Good evening. Hello everyone, welcome. Good evening, good evening.

Happy Tuesday evening to you all. OK, so I'm just, watching while a few people come on the session. Hello, welcome in.

So, don't be alarmed tonight. I, I do have a bit of a cough, but I'm absolutely fine. It's if you remember right at the beginning, back in January when we started.

I'd finally succumbed to the first cold of the season, way before all this palaver started. And I've just kept that cough all the way through. So, yeah, it's kind of if I, if I go out I have to sneakily cough where no one's looking because it's not a new cough and I don't have a temperature.

So, do excuse me if I cough a little bit during tonight. Right, let's see, more people are coming on. Welcome, welcome.

Nice to see you. I know we've got a few people on call tonight. So I will just crack on in a second and get going.

So, obviously I can't really launch into the session without just a couple of words about what's going on at the moment. I mean, so much has changed since even last Thursday, when we had the Q&A. And I know from comments from a couple of you, that, particularly for those who do struggle a little bit with anxiety, that some of what's going on is, is obviously quite anxiety provoking.

So, what I thought I would do about that is rather than tackle that on tonight, because we've got quite a lot to work through. I'm gonna put together some tools and techniques. I'll probably do it as a live in my main Facebook group, and then I'll share it over to our, VCM course group as well.

Just some tools, techniques, what I've been using, to manage my mindset and keep my head where it needs to be, to feel calm and safe, and how to combat that fear and anxiety, and just, yeah, keep your head where it needs to be. So, and the other thing is that actually these two modules that we're doing in the course are coming along just at the right time because we, you know, we're going to be talking about resilience, we're talking about. Self-worth.

We're talking about tackling the beliefs. Next time we're gonna be talking about anxiety as well and all of those sorts of things. So, although we are, I've designed them in relation to career changing and, and navigating life transitions and things, they're exactly the same tools and techniques that you would be using to navigate through what's going on at the moment.

So, I think that the, the module's coming along just at the right time. So good, we've got 10 of you in here now, so I'm gonna get going. Now we're gonna start tonight's session actually with some breath work and a visualisation again, just for 2 or 3 minutes, because it's really good.

I know we didn't do it last time because there was so much content to cover. But particularly with what's been going on in the last few days, the, you know, just even 2 or 3 minutes of a small breathing exercise or a visualisation, you know, if you don't particularly like tonight's one, for example, you could pick one of the other two, or there are plenty that you can find out there. They're so good for just resetting your emotional state.

For helping calm your neurological system and just really, yeah, just, just aiding that kind of releasing and and letting go process and getting you more into the frame of mind that you want to be in. So we're gonna do a short one just now. So as always, if you're driving, hop me forward, but if you're only you're listening on the replay, then hop me forward a couple of minutes, and obviously don't close your eyes if you're driving.

One last cough. OK, so just starting to settle yourself now, wherever you happen to be sitting, just settle into your, to your chair. Allow your body to come to rest.

And tonight actually, I just want you to place your right hand over your heart. And your left hand just gently onto your belly and just hold them there. And if it feels appropriate to do so, then you can close your eyes, just gently let your eyes close.

And just take a nice deep breath in. Feel your diaphragm and your heart expand. And then as you exhale, let your diaphragm contract and relax.

And inhale again, just breathing into the part of the body where you can feel any anxiety, any tension. Just sending your breath into that part of your body. And don't judge it.

Don't question that feeling. Just sit with it, just be present and allow it to be there. And then every time you have an out breath, I want you to just release, let go, start to breathe out any tension, breathe out any anxiety, and just let go of the stresses and strains of the day.

And anything that you're holding onto as we come into this session. So continue this breath cycle and allow that anxiety to slowly start to dissipate as you breathe. And in your mind's eye, I want you to envisage yourself standing or sitting.

Underneath a beautiful waterfall of light. So each golden drop of light cleanses you mentally, physically and emotionally. So just allow yourself a gentle smile as this waterfall of light pours over you from the top of your crown.

Down your face. Your neck Your chest and your upper back. Moving down to your stomach.

And lower back To your hips and pelvis. Down your legs, down to your feet and your toes. Inhale and breathe in that beautiful light.

And on the exhale see it flowing down through your body. And with each breath, and with each exhale, you allow that cleansing light to pour through your body and just clear whatever you're holding onto within your body's energy. This is the greatest contribution that you can bring to your own wellbeing at the moment, as well as to those around you.

So if you are feeling a little bit powerless at the moment or worried. Then your capacity to tune into exercises like this and relieve yourself of those feelings of anxiety, stress, and fear can really help both you and everyone around you as well. So continue this cycle of breath, just visioning this cleansing light pouring through you.

And sent it into any sense of relief that may be coming, even if it's just a tiny bit. Now see that light begin to expand outward from your heart. So it's becoming a golden shield of light, protecting your whole body.

So with each inhale and exhale. The golden light shield becomes bigger and stronger. This is a shield of protection and safety that also supports everyone who comes into contact with you.

Breathe in, feel that shield of protection around you. Exhale and release. And breathe in.

And release. And breathe in. And release.

Keep your hands on your heart and your belly and just continue that cycle of breath and just breathe into that new sensation that you're feeling. And even if there is still some lingering discomfort, then just trust in that protective shield. So it's not just a visualisation.

When you, we know that when you change your emotional state, you change the electromagnetic frequency that you're giving off and other people feel that too, and it helps your immune system and all sorts of things, so. You can commit to taking this new energy with you now wherever you go, and that any time you feel you've fallen into a bit of a fear, fearful space, then you can return to this practise. So you can just gently allow your eyes to open again.

And we're gonna close this practise by just shaking out your hands. Just give them a shake. Just feel and allow that new energy in and around you, so give them a shake out, maybe have a little stretch.

OK, so That's just another, another visualisation you can do. They're super simple. We've done 3 different ones now.

You can just pick one that you like or or as I say, find, there are loads of this type of thing out there if you have a bit of a hunt. If that's helpful for you. And just that I quite like to do a visualisation like that in the morning and just feel that kind of right and protected and pull that thing around me and, and just, I feel OK.

OK, so let us launch in, without further ado to module 4. So, we're now at the resilience roadmap. So we've gone through those 1st 3 modules of the sort of research phase, if you like, the data gathering phase.

And you can keep those tools and keep using them and keep using them moving forward in the coming months. And now it's time to turn our thoughts and attention more inward towards our mindset to a lot of the things we've been sort of alluding to in those 1st 3 modules, we just have a week off. So, the exercises for this session were to watch that passion and purpose webinar.

So I hopefully some of you have managed to do that. And that was just so we could get some shared common language around, some of the terminology in that. So if I talk about things like shame and vulnerability, then we're on the same page and you know what I'm referencing.

