The Netmums Podcast - S9 Ep2: The hypnotic world of Paul McKenna

Episode Date: January 17, 2023

Paul McKenna, renowned hypnotherapist and behavioural scientist, invites us into his study to talk about how to be less anxious and manifest the life you want to feel more calm instantly. His book 'freedom from anxiety' is out now.

You're listening to the Netmums podcast with me, Wendy Gollage. And me, Jennifer Howes, on this week's show. All right, so what I'd like you to do is close your eyes for a moment and just clear your mind. Now, my voice will go with you as you relax. What I'd like you to do is to relax the little muscles at the side of your eyes and mouth, comfortably aware of your chest, your arms and hands and fingers and your legs and your feet. But before all of that... Hello, hello and welcome to another episode. Now, it's a dark, dark day in the Gulledge

household today. As you can hear, I have some sort of lurgy. My youngest after a week of tonsillitis and then a week of a virus now has chicken pox. So parents out there tell me, I don't know, this winter lurgy season seems to be so much more brutal than the ones past. Our guest today, he knows a thing or two about making positive change, but I think even he might be stumped by this post-pandemic winter of discontent. Jen, tell us who is joining us today. Yes, today we have with us Paul McKenna, acclaimed hypnotherapist, behavioral scientist and broadcaster. Now, Paul's going to be talking to us about a topic that's on a lot of people's minds right now and affecting so many of us, anxiety. We'll be also getting tips and ideas about visualization and manifesting good things

in our lives. As most of you will know, he's written bestsellers, helping people lose weight, become rich, feel more confident, and change our lives. He even has a suite of apps that provide these programs for improvement. And now he has a new book. It's called Freedom from Anxiety. That's all about managing anxiety and creating a better life for ourselves. Welcome, Paul. Well, hello. Hi, very nice to meet you both. Good morning, Wendy. Good morning, Jen. We're going to hear some advice from you, I hope, about feeling less stressed, more focused, ultimately happier. That's something that I would imagine every parent listening needs. But first, I wanted to chat about a point you make early on in the book,

that lots of us have bad habits when it comes to anxiety. And letting our anxiety run away with us and not coping particularly well is one of those bad habits. Can you tell us a bit more about that? Sure. Well, look, over the last few years, if you hadn't had some anxiety, there'd be something wrong because of everything that we've been through. A global pandemic, the war, the economy. And so in a sense, even though we've been through a biological pandemic, we're in a psychological pandemic as well because people have become very good at catastrophizing, you know, worrying excessively, understandably, because the world's a very different place. And people have had to adapt.

There are all kinds of challenges going on as we speak thing is, is that when we allow our minds to go off and, you know, worry about all sorts of things that are never going to happen. And we do it over and over and over again, we get good at it. You see, so we actually, many people have practiced being anxious and now become very good at it.

The thing that's interesting about anxious people is that very often they're, they're very motivated. You know, they want to stop problems from occurring, which is why they worry about things. They're perfectionists. That's, again, one of the things they drive themselves very hard. The problem is that when you do too much of that, firstly, it's physically exhausting, which is uncomfortable. It weakens the immune system. And, you know, if you're, if you're thinking is taken up solely with survival

thoughts, which is essentially what anxiety is, then there isn't any room for the good stuff, optimism and joy and experience the richness of life and all the sort of fun stuff. So anxiety is a worldwide problem right now. The stats show that we are worrying more than ever before. And given what I do, I've sat here in my study with people for the last few decades, but certainly in the last year since I worked on this book and worked with people who are anxious, whose minds are all the time filled with survival thoughts, catastrophizing, unable to relax, a feeling of foreboding, all those sorts of things, unable to sleep properly, exhausted because of that. And develop techniques to help people to get calm, to be able to switch off the worry and the fear and the stress,

and to become peaceful, to be able to think clearly, and to have more control. Because really also, anxiety is about control. It's thinking to yourself, all right, what could happen? Could this happen? Could that happen? I've got to be in control. I've got to stop those things. So that's really essentially what I've done. So I've developed a system. It's not just a book. It comes with hypnotic trance and 18 audio techniques, which you can have on your smartphone. So what you do is if you're feeling a bit overwhelmed, you hit a button, I pop out and I do it to you. I get you feeling calm and more in control. I have to say, that's one thing that I like about the book, that you have

these audio bits. Because I think, you know, someone like me, I'm glad to know that I'm really a perfectionist. I'm not a anxious control freak. but that's the kind of thing you kind of listen to on your phone while you're out and about or in the car. And that even though this is, it's really about the kind of mental element that this book is not just about being in your head, that there are techniques of things we can do physically to bring about an immediate sense of calm, as well as kind of cultivating longer term ways of decreasing and managing anxiety. Can you tell us a little bit more about that? In the last sort of 30, 40 years, particularly the last, yeah, 30 years, there's been a really amazing series of breakthroughs in modern psychology.

