Podcasts about helen it

I was delighted to talk to the historian Helen Castor (who writes The H Files by Helen Castor) about her new book The Eagle and the Hart. I found that book compulsive, and this is one of my favourite interviews so far. We covered so much: Dickens, Melville, Diana Wynne Jones, Hilary Mantel, whether Edward III is to blame for the Wars of the Roses, why Bolingbroke did the right thing, the Paston Letters, whether we should dig up old tombs for research, leaving academia, Elizabeth I, and, of course, lots of Shakespeare. There is a full transcript below.Henry: Is there anything that we fundamentally know about this episode in history that Shakespeare didn't know?Helen: That's an extremely good question, and I'm tempted now to say no.Helen told me what is hardest to imagine about life in the fourteenth century.I think it's relatively easy to imagine a small community or even a city, because we can imagine lots of human beings together, but how relationships between human beings happen at a distance, not just in terms of writing a letter to someone you know, but how a very effective power structure happens across hundreds of miles in the absence of those things is the thing that has always absolutely fascinated me about the late Middle Ages. I think that's because it's hard, for me at least, to imagine.Good news to any publishers reading this. Helen is ready and willing to produce a complete edition of the Paston Letters. They were a bestseller when they were published a hundred years ago, but we are crying out for a complete edition in modern English.Henry: If someone wants to read the Paston Letters, but they don't want to read Middle English, weird spelling, et cetera, is there a good edition that they can use?Helen: Yes, there is an Oxford World's Classic. They're all selected. There isn't a complete edition in modern spelling. If any publishers are listening, I would love to do one. Henry: Yes, let's have it.Helen: Let's have it. I would really, really love to do that.Full TranscriptHenry: Today I am talking to the historian, Helen Castor. Helen is a former fellow of Sydney Sussex College in Cambridge. She has written several books of history. She is now a public historian, and of course, she has a Substack. The H Files by Helen CastorWe are going to talk mostly about her book, The Eagle and the Hart, which is all about Richard II and Henry IV. I found this book compulsive, so I hope you will read it too. Helen, welcome.Helen: Thank you very much for having me, Henry.Henry: You recently read Bleak House.Helen: I did.Henry: What did you think?Helen: I absolutely loved it. It was a long time since I'd read any Dickens. I read quite a lot when I was young. I read quite a lot of everything when I was young and have fallen off that reader's perch, much to my shame. The first page, that description of the London fog, the London courts, and I thought, "Why have I not been doing it for all these years?"Then I remembered, as so often with Dickens, the bits I love and the bits I'm less fond of, the sentimentality, the grotesquerie I'm less fond of, but the humour and the writing. There was one bit that I have not been able to read then or any of the times I've tried since without physically sobbing. It's a long time since a book has done that to me. I don't want to spoil it for anyone who hasn't read it, but--Henry: I'm sure I know what you mean. That's quite a sentimental passage.Helen: It is, but not sentimental in the way that I find myself objecting to. I think I really respond viscerally to this sentimentalising of some of his young women characters. I find that really off-putting, but I think now I'm a parent, and particularly I'm a parent of a boy [laughter]. I think it's that sense of a child being completely alone with no one to look after them, and then finding some people, but too late for a happy ending.Henry: Too late.Helen: Yes.Henry: You've been reading other classic novels, I think, Moby Dick?Helen: I'm in the middle of Moby Dick as we speak. I'm going very slowly, partly because I'm trying to savour every sentence. I love the sentence so much as a form. Melville is just astonishing, and also very, very funny in a way I hadn't expected to keep laughing out loud, sometimes because there is such humour in a sentence.Sometimes I'm just laughing because the sentence itself seems to have such audacity and that willingness to go places with sentences that sometimes I feel we've lost in the sort of sense of rules-based sentences instead of just sticking a semicolon and keep going. Why not, because it's so gorgeous and full of the joy of language at that point? Anyway, I'm ranting now, but--Henry: No, I think a lot of rules were instituted in the early 20th century that said you can and cannot do all these things, and writers before that point had not often followed those rules. I think what it has led to is that writers now, they can't really control a long sentence, in the sense that Melville and Dickens will do a long sentence, and it is a syntactically coherent thing, even though it's 60, 70 longer words. It's not just lots of stuff, and then, and then. The whole thing has got a beautiful structure that makes sense as a unit. That's just not obvious in a lot of writing now.Helen: I think that's exactly right. Partly, I've been reading some of the Melville out loud, and having just got onto the classification of whales, you can see I'm going very slowly. Those sentences, which are so long, but it's exactly that. If you read them out loud, and you follow the sense, and the punctuation, however irregular it might be in modern terms, gives you the breathing, you just flow on it, and the excitement of that, even or perhaps especially when one is talking about the classification of whales. Just joyful.Henry: Will we be seeing more very long sentences in your next book?Helen: I think I have to get a bit better at it. The habit that I was conscious of anyway, but became acutely so when I had to read my own audiobook for the first time is that I think I write in a very visual way. That is how I read because mostly it's silent.I discovered or rediscovered that often what I do when I want to write a very long sentence is I start the sentence and then I put a diversion or extra information within em dashes in the middle of the sentence. That works on the page because you can see spatially. I love that way of reading, I love seeing words in space.A lot of different kinds of text, both prose and poetry, I read in space like that. If you're reading to be heard, then the difficulty of breaking into a sentence with, whether it's brackets or em dashes or whatever, and then rejoining the sentence further down has its own challenges. Perhaps I ought to try and do less of that and experiment more with a Melvillian Dickensian onward flow. I don't know what my editor will think.Henry: What has brought you back to reading novels like this?Helen: I was wondering that this morning, actually, because I'm very aware having joined Substack, and of course, your Substack is one of the ones that is leading me further in this direction, very inspiringly, is discovering that lots of other people are reading and reading long novels now too. It reminded me of that thing that anyone with children will know that you have a baby and you call it something that you think only you have thought of, and then four years later, you call and you discover half the class is called that name. You wonder what was in the water that led everybody in that direction.I've just seen someone tweet this morning about how inspired they are by the builder next door who, on the scaffolding, is blasting the audiobook Middlemarch to the whole neighborhood.Henry: Oh my god. Amazing.Helen: It's really happening. Insofar as I can work out what led me as opposed to following a group, which clearly I am in some sense, I think the world at the moment is so disquieting, and depressing, and unnerving, that I think for me, there was a wish to escape into another world and another world that would be very immersive, not removed from this world completely. One that is very recognizably human.I think when I was younger, when I was in my teens and 20s, I loved reading science fiction and fantasy before it was such a genre as it is now. I'm a huge fan of Diana Wynne Jones and people like that.Henry: Oh, my god, same. Which one is your favorite?Helen: Oh, that is an impossible question to answer, partly because I want to go back and read a lot of them. Actually, I've got something next to me, just to get some obscurity points. I want to go back to Everard's Ride because there is a story in here that is based on the King's square. I don't know if I'm saying that right, but early 15th century, the story of the imprisoned King of Scotland when he was in prison in England. That one's in my head.The Dalemark Quartet I love because of the sort of medieval, but then I love the ones that are pure, more science fantasy. Which is your favorite? Which should I go back to first?Henry: I haven't read them all because I only started a couple of years ago. I just read Deep Secret, and I thought that was really excellent. I was in Bristol when I read it quite unwittingly. That was wonderful.Helen: Surrounded by Diana Wynne Jones' land. I only discovered many years into an obsession that just meant that I would read every new one while there were still new ones coming out. I sat next to Colin Burrow at a dinner in--Henry: Oh my god.Helen: I did sort of know that he was her son, but monstered him for the whole time, the whole course of sitting together, because I couldn't quite imagine her in a domestic setting, if you like, because she came up with all these extraordinary worlds. I think in days gone by, I went into more obviously imaginary worlds. I think coming back to it now, I wanted something big and something that I really could disappear into. I've been told to read Bleak House for so many decades and felt so ashamed I hadn't. Having done that, I thought, "Well, the whale."Henry: Have you read Diana Wynne Jones' husband's books, John Burrow? Because that's more in your field.Helen: It is, although I'm ashamed to say how badly read I am in medieval literary scholarship. It's weird how these academic silos can operate, shouldn't, probably don't for many, many people. I always feel I'm on horribly thin ground, thin ice when I start talking about medieval literature because I know how much scholarship is out there, and I know how much I haven't read. I must put John Burrow on my list as well.Henry: He's very readable. He's excellent.Helen: I think I can imagine, but I must go into it.Henry: Also, his books are refreshingly short. Your husband is a poet, so there's a lot of literature in your life at the moment.Helen: There is. When we met, which was 10 years ago-- Again, I don't think of myself as knowledgeable about poetry in general, but what was wonderful was discovering how much we had in common in the writing process and how much I could learn from him. To me, one of the things that has always been extremely important in my writing is the sentence, the sound of a sentence, the rhythm of a sentence folded into a paragraph.I find it extremely hard to move on from a paragraph if it's not sitting right yet. The sitting right is as much to do with sound and rhythm as it is to do with content. The content has to be right. It means I'm a nightmare to edit because once I do move on from a paragraph, I think it's finished. Obviously, my editor might beg to differ.I'm very grateful to Thomas Penn, who's also a wonderful historian, who's my editor on this last book, for being so patient with my recalcitrance as an editee. Talking to my husband about words in space on the page, about the rhythm, about the sound, about how he goes about writing has been so valuable and illuminating.I hope that the reading I've been doing, the other thing I should say about going back to big 19th-century novels is that, of course, I had the enormous privilege and learning curve of being part of a Booker jury panel three years ago. That too was an enormous kick in terms of reading and thinking about reading because my co-judges were such phenomenal reading company, and I learned such a lot that year.I feel not only I hope growing as a historian, but I am really, really focusing on writing, reading, being forced out of my bunker where writing is all on the page, starting to think about sound more, think about hearing more, because I think more and more, we are reading that way as a culture, it seems to me, the growth of audiobooks. My mother is adjusting to audiobooks now, and it's so interesting to listen to her as a lifelong, voracious reader, adjusting to what it is to experience a book through sound rather than on the page. I just think it's all fascinating, and I'm trying to learn as I write.Henry: I've been experimenting with audiobooks, because I felt like I had to, and I sort of typically hate audio anything. Jonathan Swift is very good, and so is Diana Wynne Jones.Helen: Interesting. Those two specifically. Is there something that connects the two of them, or are they separately good?Henry: I think they both wrote in a plain, colloquial style. It was very capable of being quite intellectual and had capacity for ideas. Diana Wynne Jones certainly took care about the way it sounded because she read so much to her own children, and that was really when she first read all the children's classics. She had developed for many years an understanding of what would sound good when it was read to a child, I think.Helen: And so that's the voice in her head.Henry: Indeed. As you read her essays, she talks about living with her Welsh grandfather for a year. He was intoning in the chapel, and she sort of comes out of this culture as well.Helen: Then Swift, a much more oral culture.Henry: Swift, of course, is in a very print-heavy culture because he's in London in 1710. We've got coffee houses and all the examiner, and the spectator, and all these people scribbling about each other. I think he was very insistent on what he called proper words in proper places. He became famous for that plain style. It's very carefully done, and you can't go wrong reading that out loud. He's very considerate of the reader that you won't suddenly go, "Oh, I'm in the middle of this huge parenthesis. I don't know how--" As you were saying, Swift-- he would be very deliberate about the placement of everything.Helen: A lot of that has to do with rhythm.Henry: Yes.Helen: Doesn't it? I suppose what I'm wondering, being very ignorant about the 18th century is, in a print-saturated culture, but still one where literacy was less universal than now, are we to assume that that print-saturated culture also incorporated reading out loud —Henry: Yes, exactly so. Exactly so. If you are at home, letters are read out loud. This obviously gives the novelists great opportunities to write letters that have to sort of work both ways. Novels are read out loud. This goes on into the 19th century. Dickens had many illiterate fans who knew his work through it being read to them. Charles Darwin's wife read him novels. When he says, "I love novels," what he means is, "I love it when my wife reads me a novel." [laughs]You're absolutely right. A good part of your audience would come from those listening as well as those reading it.Helen: Maybe we're getting back towards a new version of that with audiobooks expanding in their reach.Henry: I don't know. I saw some interesting stuff. I can't remember who was saying this. Someone was saying, "It's not an oral culture if you're watching short videos. That's a different sort of culture." I think, for us, we can say, "Oh yes, we're like Jonathan Swift," but for the culture at large, I don't know. It is an interesting mixed picture at the moment.Helen: Yes, history never repeats, but we should be wary of writing off any part of culture to do with words.Henry: I think so. If people are reporting builders irritating the neighbourhood with George Eliot, then it's a very mixed picture, right?Helen: It is.Henry: Last literary question. Hilary Mantel has been a big influence on you. What have you taken from her?Helen: That's quite a hard question to answer because I feel I just sit at her feet in awe. If I could point to anything in my writing that could live up to her, I would be very happy. The word that's coming into my head when you phrase the question in that way, I suppose, might be an absolute commitment to precision. Precision in language matters to me so much. Her thought and her writing of whatever kind seems to me to be so precise.Listening to interviews with her is such an outrageous experience because these beautifully, entirely formed sentences come out of her mouth as though that's how thought and language work. They don't for me. [chuckles] I'm talking about her in the present tense because I didn't know her, but I find it hard to imagine that she's not out there somewhere.Henry: She liked ghosts. She might be with us.Helen: She might. I would like to think that. Her writing of whatever genre always seems to me to have that precision, and it's precision of language that mirrors precision of thought, including the ability to imagine herself into somebody else's mind. That's, I suppose, my project as a historian. I'm always trying to experience a lost world through the eyes of a lost person or people, which, of course, when you put it like that, is an impossible task, but she makes it seem possible for her anyway and that's the road I'm attempting to travel one way or another.Henry: What is it about the 14th and 15th centuries that is hardest for us to imagine?Helen: I think this speaks to something else that Hilary Mantel does so extraordinarily well, which is to show us entire human beings who live and breathe and think and feel just as we do in as complex and contradictory and three-dimensional a way as we do, and yet who live in a world that is stripped of so many of the things that we take so much for granted that we find it, I think, hard to imagine how one could function without them.What I've always loved about the late Middle Ages, as a political historian, which is what I think of myself as, is that it has in England such a complex and sophisticated system of government, but one that operates so overwhelmingly through human beings, rather than impersonal, institutionalized, technological structures.You have a king who is the fount of all authority, exercising an extraordinary degree of control over a whole country, but without telephones, without motorized transport, without a professional police service, without a standing army. If we strip away from our understanding of government, all those things, then how on earth does society happen, does rule happen, does government happen?I think it's relatively easy to imagine a small community or even a city, because we can imagine lots of human beings together, but how relationships between human beings happen at a distance, not just in terms of writing a letter to someone you know, but how a very effective power structure happens across hundreds of miles in the absence of those things is the thing that has always absolutely fascinated me about the late Middle Ages. I think that's because it's hard, for me at least, to imagine.Henry: Good. You went to the RSC to watch The Henriad in 2013.Helen: I did.Henry: Is Shakespeare a big influence on this book? How did that affect you?Helen: I suppose this is a long story because Richard II and The Henriad have been-- there is Richard II. Richard II is part of The Henriad, isn't it?Henry: Yes.Helen: Richard II. Henry, see, this is-Henry: The two Henry IVs.Helen: -I'm not Shakespearean. I am. [laughs]Henry: No, it's Richard II, the two Henry IVs, and Henry V. Because, of course, Henry Bolingbroke is in Richard II, and it--Helen: Yes, although I never think of him as really the same person as Henry IV in the Henry IV plays, because he changes so dramatically between the two.Henry: Very often, they have a young actor and an old actor, and of course, in real life, that's insane, right?Helen: It's absolutely insane. I always separate Henry IV, parts I and II, and Henry V off from Richard II because it feels to me as though they operate in rather different worlds, which they do in lots of ways. My story with the Henry ad, now that we've established that I actually know what we're talking about, goes back to when I was in my teens and Kenneth Branagh was playing Henry V in Stratford. I grew up very near Stratford.At 15, 16, watching the young Branagh play Henry V was mind-blowing. I went a whole number of times because, in those days, I don't know how it is now, but you could go and get standing tickets for a fiver on the day. More often than not, if there were spare seats, you would get moved into some extraordinary stall seats at-- I was about to say halftime, I'm a football fan, at the interval.Henry V was the play I knew best for a long time, but at the same time, I'd studied Richard II at school. The Henry IV plays are the ones I know least well. I'm interested now to reflect on the fact that they are the ones that depart most from history. I wonder whether that's why I find them hardest to love, because I'm always coming to the plays from the history. Richard II and Henry V actually have a lot to show us about those kings. They bear very close relationships with a lot of the contemporary chronicles, whereas the Henry IV ones is Shakespeare doing his own thing much more.Particularly, as you've just said, making Henry IV way too old, and/or depending which angle we're looking at it from, making Hotspur way too young, the real Hotspur was three years older than Henry IV. If you want to make Hotspur and how-- your young Turks, you have to make Henry IV old and grey and weary with Northumberland.Back in 2013, the really intense experience I had was being asked to go for a day to join the RSC company on a school trip to Westminster Hall and Westminster Abbey at the beginning of their rehearsal process, so when David Tennant was playing Richard II and Greg Doran was directing. That was absolutely fascinating. I'd been thinking about Richard and Henry for a very long time. Obviously, I was a long way away from writing the book I've just written.Talking to actors is an extraordinary thing for a historian because, of course, to them, these are living characters. They want to know what's in their character's mind. They want to know, quite rightly, the chronological progression of their character's thought. That is something that's become more and more and more and more important to me.The longer I go on writing history, the more intensely attached I am to the need for chronology because if it hasn't happened to your protagonist yet, what are you doing with it? Your protagonist doesn't yet know. We don't know. It's very dramatically clear to us at the moment that we don't know what's happening tomorrow. Any number of outrageous and unpredictable things might happen tomorrow.The same certainly was true in Richard II's reign, goes on being true in Henry IV's reign. That experience, in the wake of which I then went to see Henry IV, parts 1 and 2 in Stratford, was really thought-provoking. The extent to which, even though I'd been working on this period for a long time, and had taught this period, I still was struggling to answer some of those questions.Then I'd just had the similarly amazing experience of having a meeting with the Richard II cast and director at the Bridge Theatre before the Nicholas Heitner production with Jonathan Bailey as Richard went on stage. That was actually towards the end of their rehearsal process. I was so struck that the actor playing Bolingbroke in this production and the actor playing Bolingbroke in the production back in 2013 both asked the same excellent first question, which is so hard for a historian to answer, which is at what point does Bolingbroke decide that he's coming back to claim the crown, not just the Duchy of Lancaster?That is a key question for Bolingbroke in Richard II. Does he already know when he decides he's going to break his exile and come back? Is he challenging for the crown straight away, or is he just coming back for his rightful inheritance with the Duchy of Lancaster? That is the million-dollar question when you're writing about Bolingbroke in 1399.It's not possible to answer with a smoking gun. We don't have a letter or a diary entry from Henry Bolingbroke as he's about to step on board ship in Boulogne saying, "I'm saying I'm coming back for the Duchy of Lancaster." The unfolding logic of his situation is that if he's going to come back at all, he's going to have to claim the crown. When he admits that to himself, and when he admits that to anybody else, are questions we can argue about.It was so interesting to me that that's the question that Shakespeare's Richard II throws up for his Bolingbroke just as much as it does for the historical one.Henry: Is there anything that we fundamentally know about this episode in history that Shakespeare didn't know?Helen: That's an extremely good question, and I'm tempted now to say no.Henry: When I left your book, the one thing I thought was that in Shakespeare, the nobles turn against Richard because of his excesses. Obviously, he really dramatizes that around the death of Gaunt. From your book, you may disagree with this, I came away thinking, well, the nobles wanted more power all the time. They may not have wanted the king's power, but there was this constant thing of the nobles feeling like they were owed more authority.Helen: I think the nobles always want more power because they are ambitious, competitive men within a political structure that rewards ambition and competition. The crucial thing for them is that they can only safely pursue ambition and competition if they know that the structure they're competing within will hold.The thing that keeps that structure rooted and solidly in place is the crown and the things that the crown is there to uphold, namely, particularly, the rule of law because if the rule of law starts to crumble, then the risk is that the whole structure collapses into anarchy. Within anarchy, then a powerful man cannot safely compete for more power because an even more powerful man might be about to roll into his estates and take them over. There have to be rules. There has to be fair competition. The referee is there on a football pitch for a reason.The king, in some senses, whether you want to see him as the keystone in an arch that supports a building or whether he's a referee on a football pitch, there are reasons why powerful men need rules because rules uphold their power. What goes wrong with Richard is that instead of seeing that he and the nobles have a common interest in keeping this structure standing, and that actually he can become more powerful if he works with and through the nobles, he sees them as a threat to him.He's attempting to establish a power structure that will not be beholden to them. In so doing, he becomes a threat to them. This structure that is supposed to stand as one mutually supportive thing is beginning to tear itself apart. That is why Richard's treatment of Bolingbroke becomes such a crucial catalyst, because what Richard does to Bolingbroke is unlawful in a very real and very technical sense. Bolingbroke has not been convicted of any crime. He's not been properly tried. There's been this trial by combat, the duel with Mowbray, but it hasn't stopped arbitrarily, and an arbitrary punishment visited upon both of them. They're both being exiled without having been found guilty, without the judgment of God speaking through this duel.Richard then promises that Bolingbroke can have his inheritance, even though he's in exile. As soon as Gaunt dies, Richard says, "No, I'm having it." Now, all of that is unlawful treatment of Bolingbroke, but because Bolingbroke is the most powerful nobleman in the country, it is also a warning and a threat to every other member of the political classes that if the king takes against you, then his arbitrary will can override the law.That diagnosis is there in Shakespeare. It's the Duke of York, who in reality was just a completely hopeless, wet figure, but he says, and I've got it written down, keep it beside me.Henry: Very nice.Helen: Kind of ridiculous, but here it is. York says to Richard, "Take Herford's rights away and take from time his charters and his customary rights. Let not tomorrow then ensue today. Be not thyself, for how art