How To Fail With Elizabeth Day - A How to Fail Miniseries: Rebecca Anderton-Davies

Episode Date: December 16, 2020

For this four week miniseries, we've been introducing you to four 'ordinary' people with extraordinary stories as part of a one-off How To Fail miniseries in partnership with Grey Goose.My final guest is Rebecca Anderton-Davies, a woman with a double life: a high-flying investment banker who has become a yoga phenomenon in her spare time. At the age of 27, she was hit by a van while cycling to work, breaking her collarbone and badly damaging her shoulder tissue. As part of her rehabilitation, her physiotherapist suggested she started doing a slow form of yoga. To begin with, Rebecca was, by her own admission, 'rubbish' but she soon found that the lessons she learned in failing on the mat served her well in the rest of her life.When, a couple of years later, a doctor found blood clots on her lungs - a life-threatening condition - yoga helped her again. But her busy job meant that she didn't often have time to make it to a studio, so Rebecca started practising at home, and sharing her journey on Instagram. This year, she published The Book of Yoga Self-Practice, enabling everyone stuck at home during lockdown to keep their bodies moving. She joins me to talk about all of this, as well as the joy - and wisdom - that comes from embracing imperfection when you're a perfectionist. Rebecca is such an uplifting, smart and self-deprecating guest: even if you've never done yoga (or, like me, you've done it for years and still can't do side-crow or headstand and are deeply competitive with the man in the harem pants at the front of the class even though you know that's not the point of yoga) you *will* gain something precious from this episode.*You can buy The Book of Yoga Self-Practice here.*Looking for a Christmas stocking filler? I can highly recommend Failosophy: A Handbook For When Things Go Wrong which contains 7 Failure Principles developed from two-and-bit years worth of accumulated podcast wisdom.*How To Fail With Elizabeth Day is hosted by Elizabeth Day, produced by Naomi Mantin and Chris Sharp. We love hearing from you! To contact us, email [e-mail] You can buy our fantastic PODCAST MERCH here.*Social Media:Elizabeth Day @elizabdayHow To Fail @howtofailpod Rebecca Anderton-Davies: @somewhatrad   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Make your nights unforgettable with American Express. Unmissable show coming up? Good news. We've got access to pre-sale tickets so you don't miss it. Meeting with friends before the show? We can book your reservation. And when you get to the main event, skip to the good bit using the card member entrance.

Let's go seize the night. That's the powerful backing of American Express. Visit amex.ca slash yamex. Benefits vary by card. Other conditions apply. This special one-off mini-series of How to Fail is sponsored by Grey Goose. Grey Goose believe in live victoriously because life, as we know, is full of moments, big and small, planned and spontaneous, and those moments need something worthy of the occasion. They deserve to be celebrated. Grey Goose does just this, a vodka of unique quality, expertly crafted for smoothness and exceptional taste, made with the finest

ingredients, single origin Picardy wheat and spring water from natural limestone. A distinctive vodka made without compromise to elevate any moment, Grey Goose brings fun and positivity whatever the occasion you're marking, because when you live victoriously, you transform those moments into lasting memories. Thank you very much to Grey Goose, and please drink responsibly. Hello, it's Elizabeth Day here, and welcome to this one-off special mini-series of How to Fail. Now, one of the things that you wonderful listeners have repeatedly asked me to do is to feature normal people as guests on the podcast. But of course, there's no such thing as a normal person. We are all unique and interesting and resilient and contradictory and loving and wise and funny and sad and experienced in our own particular ways. We all have our stories to

tell. So in the next four episodes, I'm doing something slightly different. You'll hear from people who aren't necessarily household names about who they are and the moments that shaped them. You'll hear from them about what it means to live victoriously. It's a different format from usual. We're not discussing three failures, but we are talking about resilience and what it means to live a fulfilled life. We're talking about difficulties that have been overcome, lessons that have been learned, gratitude that has been earned, and the joy of celebrating the every day. This is How to Fail as you've never heard it before. Ordinary people, extraordinary stories. Four weeks, four different lives. Because we can learn from everyone if we just listen carefully

enough. This week's guest is Rebecca Anderton-Davies. I'm Rebecca Anderton-Davies. I'm 34 years old and I am an investment banker, stroke yoga practitioner, stroke Instagrammer, stroke mother. Slash author as well now. Slash author, yes. I should add that onto the list. Rebecca, it is so lovely to have you on the podcast. And yeah, as you rightly identify there, you do a lot of different things. And I'm super interested in how an investment banker becomes a yoga sensation on Instagram. And as I mentioned, you've just published your first book, The Book of Yoga Self-Practice. So tell me about why you wanted to publish a book about self-practice specifically.