To. And if those concepts did resonate with you, then I would strongly encourage you to explore the other resources that I talked about in that webinar, because the more you learn about this stuff, the, the more it kind of beds into your head. And then the second part of the exercise was taking that self-compassion test.

You know, we've talked a lot about the importance of self-worth and self belief and how vital a component that is for our resilience, and. You know, developing our self-worth and self belief is really multifactorial. There are lots of different elements and, and parts of that resilience.

So, the reason I'm focusing primarily on self-compassion this evening is that it's just one of the really big guns in the in the toolbox when it comes to resilience. So yes, there are a lot of things that impact our self-worth. But working on looking at and developing your ability within self compassion is a really big key element, specifically for a lot of the stuff that particularly affects us as vets.

And the, and the thing about self compassion is it's not. Just as an emotion that either you have or you don't have. It it is a specific cognitive process that has different elements to it.

And that's why you've got those different categories on your results for those of you that have taken the test. And the good news is that you can practise, and develop each one of those elements individually and, you know, improve your capacity for using those tools. So, I'm gonna hop into my slides now, and hopefully this will all be seamless, PowerPoint.

Sure, let's bring that up here. Shaggy. It's gone dark, but I'm still here, hopefully.

Alright, let me get my cursor down there. OK, you Nia. PowerPoint slides.

OK. So, Hopefully, that has worked. I shall bring this up here.

I'll get my chat box over. Hi Gemma, nice to see you. OK, right then.

Brilliant. Let us go bang on time as well, good. OK, so.

What I'm gonna do tonight is gonna be slightly less pauses for interaction kind of as we go through the webinar because again with the, with the mindset concepts, there's just more. That there's sort of a flow that I need to get into with this to get the concepts across. So as I'm talking, what I would ask you to do is, if a question crops up, if something pings up in your mind, just type it into the chat box, and then at the end, I will answer any questions that have come there, or I can ask at the end, you know, has anyone got any questions?

So I probably won't stop and pause kind of in the middle, but do you just type them in as they occur to you, because you might not remember them at the end. OK, so the first thing is looking at the self compassion test scores. So here are everyone's scores, I'll just run through these very quickly.

Hopefully you can see there's all I might need to look at my slightly bigger slide. This is me over here, so my scores are, as you would hope and expect for the person who is teaching you these concepts, they are quite a bit higher because I've been working on this for a long time and, and, and, and I've been trained in it and I've been working in it. I, that's not always been the case for me, and I am gonna touch on that, in a bit.

So, when I've been doing averages, I've actually kept my scores out of it so that, so that it's more reflective of, of, who we've got in the group. Obviously I've taken everyone's names off, so these letters are all of you guys, here. So with the overall score, if you remember from reading the, the bit at the end of the test, scores between 1 to 2.5, is, it means you are quite low in self compassion.

And we can see that apart from myself and two other individuals, and interestingly this is one of our diversified vets, which I thought was quite interesting. That's where most people are sitting. So having a relatively low score in self compassion.

And I would say that that is entirely and completely normal, if it's not something that you've specifically focused on or really putting in the work to, to, to shift and change. At this stage. I do think as vets, with some of the things I've touched on in the Passion and Purpose webinar, I think we have a, a lot of shame triggers and an excessive amount of vulnerability within the veterinary profession because of what we do for a living.

That, and I think that pushes our levels of self compassion actually down. So I don't know what the general population scores are, but we may as vets be slightly lower. But certainly that didn't surprise me that everyone's coming out quickly like.

Scores of 2.5 to 3.5, means, moderate levels of self-compassion, so we've got 3 of us in there, and anything over 3.5, would indicate a higher level of self compassion, so.

But when we look at the different components, so there are, when you look at the research on self-compassion, there are these three distinct elements, which is self-kindness, common humanity, and mindfulness. And each of those have a flip side of, so they're the things we want to cultivate. And that's moving us away from self judgement, which is the reverse of self kindness.

Isolation, which is the opposite of common humanity. So isolation is, oh God, it's only me that feels like this, but common humanity is, you know, this is something we all share. And then with mindfulness, the opposite to that is over identification.

So rather than being aware of a, of an event and then allowing it to flow through you, over identification is getting really hung up on it, labelling yourself, and you know, we're gonna go into this in in a little more detail. So they're, they're the sort of things we want to move away from. So what you can see here it's quite interesting.

So this is everybody's scores averaged. And when we look at the more positive aspects of what we want to cultivate, they're still low in the grand scheme of an out of 5 score, but they're significantly higher than the things we want to move away from. So what that tells me is that the work for this group, is, yes, we want to be building on your skills of self-kindness and ability to see that shared common humanity and .

Mindfulness, but what's more important is gonna be looking at how can we release and let go of. Things like over identification, the sense of isolation, and, being self-critical and self judgement judgmental. So it's almost more important that we are developing ability to catch when we're in that, that frame of mind and work out how we can release and let go of that, because that's, that's kind of, they're the things that we really need to be working on as well as obviously cultivating the, the positive aspect of it.

You can kind of see that visually a little bit here. So again, this is for myself, and you'll see that the, the, the coloured bars that do go with, over identification. I mean that's tiny in everyone, even, even though I'm, you know, I'm still struggling with that one as well.

It's really, really common that you can see here that everyone is, is, is, has got a really low score for that one. But the, the coloured bands for the, for the, negative aspects are smaller, if you like. If you look at my scores where I have been working on this for a significantly long period of time.

The coloured bands for me are slightly more evenly spaced, so not only cultivating the positive aspects, I've also been shifting my ability to, to move away from the negative aspects as well. So that's kind of where we want to get more towards. I've still got a way to go, but it's, it's getting towards that.

Now, again, really, I, it might be easy to set to look at some of those scores of of mine and say, well, that's easy. You're a coach, you've been trained in it, or maybe you're just naturally good at self compassion. It's so not the case.

I have come from, I think possibly the, the lowest it's possible to get in terms of self-belief, self-worth and self-compassion. And I'm not gonna bore you with my whole history. But certainly for me growing up, I went through a lot of quite difficult traumatic experiences in my childhood that then led, and, and quite a lot of shame-based stuff happened, happened to me, from how I was parented, and that led in my teens to certain behaviours that, that then deepened the problems that I was having with shame-based things.

And in my twenties, that manifested itself as kind of Drug and booze problem problems, to be honest, that, that, that was my way of numbing and coping with it and trying to block it all out because there were points going into. You know, kind of in my teens, where I was as low as it's possible to go. I, I really did not want to be on the planet anymore.

I didn't want to be alive. I had not just low self-compassion or a bit of low self-worth. I had active, utter self-loathing.

