Her Discussions by Dr Faye - Could Chasing Perfection Make You Less Productive?

Episode Date: July 13, 2026

📚 WIN A BOOK! 📚Lily is kindly gifting YOU a copy of her book: “Prioritise This”To enter, comment with your favourite quote from this podcast episode wherever you are listening. We'll pick one winner at random and announce them on our Instagram Stories next Monday, so keep an eye out 🤍__What if the healthiest thing you could do was stop trying to optimise everything?In today's episode, we're joined by Lily Silverton, founder of The Priorities Method. She helps people cut through overwhelm by focusing on what truly matters, building habits that actually fit real life, and letting go of the pressure to do it all.You'll learn:🧠 the 2 question mindset to shift your priorities💼 how to separate work from your identity⏰ the truth about 5am mornings💭 how to analyse where your time goes✨ why chasing perfection can backfireResources & links mentioned:Lily’s book: https://www.lilysilverton.com/prioritise-thisLily’s Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lily_silverton/🔔 Join the HERd* broadcast channel here: https://www.instagram.com/channel/AbY4liwxlLnewx4H/?igsh=MWhuaXFweGtucTB3cA==📱 Find us on socials:Instagram & Tiktok - @drfayebatePodcast Instagram & Tiktok: @herdiscussionspod📩 Want to reach out?Email: [e-mail]🛑 Disclaimers:Opinions are my own. This content is for educational / entertainment purposes and not medical or financial advice.

You're trying to make yourself perfect. To never feel tired and to never feel stressed. This attempt to affect our lives is really damaging us. Lily Silverton is a best-selling author and mindset coach. We'll be learning all about his signature framework, the Priorities Method, which uses neuroscience and psychology to make positive changes that actually stick. I have this fear that if I'm gentle on myself, I won't do anything. Tire identity up into our work, right?

I really believe that balance is a myth. Having those moments where you allow yourself to be in the moment can really shift your perspective on. How can I say to myself, we can stop for a bit. The whole world's not going to fall apart. And before we get into the conversation, if you could do me a favour that literally takes you two seconds, hit the subscribe button or leave a five-star review

depending on what platform you're listening on. It really helps us to continue to grow the podcast and bring you guests to help you live a happier, healthier life. Thank you. Many of us will understand the feeling of setting big New Year's resolutions at the beginning of the year and then being burnt out by this time of year. So we've had so many questions come in from our community. But before we get into those, I would love to hear a little bit about how you ended up here

from a high-pressed media environment. Yeah. Okay. So thanks for having me. first of all, they? Right. So I was a magazine editor who worked at fashion and arts and culture magazines and it really was a job I'd wanted for some time. It wasn't what I studied. I studied politics and human rights, but it was a job that I absolutely loved and writing had always been sort of in my DNA. My father was a writer. And I had this kind of dream job where I was traveling all over the world.

I was doing all the fashion shows. I had an amazing team. I was at Hunger Magazine. I had the photographer Rankin. He was my boss and he was incredible boss. We got on really well. And yet I got to this point when I was in my early 30s where I just looked around myself, my surroundings, and went, God, this is amazing and I absolutely don't want this. And I looked at the women especially who I could see who were 10 years older than me,

so who were sort of the age I am now. And I saw them at the shows. absolutely no opinion or judgment on the people that stay within the world because I think it's just different types of people and what suits them. But I looked around and thought, this is not what I want in 10 years. This is not where I want to be in 10 years. And so then it was that realization of, okay, what do I actually want? What actually do I think is important? Going to priorities. And I'd done yoga since I was a kid. It was always a big part of my life. I'd always wanted to do my training. So I had this big breakup that forced me to go like, fuck it, I'm going to do it.

Rankin was really supportive, so he gave me time off to go and do it. And then from there, I went really quickly into the thought repattening side of things. I find that really, you know, fine with yoga, you can get flexible and whatever, but we all know it's not about the body and what you're doing with the body when it comes to yoga. It's more about the flexibility and understanding that you create in the mind, the compassion. And that side of things I found really interesting and so through that I discovered coaching and quickly sort of led myself down that path and that's sort of how I've ended up here. And what I find really interesting as a self-confessed workaholic myself is you are an incredibly successful person in your current career now

as you were in your previous career. The fear that drives my workaholicism is the fear that I will maybe go back to where I came from. I will lose things that I've worked for if I don't have this, you know, this insufferable self-optimisation drive to keep going. I know it all too well, Tisering along the one-way train to burn out town. So I'm really excited to come on to how you've found this balanced space where you also feel fulfilled a little bit later on. But first we have a section of the podcast called Buy or Bye Bye. So I am going to show you some products. Okay. And I would love to know whether you would buy these products or you would say bye-bye to them meaning goodbye. Okay. I can't wait. And the only rule is we love nuance. You know,

on social media, there's way too much short-clipped viral click-basedy opinions. And I think that in this day and age, that is what we're lacking. We're lacking a balanced approach. So All that being said, first up, vision boards. Vision boards. Vision boards, I guess, is a buy, essentially. I think they are really effective for some people. I think some people work, have a fantastic visual memory. And that having that there for them and being able to create it is really impactful,

being able to create it and then look at it and refer to it. visualize it is really impactful. But I also think that for some people, myself included, they find them a bit cringe. And then there's another whole group of people who make the vision board, but don't fucking do anything on the board. So you can't have the board if you're not going to put in the effort and you're not going to make it happen. So I think there's some of this like you spoke about before, you know, you get to January, you make the vision board, but you don't actually think through what are the steps, what are the sacrifices, what are the huge things that I need to do in order to actually make these things happen. And then I think if you're in that

category, then vision boards are very demotivating because then you've got this thing you've created that's maybe too many. As you spoke about earlier, I think before we were recording, you know, you've got too many things on there that you're probably not going to be able to envision, bring them into life. And so it can be really demotivating. So I think, you know, if you love vision board, and you find that they work for you, buy them, stick with them. If you don't, don't feel that you need to do that. Yeah, I'm going to sound like a massive hypocrite now, but one of my issues with vision boards is exactly like what you've said.

It's focusing on the results and not the process. Yeah. And also I think it takes us away from enjoying the process as well when we're so focused on the end product. But also I think there's this tendency for vision boards to be so aesthetic. It's almost the green juicification of wellness. 100%. And I also think about, do you remember when you were,

I mean, there's a little bit of an age gap between us, but when I was younger and I did any vision stuff, it was always about cutting out bits from magazines, but it wasn't polished. You weren't going for like this perfect polished identicate, as you say, like the match era drink, and then the beach shot in a bikini and, you know, whatever it is. It was more diverse and interesting than that, I think.

And obviously we have become quite limited in our thought process of what we should be visioning and what good visioning looks like and what aesthetic visioning looks like for sure. And everyone has the same aesthetic. It's not varied. And the reason I say I'm being a hypocrite is because a lot of our thumbnails, we use quite a vision boardee. But because they do really well and they epitomize a concept quite well. People recognize the images. You're right.