So years ago, for example, if you had a cellular telephone, it was back in the 80s. It was like a brick. Right. Remember those things used to hold your ear and all you could do was make phone calls on it. Nowadays, a cell phone is the size of a bar of chocolate. You can have your music on it, your office on it. You can make video calls on it. You can do all kinds of things. You can run your life on it, essentially. And in the same way, psychological technology has made major advancements. It used to take us six months to cure somebody of a phobia. 99% of phobias now are cured in 60 minutes, if that even. And in the same way there are some phenomenally powerful techniques from sort of three areas as a hypnotist you know hypnosis

has advanced dramatically in the last 30 years then there's these new psychological technologies like neurolinguistic programming NLP which is practiced by almost every therapist used by every government major corporation it's a communication technology but it's really useful in helping people to have more control over their thoughts and their feelings and then there's an area of course which are called psychosensory techniques now many people will have seen these things where these techniques where you tap on various parts of your body your acupuncturecture points. There's one where you move your eyes back and forth. But the best of the lot is the one that involves the touch of the side of the arms,

palms of the hands, forehead, face like this. And what this does is, I mean, if you try this now, just do this. It feels comforting, doesn't it? Because when you touch here, you are hardwired to release more delta waves in your brain. When you were a baby, your mother held you in her arms and she cradled you like this. So you are hardwired. So the use of these sort of techniques creates not just an instantaneous change in our thoughts and feelings, but a lasting one as well. And so what I've done is put together all of the best techniques in this system.

And it's not just a compendium. It's also a bit of a journey. I explain how I came about learning or involved in developing some of them. And so I hope that people find the journey interesting. But at the same time, this is a practical how to book does what it says on the tin. If you're feeling anxious, overwhelmed, you're stressed, you're worrying, you're concerned about things, you're catastrophizing, and you're not able to switch that off and get peaceful and feel calm and clear thinking really is another benefit from this, then this is for you. this is why I wrote this. I'd kind of given up writing books

a couple of years ago. And I found that I kept getting interviewed during the pandemic on the same subjects again and again. How do we, you know, turn off the anxiety and the stress? How do people sleep better? How do they become more confident? How do they become more resilient? These sorts of things. And I thought, you know, maybe I should write another book I hadn't done for a couple of years. I'd sort of given up. But I thought, actually, I've got something that's really useful for the world right now. So that's what motivated me to do it. So what were you doing when you weren't writing books? You gave up writing books. What were you sat there doing? I do training. So I teach people about hypnosis or confidence or motivation, those sorts of things.

And I tend to do them in auditoriums, you know, in a live space. But because of the way the world's changed, I now sit here in my study and I turn on lights and the camera. With a very nice chair behind you, might I add. It does look like a psychotherapist chair, though. It looks like the sort of chair one should sit in and pour out one's heart. There's not that much pouring out of one's heart with the way I do things you see I'm like um you know a traditional therapist who wants you to go back and tell you about their mother and their father all that sort of stuff well I tell I'm more of a mechanic so when someone tells me about their problems rather than going you know tell me more and more and let's take you back to all the times

when you felt awful and relive them over and over again. What I do is listen to the structure of how they're putting together their world, how they're upsetting themselves, how they're making themselves feel anxious. And I change it. I change their perceptual filters so that they think about things differently. And the world seems more friendly place to them. So I'm more interested in structure. So unlike, as you say, traditional psychotherapy, where you sit down and you pour out your problem, what I tend to do is get stuck into somebody's subconscious mind and go change it.

That's so appealing, though. It's just like, fix it. Yeah, that's the modern approach nowadays. I mean, you know, the old-fashioned Freudian way where you get somebody to relive all the worst things that have ever happened to them, a bit like taking someone with a broken leg and throwing them down the stairs till they feel better.