I couldn't bear to be in my own skin. It's just, it, you know, it was, it, I've been to some pretty, pretty dark places with it, and points where certainly in my late teens, Go to university, I couldn't really make eye contact with anyone. I was so quiet.

I had no confidence at all. And so to be able to, so it's not like I have a natural default setting of being really good at self-compassionate and really confident. That has come through, through learning, through support, through getting the right help, through finding out what the tools and techniques are, and then being really, really diligent about putting them into practise.

And doing them and gradually moving the needle on all of those things. And if I can come from that place of, like, as, as low as it's possible to go and get my scores up to that, absolutely anybody can. I promise you that.

This is not, you know, it really is that growth mindset stuff. And I know because I've lived it and I've experienced it. So, yeah, I just thought it was important to kind of share that with you so you don't think, oh, well, it's easy for her.

. It certainly hasn't always been. Huh. OK, so let's look at compassion now, and, and in particular self-compassion, they are kind of the same thing really, because it's just one is obviously pointed at other people and one is pointed towards our ourselves.

And how we can cultivate more of it, you know, why is it important to do that and how can we do it? What's interesting is that we often actually find ourselves in a deficit of compassion. So the opposite of compassion is judgement.

Either judgement of ourselves or judgement towards others. And certainly in a work setting. Then we, we tend to judge in three different directions, so we can judge our colleagues if they're doing something that is affecting or annoying us.

We can judge, we certainly judge our clients. We know that that goes on, not all of them, but, you know, particularly the difficult ones or ones from a different demographic you've made choices we can agree with, all kinds that are being horrible. So we, we can judge in that direction.

We tend to reserve the harshest judgement though for ourselves. We, we're hardest on ourselves. Hence all the the low compassion scores.

So why do we do it? Why do we judge in the first place? Because we're all a bunch of decent caring people, so what's causing this negative judgement to happen?

Now, when you find yourself in judgmental mode, either towards a colleague or a client or or more usually towards ourselves, then it's a red flag that somewhere along the line, something has triggered you to feel afraid, stressed, threatened or less than. In some way. So, you know, thinking back to what we covered in the Passion and Purpose webinar, usually something's pushed one of our shame triggers, and it's therefore actually a sign of our own emotional pain, rather than that we are a judgmental person per se.

It's a sign of, of internal pain. So when you find yourself in judgement mode, That's actually a signal that you really need to be kind to yourself and if you catch yourself judging, don't react to your judgement with more judgement on top of it. Because we judge as a form of vulnerability armour.

Particularly when something makes us feel threatened or stressed or, you know, have a sense of self-worth that that feels. So the definition of compassion, it varies somewhat if you look around, but in essence it's a warm-hearted sensitivity to suffering, along with, coupled with the desire to relieve that if you can. And compassion can obviously be given towards others, or it can be given towards ourselves.

It's been shown, you know, when you develop higher levels of compassion, it's been shown to lower self-criticism, build self-worth, and those two things together actually help you to be more ambitious and more successful and happier. So this is a really vital component of resilience. And self compassion is where we need to start because you cannot truly give to others what you're not giving to yourself.

I know we think we can. I know we think we can, but we can't because you are a human too, so where you're not giving that to yourself, there's a blockage there on your ability to truly give that to to other people. But self compassion's often really hard.

It's often really, really hard for us. So it's important that we look at why is that, why is it so difficult? And it has to do with how our nervous system works.

So our brain is like a pattern seeking storage organ, if you like. And between the ages of 2 to 7 years in particular, our brain waves are in what we call theta, which is the same. So as an adult, if you go and have hypnotherapy, the hypnotherapist will take you down into a really deep relaxation and your brain will go into theta wave.

So literally, the scary thing for us as parents is we we are literally hypnotically programming our children. Between the age of about 2 to 6 and 7. That the messages we receive about ourselves, and the world in general, and kind of how we see our own parents and caregivers interacting with the world during that age becomes literally hardwired into our subconscious.

And often, you know, as we said right in the beginning of the, of the values webinar, we were looking at that ring diagram, even though our parents and caregivers might have had loving intentions, they also may have treated you in ways that were critical, shaming, you know. Today, when I, when we read our parenting books and help our children, there's a, there's, you know, we, we know now that shame-based parenting is not a good thing, but our, our parents didn't have that knowledge, and the generation before them didn't have that knowledge either. So many of us, were raised with quite shame-based parenting techniques that kind of minimise the importance of your own feelings.

So we then internalise that, and that then sets our belief philtres, so what we believe to be true about ourselves, and our, our beliefs work like that pair of glasses. So then our brain will want to come into alignment with that, and it will only present us with information that backs that up. And it will just deflect off any evidence to the contrary.

So it starts to become a self-fulfilling prophecy. We then start to look for the evidence that says, I'm not enough, I'm not good enough, I'm clumsy, I'm silly, I'm not as clever as that person over there. And anything, any of our triumphs, any of our achievements, any evidence that doesn't match that belief, we will find a way, either consciously or subconsciously, to pass it off because it doesn't fit that view that we have.

So we then grow up finding it really hard to view ourselves with kindness. And as someone said on the, I think it was Nicola, you Nicola McCallum, said on the Q&A last week, we can almost have a physical response of rejection towards feeling worthy or OK or good enough, because it conflicts with that deeply held subconscious belief, even though that, that belief is completely not true. And then.

As veterinary professionals, we have some additional risk factors layered on top of that in terms of caring for ourselves. So when you look at the caring profession, some people are attracted to the caring profession because they've been taught at an early age that's putting to care for the needs of others before their own. So as a consequence, they just may not have developed authentic self-care practises.

And then our heavy schedule during training, both vet and nurse training, and the long working hours in practise, give you the message that your personal needs are irrelevant. So culturally, not having time for yourself to recuperate from work or play or rest is just seen as part of the job, and as is putting the needs of animals before your own, even when you're exhausted. Sorry, excuse me.

. I think we've all, we've all experienced that. If you then also have children or elderly family members or your own pets as well, then this adds in another dimension because you have to care for animals at work and then go home with enough compassion and petrol in your tank to fulfil your children's needs, your partner's needs, your other dependents needs, your own animals needs, and, and we tend to put them first. And then finally it can be really difficult to schedule with self-care practises like a yoga class or taking time to have 15 minutes in stuff every day if your working hours are really, really long.

So those factors as well, I think is, is why we see the self-compassion scores being pushed even lower for us in in the vetting professionals who have come through the. So what that can do, that combined kind of er self-belief challenges that went in when we were younger. Coupled with the pressures of vetting can then lead to quite a lot of perfectionism.