If you go through a magazine, what you pick out is going to be so different to the exact same images that everyone else is picked out on Pinterest. Do you make vision boards yourself? And if so, what is your process? No. No. Okay. I just don't see how I would make something that would inspire me like that. But I'm also, I can't visualize. So I have affintasia. I know, me and my boyfriend, we literally watched it. It's high a YouTube video all about this. Can you explain what it is to people? Because I think it's so, so wild. So I only found this out two years ago, I think, or maybe less than that. And obviously the interesting thing is that I've been teaching visualization for 10 years. And I had absolutely no idea, Faye, that when people say

visualize, that they could see things inside their head. So all I see is black. And that sounds dark. It's not. It's very soothing in one way, I think not having visual imagery. But yeah, so I can't see a thing. So when I was saying to people, you know, visualize an orange and describing it in detail, I thought that everyone else was having the same experience as me, which is that I use words to imagine and describe something. But I do not actually see the visuals. I'm going way off tangent, but this is also really interesting to me as someone who's in a creative industry as well, the visualization.

Yeah, it's such an interesting topic. I will maybe have to link the YouTube video that we watched on the science of it because it's brilliant. Anyway, I won't know. It also means you've got no memory. Oh, wow. So there's a really big link. My memory is terrible. It's why I gave up politics and human rights.

because I was going to do law. And memory was atrocious. And it's really, really linked to a really poor memory. Wow. So I can watch a film. And like a couple of months later, I'll turn to my boyfriend. My boyfriend, turn to my husband. Jesus.

Sorry, Dan. And be like, oh, look, that film looks good. We should watch that. And he'll be like, we literally just watch that film. Oh, my gosh. So. Oh, well, we'll come on to your visualization methods a little bit later on. The 5am Club.

again, if you love getting up at 5am, if you are a really early morning person and you thrive within that framework, then fantastic. Stick with it. Like I'm not saying don't do it at all. If you are not a 5am kind of person, do not force yourself to get up at 5am and feel like shit. So you may find that you get up at 5am and it works really well for you and actually you feel good even though you're not a morning person. Again, I don't think that anyone should be doing anything repeatedly in the name of wellness that doesn't have a positive impact overall. So you can, obviously, I get up at 6 a.m. most days. I don't always want to get out of bed at 6 a.m. Sometimes I do. I'm also a morning person, but sometimes I really don't. And I'll still, mostly still get up

because I know that if I get up and I do my meditation and I have a tea without the kids around and video, I'm going to feel much more set up for the day. So I'm not saying that don't push past like an initial discomfort. However, if it leaves you feeling really depleted for the rest of the day, and if it leaves you feeling anxious when you don't do it, then I would suggest that it's not a good idea. And the 5am Club, is that what it's called? The book is one of the worst written books. I have ever read in my entire life. The fact that that is a bestseller to me is the biggest joke. The 2026 Chevrolet tracks is the stylish SUV for those on the move. And with the standard Chevy Safety Assist package, you have the backup to handle every turn with confidence.

The 2026 tracks. Start Your Build at Chevrolet.ca. What, I've never read it. Why is it so badly written? He's such a terrible writer. Oh, wow. The concept is insane. It's a blog post, not even a blog post. It's like a one page of a blog post that book, which is essentially get up at 5am. Oh, God.

Do a bit of movement, do a bit of reflection, do a bit of silence, do a bit of creativity. That's it. It's two lines. Could have been an email. Could have definitely been a text. Brilliant. Okay. So that's me. Nice. I'm a recovering 5am clubber.

Feel free to lead over and smack me across the face when I say this. When I was working for the time in the NHS. And I started YouTube when I was in medical school. So mainly because I didn't know anyone who else was who was a doctor and I wanted to share my life. They told me not to apply for medical school in my school. So I wanted to show other girls like me this is what medical school is like. It's not that scary. You can do it too sort of thing.

But then I started doing that. I started working full time in the NHS and I was terrified of losing this community that I'd built up. So I would wake up at 5am every single morning. I would do two hours of work. So I'd work till 7, quickly shower, get up and then just a half an hour to get ready, shovel something down my face, going to work, be in for work for 8, sometimes be doing a 12-hour shift, 8 till 8, get back, and then I do an hour of work on social media. And then I remember on my days off, so maybe I'd have four, four, 12-hour days

where I was doing two hours in the morning, one, two hours at night, and then going to sleep, waking up, doing it again. And on my days off, I'd have so much to do, editing YouTube videos, getting them up, whatever. I would tell myself I'm not allowed to leave the house until I've finished my to-do list. Really, really, really challenging for me.

and really one of my close friends, you know Savannah Satchdev, she's brilliant and she's one of my closest friends now, but I saw one of her YouTube video, one of her social media clips that came up and it said, never trust an Indel thought. And I just remember I was locking myself away

in the pursuit of achieving things. And just feeling, you know, awful about myself. I'd never been more productive in my entire life. And I just, I would sit inside and I just have these anxious spirals of, you're not doing enough. You could be doing so much more. Look at this person.

Look at what they're doing. I've never compared myself more to anyone else, despite doing so much. And then I saw this video from her, and she said, never trust an Indle thought, like, go outside, go outside. And yeah, I think that's why I really wanted you on the podcast as a guest,

because I think what you stand for is what I wish that, that Faye could have heard. Yeah. So I'm recovering 5 a.m. I think also if you think of what you were doing, the work that you were doing during the day was so demanding physically, mentally, emotionally, on every level.

And then that sort of thing around socials and wanting to provide, you know, inspiration to girls like you. Like that's also quite a heavy reason to be doing something. You know, it's a strong and it's a beautiful reason, but there's also layers to that that maybe some people on socials don't have. they just want to be famous or they just find something interesting.

So there's those layers which would have brought so much more to the surface. And then also like physiologically, you're probably just quite tired. Like if you're waking up at 5am and you've got those demanding days and you're not sleeping very much, as we all know, it's just much harder to do anything or regulate anything on our minds or to see, you know, to be able to see properly that like, oh, I actually am being really productive and what I'm doing is incredible. and look at what little me would think of this. Isn't that fantastic?

And to not have that perspective because you're just exhausted. Yeah, exhausted. Absolutely. And waking up and literally I would wake up, I wouldn't look at my phone, I'd go straight to my desk. And then I'd shut my laptop and go straight to bed. And now I try and at least shut my laptop off seven just to make sure that I'm getting that time

because our body doesn't know. You know, our body needs to have time to wind down. we can't just go from work mode snap off to bed. Especially when work mode is screens. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay.

Sorry, I love a tangent. Love a tangent. Mindfulness apps. Yeah, I like mindfulness apps. Nice. I do like mindfulness apps. Again, it's how you use them. It's your relationship with them.

Like I use Insight Timer. I'm also a teacher on Insight Timer, so there's lots of my meditations on there. Excuse my ignorance. What's that? It's one of the big, it's one of the bigies. It's like headspace. Yeah.

And I personally just use a timer. But I think that they can be really helpful. What I worry with people is that they start to become a tool that people feel like a slave to as opposed to serve to buy. And this is my problem with a lot of wellness stuff, is that what starts out as wanting to feel better becomes something that you believe if you don't do, that you're morally failing. And I think that can happen with mindfulness apps. So you start off by being like, oh, I should do some mindfulness. Someone said this. I'm feeling really stressed. And you do it.