It very much links back to the fact that I'm very busy doing all sorts of stuff, most of which involves being in an office for, well, not these days, but normal life, extended periods of time. And so when I fell in love with yoga kind of five-ish years ago, I was working even kind of crazy hours and self-practice really became the way that I could consistently fit yoga into my life. I learned in classes and I loved going to studios and things, but even in central London, a one-hour class would kind of require a two-hour time commitment because you've got to travel, you've got to get changed and, you know, all that kind of practical stuff. Whereas being able to roll out a mat in my kitchen and as Instagram will attest to with my cats was a way

I could sneak 5, 10, 20, 45 minutes and sometimes bigger chunks of time without having to travel or without needing my schedule to fit in with the studios. And so it became the way that I could really fit yoga consistently into my life and I learned it you know through lots and lots and lots of trial and error and when I did my teacher training I pitched up with a pretty strong self-practice and was very surprised to see that that wasn't the vibe amongst my teacher training that most people practiced in studios and over time I just got more and more questions through my Instagram community of kind of how I knew what to do and so I started teaching workshops which I

loved but wasn't very sustainable for me from a time thing either and so I thought I'd put it into a book. Did I just hear a cat behind you? Yes they're both they're both in here dangerously. My cat is also behind me snoozing. So we might have a whole like literally catawalling. He says hello back. You're very sweet. It's so interesting. I love following you on Instagram because I've been doing yoga for how many years now?

Probably about seven years. And I always went to classes a bit like you. And then lockdown forced me to change that. And I started doing a lot of Zoom classes and on- went to classes a bit like you and then lockdown forced me to change that and I started doing a lot of zoom classes and on-demand classes but what I like about what you do is that you make yoga unintimidating and I think so many people are intimidated by the idea of rocking up to class never having done it before being surrounded by all these gorgeous glamazons in lululemon leggings and everyone knowing what to do and then sort of being stuck on the edge not understanding any of the sanskrit postures so how important was it for you to attack that

idea of yoga being exclusive and intimidating very important and that's why I kind of started my yoga instagram community. So I have my account and then I have a community account called Yoga Self Practice because Instagram got me into and kind of supported me as I fell in love with yoga. But that kind of first six or 12 months were really, really hard because, you know, I was in my late 20s. I was recovering from a nasty bike accident and I couldn't touch my toes. I couldn't do a press up. I'm not a naturally sporty person, as it were. I felt kind of excluded and to be very frank like I am slim I am white I am what a lot of yoga Instagram looks like and yoga self-practice is really about normal people

doing normal practices which don't involve putting your leg behind your head or having a beautiful beach to film on or all of that stuff and so really, I struggled with it and I have a lot of those privileges. And so I really, really wanted to kind of show that this is accessible for everybody, no matter what body you're in, no matter what you look like, no matter what level of practice is. And also no matter whether you can commit full time to being dedicated to your yoga practice, you can't travel to India, you work in an office, or you work for a big corporate, you can't be vegan, we can all commit to these practices in different ways. And at least, you know, from the study that I've done, and I will continue to do,

I do believe that's still authentic towards the practice of yoga. One of the things that I love that you say is practice, not perfection. And I wonder how hard you find that because as someone who is incredibly professionally successful in such a high pressure environment, I imagine you're a bit of a perfectionist in that side of your life. So how difficult is that for you? was so well it was it still is hard but at the beginning I mean it was crushing and I when I started you know I was recovering from I got hit by a van cycling to work and so I had quite there's a cat I had quite a really clear-cut reason to go to yoga but I could only manage one class a week because intellectually and like emotionally it was so stressful for me to be so awful at something. You know, I designed my life around getting rid of all the things I was bad at and getting paid for the things I was great at. And here I was, worst in the room and deeply, deeply embarrassed about it.