So I think there are a lot of vetting professionals, and certainly there were a lot of you in your questionnaires at the beginning who would describe themselves as perfectionists. Now I know there's not much in the way of published hard data and evidence data that says that we're more prone to perfectionism in the veterinary profession, but I think you'll agree there are tonnes of anecdotal evidence. I did a study last year interviewing vets who weren't happy about vetting, and those who generally were.

And within my happy group, even though they were generally happy vetting, the learning how to reduce perfectionism came out as the top thing they wanted help. So this topic is one that we could easily spend the whole of the rest of tonight talking about. Well we've only got, you know, 45 minutes left.

So here in, in 5 bullet points really is my perfectionism 101 crash course. And again, if this resonates, there's, there's a lot more, you know, you can go and find out about this. So the first thing is, perfectionism is not the same as healthy striving for excellence.

In genuine striving for excellence, the focus is internal on how can I improve. Our self-worth is not important that because the self-worth is decoupled from productivity in, in genuine healthy striving. So it feels safe to make mistakes and learn and get feedback because then we know how to improve.

Perfectionism on the other hand, it's, it's not at its heart about genuine self improvement. It's an externally focused defensive mechanism that we do to gain and keep the approval of others and manage other people's perceptions of us. So we feel that if we can somehow just do everything perfectly, keep everyone happy, never make a mistake, somehow that means we can avoid the pain, there's painful feelings of feeling blamed, shamed, judged or seen as less than.

But when you look at the data, perfectionism doesn't, doesn't increase the levels of success. You know, I used, I used, I'm a recovering perfectionist and I used to think, well, perfectionism is quite good, you know, you wanna try to do a good job. That's healthy striving.

Perfectionism does not contribute towards success and achievement. You look at the research, it's highly correlated with depression, anxiety, addiction, and just life paralysis where you, we don't take action on stuff because we're frightened of not doing it brilliantly. It's self-destructive because it's an unattainable goal.

You know, we all know perfection isn't attainable goal, but there's a, there's a hidden unattainable goal in here as well, because at its core, perfectionism is about trying to manage other people's perceptions of it. And that's something we can never achieve because you can't ever fully control what other people think of you. So we stress ourselves really badly trying to achieve the unachievable.

And finally, it's really addictive. Because when we do inevitably experience blame, shame, or judgement, and when we do make a mistake or something difficult happens and we feel less than, instead of questioning the faulty logic of perfectionism and going, well, that's just not really realistic, and applying self compassion, we go, I wasn't enough. I wasn't perfect enough, if I'd just been better, I'm the problem, and we dig even deeper into perfectionism, so.

It's, it's, it's the biggest of the vulnerability shields that we use, and we're using it because we think it's protecting us. But it's the one thing, it's like this massive big shield that actually prevents us from truly being seen, and loved for who we are, imperfections, mistakes, errors, and all, you know, as a normal fallible human being. And then on top of our own inner critic, we've also got our client's expectations, our, our line manager or boss's expectations and that can further kind of deepen our self-critical tendencies.

I think the thing Rebecca Maudlin and I were talking about this on email the other day. When, and I completely agree with that, that, you know, when it's the lives of pets that are at stake, that fear of failure and making a mistake can really impact our self-worth in really damaging ways if we aren't practising mindful awareness, if you don't have tools and techniques in your toolkit for dealing with that, because. If we make a mistake, an animal might be injured or die, whereas if you make a mistake in business, someone might lose some money, and I'm not saying that's not important, but it just energetically feels really different.

And, and we can mitigate that for that within our clinical work with with mindset shifts and tools and techniques. So it a massive, massive part of that, the counterbalance of perfectionism is self compassion. Another reason why I've chosen to focus predominantly on that this evening.

So so . How can we start that process of training ourselves to up our levels of of self compassion? So the first is, understanding that, like I said at the beginning, compassion is a psychological resource and it's a learned behaviour.

It's not something as toddlers, we're born with. It's not something you will naturally have high levels of, as I said. And it's also not some sort of fixed personality trait that you are stuck with.

So obviously introduced to you via the website with the test on it to to the work of Christine Neff. And there are a lot of really good resources on that website, which I know some of you have been, have been dipping into. So she's sort of the, the, the leader, if you like, at the moment on the body of evidence and research out there on self compassion.

And as we touched on already, her, her research has shown that there are these three distinct elements of self-compassion, and we can have varying abilities in those, and by breaking it down into its component parts in this way, we can then start to work on each different aspect of this within ourselves. So I want to start by looking at self kindness. And this involves being warm and kind towards ourselves when we suffer, fail, or feel inadequate, rather than just ignoring our pain or beating ourselves up with self-criticism and.

Everyone's in a critically different. They can vary from mildly negative to a full on verbally abusive bully mode. Mine can go at both ends of the scale, and it'll be interesting to see what, you know, you pop a few comments in, if you like, about what you, what's your own negative in a critic like?

Is, is he or she really harsh or not so bad? It'll be quite interesting to to see. .

You get to know your own inner critic by actively tuning in to what you're saying to yourself about yourself when you feel bad. So I, an example of this for me, I, I had 2 years ago when the, the Betsaversify live event was on, I was involved in it. It was supposed to be helping, and I nearly had to cancel going at the last minute because I'd gone down with flu, like cold a few days before.

And I was really poorly. I had a temperature over 100, and I could barely stand up or concentrate. And, and I've been trying to work all day, preparing stuff for it, and I, in the end I just had to go to bed.

But my inner critic was just having a field day going, you're pathetic, just man up and deal with it, you know, no one cancels things cos they've got a cold.hink of all the money you'd have wasted. Why didn't you look after yourself more in the coming weeks, and.

Self-kindness looks like pauses, so that was what was going through my head when I eventually caved in and went to bed. I thought, you know, maybe I'm not gonna to go tomorrow. Self-kindness looks like pausing to notice this narrative.

To just pay attention. Listen to it. And asking yourself, is that what I would say to my best friend if they came to me with this issue?

So I now actually literally picture my best friend in my mind's eye. And I think, right, if she's come to me and said, this is what I've got going on, what would I say to her? And it's usually way softer, much more encouraging, much more understanding.

And it's then about making a choice to know that you matter just as much. Self kindness is not about me first. It's not about putting your oxygen mask on before you sort anyone else out.

It's just about me too. Like, you matter, you matter just as much as everyone else. And so if you can start trying to apply that kind of messaging to yourself, start choosing to do that.

Your natural inclination will be self-critical because it it just is for all of us. You can choose to start. See if you can shift that even a little bit, and it is really hard at first, but it gets easier if you practise.

You just have to be really committed to practising this and believing, put it, put yourself in a growth mindset, you can paint it. It is a choice. You can choose to have better feeling thoughts about yourself.

