These Fukken Feelings Podcast© - Resilience & Renewal with Alan Cox | Season 2.5 Ep. 124

Episode Date: September 20, 2023

Send us a Text Message.In this gripping season finale, the These Fukken Feelings Podcast is graced by the inspirational and enlightening presence of Alan Cox, the mastermind behind the revolutionary mental wellness app, EverYellow (https://everyellow.com/).Alan's life is a striking tapestry of resilience, transformation, and triumph over unimaginable adversities. From facing childhood trauma and business disappointments to overcoming suicide attempts and surviving a life-altering earthquake, ...

you don't have to be positive all the time it's perfectly okay to feel sad angry annoyed frustrated scared and anxious having feelings doesn't make you a negative person it doesn't even make you weak it makes you human and we are here to talk through it all we welcome you to these fucking feelings podcast a safe space for all who needs it grab a drink and take a seat. The session begins now. Podcast, I am Micah. Sitting here with my girl, Rebecca.

This is Crystal. My co-host usually is Rebecca. They switched out for me today. So we got Crystal here filling in as co-host for this episode and we're on with Alan Cox um Alan we believe the best way to introduce yourself is for you to introduce yourself so tell our people a little bit about yourself uh yeah I guess it's a quite a long story but the shortest version I can think of is that I basically had quite a – my start in life was quite traumatic. I had quite an abusive childhood.

That led to me basically having struggles with mental health and even some quite dark places, suicide attempts up until the age of about 40. Nearly got killed in a Canterbury earthquake. And that led to me having quite a major mental breakdown. And in a strange way, that was kind of the catalyst for me really changing um my direction and i went on a journey that still is continuing actually of of transformation i made quite a um you know what some say is quite a remarkable transformation compared to where i was um and then after various events in my life, including a close friend of mine taking his life, and knowing that many of the mental well-being apps out there don't actually work, I then decided to kind of solve that problem with a new kind of app that is really easy for everyone to use

and is highly effective. That's what I set out to do with EverYellow. So I'm the founder of EverYellow, which is basically an impact venture. So our primary mandate is to bring mental fitness to millions of people around the world. And, you know, so that that goes above profits. So, yeah, that's the that's that's the short journey that I've that's not that's my life so far. Sorry, we got a new producer sitting in for today she said she wanted to produce the episode right she's my co-host rebecca

and she's over there forgetting to push button that's all right you can forgive her this time yeah you know what it is she says she got so wrapped up in your story that um you know it's like okay not only do we go through childhood stuff but then we almost die in an earthquake yeah i did hear that jeez yeah it's pretty crazy but um so is it okay to talk about your childhood yeah absolutely yeah i'm i'm an open book. So I believe telling stories is a good way for others to kind of heal and make a change themselves. So, yeah, completely open. Okay, cool. So not cool, but cool. So I guess tell us a little bit about your childhood.

I know Crystal was saying. About how you drove once a year with your dad on a bus across like to different towns. Oh, so no, my dad was a bus driver for London Transport. transport so um there's um there's quite a famous um route or route however you say it in london called the the number 15 um and it basically goes right from it's basically a straight route that um goes right through like the heart of the city so it's a really good one for seeing like a lot of the top sites you know everything from saint paul's cathedral to you know whatever and um on on a shift he would do these that route back and forwards maybe eight times a day and when i was on i was on school holidays um i would go up and and do that with him.

And, yeah, to be honest, that was probably – it's probably like the – I didn't actually see a great deal of my dad when I was growing up because, yeah, we was based in like basically a new town that grew up after the baby boom. You know, like London was heaving after the Second World War and everything. And they created these new towns that were pretty soulless really. And I was pretty certainly unexpected as a child and at that time that put, there was a lot of stigma, especially for unmarried women to have a child out of wedlock. And, yeah, I think with that and the having to move away from

the family to somewhere quite quite remote and all that kind of thing i think probably put a lot of strain on things um my dad basically was the sole um breadwinner and he would you know um go off early in the mornings and come home late at night and yeah I didn't really get to see a lot of him and then you also have a brother yep so my brother came along probably when I was about six or seven um and that in a way that kind of made things even worse for me because um you know looking back in hindsight you know a six seven year old kid new new baby comes along you probably a bit jealous for attention and you probably play up a little bit. And, um, and that kind of resulted in me kind of, you know, kickstarting, um, like more, more of this kind of behavior from,

