The Wellness Scoop - Setting Boundaries & Our Christmas Reading List

Episode Date: December 3, 2019

For our final episode of series 4, we're joined by the wonderful journalist Toni Jones, founder of Shelf Help: global platform, book club and community dedicated to self-help and self-development. Toni kicks off the episode by interviewing Matt and Ella about the whirlwind year they’ve had and how much they’ve learnt from our incredible podcast guests. From setting boundaries to work life balance, daily routines and new year’s resolutions. We then go on to discuss three gorgeous books, recommended by Toni, to help kickstart 2020. Shelf Help Gelong Thubten 100 Days of Self-discovery Feel the Fear and Do it Anyway by Susan Jeffers The Source: Open Your Mind, Change Your Life by Dr Tara Swart See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Visit BetterHelp.com today to get 10% off your first month. That's BetterHelp, H-E-L-P.com. Hi, and welcome to the final episode of the Delicious Yellow podcast season four with me, Ella Mills, and my husband, co-host, and business partner, Matthew Mills. Hi, everyone. So I did wonder if I was a little bit mad to relaunch the podcast just six weeks or so after Sky was born this year, but I can honestly say how I've absolutely loved this season. It's provided a really nice distraction actually

at times from the complete intensity and whirlwind that is early motherhood. And we've also just so loved having the privilege to meet the widest, most incredible range of guests this season. And we've talked about everything from community to calories, morning routine, friendships, gut health, affirmations, visualization, you name it, we've done it. But one thing we keep getting again and again, not just in this season, but from the whole podcast, from any doctor or nutritionist that we've spoken to is the importance of our gut health. With so much research being published all the time at the moment, and I've really loved, personally, that's one of the things I've loved learning about the most, because when I first went to a fully plant-based diet after I got ill back in 2012, I wasn't 100% sure exactly why I was

feeling so much better and what it was that was helping me so much. Then whether it was just a kind of personal benefit, whether it was anecdotal, but to see all this new research and start to really understand the science behind the gut and behind why it's so important for everyone to eat more plants so that we can load up on fiber has been actually incredibly validating for our deep health belief in the importance of a plant-rich diet. So that's been really exciting on a personal level. But for our final episode of this season, we decided we were going to do something a little bit different and we're going to turn the tables around and Matt and I are actually going to be interviewed today. And then as our part two of this, we're going to do something a little bit different and we're going to turn the tables around and Matt and I are actually going to be interviewed today and then as our part two of this

we're going to dive into a little Christmas reading club with the brilliant Tony Jones who runs one of my favourite things which is the Shelf Help book club and it's a book club basically focused on all the sorts of things we talk about on the podcast, incredible writers and authors all talking a little bit about kind of self-help but in a very kind of wellness capacity so I'm very very excited about that she's got three completely gorgeous books to run through with us so welcome Tony. Thank you thanks for having me. So Tony thanks so much for coming on I was just saying to Ella before we started today that the last time I saw you was when I burst in rather quite dramatically know, rather dramatically. Ella was doing a talk in central London on her last book tour, and I thought the talk started at 7 o'clock,

but it actually started at 6.30, and so I smuggled Austin, our dog, into this hotel. And it's quite a trendy hotel as well. Yeah, and I smuggled him in at about 6.45, thinking I would be able to kind of get in before anything really kicked off and walked into a room of about 200 people all giggling and wondering what I was doing there with this with this dog and the dog stole the show as

well the whole interview basically yeah it became about austin and we like got austin singing to everyone yeah he wanted to get up and get involved so austin isn't here today for that unfortunately but it was great because you walked straight in into the doorway was right by the by the stage right So you did totally steal the show. But that was such a nice chat, wasn't it? Because we just were able to talk a bit more about your journey as well as the recipes. And I think that's what made it so engaging to people there. Yeah, it was so nice. I think sometimes people think on a book tour, you do just sit and be like, and then you add 100 grams of rice to this recipe, but it's so much more than that and it is it was so nice it was so so nice but it's hard I suppose it's hard to be open as well it's like

you're putting yourself out there aren't you to be so vulnerable it's really kind of tough so for you guys to do this I think is brilliant to be interviewed and for me it's such a total delight because I love my job and the best part is like you said you get to meet all these amazing people and quiz them on everything they know and I think you two are almost as geeky as me about self-development which I love so yeah we can it's going to be basically big nerdy session all about how we live our lives how we can improve our lives setting boundaries maybe so maybe we start and I just say to you how is life at the moment yeah do you know what it's so funny that you were just talking about setting boundaries because that was literally exactly I had a really long conversation with one of my best friends Annie last night and that's

exactly what we were talking about because I mean I guess for us the event of the year obviously is is becoming parents so when this comes out Sky will be just over four months old and it has just been you know everyone says it it's a whirlwind it's intense but it's so much more in terms of incredible but also intense than I could have possibly ever imagined and you know I had a lot of work commitments that just were already agreed to you know before we got pregnant partly because we got pregnant and we didn't really expect it to happen in the way that it did we you know we realized there'd never be a good time so we said well we'll just see what happens and we were pregnant within a week um which took us by surprise a little bit and so yeah there was things you know like our next book for example that had to be written