So that's kind of thinking about about self-kindness. In order to have to do, to do this, you need to start working on shifting away from self-approval towards self-acceptance. So self-approval is I'll be happy with myself when I've achieved that's what I said.

So lost some weight, got my certificate, procrastinating all the time. Stop chewing my nails, whatever it is, whatever it is that annoys you about yourself, it, it self-approval is I'll be OK as a person, I'll think I'm worthy when I've sorted all that, all of that stuff out. Self acceptance is.

Every last bit of me is OK, including all the bits I'd love to change and all my weaknesses, and I'm an amazing imperfect human being and I accept and love all of those bits of myself. That's really powerful. And we have to let go of a lot of shane gremlins to get to that point.

But you can absolutely do this gradually over time. You really can, you can really get much, much, much closer towards that, . And finally, self kindness also involves learning to identify what you need personally to stay emotionally and physically happy and healthy and to set to set effective boundaries.

With everyone that you interact with. To protect yourself, even if that means saying no to something, and I had to do that this morning. I, I had to do this exact thing, and it was really difficult this morning with a very, very close friend of mine, who lives in Sardinia, lives in Italy, who was really going through it with the Italy being on lockdown, with the coronavirus.

But she and I are coping with it in our minds in a really, really different way. I'm gonna, I'm dealing with it in the ways that I'm gonna share with you tomorrow to just keep myself grounded, centred, as positive as I can be, as solution focused as I can be, and that means tuning out a lot of the apocalyptic. Doom and gloom and really strong messages of negativity.

She's coming at it from a very different place, and I understand her fear. But in order to self-protect, I have to put a boundary in place to say, I I can't go where you're going. I can't go down the rabbit hole with you.

I can, I can help and support. I can listen, but I'm not going to, I, I, I have to not do that. And she ended up getting really cross to me and actually hanging up, and that was really difficult, but.

I had to do that. It was that was a really important boundary. That was actually a really compassionate thing to do for myself.

And ultimately for her, because going down the rabbit hole with her is not going to help her either. And I had to do that with totally from a place of love. So this is not particularly easy stuff, and compassion has what the British would describe as a, as a, as a soft front.

The strong It's a courageous choice that we make and and it it comes at its roots from a place of love and understanding and understanding that our imperfections, it's actually our imperfections that they're they're the very thing that connect us to every other human being on the planet. Because of those, that's what makes us human. And so all of this really, really does come from a place of love.

That doesn't mean that it's always easy, and you do need to, to build your courage in, in putting it in place. It helps. It, it, there's a reason why we do it, because ultimately it does make you feel really good.

OK. So, I hope this is making sense. This brings us nicely onto the, the second component of, of self-combatant, which is that shared common humanity.

So, on humanity is a recognition that Excuse me, suffering and feelings of personal inadequacy are just part of the shared human experience. It's something we all go through. It's not something that just happens to you alone.

It's also about making a choice about whether you believe that people, including yourself, are generally doing the best that we can with the tools in the life situation that we have currently, or whether you believe the opposite, that people or yourself are just a bit rubbish. So Brene Brown tells it this fan fantastic story in her book Rising Strong, where she had an interaction with someone. That made her feel quite critical and judgmental towards this person, and she really struggled to know how to feel compassion for them at that time.

And I think we've all experienced that with certain types of client. Like I said before, maybe clients who are in a particular demographic that's very different to us that who have made choices about the way they live or how they, what pet they own, or how they own that pet that we really don't approve of or share, where it's really, really hard to find compassion. So, you know, I think we all know what that feels like and we know when we struggle to to feel compassionate towards ourselves.

So she talked to her therapist about this, and her therapist challenged her with the question of, you know, do you think most people are doing the best they can? Given their background and the emotional tools they have available to them, Brune at the time felt really strongly, no, hell to the no about this at that point. She was like, no, people are just rubbish.

But her husband. He's a paediatrician felt really differently. So as a paediatrician, he, he also sees the best and worst in people.

And his response was, I don't know 100% whether people are doing the best they can, but I know that my life is easier if I believe that to be the case, because it allows me to stay out of judgement and focus on what it is. Rather than what should or could be. So that messed with Berne's noodle a bit.

So she went back out to do research on this, and she found that she was asking that question to people, to her old research participants, and she found that people fell into two camps with it. So there were those who shared her initial response that, no, people are not doing the best they can. And 80% of that group used themselves as an example.

They were saying, you know, I know I'm not always doing the best I can, so why should I see other other people up? So they judged their own efforts as in the same exacting manner that they were judging the efforts of others. And then there were those who believed that, yeah, in, in general, I think people are doing the best they can.

Although the yes group were, were careful to explain that this didn't mean they, they thought people couldn't grow, change, or become better. But there was a difference. So those in the yes group were quite hesitant in how they answered it.

They were a bit like, well, you know, I, you can't be sure, but I think people are, or I know it sounds daft, but so they were sort of a bit unsure in their responses. Like they'd. Tried to think otherwise but couldn't quite give up on humanity and that was different.

Those in the no group were unequivocable, equivocal. They were absolute. They were black and white, they were like, no, no, people are not doing the best they can.

So she started to see a pattern with those responses overlap onto her previous interviews with shame and vulnerability. So the people who said no were the same people who struggled most with perfectionism. So they offered examples of situations where they weren't their perfect selves and they were as hard on other people as they were on themselves.

You know, it's not, it's not permissible to get things wrong or mess up or have a lazy day or do whatever. That's not allowed. Every participant in the yes group, however, came from her wholehearted group of research participants.

So the people that understood their inherent self-worth and who were willing to be vulnerable. They also, interestingly, offered situations and examples where they had made mistakes, but instead of pointing out how they could and should have done better, they recognised that at the time. Their intentions were good and they were trying.

There's there's a real difference there, and I think this is so relevant and important when it comes to how we feel about the potential for making mistakes in in veterinary, or for when client complaints happen at work, because they're the two areas that can really dent our self-worth if we're very, very harsh on ourselves, ourselves instead of understanding that shared common humanity of. Yes, Mr. Referral surgeon might not have done that, but most vets at my level would probably have done something similar, especially if the client's being very judgmental.

So I think this, this, this bit of Berne's work was, I think really interesting to me, given the, the, the people that I work with, in my client base. So Louise is saying, we common humanity, a colleague once said to me that when a client was being particularly nasty to me, there's always something else going on. When people react outside of what we expect or react extremely, I remember this.

I remember this when I'm getting bad reactions from people now and it really helps. Yeah, Louise, absolutely. That's, you know, when you get a client who's been really arsy or horrible or difficult, you have no idea what that person is dealing with outside.