You know, us modern psychologists, we're opposed to that approach. So an important element that you touch upon in the book is this self-view. Am I someone who's constantly stressed? And that we even start to think of that as a good thing. Being stressed makes me a good parent, a good worker, effective. And you've talked about how that can be motivating, but how does that self-view play in? Like, I hear so many parents that walk around saying, oh, my God, I'm so stressed out. And that it starts, people like that, naturally are stressed by virtue of the fact they want to get things done. They want to, you know, head off problems at the pass. They want to, you know, do things, you know, and feel like a sense of achievement, which is

good. But when it gets to the point that you tip over into worrying constantly so that you're preparing for emergencies that are never going to happen, you know, or as Mark Twain put it, I've been through some terrible experiences in my life. And some of them actually happened. When you're in that sort of frame of mind, then it's counterproductive because if the bandwidth of your thinking is taken up with survival thoughts, there's no room for creativity, for joy, for happiness. And so you end up becoming this sort of survival machine. And so I'm glad you made the distinction that people who often get classed as control freaks, when people say to me, you're a bit of a control freak because I not only control myself, I'm a hypnotist. I control lots of other people.

That's what a hypnotist does, right? That's when people go, you're a control freak. I go, thank you very much. Yeah, I like being controlled. It's a good thing, but it's used as a pejorative. So back to your original question, there's a tipping point where suddenly being um alert aware and um in control being prepared for potential problems and emergencies and and you know being motivated and driven is a good thing when it tips over into a place where you're constantly anxious there's a feeling of foreboding all your thoughts

are taken up with survival then that's counterproductive because it'll wear you out. You'll get grumpy. You'll make mistakes. You won't be able to think clearly and you won't be able to enjoy life. And as I say, you'll weaken your immune system too. Well, you cease to be effective at that point. So it goes from a tool to keep you effective to suddenly being unable to be effective because everything's it's it's a pet it's a parent thing I I have to say I

can I can relate Paul I can relate to this yeah it's that overwhelm I think Wendy that um I think you and I've talked about that constant sense of being overwhelmed and then you you feel like you can't do anything well I was going to ask you about that actually Paul because one of the things I read that you specialize in is emotional overwhelm and I think overwhelm for parents is greater now than it has ever been in terms of there's so much to do there's a lot of catching up for the kids post-pandemic. There's a lot more illness post-pandemic than there was. And so many parents are working. There's so many people struggling to make ends meet.

For me, I feel like the juggle is more than it's ever been. How can we manage it, Paul? What do we do? Well, first of all, I agree. I think the stresses that people have these days are so much greater because there's an ancestral thing called the fight or flight response, which is when there's a threat to our physical self or our ego, we suddenly go into survival mode.

So if someone's chasing you down the street with a knife, you want to go into survival mode to get the hell out of there. And it comes from when we were cave people. We had to fight a wild animal or run away. And the thing is that even though we're not necessarily under massive threat all day long, there are lots of little threats going on. You get caught up in traffic. You're late for a meeting. You have a disagreement with somebody. You're worrying about this meeting or presentation you're about to give or you know how what am i going to do i'm going to pick up the kids at this time etc etc now all of that background stress is accumulative right and my my my objective with this book and the audio the system is to bring the baseline down you know

in fact what i say at the very start is, if there is one thing that I could give everybody, one technique I could give everyone in the world, we'd be able to go into a state of peaceful relaxation at will. Now, some people go, now, hang on. I don't want to do that because I'll lose my edge. No, the thing is that there comes a point where you actually lose your edge doing that so the the the main thrust of this is that i can help you to adjust your perceptual filters so that instead of seeing threats everywhere you know what it's like when when you're all wound up the world's an unfriendly place when you feel good the world's so much better yeah and so i made a trance that goes with this so 30 minute hypnotic trance and i've been testing this on the most stressed people i could find i mean people

like this all day long and they would they reported to me they said i mean first of all they said i when i awoke from this because because I went so deeply relaxed, I fell asleep. In fact, the producer had to keep going back again and again because he kept falling asleep while he was trying to edit. Right. If I put everything in the kitchen sink, everything I've learned in the last three decades into this. And so what it does is afterwards, not only have you had all this wonderful rest and relaxation and replenishment, right? But also it means that you suddenly see the world in a way whereby you're in a relaxed, alert state. You're not overwhelmed. The overwhelm's gone and you can handle things. You can see, right, I've got to do that, got to do that, got to do that. Yeah, right.