And while now I have a reasonably advanced practice, it's been so humbling having been pregnant and had a baby and recovering I think this is something that's very especially important for women because whether you're pregnant or not but our bodies change so much more on a weekly monthly yearly basis than men do and I just think it's such an important thing to deliberately practice that experience of change in your body and in your mind and so yeah it was a lot harder than it is now. But it's still something that trips me up on the regular. Tell me more, if you don't mind about that bicycle accident that you had. So you were working very, very long hours, as I understand it. And cycling

to and from work was your way of getting in the necessary exercise that you needed for your mental health. Is that right? Yeah, I mean, I've been cycling for six months when I had the accident. So up until then, I've been kind of dabbling in the odd spin class, yoga class, whatever, but nothing consistent. And I was in my late twenties. My work was starting to kind of level out a bit. I used to do the hundred hour weeks and the nightclubs till 5am kind of stuff. I've never been that person. Oh my goodness. It was hard, but fun. But you know, life was changing a little bit. And I wasn't doing that anymore. And so cycling to and from work seemed like a good idea at the time. And then yeah, I just got hit by a white van. And it was a very, you know, slow mo accident, but I broke my

collarbone and did a whole bunch of damage to my right shoulder, and I'm right-handed. The big stuff healed very quickly, and I was back on my bike after six weeks, but the soft tissue damage, I went to physio, but I studiously did none of the homework that my physio gave me, because who does physio homework? And six months later, I still couldn't lift my right arm above my shoulder, And I wasn't even 30 at that point. I was like, I need to fix this. And so my physio was like, why don't you try yoga? And that's kind of how it all began.

The thing that struck me there was that after this horrific accident that must have been really terrifying and painful on many levels, you said that you were back on your bike within six weeks. Is that just you? Is that your mindset? Very much so. Yeah, yeah kind of I'm fine dust myself off and keep going it's kind of the lesson that much to my deep-seated fear the universe regularly is still trying to teach me a couple of years after the bike accident I had another

health crisis I had multiple bilateral pulmonary embolisms, which I also kind of ignored. And these kind of things have happened time and time again for me. And it's something I'm working on with my yoga practice to listen, I still have to listen more to my body. It's very challenging for me to kind of slow down and do what it's asking me to do, which isn't all the things all the time. And that blood disorder that you mentioned, was that as a result of you taking a lot of long haul flights for work? Long haul flights are definitely a piece of it. As was being on the pill, I've since found out I have a genetic disorder and so I shouldn't have been on the kind of hormonal contraception that I was, but I didn't know. And so all of those things I've been doing for 10 years, I was very unlucky that it happened,

but I was very, very lucky that I survived it and that it got corked. PEs have a 30% mortality rate. So I was super, super lucky, but I ignored the symptoms of breathlessness and weight loss and things for a few months, which I think, again, comes back to this cultural, societal expectation of womanhood and bodies and all that complex stuff I was actually deeply embarrassed I was practicing yoga at the time that this ethos of listening to your body that I would just kind of stormed through and ignored it and it was a real catalyst for wanting to do my teacher training and kind of

study beyond just the asana and the physical piece more because I realised I wasn't getting the message at that point. And was this all before you were 30? Yes, the accident happened a couple years before I turned 30 and the PEs for the year I turned 30. Wow, that is a lot of life to live through. How old do you feel inside? I mean, obviously, you look tremendously young you are very young but I often think that people have a different psychic age how old do you feel I feel like my 30s suit me really well I love being where I am in my career and like my marriage and having kids and this feels like where I always wanted to be older if you'd asked me any point before I was

probably 21 how old I was I would have told you I'll be 18 at my next birthday so this feels like a nice bit of life but I don't know how long that's going to last because ageism is also an interesting thing it was a lot for a few years but I don't think it really compares to what a lot of people go through and it's interesting that you say you're content where you are right now because that's what yoga is all about it's about being in the present which is one of the hardest things even though it sounds so simple you mentioned there that you you took time off to do your teacher training you took three and a half weeks off work yeah Yeah. Why did you want to do the teacher training? Because you're not now making a living as a teacher. So why was it important for you to do that? It's a really odd thing in yoga that one of the only ways to kind of deepen your knowledge

and have a consistent in depth period to practice is to do a teacher training. And so it was kind of that or nothing, really, I would have loved to have gone on kind of an intensive and just learn and practiced, but it wasn't really available. And with hindsight, it gave me the confidence to start teaching. I taught a regular class for a good few months before I was then too pregnant to do it. And then I taught my workshops. And so it kind of, it was fortuitous with hindsight, because it gave me the confidence to teach, which then gave me the confidence to write the book. And when you do teacher training, as well as understanding the poses and executing them, do they also teach you how to keep up that patter that an instructor has to have throughout the class? Because I think that must be one of the hardest things.