You know, they, they might be dealing with stuff that we just don't have to deal with. They might not be, they might be just inherently nutty person, but usually there's something behind why they have that opinion or that behaviour, some sort of damage or pain and that they're in. So Louisa, it's a really astute observation, thank you for sharing that.

OK, so Self compassion with shared common humanity is looked like. When you do experience a moment of personal inadequacy or fallibility or weakness, instead of feeling like, oh my God, everyone else would have handled that. Everyone else would have done something different, they would have known more, and I'm the only one who is that crap, or who'd have done that thing or felt that way.

That's when you need to catch yourself. That's when you need to be remembering that you are doing the best that you can and that your intentions are good and that you are trying. Even if you're not able to try very hard that day because something's going on or you're really tired or there's something happening at home or whatever, and that these feelings are feelings that we all experience, no matter how high up the, the, the tree of qualification you go.

You know, that really doesn't mean understanding that our giving our, doing our best doesn't mean that we're able to give 100% all of the time. Sometimes there's only enough petrol in the tank to give 30% on a given day, for whatever reason. That's also something that we all share.

So that's kind of what the, the shared common humanity looks like. So that brings us on to the final component of self compassion, which is mindfulness. So, everyone here is probably within this group is probably obviously familiar with that term.

So, I'm sure you will have either read about it, maybe you've done one of Mike Scanlon's mindfulness courses, with Webinar vet, or just dabble in it generally when you can. What does it mean in relation specifically to self compassion? So in this instance, it isn't so much about sitting and doing a body scan or breath work or meditation in this particular instance.

Mindfulness here refers to the non-judgmental acceptance of what's happening in the present moment, so sort of facing up to the reality of what is, in other words. And the idea is that we need to see things just as they are, no more and no less. In order to respond to the current situation in the most compassionate and therefore effective manner, and actually this is so hugely prevalent to to what's going on in the outside world at the moment in in having that kind of in the moment, moment to moment recalibration of right now, am I safe?

Am I OK? Have I got the request to deal with this? And what is the most appropriate measured response, you know, that's appropriate to this situation.

So it's about taking that balanced approach to negative emotion when we find ourselves in judgement mode, either towards colleagues or clients or ourselves. And the first thing is just having an awareness of when we've been triggered and what you know, recognise when we're feeling bad, and we've talked about that a few times already on the course. Because you can't heal what you can't feel.

But most of us don't want to feel uncomfortable emotions, and so we do whatever we can to ignore them or numb them as as we talked about earlier. And we're physiologically programmed to move away from negative stimuli and to seek pleasurable experiences. And because of this innate tendency to sort of shy away from pain, it can be really difficult to actually turn towards it and actually, you know, sit there and recognise and go, oh gosh, my negative inner critic has just made me feel anger or guilt or shame or sadness, and that these emotions are suffering and that we need to give ourselves compassion in these moments.

Because what we tend to do is press those feelings, you know, particularly by. Staying in practical viewing mode a lot of the time, and if we suppress those feelings for long enough, then sometimes we can either end up just exploding or losing our shizzel, or having a bit of an internal meltdown. So.

The mindful element here is firstly about recognition. Sorry. I'm taking a moment to just observe what your mind is doing, but they're not overly identifying with it or starting to give ourselves or other people permanent labels.

I'm a bad vet, I'm a terrible colleague, I'm a shit parent, you know, that a definitive, I am this thing. So it's kind of like, OK, I'm feeling like that was a parenting fail and that's made me feel really, really bad. But not taking it to the step of, therefore, I am a bad parent.

That's over identification. Mindfulness is going, I'm feeling that emotion, if that's what my brain is telling me, it doesn't feel great, and I'm that that's feeling quite difficult. Over identification is then taking it that step further, and that's a bit to to catch yourself and go, no, I'm actually not gonna give myself that label or anyone else.

That's the non-judgmental bit. And that's the hardest bit, right? You know, I mean, to some extent, our ego loves a bit of drama and judgement sometimes.

It doesn't always want to give that up so easily, you know, the, the, the ego, our sense of self, in order to create a sense of self, our ego has to create a sense of separateness and other to other people. So quite often our ego will amp up drama and judgement because it needs the sense of separation to survive. Who we really are, which is not our ego sense of self, who we really are is the quiet observer, the person who is observing what the mind is doing, that's a core part of your hearing.

That's the, that's the bit doing the noticing. That bit does not need to thrive on judgement and drama. So it's just recognising when our ego's getting in the way and not wanting to let go and learning how to gradually how to release that.

Because when we notice our pain without exaggerating it, that's a moment of mindfulness. And that might be in a clinical situation, for example, I remember having an awful case with a cat with a melting corneal ulcer, where the owners had left it for two weeks, and the, the cat was in so much pain, and I, I was so angry. I was so upset about the cat.

I was so angry at the owners, and I didn't deal with that situation very well. And I, I needed self-compassion and I needed I needed to find some way of being compassionate. To them in order to be able to help the cat, and so what self compassion might have looked like in that moment would have been when I took the cat out the back, maybe just saying, look guys, I'm just just go upstairs for a few minutes, I'll be back in a minute.

Can you just do whatever you need to do with the cat for a second. I'm just going up to the tea room, or shutting myself in the loo and just. Sitting and just breathing and just recognising for a couple of seconds what's going on in my mind and and doing something to release that adrenaline and think about how can I soothe myself a little bit in this, how can I just re-enter, how can I remind myself.

With some of the things I've been learning about and just get to a place that feels a little bit better, rather than just proactively reacting and pushing on through it. It's just a, just a bit of mindful awareness because instead of just feeling judgmental, then, you're now aware that you're feeling judgmental and that awareness just gives you the space you need to then choose how you want to respond rather than just knee jerk reacting. And, and that's mindfulness in action.

So basically what we did at the beginning, which was obviously just a a medication. That makes sense. So, You know 5 or 55 10 minutes.

I want to just think about how do we start putting this into practise, because knowing, just knowing this stuff, it is not enough, so you can read about this stuff, you can intellectually conceptualise it. That on its own will not shift your levels of self-compassion or self-worth. That would be like reading a book about marathon training or, or running, but then not actually sitting on a pair of trainers and getting out and doing a progressively increasing training programme that's building you up towards the goal that you want.

That you might know more about running and fitness, but you would not have changed your level of fitness. You actually have to be looking at the exercises, looking at the practises, and then actually bloody well doing them, and it just, and, and. I say that with a loving kick up the bum because it's not, it's not always easy.

I'm terrible at being consistent with this, sometimes I can practise it and sometimes I can't, and that's OK. But we, you do need to, the reason that I've stretched my scores to that level has partly been. I'll read read that out in a second, Nicola.

