-talk, it's very much something where people get stuck in this kind of like very frustrating cocoon of negativity, of stewing, being frustrated, going over things that have happened, but they're not happy about, you know, and if something's told to them, or something's brought to them in a communicative way, they immediately take a negative slant on it, rather than seeing the positive, because if fixed in this kind of a mindset of which is driven by language, whereas challenging someone's language, even by getting them to say something in a positive way, and getting them to find something in a positive way, and getting them to actually verbalise it, can lift the mouth of that kind of well of negativity, not straight away, but bit by bit, you know, sometimes people falling to the habit of negativity and negative self-talk or using negative language around, you know, all aspects, whether it be relationships, nutrition, health, fitness, work, as a matter of so kind of like if you think about it on a global way, sometimes you just have to go in with individual context and get them to change that negative language in those individual context first, and then eventually you get a global effect, and they become a much more positive person. and they speak with a lot more gratitude and I find that gratitude is something that gains leverage over shifting that language from negative into a positive and finding gratitude and sometimes it's tricky people in a real shit situation. You know finding gratitude is some situations that people are in it, it's really tough right? But ultimately the the aim is to shape that language so that it starts to change the overall narrative of their story and they start to rewrite their own path and their own story in a much more positive way and that's not to say you get this like, there is this, it's absolutely, there's this tightly-known internet as low to trends, there was this trend of like, a whole positive, it's really positive, it's really positive, it's fine, it's just think positively, like you know sometimes something happens and you just have to go that's really shit, that's really that is awful, that's terrible, you know, you can't find anything positive in it, that's okay, but then you move on to the acceptance and you become, you know, you lose, you lose the connection with it in a negative way but you find a connection with it in an accepting way and that's you know therapeutic journey in itself right but avoiding toxic positivity is quite important because you know you can't just be continuously throwing positive comments down someone's throat or getting them to, you know, kind of come forward with positivity if the situation is really negative, then it's about using language that is about acceptance and about moving into that space, yeah, I think we have seen this emergence of like, especially I feel from like, oh, positive people are more successful, positive people are more productive, positive people are more all of these things that kind of get in push in our face and if you're someone that is in the pit of struggle right now, not only does that not help, it makes you feel worse because like, oh, I could be doing XYZ but I currently feel like this and I think being able to make space to feel that way to be able to acknowledge like, I am allowed to have a bad day, I am allowed to feel this way like, it doesn't need to be, and again, I suppose it's the echo chamber of socials as well, isn't it? We've always got this really extreme, heavily controversial opinion that goes right down the other end of the spectrum that is toxic positivity, but create space for and being able to say, oh, actually this is this is how I feel right now, sounds really transformative and you mentioned gratitude there for someone who hasn't experienced or engaged in a gratitude practice, what would be like an entry point for them, what would be the first step? First step, so one thing that's pretty, pretty beneficial and actually can really, so this can have a huge effect on someone's day and also on them their ability to sleep more soundly. So if you have a three, right three things in the morning that you're grateful for, you know, like say for example, I woke up this morning, the sun was rising, I saw, I watched for some rise through the trees out of my arm, I'm a window, you know, I'm grateful for that, straight away, you know, just write that down, jot that down, you know, but I've got to, my first client today was, we engaged really well, you know, she bought some really positive stuff to her sessions, she's moved on really well with some certain aspects, I was very grateful for that, you know, and I've got time to sit down today and had a really nice break first, had a window of opportunities, sat down, had a really nice break, I said really positive, I chatted with one of my colleagues, shared some examples of stuff, I'm really grateful for that as well, you know, and it's kind of like writing things down as you go, it's really nice, but starting off immediately, when you wake up, think well what's grateful, what's grateful, what's immediately, can I just look around and I'm happy with them and I'm going to kind of, in that position, and then at the end of the day, reflection on what's gone well, you know, what have you enjoyed, what are you grateful for, and I think there's this like kind of, he's almost like balancing the app between projecting what you're going to be grateful for and reflecting what you are grateful for, and it kind of like meshes together and gives you a nice little gratitude net, which kind of supports you, because shit does happen during the day, you know, there are some things which you're not really happy with during the week, and you're like, now I don't know, that's really kind of, give a maybe a punch in the face, metaphorically, but like ultimately, if you're supported by a net of gratitude of other things, you know, and you should find, you know, finding things, finding gratitude in the smallest of things will allow you to build a really strong net of gratitude to support that positivity. I personally find that haven't, I don't know, I don't know, maybe you would want to call it a ritual, but just like something that like for me, it's a coffee in a book, so every morning I make space because I love to sit there with my coffee, I like to feel the warmth of the cup like while I'm and that I suppose it's kind of like making an opportunity for that to happen if you've got the ability to do so as well, so I'm always able to find