especially my mom, um, that kind of really led to the troubles I had later on. And so, and when you say abuse, it was like spanking type of, your mom hitting you type of thing? It was mostly verbal abuse. So my mom, whenever I was playing or making even the slightest bit of noise, mom would tell me, come up very close, hold me by my shoulders and say you know think quite nasty things you know like you're you're a hateful child and things like that and

you know like the the what really the worst possible things to build self-esteem you know things like you'll you know you i don't i don't know you know you you, I don't, I don't know, you know, you, you, you'll never make anything of yourself, all that kind of stuff. Yeah. And it's, and it's crazy because that coming from a parent, I know it had to hit you like harder, you know, than like regular bullying, you know? Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's kind of crazy. But, um, so how did you kind of go through your life? Like how did you get out of that like how did you get out of that how did you get out of that mind frame how did you erase her voice in a way to be able to move on

oh um i think i think the truth is until i know it sounds really kind of it sounds terrible but um two or three years ago she she basically um got terminal cancer and when she passed away that was really like i i i didn't i didn't as much as i love her i didn't cry i think i think that was it was kind of end of a chapter for me you know and that was um um so really yeah i think i think in terms of like how did i kind of turn my life around that you know that that really came there was there was really a series of events that really basically happened when I was basically in a really, really dark place after I'd had this kind of near-death experience in the earthquakes. And I basically had this major mental breakdown and if if anybody like i just for the purpose of your listeners i i had no understanding of what a mental breakdown was before um i i thought it just meant someone's having a bit of a depressed period you know i'm having a breakdown kind of happens to varying degrees is that when you've had a very long period of sustained mental health problems, and then, you know, so your resilience is already very, very, very low.

Right. So your resilience is already very, very, very low. Right. When something serious hits you, your brain basically goes into survival mode, and it basically shuts down a number of parts of your functionality, if you like, that isn't really needed for survival so in my case i could only function awake for about two hours at a time at the most i i couldn't walk for more than about 20 yards my my legs were very weak um i my speech was you would have thought I'd had a stroke or something. And yes, it's really scary. And people have mental breakdowns to varying degrees.

Mine was quite serious. Yeah, it sounds like it. Yeah. I was told by my caregivers that someone in my condition can probably expect to be at least a year before I would even be able to think about going back to work part time. And that actually made things worse, actually, you know. And, you know, and then, yeah, there was kind you know, there was kind of suicide attempts. I didn't want, I didn't want to, I didn't want to deal with that. Um, and yeah, I was, I was very, very fortunate that, um, I mean, I can tell the story if you like, but, but basically a, a program came on TV that kind of changed my life. And that was really the turning point for me.

Yeah. And now we will love to hear the story. Yeah. So at the time, I would basically describe myself as being 100% hopeless, like in the sense of I had no hope about my future I also had an understanding of sorry I not a real understanding but what what my what I had in my head was that this is just the way I am and this is the way life is going to be for me forever you know because i've already been like this for 30 odd years you know and kept on hitting these um major down points um and i i kind of um tell the analogy of it feeling like i was in a black tunnel that was absolutely pitch black i had no idea what way was out or even if there was a way out. Right. And then this program came on TV and it's actually a BBC program called The Truth

About Depression. And it's actually still available for free on YouTube. And whether you're depressed or not depressed, it's actually a really good program to watch. And, you know, of course it's a bit dated now. This goes back, you know, 12 years or so. It's got people from like Coronation Street on there and things like that. And basically, there was kind of two, I think, two main things that the program showed me. First of all, it showed me for the first time that it had all of these graphics of inside your brain and and what have you and it basically showed me that just like i don't know having diabetes or um like a skin

condition or whatever there is actually physical things going on in your brain, right? You know, so like as an example, it showed you that somebody with long-term depression like I had, my hippocampus would be shrunk by at least like say 20% to 30% and that would have these kinds of consequences. And, you know, so I was kind of stunned in a way, thinking, oh, my God, like, this is actually real. There's stuff going on in my head that's actually real. And the other thing that it showed me is all of that stuff is completely reversible, right?