thou a king, but by fair sequence and succession?" In other words, if you interfere with, and I know you've written about time in these plays, it's absolutely crucial.Part of the process of time in these plays is that the rules play out over time. Any one individual king must not break those rules so that the expected process of succession over time can take place. York's warning comes true, that Richard is unseating himself by seeking to unseat Bolingbroke from his inheritance.Henry: We give Shakespeare good marks as a historian.Helen: In this play, yes, absolutely. The things he tinkers with in Richard II are minor plot points. He compresses time in order to get it all on stage in a plausible sequence of events. He compresses two queens into one, given that Richard was married to, by the time he fell, a nine-year-old who he'd married when he was six. It's harder to have a six-year-old making speeches on stage, so he puts the two queens into one.Henry: You don't want to pay another actor.Helen: Exactly.Henry: It's expensive.Helen: You don't want children and animals on stage. Although there is a wonderful account of a production of Richard II on stage in the West End in 1901, with the Australian actor Oscar Asche in it, playing Bolingbroke. The duel scene, he had full armour and a horse, opening night. It was a different horse from the one he rehearsed with. He gives an account in his autobiography of this horse rearing and him somersaulting heroically off the horse.Henry: Oh my god.Helen: The curtain having to come down and then it going back up again to tumultuous applause. You think, "Oscar, I'm wondering whether you're over-egging this pudding." Anyway, I give Shakespeare very good marks in Richard II, not really in the Henry IV plays, but gets back on track.Henry: The Henry IV plays are so good, we're forgiven. Was Richard II a prototype Henry VIII?Helen: Yes. Although, of course, history doesn't work forwards like that. I always worry about being a historian, talking about prototypes, if you see what I mean, but--Henry: No, this is just some podcast, so we don't have to be too strict. He's over-mighty, his sense of his relationship to God. There are issues in parliament about, "How much can the Pope tell us what to do?" There are certain things that seem to be inherent in the way the British state conceives of itself at this point that become problematic in another way.Helen: Is this pushing it too far to say Richard is a second son who ends up being the lone precious heir to the throne who must be wrapped in cotton wool to ensure that his unique God-given authority is protected? Also describes Henry VIII.Henry: They both like fancy clothes.Helen: Both like fancy clothes. Charles I is also a second son who has to step up.Henry: With wonderful cuffs and collars. He's another big dresser.Helen: And great patrons of art. I think we're developing new historical--Henry: No, I think there's a whole thing here.Helen: I think there is. What Henry does, of course, in rather different, because a lot has changed thanks to the Wars of the Roses, the power of the nobility to stand up independently of the crown is significantly lessened by the political effects of the Wars of the Roses, not at least that a lot of them have had their heads cut off, or died in battle, and the Tudors are busy making sure that they remain in the newly subjected place that they find themselves in.Henry then finds to go back to Hilary Mantel, a very, very able political servant who works out how to use parliament for him in rejecting those extra English powers that might restrain him. I do always wonder what Richard thought he was going to do if he'd succeeded in becoming Holy Roman Emperor, which I take very seriously as a proposition from Richard.Most other historians, because it's so patently ridiculous, if you look at it from a European perspective, have just said, "Oh, he got this idea that he wanted to become Holy Roman Emperor," but, of course, it was never going to happen. In Richard's mind, I think it was extremely real. Whether he really would have tried to give the English crown to Rutland, his favorite by the end of the reign, while he went off in glory to be crowned by the Pope, I don't know what was in his head. The difference with Henry is that the ambitions he eventually conceives are very England-focused, and so he can make them happen.Henry: Is there some sort of argument that, if the king hadn't won the Wars of the Roses, and the nobility had flourished, and their sons hadn't been killed, the reformation would have just been much harder to pull off here?[silence]Helen: I wonder what that would have looked like, because in a sense, the king was always going to win the Wars of the Roses, in the sense that you have to have a king. The minute you had someone left standing after that mess, that protracted mess, if he knew what he was doing, and there are arguments about the extent to which Henry VII knew what he was doing, or was doing something very different, whether or not he knew it was different, but there was always going to be an opportunity for a king to assert himself after that.Particularly, the extent to which the lesser landowners, the gentry had realized they couldn't just rely on the nobility to protect them anymore. They couldn't just follow their lord into battle and abdicate responsibility.Henry: Okay.Helen: That's an interesting--Henry: How much should we blame Edward III for all of this?Helen: For living too long and having too many sons?Henry: My argument against Edward is the Hundred Years' War, it doesn't actually go that well by the end of his reign, and it's cost too much money. Too many dukes with too much power. It's not that he had too many sons, he elevates them all and creates this insane situation. The war itself starts to tip the balance between the king and parliament, and so now you've got it from the dukes, and from the other side, and he just didn't manage the succession at all.Even though his son has died, and it really needs some kind of-- He allowed. He should have known that he was allowing a vacuum to open up where there's competition from the nobles, and from parliament, and the finances are a mess, and this war isn't there. It's just… he just leaves a disaster, doesn't he?Helen: I think I'd want to reframe that a little bit. Perhaps, I'm too much the king's friend. I think the political, and in some senses, existential dilemma for a medieval king is that the best of all possible worlds is what Edward achieves in the 1340s and the 1350s, which is, fight a war for reasons that your subjects recognize as in the common interest, in the national interest. Fight it over there so that the lands that are being devastated and the villages and towns that are being burned are not yours. Bring back lots of plunder. Everybody's getting richer and feeling very victorious.You can harness parliament. When things are going well, a medieval king and a parliament are not rivals for power. An English king working with parliament is more powerful than an English king trying to work without parliament. If things are going well, he gets more money, he can pass laws, he can enforce his will more effectively. It's win-win-win if you're ticking all those boxes.As you're pointing out, the worst of all possible worlds is to be fighting a war that's going badly. To fight a war is a big risk because either you're going to end up winning and everything's great, or if it's going badly, then you'd rather be at peace. Of course, you're not necessarily in a position to negotiate peace, depending on the terms of the war you've established.Similarly, with sons, you want heirs. You want to know the succession is safe. I think Edward's younger sons would argue with you about setting up very powerful dukes because the younger ones really-- York and Gloucester, Edmund of Langley and Thomas of Woodstock, really didn't have much in the way of an estate given to them at all, and always felt very hard done by about that. John of Gaunt is set up very well because he's married off to the heir of the Duke of Lancaster who's handily died, leaving only daughters.Henry: That's the problem, isn't it, creating that sort of impact? John of Gaunt is far too rich and powerful.Helen: You say that, except he's unfeasibly loyal. Without Gaunt, disaster happens much, much, much earlier. Gaunt is putting all those resources into the project of propping up the English state and the English crown for way longer than Richard deserves, given that Richard's trying to murder him half the time in the 1380s.Henry: [laughs] For sure. No, I agree with you there, but from Edward III's point of view, it's a mistake to make one very powerful son another quite powerful son next to-- We still see this playing out in royal family dynamics.Helen: This is the problem. What is the perfect scenario in a hereditary system where you need an heir and a spare, but even there, the spare, if he doesn't get to be the heir, is often very disgruntled. [laughs] If he does get to be the heir, as we've just said, turns out to be overconvinced of his own-Henry: Oh, indeed, yes.Helen: -specialness. Then, if you have too many spares, you run into a different kind of problem. Equally, if you don't have a hereditary system, then you have an almighty battle, as the Anglo-Saxons often did, about who's actually going to get the crown in the next generation. It's a very tricky--Henry: Is England just inherently unstable? We've got the Black Death, France is going to be a problem, whatever happens. Who is really going to come to a good fiscal position in this situation? It's no one's fault. It's just there wasn't another way out.Helen: You could say that England's remarkably-- See, I'm just playing devil's advocate the whole time.Henry: No, good.Helen: You could say England is remarkably stable in the sense that England is very unusually centralized for a medieval state at this point. It's centralized in a way that works because it's small enough to govern. It's, broadly speaking, an island. You've got to deal with the Scotts border, but it's a relatively short border. Yes, you have powerful nobles, but they are powerful nobles who, by this stage, are locked into the state. They're locked into a unified system of law. The common law rules everyone. Everyone looks to Westminster.It's very different from what the King of France has been having to face, which has been having to push his authority outward from the Île-de-France, reconquer bits of France that the English have had for a long time, impose his authority over other princes of the realm in a context where there are different laws, there are different customs, there are different languages. You could say that France is in a much more difficult and unstable situation.Of course, what we see as the tide of the war turns again in the early 15th century is precisely that France collapses into civil war, and the English can make hay again in that situation. If Henry V had not died too young with not enough sons in 1423, and particularly, if he'd left a son who grew up to be any use at all, as opposed to absolutely none-- what am I saying? I'm saying that the structure of government in England could work astonishingly well given the luck of the right man at the helm. The right man at the helm had to understand his responsibilities at home, and he had to be capable of prosecuting a successful war abroad because that is how this state works best.As you've just pointed out, prosecuting a successful war abroad is an inherently unstable scenario because no war is ever going to go in your direction the entire time. That's what Richard, who has no interest in war at all is discovering, because once the tide of war is lapping at your own shores, instead of all happening over there, it's a very, very different prospect in terms of persuading parliament to pay for it, quite understandably.You talk about the Black Death. One of the extraordinary things is looking at England in 1348, 1349, when the Black Death hits. Probably, something approaching half the population dies in 18 months. If you're looking at the progress of the war, you barely notice it happened at all. What does the government do? It snaps into action and implements a maximum wage immediately, in case [chuckles] these uppity laborers start noticing there are fewer of them, and they can ask for more money.The amount of control, at that stage at least, that the government has over a country going through an extraordinary set of challenges is quite remarkable, really.Henry: Did Bolingbroke do the right thing?Helen: I think Bolingbroke did the only possible thing, which, in some senses, equates to the right thing. If he had not come back, he would not only have been abandoning his own family, his dynasty, his inheritance, everything he'd been brought up to believe was his responsibility, but also abandoning England to what was pretty much by that stage, clearly, a situation of tyranny.The big argument is always, well, we can identify a tyrant, we have a definition of tyranny. That is, if a legitimate king rules in the common interest and according to the law, then a tyrant rules not in the common interest, and not according to the law. But then the thing that the political theorists argue about is whether or not you can actively resist a tyrant, or whether you have to wait for God to act.Then, the question is, "Might God be acting through me if I'm Bolingbroke?" That's what Bolingbroke has to hope, because if he doesn't do what he does in 1399, he is abandoning everything his whole life has been devoted to maintaining and taking responsibility for. It's quite hard to see where England would then end up, other than with somebody else trying to challenge Richard in the way that Henry does.Henry: Why was he anointed with Thomas Becket's oil?Helen: Because Richard had found it in the tower, [chuckles] and was making great play of the claims that were made for Thomas. This is one of the interesting things about Richard. He is simultaneously very interested in history, and interested in his place in history, his place in the lineage of English kings, going all the way back, particularly to the confessor to whom he looks as not only a patron saint, but as in some sense, a point of identification.He's also seeking to stop time at himself. He doesn't like to think about the future beyond himself. He doesn't show any interest in fathering an heir. His will is all about how to make permanent the judgments that he's made on his nobles. It's not about realistically what's going to happen after his death.In the course of his interest in history, he has found this vial of oil in the tower somewhere in a locked drawer with a note that says, "The Virgin gave this to Thomas Becket, and whoever is anointed with this oil shall win all his battles and shall lead England to greatness," et cetera. Richard has tried to have himself re-anointed, and even his patsy Archbishop of Canterbury that he's put in place after exiling the original one who'd stood up to him a bit.Even the new Archbishop of Canterbury says, "Sire, anointing doesn't really work like that. I'm afraid we can't do it twice." Richard has been wearing this vial round his neck in an attempt to claim that he is not only the successor to the confessor, but he is now the inheritor of this holy oil. The French king has had a holy oil for a very long time in the Cathedral of Reims, which was supposedly given to Clovis, the first king of France, by an angel, et cetera.Richard, who is always very keen on emulating, or paralleling the crown of France, is very, very keen on this. If you were Henry coming in 1399 saying, "No, God has spoken through me. The country has rallied to me. I am now the rightful king of England. We won't look too closely at my justifications for that," and you are appropriating the ceremonial of the crown, you are having yourself crowned in Westminster Abbey on the 13th of October, which is the feast day of the confessor, you are handed that opportunity to use the symbolism of this oil that Richard has just unearthed, and was trying to claim for himself. You can then say, "No, I am the first king crowned with this oil," and you're showing it to the French ambassadors and so on.If we are to believe the chroniclers, it starts making his hair fall out, which might be a contrary sign from God. It's a situation where you are usurping the throne, and what is questionable is your right to be there. Then, any symbolic prop you can get, you're going to lean on as hard as you can.Henry: A few general questions to close. Should we be more willing to open up old tombs?Helen: Yes. [laughs]Henry: Good. [laughs]Helen: I'm afraid, for me, historical curiosity is-- Our forebears in the 18th and 19th century had very few qualms at all. One of the things I love about the endless series of scholarly antiquarian articles that are-- or not so scholarly, in some cases, that are written about all the various tomb openings that went on in the 18th and 19th century, I do love the moments, where just occasionally, they end up saying, "Do you know what, lads? Maybe we shouldn't do this bit." [chuckles]They get right to the brink with a couple of tombs and say, "Oh, do you know what? This one hasn't been disturbed since 1260, whatever. Maybe we won't. We'll put it back." Mostly, they just crowbar the lid off and see what they can find, which one might regret in terms of what we might now find with greater scientific know-how, and et cetera. Equally, we don't do that kind of thing anymore unless we're digging up a car park. We're not finding things out anyway. I just love the information that comes out, so yes, for me.Henry: Dig up more tombs.Helen: Yes.Henry: What is it that you love about the Paston Letters?Helen: More or less everything. I love the language. I love the way that, even though most of them are dictated to scribes, but you can hear the dictation. You can hear individual voices. Everything we were saying about sentences. You can hear the rhythm. You can hear the speech patterns. I'm no linguistic expert, but I love seeing the different forms of spelling and how that plays out on the page.I love how recognizable they are as a family. I love the fact that we hear women's voices in a way that we very rarely do in the public records. The government which is mainly what we have to work with. I love Margaret Paston, who arrives at 18 as a new bride, and becomes the matriarch of the family. I love her relationship with her two eldest boys, John and John, and their father, John.I do wish they hadn't done that because it doesn't help those of us who are trying to write about them. I love the view you get of late medieval of 15th-century politics from the point of view of a family trying to survive it. The fact that you get tiny drops in letters that are also about shopping, or also about your sisters fall in love with someone unsuitable. Unsuitable only, I hasten to add, because he's the family bailiff, not because he isn't a wonderful and extremely able man. They all know those two things. It's just that he's a family bailiff, and therefore, not socially acceptable.I love that experience of being immersed in the world of a 15th-century gentry family, so politically involved, but not powerful enough to protect themselves, who can protect themselves in the Wars of the Roses in any case.Henry: If someone wants to read the Paston Letters, but they don't want to read Middle English, weird spelling, et cetera, is there a good edition that they can use?Helen: Yes, there is an Oxford World's Classic. They're all selected. There isn't a complete edition in modern spelling. If any publishers are listening, I would love to do one. [chuckles]Henry: Yes, let's have it.Helen: Let's have it. I would really, really love to do that. There are some very good selections. Richard Barber did one many years ago, and, of course, self-advertising. There is also my book, now more than 20 years old, about the Paston family, where I was trying to put in as much of the letters as I could. I wanted to weave the voices through. Yes, please go and read the Paston Letters in selections, in whatever form you can get them, and let's start lobbying for a complete modernized Paston.Henry: That's right. Why did you leave academia? Because you did it before it was cool.Helen: [laughs] That's very kind of you to say. My academic life was, and is very important to me, and I hate saying this now, because the academic world is so difficult now. I ended up in it almost by accident, which is a terrible thing to say now, people having to-- I never intended to be an academic. My parents were academics, and I felt I'd seen enough and wasn't sure I wanted to do that.I couldn't bear to give up history, and put in a PhD application to work with Christine Carpenter, who'd been the most inspiring supervisor when I was an undergraduate, got the place, thought, "Right, I'm just going to do a PhD." Of course, once you're doing a PhD, and everyone you know is starting to apply for early career jobs, which weren't even called early career jobs in those days, because it was a million years ago.I applied for a research fellowship, was lucky enough to get it, and then applied for a teaching job, utterly convinced, and being told by the people around me that I stood no chance of getting it, because I was way too junior, and breezed through the whole process, because I knew I wasn't going to get it, and then turned up looking for someone very junior.I got this wonderful teaching job at Sidney Sussex in Cambridge and spent eight years there, learned so much, loved working with the students. I was working very closely with the students in various ways, but I wasn't-- I'm such a slow writer, and a writer that needs to be immersed in what I was doing, and I just wasn't managing to write, and also not managing to write in the way I wanted to write, because I was becoming clearer and clearer about the fact that I wanted to write narrative history.Certainly, at that point, it felt as though writing narrative history for a general audience and being an early career academic didn't go so easily together. I think lots of people are now showing how possible it is, but I wasn't convinced I could do it. Then, sorry, this is a very long answer to what's [crosstalk] your question.Henry: That's good.Helen: I also had my son, and my then partner was teaching at a very different university, I mean, geographically different, and we were living in a third place, and trying to put a baby into that geographical [chuckles] setup was not going to work. I thought, "Well, now or never, I'll write a proposal for a book, a narrative, a book for a general readership, a narrative book about the Paxton family, because that's what I really want to write, and I'll see if I can find an agent, and I'll see if I," and I did.I found the most wonderful agent, with whose help I wrote a huge proposal, and got a deal for it two weeks before my son was due. At that point, I thought, "Okay, if I don't jump now, now or never, the stars are aligned." I've been a freelance medieval historian ever since then, touching every wood I can find as it continues to be possible. I am very grateful for those years in Cambridge. They were the making of me in terms of training and in terms of teaching.I certainly think without teaching for those years, I wouldn't be anywhere near as good a writer, because you learn such a lot from talking to, and reading what students produce.Henry: How do you choose your subjects now? How do you choose what to write about?Helen: I follow my nose, really. It's not very scientific.Henry: Why should it be?Helen: Thank you. The book, bizarrely, the book that felt most contingent, was the one I wrote after the Paston book, because I knew I'd written about the Pastons in my PhD, and then again more of it in the monograph that was based on my PhD. I knew having written about the Pastons in a very academic, analytical way, contributing to my analysis of 15th-century politics. I knew I wanted to put them at the center and write about them. That was my beginning point.The big question was what to do next, and I was a bit bamboozled for a while. The next book I ended up writing was She-Wolves, which is probably, until now, my best-known book. It was the one that felt most uncertain to me, while I was putting it together, and that really started from having one scene in my head, and it's the scene with which the book opens. It's the scene of the young Edward VI in 1553, Henry VIII's only son, dying at the age of 15.Suddenly, me suddenly realizing that wherever you looked on the Tudor family tree at that point, there were only women left. The whole question of whether a woman could rule was going to have to be answered in some way at that point, and because I'm a medievalist, that made me start thinking backwards, and so I ended up choosing some medieval queens to write about, because they've got their hands on power one way or another.Until very close to finishing it, I was worried that it wouldn't hang together as a book, and the irony is that it's the one that people seem to have taken to most. The next book after that grew out of that one, because I found myself going around talking about She-Wolves, and saying repeatedly, "The problem these queens faced was that they couldn't lead an army on the battlefield."Women couldn't do that. The only medieval woman who did that was Joan of Arc, and look what happened to her. Gradually, I realized that I didn't really know what had happened to her. I mean, I did know what--Henry: Yes, indeed.Helen: I decided that I really wanted to write about her, so I did that. Then, having done that, and having then written a very short book about Elizabeth I, that I was asked to write for Penguin Monarchs, I realized I'd been haunted all this time by Richard and Henry, who I'd been thinking about and working on since the very beginning of my PhD, but I finally felt, perhaps, ready to have a go at them properly.It's all been pretty organic apart from She-Wolves, which was the big, "What am I writing about next?" That took shape slowly and gradually. Now, I'm going to write about Elizabeth I properly in a-Henry: Oh, exciting.Helen: -full-scale book, and I decided that, anyway, before I wrote this last one, but I-- It feels even righter now, because I Am Richard II, Know Ye Not That, feels even more intensely relevant having now written about Richard and Henry, and I'm quite intimidated because Elizabeth is quite intimidating, but I think it's good, related by your subjects.[laughter]Henry: Have you read the Elizabeth Jenkins biography?Helen: Many, many years ago. It's on my shelf here.Henry: Oh, good.Helen: In fact, so it's one of the things I will be going back to. Why do you ask particularly? I need--Henry: I'm a big Elizabeth Jenkins fan, and I like that book particularly.Helen: Wonderful. Well, I will be redoubled in my enthusiasm.Henry: I look forward to seeing what you say about it. What did you learn from Christine Carpenter?Helen: Ooh. Just as precision was the word that came into my head when you asked me about Hilary Mantel, the word that comes into my head when you ask about Christine is rigor. I think she is the most rigorous historical thinker that I have ever had the privilege of working with and talking to. I am never not on my toes when I am writing for, talking to, reading Christine. That was an experience that started from the first day I walked into her room for my first supervision in 1987.It was really that rigor that started opening up the medieval world to me, asking questions that at that stage I couldn't answer at all, but suddenly, made everything go into technicolor. Really, from the perspective that I had been failing to ask the most basic questions. I would sometimes have students say to me, "Oh, I didn't say that, because I thought it was too basic."I have always said, "No, there is no question that is too basic." Because what Christine started opening up for me was how does medieval government work? What are you talking about? There is the king at Westminster. There is that family there in Northumberland. What relates the two of them? How does this work? Think about it structurally. Think about it in human terms, but also in political structural terms, and then convince me that you understand how this all goes together. I try never to lose that.Henry: Helen Castor, thank you very much.Helen: Thank you so much. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.commonreader.co.uk/subscribe