shot edited one sky was you know a week old and and you know we wanted to come back online with this and we've had loads of product launches and stuff and I did find it quite challenging at times months two three I was working a lot a lot and I was find it quite challenging at times but months two three I was working a lot a lot and I was finding really hard to find those boundaries between sky and work and I've just taken a step back and I'm going to take three months basically of maternity with um you know bits and pieces here and there and we're going away for three weeks together um as a family to really get that time and it's it been, yeah, it's incredible and feel really lucky to do it. But it's been a really great lesson in the importance of setting boundaries

and realizing you can't do everything really, really well. So it's better to do a few things well, and then guard the rest of that time. Yeah, brilliant advice. And also, I suppose, the lesson in you can't control everything, right? The biggest lesson is a small person coming into your life and throwing it all upside down. Yeah, well, case in point, Sky's asleep now, so fingers crossed we can get to the end of the episode. And what about you, Matt?

It's been a really, really busy year. I mean, I did the marathon earlier this year. I hate running. And so waking up and doing lots of runs wasn't my best thing, but I was really proud of it and I was happy I did it. And then it's just been a really really busy year with work we've released our new app and we've launched lots of new products and we're making plans to launch internationally so it's been really really busy but it's been incredibly rewarding and obviously the best

thing the the glue of all of it is is sky and we've Ella and i are people who are i think are naturally focused on creating positive change and we i think that's been a slightly abstract thought and then suddenly when sky was born it becomes this tangible thing that you can hold and you can feel and you can say this is why we want to make or try and make as much positive change we possibly can and so having her has been the most empowering, motivating thing for us to. Wow. Amazing. And it sounds like you're both saying like the work life balance that we all kind of hear about and read about. It might not really exist for you guys that it's like you're not this isn't your work life and this isn't your personal life. They're so intertwined. Yeah, they're completely intertwined and they can always have been. And when we first started working together and we were going out at the time, it was something where we would try and divide the two.

And then in our first 18 months together, I think we had to cancel five different holidays that we had booked that we would then have to cancel at the last minute just because of work. And we had a pretty quick realization that there was no way of actually properly separating the two. So I think that's helped us in the transition with sky as well but it is it's it's non-stop doing what we do but we absolutely love it and our building our company as we are is is part of our heart and soul and you know our dream is for sky to come and work in the company one day too we want it to be a really long-term family business and so every step that we take on that is is is great and we're we love it i mean it's we're so deeply passionate about what we do we wake up with enormous purpose which i think is something we've talked a lot about on the podcast

with various guests and something that we're so fortunate to have and that we want to try and share with other people but our work life our family life is all muddled into one. Yeah. And you talk about you want to help others and that's your purpose. And that's been the Deliciously Ella purpose from the beginning. But how do you make sure that you look after yourselves? Because I'm sure you've heard a lot. I've heard some of the guests talking about self-care and about the kind of the fact that you have to have. So starting with boundaries, but also self-care for Ella's massive for you isn't it so how do you make sure

that you keep up yeah no it really is and again I think it is so true there is there is no boundary between between work and home and I think we both absolutely love that because it is as we said our passion and it keeps it exciting but at the same time it sometimes makes the off button a little bit challenging say matt will be exhausted and want to switch off but i'm like no we need to talk about this project or vice versa and also you're excited about something so you inevitably kind of get swept up in it so i think for both of us trying to find time and not booking it in necessarily as much because sometimes that can be challenging you've got a bit more go with the flow i think that's been a big lesson for us but trying to make sure they're just little things that we do every day so one of the things

we've been doing at the moment which is our kind of literally best time of our life is so Skye gets up at about 6 30 and we have coffee in bed together you know we have a real routine Matt we have our probiotics every morning and Matt gets those and I'm feeding Skye and then I finish feeding Skye and you have her and I go make us coffee and we get in bed with Austin and we have you know between 6 30 and 7 30 or so every morning together and it's just trying to make little bits like that I think for me that's that's the biggest self-care and it's realizing that you you know you can't plan a day you don't know what's going to happen but you can always just fit in those little things here and there and you know we've been really as well making a big effort every evening to kind of actually make dinner and sit down together. And it might be something so, so simple. I cannot

count the number of times we've had pasta, but, you know, we'll do pesto and then I'll chuck in as many veggies as I can do. So I'll saute courgettes and mushrooms and broccoli and then put some peas in, garlic, onions, spinach, and then stir that through pasta. So it's so easy, but it is full of loads of green stuff. It takes 10 minutes. And I think that has been a great, great act of self-care, I think for both of us, because it means also at the end of the day, even if we're so exhausted, we sit down and we talk to each other properly. And we've also made, I think one of my biggest things, we did a big episode on digital and it was a really good check-in, I think, because she said one of the things is, you know, don't take your phone to the bathroom and I just god how many times do we do that I mean it is nuts

and it was a really good check-in actually the fact that like screens can be so dominating and of course sometimes that's important because you you got to work but I think we both made a really big effort to not watch tv when we get into bed to not take our phones into bed and actually just like you know it helps that sky's in our room so you kind of got to be quiet and when we get into bed, to not take our phones into bed and actually just like, you know, it helps that Sky's in our room so you kind of got to be quiet and dark, but get in and just talk to each other and actually just be together and have that dinner time together.