By doing the right things, you can actively work to reverse all of those things that are making you the way you are. So that really was, you know, if you, if like, I didn't suddenly become well, of course. Right. Um, but it was basically like, you know, if I was in that tunnel, I, the, the, the light came on, you know, at one end of the tunnel, I could see that, you know, there, there was hope. Right. Um, and i could see that there was a way out and that really was the start of my journey so now you said suicide attempts there was more than one yeah i've kind of lost count i've um it's probably probably like five or six something like that

and um i guess how did you get out of that or how did you get out of that mentality was it just did that stop when your shift of mind changed yeah absolutely yeah absolutely you know i i basically so basically um what happened from then on i went on like a voyage of discovery really i just like um i just wanted to you know i'd been i'd been shown this kind of new kind of subject if you like but i had nothing i knew nothing about and i thought oh if i learn about this i um i can fix myself and so i I just, at the time, I couldn't actually read a paragraph without not remembering the sentences above, you know. So I turned to YouTube and I, you know, this program had mentioned things

like neuroplasticity, you know, the role of your amygdala, the hippocampus, all of these different things. And I just started lapping it all up. And then I started getting my energy back. That two hours of awake time started turning into three hours to four hours to five hours. And, yeah, within three months, I was actually back to work full time. And my care workers actually was worried for me because they thought I was faking it, you know, because a lot of people that are in a mental kind of state like I had been, they do put things on to try and get people to go away.

But, you know, I actually found it quite funny, to be honest. But, you know, I got myself back to work and to wellbeing. But there's being well, but there's there's bit there's being well but there's also being there's also i think the the next big discovery for me was that there's a whole new world there's a there's a whole new place and a way of being right when you elevate yourself above being just well. And what not a lot of people realise is if you think of mental wellbeing as being on a scale of, say, 1 to 10, around the three mark is if you was to go and see a doctor and say, look, I think i'm depressed or whatever um they would if they're a good doctor they would do an assessment of you using a like

a proper you know world recognized instrument right and if you're say a three or below you would technically be mentally unwell, right, or mentally ill. You know, you wouldn't have, you know, I'm not talking about specific mental illnesses like, I know, schizophrenia, things like that. I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about general well-being. So if you're, say, a three or below, they would then prescribe you medication,

suggest you go and see psychiatrists and that kind of thing if you're say three and a half four um they you you are not unwell right but you're you're far from being like thriving right and and i guess that was the big discovery for me when i started doing the research i actually found that the the vast majority of the kind of human population is actually somewhere around like five to six around that area um and so you know my analogy here is that um you know people are kind of going around on this mouse wheel where like every day is like groundhog day and it's like this this this is just the way life is you know don't really you know i'm i've got a decent paycheck i'm i've got a good family i go to work i I come home, you know,

but there always feels like there's something missing, but you don't know quite what. And I almost see them as kind of like separate kind of things is that like one one thing is your mental well-being which can be you know like five six or seven or eight or nine but you've also got this other thing which is when you when you learn about how your mind works and you learn specific skills you know so for example learning to reframe like thoughts feelings or behaviors so that you have a healthier reaction to them um your your life actually becomes much much much, it becomes much easier for a start. Right. And, and, and it just becomes a lot, a lot, you know, you get, um, a lot more moments of, of joy in your life. And, um, and yeah, it was really kind of that understanding that really led me to do,

to do what I'm doing today. And that's pretty cool. I want to ask about this earthquake though. Yeah. Because that had to be horrified right i couldn't even imagine it yeah it was so so um this was in february and in i think it was you know september the previous year um you know at that time i had been so i'm originally from the uk i was born in london and we had been, so I'm originally from the UK. I was born in London. And we had been living in New Zealand at that time for about 11 years or so. And we, you know, there's all like museums here where they show you like past volcanoes. And, you know, so we kind of knew we lived in a place that um is susceptible but um where where i live um it's it's basically of it's called the canterbury plains and if you if you

basically go up onto the like a higher elevation or you're in an aeroplane and look down it's you know i live in this it looks like a massive flat sheet right and at that time there was no knowledge that christchurch or canterbury was one of the susceptible regions you know it we always had in our head that if there's a big earthquake it's going going to be in Wellington or on the North Island or something like that. And during that time, we also, you know, even if I think maybe once or twice there was a slight tremor that just shook the glass slightly and our friends would have phoned up and said, did you feel that?