And then you feel better. And then you stop doing it or you forget to do it. And then you really beat yourself up for it because you haven't done your daily mindfulness. And then the app is giving you a little thing a nudge saying, why haven't you done this? And, you know, come on, come back, et cetera, which is very smart in terms of behavioral psychology. But I think can often lead people again in our modern lives where we never feel like we're doing enough. Right? We always feel like we're failing. We're always falling behind. And I think those can add to that sense of, am I doing enough? What do you do when that voice? comes into your head.

That fuck off. Love. I swear quite a lot, so I really do. I spend a lot of time trying to remind myself that life is messy and complex and that we are not here for perfection. We are here to live and experience our lives to try and kind of be okay

with whatever is going on. And that's true mindfulness, right? The truth of you're thinking about actually practicing mindfulness, it's being okay with whatever the current situation is and whatever's going on. So like you were talking about the, you know, the time when you had all the really, really intense days, and I'm sure you still have really intense days in life, trying to say, okay, well, this is that intense day.

And if I missed the mindfulness app, whatever I was meant to do, I'm just going to be kind to myself about that. I'm just going to give myself a little break. And if I know that it's really impactful and really helpful for my mental health, then I'm going to, you know, make sure that I get up tomorrow and do it a bit earlier. Or if I fail that day,

or if I don't succeed that day, then I'll do it the next day. And so on. So just giving yourself a break and going a little bit gentler on yourself, I guess, is the dream. I have this fear that if I'm gentle, on myself, I won't do anything.

Have you ever experienced that? Yeah, for sure. Yeah, how do you manage that? I think it's a little bit easier in your 40s. Fine. I do think having age, having children, being shown with children that they're like, you can't control everything and you can't optimize your days in the way that you once thought you could or could.

And understanding that your attention and your time is limited and that those resources are limited, I think it's easier to be. more emotionally and mentally forgiving as you get a little bit older. I think in your 20s, at least I definitely had much more of a propensity towards self-flagellation. And it's that funny thing because, you know, in your 20s, I don't know if this is your experience, but I hear it a lot from when I give workshops and talks of people feeling like they are already falling behind, right, that they haven't done enough. And, And I think for most people, not everyone, that starts to diminish the older you get, which is

kind of ridiculous because surely the older you get, the more you should be like, oh my God, I've got less time. Yeah. And have I done enough? But first of all, you start to do more things. And also you start to understand maybe more of what matters. You start to listen to yourself and what works for you a little bit more. So yeah, I would say that it's very, very common in your 20s.

Yeah. And social media doesn't help. Oh, social media really, really doesn't help. And I didn't have social media in my 20s, really. I mean, we have Facebook, but. Yeah. Not in the way that you guys do. Habit trackers.

Love a habit tracker. Nice. Yeah, I love a habit tracker. I've got one in the journal in the Priorities Method journal. There's a plug. Again, I think they can be really helpful as long as they continue to serve you and not you serving them the other way around. So it's really that thing of with any.

wellness tool with any productivity tool. It's making sure that it is supporting your wellness as a 360 degree human and not just your wellness practice or productivity practice or whatever that is. So making sure that it's supporting your mental health, your emotional health. And if it's becoming something where you are using it to beat yourself up or you're feeling terrible or if you don't have that one tick on one day, then you're feeling like shit about yourself, then I would re-evaluate your relationship with it. But provided you can use it in a way where, you know, it's I might miss one or two, three of these a week,

that's all right as long as I keep going, you know, consistency over time, over long periods of time is much more important than whatever we can tick seven days off in a row, you know, rather someone was ticking off three days a row for three months and seeing that. So yeah, that's where I stand. What about you?

I would be that person. I would do seven days religiously for a month. miss one day because I was away or whatever. Never again. Never again. Never again. And then I heard maybe it was a podcast, maybe it was but God knows now, but the, someone said the best thing that you can do is when you set up that habit tracker say, I am going to fail.

One of these days, I will fail, or I will miss a day. Fail is probably the wrong word. And actually the power is in getting back on the horse, not. A hundred percent. Not letting guilt and blame send you into a spire. or we just don't do it again. Yeah, it's baking it into the cake, like in your mind. So the practice of doing this is also the practice of not doing this.

Oh, I love that. And not all the time. Don't not do it all the time because then you're not doing it at all. But having that idea of like sometimes I won't do this. And that is a healthy, normal to be expected experience. I think maybe the human psychology side of it is where if a habit is really difficult to build, like say, I don't know, going to the gym three times a week or whatever, we're going out for a walk.

It might feel like a really difficult habit to build. Our brain makes us think, okay, we've missed a couple days. To build it back up will be equally as hard as when we started. Even though that's not the case, you've already come so far in building it. It's a lot easier to rebuild it again. We remember the challenges, you know? Yeah, absolutely. And it's also like we both use the word failure as well.

It's that thing that our brain goes, you failed by not doing this. And so that becomes demotivating. And we know that habit trackers are very effective because when you tick something off a to-do list or a habit track of whatever it is, you get a hit of dopamine. And that dopamine is a very helpful chemical that can neurotransmitter that you're going to get. If you want to stick with something, if you want to stay engaged with something, you're not going to get that reward when you don't do something. And so part of it, I would say, in terms of getting back on is how you can trick yourself.

Like you said, like what can you think about the positive experiences you've had to doing something and how can you assure yourself that a couple of days off or a week off or a month off, whatever it is, there's always time to get back onto something. Do you have any examples of how you've tricked yourself to get back into a habit that maybe you've lost? That's a good question. I really do love when it comes to habit setting. I love the basing your identity around it. Yes.

So rather than saying to yourself, I have to go the gym, I have to go the gym, I have to go the gym. you say to yourself, I am the kind of person who really gets a lot out of moving my body. So you're not even, you're not putting some like moral placement on it. So it's not like I'm the kind of person who's really healthy, you know, because then when you don't go, then you feel shit about yourself. But it's trying to build and tie up your identity into a habit so that you can remind yourself of that and think of it more along those lines rather than I have to do something.

And also all those tricks of sort of working with language again of I get to move my body. I am very privileged that I have a body that can get up and work. I'll just go for 15 minutes. You know, future me is going to thank me all of that sort of stuff. Making it really manageable. So rather than saying I have to do an hour, you just go, I'm going to go for 20 minutes.