And it just feels incredible. I think for us, we certainly believe anyway, routine for babies is really important. So we've really tried to get Sky in a pattern and Ella's definitely been the one leading this of having sleeps at the same times each day and feeds at the same time each day and what that's actually done is I think instilled a better sense of routine within us as well and we could easily let dinner time kind of come and go

and there'd be other stuff going on but it's actually really enforcing us that we really want to have proper dinner time every night and it really has helped a lot but I think when things are busy I think having practices or a routine or an event within the week that you can come back to is really really helpful and so for me that's been we interviewed an amazing Buddhist monk who we've talked about on a couple of other episodes we interviewed him on the podcast in season three he's called Jielong Tubten he's the most extraordinarily lovely man as well. And he really inspired and motivated me to start meditating. And so that's something that I started doing every day.

And even if it's just five minutes, it's something that just really grounds me. And then in the moments of real stress, you just come back to that. And that's been something that has been an intention of mine for a long time, but I just never quite got around to doing. And I do it at different parts of the day, but I'll just always try and find five minutes where I just go sit peacefully and sometimes just in the office as well. And then the other thing is every Saturday morning, my dear wife here still allows me to do this, which is great. I go and play golf with friends every Saturday morning. And that really is my time just to properly switch off and get away from work and anything else

and just hang out with friends and be outside and do something that I love. So having that bigger part of my routine taken care of and then just a daily, just five minutes doing that has been really, really helpful for me. I think that's actually been like, we keep talking about her, but she has been a great lesson for us.

I think that's been one of my biggest learnings her but she has been a great lesson for us I think that's been one of my biggest learnings is that like I think sometimes you think I've got to get to a yoga class you know I've got to do the full 60 minutes I've got to go on a big run I've got to read a whole self-help book I've got to do a 30 minute meditation you kind of set yourself all these big goals you know I've got to make this big lunch dinner you know all these kind of complicated things but actually I think it's been such a good lesson this year between the busyness of everything that actually five minutes here, five minutes there, a 10 minute green pasta, a five minute meditation, a five minute stretch, you know, like a small walk just makes all the difference. And it's been a great

lesson actually, and just reinforcing that like being healthy, looking after yourself kind of physically and mentally, it doesn't have to be be hard it doesn't have to be complicated because realistically for us at the moment that's that's not going to happen but just like a five minute yoga stretch is you know mentally does so much it does almost as much as 60 minutes yeah and it means that you're going to be able to do all the stressful stuff better right when you when you're meditating when you're stretching but how funny is it that we get get a baby into a routine so quickly because we know how important it is to them but when it comes to us we kind of don't really think about it like that um i think those times are so sacred so whether

it's playing golf whether it's doing yoga it's so important to make sure like you say you make the time to do those things and what about working together living together now parenting together like loads of people would say they would not be able to do that. So what's the magic? What's the secret? We do really different things, which I think really, really helps. So when we started working together, we figured out very, very quickly that if we were both trying to do the same thing as each other, naturally we would have different opinions

on that and it would drive each other nuts. And we now do very very different things within the business and ella is our brand director and she's completely focused on on brand and i do the kind of the normal running of the business so um finance operations business development uh commercial i oversee so that really helps that we do. We stick to your own roles. Yeah, and Ella's really trying to build our community in a big way and focus on building our brand, whereas I'm more focused on the kind of

the more business-y parts, I suppose, of what we do. And that's really, really helped. And I think as long as we're fully kind of up to date with what each other are doing and we're aligned on what each other are doing and we're aligned on what each other are doing and if there's any big decisions to be made we're both 100 committed to them then it honestly works really well and now i don't think i ever imagined before working with my wife but but now we do i couldn't imagine anything better it's it's amazingly rewarding and it's really enforced in me the

power of family business and you know as i said before there's nothing i would love more now than for sky to come work in our company one day and we are planning now for the for the really long term we're not trying to focus on something where we're looking to do kind of deals or you know we're trying to build the business really really sustainably so that we can have it for the for the really long term which is has been another slight shift in us this year which has been great yeah I think it is one of those things I think sometimes people look at it and be like oh my god you must be so perfect that you can work together and live together and we literally spend 99.5 percent of our time together apart from when Matt's playing golf that's basically the only time apart but actually I

think it is it's not about us being kind of perfect in that sense it's just about trying to divide it up so that it works and and when we were doing the same thing it was sometimes challenging but the thing that I think we realized today that's so nice about it is that you get to really see what the other person does you know it's really lovely to kind of completely have an insight into how the other person's developing and when, you know, they've been really working towards something or, you know, a really big project and you see it kind of come together. You get that really deep insight and you can feel really proud of them. And I think as much as sometimes there are drawbacks and downsides, of course, there are to anything, that amazing sense of closeness that you get from being able to have such a deep insight into everything that's going on is really, really special, isn't it? Yeah, I totally agree. And also, and you're kind of developing together along with the brand. I was thinking this about