In this episode of Let's Talk About CBT, host Helen MacDonald speaks with Sarah, Sally, and Leanne about Sarah's experience of having Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) after giving birth. They explore how CBT helped Sarah regain control during a challenging postnatal period, addressing struggles such as insomnia, anxiety, and adjusting to new motherhood. Sarah shares her journey of balancing therapy with the therapeutic benefits of movement and time spent in nature. CBT therapists Sally and Leanne discuss the powerful combination of therapy, physical activity, and connecting with nature for improving mental health.  Useful links: NHS Choices- Insomnia-https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/insomnia/  NHS Guidance on feeling depressed after childbirth: https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/baby/support-and-services/feeling-depressed-after-childbirth/ MIND information on how nature can help mental health: https://www.mind.org.uk/information-support/tips-for-everyday-living/nature-and-mental-health/how-nature-benefits-mental-health/ For more on CBT the BABCP website is www.babcp.com Accredited therapists can be found at www.cbtregisteruk.com Listen to more episodes from Let's Talk About CBT here. Credits: Music is Autmn Coffee by Bosnow from Uppbeat Music from #Uppbeat (free for Creators!): https://uppbeat.io/t/bosnow/autumn-coffee License code: 3F32NRBYH67P5MIF This episode was produced and edited by Steph Curnow   Transcript: Helen: Hello, and welcome to Let's Talk About CBT, the podcast where we talk about cognitive and behavioural psychotherapies, what they are, what they can do, and what they can't. I'm Helen MacDonald, your host. I'm the senior clinical advisor for the British Association for Behavioural and Cognitive Psychotherapies Today I'm very pleased to have Sarah, Sally and Leanne here to talk with me about having CBT, in Sarah's case, when you've recently had a baby and also the value of getting more active and getting outside into nature and how that can help when you're also having CBT. Sarah, would you like to introduce yourself, please? Sarah: Hi, I'm Sarah. I'm, 37 from Sheffield and like I said, just recently had a baby, and she's absolutely wonderful. She is a happy, loud little bundle of joy. I ended up having CBT though, because the experience of having the baby wasn't what I thought it was going to be, I think is the reason. And I, just went a little bit mad, so I got some help. Yeah, I'm normally a very happy, positive, active person. Lots of friends, very sociable, always like to be doing things, always like to be in control and have a plan. I like to know what I'm doing and what everyone else is doing. And all that changed a little bit and I didn't really know what to do about it. So yeah, got some therapy. Helen: Thank you Sarah. So, we'll talk with you a bit more about what that was like. And first, Sally, would you like to just briefly say who you are? Sally: Yeah, so I'm, my name's Sally. I am a Cognitive Behavioural Therapist, working both in the NHS and in, in private practice at the moment. Helen: Thank you. And Leanne, Leanne: Hi, I'm Leanne. and I'm a cognitive behavioural therapist as well. And I also work in the NHS and in private practice with Sally. Helen: Thank you all very much. What we're going to do is ask Sarah to tell us a bit more about, when you use the term mad, perhaps I could ask you to say a little bit more about what was happening for you that made you look for some therapy. Sarah: Wel the short answer to that is I developed insomnia about 12 weeks postnatally, didn't sleep for five days. Baby was sleeping better than most, you know, so it was equally frustrating because there was no real reason I didn't think that I should be awake. And sleep obviously is very important when you've had a baby. As I said, I like to be in control, like to prepare, like to know what's going on. So I did hypnobirthing, I prepared, I planned, I packed the biggest suitcase for this birth of this baby that I was really excited for and I thought I'd prepared mentally for every eventuality- what kind of birth, what would happen afterwards, but all very physical because they're the sorts of things that I could understand and imagine. And basically I ended up having an emergency C section, which in the moment I was fine with and I didn't think I was bothered by it, but the level of pain afterwards, that then again affected my level of control over looking after the baby. And the level of debilitation it created that I wasn't expecting- this is the key thing, I wasn't expecting it. That meant that I wasn't able to be me, really. I wasn't able to not least look after a baby, but get myself dressed, get myself showered, walk to the shop, drive a car, play netball, walk my dog. And I wasn't able to do any of that. I didn't appreciate that I was struggling with that, with accepting that. And because it went on for so long, and of course with this comes the baby blues that everyone talks about, but that's meant to only last apparently a couple of weeks. I, you know, you kind of just think, oh, well, I feel all this. I feel pain. I feel sad. I can't stop crying. But all that's meant to happen, all that's normal and it's sort of became the norm. So I was like, well, this is normal. This is how I'm going to feel forever. At this point I didn't have insomnia. I just could not stop crying. And I mean, like I couldn't, I didn't talk to anyone for two days at one point, because I knew if I opened my mouth to say anything, I would start crying. Like literally anything, I would just start crying. What the clincher for me was when I spoke to a doctor, I thought they were going to say get out and about, do some therapy, which at the time, I'm going to be honest, I thought, I can't sleep. I need a fix now. What I now know is I was doing a lot of behaviours that over time culminated in my body going, you're not listening to me, you're not well. Right I need to do something physical so that you wake up and do something about it. And that was the insomnia. So, I went to the doctor fully expecting them to say, do some mindfulness, do this, do that. And at that point I was just, you need to fix this now. I need to sleep. I need drugs. And yes, that's what they gave me, but they did say you need to do CBT- but what they did say what the first thing the doctor said was, you need antidepressants. Now, as a nurse working in GP surgery for them to jump all the self-help stuff and go take these tablets was like, Oh, right. I'm not okay. and it gave me that like allowance to say, I need to take tablets. But I already had said to myself, but I want to do not just mindfulness and helpfulness for myself. I want to do structured CBT because that way it is something I'm doing to give me back my control and I've got a plan. And because I already knew CBT was wonderful. Yeah, I didn't really understand what it was, how it worked, the structure of it. And I get that there's different types for different problems. but I knew that's what I wanted to do, once I had tablets to help me sleep and knew the antidepressants were going to work eventually, which did take a while. I was at least doing something myself that would help me forever. And I just thought, what have I got to lose? I need to do something. And until I started CBT, basically, I just felt like I was running around in circles in the dark. And the CBT gave me control and focus and, right, this is what we're doing going that way. Because until I started CBT, you know, I was Googling everything. Right, I'll try this. Right, I'll try that. And because it didn't work within 24 hours, I'd then try something else and try something else. Now it was making it worse, obviously. So, to have the CBT and have my therapist say, do this one thing for a whole week. I was like, all right, okay. That's quite a long time, but there's obviously a reason. Helen: Sarah, thank you for telling us all about that. What I'm hearing is that you had a combination of massive changes in your life, which will happen when you've had a baby, all sorts of things about the kind of person that you are, kind of added to all your really careful and sensible preparations for having this baby and then really being taken by surprise almost by all the other impact that it had on you and taking a while really to look for help and to look for a very specific kind of help then. And I'm just wondering in the context of all that, what it was like when you first went to see Sally for therapy? Sarah: Well, like I say, it was brilliant. It was like having someone turn the lights on and point me in the right direction and say, right, head that way and don't turn off and don't go any other direction. Just keep going that way. And it will eventually result in this. It's like if you go to the gym and you're running on the treadmill and you're thinking, well, is this going to achieve what I want it to achieve? And until it does start to, you've not got that positive reinforcement, to keep going. So quite often you stop, and that's what I was doing. I was trying one thing, trying the next, because I was so desperate for it to just go away, this insomnia. Which obviously at the time was one thing, but I understand now there was a whole other problem going on but the insomnia was what I needed fixing. I found CBT for insomnia, but Sally said, do you want to do a more generic anxiety control type approach and I said, yeah, because that's what if before this, you know, five, six years ago, little things would happen. And I think, Oh, I should do CBT for that. So it's clearly the same thing. So yeah. Why don't we just tackle it as a whole? And that was definitely the best thing to do. Helen: It sounds as if one of the things that was really helpful was looking at the bigger picture, as well as focusing on taking enough time to make changes. Okay. Can you tell us about the specific things that you did in therapy that you saw as particularly helpful. Sarah: Yeah. Like you say, what was helpful was being given a timeline really, and a direction. Like I say, when you go to the gym, you're not sure if it's going to work, I had to just trust Sally that what was she was explaining to me was going to work. And of course, at the time I couldn't see how it was going to work, but at least someone I trusted was telling me it will this, just do this? What was most helpful I could say was being told you've got to do the homework yourself. There's no point in being just told stuff. It was explained to me. And then what was helpful was then being told, go away and do this one thing for a whole week and then we'll review. So it really just broke down my thoughts, behaviours, my thought processes that I was going at such a hundred miles an hour that I wasn't giving, even giving myself time to think or realise I was having, and essentially that's what CBT is, you know, making you stop, think and unpick your thoughts and your behaviours and then trying to change them accordingly. So yeah, that the homework was helpful. And then obviously reviewing that homework, which with, before I even got to the review, a week later, I was able to physically feel and see why I was being asked to do what I was being asked to do. Helen: And I'm just thinking the analogy that you used there about being in the gym that you wouldn't necessarily expect to be super fit or running five miles the first time you got on the treadmill, but there was something that was tending to make you, you use the word desperate really to make a difference immediately. Because things needed to change. And during the therapy, was there anything that you found particularly challenging or something that either you and Sally talked about it, but you really didn't want to try it? Sarah: Well, as the weeks moved on, obviously the challenges that the homework got harder because it asked you to delve further in and make the changes of what you've, you know, you've realized just to give an idea, essentially the first week, I was asked to literally rate my happiness per hour as to what I was doing. Sounds simple. It is simple, but very quickly I realised, well, this doesn't make me as happy. So why am I doing it? And then of course you stop doing it because you know, it doesn't make you happy. And then over time, there's less time that you're unhappy. The second week, it was a bit more detail, rate how anxious certain things make you., So that was all fine. But once it got to the weeks where it was highlight the things that you've found out make you anxious, now do them or don't do them. Or, you know, if there's something you're doing to make yourself feel better, but actually you've realised it doesn't really work, it actually has a negative effect later on, don't do it. And if there's something that you're avoiding, but you know probably will make you feel better- do it. So that's obviously that's the scary bit because you've literally facing the spider, if that's what your problem is. but again, like every other stage during the CBT, I found it really easy. The main thing was I trusted Sally and also had nothing to lose.  One of the things, the behaviours that we realized I was doing was seeking reassurance from people on hypothetical worries. So you Google, you ask your experienced mums, why is my baby this colour or not sleeping or eating or the poo looks like this? They can't answer that. And you're wanting them to reply, Oh, it's this. And of course they can't. So, or I'd say to my husband, am I going to sleep tonight? He doesn't know that. And by doing that, I would reinforce the anxiety. But yeah, that was an example of something I stopped myself doing. And within days I realized, Oh, there was that thing that normally I would have asked about or Googled. I didn't. And actually nothing bad happened and I forgot all about it. Cause that was the worry was that it all comes back to sleep. If I didn't ask, would I then lie awake at night worrying I don't know what the answer is, but I didn't. So yeah, the hardest bit was actually stopping certain behaviours or starting certain behaviours. But actually I found it very easy once I had done because the positive reinforcement was there, you know, it worked. Helen: Thank you, Sarah. And, in a couple of minutes, I'm going to bring Sally into the conversation to talk about her reflections on what you've just been saying. Overall though, what are the things that you're still using now from what happened in therapy? What are the things that you learned and how are things now compared with when you first went to see Sally. Sarah: Well, things are great. I'm on antidepressants still. I'm going to see the doctor soon. Cause they want you to be on those for six months before you even think about coming off them. I feel myself now, so I feel confident to do that. Um, and because I'm healed, I'm back to being myself physically. I play netball, I walk the dog. I mean, I walked for four hours yesterday because of dog walking and pushing the pram around and played netball as well. So that helps, you know, being out and about physically, being in nature where I would normally be definitely helps my mood. The CBT a hundred percent has helped because there's been change again with the baby. So we've gone from breastfeeding to weaning, sleep changes, cause it's all about sleep, putting her in her own room, thinking when she's going to wake up, is she okay? Am I going to get back to sleep? Is there any point in me going to sleep? Cause she can be awake in this many hours. You know, that's a whole new challenge that I've had to deal with and there's been times that I've stopped and thought, Ooh. There's a thing I'm doing here and it's a behaviour that we recognised was what I was doing originally, which when I did it too much caused the problem. So, I've been able to really be more self-aware, basically, checking with myself and go, stop that. You don't need to do that. Everything will be fine. And guess what it is. Helen: Well, that's really good to hear. And what I'm also hearing is that it's not just that therapy helped, is that you're still using the techniques that you learn in the therapy. Sarah: I am. And also, I meant to say. This might not be the same for everybody, but it's quite important for myself because I'm not at work at the moment, you know, I'm a nurse. I've lost a sense of not purpose, but people come to me every day at work asking for help and support and advice. And I love to be able to do that and hear them say that's really helped, thank you. And since having the CBT, because it is something people are more happy to talk about nowadays, the amount of people I've spoken to that have said, Oh, I've done CBT or Oh, I'm thinking about, I've been told I should do CBT. Or none of that just I'm doing this behaviour and I'm not happy. I feel like I've been able to be a mini therapist to a few other people. I've been able to pass the torch a little bit because even though the problem they might be having is different to insomnia or anxiety, a lot of what Sally taught me was, I found, they were telling me things and I was thinking, well, I'll just say this thing that I do because it would work. And I've been able to relay what Sally said to so many people. And that's given me a lot of, joy because I've been able to help people. And they've said, Oh, right. Brilliant. You know, either they've gone to therapy because I've told them why they should because they didn't have anyone telling them that before, they've gone and then come back and gone, that was great. Or they've said to me, Oh, I didn't think anybody else was on Sertraline. 80 percent of the country are on Sertraline. It's fine. And that gives them support. Or like I say, the little technique Sally taught me, I've said, do this. And then they've come back and gone, do you know that really helped. So that's been nice for me too. Helen: Well, if there's somebody out there listening to this, who hasn't had that kind of conversation with you, or someone else who's recommended CBT or things that you can do to help in a situation like that. Is there anything that you would want to say about, CBT or looking after your mental health that anybody out there who hasn't encountered it before might need to know or want to hear. Sarah: It's free, most of the time. It's something that will help you for the rest of your life. Unlike, you know, a course of antibiotics. it's something that gives you control. It doesn't hurt, there's no injections. It's brilliant. Talk to people, I think is the key thing, not least your doctor, because obviously that's a private conversation. But again, as working in a GP surgery, I know that majority of health issues that come through the door, there's always an in for therapy. There's always a little bit of whatever they've come in with. Do you know what therapy could help that?  It should be the crux of everything. You know whenever a patient comes to see me, I can't think of many situations where I don't say, do you know what would help? Drinking more water. I feel like it's just as important as that in terms of you can't fix something up here if you don't get your foundation and your foundation is nourishment and happiness and the therapy made me happier because I had more control, and was less anxious and more relaxed and, you know, just chill. So I think just talk to people, not least your GP, if you don't want to talk to someone personally. Helen: From my point of view, that's a great message, Sarah. Thank you so much for sharing that with us. And what I'm going to do now is I'm going to ask Sally, just to talk a little bit, I could see, I know our listeners can't see our faces, but I could see Sally smiling when you were saying some of the things that she told you to do. And I'd be really interested to hear Sally's reflections on her therapy with you and how you work together. Sally: Yeah, absolutely. It was brilliant working with Sarah and I think it's really nice to see where she's at now and also the fact that she's still using a lot of those tools that she learned and that she put into practice and, I think one of the things that was really good is that Sarah was ready. She was ready to engage. She wanted to do, you know, she wanted to do all of the things. She wanted to practice everything. She was ready there with the notebook, every session kind of, you know, making notes, taking it all in. And that's brilliant because that's what you need in CBT is really just to come with an open mind and just think about things in a different way. So that was really good. And I think as well, one of the things we discussed before we started the therapy was, time away from the baby. So this was Sarah's time, you know, this was an hour a week where, Sarah's husband or mum would look after the baby and this would be Sarah's hour where it's just about Sarah and it's just about this therapy and the CBT and so it was really important that she had that time and that space with no distractions. And so that I think that worked really well. We did some face to face and some remote via Teams sessions together. And I think one of the, one of the sort of challenges initially, as Sarah's mentioned before, Sarah's problem was that she couldn't sleep, that's what Sarah came with, it was a sleep problem. And it took us a little bit of time to sort of think about that together and unpick it together and go, actually, do we think it might be a symptom of a bigger picture, something else that's going on. And so we talked a bit over time and agreed as Sarah mentioned that actually it probably feels like more of a generalized anxiety and worry problem that was going on that was then impacting on the sleep. We spent quite a bit of time just exploring that and we did some fun experiments and things as the sessions went on, which is probably what I was smiling along to because I know it's not always easy for clients to, to sort of do those things and want to drop things like reassurance seeking. It's a safety net. And it's hard to drop that sometimes. Helen: Thanks, Sally. You've just said two things there that I would really like to explore a little bit more. You said fun experiments and reassurance seeking. So can you explain what you mean by those please? Sally: Of course. So, suppose I say fun because experiments are quite fun, aren't they sometimes. I know it's not easy to push yourself out of your comfort zone but I think we, me and Sarah had a bit of a laugh about some of the things that, you know, in the session, once we'd sort of sat down together and said, okay, so you're asking all of these other mums, for example, you know, what would they do in this situation, or like Sarah mentioned, what does it mean that my baby is this colour or that this is here and, you know, as we sort of broke it down together we could sort of see that, oh, actually, yeah, that they don't know. They're not going to be able to tell me this. My husband doesn't know if I'm going to be able to sleep tonight or not. So I'm asking this, but actually it's not getting me anywhere. So I suppose we almost got to a point where we could sort of see the funny side to those questions. And actually that helped, I think a little bit with then, right. How do we drop these things? How do we experiment with them? How do we move forward? And that really started to increase Sarah's confidence. And I could see that from session to session, you know, she wasn't asking other people, she was just allowing herself to rely on her own thoughts and her own experiences. And that worked really well for her. Helen: So there's something quite important about testing things out, finding out for yourself really having the experience of what it's like to do something differently and check whether that works in your particular situation. There was another phrase that Sarah used as well, which was positive reinforcement. I think we should just mention that's about essentially what reward you get or what is it that happens that makes you more likely to do something again. And that's what positive reinforcement means. It's just something that happens after we've done something that makes it more likely we'll do it again. And, to me, it sounds like one example of that was making it fun, testing these things out and actually getting something rewarding out of it was part of that journey. Sally: Yeah, absolutely. I think that's a big part of it. Helen: And one of the things that made me smile when you were speaking, Sarah, was when you were talking about what Sally told you to do. And what things you ended up trying out for homework and those sorts of things, the way Sally's talked about it was deciding together, discussing it. I'd be really interested to hear a bit more about do you get told what to do in CBT or is it more you end up in a position where you've decided to do it? Sarah: No, you don't get told what to do. Of course. It's all very, like Sally says, you talk about it and then together decide what might be the best experiments is a good word. Cause everyone's different. Obviously, my exact path of how we got from A to B probably might not work for somebody else. Like Sally says, I came with a notebook, wrote everything down, did homework, because that works for me. No, she didn't tell me what to do. And what was funny as well was Sally's very good at just sitting back and letting you talk, which works because I talk a lot. So she sits back and she's very good at just sort of nudging you to realisations on your own, because if someone tells you that you think something or that you should do something, it doesn't really mean much. If you think it through yourself, because someone's supported you towards that thought process, you believe it more. It makes more sense. And you're like, ah, you know, the cogs go a bit slower, but then you get there. And so over the weeks I would be reflecting on what I'd been doing for Sally, myself, but with the homework. And she'd just go, and so do you think, and what do you reckon? And then I'd go off on another blah, blah, blah, and come back to a realisation that, and she'd have this sort of pleasing grin on her face, of yes that's where I was hoping you'd get to, but you need to get there yourself, obviously. And I was just like, really proud of myself, but also proud of, chuffed for her that it was going in the right direction, it was working. Helen: It's good to hear that you are proud and also it's good for me here listening to you both talk about this because we do talk in CBT about guided discovery and that's exactly what you've just described to us is that idea that it's you that's looking at what's happening And the therapist is perhaps asking you some well-placed questions, but it is about you and what you need and your process and drawing your conclusions from what you've discovered. It's good to hear you talking about that experience. And I'm just thinking about, at the beginning, we did mention that getting active, getting out into nature and things to do with moving more were an important part of the therapy and I'd really like to bring Leanne in as well to talk about how getting active, getting out into nature might be an important part of that therapy journey. Leanne: Oh, lovely, yeah it's something that Sally and I do a lot in our CBT because we recognize that the cognitive behavioural therapy has a really strong evidence base. There's a lot of research that says that it works and it's useful for lots of common mental health problems. But we also know that there's a really strong evidence base for exercise. Exercise is known to be one of the best antidepressants. And there's research as well that says that being in nature has a massive mood boosting effect. And if you pull all those three things together, then surely the outcome can only be brilliant if you've got lots and lots of really good evidence to say that, you know, any one of these variables on its own is going to help you, but let's combine the three. So, so we are huge advocates of including that in the work that we do as much as possible for lots and lots of different reasons, but you know, that sits underneath it all. It can be so good for mood. And also from our own experience I know I feel better when I've blown the cobwebs off, or we've got outside, or I felt the wind on my face, or I've been in nature. I've just moved a little bit. So from personal experience, both Sally and I can say it works. Helen: That's really good to hear, Leanne. And I'm just thinking, I can hear the enthusiasm in your voice and certainly we do know about that effect on wellbeing on getting out in the fresh air, moving more, and how important that is. And without taking away from how important that is, Sarah was talking about she just had major surgery. A caesarean section is actually quite a big operation. She's also got a tiny baby, so at least in the immediate short term, it would have been really difficult for her to move much or get out in the fresh air very much. And it might be the case not only for people who've recently had a baby, even without the surgery, it can have quite a big impact on your body but also perhaps for people with other challenges to getting out and about and moving and I'm just wondering, how can people still benefit from combining getting more active with things that might help say anxiety and depression when they do have challenges about getting out and about? Leanne: I think the first thing that comes to mind is to get medical guidance to kind of find out from somebody who knows your body as well as you do about what's appropriate and what's doable, before you start leaping into exercise or doing anything. And I think it's about trying to find ways just to move a little bit, whether that's, you know, stretching or things like chairobics or chair yoga, those kinds of things can be things that people do at home when they have limitations or pain or, you know, anything like that, but within the realms of, I suppose you've got to pace it within your capabilities and what's appropriate for you. But things like connecting with nature. I was looking into this prior to was talking today and things like birdwatching and looking out of the window or doing a little bit of gardening or tending to window boxes and those kinds of things can give you the same powerful effects of connecting with nature and a bit of activity too. It's not about, I suppose when we think about exercise and we think about movement, we often think about the Olympics and we think about marathon runners and we think about going to the gym and lifting really heavy weights over your head. And it doesn't have to be like that. It can be small things often and Sally and I were talking about this before about, the NHS recommendations and we worked out that it's about 20 minutes a day of movement that's helpful. And also, if you add 20 minutes a day in nature so you do 20 minutes moving around in nature every day, that's going to have a huge effect. So if you can find a way to, to do a little bit, a little walk, a little stretch, look out the window, even watch a nature documentary, that has a massive effect on your mood as well, because it's connecting with nature but in a different way, you don't have to leave the house for that. How does that answer your question Helen? Helen: It does thank you, Leanne. And I'm really pleased to hear you say that it doesn't have to involve buying expensive equipment or joining the gym. You don't have to live on the edges of a beautiful park or something like that. It's something that you can do whatever your living circumstances are. There's all sorts of creative ways that you can incorporate this as part of recovering, improving depression and anxiety and your mental health more generally. And I wonder whether, Sarah has any comments about that, Sarah, because you did mention how important that was to you even before you had your baby, and of course there would have been quite a big change to what was available to you immediately after you had her. Just wondered what your responses to what Leanne's just been saying about that. Sarah: Yeah, I mean, like I said at the very beginning, my expectations of getting back to being myself were not met. And so the big things were, I actually made a list for and showed Sally of things that I'd written down saying, and I entitled it Getting Back To Me. And it was in order of, I just want to be able to make tea for my husband, walk the dog with the baby. These are all things that I just thought I'm never going to be. I don't understand how I'm going to be able to do these. And every time I did them, I was like, oh look, I'm doing that. You know, playing netball and the big one was paddle boarding, and I did it the other week and I was like, oh yeah paddle boarding. Like Leanne says, when it was very important for me as someone who's very active and I'm outdoors with the dog in the countryside all the time to get back to that. And like Leanne says though, it doesn't have to be going for a run. You know, my level of, well, what do I want to achieve was forced to be lowered, if you like, that's the wrong word, changed and because what I hadn't realized on top of taking the dog for a walk was whilst I'm there, I'm listening to the water. I'm listening to the birds. I'm feeling, I'm smelling, I'm all these things. And I didn't realise all that had been took away from me. And so that was adding to how miserable I was. And, like Leanne says, it doesn't have to be right. I need to be able to go for a run. It can just be find yourself back in something that makes you feel happy. And I think one of the techniques I wanted to just mention as well, that Sally taught me, when Leanne mentioned about you doing 20 minutes a day of being in nature or exercising, so that you make sure that you really are doing that to its fullest and you're not, you know, birdwatching whilst washing the dishes or thinking about what you need to make for tea. She taught me a five, four, three, two, one mindfulness technique, which basically is whilst you're tending to your bird box or whatever you're doing, think of five things that you can see. Four things you can hear, three things you can smell, two things you can feel, a one thing you can taste or something like that. And not only does that focus your mind for that minute on those things. It's really nice to think, Oh, I didn't know I could hear that I'm tuning into it. And then you do it again, five minutes later or as much as you want or, and it stops the thought processes that are negative as well, because you're focusing on that, but it just makes sure that when you're in the nature bit you are really soaking it all in as much as possible. Helen: Thank you for that, Sarah. And I'm just thinking, we've had a really interesting conversation about your experience of therapy, Sarah, Sally's and Leanne's thoughts about what they're doing in therapy and what. seems to help people to benefit from it. I was wondering if I could ask each of you in turn, what's your most important message that you'd want people out there to know? So, Sally, what do you think is one key thing that you would want people out there to know? Sally: I would say that mental health difficulties are common and it's not something that you have to sort of put up with or that you're stuck with, I suppose, for the long term, often there are a lot of quite often very simple techniques that you can practice and try and learn either with or without therapy, that can just really help to manage those, either the feelings of low mood or those anxiety feelings as well so, it doesn't have to be a major change. There's a lot out there and a lot of cost-effective things as well that you can get involved with that can just really help to boost your mood. Helen: Thank you, Sally. Leanne. Leanne: Oh, it's such a good question. I think what I'd really like people to think about is thinking about mental health, the way we think about fitness and physical health and spending time each day doing something that nourishes and nurtures mental fitness, let's call it. In the same way that we might, you know, drink some water, like Sarah said, take our vitamins and have something to eat and try and have good sleep, but moving in the direction of thinking about our mental fitness being on the agenda all the time so that I suppose it normalises asking for help and talking about things and looking after yourself and, and good wellbeing all round. Because I think people often really struggle, don't talk about it and then come for therapy when they've been on their own with it for a very long time. Helen: Thank you very much, Leanne. And Sarah, what do you think you would want people out there to know, one key thing that you'd like to say? Sarah: Probably that if you think something's not quite right or something really isn't right and you just don't, you're not sure what, you don't have to know, you don't have to be able to go to a doctor and say I've got this problem, can you fix it please? Doctors are just as, they're well trained to know when someone needs referring for therapy. So yes, that's who you need to probably go to first in a professional manner but if you just go and say, okay, this is how I feel, blah, blah, blah. They'll pick up and know, actually, you would benefit from therapy because it sounds like this might be happening or going on and then you get referred to someone obviously who's even more specialised, a therapist, and they can sit back and listen to you just offload and say, these are the things that's happening, I'm not happy because of this, that and the other, and they'll go, right, It could be this, shall we try that? And so, yeah, you don't have to have all the answers, I think, is my key thing. but you need to ask for them, Helen: Fantastic. Thank you so much. All three of you have been excellent at telling us about your experience and knowledge, and I'd just like to express how grateful I am for all three of you talking with me today. Thank you. Thanks for listening to another episode and for being part of our Let's Talk About CBT community. There are useful links related to every podcast in the show notes. If you have any questions or suggestions of what you'd like to hear about in future Let's Talk About CBT podcasts, we'd love to hear from you. Please email the Let's Talk About CBT team at podcasts@babcp.com, that's podcasts@babcp.com. You can also follow us on X and Instagram at BABCP Podcasts. Please rate, review, and subscribe to the podcast by clicking subscribe wherever you get your podcasts, so that each new episode is automatically delivered to your library and do please share the podcast with your friends, colleagues, neighbours, and anyone else who might be interested. If you've enjoyed listening to this podcast, you might find our sister podcasts Let's talk about CBT- Practice Matters and Let's Talk about CBT- Research Matters well worth a listen.  