Yeah, trick yourself. Trick yourself. There's always the trick with the gym as well of leaving your shoes and your gym outfit by the bed so that you get up straight into your clothing. That's a good one actually. I need to do that one because I actually can imagine when I was working quite significantly. Gym, I didn't even have gym membership. I didn't run. Think I exercised maybe three times across the, maybe that's a bit of an exaggeration, maybe five times across the entire year. I never knew medical students who were incredibly at the gym. gym and really healthy as well. Often they were the ones who were like partying the hardest, but also like going the hardest, you know, drowning their sorrows and also like had so much work to do. I don't think any of them were. Yeah. Yeah. No, exactly. And then this year I've got

a little bit more flexibility and, you know, a bit more time. It's really interesting. You mentioned the identity thing because you know people you meet and they say, oh, I have to go to the gym because it clears my head. And because I hadn't been exercising, I didn't identify with that statement, even though my head was a mess. So I think the one way that I found myself getting back into that habit is going, oh, do you know what, I should go to the gym to clear my head. I'm one of those people who goes to the gyms to clear their head. And actually, you know, you go and you feel 10 times better afterwards. It does clear your head. But yeah, seeing myself as someone who, you know, went to the gym to clear their head. I love that. Yeah. So yeah, I love the identity shift.

accountability partners. Oh, 100% on this one. I'm 100% buy on this one. Which is much more likely, all of the studies show that we are much more likely to achieve our goals, quote unquote, whatever that is, if we have a bit of accountability. So I think the best possible thing is working with a friend if they are the kind of friend that also stays on track with something, not if they are not sort of friend. But yeah, whether it's, you know, you can create accountability for yourself in lots of ways.

there's an amazing, I don't know whether it exists here in the UK. I know it does in the States, but where you have an app where if you don't do the thing you said you were going to do, you have to donate money, but you donate money to a cause you really, really, really disagree with. And that is incredibly smart in terms of like what that does to your brain and accountability. So that's, I don't know whether it exists here in the UK. I've heard of sort of when I've given workshops with the same. States is spoken about something like that. Creating accountability when you're looking at change

is so essential. I'm so excited to come on to your priorities method. But first, I wanted to speak a little bit about optimization culture just in general. Before recording, we mentioned the video that went viral about Stephen Bartlett. If you don't know what we're on about where have you been, probably off your phone, which is good. But there was a video from Stephen Bartlett where he was talking about having three glasses of wine ruined his life. I would love to to know what your thoughts are on that. Yeah, so he was saying that he had a couple of glasses of wine and it ruined three days, right?

So three days is what he said. And then went on to talk about all the trackers that he or essentially everything was through whatever a ring or something. Yeah. He was, you know, my sleep score was down. My cortisol levels were through the roof, which I'm not really as a doctor. He do his cortisol every day. And me with like the trainings I've got. I'm not sure that that like.

Yeah, I don't quite believe that one. But what is he doing, a blood test, a saliva test, every single day on his cortisol? Yeah, and also maybe your cortisol levels would drop also possibly more than raise. I don't know. Cortisol, et cetera, et cetera. He said that he'd podcast two days later and he was terrible at the podcast because he was still from this wine. He couldn't go to the gym three days later and so on and so forth. And I'm not a huge fan of Stephen Bartlett anyway.

way. I'll say. However, with that, it just really hit at the heart of something that I've been talking about for years and is a lot of why I wrote my book as well is just I think that wellness can become really unwell. And I think self-help can become really unhelpful very quickly. And I think these days, largely because of social media and because of all these trackers, is that people are so with their own optimization, that they think that they can, you know, it's like with all the Brian Johnson stuff, you know, the longevity, which again, great, like developing ways to live longer, fantastic. But I think we all know the main stuff that works. And one of those is like being born within a safe environment with access to healthcare and so on. But yeah, becoming so

obsessed with optimization that you kind of optimize out all of the experiences of life. So you're trying to make yourself quote unquote perfect, you know, to never feel tired and to never feel stressed and to never stay out too late because you've got to get up early and to never feel bloated and, you know, to never have bad skin and so on and so forth. So much of it is ascetic as a setter as we know as well. But the reality of living is that we take the ups with the downs and we cannot get rid of the downs altogether. And I think this attempt to affect our lives is really damaging us. I've got a take on this video that I haven't heard spoken about in, I haven't heard in the discourse and I would love to hear your your opinions on it.

because I don't know what it's like to be a mixed race man, but I do know what it's like to be maybe a woman who doesn't have privilege on her size, you know? What I resonate with in the optimization culture or what I see in optimization culture is people who have really had to work extremely hard to get to where they are, and now they don't know how to relax. They have this work ethic and this probably fear of going back to where they came from that means they're so focused on they're in fight or flight,

doing everything possible to succeed because that's how they had to get out of where they were in the beginning. Stephen Bartlett is an extremely successful man. If he had a couple of glasses of wine every night, if he enjoyed himself, He's still going to be an extremely wealthy man. He's built success that means he will probably never be below the poverty line ever again in his entire life. I've found a lot more enjoyment in my life. But I do resonate with almost the work ethic that comes with fear. I would love to know how you have found your success that is also balanced.

That's a big question. I was just thinking about what you said before as well. which is also that it's this control, right? Oh, 100%. We desperately want to control things, and particularly if we want a trajectory, which isn't immediately available to us, so we have to work very hard for it, as in your case,

that it becomes about control. And if something works, then we stick with it. And then it becomes something we have to stick with. And I've been there as well myself. You know, I really, I get up very early in the morning, so I don't like to have very late nights. And so I've been through periods where I haven't hung out with my friends as much as I really should because I don't want to sacrifice that sleep.

Now I'm getting more sleep because my kids are a bit older. I find that I can get those nights where I don't sleep much and it doesn't make as big a impact. But I think it is that thing of we get very attached and we want to control things. And if we feel that little sense of control in this very uncontrollable chaotic world, then we hang on to it. Right. my own sense of balance. I really believe that balance is a myth. Nice. I like the idea of it. Sounds very nice on paper. But in reality, as I said, life comes at you. There are many things to do.

We have many competing priorities. We have other people's competing priorities as well to factor in. And I think there are different periods of life that are good things. different things, you know. Even the period of your life when you were waking up at 5 am, like you built this, you know, and you got your medical degree. And that was a very intense experience and very intense things to do, but that was an intense period of life. And if you'd kept that up, perhaps for much longer, that would have had huge consequences. But I do feel that small periods of time where we work incredibly hard at the expense of other things can be quite healthy as long as we are balancing it with periods where we are able, if we are able, obviously it's

huge privilege to be able to control your time and your work, but to see how you can create that sort of overall balance and thinking like maybe this is a certain season of my life. And so this is not going to be the time for X, Y and Z. And maybe if I've just had children and my work is also very intense, maybe I'm not going to be the best friend I can be. in these months and that maybe I can communicate that so that I'm not just dropping off a cliff from people and that they're going to feel

deprioritized by me and excluded by this life that I'm living but that I'm also not trying to be everything to everyone all the time and so that's probably my own philosophy is trying not to be everything to everyone all the time and accepting that sometimes there will be things that are the absolute most important

and that sometimes I'll have real competing priorities but I might also need to think, okay, well, this week I'm going to have to miss that school thing because I need to be away with work and that's a shame, but it's one school thing or it's a couple of school things, you know, and that I've made something else. And not every parent can say that

because not every parent can make them work. and I've got lots of friends who work in professions where they can't go to any of the stuff during the day. Yeah. So I think that's my own way of making it work and that's I'm a freelancer. So, you know, there's huge privilege in being able to control my own hours, which enables me, I think, to have a sense of balance. But I will say also that any time I stop working too much, I get very anxious. So I also, and I know I do, because I'm just used to working. You know, I've been a reliance are a very long time as well. I'm used to working as much as possible. So that's something that I also become very conscious off in terms of how can I stop and how can I say to myself,

we can stop for a bit. The whole world's not going to fall apart. It's healthy, you know, and also trying not to optimise it because I also hate the like rest is productive and makes you a better worker. So I kind of hate that messaging. So it's sort of how to step away from that sense of, you know, we tie our identity up into our work, right? If you do the kind of work that you love, you know, that's what happens. I'm not sure I gave a great answer to that last one. That was more just a comment. No, no, that's brilliant.