the podcast as well, because the kind of topics that you talk about, they're delving into you guys as well. And you're sitting next to each other and finding out probably at the same time as everyone else about these things about your partner partner right how do you decide um who's coming on the podcast you both have similar ideas about that yeah so the podcast is one of one of my projects and and I absolutely love it I think the guests are honestly such a mix I mean I think the thing that I've enjoyed most about it is that it's so diverse because the more I mean I started in health and wellness from a food perspective that's what I was initially interested in when I was trying to get better and I was focused completely basically on cooking and then as we kind of got more and more into it I realized that health is just such a 360 thing

and every kind of moment over the last how many years has really reinforced that like it's no good just eating broccoli you know it's great to eat more broccoli but it's nowhere near enough on its own. You know, if your mental health's struggling, if you're not sleeping, if you're really stressed, if your relationship's in a difficult place, you know, if you're feeling kind of dragged down by all of that, vegetables aren't the answer.

And, you know, it's really interesting. One of the people we've actually interviewed just twice because she's so brilliant is Dr. Megan Rossi, and she's talking a lot about gut health. And saying, for example, she'll often say to her patients, you know, stress has just a bigger impact, if not sometimes more, on IBS and lot about gut health and saying for example she'll often say to her patients you know stress has just a bigger impact if not sometimes more on IBS and kind of gut health issues than diet does but people want to focus on diet first and I think we see that time and time again so for me I think the brilliant thing about podcasts and what I've wanted to focus on is that

kind of diversity and about the fact that you know so we were talking the other day you found that amazing Harvard study which is over 75 years looking at what's truly made people happy and it's meaningful social bonds, sense of community, sense of purpose. And I think that's had such a big impact on their health and they've seen that had a bigger impact on their health than like their cholesterol. And I think that's really powerful. And so for me, it's trying to create that really interesting sense of diversity so that we are talking about, you know, our gut microbes and whether you know calorie of mars bar is the same as a calorie of an avocado and and you know what about fat and protein or the rest of it and a vegan diet and the nutrition of that because obviously that's a big part of what we do but equally because I think for me wellness

is so much more than that it's been really important to also you know delve into yoga and mindfulness and friendship and community and and things that are quite different in that sense and I think sometimes conventionally if we think about health we don't necessarily think friendship as our first thing but actually has such a big impact on our health yeah and if you're now that you're building the community and the brand and you probably see this it's connection isn't it that people are really hungry for so like you say you can you're building the community and the brand and you probably see this, it's connection, isn't it? That people are really hungry for. So like you say, you can, you can eat all the vegetables, but really what you need to do as well is like, think about your mental health, think about your social circles and what you're getting from that. It's so much more important. I think sometimes when we give it credit for being, um, and I've definitely seen

that in my life, a hundred percent. Yeah. Who, um, Who's been your favorite guest or maybe the most inspiring guest? It is really, really hard to pick a favorite, but Gaylong Thupten, who we keep referencing, he was also a really special one about, talks a lot about happiness as a choice. And, you know, I know it makes it kind of sound overly simple, but the idea that, you know, we have to learn to control our minds. You know, we have tens of thousands of thoughts every single day. And of course, lots of the time, those can be negative and unhelpful

and we can be so easily drawn into that. And what we need to be able to do is control those thoughts and talk to our brains. And there was the other episode we did, which I loved, was on how to fail and the importance of failure with Elizabeth Day. And we referenced an episode that she did on her podcast, which is absolutely fantastic,

with this guy called Mo Gowdat, who talks about the loss of his son and that was his big thing that you usually need to talk to your brain basically and you need to separate out fact from thought and yes we have a lot of feelings and matt's always saying this to me because i have so many feelings every day i'm like i feel this i feel that i feel the next thing and you know especially in like the exhaustion of the last few months and the intensity of it, it can be really easy to get really wrapped up in. I feel this, I feel that, I feel the next thing. But sometimes it's like, OK, what do you feel and what's fact?

And sometimes I think talking to your brain in that way is quite powerful. Yeah, I think so. I probably do 60 to 70 percent of the podcasts that we do. But I would probably have to say three i love the one with joseph paul who's a researcher at oxford university who had done the largest study on the impacts of farming on the environment and it really catapulted me into really understand the importance of what we're doing we we really, really do believe that people eating more plant-based food is important. And there was so much compelling data behind that that really struck me.

The other one I really enjoyed was a recent one with Tim Spector talking about guts. And he had done this amazing study with twins who are effectively clones of each other, but they all die of different things and have different health issues. And it all came down to their gut health. And so I found that really, really fascinating. And then the other one I loved was with Matthew Walker on why we sleep. And I had never quite understood the importance of sleep.