Insomnia Causes Chaos! |Interview with Helen SernettToday, for the final episode of Season 5, Helen Sernett talks about the remedies she has used to conquer insomnia, improve her energy, and calm her physical and emotional chaos. Helen is a self-proclaimed Sleep Evangelist, and has helped many people calm their insomnia by using “Sleep Lists.” Helen's interview is timely because Tracy will also be talking about putting Calming the Chaos Podcast down for a nap, and about the future plans for the podcast. Key Points and Timestamps:5:00 How Helen got interested in the benefits of getting good sleep“I had to deserve a good sleep”Helen left a career in non-profit fundraising to do “Sleep Evangelizing”7:19: It is important to get good sleep! Here's why9:24: What happens if you don't sleep enough – “You are being a much more risky person if you don't get enough sleep.” Tracy's stories about driving while too tired. It's a safety issue!Our sleep gives us a better balance of chemicals to be more positive and to get over obstacles.”13:30 - The critical voice can be turned on with less sleep. If you want to turn off the critical voice, more sleep and quality sleep can help!14:24: Helen's method for conquering insomnia: What she's tried and what works and how Sleep Lists help17:00: You can create a podcast with your original ideas!Helen uses Hrz to record her voice in a soothing manner and 60 beats per minute voice pattern21:00 Learning something new is confidence-building. Website Tour22:40 Sleep Resources25:00 Phones and sleep – Your phone can be helpful to you helping you improve and support your goals for sleep32:00 Helen wants to be there for people to help them be joyful. She also comments on using drugs for sleep 35:00 “If you can….get good sleep and find your way to a deep and restorative sleep without the aid of pharmaceuticals37:00 Parting thoughts from Helen – “It will help you optimize your true self!” “Sleep is LIFE!”Links and ResourcesHelen's Podcast with Sleep Lists, Patreon and information about how to contact Helen: www.sleeplists.com Social Media Links:LinkedIn: In@helehsernett#insomnia #Prozacandmentalhealth #sleepdisorders

As the engineering sector continuously evolves and grows, how can you stay on top and progress in your career? Today we discover how leading managers achieved their ascent in the industry and what key qualities they look for in their teams. We also hear how employee wellbeing is crucial to operating a safe workplace. Joining us to tell us more is Director of TII's Professional Services Division, Helen Hughes and Director of Operations with Jacobs, Jillian Bolton.THINGS WE SPOKE ABOUT1:21 Finding your chosen discipline3:31 How engineering has evolved 6:20 5G in cars of the new future 7:57 Work/Life Balance 10:33 How safety to changing on site 13:40 The qualities required to move up the ladder 17:00 The importance of being visible 19:49 Moving into management  24:21 Continuous learning - exhausting or exciting? GUEST DETAILSHelen Hughes was appointed Director of TII's Professional Services Division in 2015 following the establishment of Transport Infrastructure Ireland. Helen has over 30 years of experience in transport planning, project appraisal and project management and has worked in the UK, Ireland and France in the public and private sectors. Helen has been a member of TII's Executive Team for 7 years, has 18 years' experience with NRA and 10 years with Consulting Engineers.  She has experience in delivery of capital projects, development of strategies, policies, technical reports, road design standards, specifications, and research.She is a Chartered Engineer and holds a Bachelor of Civil Engineering degree and a Diploma in Project Management. She has been a Council Member of Engineers Ireland and Chairperson of WITS, a voluntary organisation supporting women in science, technology, engineering and mathematics.-- Jillian Bolton is a Chartered Civil Engineer with 20 years' experience in the engineering industry, predominantly supporting capital infrastructure clients in the development and construction of national infrastructure. As Regional Lead for Water Ireland & Scotland, Jillian is responsible for the continued development and growth of the region, supporting and developing an extensive team of engineering professionals within the water infrastructure sector delivering on capital investment frameworks and projects for our clients.MORE INFORMATIONLooking for ways to explore or advance a career in the field of engineering? Visit Engineers Ireland to learn more about the many programs and resources on offer. https://www.engineersireland.ie/ Engineers Journal AMPLIFIED is produced by DustPod.io for Engineers Ireland.QUOTESWhen you start in engineering, you realize how many different disciplines there are, but they also have many different types of roles within all of those disciplines. - JillianThe thing that's very rewarding is that you can see very visibly the difference you make. You're delivering infrastructure for the people of Ireland, so I think that's quite gratifying. Jillian mentioned the major inter urban road network that we delivered in the naughties. And that's a huge legacy for generations to come. So the love of engineering is directly related to the impact you're making, for me. - Helen It's the always-on culture. People are now saying that they're going to leave their mobile phones off for six hours or 12 hours to switch off. We shouldn't be always-on, we never were in the past. - HelenI would say making sure that you're looking up, and you're looking out. It's saying yes to other things that may not be just purely in the engineering fixed fields that you're in. But it's also looking up from what you're doing at the moment. You've got to be aware of what else is going on within your organization or within your sector and even within the wider infrastructure sector - JillianKEYWORDS#engineering #management #safety #wellbeing #worklifebalance

In this episode, Neil Carberry, REC Chief Executive, talks to Helen Tomlinson, Head of Talent Development at The Adecco Group and the UK's first-ever Menopause Employment Champion, as appointed by the Department for Work and Pensions. Helen shares her experiences of supporting women across the recruitment industry and how, in her new role as Menopause Employment Champion, she is working with employers to better support and retain women through perimenopause and menopause. In this episode, you'll hear about: The importance of supporting women through perimenopause & menopause in the recruitment industry. How supporting women through perimenopause & menopause periods in their life is linked to retaining women in the workforce more broadly. How has Adecco developed their Women's Health strategy to support their female workforce? Key Quotes ”I've lost count of the number of women that I've spoken to who had really senior roles in the organisation and felt that they've got no alternative but to leave because they just felt that they'd lost their mojo and left their position.” Helen “It's not a time to step down, step back, or step out of your career. Because if the situation is handled properly both by the person and the organisation, arguably you could have the best 10 to 15 years of your career still left." Helen “In the context of a world where we are short of high-quality recruiters, and we are short of candidates. People are going to stay at the places that they feel they belong.” Neil