And it really neatly brings us on to the intentional prioritisation method. You reminded me of another part of the Stephen Bartlett discourse that is important. I think optimization culture in general is extremely sexist. Because when we look at the completely, when you mentioned being a mum, women take the brunt of a lot of these life events that are completely out of our control. If generally care duties are given to women, whether that is young children or whether that is elderly relatives, if an elderly relative gets sick, who takes on that burden. Statistically, we know most, the vast majority of times that is women. And I think, yeah, the whole optimization culture, this idea that we can control everything feeds into a patriarchal society because women are the ones dealing with the things that we can't control.

And it's also with the optimization stuff, like at some point you just got to get on with it. Yeah. Like you can't be derailed by things so easily, I think is the main thing, you know. Yeah. If we were derailed, I mean, everyone has a very different experience with their hormones in that time at the month. but for people, let's say, who have like a regular-ish experience where it's not a great time in the month, but it doesn't completely destroy them.

If we really focused on the pain in our stomach, if we really focused on how tired we were, we wouldn't be able to keep going and do the things we want to do. And that I feel slightly with the three glasses of wine, like, yeah, sure, if you want to look at your tracker nonstop and think about how tired you are and look at this cortisol level and that, and then you're going to focus on that, on the negative. as opposed to being like, oh, I had a couple of glasses of wine and bit tired today. Let's go.

Yeah. And women have to do that from the age of 11, 12, 14, whatever. You get your cramps every month and you have to crack on. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Coming back to intentional prioritization. What is it for anyone who doesn't know? The priorities method. Yeah. So it is a method. Everyone's got a method these days, right? Yeah. It's an approach to self-development. which essentially puts priorities at the forefront. So it combines coaching, positive psychology and neuroscience, and a whole bunch of other stuff, and ask the question, what are you prioritising?

So we think about perhaps the people that we prioritize, right? We might think about, I have a couple of goals, as you were talking about earlier, and how do I fit those all in and what do I prioritize? But I also, I don't think that we consider that often what about the thoughts that we're prioritising. Yeah. Inside our heads.

We're not thinking about the habits that we're prioritizing in our lives. And ultimately, what we prioritize day to day, hour to hour, minute to minute, makes up the sum of our entire existence. And that's really easy to forget because we like to try and forget things like that. But that's something that I don't forget. Or I definitely do, because I probably probably. prioritising so I shouldn't, but it's something that I try to keep at the forefront of my own mind and of the way that I work so that we're always asking, okay, what am I prioritising here? And it doesn't have to be this idea of obsessive optimization. So it's not saying, oh, I have to

prioritize the right things at all time. That's absolutely not what I'm saying. But it's having an awareness of what am I prioritizing. Who am I prioritizing? Am I prioritizing the kinds of thoughts? that are going to help me have a kind, compassionate experience of my own mind. Am I prioritizing the kind of behaviors and habits that are going to help me do the things that I want to do and that are important to me? Am I prioritizing the people who really have my back and who really support me? Or am I sometimes prioritizing the people who maybe don't show me the same energy and attention? and care that I show them.

So it's all these sorts of questions. And I know that, you know, I had really poor mental health myself. Like, I know that it's not as simple as like, am I prioritising the right thoughts? And then obviously, then you can prioritize a different thought. It's not that simple at all. But there are many ways where at least if we're questioning to ourselves, kindly, compassionately, I'm not talking about constantly judging your inner thoughts. And sometimes we will have really self-critical thoughts.

And that's all very normal as well. but questioning like what's at the forefront of my life what am I putting out there and then seeing okay where maybe could I make some change where's what's going to make the biggest impact here if I changed something if I prioritised a different person or a different thought or a different habit how would that impact my life for the better and for someone who wants to start doing that Are there any exercises that you do? I do one that's called what I do in a week. And that's why I ask people to make a spider diagram.

So you'll know this very well, but where you write, so in the middle, so I have a big piece of paper. You write what I do in a week. And then you do a bunch of little lines off it. And you write down all the things you do in your week. So you think about your day first. You know, I shower, I drink a coffee, a podcast. I do my prep notes for my podcast.

And so when you break it down, I scroll through social media. And then there might be things that you do once or twice a week. You know, I have a piano lesson I do once a week. Taking the kids to school. You know, sometimes I'd hate them. Sometimes my partner or a brilliant nanny takes them. So writing them all down, there might be something you do once a month. And so on.

And once you've got that all on the page, having a look at that and seeing what we've got, I use a specific model, but in general, what you're looking at is what's nourishing me. hear what's bringing purpose and joy and what's actually draining me. And sometimes the same things will bring a lot of things. Like when I take the kids to school, if they're in a great mood and we're out the house early and it's all, the traffic's not bad, then it's incredibly joyful and nourishing and brings me, you know, meaning. And if they are being nightmares and the traffic is terrible and everyone's in a horrible mood, then that can feel quite draining. So it's not binary, like nothing. in life as binary, but it's saying, okay, what are my days like? What are my weeks like? What am I

actually filling my time with? And am I filling my time with the things that are bringing me joy, making me feel nourished, making me feel grounded, bringing meaning and purpose? And again, we can't feel all those wonderful feelings all the time. That's not the reality of life, but seeing, am I prioritizing the things that are bringing some of that to my life? And if I'm not, what is What's one thing that I can do? So not trying to make a million changes, but what's one change that I could make that would have an impact on my week and how I feel?

And if someone's struggling to know what part to cut? Scrolling, just stop scrolling. That's an easy, yeah. Easy, yeah, we can all be doing a lot less about. If I had anyone say when they do the exercise that scrolling brings them joy and purpose? And social media can. So I do think social media can bring connection

and laughter and, you know, nourishment and so on. But the scrolling, particularly if it's not through your own feed, I think tends to drain. What do you think? Yeah, no, I completely agree. And myself and my fiancé have done something recently, which has really, really, really helped, which the Apple screen time limits.

So just don't work. You just click. You reach the limit and you go, right, no, go away. And he has the password for my limit now. So if, so I've got my camera. cap of, I think I've got an hour on Instagram a day and 45 minutes on TikTok a day. That's my current cap. And then every week we try and see how many times we've reached our limit to see if we can cut it down a little bit more. But say if I've got a post that has to go up and I've

reached my limit, I will go to him and I'll say, please, sir, can I have some more? And he, I won't see the password and I will give him my phone and he'll unlock it and give me an extra hour or 15 minutes or whatever. And that has really helped me with the barrier. But otherwise, It's that accountability that you were as well. Because I feel guilty. If I goes, well, I mean, maybe I shouldn't be harmed myself. But when I go to him, please sit it. Can I have some more?