All right. But this September, right in the middle of the night, 2 o'clock, there was this big earthquake, and it didn't actually cause a huge amount of damage, and it was like a 7.2 or something on the Richter scale, but it was actually quite a way out of the city. Okay. But, you know, it was still a very traumatic event I remember um my young boy you know screaming and I'm like I'm

crouching over him like saying that I'm you're fine I'll protect you kind of thing and um and then then what happened after that is you you just get this ongoing period of aftershocks right and and they get less and less frequent and they get less and less like in magnitude right and then they became just part of an everyday life and then and then in february um i, I went out to lunch and there was a beautiful part of the city that was close to where I worked. And it was all about three-story, old brick-built industrial area that had been converted into like hospitality and and various things um and i think they're called parapets do you know where the the roof comes down to the edge of the wall but the wall carries on and has all like them fancy shapes kind of thing um so yeah like you've got three stories plus these, like, you know, probably a metre or so of these parapets topped off with, like,

ornate stone and that kind of stuff. So it's a beautiful place. And I was walking through there and I just basically got into the doorway of this sushi bar that I used to go to, and I just said, I literally hadn't even said, I think I just said hello when it was just the most crazy ground shaking. And initially I smiled, you know, because I just smiled at the lady across from me and kind of thought,

oh, this is just another one. And then it just got bigger and bigger and bigger. And then we heard all the rumbling and um the the best kind of description that i can give of it so that you can visualize it is you know when the um world trade center came down and there was those images of the streets just going completely white with, you know, like dust. Right. That's exactly what it was. Like there was the wall opposite the door that I walked in, couldn't see that at all.

Oh, wow. And couldn't see anything and when i i basically you know there was bricks all over the floor i walked out of the doorway and it was it was just basically like if you imagine i couldn't actually see anything um but i knew that the ground was, you know, it was just basically, I had no idea how deep it was, but basically it was just bricks and rubble, right? And I managed to make it out. But the next day when the dust had settled and, you know, quite a few people were killed in that earthquake the dust had settled and, you know, you, you know,

quite a few people were killed in that earthquake and there was cauldrons all around, but you know, there was TV footage and photos and stuff. There was there was a picture of the, that, that walkway where I'd gone and the bricks on the floor would probably have been like two foot deep something like that and there was and just opposite the doorway where I'd walked in there was a car um and it was basically flattened to about half of its height oh wow and that and that's when it really kind of like that's when I really it really brought it home to me, how close I'd come.

And yeah, thank God I wasn't walking a little bit slower that day. What was going through your head when it started, when you knew it was serious, not a little tremble? I think literally a million things are going through your head. Like you're thinking about, you know, I had three children and they're all in different schools, actually. So I had an office where my team were on the – I was running a company at the time, and I knew that there was 12 people and my wife up there, and that was also an old building. And, yeah, it's hard to describe what goes through your mind in something like that. You're kind of just in this.

I think probably adrenaline has taken over and it's just kind of getting you out, you know? Was your home okay? It was still standing, but it needed a bit. So we were lucky in that we could continue to live in it. We had – our house is quite an old house with – we had lath and plaster ceilings. You know what that is? Yes. I know they call it different things in different countries.

But, yeah, like all of the plaster had come off the ceilings and a lot of the walls. And our house is like on a ring foundation, and that had basically severed in multiple places. And our house was kind of slightly wobbly, you know. But it was safe to live in. But there were many people that it weren't, you know, and, and the, like another kind of, um, really scary thing was when, when I got back to my wife and it was really horrible, like, because when I got back to my wife and I made sure my guys were safe, there were people walking around covered in dust, on their head and they're