I'm going to do this. I'm going to do this. I'm going to do that. Got to do that. Yeah. Right. I'm going to do this. I'm going to do this. I'm going to do this. Oh. And at the same time, I feel good. Life is rich. Life is beautiful. Life is wonderful. Yeah.

So it puts you in this amazingly resourceful place. And I didn't just come up with this. It's taken a long time to get to this point. And so I'm extremely proud of this trance. And it's one of those chances where, you know, I don't care how uptight you are, by the end of it, you will be relaxed. That is a bold claim. I'm going to have to try this.

It's a bold claim. I feel like, Paul, you're going to have to give us just a little kind of tidbit of what that exercise is like. Well, you see, the thing is, well, I'm not going to do a trance with you right now i you know what it will do though i said why don't we do a little meditation like a few minutes i've met meditation yeah um there's a friend of mine he's a zen master right his name's genpa roshi and he does this meditation called big mind and uh there's been a load of scientific studies done on this meditation. And it's found to be

incredibly, profoundly relaxing and blissful. It produces all kinds of amazing results in the studies that have been done. And I've taken Genpo's meditation and adapted it in my funky NLP style. So we can do something right

now that'll make you feel that much calmer. And it'll take just a few minutes. Perfectly safe. But I would say only do this if it's safe and appropriate to do so. So if you are operating any heavy machinery or something like that right now, then don't do it, right? But if it's safe for you to just relax and close your eyes for a few moments then i can take you into a nice place and just give you a few minutes and a taste if you look jen she's gone she's ready i'm doing it i'm ready okay so all right so what i'd like you to do is close your eyes for a moment and just clear your mind. Now, my voice will go with you as you relax.

What I'd like you to do is to relax the little muscles at the sight of your eyes and mouth, comfortably aware of your chest, your arms and hands and fingers and your legs and your feet aware of my words and the gaps between my words and I'd like you to imagine how you would look

if you were twice as relaxed as you are right now and float in to that more relaxed you see through the ears of your more relaxed self. And feel this greater relaxation. And I'd like to talk to that part of you or refer to as a controller, part of you that likes to be in control. I'd like it to continue to do all the good things

that it does for you. But for now, from the background of your experience, just move off into the background of your experience. And now, I'd like to talk to that part of you, or refer to as the protector part of you that keeps you safe. I'd like to continue to do all the good things to do for you. For now, from the background of your experience. Now, I'd like to talk to that part of you,

referred to as the evaluator, part of you that judges and analyzes and critiques. I'd like you to continue to do what it does for you. But for now, from the background of your experience, now, I'd like to talk to that part of you we'll refer to as desire or ambition, part of you that gets you things. I'd like it to continue to do all the good things it does for you. But for now, from the background of your experience,

so you can let go of all desire in this moment. Now I'd like to talk to that part of you, or refer to as the seeking mind. Mind that seeks the way. And I'd like it to continue to do all the good things that it does for you, but for now, in the background of your experience. Now, I'd like to talk to non-seeking, contented mind. Because right now there's nothing to be done. Nowhere to be. Everything is perfectly as it is.

Now, I'd like to talk to you. Big mind. How big are you? How small are you? When are you? When are you? And in this expanded consciousness, allow any problems or challenges to transform. That's right.

And take the sense of inner peace with you into the rest of the day, the rest of the week, the rest of the week, rest of the month, rest of the year. Allowing the baseline of your stress and anxiety levels to change so that

you feel calmer, you feel more peaceful. Peace, calm, comfort. Peace, calm, comfort. And in just a few moments, it'll be time to return to normal waking consciousness, feeling refreshed and alert. That's it. Opening your eyes now, take a stretch in the air as you come on back. How did you find that? Wow. I love that your voice gets deeper and deeper and deeper and deeper as you go on it's brilliant it definitely demonstrates one how we can kind of you can get to a place quite quickly

when you take a moment and also that yes uh you've definitely got a voice for radio I mean it's just now am I supposed to ask some more questions and do something now because that's it I'm done Jen ask the good man a question I have a couple of questions actually so you've got wonderful tidbits in the book about some of the kind of more famous names of people that you've spoken with or worked with or talked with. And one was, I thought there was this wonderful tidbit about a podcast you did with Armando Iannucci, just because I really love him, love his work. And, you know, he's obviously, he's created and scripted some of our most iconic characters and shows, including Alan Partridge, the TV series, The Thick of It, the US series Veep.