And I'd had a year of sleeping really badly, but when my mum was ill and having a refocus on sleep and doing the right things before I go to sleep actually throughout the day so that I could be able to sleep whilst I'm not drinking coffee past 10 o'clock in the morning and eating a little earlier than I used to eat before I'd go to bed and really like actually prioritizing having eight hours sleep in at night has been really really powerful for me and it's been obviously slightly more difficult with sky but that was a really powerful episode for me so but that kind of changed your life that one it really did yeah and and the one as ella said with with g long

tip 10 as well has really prompted a new behavior of mine of meditating each day which i never ever used to do i always used to say i wanted to do it but but i never actually did. So we feel so fortunate we get to interview such extraordinary people. And it really is. It's just a constant exploration. And we say this sometimes in our business that we're just doing this big experiment of trying to scale a food company across category by only using completely natural ingredients. And it feels like within our podcast podcast we're doing that as well and there's so much new exploration new data new insights that have come out within our space of we've always i think health and wellness has been a slightly abstract thing that we haven't quite understood

and it felt like you were either doing it all or nothing and it was something slightly niche and slightly weird and slightly weird. And actually to understand the science of it and the accessibility of it, if you can just do a few things slightly better, has been really, really powerful. And I think the combination of some of the episodes we've talked about have been the ones that have really, really helped me anyway. And I hope have helped our listeners too. Yeah, it's nice to know the why. Because I'm quite obsessed. I think you're always told walk 10,000 steps get your heart rate up with 30 minutes of exercise you know eat your

portions of fruit and vegetables monitor your sleep exactly but why yeah and I think that's been what's what's been powerful is getting into the fact that like it's not just anecdotal you know that you feel a bit better like there is there is a lot of kind of bulk and research and science behind it yeah it sounds like both of you have gone through quite a lot of changes in the last year obviously there's been the major change but how different would you say are you as a person to both of you from this time last year I would say that I'm a more content person I would say I've been incredibly fortunate throughout my life I grew up in a very very happy solid family and family has always made up the center point of my life and I've had a natural

sense of happiness throughout my life I've always I've always been happy and I've never struggled with with any mental health issues but I feel like even in the last year I've got a greater I think it was after my mum died as well. And then in now being a dad, which is the greatest honour and privilege and responsibility I've ever felt. seeing a daughter born and trying to create a world that she can live in and around where she feels loved and supported and cared for and given opportunity have been two things that really crystallized within me who I want to be and how I want to live and trying to just do the right things each day I think our lives are the accumulation of all the small choices that we make each day and making sure that I'm really really conscious within that every day has been something that's that's really helped and I've in the last year I've you know I'm still not doing

it enough but I'm exercising more I'm meditating more I think I'm eating much better. I think that the strength within the relationships I have is stronger. And I think those two things have been what one felt like a curse and the other one felt like a blessing have actually both been blessings for me. And I just try and carry those on and just try and just be a little bit better every day. Amazing. I think the word content is brilliant as well, because I think we all so strive so strive don't we for this kind of need to be doing need to be happy need to be like more happy need more stuff to be happening and you're kind of saying what you're finding is that level of purpose and yeah I think it's I think that when my mum was ill what drove me nuts was thinking is she gonna be here in three months or six months or a

year or is this going to work and actually what it really really teaches you is a great sense of presence and the need just to be utterly present and just live one day at a time and I think that in having that focus as well that's really enabled me to just be more content because I'm not thinking about oh well when this happens in two years time or in five years time or when we accomplish this or we do that or sky's a bit older or she can do this or we even have another kid I'm just not thinking about that I'm you know I really just am completely focused on trying to live well each day and if I can do that then hopefully it all adds up into something good yeah brilliant Ella quite hard to follow that up isn't it he has this amazing kind of complete Matt's emotional intelligence is second to none really

yeah I think it's been a roller coaster the last year 100% and I think for me I think content is is a really brilliant word and I as I think we both have felt a shift away from the when I culture you know when I achieve this when skies this when that when the next thing will we do this we'll be happy and actually also moving away from it was really interesting we interviewed the politician Rory Stewart and one thing he said that really stuck with me it's like moving away from those big words almost like happiness you know because it's that is not a permanent state that's a moment you know a lovely time together with a friend or you know a lovely thing to eat but content is much more of a plausible thing to be aiming for is a sense of continuous balance and calm and I think that is something

that we have both focused much more on and has felt really good I think for me the biggest change has been a sense of calm I'm definitely Matt is the most kind of stable we're quite yin and yang in that sense he's so stable he's so kind of you know you don't really fluctuate whereas I'm like this is the best thing ever this is the worst thing ever I'm so good I am terrible and exhausting isn't it sometimes it's also it changes by the moment I mean it's like living in really tropical weather I mean you go from like just complete sunshine to torrential rain and I definitely am more inclined to struggle in that sense and I've definitely had some real kind of anxiety and things with being a mother and are you good enough and Matt's much better at not

questioning himself in that way which which is a big inspiration for me and I feel very lucky to live with and it's really helped balance me out but I think those kind of life events that we've been through have definitely given me a much better kind of appreciation of just taking everything as it comes and I think you know that's also it's just something you learn isn't it the more the more you go through and the more you deal with the more kind of big events happen but I think every time something bad happened I used to really worry about it and I used to kind of get really het up about it and I think I've come to realize now that there's nothing that you can't get through you know no matter how challenging it is there is nothing that you can't overcome and yes really