they're walking that they're they're going to walk to places where you can think that is going to fall down any second so you're having to you know i think they were just in this days and you're having to like stop people from going to very dangerous places. And then when we eventually manage to get our car and then we're into the mode of let's go and get our children. We've got no idea whether they're even alive, right? I can't even imagine. Yeah. even imagine yeah and and as and as we're going towards where our house is if you imagine like you're driving down these roads and there's like massive sections of road that have um have

basically sunken and and cars in them and i think they call it liquid it's called liquefaction where you've got all this water comes up and basically takes away all of the ground and yeah so like the further we got from town there was water everywhere there's this muddy water gushing up everywhere

cars in sinkholes and like it actually started to get more Armageddon like the further we got out there. Like, the end of the world. It had to bring you guys closer together as a family, did it? Oh, yeah. Yeah.

I mean, we've always been pretty close. I think because of the experience I'd had as a child, you know, I made, I don't know, I don't know why, because I hear so many times that, you know, abuse repeats itself, you know, and like, that didn't happen to me. I was, from a very early age, it was like, I'm not going to be like my mum and dad, you know, I'm, like my, even to this day, my dad can't say i love you right um you know if i hang up the phone and like say all right see you dad i love you you know he's got like the most he can imagine the most he can manage is yup right that's all he can do you know and um and i i always i always basically grew up thinking right right, when I have kids, I'm going to be showing telling them I love them all the time.

I'll I'll I'll hug them all the time. And, yeah, so we've we've always had that quite close relationship anyway. So now how long have you actually been on your mental health journey? You mean in terms of recovery? Recovery, yeah. Probably about, it was probably about six months after the earthquake. So what happened is when I had the earthquake, if you imagine a lot of people at that time

who had gone through something similar to me, like if you were, say, an employee, you would have probably taken two, three, four weeks off work to kind of recover from that and get counselling. I basically had to go into leadership mode. I had to go into making sure my people were safe. This was a time when there was no, we didn't really know about cloud services and like things being stored on the internet. So we had a back office that had all of our servers with all of our customer data and everything,

and we wasn't allowed in there. So, you know, I'm thinking about my team, their livelihoods. You know, they've got their mortgage to pay. I've got to find a new place to work from. When we did, it was like it took us about three or four weeks before we could get internet connected. And, you know, imagine our business was a web business, right? And imagine trying to run a web business just through telephones and things like that. It was crazy.

Well, you're talking to someone I can't even imagine going camping. So, like, there's no running water. I'm not going, you know, so. Yeah. water i'm not going you know so yeah and so so i guess at a time when i really should have been taking care of myself i was kind of doing the opposite putting even more load on myself um and because of the like the economic knock-on effects of the earthquake you know um a lot of customers basically put projects on hold you know a lot of our work was with the government so they they didn't cancel our projects but they

say look we can't do this right now because our attention is on the earthquake right um so that ultimately led to me losing the business um and then then then i started getting calls from customers saying oh what you're going to do about this then you know and you and and then that was really when the uh you know the that was really the straw that broke the camel's back you know like i um i just couldn't take anymore and um i just i just you know, I literally collapsed. Yeah. Right. Did you go seek a therapist before you do that, like the Everett Yellow app?

Sorry, what do you mean? Did you seek therapy? Well, after I had the, yeah, I mean, they basically, they put like quite a strong safety net around you. You know, there's people coming to see you every day, like in the beginning, probably two or three times a day. Yeah, so there was quite a lot of care. I didn't find it particularly useful, but yeah. Right, that's the part that sucks. So I didn't find it particularly useful, but yeah. Right. That's the part that sucks. So I think that's where we go into Ever Yellow.

So where did this concept and idea come from? I want to know why the name. What one do you want me to answer first? Either one. Well, I'll answer where it came from first because that was asked first, right? So that's my diplomatic way out. I guess I already had the knowledge that most mental well-being apps are not really very effective. I know that when I was in my recovery, I was given a list of apps to try,

and I actually tried a bunch of them and found them no help at all. And I actually thought that was because of me, not because of the app. Right. And I then found that there's plenty of reasons. Sorry. You're in fact. that there's plenty of reasons. Sorry. I actually found that there was a lot of research that showed that a lot of apps, there's little research data that show that they work.