And it's funny, I think we know this about people, but how you write about how even he had to kind of conquer anxiety when it comes to work. And I think often we can feel very alone in our sense of feeling anxiety or feeling overwhelmed. Can you just tell us a little bit more about that? Well, I specifically mentioned the interview with him because we talked about imposter syndrome. And again, this is all in the family of anxiety, that feeling of being found out that I'm not really as good as everyone thinks, or I'm sort of just getting away with it, you know, and, and, and he brought this up. So I do a podcast called positivity. And I interview household names, a very eclectic mix of people, international household names. And the idea is, is that in the course of asking

different questions, we discover the positive mindset. You get a glimpse through the, you know, the perception of that person who's super interesting. So it could be a Simon Cowell or it could be Mel B. It could be Joe Malone. It could be, I don't know, Richard E. Grant. You know, John Cleese, all kinds of really interesting people. And the idea is we see the world through their eyes. And why I mentioned the interview with Amanda Nucci was he's a really interesting guy, by the way, super smart. You know, the kind of tough guy of political satire. But also this had a lovely, very warm human side to him when he talked about imposter syndrome.

And that's something that I know I felt when I started out my career. I just couldn't believe that when I started to do well, I thought, you know, I'm getting away with it. Maybe I'm not really any good and people think I am. And I think that that was, again um a way of a sort of addressing another aspect of anxiety anxiety shows up in all kinds of different ways you know a lot of people think that oh you know if you say the word stress they go well it's something for executives really isn't it don't know about me you know but there was a high part executive no stress anxiety fear concern worry they're all in the same family and um you know so that's why i mentioned that interview specifically because i wanted to address

those people who are continually got that voice in their head going you know what you're gonna get found out i don't care how well you've done you're not really that good or you're okay this time but you know what are you gonna do next time so they're continually moving away from the fear of failure rather than moving towards a sense of success if that makes sense so Jen Jen is writing notes to me here saying I want to talk about manifestation I want to talk about manifestation so go talk about manifestation yes so yeah of course in your book you talk about using the self-hypnosis to visualize and manifest the life we want. I think it's a really intriguing, inspiring part of the book. But also, even while we're talking about anxiety and some of the kind of negative feelings,

that there's this wonderful positive element in terms of what we can do to kind of get where we want to go in life. So once you've taken away, or rather you've reduced the anxiety, the survival thoughts, the continual kind of overthinking everything, there's space, there's more bandwidth for creativity and so uh i wanted to put a section in there about how it is that we can begin to design the sort of life we want so um if you look at a look around us all of us right now everything here once started as an idea in somebody's head right including us and so the power of the human mind to manifest or create, whether you're looking at that in a scientific sense, or whether you want to move beyond and make it a little bit more

paranormal, a little bit more alternative, is fine by me. I don't care how it gets classed. But all I know is human beings are super creative. And when you stop over surviving, you've then got this opportunity to sort of design the sort of lifestyle you want to have. And so, again, in a slightly autobiographical sense, I went into when I started out, you know, I was quite happy being a radio broadcaster. And that's all I wanted to do. And then I interviewed a hypnotist and I got fascinated by hypnosis. And then I became obsessed with it. And, you know, then I decided I didn't want to be a broadcaster anymore. And I started to design this life that I wanted to have. And there's a sign that hangs. It's actually by my closet that says, what would you do if you knew you couldn't fail? It's a thing that American motivators use. What it does is takes the limiters off and you suddenly think, if I couldn't fail, what would I do? And you start to

think outside of the normal limitations that you have and you become, you know, much more in a sense, powerful. And so part of this book is also, once you've got rid of the anxiety and the stress, what are you going to do? You know, design a better life. Right. You're going to start to think. Think big, you know, because there's almost a spiritual element to the very end of this. And I don't mean a religious. I mean, as in human potential, where you start to think, what's the purpose of my life? You know, Gandhi famously said he said, my life's my message or be the change you want to see in the world those sorts of things and when you start to think you know really big

almost cosmically if you like little problems get put in context right i've had a few problems uh the last couple of days lost my laptop you know and i was sitting there this morning and I was going and then and then my wife said you know nobody's died right and suddenly we just recontextualized it in a second and I went to myself you know in the grand scheme of things um the things that I think to myself can be a big deal are really not you know if I think about things in the context of my life I mean I remember you know I've had people things in the context of my life i mean i remember you know i've had people sit there and tell me the most horrendous stuff right because i've worked with war veterans rape victims bereavement cases i remember somebody came in one day and um and