something to be grateful for even if it is just my coffee in my book because I love to do that. And I think that aspect of what you've said there have just been able to like, again, like so many analogies that you're using, like we were talking earlier, you were talking about the force field, we've had like the ship in the boat and the steering with the values, we've had the North Star and the sea, we've had the gratitude net, like all of these things are really visual for people to connect with, and I think that's amazing, like using there actually like someone could come in from left field, knock you right off your feet, but luckily you've got this net to catch you so that you just don't quite fall as far and that you need self, again super, super visual, which leads me on to something else that I saw on your socials and I was mega interested in. And that was your hot air balloon busket technique and I just, when I was listening to you say about the net there I was like, oh, this is going to lead on perfectly to this bit that I want to know. And that is this hot air balloon busket technique. What is it? What does it do? Because this sounds again super visual. So I'm actually really annoyed because Instagram have taken the audio off of that. So the audio doesn't work anymore, you just get the captions coming up underneath. The captions. We move on from that in life, but that's just Instagram sticking it to me but never mind. So you have to re-law it, you have to re-purpose it. That's a business thing. Repurpose content. Apparently that's what we're doing. The idea of a hot air balloon technique, I kind of like I used it, I used this from positive psychology. So I've done a lot of work. I've done a lot of like work in positive psychology with various different certifications and master classes and this came up in one of them kind of, but I've taken it and I've put my spin on it. So you have the idea of that in the basket you've got everything that's weighing you down, weighing your mind down. So the idea that everything just ends up in one massive lump of a basket in there and the thing is we've actually getting stuff done or going about your day. You need a certain lightness of the mind, you need a certain amount of dexterity and maneuverability, you need to be able to go from A to B without being weighed down. So when you think about what's in the basket, it's a good idea to actually reflect on it and go, well, first this is the key factor which I've probably been going into too much depth on the Instagramming, but what's in your control and what's not in your control? So firstly get rid of everything that is, yeah, get everything that's not in your control because you can't, there's no point in that weighing you down. It's not going to serve you well. And then the things that are in your control, either you can approach it in two ways, you can either go well, this is what I can do and then it's no longer in my control. So I'm going to do these bits, now I've done them, they're good, they're not in my control anymore, they're not in the basket and then you start to like lift off and you start to, because you've lightened the load, you start to be able to then think and have parity around some of the other things. And I always like saying, especially to like some of the like core groups that I, like cogent, I coach top founders and, and I'm going to hike for some of the high positions. And I'm just going to be like well, basically once you've got rid of that, now your mind can be created, now your mind is, is freer, it's got more value that's in because you're not being weighed down by stuff that's one line of your control and stuff that you've actually not off the table, got out the basket. So now you can come up and you can start to be, and it's and engage with some of the tasks. We're just still in the past here, but you can do it in a more creative way, in a more flexible way, and get where you need to get to. That ability, I think, especially when we're faced with a problem or a struggle or a barrier that's stopping us from doing something that we want to do, we do need to be able to think outside the box to come up with those creative solutions. And what you just said, actually, let's focus on these things, these things that we can't control, let's get rid of them there. Now we can do it with those anywhere. And then the things that we can control, what are going to be the easy wins, what are going to be the things that are going to lighten our Lord to then give us the clarity, energy, capacity, power to make this change happen. And I think for so many people right now, there's so much going on in the world that we just can't control. And we get so wrapped up in it, like mainstream media and being bombarded by the news and all these stories. And it's just like that's robbing you that's putting stuff in your basket. That's putting stuff in your basket that you cannot control. And I think having that little analogy of like, right, let's lighten the Lord, let's lighten the basket and give you back some of that clarity, some of that lift off, and the maneuverability to be able to work on that is fantastic. Is there like a little framework that people can follow? Like is there something that can just be like, right, this is what we do first, like maybe a prompt or a question that they can use to explore this a little bit? I mean, I suppose often when I'm someone that start, I'm in a conversation with someone and I can tell they're heavy and they're not really, I can see intuitively what needs to happen. But obviously as a coach, you can't do that right? That's the only way you, well, in some types of coaching you can, but in the majority of coaching, it's not. So you kind of like, the prompt is, I go, what's in your basket? What you carrying in your basket? And then I go, okay, and then almost like triggers, well, almost like a reflective list. All you need to do is really go, can't control that, can't control that, can't control that. And then all of a sudden you start thinking, okay, right, this is why I feel so. You've got down heavy and might, I can't focus and I can't get around, I can't get off the ground for the start of the day. And I often think that the best way that you coach people is, you use a framework. The framework is a generalisation, but you actually really need to individually apply it to the person. And how you do that is different. Application is different. Most people have little mantras, little sayings, the best way to then trigger that particular course