Yoga teacher voice. Yeah. Look, great teacher training will help you find the kind of teacher that you want to be. And maybe it is workshops rather than classes. And maybe you want to teach really fast, dynamic flows or really slow and deep and meaningful yin classes. That's what a good teacher training should do. It should let you find your voice. But it's not an easy process to go through, I think, for anyone because it's quite exposing to be with all these people that do it in such a different way to how you might do it.

So can you explain to me now what an average day is like for you? I mean, we're talking in the midst of the second lockdown, so I know that that will have changed things for you. But how do you apportion your time? for you but how do you apportion your time? 6.30 in the morning getting up and ready and hopefully if my son's not sleeping in I'll get a chance to see him first thing as well so he's just over two and then these days we have our amazing nanny so always full disclosure I think it's very hard to do my husband's got an amazing career as well so it's very hard to do two careers and children without help and so we have a lot of help and then these days rather than commuting normally I'd be on the 7.15 train into London but these days I use that morning commute for quote-unquote exercise and at the moment I'm broadly alternating between like a long walk one day and yoga the next day. Then I'm at my desk from 8.30-ish till

6-ish, at which point I kind of dash upstairs and have an hour and a half with my son before he goes to bed. And then evenings are either some work emails on my laptop, Instagram stuff, or whatever's good on Netflix. And what do you think yoga has taught you about celebrating everyday moments? Because as I said, you've been through a lot at a relatively young age. And I wonder if having had those experiences, you now feel even more grateful to be living the life that you are oh a hundred percent that practice of gratitude and as you said earlier kind of being in the moment is a practice and it's so much of what my yoga has taught me the the comfort with discomfort the comfort with kind of small repeated failures and it being okay and necessary to keep showing up and then the bigger picture of

you know I'm just so lucky that I can move my body in the way that I can and that I've overcome the various health issues that I have and that I've got a space that I can practice and I can do my work from home in a year where so many people can't and all of those things it's interesting like chatting to a lot of the senior people that I've worked with, who've kind of seen my career develop, they see the impact that it's had on me, you know, I was very, very highly strung and very impatient and still a bit impatient. I was holding on to work and my career so, so tightly. And my yoga has just calmed that whole process down. And I still care deeply about it. And I'm still deeply ambitious. But I'm just not holding on to it by the fingernails anymore. Yoga has taught me that

there is a process and there is a journey. And I just need to keep showing up and building a life and time and space to be able to keep showing up. And actually, if I focus on that bit, then the outcomes will come. If I'm miserable, if I'm unhealthy, it gets harder to go to work, it gets harder to turn up on my yoga mat. So actually taking time to practice yoga or to be with my family, or if a big work project is going on to go and be at work and get really stuck into that and not feel guilty about missing bedtime with my son once in a couple of weeks. All of those things are okay that I'm a complex person and it's okay to want all of these different things in my life and to need them at different times in different quantities. Oh, I love that so much. I often say that life is texture. It's a combination of all of these things and you don't

have to be striving for a perfect balance all of the time it's okay for one thing to take precedence over another and it's okay for you to reassess and not beat yourself up about that that thing that you said about life being a process and a journey and having to confront a series of failures and getting comfortable with that discomfort is so profound, I think. So can I ask you off the back of that, how do you dial down the inner critic when you are doing yoga or when I'm doing yoga, I should say, sometimes it takes me a beat to get to that point where I'm not comparing myself to other people who either are there in class in physical form or are there but are just like in my head taunting me that I don't feel

good enough that I sort of beat myself up when I've done a bad pose quote-unquote bad pose how do you dial down that inner critic which we're so used to listening to the rest of our lives oh so hard isn't it I still feel like that often I guess comes back to why I kind of wrote the book I kind of try and trick myself a lot into these things and there was before I had my son when I had a little bit more free time I used to keep a yoga journal and I found that really powerful because I was totting up the time on my mat or the number of times I practiced that week and so my focus was on the practice and not on the mat or the number of times I practiced that week. And so my focus was on the practice and not on the content of the practice. Like, have I done something today,