The implementing the tools and techniques, and a lot of that has come from work that I've done with my coach, where you've constantly got someone reminding you of this and, and asking you to stretch into that space. It's much easier, as it, as it is when you surround yourself with, more knowledge about this area and then putting it into practise. So Nicola's saying, in case anyone wants to check it out, one of the most helpful books I've ever read is The Happiness Trap.

It explores mindfulness and teaches acceptance and commitment therapy. It is a lot to start changing my mindset. Thank you for that, Nicola.

That's brilliant. Another one to add to my list, I've not read that. I've read the hap I've got, there's the Happiness Project by Gretchen Ruben, isn't there?

There's the happiness chat. Cool. Thank you for that.

Yeah, and it's just, it's just, you change this by gradually layering knowledge and then exercise knowledge and working on it, knowledge and working on it. Because our self-belief and . You know, we have this choice of do we go down the, do you just go down the road most travelled, which is how everybody thinks, or do you be brave enough to get off that path and start choosing that road less travelled, and that's choosing a pathway to better self-belief, because.

It is a choice. This is the biggest revelation that I've had in recent years is that we, we are choosing this every day, whether we know we're doing it or not. You are choosing every day whether to keep your tolerate and keep your level of self-belief or ability and self compassion to stay exactly where it is, or whether you are going to choose to take time to work on it gradually over a long period of time to shift the dial and move it up.

So it's not something that you can just sit around hoping that it's magically gonna get better as you get older, as you get more experience, as you get more qualifications, as you just read more books. It's something you have to choose, and you have to, you know, every morning when you wake up, you get to choose again. So if last week was really tough and really stressful and really difficult, you get to choose again next week.

You get to choose again tomorrow morning. That's really empowering. And that's every time you make a choice, that's another step onto that smaller pathway in your mind, your neurological mind.

And every time you step onto that pathway, you build that neural connection. And that then just starts to become the way you see yourself. So you don't have to laboriously try and do this process all the time.

If you keep doing that consistently, that will just become the way you see yourself, and your self-belief and self compassion will have gone up. And, and again, this is another thing that takes time. Don't expect to have this mail in a week, and be coming back to me at next week's Q&A saying, no, it's not working.

It, it, it takes time. again, with all of this, so. The way we view ourselves becomes like a habit.

We become habituated to how we we view ourselves. And if you want to change your habits, then there are these three layers of behaviour change that we need to think about. However, the reason that most of us struggle to change our habits, and this has actually come to me by a book that Ebony Escalone recommends called Comic Habits, I think it's also really interesting.

The reason most of us struggle to change our habits is because we kind of change the wrong thing. So here's what this looks like, and let's take the example of someone trying to lose weight. So the outcome, is that the person wants is to lose weight.

So most goals that we set are associated with a specific outcome in that way. The second layer of behaviour change is changing your processes. So that might be changing your eating habits or going to the gym more often.

And the third and deepest layer is changing your identity. So this is the level that's concerned with your beliefs, your worldview, your judgments about yourself and others. So this is those subconscious programmes that we were talking about earlier on tonight.

So outcomes are what you get in your life, processes are what you do. And identity is what you believe. Now, most people are trying to change their behaviour from the outside in.

We want to get that outcome. So we go, right, I want to be skinny, so I'm going to change what I eat and how much exercise I do. But they're not tapping into that identity piece.

So, so they've still got the identity of a person who overeats and doesn't look after their, their, their health. It's a bit like with smoking, if you. I'll try, if someone's trying to quit smoking and they're offered a cigarette, and they say, oh no thanks, I'm trying to give up.

They still have the identity of a smoker. Their identity is I'm a smoker who's trying to give up. If that person has said, no thanks, I don't smoke, that sounds like a small change, but it's actually massive.

That person has said, I now have adopted the identity. I am a non-smoker. And that is a massive difference because if you try and just change what you do or change the outcomes you get in your life without working on the belief system that's holding that in place, then that's why we keep not getting the outcomes we want and not changing because we still have that same identity because we're not doing the work on that part of it.

And the beautiful thing about this is we can absolutely do the part of of the the work on that part of it. You can change what you believe. Beliefs are not truths, that's what we're gonna be covering it in the next module.

So, it, it's if we. It's exactly the same, where, you know, so I'm talking about losing weight there, but this is the same if you want to if the outcome you want is changing your level of self-belief or self-worth or changing your ability with self compassion. If you have the identity, I am someone who has permanently chronic self-worth and I can't change that.

Guess what? It's not gonna change. So it's, it's, so if you hold a belief, I'm somehow broken and fixing at my core, I'm an unfixably low self-worth person, and our efforts will, you will make some progress, but it will be slow.

And that it's not true. And it comes back to the other ring diagram seems like quite like a ring diagram that we talked about right at the beginning of the values thing. So this, this ring diagram sort of sits into this, this is our identity.

This sits really into the middle of here. So when we, and it fits in with the growth mindset fixed mindset stuff. So when we're in a fixed mindset, i.e., we believe we're this middle ring, we believe who I'm afraid I am.

We believe who I've been conditioned to think that I am, that I worry about myself. Then that's what we've been doing really in the, in the last sort of almost two months now. It's just starting to punch some holes through that layer so that you can connect with the truth of who you truly are in the middle there.

And that's not to say a person without imperfections or problems or things that we're not good at because we all have that. It's, it's, it's not when you're solely coming from that, that, that, that layer of limiting beliefs, then you can't do that identity change. You have to be able to create space for the belief of of who I truly am, and that central part of you, like I say, we pop out as babies, we do not have self-worth issues.

We know that we're worthy. We don't have any problem with asking for what we need. And that part of you is, can never be broken.

That part of you does not need fixing. It's still there, it's always there and it's always accessible for you. So, but behaviour, behaviour that's incongruent with the self will not last.

So if you think if you think you are your middle ring, then, then, then, then that's gonna slow your progress. So that's kind of what, what we need to shift. So what practical things can you be doing about that?

What are these things that I'm saying right you need to engage with it? Well, this course, for, for one thing, so the work we were doing and have been doing in those first two, the first two modules particularly. We're starting to connect you gradually back in with that central core of of yourself and some of the mindset work that we've touched on already has been about having, just having an awareness of that ring system, and the fact that that's that you're worried you are is not the full story of who.

You actually are and how we can start to punch some of those facts in. So this process has already begun for you. It's already started to happen.

The door is already beginning to open, and even if you did nothing more moving forward, that process has already started. You can't get back on that. Journaling is really good.

So, so journaling is, is not writing a diary. Journaling is, is getting stuff out of your head. I think I've touched on it before.