Host Helen Lee continues with the third and final part of her conversation with Maxim Dondyuk, Ukrainian photographer and visual artist, and his wife and Artistic Manager Irena Dondyuk about how the Ukrainians are responding emotionally to the war, the strengthening of Ukrainian culture and language in the face of Russian aggression, how Maxim and Irena cope personally with the experience, how the frontline war must be faced with humanity first, the importance of national and intellectual freedom, and Maxim and Irena's unwavering hope for the future of Ukraine.  As mass consciousness is raised globally, and we allow the highest aspects of who we are to lead us and our lives, we will operate from a much higher level of intelligence - spiritual intelligence or SQ which has to be and will be the foundation for IQ and EQ, and we would have eradicated all possibility of war, pandemics, poverty, hunger and all manner of injustice and inequality. Our task is to conscientiously and consciously move towards transforming and thriving en masse now, release all old programs, old ways of thinking, emoting and behaviour that are lower vibrational, that smacks of lack and limitation, fear and scarcity, aggression and domination, greed and need to control AND shift towards endless possibilities and abundance for all, love and peace, caring and collaboration, sharing and giving, justice and equality.   KEY TAKEAWAYS   Maxim and Irena keep themselves positive about their future and as is the case with most Ukrainians, they relentlessly push to end the war, driven to protect their country and people, their identity and freedom at the same time.  The Ukrainians feel much anger during this time which motivates them in their fight against Russia, but more importantly their love and pride for their country drives them forward.  Before the invasion, many in Ukraine used the Russian language but now using Russian is shameful. Russia's refusal to acknowledge Ukraine as a country and accept its own unique culture has resulted in widespread rejection of everything Russian.   Because of his time in the frontline, Maxim can feel hopelessness creeping up, especially when parted from Irena for months at a time. He can feel anger at both sides, especially those intent on continuing the war but never witness the destruction wrought on the frontlines of battle.  If you don't respond emotionally when working on the frontline, in Maxim's case as a photographer, then it is psychologically worse as suppression can be damaging. Firstly, Maxim helps all that need help, both humans and animals, and then, secondarily, takes pictures that can be used to document Ukraine's plight.  Maxim recently won the W. Eugene Smith Grant in Humanistic Photography for his work Ukraine: 2014 to 2022. This funding is important in many countries as it is currently, mainly in richer countries that steady sponsorship and support can be secured, so grants are essential in those underfunded areas of the world.  It is not only important for nations to achieve their own freedom, but vital that we all have freedom within our own minds. Freedom of thought and freedom of ideas. In many countries, the population do not have this freedom and Russia is one example.  Competition between countries leading to eventual aggression comes from internal weakness. Diplomacy is strength, understanding is strength, communication is strength. Russia respects only power and that is their weakness. A quote from Helen that she has been advocating for decades is: "True power is NOT power over others but power over our own fear and ego-based minds". By raising our consciousness and connecting with our deeper spiritual selves, we can all make the need for war obsolete. When we align with soul and spirit, we think differently and lower vibrations like fear, hate and greed which motivate war are replaced with much higher vibrational energies.    BEST MOMENTS ‘They speak openly and honestly about the emotions of the Ukrainians and their own as well. They are also very clear about lots of things including what's necessary to keep themselves sane and balanced while they are dealing with the stresses and constraints of war.' – Helen ‘They gave me great hope for the quality of human beings we would like to see in our world. Kind, genuinely loving and caring people. Gentle, honest and open beings that emanate a higher intelligence and consideration for humanity and animals.' – Helen ‘It's not possible for Russia to invade our country because even women and children take pictures of Russian tanks and give their position to the Ukrainian army.' – Maxim  ‘Sometimes I feel so much anger in me. Sometimes I feel hopeless, sometimes I feel sorry for the Russian people because they are so miserable with everything they do. It's a great mix of feelings in myself but with each new missile from Russia, with each new death that comes from Russia, I feel more anger and pity for them.' – Irena  ‘A soldier knows what they do. They are ready to die. But when it's a civilian, it's hard. First of all I'm a man not a photographer and if I can help people, if somebody is dead or injured or they need food, or they're homeless, dogs and cats everywhere I share all my food and everything I have because I can do it. First, I will be human and second I will be a photographer.' – Maxim ‘And, as you (Helen) say, it's really important that freedom is not only for nations, but it's really important to have freedom inside of our own minds. Sometimes, we do stupid things because we have no freedom, because somebody controls our mind - in some countries.' – Maxim ‘I hold an unwavering intention and pray that Ukraine and all nations will have their freedom and sovereignty very soon. That there will be abundance and freedom, justice and equality for all living things, all humans as well as all fauna and flora, and all that live and breathe, including our planet, can flourish greatly. I know that this can be so, as the level of human consciousness is raised.' – Helen     ABOUT THE GUEST Maxim's professional career began in Ukrainian media as a photojournalist in 2007. He has been freelance since 2010, working on creating and promoting his own documentary projects, following the sociopolitical events in his country of Ukraine for years and expressing through the visual arts for well over a decade. He became world famous with his interviews on CNN and his publications in Time Magazine and is currently photo-documenting the ongoing conflict between Russia and Ukraine and recording atrocities that are difficult to imagine or behold. His accomplishments include being a recent winner of theW. Eugene Smith Grant in Humanistic Photography, a finalist in the Prix Pictet Photography Prize and Fotoevidence Book Award, and winner of the Prix Photo La Quatrieme Image, Ville de Perpignan Remi Ochlik Award at Visa pour l'Image, a Magnum Photos Competition ‘30 under 30' for emerging documentary photographers, and received Grand Prix ‘Best Global Health Story' of Becton Dickinson (BD)'s 'Hope for a Healthy World Photo Competition.'   ABOUT THE HOST HELEN LEE Founder & Principal Coach of Lee Heiss Coaching, Helen Lee coached thousands of clients worldwide and multinationals in Asia-Pacific in the last three decades. She created a powerful ontological coaching methodology that ignites the true greatness or invincibility in people. Thoroughly tested and honed over 20 years, this methodology consistently and rapidly produces desired results. Helen was also a journalist who later ran her own communications consultancies in Australia and Asia.The Business Times listed her in its “Who's Who of Women Shaping Singapore” while The Straits Times named her “The Leader Prodder” in a feature on Singapore's top coaches.   VALUABLE RESOURCES To become a member of the Transform and Thrive Club and benefit from monthly powerful live sessions on Zoom video calls and multimedia coaching, check out and sign up here: www.transformandthrive.club CONTACT METHOD www.leeheiss.com www.facebook.com/leeheiss https://www.facebook.com/helenleeheiss https://www.facebook.com/groups/transformandthriveclub www.instagram.com/helenleeheiss enquiries@leeheiss.com

Host Helen Lee interviews Masami Sato, Founder and CEO of B1G1 (BUY1GIVE1), a global giving initiative that is rapidly expanding into a global movement. By helping businesses embed the process of giving right into their everyday operations, B1G1 makes business giving easy, effective and meaningful by focusing funds towards 500 carefully selected high-impact giving projects. Masami is also a best selling Amazon author with the books ‘Legacy : The Sustainable Development Goals in Action', ‘Joy : The Gift of Acceptance, Trust and Love', and ‘Giving Business – Creating the Maximum Impact in the Meaning-Driven World.' A two time TEDx speaker and frequent podcast, event and media interviewee, Masami spreads her message of philanthropy and a new way of global business and is now the latest treasured guest of Transform and Thrive. Helen and Masami discuss how she became an entrepreneur and change maker, the start of B1G1, the power of small, positive life philosophy and the changes we need to make within ourselves to step forward.  This includes Masami's idea of harnessing gratitude for the positives in our business, making full use of the power of collaboration among many worldwide and turning this combined positive energy into a force for good! Do check out https://b1g1.com/ and if it resonates with you, do be part of that force for good in this particular way, for the wellbeing of humanity and our world! KEY TAKEAWAYS Masami was born in Japan, with hard working parents in the corporate world. Shy and not outspoken but very curious, her first international journeys taught her how similar people throughout the world are and also how kind.  When she became a mother, she thought about all the children in the world not as lucky as her own and this spurred her on to become an entrepreneur to fund philanthropic efforts with her own food company.  By breaking down into small, daily activities, the need to fund giving activities becomes habitual and simple, with more businesses being able to access these giving models, creating a larger groundswell of philanthropy and a movement of kindness and giving. As recently as May 2021, B1G1 had already facilitated more than 193 million giving impacts. Yet, amazingly, the numbers have now surged to more than 303 million in just over a year! The message of B1G1 spreads exponentially from business to business through their contacts with each other.  Instead of seeing lack and limitation within ourselves, that add up to a sense of powerlessness to make a difference and inaction to take any steps to help transform our world, we can all take small actions daily and collectively create a massive impact. We are starting to recognise the flaw in the model of short term profit maximisation and we are starting to think about long term implications. Awareness of the negativity of the old models is growing.  Masami truly embodies the Higher Intelligence that we are being called to align with and focuses on all that is important with such grace, energy and determination by simply doing what we can each day instead of obsessing over what we cannot do, and with the support and contribution of her husband Paul Dunn who is Chairman and Co-Founder of B1G1, their team and members.   BEST MOMENTS ‘I was very touched and inspired by how like, no matter how little some people had, there was so much generosity.' – Masami ‘Then I thought, what if instead of trying to do a big thing, one day, what if we did something small every day, from today? That was the start of the idea of B1G1.' – Masami ‘We always see ‘big' things in the media and everywhere. Quite often, those big things could be negative big things, like climate change or war, or refugees being displaced and all that kind of overwhelming big issues. Then, we feel powerless, sad or negative.' – Masami ‘Actually our day to day actions, when we do it together, rather than alone, can be very powerful. And by transforming our regular habits, we could actually really transform our destiny. That's why the power of small is important.' – Masami ‘Because of what you've done it's growing to that point where it can grow even further and really fast now, is that true?' – Helen ‘Because humans are afflicted with this concept of not being good enough, this false idea of not being good enough. So, it holds us back, this idea of perfection.' – Helen  ‘It's very difficult to make a judgement on what's better or what's more important.  What we can do instead is to appreciate the fact that all these things could be important. But the difference is bringing together different actions, different aspirations, different people, different experiences and ideas, is really more important in enabling us all to move forward. I think that actually makes our journey more enjoyable and meaningful.' – Masami  'As we become braver, understand things more, respect each other and not jump onto judgment but really reflect what we can do today, and put in place certain actions, rather than feeling overwhelmed by things we cannot change. If all of these businesses start to align together with the new set of values, then we can actually change this world and create greater sustainability. But it is a critical time, whether we will have time to turn things around.' - Masami ‘If we could all come together with different intentions but also with the shared understanding that we are in it together, we are not individuals. As a whole we share this place together and if this place cannot exist anymore, none of us will be here.' – Masami  ‘Her views carry what I call the essence of Higher Intelligence, which I have talked about quite often in my various episodes, especially the solo ones.' - Helen ‘We all have access to this Higher Intelligence and are called to increasingly align with and embody it now. So, this is a very heartening interview for me, to see it embodied and exercised in this courageous lady.' – Helen  ‘It is a simple, powerful and delightful approach for all of us to adopt, to get off our behinds and contribute positively towards creating our collective destiny and world.' – Helen   ABOUT THE HOST HELEN LEE Founder & Principal Coach of Lee Heiss Coaching, Helen Lee coached thousands of clients worldwide and multinationals in Asia-Pacific in the last three decades. She created a powerful ontological coaching methodology that ignites the true greatness or invincibility in people. Thoroughly tested and honed over 20 years, this methodology consistently and rapidly produces desired results. Helen was also a journalist who later ran her own communications consultancies in Australia and Asia.The Business Times listed her in its “Who's Who of Women Shaping Singapore” while The Straits Times named her “The Leader Prodder” in a feature on Singapore's top coaches. VALUABLE RESOURCES To become a member of the Transform and Thrive Club and benefit from monthly powerful live sessions on Zoom video calls and multimedia coaching, check out and sign up here:www.transformandthrive.club CONTACT METHODwww.leeheiss.comwww.facebook.com/leeheisswww.facebook.com/transformingpeopleworldwidewww.instagram.com/helenleeheissenquiries@leeheiss.com

Host Helen Lee continues to interview Andrew Khor, an Energy Master and Master Healer from Malaysia. He worked in advertising for a total of 25 years, 16 of which were with Ogilvy, before he totally left the corporate world to immerse himself in the field of energy and healing.   Andrew is a Golden Amrit Mentor, facilitates workshops in Spontaneous Kundalini Rising, DNA Activation and Ascension, Inner Peace Reiki and Male Female Balancing. He is the creator of several different powerful and highly effective modalities, some of which Host Helen Lee has personally experienced and also arranged for her family, clients and others to experience. Andrew and Helen discuss transformative golden energy and its miraculous effect on ourselves and our planet. Both of them have had their own golden light experiences which have led them to create their own unique modality or methodology that help the growing number of people worldwide, who are awakening to be comfortable with and successfully integrate the great transformation occurring within them. This unprecedented alchemy occurring within humans on Earth will accelerate in the next 10 years, impacting everyone of all ages and backgrounds so that human consciousness will be massively raised.  Helen has chosen to represent extraordinary healers and energy masters such as Andrew and his team, to add to her own team of coaches she personally trains to deliver her own coaching methodology, so that she can offer the world a more complete, powerful and holistic means of supporting everyone of all ages and backgrounds to truly transform and thrive in these unprecedented times. You can write to her at enquiries@leeheiss.com if you wish to have trial sessions of either Golden Amrit or any other modalities that Andrew has created, and she will arrange for you (please note that Andrew is only available in one or two months from now). She will also be organising Masterclasses in the near future with Andrew and other select podcast guests for listeners, that will help everyone transform and thrive. Stay tuned! To do well or even flourish in our work and professional or business lives, we need to get our foundations right and strong, especially in these times. Hence, Helen is bringing what is personal, innovative, energetic and spiritual to the current chaotic world we live in, to provide practical and holistic tools and strategies to prepare everyone at all levels in all fields to greatly transform and thrive.  And to encourage people and organisations to dare to venture beyond old ways that can no longer serve you well in these times! She urges ALL to listen to ALL episodes, including this one.  ENJOY! KEY TAKEAWAYS Andrew has been creating different derivations of the Reiki methodology through receiving new symbols from Dr Usui, the originator of Reiki himself who has passed on. He is, however, delivering the Golden Amrit energy to clients by using traditional Reiki symbols which he transmits in a totally new and advanced way from his Inner Being. As we get increasingly aligned and raise our vibration, we would draw to us more and more people who are also increasingly aligned and of a higher level of consciousness, committed to focus on the process of transforming and thriving. And Helen together with her team of coaches and healers/energy masters such as Andrew offer powerful means of doing so. Upon awakening, people become less egocentric, less aggressive. The change is spontaneous and achieved, with guidance, in a natural progression.  We will also become far more creative and will come up with innovative and practical ideas of how we can thrive in our personal and work lives.   With the modalities and methodologies that Helen and Andrew offer, various challenges at all levels - physical, emotional, mental, energetic and spiritual - can be reduced in intensity or even resolved, with the client's full collaboration. It is a simple, natural and spontaneous process of returning to our original states. Organisations must also become open to the transformation and with that, will come a new way of business that will be more in sync with the natural world, each other, and our place in it. Helen has successfully used her innovative coaching methodology (coupled with traditional coaching of the highest international standards) not only with individuals worldwide, but also with many top multinationals for more than 10 years and intends to bring the updated and upgraded version of it to the global corporate world to help support leaders, teams and organisations to be their best selves and have what it takes to up level themselves tremendously to excel in these times rapid change and great challenges.    BEST MOMENTS ‘We need new information and technologies to help everyone move towards wholeness and being our Greater Selves and the goal has to be to support both individuals and organisations worldwide. – Helen ‘It's like a yin and a yang. The yin, the nurturing, the caring and the giving and in Asia we are raised in that direction. Whereas the yang is being firm, authoritative, or standing for your rights, standing for your boundaries.' – Andrew (Note that Helen's company logo is a contemporary version of the yin yang symbol to represent supporting people to move towards greater balance which, in turn, brings greater power and success at all levels, both material and intangible.) ‘I took up Kundalini Awakening in 1995 and it was a period of time that I learnt about meditation and chakras. I learned so many things and I had this rising energy within me. When the kundalini rises within you and you are prepared for it and you have good teachers, there is spontaneous inner transformation.' – Andrew ‘It's a very sobering process. We all go through it and therefore I find that change begins with me. I want my world to be different, I've got to start changing myself first.' – Andrew ‘This can help other people too.There are millions of people who suffer from anxiety or depression. At this time, worrying about the economy of the world, covid still being around..' – Helen  ‘I'm initially training more people because the idea is to create more people with this ability to go out there and help people.' - Andrew   ABOUT THE HOST HELEN LEE Founder & Principal Coach of Lee Heiss Coaching, Helen Lee coached thousands of clients worldwide and multinationals in Asia-Pacific in the last three decades. She created a powerful ontological coaching methodology that ignites the true greatness or invincibility in people. Thoroughly tested and honed over 20 years, this methodology consistently and rapidly produces desired results. Helen was also a journalist who later ran her own communications consultancies in Australia and Asia.The Business Times listed her in its “Who's Who of Women Shaping Singapore” while The Straits Times named her “The Leader Prodder” in a feature on Singapore's top coaches. VALUABLE RESOURCES To become a member of the Transform and Thrive Club and benefit from monthly powerful live sessions on Zoom video calls and multimedia coaching, check out and sign up here: www.transformandthrive.club   CONTACT METHOD  www.leeheiss.com  www.facebook.com/leeheiss  www.facebook.com/transformingpeopleworldwide  www.instagram.com/helenleeheiss  enquiries@leeheiss.com

Welcome to the Eureka Moments Only Podcast, a show that highlights members of the global entrepreneurship community and breaks down the moments of change that lead to success in business that we like to call eureka moments.Chris Decker kicks off this season with Helen Kontozopoulos, who teaches Product Development, Design, and Entrepreneurship at the University of Toronto. Among Helen's achievements include co-founding the Department of Computer Science Innovation Lab and co-founding ODAIA Intelligence.HIGHLIGHTSHelen on being a startup founderThe process of growing her startupHelen's Vision and MissionThe difference between the academic world and the business worldHelen's eureka momentHelen's role modelsQUOTESHelen: “It's really great being a founder, but it's also very scary. So you kind of kind of have an embrace, and be courageous around the fear you have every day. So that's what I do.”Helen: “My mission is to really kind of educate what it means to have tools at your hands and, and be empowered by them.”Helen: “If you kind of live in a silo, you don't see that there's opportunities out there, you gotta showcase the problems of what's happening in the real world for students to really log on to and find solutions for.”Helen: “It was an aha moment. You beat yourself up a little bit too much. You think you do worse than what you really do. On that stage, I thought I was flopping like I thought I wasn't doing great at all. And then you realize that's not what people are seeing. People want to be your champion. People want to hear you. And people want to see you.”Helen: “I realized if you don't speak your truth and your personality. I'm not the person who is going to try to be someone else. I tried that. Do not do that. Do not try to be somebody else. Do not try to be some person who's supposed to be a startup founder. Be yourself, be the authentic person you are.”Helen: “Just go out and have fun, you know, and be open and experiment with your thinking, experiment with who you are. And help others experiment and be creative.”Connect with Helen and learn more about her with the links below: LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/helenissocialWebsite:helenissocial.ca  (Personal Website)HELEN KONTOZOPOULOSodaia.ai  (Company Website)Learn more about Chris and what he's been up to with the links below: LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/decker-christopherEmail: christopher@deckerventures.comEureka Fest 2022: “Find the Future” is coming. Featuring 30 speakers and over 50 exhibitors from 15 countries, this will be one of the biggest startup festivals in California. Visit https://www.eurekafest.com to learn more about this amazing event.Tune in to more Eureka Moments from amazing people by subscribing to Eureka Moments Only at https://eureka-moments-only.simplecast.com.Join our free podcasting community today at http://salescast.community.