of actions, what they do is, I want you to explain something like the high-ebbling technique, what kind of thing would help you trigger that and want you to think about that process. And literally the process, you know, what's in your basket is a question, but you know, you might be like, what am I carrying to something like that? And then it kind of like allows them to apply the framework or the concept in their own individual way. I suppose these things back to what we were talking about earlier on and that was having this awareness of the problems, having this awareness, like there's a very good chance. And I fall into this boat as well, carrying that stuff around and then just simply not aware of it. And then when you bring some awareness to it, it's like, ah, okay, that makes more sense now. It's kind of almost like that breakthrough. So sometimes that level of awareness can be enough. And I love the the emphasis there on that individualised approach, like what in your basket, you know, what you carry and finding that little mantra, saying reminder, that will just remind you to check in even if that was something that could be included in you. If you do a journal practice or anything like that, um, boat, I'm very conscious of your time, sir. I know that you're a very busy human. I want to ask one more question. And this is arguably the one that people either love or hate the most. And that is if you had three pieces of wisdom as your entire legacy, everything's gone. All the teachings that you've ever done, all the content that you've ever made, podcasts, posts, blogs, anything that you've ever created is gone. And you can leave three pieces of wisdom what they're going to be. I've actually written three words down because I thought this is this is a challenging question. Like the other I didn't write anything down for the others that we've been talking about that. And so the first the first piece of wisdom, which was really cringe me saying that like they are not really. It also feels quite cringe me asking it. I'm not going to lie, but I've done it for like 50 episodes now. So I've just got a fucking commit to it. I've made me bed and I've got a lie in it. It's as simple as that. You've done well, though. It's good. I like it. I do like it. So the first the first piece of the wisdom I've probably liked people to really think about is be authentic. Find your authentic voice or who you are and and then stay true to it. But there's a caveat to this. You can always be kind. Because sometimes people can be authentic and really it can be quite hurtful in their opinions or their approaches or you know and not everyone is and has some possessive personality traits of being conscientiousness to a high level. However, they can still be authentic but they do need to be kind and be in their way in which they are authentic and when they don't worry about people. I think that's really important and something that not that I hadn't considered, but that hadn't verbalised in a way and that's absolutely leave the life that's true to yourself and would just have that consideration for the people and it's so easy to fall into that trap or to see that especially with a lot of the like oh just toxic people out like a lot of these narratives where it's kind of like the self isolation like I am in some there's a lot of what feels to be within this space of be authentic. There's these underlying sort of superiority of like look at me I'm more authentic and I think that bit that little caveat on the end is just beautiful and that's the bit that so many people miss. Yeah, authentic and kind. I think the second thing realistically is it's a bit of a tricky one but we have this kind of, we exist in a world where we have relationships with everyone but and we should nourish them especially the relationships that have a reciprocity towards us as individuals and support us as individuals, nurturing and having those relationships in good health is very important but it should never be superseded by the relationship with yourself. It should never be more important than the relationship with yourself and you should always be attending to your needs, your once, your foundation of a human being and the relationship you have with yourself is a priority. At the same time you have the caveat if you can always do it in a kind way. So it's kind of like look after yourself, nurture your own relationship, make sure it's really really fucking important that you do that but you don't have to do it and piss everyone else off or other people don't have to suffer because you're looking after yourself so do it but do it and be kind. I love that one as well. What's number three? Number three is always, so from an emotional intelligence point of view, always be building and elevating your level of emotional intelligence and utilising it in a honest, true, authentic and kind way in order to be able to have a positive impact on your environment and to the people that are in it because that will, whatever you do in life if you do that, you know, when you lay down and you die, if you've done that and you've acted in that kind of way then you've been a good person, you've been a good human. I love how those role interconnected. I love how the end the emotional intelligence and building that and cultivate that and continue to do so. Like that that's huge and it's arguably one of the more challenging things to do but like you say when you get to the end of your days and you look them back I don't think you're going to regret doing that. That has been a phenomenal chat. I sincerely appreciate your time today. If people are thinking I need to more will in my life working they find out more from you how can they get in touch how can they ever chat? Well I'm on, but if you're starting anyone is more than welcome to reach out with their anything you want to talk about then my door is always open. I'm on Instagram, we're all being coaching, I'm on LinkedIn, we're all coaching again as well. I spend time on both of those platforms obviously so you know the The door is always open but yes it's been an absolute pleasure. I do it really has and very facilitative and communicative chat which I value myself so thank you for having me on. It's been a pleasure. No it's been phenomenal. I'll put all of that in the show notes below so you can just click away and go and check out more of Will's work which I would 100% recommend. However, on that note I'm going to wrap the episode up there. Remember, be humble, be curious, be kind, peace out.