It's he, I'm acknowledging I haven't been able to stick under the time. But do you have any ways that you found reduced and scrolling? Because it's a dopamine, you know, machine. It's developed by psychologists who. They're very good. Yeah. There's a lot of money they've put behind keeping us on those. I do think the apps work.

I do think some of, I've seen them work well. I've heard of them working well, so in terms of the social media blocking apps. I think those practices of like leaving your phone in a different room or I've heard of people hanging their phone up by the door when they get in. So like when you hang your coat up, you hang your phone up there as well instead of taking it into the house or flat with you. I think that can be very effective. I think it's also, it's working on it's that like temptation and that resisting and how can I make a habit of resisting doing the thing that I want to do and it's it's not an addiction like I wouldn't I don't think it's an addiction

like alcohol or drugs or smoking but it is a habit that we've formed and so it's breaking that habit and maybe saying okay I'm not going to take my phone to the loo with me anymore right Like everyone walks, you see people walk straight to the loop with their phone. Or I'm not going to take my phone into the kitchen with me anymore. I'm not going to look between 6am and 8 a.m. It's going to stay on Do Not Disturb so I don't get the notifications and things like that where you can say what are the small places that I can interrupt my relationship with scrolling and with assuming that my phone is like, because we will reach for it the whole time.

having a book on you. Yeah. Having, I think substack can be quite useful. Like if you like reading, using substack on your phone instead of the socials at least. Kevin back to the priorities method. So phone, bad, cut phone time.

Yeah. What about the more borderline activities? How do you help people decide which to cut? So let's take, dropping your kids off. You've got to, well, I'd assume that's... They've got to get them there. Yeah, they've got to get to school. But those borderline activities,

where even if it's sometimes it's good, sometimes it's bad, or maybe they're just a little bit challenging. How do you help people decide what is the first thing to cut? So I guess maybe not if cut, maybe not cutting. So let's use that example of of the school run. I can't cut that. Yeah. Because that I don't want to, but also that wouldn't work. So when we have something maybe that we want to change or a situation that we think needs shifting, we can look at can I change the situation itself? So can I change any of the behaviours here? And if I can't change any of the behaviours, then can I change the mindset? And that's always the two approaches we take. And actually, if you think of drop off at school, there's ways that you can look at the behaviours.

So obviously I still need to take them to school. But it's about getting them up earlier in the morning. It's about making sure that I've done my yoga and meditation or movement practice, whatever it is, and showered before they're up so that I'm in that good place. And I'm not rushing. It's about making sure that like a coffee's made or a tea to take into the car with me. It's making sure that we leave early. And then maybe you do all of that stuff or maybe you don't manage to do all that stuff because maybe they wake up late and something goes wrong or work thing comes in at 7.30 in the morning, which sometimes it does. That then it's mindset. So you know, if you're sitting in traffic, you're going like, I always say to myself when I'm in traffic, well, this is

saving me from a crash. So this is always my thought with being late if I'm on a car. My mom taught me that. So if I'm ever sort of held up by something, I'm like, this is just saving me. This is where I'm meant to be. So having that of like, you know, I can't do anything about the traffic. I mean, I'm sure you've had lots of people come in and talk about this. You know, we can't control things like the traffic. We can't control the weather. Getting angry and stressed about the traffic or someone else's behavior, maybe someone in the car in front does something really stupid or really annoying, that you perceive as stupid or annoying. You know, it's going. okay, with my mindset here, what's going to be the thought that if I prioritize is going to help

me feel a little bit more peaceful, aligned, whatever the words you want to use. And what are the thoughts that are going to send me into a place that I don't want to be in? Yeah. So it's that. Like if you're late, you know, I actually hate being a late. My parents were always late. So we were always late to school. So for me, I never want to be late.

So I always have to work on that, you know, if we are late, not spiraling and getting stressed about that fact. And trying to find those thoughts that will reground me in the like, this is a small thing. This does not actually matter. This is not a huge emergency. You're late. Don't worry about it. You're getting stressed about it is just going to make things worse. It's going to make the kids upset and so on.

And then you're going to get annoyed and then that's going to spiral. So trying our level best to say, okay, can I change any of the behaviors here? Can I change any of the circumstance itself? And maybe I can. And if I can't, what are the mindsets that I can shift and change? Nice. We've got some community questions. Go.

So first community question we have is how to follow through and achieve goals when you're struggling with motivation. Okay. Great question. It's when I get so much. I don't think we should rely on motivation. That is my really big advice there. I think we rely on it far too much. And it's incredibly fickle, as we all know.

It's so impacted by our feelings and how our day goes. And what we see on social media, you might feel very motivated with your goal. And then you might see. someone, a friend or a stranger on social media, achieving your goal in a very easy way. And you'll feel envious. And you'll feel, you'll decide that that reflects on you. And then suddenly your motivation will just fall out the bottom, right? So I think we always say within, within coaching is not to rely on motivation, but just fall back on systems. And it's a quote from, from an astronaut actually

that when you're in a challenging situation you fall back on the systems you don't try and think on your feet so it's about having systems that you know work for you and everyone has really different brains so they're going to have different systems that suit them in different ways of working

but not thinking not waiting to feel motivated and not obviously there are loads of ways in which we can increase our motivation and we can work with it but not relying on it. So thinking more like this is a wonderful additional extra. If I have this motivation and when it comes, that's great. But to ride it when it comes,

but to kind of forget about it when it goes and to steer the course. Nice. Do you have an example that you can think of of a system that's helped you or how someone could find their system that works for them? So we're thinking about a goal? I'll tell you a goal that I've got at the moment. I've never been able to get into journaling

and it's something I really think would benefit me a morning journal practice. So for that you're going to hate this. This is not the answer to the question so we'll have to have another one. But for that I would question why you can't get into it and if you can't get into it, maybe it's not the right practice for you.

Fine. So that would actually be my thing there. Have you tried doing it for a couple of weeks before? I've done morning pages. Have you ever done morning? I liked morning pages and I had my e-reader or my thingy pad right by my bed. And I prefer that because my handwriting is atrocious and I have this really weird issue if I press into the paper and it actually physically hurts my hand and having it right by my bed.

And also if I can only, if I've got time in the morning because a lot of the time I just feel like I wake up and I've got going. There's stuff to do and it feels like a waste of my time. However, when I do my morning pages, I really love it. It feels great. I would think about how you can entice yourself more to do it. So I would probably think you have a cup of tea in the morning. I'm a big coffee girl. You have a coffee first thing.