And then there was a lot of increase in visibility around mental health. You know, one of my favourite artists, you know, Avicii, took his life. You know, Anthony Bourdain that I used to watch a lot took his life. And I'd already been kind of thinking about doing something like this. And as a quick aside, my kind of career background was in um like design thinking and innovation so i'd already been kind of ruminating i guess around i wonder why these apps don't work i wonder how we can make something that's that really does work you know and um and then i guess you know a close a close friend of mine uh um unfortunately

took his life and and at the time my consulting business it was it was going okay but like it was actually bringing me down mentally um so that was when really I decided to do something. And the name Ever Yellow, so we, yeah, we actually, we started off with a different name, but later on into our journey, we felt that it wasn't right and we basically went to our community with, like, you know, what do you think? And basically the yellow is the color of happiness right um and um and ever is basically around like ever you know always being in a always at least working towards happiness so like um you know, always being in a, always at least working towards happiness.

So like, you know, being in a constant state of happiness is not the goal and it's not realistic, but ever in the pursuit of happiness is kind of where Ever Yellow comes from. Pretty cool. Yeah, it's just rare so um and so you know you said there's uh how long has that been out so uh the app has been kind of technically in the app store for about a year and a half. We haven't actually been promoting it up until recently. And the reason for that is it was, we spent, we spent at least a year going through rounds of research trials where,

you know, we, we'd recruit a whole bunch of people that didn't know anything about EverYellow and they were motivated to work on their mental wellbeing. And so we'd get feedback, see how effective it was, see what gaps there were. And so we spent a year basically refining the app until around November, December last year, we basically were quite stunned with the kind of results that we were getting back. And that really is what kind of gave us the confidence

to start moving forward. I think the truth is we would have kind of been promoting it more by now, but there's, there's, you know, I'm, there's, there's this saying in the UK, I'm not sure if you have it in the States, it's running on the fumes of an oily rag. And basically it means that like I've been just, you know, beg stealing and borrowing to, to kind of get the app to where it is today

and you kind of you kind of get yourself in a catch-22 where um you need money to market something so that otherwise you're just an oasis in a desert no nobody knows about this thing right but in order to get say investment to market it they want to see traction first right so you're in this catch-22 loop so i think the last yeah few months we've really been trying to work out you know how can we work smarter and um so we're just we're just in a position now where thing you know all the ducks have come into line we're just about to start our you know social media push and that kind of thing um but yeah to answer your question it's been in the app store for about a year and a half now and um so i actually i can't lie i haven't looked at at it yet because I'm probably a lot like you. I work a lot.

So but Crystal here, like I do, I listen to it on my way to work. Yeah. Yeah. I used to listen to motivation speeches and stuff like that. But I started to listen to every yellow. Yeah. And now knowing what it means i think is awesome too like yeah um i know this is off that topic what that um i wanted to hear about how you met your wife how i met my wife so um we when i was younger, all I wanted to do was creative stuff at school, right? And when it comes to taking your exam, sorry, taking your options, right, I chose woodwork, art, history, social science,

and I kind of got the proverbial slap around the head from my parents saying, oh, that's all a waste of time. You'll never make anything of yourself doing that. And I got pushed into kind of more science and technology. Anyway, I ended up getting onto this apprenticeship, electronics apprenticeship with GEC Marconi avionics. Um, and my wife, you know, my wife to be was basically, um, one of the, one of my co-apprentices. And, um, uh, so that apprenticeship was about three years, three and a bit years long.

And for the first couple of years, I won't quite say we hated each other, but, like, you know, it wasn't great. It was love at first sight. Yeah. But there was this one Christmas that I'll never, ever forget it would I don't think I had ever had any feelings for her right but one Christmas like she'd had a few drinks this other guy had had a few drinks and I saw them kissing right and I just had this overwhelming feeling of like, no, you're mine, right? It was just really, really weird.

And after that, I kind of made a move to invite her to like a local disco and what have you. And we was having a slow dance and I nibbled her ear and that was the end of it. I heard the story. I just wanted to hear it again. Oh, you've already heard? Where did you hear that?