their problem was they said it's just terrible i mean it's just awful i said what is it? My neighbor, my neighbor keeps moving the trash can from their side to my side of the walkway. And I can't sleep at night and I know they're doing it on purpose. I can't stop thinking about it. Right. And, you know, it was like a joke. Right. And I was at the point where I was going to say, you actually need some proper problems because, you know and we did recontextualize and i went um firstly you don't know they're doing it on purpose blah blah blah we pulled it all to pieces no i said you know who sat in that seat yesterday somebody had seen all his colleagues blown to pieces in afghanistan and he was drinking a bottle of vodka a day and hitting his kids and you know he thinks that's a problem meanwhile you think you think moving the trash can, you know,

and suddenly this person went, you know what? You're absolutely right. I've blown this thing up in my mind out of all proportion, not because they're a bad person, but just because human beings do this kind of stuff, right? I mean, that's how it works. And so, you know, there will always be somebody with a bigger problem than you,

but that doesn't mean your problem isn't real. But what you've got to do is sometimes just put in context and go in the grand scheme of my life am I going to look back and go I really wish I'd sorted that trash can problem out you know so the way I would you know end the the answer to this question there was an interesting study done it to it was with people in old people's homes right and they were asked what do you wish you done more of or less of and basically 80 of them said I wish I'd worried less right and so I took from that you know that's maybe something I can help people do is because worry, the job of worry is to protect you, you know, is to stop you from getting yourself into situations that would be bad. If I'm about to step off the curb and there's a bus coming, I want a burst of fear. Pull me back. Keep me alive. I just don't want to live in fear all the time.

I want to live in anxiety. I want to live. I want to have just enough to keep me safe and in a good space but I want to live in a in a creative joyous rich and beautiful world and that's really the sort of theme of my work is is about freedom so to finish Paul I'd like to ask your advice basically for parents this is this all sounds to me like exactly the kind of thing parents need to be doing but it also feels a bit like it's going to become another thing on the to-do list I've got to listen to Paul's trance I've got to do this I've got to read this book and you know at the time of year when everything's really busy how do you stop it just becoming another thing to do brilliant question uh you're absolutely right people go ah I'm too busy to do all my stuff.

You know, now, if you're a mother, you are, in a sense, the most important person in the family. So if you're in bad shape, family's in bad shape. You're in good shape, family's in good shape, right? So it's a false economy to tell yourself, I haven't got time to put myself in good mental and physical health that's a false economy right because sure you might get more stuff on your list done but you burn out or you get sick or something happens right so the very best thing you can do for your family is to make sure you're in great health because when you are mentally and physically when you are everything else flows from that and the thing is that i'm 30 minutes a day to relax deeply

i mean you know i say read the book but if not just download that trance and use that for 30 minutes a day there's there's shorter techniques as well but 30 minutes today and after after a few days of listening to that, you will feel differently about things. You'll be much more resilient. You'll be much more confident. You'll have more energy. Things that were bothering you, winding you up, you'll be able to handle them. Because your perceptual filter will be different. And the kind of things that I'm hearing from people who are using it is they go, well, firstly, they go, God, I felt so relaxed. I feel so good afterwards. But they go, I just didn't get so wound up when that annoying person, you know, was was driving me nuts.

And other people have said to me, they've gone, there's something different about you, isn't there? You know, so that's the kind of results you could expect. Thank you, Paul, for coming on and chatting with us. Thank you, Wendy. Thank you, Jen. Well, you've given us some great ideas, some great tips. Freedom from Anxiety is the book. Yes, it is.

It's one of the most useful podcasts we've done, Paul. I'm going away to download a chance. Me and the poxy one are going to go and sit and do it yeah honestly you'll feel so much better afterwards um i mean i'm so pleased with this trance you know i'm just one of those what i yes i've nailed it and but also it's a real pleasure talking to you because um this is this kind of conversation the sort of conversation i like to have and you know it had depth to it and also it's relatable to people in their everyday lives. It's not just, so tell us about the techniques.

It's, hang on a minute, you know, mothers, this sort of problem, that, that, that, that, this is the real world. You know, that's kind of where we're at right now. You know, the world needs more. It needs less anxiety. Everyone needs a bit more resilience and a bit more joy. And, you know, if I can bring a bit of that then I'm pretty happy and you've certainly enabled me to to put my case today so thank you

very much thank you for joining us it's been lovely to meet you