In questo episodio, terminiamo gli esercizi di comprensione orale. Siamo sicuri che avrai fatto grandi progressi con la nostra serie originale in inglese.Ecco il vocabolario da imparareOutside = fuoriLet's go = AndiamoTo take = prendereWhere are you going? = Dove stai andando?, Dove vai?In front of = davantiFamous = famosoHow much is it? = Quanto costa?Wife = moglieExcited = emozionatoDoor = portaEcco il testo dell'audio che hai ascoltato:We leave the hospital. I am very happy to be outside. I do not like hospitals.Helen: Let's take a taxi.Taxi: Hello, where are you going?Helen: 5th Avenue, number 1274.Helen: It's just in front of Central Park.?: Ah yes, I think I know Central Park.?: Maybe I am starting to remember something?Helen: Mmm, you know, everybody knows Central Park. It's very famous.After 20 minutes in the taxi…Taxi: Here we are.Helen: How much is it?Taxi: 38 dollars, please.Helen: Here's 50 bucks.Taxi : Thank you.We get out of the cab.?: It is nice here, in front of the park.Helen: Yeah, it's very nice. And also very expensive.Helen: Alright, let's go up, it's on the 6th floor.We go up, everything is very beautiful inside.Helen: This is the door.I am so excited. What is behind this door? My parents? Or maybe I have a wife and children? I knock on the door, but there is no answer…Helen: Try to open the door with your key…?: Yes, good idea!My key works. I open the door…Prova gratuita per iniziare subito a imparare l'inglese con MosaSeries: www.mosalingua.com/prova-mosaseries

Just as the container of a playground frees a child to explore and grow, the containers that we do our writing in -- containers of time and space and genre and institutions -- are the spaces where we can experiment, and improvise, and take risks, and invent the ideas of the future. In Helen Sword's 2012 Stylish Academic Writing, she made the case that academics across disciplines and around the world want a style revolution. We're all craving the freedom to write more creatively, more like human beings. The key to the style revolution is not to overthrow all structures, genres, and conventions. Instead, the key is to re-imagine how we work within existing structures and how we create new worlds from the inside out. How does Helen herself navigate this paradox of structure and freedom, constraint and playfulness, in her writing process? How do these tensions fuel her innovations? Listen to this episode to learn how Helen integrates structure and play in her writing, and how her innovations as a scholar have centered on the evolution of her mental model of scholarship. From Helen, the Oracle we receive is the question, “Where is your playground for revolution?” (Length: 36: 31)“The structure gives the scaffolding for play and pleasure. So it's not an inhibiting structure. It's a freeing structure.” — Helen Sword Listen on: Apple Podcasts | Google Podcasts | Stitcher | SpotifyHelen's links: Join Helen's WriteSPACE!: https://www.helensword.com/writespaceWebsite: https://www.helensword.com/Writing tools: https://www.helensword.com/writing-toolsStylish Academic Writing: https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674064485 Air and Light and Time and Space: https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674737709TRANSCRIPTOracles of Academia, Episode 2. Playgrounds for Revolution: Helen Sword on Structure, Pleasure, and Innovation in Academic WritingThink about how the container of a playground frees a child to explore and grow. The containers that we do our writing in -- containers of time and space and genre and institutions -- are the spaces where we can experiment and improvise and take risks and invent the ideas of the future. Constraints can feel limiting. The containers that we're in define where we can't go and what we can't do. But constraints can also be liberating. Once we accept what isn't possible, we are free to find out what is possible. And we're free to find out who we really are, and what we have to offer the world that no one else can. Back in 2012, Helen Sword published Stylish Academic Writing, a book where she made the case that we -- academics scholars, researchers -- all want a style revolution.Helen showed through meta-analysis and original research that academics across disciplines and around the world are all craving the freedom to write more creatively, more like human beings. We just all think that nobody else wants us to.Helen has devoted much of the past 10 years to giving us tools for this style revolution. In Stylish Academic Writing. And before that in the Writer's Diet, and then later in Air and Light and Time and Space. The key to the style revolution is not to overthrow all structures or reject all genres and conventions. Instead, the key to the style revolution is to re-imagine how we work within existing structures and how we create new worlds from the inside out. I have loved Helen's books for years, and I've been curious about how she lives within her writing process. How does she navigate this paradox of structure and freedom, constraint and playfulness? Do these tensions fuel her innovations? Today, we'll hear directly from Helen all about her writing process and how these paradoxes play out for her. And we'll think through what all this might mean for us as writers. From Helen, the Oracle we receive is the question, where is your playground for revolution?Helen: “The structure gives the scaffolding for play and pleasure. So it's not an inhibiting structure. It's a freeing structure.In this episode of Oracles of Academia, I bring you a conversation with Helen Sword and my reflections on what I learned from it. I'm your host, Margy Thomas, founder of ScholarShape.May this oracle help you find your way into the future of scholarship.[OPENING CREDITS] In Stylish Academic Writing, Helen Sword's classic text from 2012, she calls for a style revolution that banishes lifeless and obscure academic prose forever. I first read Stylish Academic Writing back in 2013, when I was founding ScholarShape, my business, which supports scholars in writing creatively. Helen is the person who helped me see that it was possible to be human in the process of creating scholarship. Over the past decade, Helen has written several academic writing guidebooks that map out a new universe of possibilities for creating scholarship from our own perspectives, in our own living voices.In this conversation, Helen shares how she structures her own scholarly writing process and how she plays and explores within this structure. Helen's perspective on writing is threaded through with the paradox of structure and play, constraint and creativity. The two sides of a paradox seem at odds with each other, and yet they are integral to one another. As you listen to this episode, consider the question, where is your playground for revolution? What structures have you devised to work within, to explore and invent and take risks within? And what structures do you have no choice but to work within, but you still find ways to exercise your agency? Your playground could be a physical place or object, like a computer full of your files and sources, or a wall of your office covered in post-it notes. Your playground could be a conceptual framework that guides your thinking and writing. Your playground could be a genre that you're trying to reinvent, or the institution where you work, or a scholarly community that you engage with. Maybe your playground is an aesthetic structure, like symmetry or rhythm. Most likely, your playground combines all four kinds of structures: tangible structures, conceptual structures, social structures, and aesthetic structures. In this episode of Oracles of Academia, we'll see how balancing structure and play in our writing enables us to create and communicate revolutionary ideas.On the day that Helen and I spoke, the playground that she was in the middle of was a book in progress, entitled Writing With Pleasure. Helen was physically located in Auckland, New Zealand, where she is a professor at the University of Auckland, as well as the Director of their Center for Learning and Research in Higher Education.But in spirit, Helen was immersed in her book project. The idea for her book, Writing with Pleasure, grew out of research that she conducted with her research assistant, Madeline Ballard. They studied 90 academic writing guidebooks and noticed that something critical was missing.Helen: Discussions of pleasure in academic writing are almost non-existent. It was less than 1% of the page count in the 90 academic writing guidebooks. So, I ran workshops around the world and asked people to write a narrative of a time in their lives when writing gave them pleasure. I've got these 600 wonderful narratives. I found pleasure is everywhere. People have memories of pleasure from their childhood. Pleasure from work on their PhD. Some get pleasure in the cognitive processes of working on a computer; some get pleasure from writing by hand. So, I want to write the book that puts pleasure back on the map and gives people strategies for pleasure. Helen is aware that her message in this book is rather revolutionary. Helen: This is the book where I'm just saying to hell with it. I'm going to write about pleasure. I'm going to fill it with metaphor. And I love this fact -- it's being published by Princeton University Press as part of their new Skills for Scholars series. So, this is Princeton saying, finding pleasure in writing and pleasure through metaphor and color and everything else -- those are essential skills for scholars. What does a revolutionary book about pleasure look like while it is in the middle of being written? With such a wild and creative idea at the heart of it, does the work process look wild and creative too?Helen and I were on a video call, and she shared her screen and opened up her Scrivener file so that I could see all of her notes and rough drafts and images that she's working with. Scrivener is a word processing software designed for developing large creative projects.Helen: So, what you can see is I have three sections to my book. I have five chapters; three in each section. And when you unfold them, you see that I have an introduction and then three sections within each chapter. And then within each section, you can open it up and see my notes. What's striking here is how orderly Helen's project materials are. Most of the book isn't drafted yet, but Helen already knows how many chapters and sections and subsections the book will have and what each one of these pieces will be about. And she's filed away all of her notes and data and sources and interview transcripts into their appropriate compartments within her Scrivener dashboard, like clean laundry folded and put away in dresser drawers. This little universe is a container for Helen's book project to emerge within. It makes me think of a three-dimensional version of an outline. It's all organized around her central idea, her working thesis, and it's structured in accordance with her chapter strategy, or at least her current chapter strategy.Helen tells me that in the course of developing this book, she's changed her mind about how many chapters she'll have and how all of the chapters will fit together. But this little universe that she's built gives her a way to make these big structural changes without getting lost or overwhelmed. She can shift the structure to accommodate shifts in her overall vision for the project. Helen maintains her sense of play and pleasure by making her workspace as beautiful and delightful as possible. Helen: My post-it notes are all in a book of wrapping paper. Each one has a beautiful background. This kind of tactile pleasure helps me think differently, a kind of mind-mapping structural thinking, but it also just makes the whole process more joyful.For Helen, the play and the struggle of the writing process are inextricable.Helen: One of the things that I've learned from my research on pleasure is that the academics who really enjoy their writing -- most of what they enjoy is the challenge of the craft. So, if I can see even the hard parts as a joyful challenge, I know that's going to get me through. The structure gives the scaffolding for play and pleasure. So it's not an inhibiting structure. It's a freeing structure because it kind of gives those big boundaries that allow me then to cut loose within.So how does Helen play within this structure she's created? How does she actually go about bringing order to all of her materials? What processes does she follow? What habits of mind does she rely on? In this next part, she refers to me, Margy, in the third person, because we're actually holding this conversation in front of a live audience.Helen: After reading some of Margy's material on structure, I went through and for every chapter, I did a collection post-it notes. For each section, I say, okay, what's my big idea? What's my evidence? How am I going to interpret that evidence? Why is this interesting to people? And what's the revelation that I want people to go away with? And so, I've done that for every one of the 15 chapters, and for every one of the three sections within those 15 chapters. So that's a lot of post-it notes.What Helen is talking about here is structuring her new book, Writing With Pleasure, as a fractal. This is an approach to scholarship design that I discuss in the materials Helen's referencing here. Helen and I have discovered that we both find it useful to visualize scholarship as having a fractal structure. A fractal is a structure that we see all over nature, whenever a self-similar pattern repeats across scales. Like the way the tiniest twig on a tree mirrors the structure of the whole tree, or the way the shell of a snail mirrors the structure of the spiral galaxy that that snail exists within. When we understand books as having a fractal structure, we mean that a book conveys one central idea, and it's made up of other, smaller, mini ideas. And each of those mini ideas are made up of even smaller ideas. All of these units of meaning -- the macro unit of meaning, which is the whole book, the meso unit of meaning, which are the chapters or parts of the book, and the micro units of meaning that are individual sections and paragraphs -- all of these units of meaning are subject to the same laws of logic. Which means that we can design each individual part of the book the same way that we design the whole book, and vice versa. We'll talk more about this fractal model later in this episode. I call it the Story-Argument model. But for now, what's important to know is that our mental models give us ways to coach ourselves through the writing process.When we have in mind an abstract picture of what scholarship looks like, how it is structured at the most abstract level, then we know what questions to ask ourselves to coach ourselves through the process of developing a work of scholarship that fits that structure. From the model, we can derive questions that we use, like writing prompts, to focus our attention on what's most important as we navigate the writing process.In talking with Helen about her writing process, I noticed two major strategies that she uses for balancing structure and play. Strategy number one: the tangible playground. Helen has a physical form for expressing the structure of her book as it currently exists and for supporting the emergence of the finished book product. For Helen, this tangible form is found in her Scrivener file and in her beautiful notebooks that are full of printed paper and post-it notes.Strategy number two: the conceptual playground. Helen has a mental model of scholarship, an image in her mind of the architecture of a work of scholarship, a knowledge product. She puts this mental model to work by translating it into questions that she asks herself to guide her thinking and writing.These two playgrounds, the tangible and the conceptual, are central to Helen's innovations as a stylish academic writer. She consciously designs her own writing process as a structure for exploration. This structure helps Helen channel her imagination into creating work that will be coherent and useful to readers, even as it transcends conventions.So how about you? Where is your playground? What tangible structure are you developing your project within? And what conceptual structure or mental model is guiding you as you work with your tangible materials. Ideally, the playground is stable enough to support your process, but flexible enough to evolve as your ideas evolve. After our break, we'll dig deeper into mental models for writing, and we'll look at how Helen's mental model has evolved over the years. [MID-ROLL]In the first part of this episode, we heard from Helen Sword about the containers that she is working within -- the tangible form of her project materials and the conceptual form of her mental model of scholarship. And we heard how these physical and conceptual structures are places where Helen can experiment and bring new ideas into being. They are playgrounds for revolution.In the second part of the episode, we're going to dig deeper into Helen's mental model for writing. We're going to look at how that mental model has evolved over the years. Helen has become increasingly conscious of structure in her writing over the years as she has thought more and more deeply about reader experience.Helen: If you went back and looked at the two books that I published as a literary scholar, before I started writing books on writing, they're much more free-flowing. The structure was an afterthought. Whereas now I'm much more thinking of the book as a whole, from the very beginning, thinking about the symmetry. I want this sense of balance. And it's comforting to me, but I think it's comforting to the reader as well, partly because I'm often making arguments that are outside the box. Helen's shift to a more rigorous approach to structure is what enabled her to start making more unconventional arguments. It's like that line from Flaubert about how he was regular and orderly in his life so that he could be violently original in his work. Helen's first great experiment with manuscript structure was Stylish Academic Writing, which was published in 2012 by Harvard University Press. The goal that she set herself in writing this book was twofold. First, to persuade academic writers that it is possible and desirable to write stylishly. And second, to give them the tools and strategies for doing so. This two-part goal was difficult because it required her to blend two very different genres, each with their own structural conventions.First, books that present empirical research on how academic discourse works. And second, how-to books, which tend to be written by individual academics, sharing insights and recommendations based on their own experience with writing and anecdotes from other academic writers. Both of these are worthy genres. But neither one was a fitting model for Helen's project.When Helen couldn't find any other academic books that combined empirical research with how-to, she decided to use logic and instinct to figure out a structure that just made sense to her and that she thought would make sense to her readers. She ended up dividing the book into two parts. Part one is the empirical section, consisting of several chapters that present Helen's background research on academic style across the disciplines. And part two is the how-to section, 11 chapters with each one explaining one specific aspect of writing stylishly -- sentence structure, voice titles, hooks, abstracts, et cetera. Those how-to chapters progress from foundational aspects of style, to stylizing specific parts of a manuscript, to some chapters that look at different academic genres, to a final body chapter that explores the intangibles of style.Helen: It seems like a really obvious structure. I can't tell you how long it took me to get there because I couldn't find another book like it. In order to design the structure of Stylish Academic Writing, Helen imagined her reader's journey through the material and plotted a course for them, point by point, from beginning to end. And the structure is rhetorical, meaning that it's dictated by Helen's imagined relationship with her reader. The rhetorical logic of Stylish Academic Writing holds up. If you read the book straight through from the first page to the last, you don't encounter any jarring moments where the logical links are broken. When the book was published, the overall reader response validated Helen's approach. The book quickly became a modern classic.But for her next book, Air and Light and Time and Space, Helen would choose to take a radically different approach. Her conceptual playground shifted significantly because of a reader named Janet, who wrote Helen a letter in response to Stylish Academic Writing.Helen: A retired law professor called Janet wrote to me this letter about how she read the book. She said, "I looked at your table of contents. I looked in your index to see if you written about people that I find interesting. I went into some of the chapters that had the most interesting-sounding topics and read them. It was not linear." And she said, "I really wish that in your introduction, you had given me a map, and some sense of how I could read the book if I didn't choose to go in a linear way." And I honestly had never thought of it this way, even though I think of readers all the time. I had never thought of a non- linear reader coming to this book, even though of course that's how you might address a how-to book. You go to the chapter that speaks to where you are. So, with my next book, I did things a bit differently.Janet's critique strengthens Helen's mental model by deepening her understanding of the reader experience. Our relationship with our readers, real or imagined, can be yet another generative structure, a constraint around our writing that can focus us on what's important and propel us forward. This perspective on critical feedback is a big reason why Helen is able to keep innovating and breaking new ground in her scholarship. So now let's hear about the book that Helen wrote next, influenced by Janet's feedback. The book is Air and Light and Time and Space, and it was published in 2017 by Harvard University Press.Helen: This book is about the writing habits of successful academics, with success very broadly defined. I interviewed a hundred academics about their writing, how they write, their emotions around writing. I also got 1200 questionnaires from writers. Helen realized that all of her data about successful writers' practices fit into four categories, four sets of habits: behavioral, artisanal, social, and emotional. Behavioral habits govern how you carve out time and space for your writing. Artisanal habits govern how you pursue ever-greater mastery of the skills involved in writing. Your social habits govern how you engage in relationships around your writing, how you give and receive support and feedback with the people around you. And then finally, your emotional habits. These govern how you manage your subjective experience of the writing process. Different writers may vary in which types of habits they're really strong in, or that they emphasize. And any writer can choose to become more consciously aware of their habits and cultivate areas where they feel like they're lacking. So, let's get to the question of structure. How could Helen make this practical book as user-friendly as possible? Helen knew that she needed to figure out a way to structure Air and Light and Time and Space so that readers could dip in and out of it, according to their own needs and interests. She wanted readers to be able to navigate the book in a nonlinear way. The answer turned out to lie in those four categories of habits that we mentioned earlier: behavioral, artisanal, social, and emotional. These four categories gave her the acronym BASE: B-A-S-E. And then this BASE acronym gave Helen the structuring device for the whole book. It's an architectural metaphor.Helen: The idea is that this is the four-sided base on which you are building your writing practice. You need all sides of the base to be operating together. One glance at the table of contents and you can easily see the structure of the entire book. The body of the book is organized into four parts, one for each corner of the base. Within each part, Helen gives us three chapters elaborating on that element of a writing practice. These chapters are full of examples and stories and quotes and exercises based on Helen's in-depth research on hundreds of academic writers around the world. The body of the book is then bookended with two long conceptual chapters: the Introduction, setting up the framework, and the Conclusion, integrating the framework. At the very beginning and very end of the book are two short lyrical passages, a Preface and an Afterward. Helen: In the Preface, thanks to Janet, I said, "You should read the Introduction first, because that will help you understand where I'm coming from. After that, you can enter this book by any door."The Afterward that comes at the end of the book feels like the opening of a door back out to the world, beyond the book. The Afterward evokes how we can apply the concepts from the book beyond our own writing practices in our communities and institutions. There's a real logic and symmetry to the overall organization of the book that enables the reader to immediately grasp and remember the whole structure. Because the reader can hold the entire book in mind at once, they're able to navigate the book in a non-linear way without getting lost. On any given day, the reader can pick up the book, flip to the table of contents or skim the headings and chapter titles, and the reader can know immediately which section is going to be most helpful to them in that moment. That table of contents is especially close to Helen's heart.Helen: The book designer centered the table of contents. Normally, a table of contents would be left flush, but they centered it because they recognized that the symmetry was an important part of this book structure. Which I just loved. That was a nice, you know, form and content speaking together. And the best book review I ever got -- the one that I cherish most -- was a reviewer who pointed to my table of contents and said that it should be framed the way you frame architectural drawings of stately homes. What makes this table of contents so powerful is that it's not just a list of chapter titles and topics. It's a microcosm of the book as a whole. And it's a point of entry into the world of the book. The table of contents is a device that helps the reader hold the entire fractal structure of the book in mind so that they can navigate the book according to their own needs and interests, rather than having to follow one set linear course.Another point of entry to the book is an online quiz that Helen created, a diagnostic tool that readers can use to assess where they might focus their efforts at improvement. This quiz is like a personalized invitation guiding readers to the spot in the book that they might find most useful at that moment. The quiz is linked in the show notes and is also on Helen's website@helensword.com slash writing tools.Air and Light and Time and Space doesn't just feel revolutionary for its substance -- its point about how much variety there is in successful academic writers' practices. Air and Light and Time and Space also feels revolutionary for its structure. Helen doesn't design it as a linear journey for readers. Instead, she designs it more like a universe for readers to immerse themselves in. She invites us into this universe and then she trusts us to chart our own course.Helen: I'm very conscious of the pleasure for the reader of not getting lost, of knowing where they are, knowing where they're going. I like giving the structural handhold that gives you a way into it. Helen's approach to designing reader experiences has evolved over the years. First, in her early literary scholarship, she designed free-flowing structures that were less about providing a particular kind of reader experience than about delivering her literary analyses. Then came Stylish Academic Writing, her first radically unconventional argument about academic writing, where she used logic and intuition to develop a linear structure. Next came Air and Light and Time and Space, which she designed to function like an immersive universe for readers to navigate in their own way. As Helen's understanding of the reader experience evolved, so did her mental model of scholarship. She's incorporated various new structures into her mental model over the years -- social structures like genres and institutions and scholarly communities, and aesthetic structures like symmetry and fractals, which capture something about how humans experience pleasure and coherence. Both kinds of structures, the social and the aesthetic, can inform how we as scholars imagine our readers and how we design experiences for them.In the book that Helen is currently working on, entitled Writing With Pleasure, she's continuing in the vein of Air and Light and Time and Space, designing this new book to also be an immersive universe for the reader. A space that they can navigate in their own non-linear way, rather than having to follow just one set path. Helen: I've become increasingly balanced and structural and fractal -- to use Margy's term -- as I've gone along. What I've learned from Margy is looking at not just the book itself, but each chapter, each section within each chapter, and to some extent, even each paragraph to say, "Okay, what is it is my Story-Argument here? What's the claim I'm making? Why should I care?" Helen's ever-evolving mental model of scholarship is her secret weapon as a writer. That model is what she uses to shape her project materials into powerful books that her readers find fascinating and transformative.When you become conscious of your mental model, as Helen is, you can use it to notice the structure of your own thoughts and navigate your thinking and writing more deliberately. Before I knew Helen personally, when I was just admiring her work from afar, I would always wonder about this. How does her mind work? What thought processes guide her in creating her books? What questions does she ask herself in order to make sense of all of her data and find a shape for it that feels right? I would ask myself these questions any time I read a book by any writer that rearranged my mental landscape. What is it about the writers who produce the work that leaves us transformed? It turns out that there are patterns to how we humans make meaning, common threads to how we seek coherence. To find these patterns and common threads, we have to zoom out to a higher level of abstraction, outside of specific academic genres and disciplines. And we have to think about how humans in general make meaning. This is what Helen was doing when she broke out of conventional academic genres to design the structures of Stylish Academic Writing and Air and Light and Time and Space. She was writing for humans, not just for academics.So, when we zoom out, what do we see? Well, what I see after many, many years of studying scholarship and scholars and the scholarly process, is, I see two patterns of meaning, intertwined: story and argument.Humans have been using these two methods of meaning-making -- storytelling and argumentation -- for millennia. When we want to communicate with each other about not just the facts of our experience, but the meaning of it, we tell stories that distill experiences into causal sequences that illustrate themes. And we process data into claims that capture the essence of what the data means.We can understand, at an intuitive level, how great scholarship uses both of these strategies. We know that great scholarship draws readers into stories that matter and makes persuasive arguments about what the data means. I really wanted to surface this intuitive understanding and explicate it and hone it. I wanted us to have a more rigorous structure to articulate how story and argument work together in scholarship. And that's why I spent years developing the Story-Argument model as a conceptual framework to describe how this works.This quest to find the Story-Argument model has been my playground for revolution for many years. But let's get back to you, and to the question that we began with. Where is your playground for revolution? What structures have you devised to work within, to explore and invent and take risks within? How do you structure your project materials, your time and attention, your space, your world? How do the very constraints that you have to work within elevate your creativity and expand your sense of what's possible? We often think of revolutions on the broadest scales -- the sun revolving in the middle of our solar system, radiating all of the energy that powers our world; the mass uprising in the streets where thousands of people coordinate their movements in order to revise an entire society at once.But revolutions are fractal too. As surely as the sun spins, as surely as empires rise and fall, we revolve at the center of our own lives. We are revolutions in miniature.And our playgrounds -- our structures for inventing the future -- are wherever we happen to be. [CLOSING CREDITS]