brilliant kind of practices and people and tools in your life really help with that 100%. I really do believe that. But I think what I've come to appreciate is no matter how challenging something is, you always put one foot in front of the other. And for me, that's very empowering

and has created a lot more calm in my life of just knowing, you know, whatever it is, you can get through it, you can do it because we've seen it, because we've we've seen it done. And we've kind of learned to experience that ourselves. And that takes away, I think, a lot of fear of the unknown, because there's nothing there's nothing you can't get through. Yeah, brilliant. And what about so we've kind of reflected a little bit on the last year, and then looking ahead to the next to the next year do you are you the kind of people that make new year resolutions i'm not a new year's resolution person i feel like it's

it's another day and again it comes back to what i was just saying about how just trying to live one day really well at a time and that doesn't mean that you know we're planning for the long term in our business we have we have three year plans even now but I just don't think it's something where because it's January 1st means that you should change your life I think that the opportunity for personal transformation is always at your fingertips and you it's always within your grasp to be able to do it and we've got really really exciting plans but again it all just comes back to doing today as well as I can possibly do it. And if, if we have the right strategy in place and we have the right plans in place,

and it just comes down to doing every day well, and that really is the focus. And ultimately what matters most and my biggest focus of anything is just being a great dad to Sky. And it is the most overwhelming indescribable sense of responsibility you feel when you're just holding this little thing of you're kind of overwhelmed with love and if I can be a great dad then everything else will be okay in the world everything will fit into place around that yeah I think it's you know I I've kind of stood in between I think new year's resolutions can be, for want of a better word, a bit dangerous because I think it can sometimes lean a little bit towards that all or nothing.

You know, as of today, I will stop drinking. I'm going to become vegan. I'm only going to eat vegetables. I'm not going to do this. Yeah, it's like the best new me will appear. I'm going to exercise for two hours a day. I'm going to this, I'm going to that. And it's like, those are big aims yeah and I think sometimes we just set ourselves up for failure

because we're just aiming too much too soon too quick and especially after Christmas yeah um you know so I think it's and I'm also to me it's about like as you said kind of personal transformation and trying to feel your best and be your best every single day rather than just for January you know and I think and I always come back to it's so boring but I think for anything to be sustainable it's got to be enjoyable so if you radically try and transform the way you eat overnight are you going to enjoy it maybe not could you just instead focus on like adding in more vegetables rather than things like that so I think I'm a bit nervous of New Year's resolutions in that sense because they tend to fail because I think they're sort of too big, too hard, too fast.

That being said, I do think Christmas is one of those really rare times of the year where most of us are lucky enough to get a bit of time to switch off and a bit of downtime. And I think that can be quite a nice moment for a bit of reflection. You know, what is it in this year that you've loved? What is it that you've struggled with? You know, what areas of your life do you feel good about? What areas of your life do you not feel so brilliant about? And are there things that you could look at in that for next year? And so I think it's not so much a New Year's resolution of tomorrow, I will do this and I won't do that. I think it's much more of a kind of intention for this year if I look at this year as a whole you know in 365 days

time I'd like to feel a bit stronger I would really like to feel a little bit calmer you know kind of have a more positive headspace maybe that's you know looking at meditation sort of thing um so for me that's that and there was a question from one of the books that you raised the beginning which I think is exactly that is you know where would you like to what would you like to be looking back on when you're 90 and And I think that's exactly what to look at. And the resolution is, it's not about tomorrow. It's about your life and just setting kind of maybe time for intention. So that leads on really nicely to part two of the podcast, which is your incredible book club. So Tony, to start, can you introduce the three books that we're going to be discussing?

Yeah, so you asked me to pick three books, which is like when I asked you about to pick one person you were inspired by to ask me for three books, just three books is kind of like from the library. But yeah, I've got three books I'm really happy to kind of talk to you about. And the first one is 100 Days of Self-Discovery. It's just a really small journal, six pounds, and every day asks you a different question. And one of the questions, as Ella just talked about, is what stories would you like to be telling on your 90th birthday gosh I would be like like to be telling how Sky is now the new CEO of Delicious the Ella and Sky's son or daughter is now working in the company as well we've now got three generations within the company and they're still hopefully just about listening to an occasional idea of mine with what we could do.

Hopefully there's been some anti-aging technology by then and I'm not too... You'll look exactly the same as you look now, right? Yeah, that would be great. delicious yellow that we've provided a place not just of jobs but careers and that we've got lots of people who tell really happy stories about the long and supportive career they had a company that showed that really cared about them and put them first i'd also love that when i'm 90 i'm talking about family and family has always been the center point of my world. And I hope that I'm able to give Sky and Sky's children one day the happiness that my family have given me growing up. And I hope that they talk about me in the same way that I'm able to talk about my mom and dad and my sister who have meant so much to me. And I hope that, you know, my dad always said to me,

he said, you know, being happily married is great, but being really happily married is heaven. And Ella and I invest a lot in our marriage and I hope that I've been able to make her as happy as she makes me as well. And if I can sit there at 90 and I'm talking about that then I'll be happy I mean that's why this I think the questions in this book are so amazing because they make you think about how do you want to feel and then what what are you going to do to