On another interview that you did. Oh, okay. I told you you got a fan. So Crystal is your fan, okay um it was with the gentleman that was talking about the rice challenge all right yeah you remember that i'm actually gonna try it and see if you're trying to get all of us to try it but yeah i want to do it like in our office and see if it works yeah yeah could you try it the what challenge the rice challenge you cook the rice put it into different containers um no i didn't and the re the reason is um so one one of my attributes

that's kind of come from me being forced into this engineering side of things is that I always I don't ever take anything on face value I I always um look into something deeply before I accept it and um I've I've I basically did the research on that. And, you know, you do your own research, but, you know, it's from what I've read from very kind of reputable sources, the studies that are on that are kind of quite flaky at best is kind of how i put it so um yeah i i you know like even if like someone suggests doing a certain diet or something like that i'll i'll always you know look into it deeply before i kind of um either do it or promote it to anyone else

right okay and honestly it's like it's like you said do your own research and until it's based on on your belief you know and i think that probably is the point of the challenge you know to get you to be more positive think more positive say more positive things so um so yeah we definitely see that now the concepts where are like all the concepts that you have forever yellow are they all original your own or do you have a team that works with you? Do you mean in terms of the content? Content, yes. Yeah, so it's all our own.

It's been incredibly hard to get, and we're getting a whole bunch more content done right now. From a scientific point of view, all of the content is based on the science of positive psychology. And positive psychology is a relatively new, when I say new, it's kind of like over the last, it's evolved over the last 20 to 30 years and is you know widely accepted you know widely proven by research and and what what it basically what it basically is um and firstly i'll just get out the way it's not it's not about the psychology of being positive what what positive psychology is is it basically says that our mental well-being is actually, is basically due to a number of things, like a number of very independent things that kind of all stack up, right?

So, for example, in Ever ever yellow we have nine different pillars um so one of them is um positive relationships another one is is your ability to be ability to be present and not worry about the future or ruminate on the past another one is growth and achievement so so you basically have nine different pillars right and if if you think of if you think of each of these pillars as being your as being like a battery pack you've got like nine batteries if everyone has a battery pack at different you know if you if you kind of think of it like a graphic equalizer, each of the batteries will be either quite full or depleted or whatever, right?

Right. And so what positive psychology is about is that you can make the biggest gains in your sense of well-being by focusing on the areas where you are weakest, right? So that's not to say you ignore all of the other areas, but like, for example, if you are already really strong in positive relationships, you probably don't need to do anything differently to what you're doing right now but um if you you know if if i was to ask the question for example thinking back over the last two weeks to what extent have you engaged in positive relationships and the scale is from never to very often, right, that's a very quick way of

gauging like where you are on that, right? And if you kind of score one, two, or three, you can at least then think, okay, well, what can I do about that? You know, can I join like a reading book club or can I join a gardening group or whatever your thing is, right? And each of those pillars in positive psychology are deeply rooted in kind of science and even like evolutionary science you know like so for example um you know you you know we we've we evolved to be in social groups right and and we we evolved to take care of other people and and and when we're, having other people looking out for us and making sure we're not going to get jumped on by a lion or something, right?

And it's only in the last pinprick of history that that doesn't happen anymore. And that actually really drains us. So that's kind of how we kind of model our content um and yeah we we recruit narrators that are and content writers sorry we we recruit content writers that can write the content that has that good scientific backing to it. And we then hire narrators that can basically translate that content and speak it in a very natural, authentic way. So we do all that ourselves. So now is there a stage in someone's healing journey that you think that your app would be best suited for them?

Well, actually, I would say that the bell curve, right, where, you know, around the five to six mark is where 80-odd percent of the population is, you know, we want to stop people from going down and we want to get them up so that they, you know, they have better relationships, so that they have more energy, they feel more optimistic about life and all of those kinds of things, right? But if you're, say, a three to, you know, anywhere under, say, a five or six, we want to get you back up to that place as quickly as we can. I want to make it clear that anyone that's, say, below a three,

you shouldn't rely on an app like Eviello. You should definitely go and seek professional help. Right. Eviello, we're not, you know, for legal reasons, we're not going to make any claims about this is good for depression. What I will say is that we've had many people write letters to us that have had, like, say, severe PTSD, people that were in say a self-harm situation and they've said that as a result of using EverYellow, they're now in a much better place, which is great. So like there's no harm in trying it to support wherever you're at,