even if it was only five minutes? And how can I kind of trick myself? Or in the beginning of lockdown, I got an Apple Watch and I got really obsessed with the calories on my Apple Watch. And I was forcing myself to do these like hyperdynamic yoga practices, even though we had a lot less childcare and a lot less help around the house and work was crazy because it was financial crisis was blowing up. And I wasn't in a great place mentally or physically. I was like, gosh, I need to stop. And I was still too addicted to the Apple Watch. I was like, you know what, I'm going to go for a walk first and burn some calories and then I can be on my mat and just do yoga. It's why I use Instagram. Like it says things I don't care to admit about the kind of external motivators that I have as a person and being very ego driven.

But Instagram is a personality hack for me. Wanting something to share on Instagram helps me get on my mat on days that I struggle and it's so interesting hopefully I help people think through this in the book but if you can work out who you are and why you're doing it then you can use the good bits and the bad bits in your personality to help you get to where you want to be that's such good advice I'm a big believer that fuel is fuel and that you need to use whatever you need to use to get you to a place where you don't want to be, but you know you should be. Yeah, it shouldn't be punishment and you should enjoy it. And, you know, I think we all get caught up. And again, I think this is a pressure that women have more than anyone on body image and looking a certain way. And, you know, especially on social media media it's not a hit workout it's you know hopefully it's not a workout that's just a side benefit but at the same time if you can kill two birds with one stone and you get a bit of sweat and you feel the burn a bit and that's good for you and that

motivates you to practice then awesome what do you think is the thing that you're proudest of in your life goodness hands down my marriage for sure because you got married very young didn't you I was super young I was 24 when I got married and my husband and I had already been together for five and a half years at that point so we got together when I was 18 on his 20th birthday so we celebrated our 10-year anniversary in August. We've been together for over 15 years. Congratulations. Thank you. And nothing else I do would be possible if it wasn't for him and the relationship that we have.

In so many ways, we upend expectations. I'm the breadwinner. I don't cook. He does all the cooking, all the laundry. So from the outside, we can look like we're doing it the alternative way round. But from the inside, it doesn't feel like that at all. It's an incredibly equal partnership that enables both of us to do a bunch of really cool stuff, including raise our son. And did you know that you wanted to get married young? Because again, you sound like someone who has a strategy in place and a kind of plan for life and I wondered if that was

part of your plan yeah I'm definitely a planner and actually it's something I've spent a lot of time stepping back from because there was at one point a 20-year spreadsheet that I used to like to take her around with I know but yeah you know my parents met at university and got married in their mid-20s that felt like a very normal life plan for me. And when I met, I call him Mr. Rad on my Instagram. I say I call him, that's what my followers christened him. And so when I met him, it just was very, it felt very easy to do. Yeah, so I guess it was part of the plan. Well, you've executed it flawlessly. Do you still struggle with certain poses and can you tell me how to do a headstand without having to do it against a wall I definitely struggle with certain poses and

there's still stuff that I could do before I had my son that I can't do now because I haven't that's interesting I look I have less time and to be frank my physical practice is slower down on the priority list right now. Like I'm in a different time of my life. And yoga is going to be a lifelong thing for me. And maybe this 10 years isn't going to be the point at which it's top of the list. And that's okay. But yeah, there's a whole bunch of stuff. I broke my collarbone again, messing around with a handstand that I had absolutely no business doing. I have a really nice four hour stand, but I can't do a handstand for the life of me and I'm broadly too afraid to try so yeah

there's all sorts of stuff that I can't do and I don't spend a lot of time trying to do either but yes I definitely can help you with a headstand it's possible okay I can't I think sometimes I just get in my head about it because I can do it really easily other times always against the wall by the way but sometimes I just get really worried and I'm like no I just can't my head about it because I can do it really easily other times, always against a wall, by the way. But sometimes I just get really worried and I'm like, no, I just can't do this. I learned headstand the Iyengar way and in Iyengar they use walls. It's okay to use a wall. Thank you.

So I'm not failing then. Thank you. No. Well, I guess it comes back to, you know, what are you trying to achieve with the headstand? And it's the thing I love about headstand is that you really have to be in headstand when you're in headstand. You cannot think about anything else. Like it is such a meditative pose. And if you're there for 30 seconds a minute and you're in it, then you've done it.