So, I use my journal a lot, as do a lot of the other people that I move with in my coaching circles and people who are really kind of up to speed on this, this type of work, because that's where you can capture. What's going on in your subconscious, that's where you can see what your fearful brain is, is saying or what your self view is, and then look at it on the paper and then decide if that's what you would like to stay with us as a belief or If it isn't, you want to start shifting and painting, and I'm gonna give you the tools for shifting and painting, . Just self-reflecting, so having a process either when you're out on a dog walk, or linking it to a habit that you already have.

So when you go to bed, like maybe after you've cleaned your teeth and you get into bed, just having a a little notepad by the bed to just reflect on, OK, retrospectively today, are there any areas where actually I was pretty good with self kindness, but I'm pleased with how I handled that and, and I did have their come mecy, all those things, or were there any areas where I really slipped in self judgement and what was the trigger? You know, what was happening and how could I have, how could I maybe, you know, retrospectively think, right, what could I have said to myself, that's you starting to do the work of the neural reprogramming. Mindfulness and meditation really, really helps.

It sounds like, Nicola, that that's a topic and a theme within the happiness trap as well. So those tools and techniques just allow you to see what's going on in your head, to see what that narrative, what that monkey's mind is, is saying, so that it's not about trying to make that go away, but it's about you have to see what it's doing. Sometimes therapy is needed as well.

I've had plenty of it on my course back to, connecting back with myself and feeling OK again and recovering from perfectionism and getting that self-compassion up. I've not done it all by myself. I have had help and support from coaches, from friends, from therapists, in various different disciplines.

So there is no shame in asking for help. It's a really strong sign. Of of help and of of strength actually, and, and it just speeds up the process like you can do it just by yourself, but why would you, when there are trained professionals who can really, really help, you know, if you've got some particularly unhelpful limiting, that you're struggling to shift by yourself.

Reading, watching, listening, obviously a lot of you are, are doing that already. I'm trying to sort of give you as many references and things as I can, as we go through the course as well. So you're feeding yourself with the knowledge, but as I say, the caveat to that is the knowledge alone won't shift it.

You've then got to sort of, if it gives you an exercise, actually go away and do it and try it, and find ones that work for you and then stick with them and build them into your routine, build them into your habits. Guided meditations can really help here, as can self hypnotist MP3s, and if you want any recommendations for those or any places to go and hunt, and then just let me know. I use Glenn Harold quite a lot, not all of his meditations, but, the reducing anxiety one, the overcoming procrastination one, the relaxed one.

You know, the, these are very similar. The self MP3s I would tend to properly and lie down. I often go to sleep to those.

Guided meditations you can just use either when you're walking around or have, you know, things, or sometimes I just pop them on, on YouTube. All of these things kind of layered together and then it doesn't matter if you're not massively consistent or you dip in and out of it. If you keep doing those things over time, this will shift for you.

I absolutely guarantee it. And I think that is the end of the sides, yes, it is. So, OK, when we come out of the end of the show, I think that will stop the share.

Oh, not too badly running over time, which is good. So screen sharing has stopped as the windows are closed, OK. Right, so I hope that that has been useful for you this evening.

Please hit me up if you've got any questions. So if any, if that's brought anything up for anyone, if there's anything you want to ask me while I'm here, or you've got me here for a minute or two before we go, then just type those in. Obviously, if you think of questions around this stuff, as we go forward over the next couple of weeks, then you can add them to the next Q&A.

so yeah, let me know what that has brought up for you, if anything, both positive, you know what, what the useful nuggets in that, are, and any questions that you may have around that. And if no one's got any questions, that's fine. But I'll just give you a second.

Louise says, thank you, that was very useful. Do you have any tips on how to remind ourselves throughout the day on remembering to be mindful, I find I'm energised in the mornings and remember these things, but mid-afternoon my mindfulness wanes and perhaps post it stuck around the house. Yeah, so yeah, Louise, absolutely.

I think it's about everything in balance. So if you are managing to tap into any form of mindfulness, even once a day, just in the morning, that's really brilliant. So it's about not necessarily feeling like you need to have it switched on constantly all the time.

But reminders, visual reminders is really good as is. What James Clear in Atomic Habits calls habit stacking. So where you've got things during your day that are part of your normal routine that you always do, can you look at any of those and think, right, I'm gonna add on one minute of mindful breathing, or I'm gonna add on one minute of reflecting over what's happened previous couple of hours to a certain thing.

So that might be if you, if every morning you get up and you make yourself a cup of tea, it might by the end of my first morning cup of tea I'm going to do 1 minute of breath work. Maybe there's something you'd do if you do get a lunch break at work that you could tie it in with. Maybe you could have a Post-it note that's stuck to your car so that when you get into the car and, and to, to go home, there's a little reminder there.

What other things that I've done is I've linked it to my iPhone. You know how when you're, like, in the morning, when you, when the alarm goes off, it just says alarm. You can change that to say something different.

So, I think I had one on there a while ago, which wasn't to do with mindfulness, but I think the message I changed the alarm to was, get out of, get out of bed and go and knock it out of the. I nearly swore park for the day, as in it was I had a motivational boost that's that's kind of, I read every morning when my alarm went off, so . Definitely Post-it notes can help.

I've got stuff stuck in the kitchen because I quite like cooking. And so when I finished work for the day, usually the first thing I'm doing is going into the kitchen and cooking for Eva and then cooking for us, which I really enjoy. And so on the, on my kitchen cupboards, I've got some motivational quotes.

I've got some stuff, in, in there. So, yeah, linking it to things. And also just giving yourself a break if you can't maintain it, you know, doing anything.

Thanks. I also have a podcast recommendation, Optimal Living Daily. Short snippets of things about regarding one that's great, fantastic.

These suggestions are really great, everyone, thank you. OK. So, I think that's looking like it's about it.

So I'm gonna let you escape. I'm gonna keep this one to, to a, a nice kind of almost on virtually on time one then for tonight. Please do give me feedback and comments in the Facebook group if you need to.

I will tomorrow, as I say, I'm gonna jump into Facebook and, do some stuff around just helping everyone manage their mindset with what is going on with all the coronavirus stuff and any help and support that I can do. If there's anything that would be helpful for you guys, for me to give you or do around that, then please just let me know. I'm just really feeling like I want to show up and be there and actually stand up rather than stand down at the moment and just.

Show up even more for everybody. So I'll do that tomorrow and then before the end of the week I'll get you the bits and bobs that you need for our next module as well, and then hopefully we'll have another really good Q&A next week as well on Thursday. So that's it from me for this evening.

Enjoy the rest of your evening and stay well and healthy and safe as much as you can and I will see you. Thanks, Nicola, . Thank you, thanks, yeah, sharing stories is good, isn't isn't it?

It just kind of makes you realise that we are all normal people. So I'm gonna love you and leave you. Have a good evening everyone and see you all again soon.