With many employers looking at changing contracts as a way of avoiding redundancies, we ask Acas advisers Mark Makin and Helen Robinson how to do it well. We explore:- The best way to change employment contracts- Why consulting staff matters- How to do this well remotely- What your rights are as an employeeEpisode Resourceshttps://www.acas.org.uk/changing-an-employment-contractTranscript Sarah GuthrieWelcome to the Acas Podcast. We're talking today about changing an employment contract with Acas advisors, Helen Robinson and Mark Makin, and I'm Sarah Guthrie. This is topical at the moment because lots of employers are looking at changing contracts as an alternative to making people redundant. So employers are asking, how can we do that? And members of staff might be asking us, can my employer do this? So Helen, let's start off with employers. What's the best way of going about changing an employment contract?Helen RobinsonThere's a number of different ways that an employer can can consider changing somebody's contract or varying the terms and conditions. But I think the best way from an Acas perspective would be where possible to do so by agreement. If an employer speaks to a member of staff, and they are able to get their agreement to make a change to their terms and conditions, then ultimately that is going to be the best way for conducive working relationship moving forward.Mark MakinTo echo what Helen said there, taking the workforce with you - informing, explaining consulting, discussing, providing feedback - that sets the tone for the relationship once the change comes into effect, because the trust and the goodwill will need to be there to take the organisation forward afterwards. And if we make changes without agreements, there's a big possibility that that trust and goodwill won't be there, which is going to create problems with itself.Helen Building on that, I mean, what some employers are choosing to do is to see whether they can make these changes on a temporary basis because staff might be more willing or accepting to the changes there. And I've also spoken to an employer recently who has offered an incentives so the change that they were looking at making was a 10% pay cut and that was across the board 10% pay cut for all staff. That was a measure to look at avoiding redundancy. And what the employer said almost as an incentive was that if this didn't work, and if actually they did need to make any redundancies within the next 12 months, their redundancy pay and their notice pay would be calculated at their original wage so that the wage that was slightly higher, and so that that was something that went some way for for stuff agreeing to that change. Sarah Yeah, I can see why that would really help because we've heard stories of people who have agreed to a temporary pay cap with a perception that then they won't be made redundant and get made redundant and then also have their redundancies as calculated on their most recent pay, which is half of what they were being paid. So I guess it, it sounds like thinking through in detail how your staff will respond to the changes you're proposing both in the short term and the long term is really important here. Some people listening to this podcast might be thinking, Well, can employers change a contract? What are my rights? I wondered if you could give us an insight into that.Helen If a member of staff agrees to a change, then absolutely a change can be made to that contract, whether it's on a temporary or a permanent basis. I think it's very, very important when we're looking at agreements and agreeing to a change that an employer is very open and honest about what this change is going to be. How long is it going to last for? Is it going to be permanent? Because employees need to have that information so that they can make an informed decision about whether they are happy to agree. But I also think it's equally if not more important for employers to be open about the reason behind the change. Because if they approach their staff and they speak about Okay - we will use the 10% pay cut as an example - we're looking at giving you a 10% pay cut, if that's all the information that staff have, then it's highly unlikely that they're going to be happy about that or agreed to it. Whereas if an employer approaches staff and says, Okay, look, we're looking at a 10% pay cut and the reasons are because x y z, people still may or may not be happy about it, but they might be more likely to respond to that say, Okay, yeah, I can understand the reasons why. And yes, I will accept that change.Sarah So keeping very clear communication around the reason why and also how long it's likely to be for and what the long term consequences of that might be. And, Mark, what have you seen from employers about good practice in this area?Mark I think it is the communication as early as possible, as open and transparent as possible. And it's two way. Feedback is given. I think that's something that is often missed in this type of process, where the employer may well go into this type of situation. And they will listen to what people have to say, but they don't provide the feedback. And the feedback may be that was a great idea. But we can't do it, because in some cases, it may be that's a great idea we haven't thought about. Let's discuss in some more detail how we might be able to implement that.Helen Just remember that if you are looking at changing the contract of 20 or more people, there are additional consultation requirements on you, and that you would need to collectively consult. So that would mean either involving trade union representatives if you recognise a trade union, or giving staff the opportunity to appoint employee representatives to almost act as a go between and have conversations with employer and staff themselves.Sarah And that two way communication is very different at the moment for most workplaces than what we would have encountered in the past. Do you have any insight into the challenges of doing this remotely and how people have been overcoming them?Helen I think there are I should say that added challenges. And I think sometimes it's very important for employers to remember that actually, people have got other stuff going on at home. At the moment, yes, they may be working from home. But it might be that they need to schedule a specific time to have important conversations such as these when I don't know if they've not got children at home or the partner is able to look after children at that particular point or other caring responsibilities. So being very, very clear about what's going to be spoken about in a specific meeting or specific virtual meeting. But making sure that that person is in the right frame of mind with minimal distractions to have this conversation because it is an important conversation. Just because people are working remotely or we may have people furlough that we need to speak to, there still needs to be a good level of communication. And what I mean by that is not just an email chain, it's a conversation that would usually be had and it should be a conversation, have it as a conversation, whether it's a video call, whether it's a telephone conversation, not just an email to all and saying this is happening or we're proposing this how. Have a conversation.Sarah So you mentioned Mark that one of the things people often miss is the two way feedback and the need for that. What other mistakes have you seen employers making? And why do you think those mistakes are being made? Mark There's sometimes an assumption that I've made this decision for the good of the business. So people will automatically accept that it's the right decision. So one of the mistakes that is often made is that that communication, early communication doesn't take place. A decision has already been made, and the employer presents it to the staff almost as a fait accompli, and then is shocked and surprised when they get objections to that, or when people have concerns about it. Or when there is a long list of questions about well, how will this impact me? What does this mean for me? When is it gonna happen? It's it's almost like the employer sometimes jumps the gun and makes the decisions for good reasons, but misses out that communication stage consultation stage.Sarah One thing that's really struck me about doing this process well is that it can take quite a lot of time. And I wonder what you would say to somebody who's thinking, well, that all sounds great, I don't have time to do this.Mark Ultimately, the decision is the employers. But the conversation that I would have with them would be centred around not just the legal risks that they might face if they get this wrong - so there might be breach of contract claims there might be constructive dismissal claims, there might be claims centred around the failure to consult properly if they are in a collective situation. But I'd also talk about some of the less obvious risks, the impact on your workforce, in terms of morale and motivation, the goodwill and that trust and confidence that needs to exist between the employer and the workforce in order for them to function properly.Sarah And so what rights do you have as a member of staff who's going through this process? Perhaps there's been a proposed change, perhaps your employer has or hasn't handled it well? Could you just talk us through what rights you have?Helen It's not an uncommon question from from an employee to say, Okay, well, you're talking about agreement to change, but actually, I don't want to agree to it for whatever reason, and it may be that an employer has done absolutely everything that Mark and I have spoken about. They've consulted they discussed, they've been very open about the the reason behind this change, but the change doesn't suit the member of staff and that is a real life situation. And I think in all circumstances, there's absolutely no obligation on a member of staff to agree to a change. But I do think it's, it's worth being aware that ultimately, if they don't agree to change, there are other options that are available to their employer. For example, if an employer feels that they've got absolutely no option, but to make this change, and their business may go under otherwise, for example, then they do have the option of actually ending the existing contracts by giving notice. And then re-engaging their staff at the end of that notice period on new contracts. What I would say is that it's not a risk free thing for an employer to do. It is still technically a dismissal, you dismissing somebody from their existing role, from their existing contract. And with that in mind, an individual would have the option, if they chose to, to appeal against the decision. They'd also potentially have the option of actually treating that notice as notice of dismissal. And if they felt it was unfair, and they weren't engaged in the new contract, they could potentially look at making a complaint to an employment tribunal around that. So it's not risk free for an employer. It's an option but it's not not a risk free one.Mark As well as the agreement route to vary a contract, and the dismissal and reengagement route to varying contracts, some employers already have flexibility clauses built in to their contracts, which they can invoke. Just a word of caution around flexibility clauses: they do need to be well written, they need to be quite specific, and they need to be reasonable in order them for them to be to stand up and and be operative. And you usually find them around place of work, job role, job function, hours of work. Even if flexibility clauses already exist in a contract before invoking them, I think it's good practice for the employer to speak to staff and explain the circumstances such that they feel they need to invoke the clause. Here's the reason why I feel a need to involve the clause and here's the fine detail about about when and how and what it might mean for you. But then leave the door open for the staff to come back with questions, concerns and objections of other suggestions and ideas. There is another option, unilateral variation, which involves the employer simply making the change and imposing it on employees. But it is fraught with risk and it should be only used as a very, very last resort. It opens the door to legal challenges, it doesn't go down well with the workforce, it will damage goodwill, it will remove any discretionary behaviour that might have been the previous layer, and it just doesn't make for good employment relations as well as the the big legal risks that come along with imposing changes on your workforce.Helen And I think if I if I just add to that, I did some work with an organisation last year - so we're talking pre COVID pre pandemic. And the employer had done exactly this, they had basically informed all of their workforce that as of next week, they were going from a five day to a four day working week, and the pay cut that that attracted as well. Now as Mark said, they lost a lot of goodwill from their staff with that, but what also happened was they lost within about the following month, four members of staff left and went working for another organisation. But what had actually happened, these four particular members of staff were quite specialist, so they had to be replaced. So there's all these then additional costs that the employers got of losing experienced, knowledgeable members of staff, and then having to go through recruitment again to replace them when they were already struggling with money, which is why this this going to four day working week had come in in the first place.Mark And I can see in a situation like that Helen where, if the employer had spoken to people in advance, early, been open about the need to make the change, staff may well have agreed to that once they understood the full picture. Helen Absolutely, yeah. And I think at the end, the employer in his particular circumstance, had done exactly what we were talking about earlier. He'd fallen into one of those traps where they felt they had consulted because they themselves had thought about all these different measures or different ways and come up with the solution. But they'd done it on their own. They hadn't involve their staff during that thought process.Sarah I'm just thinking of people who are listening to this and thinking my employer is not doing this well. They haven't consulted very well. They haven't listened to that feedback. What would you advise someone in that position about how they can help their whole workplace go through this process more smoothly? Helen I think in the first instance, and this would be true of any concern that any member of staff has within a workplace, we would be advising them to raise that and to raise that internally. I think it's very important for both employers and members of staff to see whether a situation can be resolved internally before they think. Okay, well, is there any sort of external complaints I could make? And part of the reason for that is something that Mark mentioned earlier on, it's about the fact that hopefully, a working relationship is going to continue. And the more that that can be resolved internally, and informally wherever possible, the more likely it is that that working relationship will continue and will continue to be positive. Sarah Thanks. That's been really helpful. I wondered if you could leave us with a key insight that you've had to during your work on this topic. Helen The key thing - and Mark and I have referenced this throughout our conversation today - is to communicate and to communicate as early as possible.Mark And to keep communicating. I've seen situations, certainly in collective situations where there are laid down consultation periods that the employer must observe. But I've seen situations where we get to the end of that 30 days or 45 days, depending on the numbers, and the employer decides that's it job done, when it would have made so much more difference if they just kept that talk in that communication going for a few more days, because they were making progress. Things were developing yet, they'd come to the end of the statutory consultation period, and they felt that's it. That's the green light to move ahead now. So don't be bound by any limits. If things are moving ahead. If progress is being made, keep talking. Helen Absolutely. Yeah. Sarah It's a great thing to remember for all workplace relationships, not just varying a contract, changing your contract. And so thanks very much for your insight today.Helen Thank you. Mark Okay.Sarah You've been listening to the Acas podcast. You can find full details about what you need to know about changing an employment contract on our website at www.acas.org.uk Thanks for listening. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

I’m sharing today’s podcast with the incredibly talented Helen Packham whom I have had the privilege of knowing both on a personal and business level for quite a few years now. Helen is a leadership and business coach, she gives people the confidence to share their voice, to connect, to be visible and helps you to build awareness of who you are as a person. We are having fun sharing really solid information and just making sure that you know exactly what you've got to do when it comes to crafting that next talk. So if you've been thinking about becoming a speaker, or you've been thinking about stepping up onto the TEDx stage, or any other virtual in person stage, then I really hope you enjoy this episode, I really feel that it’s going to be a valuable one for you to listen to. In this episode I’m discussing with Helen: Stop being stunted in your visibility, how to connect with people and build relationships with confidence Helen’s impact ratio, what it is comprised of and how it can effectively communicate and engage people in your delivery  How you can connect on a number of levels  by storytelling and how it helps us to make sense of things we don’t really understand   Quotes: ‘The things that you focus on are the things that are going to make you more confident.’ - Helen ‘It's probably more key now than ever before for people to determine how they can get out there and how they can get their message heard.’ - Jess ‘It's still needed, the voice that you have, the message that you have, the impact that you want to have on the world is still needed. Even more so now.’ - Helen Remember, reviews help us to let more people know about Smart Leaders Sell, so please take a moment to leave a review on your podcast player! https://smartleaderssell.com/how-to-add-an-podcast-review/   Helen Packham www.facebook.com/helenpackhamcoach http://helenpackham.com/free-speaker-coaching/   Email Jess Jessica@JessicaLorimer.com   The C Suite® http://bit.ly/The_C_Suite   Smart Leaders Sell https://smartleaderssell.com/   Products and Courses https://smartleaderssell.com/products-and-courses/ Selling To Corporate FB Group https://www.facebook.com/groups/sellingtocorporate/ More Jess! www.facebook.com/JessicaLorimerSuccessCoach/ linkedin.com/in/jesslorimer https://www.instagram.com/jess_lorimer/   Content Disclaimer The information contained above is provided for information purposes only. The contents of this article, video or audio are not intended to amount to advice and you should not rely on any of the contents of this article, video or audio. Professional advice should be obtained before taking or refraining from taking any action as a result of the contents of this article, video or audio. Jessica Lorimer disclaims all liability and responsibility arising from any reliance placed on any of the contents of this article, video or audio. Disclaimer: Some of these links are for products and services offered by the podcast creator.

This is the remarkable story of how triathlon has completely transformed Renee Kiley (http://reneekiley.com/) 's life. In 2014, the Australian came 252nd in her first ever sprint distance triathlon. “I pretty much walked the 5km”  she says. In 5.5 years, Renee has gone from weighing 104kg, with alarming blood pressure readings to racing in the pro ranks. Long gone are the long, boozy Friday lunches, the 7 day working weeks in the office and the daily packet of cigarettes! We go pretty deep in the interview, but Renee is ridiculously open and honest and she reveals she still struggles with her body image. You'll hear: *The 'lightbulb moment' that made her start to change her life around *How she ran on the treadmill and avoided the pool at busy times when she first started exercising, for fear of what others would say *The lessons she's taken from the business world into the triathlon domain and vice versa *Her struggles with body image and disordered eating Like what you heard? If you liked this episode please share it with a friend and get involved on social media, by following Inside Tri Show on Instagram (https://instagram.com/Insidetrishow) and commenting on/sharing posts. Connect with Renee via her website, on  instagram (https://www.instagram.com/reneekiley_/)    Who is Helen? It's a good question!  Head over to her website (https://www.helenmurray.net/)  and you'll find all you need to know. HELEN GETS INTERVIEWED! Listen to the recent interview Helen did with  https://soundcloud.com/tri-oraklet/helen-murray-inside-tri-show (https://soundcloud.com/tri-oraklet/helen-murray-inside-tri-show) SUPPORT THE SHOW BY LEAVING A REVIEW AND SHARING IT Please support the show by leaving a review and sharing it with a friend. BUY HELEN A COFFEE To help me to continue to bring you the best interviews in triathlon every week, I’d love you to become a patreon and  buy me a coffee every so often (https://www.patreon.com/insidetrishow) . POWERED BY 33 FUEL This week's show is powered by  www.33fuel.com (https://www.33fuel.com/winter-survival-bundle) . Why not treat yourself to a vegan winter performance bundle? FRIEND OF THE SHOW www.komfuel.co.uk (https://www.insidetrishow.com/www.komfuel.co.uk) INTERVIEW TIME LINE* (not the whole episode) 00:00 A typical Friday 6 years ago? “My ultimate was a long lunch at a fancy restaurant, which means leaving the office by 11.30am, and pretty much drinking at the table until they would come up and say ‘we need to get ready for dinner service' which was around 3.30 in the afternoon, then we would head for drinks in bar, with cigarettes, cocktails and wines and I’d be home by 7.30 or 8 and sleep the hangover off. That was the ideal Friday about 6 years ago. 01.25 Today (Friday) was I woke up at 0540am because that’s the body clock now, then did the house work, came home and had a coffee and then got ready for this interview. 02.00 There are still moments where I have memories and I think ‘wow, my life has changed a lot’. 02.40 2012/2013 I was at the height of my unhealthiness, I was running a successful business which I had been growing since 2007 and I was obsessed with work. But now in hindsight I realise I was unhappy and unhealthy. So 2012, I was in the office 7 days a week, I would sleep in a bit on a Saturday and Sunday but I would still go to the office. And my business partner came up to me at some point in 2012 and he said ‘I don’t care what you do next week, but you are not coming in to the office, you need a break.’ So I booked myself into a health retreat and it was just to de-stress. 05.35 I remember when you got there, they did a series of health checks on you and my heart rate got to 155 beats on a bike just turning the pedals for a few minutes, they weighed me and I was 104kg (16 stone)... Support this podcast