get there so straight away that just shows all your values about family and kind of relationships and being together um and I love this book as well because it's a good way to get into journaling and how good it is for us just to get into the practice of writing down every day something about how we're feeling or what's happening and just kind of checking in with ourselves really and this is just a kind of really simple easy way to do that while getting some nice feelings about what's going to happen when you're 90. But also I think it's brilliant because I think when it comes to journaling it's a bit scary isn't it you know you kind of open a journal and you think hello I feel a bit awkward yeah what's the first thing you write you know people you know lots of our guests say journaling gratitude you know kind of affirmations visualization exactly

intention is so powerful and I totally agree yeah but sometimes the blank page is a bit scary you know where to start is a bit scary that first line is terrifying and I think you know you're if you're not used to doing anything like that the kind of creative freedom of it's a bit scary you know where to start is a bit scary that first line is terrifying and I think you know you if you're not used to doing anything like that the kind of creative freedom of it's a bit terrifying and I think what's brilliant about this is that it gives you direction yeah in your intention and it still gets you into the same place but it just is a it's nice to have a kind of helping hand to get there totally so can you give us a couple of other questions from the book yeah well another question I really liked was what when do you feel most energized because straight away it switches you into that kind of frame of mind of your kind of thinking positive things right so if you if you fill this

in in the morning and it's like a rainy day like it might be today it's like you start thinking about for me it was sunshine being outside being with people I love so writing that down just gives you that lift and then you're going into the day and that with that amazing feeling but also I think we did this episode a few weeks ago on morning routines and he talked a lot about that you know I think the power of doing something like this first thing in the morning because as if you say if you wake up and you haven't had a great night's sleep and it's raining and it's dark and you've got a stressful day at work it's quite easy to just like rush out the house and the day become a bit chaotic it's going wrong from the beginning right yeah not feel great but what's quite nice about this is as you said a question like that prompt okay when do you feel most energized

when i do this when i do that when i do the next thing well can you do that today you know say it's yoga for example can you just do five minutes you just do 10 minutes you know it's kind of that thing where it actually prompts you to then do the things that make you feel better. And I think that's quite a nice morning check in. Definitely. And it's like setting an intention. Another one of the questions is who do you want to meet and why? And my list was things like Oprah, Tony Robbins. It was both cases that could self-help, like who's who.

And then but then it starts your brain thinking, so how I know someone who knows someone who knows this person. So then your brain starts going kind of along that way of how can I make it happen? So it's then again, your thought processes are kind of positive and they're kind of broadening. Yeah. So what is book two? So book two is a classic. It's Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway. Have you heard of that one?

I haven't read it. So that will be on my Christmas list. So it's Susan Jeffers and it's from the 80s. And when people join the book club, I ask them what's their favourite self-help book and this one is always the top and that's from like Generation Z through to grandmas. So I thought I'm going to do it as a book because it's the themes are about how we're always going to feel scared when we're doing new things and it's a good thing. So it's basically reframing that feeling of nerves or I know you guys talk about imposter syndrome sometimes but that feeling of I don't really know what I'm doing it's actually a good thing because it means you're pushing

yourself and you're stretching yourself so this book is it's just so brilliant at reframing that feeling and thinking that being scared is a positive thing which for me as like running my own business and maybe for you guys as well it was like it was just a brilliant reframe there's also an exercise in the book which is really good to kind of strengthen resilience and it's, you kind of draw a box and you try and fill it with nine things that your life is filled with. And for some people, they can only put one thing in that box, which is work or relationship or partying, because that's what their whole life is about. But if you can try and think of at least nine things, and when one of those things is taken away, you still have the other eight things to kind of keep you going. So it's very much about

making your life as full and as varied and as diverse as possible and filling it with all these different things and people which i think is brilliant i absolutely love that i think that is just something we've learned as you said and running your own business that like getting comfortable with being uncomfortable is so key it's so hard though it's so hard and it's also true even like we were saying you know saying a gratitude journal something like that you can feel quite awkward when you start these things starting affirmations you feel so weird saying to yourself like I'm gonna be this I'm gonna be that I remember the first time going to yoga class and I'm saying set an intention and thinking oh what yeah and they're like you know say I feel open you know I'm opening my heart and you think oh

my goodness me and it's it is it's you know it's a small example but or standing on stage in front of 700 people or you know talking about what we talk about on the podcast and being kind of vulnerable and open, it's terrifying, but it feels so good the more you do it. And the more you get comfortable with being uncomfortable, the easier it becomes. And I think now it feels quite second nature to push yourself out your comfort zone to a certain extent. And I feel really grateful to feel that way now yeah but you're right it's a practice right so talking in front of people or all of this stuff like you said the feeling of pushing yourself out your comfort zone it's kind of your new normal now because you're always trying