Yeah, you do. Great. That you have your pages with your cup of coffee so that you tie those things together. Nice. And you know that you love your coffee so you can't have your coffee unless you do your pages as well. So rather than being like, oh, I'll make a cup of coffee. You could do it where you go, I can't have my coffee until I've done my pages. So that's one option. If you like a more severe option, the other option is to say I'm going to have them together and I'm not allowed to drink this coffee unless I do my pages. So that's sort of looking of how you can, you already did the thing of

leaving it next to your bed. That's obviously like making it very visible. Yeah. Is a very effective way to stick with something that you want to do. Yeah. Trying to create ways to make it more visible to yourself. Make it more attractive. So that's, you know, with the coffee and make it easy. So you could even say I'm going to do a minute for the next 30 days,

give or take a couple of days that maybe I don't do. No problem. I'll get back on it. Yeah. You could do yourself a habit tracker for it. You get the dopamine hit with the ticks. So yeah, it's thinking like what's the system that's going to work for me as opposed to wanting to feel motivated to do it when you wake up in the morning.

I'm going to have to give you another one because you're really good at this. This is really helpful. You're basically going to troubleshoot my life now. Yeah, I'm just going to do one more. It's what I'm here for. I think it's more relevant. It's your personal session. Yeah. I think it's relevant for the audience.

Okay, I'll tell you the issue. myself and my fiance, obviously I've been in a period where it's been quite busy. This year is a little bit less busy but still quite busy. So say, we finished recording the podcast today at half six. I guarantee I will go home and I've been talking. Yeah, we do lots of episodes and I will get home and I will be quite depleted energetically. And I will say, Dylan, let's put something on Netflix and eat our dinner in front of Netflix. We will then likely, this is the bad habit or the,

this is the habit pattern that we tend to fall in. I will put on a series. We'll say we're going to watch one episode. I cannot stop at one episode. It will be 10, half 10, and he'll be saying, Faye, should we go to bed? And I'm going, just 15 more minutes, just 15 more minutes, please. I just need to see what happens.

I physically cannot turn off the TV. And then that has resulted in us having a lot of late nights. And I do not begrudiate late night when it's with my friend. when we're talking, I'm, you know, nourishing those social relationships, but I'm not talking to my partner. I'm watching another Netflix murder documentary that's exactly the same as every other Netflix murder documentary I've watched. So I don't, it doesn't make me feel good, doesn't make me feel relaxed.

Yeah. It's a bad habit I want to break for my sleep, everything. Every single week, me and my fiancé, we have a check-in every single week where we just talk about five different areas of our life and we just, it's a nice, we go get a coffee. Yeah. And it's gorgeous. And we're almost like our own little accountability buddies for it. And every single week, one of our pillars that we talk about is health. Every single week, both of us will say, we need to start going to bed earlier.

And we'll say, why don't we save TV for the weekend? Never happens. Because I get back from a busy day and I'm like, I don't have the energy to talk to. I just need to. Yeah, you want to switch off. God, yeah, this is such a common one and a familiar one as well. I would recommend, don't say, let's only watch. TV at the weekend because you have intense days, you're working hard, and you need something that's

going to help you switch off. And so at the moment, that's television. So saying to yourself, I'm not going to do it until the weekend, it's just kind of mean. And as you know, then you also can't stick with it because you fundamentally really don't want to as well. That's the thing. You've got like both things at play. So what you want to is get to a place where you are taking nourishment from watching TV. So you're also not beating yourself up about it, right, so that you can enjoy it, those murder documentaries or whatever it is, more. And I would suggest starting off small and having one night in the week, maybe a Wednesday, what day is it today, Monday? Yeah. Maybe a Wednesday or Tuesday, midweek, where that's your screen free night. Okay. So it's not just television,

it's all your screens. And you don't have to talk necessarily. It's. sounds like, you know, you do lots of, you do, you know, you do lots of communicating otherwise. It doesn't have to be that. My husband and I, we play backgammon. Oh. So that's what we do. And we actually, we started it as one night a week. And now I would say most nights we do that instead of watching TV. Nice. Because we know that if we play backgammon, we'll do it for half an hour, 45 minutes max. And then we'll be like, all right, that's go to bad. Whereby, as you say, with TV, I'm the same. I have quite an addictive personality. So, you know, I'm not the like, let's just do one of anything person. So yeah, building in a screen free night where you say to yourself,

okay, this, you know, at 7 p.m., I'm going to put my phone on to do not disturb. I'm going to put my lap, you said you close your laptop most days, I'm going to close my laptop. We can grab a book. I can light a candle. I don't have to sit and chat while we eat, but I'm not going to be on a screen. I might run a bath and so on. So you're sort of giving yourself a different kind of experience rather than telling yourself you absolutely can't do anything as well. So you're not demonising. You're, you know, watching TV is great.

We like watching TV, there's great TV on, you know, trying not to demonize it, but rather saying to yourself, I'm going to give myself a different experience this night. And by giving myself a different experience, I can also enjoy the other experience. experience more. A little bit of novelty to look forward to you. Okay, I like that. Try that. I'm going to try that. Cards. Puzzle. I love cards. You love cards. Play cards. Yeah. We do like, we do like playing cards. So I think I'll play cards. Nice. Next community question. How to set ambitious goals, but avoid the feeling of always looking to the next thing and wanting more and more. As humans, we always look to the next thing and we always want more and more. That's the way that we

operates the way our brain operates. I think this is where mindfulness really does come into its own and has a big impact and that doesn't mean that like you have to sit and meditate, although I always do recommend meditation to people. It's more about having that grounding in the present moment so that you are trying your level best to experience what you're experiencing as opposed to always moving on to that next thing. And even if you're happy for me too, I can go back to what you said earlier. Yeah. In terms of success and feeling like you're always onto the next thing, rather than taking that time to really be in the experience of living now and thinking younger me would be really impressed by that. And they'd really like that. And how can I sit in this feeling for a minute

and be here and appreciate that as opposed to next, next, next, next, next. And I think that really is. And also, I have to do this myself. I'm as guilty as the next, definitely. It's having that practice of slowing down. And that doesn't mean slowing down all the time. You know, if you're a fast-paced, Taipei person, absolutely fine. Stick with what you've got if that's working for you.

But having those moments where you allow yourself to be. in the moment, I think can really shift your perspective on feeling like you're on the wheel the whole time. I'm sure you find this with your kids. If your kids see a relative that maybe they haven't seen for ages, they say, oh my gosh, you've changed so much, you know, whereas you as their parent won't have seen them change as much necessarily because you're seeing those small, small incremental changes. You don't notice the changes. day to day. Someone who hasn't seen them for a year, they'll see them and go, oh my gosh, you've, you've shot up or whatever. I noticed that myself, like what you were saying, you looking back at

what little you would think. And because I was doing the same thing, there were these small incremental changes and I wasn't noticing the growth in myself. But if I looked back over a year, five years, there'd been huge, huge changes. So when I bought my first flat, I wrote myself a letter to me five years ago and five years in the future. And, you know, and five years in the future. And it was one of those where it really, really, really helped me sit with the change and appreciate it. Whenever a big milestone is hit, I try and really take a moment to document that feeling. I love that so much. Yeah.

Five years in the past and five years in the future. Yeah. I love that. I think I might do that. Having just had the book come out, I might do that. I've always done a year in the future. So like when I run retreats or I take big groups or we do sort of January goal setting. will often do year in the future, you know, writing a letter to future self.