but I would basically like Ever ever yellow to be seen as you know if don't don't just don't just accept the status quo of life you know you only get one life and like i have this story about my my mum like when she was like in the hospice and very close to passing away. And I kind of said to her, asked her some questions about her life and what are you most proud of and what have you. And she couldn't answer me and tears come down her face. Although she didn't actually say it, I think what she was thinking is, look, here I am, I'm just about to die. And I haven't, right. I haven't, I haven't been the person I really wanted to be. Um, and, and I think that's

my main message for everyone. You know, don't, don't just accept, don't just, you know, if, if you, even in the slightest way, if you feel like you're on this kind of treadmill or mouse wheel of life, you know, just take a step off and see what's on the horizon. Because, you know, there could be, well, there probably is like a much easier and much more fulfilling life for you, you know, whatever shape that might be. You know, it might be, you know, you might have an attitude towards, say, a family member that you think, actually, let's let that go, you know. And whatever, there's a million different examples, you know.

It could be that you feel, you know, I had one person that wrote to me. She was in a place in, where was it? It was an Eastern B was an eastern block country right and she basically had to go to work to support her family and when i say family i mean like her extended family that lived in this small house and she was in what she called a highly toxic work environment. And she said she felt totally stuck. Like there's no way she could even entertain, you know,

giving up her job because she had a family to support. But she said that after, I can't remember, a few weeks or whatever of listening to Eviello, she basically had the strength and the belief to think, actually, no, if I have the right attitude, I can let leave tomorrow and it may not come immediately, but I believe that something better will come for me. And it did. And so, yeah, that's the kind of thing I'm saying is that, you know, there's a million different examples for a million different people, but don't just accept where you are, you know.

You know, there was another, someone asked me once about, like, well, imagine you're, like, in quite a good job and you, like, let's say that your family forced you into becoming a lawyer or a doctor or something like that. And you never really wanted to become a lawyer or a doctor or something like that and you never really wanted to become a lawyer or a doctor and um but because of your salary you've now got a big house and a big mortgage and you've got family to feed you know you can't just go and chuck in your job right and and like sorry and this and what all you really wanted to do was be in a band, right? Right, right.

And but, you know, I guess my response to that is, well, first of all, the fact that you have done well for yourself is something that you really need to congratulate yourself on first. You know, wherever you are, you know, congratulate yourself on first you know whatever whatever you wherever you are you know congratulate yourself for you know don't think of it as i'm in the wrong place think haven't i done well you know but then you know it's not an either or thing right you you can you can then say well what is to stop me from learning an instrument and joining a band and i can gig in the evenings or at the weekends you know and and that is just another example of a of a shift you can make just by you know lift lift you know i think of like that those race horses with the blinders on right

take take the blinders off see see what they're see what there is for you and um and go for it right it sounds like what you're gonna find is ever yellow so yeah well alan we definitely thank you so much for being on um we will list all of your contact details and it's episode and it'll be posted on our website and all of that good stuff um any last words for our viewers? And I feel like you said a lot of good stuff already, but yeah, we'll ask it for a little bit more. A lot of people who watch our podcast are,

I'm finding that are they're new to the mental health journey. So, you know, what is your advice to someone who's new in this journey? Well, I know it probably sounds cliche, but wherever you are in your kind of depths of darkness or whatever you want to call it is, you know, two things. There is always a way out, right? And I should also acknowledge that I completely understand

how you feel, right? You know, like you feel numb to the world. You know, you don't feel like there's anything, you you know any way out but but there is a way out but not only that is that when you do find your way out you are actually going to become more valuable to the world and to people around you than if you'd never been through this in the first place right so um yeah that that's probably my my final message really dope so yeah thank you again so much for being on um and uh once again we're gonna list all your contact information i'm gonna check out the app myself and promise myself i'm gonna do it and i'm gonna write a blog about it

so awesome yeah so we're gonna we're gonna do that and I'm going to write a blog about it. Awesome. Yeah, so we're going to do that. And then, yeah, we thank you and we will be in contact. That's excellent. Thank you very much indeed. Bye. Bye-bye.