new things and so that's when you're probably not doing something new you feel a bit kind of what's missing totally absolutely I absolutely think that's absolutely brilliant because there's no way of going further is there and I think if that is what people's intentions are for next year, like, if you want to get to the next stage in anything in your life, if you want to take it to the next level, you've got to change something. And that's what's the things that's really resonated to me most from guests. It's like, if you want something to be different, you need to be different. Like, if you want to feel stronger, happier, more content, more calm, you know, whatever it is, do better in work, your relationships, nothing's going to change if you want to feel stronger happier more content more calm you know whatever it is do better in work your relationships nothing's going to change if you don't change

but to change is scary so that sounds like a kind of good new year yeah you can put it on the list yeah okay that'll be my thailand reading if sky allows us to read i'm not sure people say you don't read on holiday with children audible maybe that's we like audible that's a great good idea and um and book three book three is someone i think you should have on the podcast dr tara swart has written a book called the source and it's about it's kind of like the secret which maybe you know about which is law of attraction and manifesting what you want but she's a neuroscientist so she's talking about the brain science behind when you really focus on something why it will why it will come

to you and so I think a lot of people have read The Secret and kind of like the idea that what you put out comes back to you in different forms, but it's kind of a bit wishy-washy and it was kind of, and it was seen as a bit naff, but Dr. Swart, she is a brilliant neuroscientist and an executive coach. And so she's kind of saying when you use your brain properly and fully and positively things will change oh I love the sound of that I'm going to read that that's absolutely brilliant because I think you're completely right when it comes to things like and when we were doing this morning routine episode we were talking about kind of affirmations and visualizations and intentions things like that

in the morning and I I do totally believe in it because I think if you set yourself up for I want to achieve this today are you thinking about the things that make you feel good and doing them it really helps but there is something that feels a bit kind of wishy-washy about the word affirmation I think when people talk about manifesting and kind of visualization boards I think as much as it does totally resonate with me I can see other people's eyes close over and it feels too hippy-dippy and wishy-washy and actually I think it's like all these things as soon as you get the science behind it you realize it's not at all that's why people do it because it does work but knowing that there's science behind it it's not just anecdotal it's quite powerful yeah and it's brilliant because she kind of breaks down the brain into different sections and one of the exercises I did recently

it proved to me which I kind of knew that I'm logic over intuition always um but what that's how that shows up is if I'm running my own event if I'm worried about what time lunch is arriving and kind of looking after people I then can't be very creative on stage so I get nervous but if I'm doing an event with someone else when all the organization's done I can be really myself and kind of tell my story and so highlighting that to me is kind of now I can make changes to make sure that I'm always the best version you know when I'm doing something like that and also she talks, she does talk as well about self-care and about how fueling your body and your brain.

Like you said, you can't expect changes if you don't change something, right? But she says you can't expect your brain to run on its full power if you're not getting good sleep and if you're just drinking coffee because you're shattered all the time. So it's about fueling it, it's about sleep,

it's about hydration, things like that. So the book's brilliant because it goes from the basics of keeping your brain which is the source which she calls the source um looking after it and then using it to kind of create loads of magic in your life which I just love so hopefully we can all have a little bit more magic in 2020 then and so people want to get involved in the book club what's the best way to do that probably to check us out on social media first of all shelfhelp.club and we've also got a facebook group which is a closed group where we talk about the different books so I choose a different book every two months now because it

was every month and then people were getting stressed out about not doing their self-help yeah which was not the point so yeah every two months we choose a new book and we talk about it online and then we do face-to-face meetups as well so we've now got 30 meetups around the world and they always happen on the last Monday of every other month. So we've got LA, Paris, Melbourne, and then quite a few around London in the UK. And that's just local hosts kind of taking my idea. And we all talk about the same book and talk about the same questions. And the face to face meetups for me are really where the magic happens. Because I think I started it as a book club, because it's something I needed, because I was boring all my friends about self help. And I thought I started it as a book club because it's something I needed because I was boring all my friends about self-help

and I thought I need to meet some new friends. But what it really is, is a place to create spaces, to bring people together and talk about this kind of stuff. And it's just, I think it's taken off for me because people really want to talk about this kind of stuff.

So it's just gives people an opportunity to come and talk about manifesting or affirmations with people who aren't going to laugh at them too much. Yeah, I can totally relate to that 100 some of my friends really did thought i was absolutely nuts at the beginning they're all really getting on board now but yeah there were a lot of eye rolls at the beginning of delicious yellow well tony thank you so much for your time today um i'm gonna have all three books on my um christmas reading list thank you

so much for coming on we so appreciate it And thank you so much to everyone who's listened and supports Delicious Yellow each day. We cannot thank you enough. And we can't wait to be back, I think, early next year with season five. Gosh, I don't know where they're all coming from. I know. So we're going to be back in early February. I'm taking January off to be full time Mama to Sky, which I'm very excited about. But 2020 is going to be a big year for us and if you want to come and see us live and get involved in a kind of big live q a with lots of brilliant guests and we're going to be doing a big book tour around the uk and ireland um throughout may and june of next year all the details are on our website so please please do come and see us live

and otherwise we just wish you the happiest christmas hopefully you get a little bit of time off and we cannot wait to see you back here next year. Yeah, happy Christmas and happy new year. Bye. You're a podcast listener and this is a podcast ad heard only in Canada. Reach great Canadian listeners like yourself

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