But I love writing one to the past as well. That's beautiful. I'd love to hear your thoughts on social connection versus physical activity. You voiced some interesting opinions. So I actually wouldn't say social connection versus physical movement. I would say that social connection is really underappreciated. So I think how true this is, I don't know. We are constantly evolving our understanding.

around information with the brain and the nervous system. However, the thought system goes, or the thought process goes, that when we were in danger back in the day, and we were running away from a warring tribe or a tiger or whatever it is, very classic examples we use with the nervous system, that the one option was that we got caught or eaten and that was done. And the other option was that we ran really, really fast and we escaped. And the other option was that we ran really fast and we ran back to our community.

And that then we were with our people and we were surrounded by them. And that our nervous system today is regulated by those two things still. So it's regulated by exercise, you know, in terms of stress interventions. We know how proven those are. We know the studies are incredible around it. And it's regulated by social connection. You know, we have a social brain. Our brain was developed in coordination with other people.

We can't live really without other people. We've seen those absolutely horrific experiments. Social connection is so essential for our brain development, for children's brain development. And in terms of regulating our nervous system, which is what we all talk about these days, social connection is absolutely huge. And we know that, right?

We know that if we are with someone where we feel safe and we feel seen and we feel supported and we feel in a great environment, even, you know, like having this conversation with you we haven't met before, but this experience where your systems are aligned that you feel good, that your system feels calm. I think we, like to our conversation, earlier about optimization, we push all these protocols and we push all these systems and not like

the systems I was talking about in terms of, you know, put your trainers next to your bed, but systems in terms of things we need to buy into and that we have to follow and even a lot of the books out there, which, you know, you have to follow my exact way of doing things and this is what's going to save your life or whatever it is. And we don't put enough emphasis on the amazing impact that social connection has on regulating on our ecosystem and on making us feel a little bit better in this world. And the studies there are just huge. They really are. Yeah. So I think exercise is fantastic for regulating stress. I also think it's not available to everyone. Like not everyone is in a a body that is able to move in those ways.

And I think that everyone is in a body that can have social connection. So I think we need to look as much as possible. You know, like all the blue zones. I mean, the blue zone stuff. Yeah. Which some people really like the blue zone stuff and really believe in it. Some people will say it's actually not very real. But one thing that everyone agrees on is that it's about those connections and relationships

and having community. as opposed to feeling really desperate. When I first trained as a yoga teacher, I worked in some of the student dorms. Oh, wow. In London during yoga sessions. And it was for overseas students. And there was such, part of the reason that I went in

was to help develop a program that would bring them all together because they were so separate. All of their doors were closed. They were completely solo in their experiences. they were all ordering in food. You know, you didn't even have to go to a canteen to get food like when I was younger. And the impact that this separation

from community was having on their mental health was so huge. And I really saw it then in terms of like community is really, really important and how you can create environments where people feel and it doesn't have to be a huge community. You know, we're not talking, you don't have to have massive big community,

but just that you have enough or a couple of people where you feel safe and supported and secure and all those things and loved. And like you can just be yourself, the true version of you, rather than all the other different versions we present to the world. Having that is so essential. It's also free, I think, in terms of like,

intervention programs that can be put together for stress and for burnout and so on, I think it's the most overlooked intervention there is. I think people look for like supplements and new protocols and they listen to Stephen Bartlett, talk to the latest person who says the completely different thing than the person the week before has said and so on and they don't think about and this is why you know we're seeing loads of success now with community run clubs and where you bring the two things together which is great and I do think it's becoming a lot more apparent and I think even the younger generations like

within you guys are probably a lot more aware of it in some ways. Aware but maybe worse, I think. Really? Because when were you in the dorms? Ten years ago? Because I think that's, again, not to shit on social media too much, but I think that that sometimes can give you this pseudo sense of community. A hundred percent.

I completely agree. And it makes you feel like you're connected, but you're not. And I worry about, I don't know, generations to compare whether they may be making that time for community. We're going to come on to the section, Real or Not Real. So I'm going to show you a video, and I would love to hear what your thoughts are. Okay. I think one of the biggest paradoxes of my 20s was feeling like I had no time, when in fact you have all the time in the world.

Something today said, it takes time. Take your time. like yourself, try to believe, just make the effort. Any thoughts? It's very sweet. It really makes me want to cry. It's kind of what we were saying about earlier, right? That in your 20s, there's this feeling of there's no time. And actually, it's the time when you have a lot of time.

Yeah. Is that her diary? Is she reading like an old diary? I think so. I'm not so sure. Okay. Do you live in London? Do you? Because I think that does impact it as well, living in a city. you know, you walk on the tube and it's the London walk.

You're walking so much quicker. I went for a walk with all of my friends. I think I was quite stressed at the time. And we were walking around a park and she went, Faye, slow down. We're on a park walk. Slow down. No one's ahead of us.

We're not running for the tube. Your system was going fight or flight the whole time. Do you know what I grew up in London? So I think that's the only walk I've got. Do I have any? we're going to say tips in terms of when you're in your 20s or just generally

trying your level best not to get too distracted by what other people are showing themselves to be doing online whether it's real or not and always thinking of like stay in your lane and that doesn't mean stay in your lane in terms of don't do other stuff

that other people are doing, but just trying to have those blinkers on in terms of this is me and this is my experience of life. And I think one of the questions that I think is really helpful as well is if you look at, say you're feeling envious of someone else who you feel like they've achieved more or they've achieved the things that you want to have done at this point and so on and so forth, looking at them, and saying to yourself, okay, I want the end result, sure, but do I actually want their whole life? Do I want all of their experiences up until now that have gotten them to this place and all the people that are in their life? And do I want to sacrifice all of mine?

Do I really want to give up all of mine? And for most people, the answer's going to be no. I love that. I think that's a reminder we could all use. Yeah, I guess in your 20s, that sense of urgency can be quite helpful and useful in terms of driving you forward and doing the things you want to do.

But it's that youth is wasted on the young. You know, try and enjoy it. Yeah. Try and enjoy it. You have got a whole lifetime to shift and change. And I think also people don't do the same jobs for long periods of time in the same way that they have done throughout history.

So thinking there are many times that you can shift and pivot and change and take the things that you've done from before and bring those lessons and learnings into the new thing. But always thinking like there is always time. They genuinely is until there's not. Yeah. That's a different thing. I love that.

Lily, you've been absolutely incredible. We will leave all the details for your book in the description for anyone who's interested. But before you go, we've got a question that we ask all the guests. And that is, Lily, what do you wish every woman knew by the time she was 25? It's a big one. I wish that every woman knew to be kind to herself, to be on her own team and on her own side as much as possible.

And again, I don't think most people can do that all the time because, you know, we naturally criticise and question. our lives and that can be helpful in its own way. But I think women in particular really beat themselves up and really do themselves a disservice and spend too many years of their lives not being kind about their minds and their bodies fucking hell, their faces and so on. so I think if we could all let go of that stuff, we'd achieve huge things as well. Yeah, that would be mine. That's gorgeous.

Thank you so, so, so, so much. Thank you so, so much, Bay.