You've achieved headstand. Doesn't matter if you're using a wall. So great. So great talking to you. What if someone is listening to this? They've never done yoga, they think it's really smug, and they're also worried about how to start. What would your advice be for starting other than buying your book, the book of yoga self practice, which is brilliant and gives you lots of ideas for workouts. I'm so proud of the book. And there is actually a little very pretty picture at the end of the book that kind of describes the different

types of yoga and helps people think about the different buckets they fall into, depending on whether you want something very creative, very fast, slow, dynamic. My key piece of advice is that you, I guess, spending a little bit of time thinking about who you are and what motivates you, the threshold that you're trying to find is how can I find something that I'm going to keep coming back to? Because as you know, those first six months-ish at least are really hard, especially if you're not 21 and you haven't grown up doing dance and gymnastics. If you sit at desk most of the day, like getting onto a yoga mat for the first time is really hard. So have a little bit of a research and a think about the different types of yoga and what you think will suit you best, as opposed to what you think will

burn the most calories or get you the most fit or whatever those other goals could be. And then my other piece of advice is to keep trying different teachers until you find the one that you just click with. There are so many and I wish there was a better way of finding them. But there are so many different teachers who will teach the same type of yoga in a totally different way. And once you find your teacher and your teachers will also change at different points in your life. I started practicing Iyengar and then I moved on to really kind of dynamic, creative vinyasa. And now I'm kind of a little bit in between. But finding a teacher that will help you.

Self-practice is life changing. And I say this in the book. It's very, very hard to start from a self-practice. Most people will need a teacher in person or virtual to help them to start off. I'd like to draw this to a close actually by reading a quote from Michael A. Singer from his book The Untethered Soul, which you include in your book. And it just so struck a chord with me. And he writes, you said to your mind, I want everyone to like me. I don't want anyone to speak badly of me.

I want everything I say and do to be acceptable and pleasing to everyone. I don't want anyone to hurt me. I don't want anything to happen that I don't like. And I want everything to happen that I do like. Then you said, now mind, figure out how to make every one of these things a reality, even if you have to think about it all day and night. And of course, your mind said, I'm on the job. I will work on it constantly. Why did you choose to include that quote, Rebecca? That's my favorite quote in the book. I'm so pleased you picked it. Is it? That book, anyone, forget my book, go and read Michael A. Singer's The Untethered Soul.

anyone forget my book go and read Michael A. Singer's The Untethered Soul it's so good because that was where I was and don't get me wrong I am still striving for success and publishing a book is a huge life goal I'm really excited by it but I was trying to solve for all of these things that were outside of my control and yoga is such a great tool and books like Michael's are to show you that what is in your control and what is such a great tool and books like Michael's are to show you that what is in your control and what is not on your control and strangely most of us ask our minds to try and fix all this stuff all the day and it's impossible and then we wonder why we're too tired people love to ask me how I find time to do all of this stuff and I think it's because I learned from quotes like that and I learned to let the stuff that I

couldn't control go. And I had a lot more emotional capacity to do stuff I do want to do, like writing books and running around after a toddler. This is going to be quite a weird final question. But I think you'll appreciate where it's coming from, given the tone of this podcast, which is, appreciate where it's coming from given the tone of this podcast which is you were knocked off your bike by a van and it led you to this point are you in a way grateful now that that happened I'm deeply deeply grateful for it it was the best worst thing that's well I there's I have two best worst things that happened in my life and the bike accident was the second and the first one was not getting a place well I got a place at Cambridge but I didn't get my A-level grades and I ended up at Nottingham and I met my husband on the very first day of university so I'm I'm a huge believer in things going wrong in the best possible way. Things going wrong in

order that they can then go right exactly exactly you have been a joy to interview thank you so so much for coming on my podcast no I'm thrilled it's a real honor I'm a huge fan I've listened to every single episode and it's it's very humbling I love I could talk about it all day um so yeah it's another big life tick to be here so thank you so much will you listen to your own episodes that's damn straight I will yes you will okay thank you so so much you're so sweet thank you thanks if you enjoyed this episode of how to fail with Elizabeth Day, I would so appreciate it if you could rate, review and subscribe. Apparently, it helps other people know that we exist.