Helen Pritchard knows her way around LinkedIn. So much so that she’s built very successful businesses with leads generated from LinkedIn after finding herself desperate to make fast money after life left her in a bit of a bind. Make no mistake, Helen doesn’t portray herself as a LinkedIn Expert, she just happens to be an expert at using it!   In This Episode How did LinkedIn save Helen? Drunk, desperate and making huge moves What are you the bridge to? What NOT to do on LinkedIn This is what happens when you give humans the internet What you need to be doing to have LinkedIn success 4 types of content you should be using   “I don’t have to do anywhere, I don’t have to pay for anything and yet it’s full of potential clients” - Helen “What am I really good at? What could I sell?” - Helen “What’s the minimum effort we can put in to get the maximum return back” - Helen “It’s like trying to sleep with someone on the first date. It’s too much, too soon. It’s just inappropriate” - Helen “Where do you add the most value, where do you get the most joy, and where do you make the most profit?” -Helen “Building goodwill is hugely hugely powerful in sales” - Helen   More Helen! Headline Guide - https://helenpritchardonline.com/linkedin-headline-guide   The Group - Group link: https://www.facebook.com/groups/groupforlinkedinmarketing/   https://www.linkedin.com/in/helenpritchard/   More Claire! https://www.facebook.com/clairedowdallcommunity/

Helen Brown's captivating story telling has created an international phenomenon, a family life narrative on the healing power of cats which leavens grief with comedy. Hi there, I'm your host Jenny Wheeler and today Helen talks about the journey which has seen her books published in 18 countries, and explains how a cat became a metaphor for life. Six things you'll learn from this Joys of Binge Reading episode: How Helen migrated from journalism to fiction The tragedy that brought her close to her readers What her readers have taught her How a mini 'mid life crisis' led to an international best seller Why her next project is a children's story The part she'd like to see Chris Hemsworth play. Where to find Helen Brown:  Website: https://www.helenbrown.com.au/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Helen.Brown.International.Author Instagram:  https://www.instagram.com/helenbrownauthor/ What follows is a "near as" transcript of our conversation, not word for word but pretty close to it, with links to important mentions. Jenny: But now, here's Helen. .  Hello there Helen and welcome to the show, it's great to have you with us. Helen: It's a pleasure to be here Jenny. Helen Brown international best selling author Jenny: I usually start by asking the  “Once Upon A Time” question - how did you come to write fiction?  But I know in your case your work has always had a very strong element of personal memoir.   And you've developed these books into a unique series which marries story telling with memoir...  Can you tell us a little about of how that happened? Helen: Well, I think it goes back to basic story telling. I started writing columns maybe forty years ago, and my readers always taught me actually what worked for them. If I wrote a column that touched them, they would write me letters back, and it was so often about something very trivial. They guided me really towards stories they wanted to hear, and they were so often emotional stories about ordinary life that we all shared. I was writing those columns, and they were 750 words roughly for many years. When we moved to Australia, I actually couldn't get a job over here. Nobody had heard of me, and nobody really wanted me and I didn't have the confidence or something. So I thought - well, I kind of know what touches readers; maybe I'll have a go at spinning out to a larger concept. I knew from experience that talking about the loss of my son and the way that our cat had helped us; those stories really got big reactions from readers. So I thought - and it was actually at the same time- the cat that had helped us when Sam died - that cat died itself at the age of nearly 24. Phil, my second husband was burying the cat under the Daphne bush in the garden. And Rob, who was Sam's younger brother, and had seen him run over back in 1983, said "there goes the last connection with Sam". I thought - maybe the story hasn't finished being told. I need to tell the story in full. It was a big exercise and I really wasn't sure if it was working. Every publisher that I sent the idea to assured me that is wasn't working! And then I tried several agents who were also not at all impressed. One of them said, "you know, nobody wants to read a book in which a child dies". So I thought; OK...who are these people who read books? In real life, children die, and in real life when my child was run over in 1983, the best consolation I got was from other parents who had lost children. They wrote to me, and you know I didn't know anyone who had lost a child. But because of writing about it in my column, they approached me with these wonderful letters and cards which were the best grief counselling that was available in 1983. Cleo - Helen Brown They were basically saying you know, this happened to us; it was the worst thing that ever happened to us, but we survived. We're still here, and we want to tell you that we'll get through this.

BRINGING PLAY BACK INTO OUR LIVES:  HELEN GRIFFITHS   Today’s interview with Helen Griffiths teaches us a thing or two about critical areas in business such as marketing, technology, operations, and finally, getting our business’ message understood by our clients.    Helen Griffiths finished at the Cardiff University with a degree in Speech and Language Therapy.  Wales-born Helen and her then-fiancee, Hugh, got married and worked in different industries.  Hugh, with his Information Technology background, worked in that industry.  Helen worked for a secondary school in Southampton, managing services and giving support assistance at the institution.  She was then required to do graduate studies in primary education.  Then she got her second degree and qualified as a primary school teacher.   On holiday to New Zealand in 2005, Helen and Hugh, over a bottle of wine, decided that New Zealand would be a good place to bring up their children.  Being risk takers, the couple decided to give it a shot.  The move to New Zealand was easy for Helen and Hugh to make.  According to Helen, it was an opportunity for them to shake things up in their lives.  Since Hugh’s family moved around a lot when he was growing up, it was not difficult to convince him to make the move.  At that time, their children were 5 and 8 years old.  Helen then worked with the Ministry of Education while Hugh continued working within the IT industry.    Three years later, they decided to take another risk, opening up Rumpus Room in 2013.  At the time, Hugh found himself in the position where he wasn’t getting the satisfaction that he wanted at work.  Seeing that Helen and Hugh considered entertaining people their strength, the idea of Rumpus Room seemed to morph into its own identity   Initially Huw & Helen investigated franchises as a way to get into the business.  However, after doing their research, they decided they preferred having more creative opportunities as well as being responsive to the needs of the community.  They were determined to create a community asset unique to Taranaki and one which Taranaki could be proud of.  Helen and Hugh researched around Family Entertainment Systems, which the industry is called and through their 18-month intelligence research, the concluded that there was a gap in the market and Rumpus Room was launched.    Although Helen refers to it as a “multifaceted monster,” she speaks of Rumpus Room with much fondness, showing her love & passion of the business.     Operationally, the Rumpus Room is open 7 days a week from 9:30 AM to 6:00 PM.  Helen is currently being assisted by 4 core staff who have various roles in the business.  This gives Helen the versatility needed by the business.  In addition, they have a pool of casual employees who can provide additional help when needed.  Finding the right staff is similar to diamond mining, according to Helen.  Once you find them, you need to hold on to them, treasure them, and look after them.  Among Helen’s learnings in relation to recruitment, she says that she would trust her gut more when interviewing people.  Given the chance to do it again, she would not hire someone as quickly on the mere basis of the person’s availability.   Initially running the business as husband and wife, Hugh and Helen knew each other very well and this has helped them in terms of knowing each person’s strengths and weaknesses.  Helen likens Hugh’s strength as being the left hemisphere of the brain.  He concentrates on the businesses’ systems, processes, logistics, and finances.  Helen is more oriented towards the right hemisphere of the brain.  She’s creative, focuses on service delivery, people management, marketing, and promotions.  However, in terms of decision making, Hugh had the last say as he wears the CFO hat.   One of the key challenges that Helen faces is the weather and the New Zealand culture.  According to Helen, there is a direct relationship between the Rumpus Room’s revenue and the rainfall.     In addition, New Zealand’s outdoor culture has also proven to be a challenge because it is difficult to change people’s mindsets.  Facing financial challenges head on has also been something Helen has focused on.  In relation to this, demonstrating value takes the top spot in terms of marketing the business.    The delegation was one of the things that Helen needed to learn.  When she finally found staff that she could trust and understand Rumpus Room’s philosophy and values, and inner workings this became a lot easier.    Like most business owners, Helen was invested emotionally, financial and every other way possible within her business and she didn’t want to fail on the basis of someone else’s mistake.  Since then, she has found that her staff has stepped up and done what they were expected to do.   Learning to communicate with her staff has been crucial to the success of Rumpus Room.  She strongly believes that if her employees are happy, they are engaged.  Regular performance reviews have helped Helen stay updated on things that were happening in her business.  She also makes sure that when things go well, she recognizes staff as having done a good job.  According to her, it’s the little things that matter to them.  In addition, she also has activities with her employees such as croquet evening and barbecues, which have allowed her to create a culture of fun.  This kind of organizational culture will emanate through her business processes.  The right dynamics and a strong connection with her employees put her business on the right trajectory.   Working as a therapist and understanding the psychology of people and relationships has helped her manage her staff well.    One of the strengths in running the business has been Helen’s connection with her market.  Helen has a loyal customer base perhaps because she is in tune with them.  She is able to manage her customers’ expectations in terms of the range of activities that they have within the space.  According to her, the majority is supportive and understand that they’re running a business.  Helen also knows who her customers are and how to reach them.  Another thing that Helen is known for is idea generation.  She believes that an idea isn’t worth having unless she does something with it.  If you’re going to have an idea around the business, she believes in giving it a shot or investigate it.    Worrying about her business is something that Helen has learned to stop doing.  She believes that it’s a waste of energy and is a negative experience altogether.    Worrying about the future is a futile exercise because it’s more important to appreciate the present and enjoy it.    Putting herself under pressure has also stopped. Helen believes that you need to be aware of the struggle that exists between the head and the heart and that it affects your demeanor and affects the way people relate to you. Being authentic is important and as she says “ at the end of the day, it doesn’t matter and if she continued living her life also worrying about what other people are going to think of her, she would be under a tremendous amount of stress”   Helen subscribes to Marshall McLuhan’s belief that “anyone who thinks education and entertainment are different, doesn’t know much about either.”  She believes that the Rumpus Room must be able to provide a focused mix of age appropriate, interactive play experiences.  While adults perceive play as frivolous, they need to understand its importance in their children’s development.  For instance, it has huge implications for a child’s motor skills, social development, and language development, as examples.   Since children are playing less, they are becoming more obese and are entering school with poor language levels.  They also lack social and emotional competence.  A different type of play that children are engaging in has emerged because of technology.  More children are now in front of an iPad screen and playing that way, instead of being more physical and imaginative.    Some parents take the easy option and route.  Sometimes, pushing your kid around with a screen while doing your grocery shopping may be an easier thing to do.  As a result, children cannot be blamed for this at all.  They are being shaped by the experiences provided to them.  As adults, we don’t understand them as well.  The play does not have to have the reason.  We should not focus on the process of playing.  We need to provide children a rich environment they can act upon, manipulate, and control.  They need to be given the license to play and be kids.  It’s all about the process.   In the next 5 to 10 years, the industry needs to revisit the whole perception of play and sell its importance in our children’s development.  Grownups need to have a little bit more fun, engaging, playing, and understanding that it’s not about what’s at the end, rather, it’s about being and it’s about the process.  It’s about letting go and having fun.  It actually helps develop creativity.  It is a form of exercise and allows for endorphins to be released.   QUICK FIRE ROUND:   BEST MARKETING TIP:  Be authentic.   BEST OPERATIONAL TIP:  Always be able to help or go one step further than expected.   BEST STAFF MANAGEMENT-TIP:  Appreciate them   BUSINESS GROWTH TIP:  Measure.  How do you know your business is growing unless you know how to measure growth?   Well, Rumpus Room can be found at 151 Gill Street in New Plymouth.  We have a website which is www.Rumpus-Room.co.nz and there’s always our Facebook page which is Rumpus Room New Zealand.     www.rumpus-room.co.nz   https://www.facebook.com/TheRumpusRoomNZ/?fref=ts   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marshall_McLuhan               MAKING IT WORK IN THE ENTERTAINMENT INDUSTRY:  AN INTERVIEW WITH HELEN GRIFFITHS OF RUMPUS ROOM   In today’s podcast, Craig of The Project Guys interviews Helen, owner of The Rumpus Room.  Helen graduated from Cardiff University with a degree in speech and language therapy.  Born and bred in Wales, Helen and Huw got married soon after she got her degree.  Huw worked in the IT industry while Helen worked with the National Health Service.  She also did a post-graduate course in Primary Education from the University of Winchester.    As fate would have it, Helen and Huw went to New Zealand and over a bottle of wine, they decided to move.  As risk takers, they wanted to give it a shot.  At that time, their kids were 5 and 8 years old.  Nine months after they applied for residency, they started working.  Helen then worked for the Ministry of Education while Huw continued to work in the IT industry.  They then got to the point where they decided to get into business together to try something completely different.  The Rumpus Room opened in 2013.   It always intrigues me when people from the U.K. make their jump to New Zealand and then decide to live here.    Helen: We were living in Hampshire, at that time, in a nice house, in a nice suburb with nice jobs.  Everything was nice and it was a bit of a treadmill of niceness and I just asked, “Do you want everything to continue to be nice?  That’s a very easy option or shall we challenge ourselves?  And I don’t think it’s that bad when you see things slightly out of control.  It was just an opportunity.  Huw’s family had moved around a lot and his father was a consultant and just lived in the states.  So that idea of moving to another country wasn’t an unfamiliar one to him, that’s why it wasn’t unfamiliar to him and the world is a much smaller place these days.  Communications are very easy and to be honest, there are times when we’re communicating more often with people in the U.K. then someone else is sleeping, you know, 10 doors down the road.  I mean, we have family that are living in the same town and they may not see each other for the century.  You know, you make it happen.    What about the 2013 to go from doing something relatively secure and stable incomes to this Rumpus Room business which is almost a brain-built business.    Helen:  Huw found himself in the position where he wasn’t getting what he wanted out of the position that he was in and we have always, as a couple, we’d always been pretty damn good at entertaining people, keeping people happy, managing, events, creating events and so therefore, it seemed to be be, “Well actually, this is something that we…together, we are good at doing this.  Why don’t we do it?”  There’s nothing worse than being stuck in a job that you hate.  So why tolerate that?  Why continue doing that?  Why?  When you consider how much time you spend working, why do something that makes you miserable?  And at that time, he was in a position that was making him miserable and so some new positions had to be made and we did what was around and at that time, there was a gap in the market for something like Rumpus Room and that’s how we came about?   Tell us about Rumpus Room.   Helen: Rumpus Room is a multifaceted monster, really and it is essentially an indoor play and party venue.  However, it has many arms to it, which in fact, could be business within that and so that’s what makes it a multifaceted monster, like you said.  But that’s a necessity too.  If we were just a pay to play venue, we would be dead in the water.  We took on a sizeable building because the nature of the business required that and so therefore the type of revenue to keep that type of building going.    Did your business plan change in 12 months?   Helen: We had the opportunity to take on or investigate our competitors’ franchise, so we looked into that.  We looked into taking out on board.  However, we felt that as a national franchise, it wouldn’t allow us to have the creative opportunities and be as responsive to the community as we wanted to be.  We were determined to create a community asset and we wanted to make sure that it was something that was unique to Taranaki in a sense.  Rather than just being another type of indoor play but it needed to be something that Taranaki was proud of, you know.   I know that that type of venue, when we were growing up and the kids were smaller, as a parent of young kids, you know, they preach it a lot in their childhood and when we started out with Rumpus Room, I just wanted to…I guess I wanted to create something that was unique…there was a lot of research around family entertainment systems, which is what the industry is called around the fact that a center that offers a greater range of services has a better chance.   How long did it take you to do intel research?  What type of intel research did you do and what sort of research were you doing?   Helen: Just setting up Rumpus Room, I think it took us about 18 months worth.  We were new. We were taking a gamble and you don’t just go “Red or black.  Oooh, black.” [laughs]   A lot of people would like to be more considered, so we did a lot of reading around.  Did a lot of investigating about the current situation and at that time, we went over in terms of the premises.  We wanted to get that absolutely right cause that was key in terms of its location and its parking and things like that.  So that took a lot of time to find something with the right size and the right place.  We went over to Sydney to have a look at the factory where we knew the soft play structure was going to be made and we knew it would have been very easy to have ordered something from China but in terms of the investment, you get what you pay for and we want to be sure that when you are investing the amount of money, because there’s a huge outlay in a business like that.  When you’re invest that amount of money, you need to make sure that there’s durability and that after 2 years, it’s not gonna fall apart or have any health and safety issues.  It’s made to a particular standard.  When it comes to health and safety, you cannot compromise.  So yeah.  That’s what we did.    What is the size of your business now in terms of the number of staff that you have and what are your operating hours?   Helen: It’s open 7 days from 9:30 til 6.  We have 4 core staff who are very versatile.  They are very loyal, they’re very committed.  They understand the brand Rumpus Room.  They take various roles within the business, so we’re not necessarily reliant on one person for the kitchen.  I think that’s important for our business, to have that versatility in the staff.  We also have a pool of casuals who are available to help out weekends for birthday parties or extra staffing around holiday programs and things like that.  All in all, we have 14 staff members on our books.    Improvement in Staffing is one of the biggest problems of business owners.  It’s time and staff.  What do you think about recruiting staff?   Helen: Okay, I always liken finding staff like diamond mining.  It’s a lot of hard work, but when you do find those gems, you need to hold on to them.  You need to treasure them and look after them.    Oh, polish them.  Absolutely.  It is, it is exactly like that.  I would definitely say it’s a huge learning curve but out of that learning curve it’s meant to the value I expect from my staff.    If you were to recruit someone today, what would you make make it easier today than it did on the first day of 2013?  What have you learned from the past 3 years that would make it easier to do it today?  What mistake could you have avoided?   Helen: I would trust my gut more when it comes to interviewing people and just because the rush into employing somebody even if you’ve got one position.  That time, I guess and this is how our facility, we had very specific goals.  We were looking for one person to fit this specific goal and only one person applied and so therefore, we appointed, when in fact, we should have waited.  But we were, “We need somebody now.”  That probably came back to bit us a bit.    You mentioned you and Huw started the business together. Please tell us more about how you define your roles and how you manage that?   Helen: So, Huw and I have been together since 1987 so that’s over 30 years and I think by then, we knew each other very well and so that helped in terms of knowing what our strengths are and Huw’s background in IT, I always like to think that together, we’re a functioning brain.  Huw’s very much the left hemisphere, so he is systems, the processes, the logistics, the finances person and I’m very much the right brain.  So I’m the creative and the operational, the service delivery, people, management, that type of… that’s where I’m happiest.  Marketing and promotion and so these are creative and right brain type of strengths.  So, it wasn’t difficult because we knew we were bringing different things to the party and in terms of decision making, when you’re in business, ultimately, the buck stops with the dollar.  It comes down to the money.  So it didn’t matter how grandiose my ideas where and if ultimately, Huw said, “No, the money doesn’t stuck up.” or “The numbers didn’t work.”  Then I respected that decision. So that’s how the partnerships worked.   So what’s been your biggest challenge or learnings that you’ve faced as you’re growing the business?   Helen: There were various challenges and there are some that we can control and there are some that we cannot.  It’s difficult to pick the biggest challenge.  We run an indoor playing party facility and weather is a huge influence.  There is a direct relationship between our revenue and the rainfall and there’s nothing we can do about that apart from doing rain dances.  [laughs] Or actually, there are things we can do.  I know we need to look at and that we need to work to getting people to come into the business on a sunny day, you can market it all you like in terms of keep your child safe.  The ultimate smart, safe venue, where children are sent between these periods or the alternative is that you can get out there with them and be part.  Go out there and expand what your service is to be out in the community when people are outside.   We’ve done varied things to try and overcome that challenge but it is an ongoing challenge.  We’ve just had a long hot summer.  We’ve had a warm, dry autumn and in the winter, it hasn’t rained that much but we’re getting a lovely damp spring which is good for us but I’m not a fun of sunny days.   In hindsight, would you have gone for a smaller building?   Helen: Yes.  You know how quickly I answered that?  In a heartbeat.  I would have but then it’s difficult because people enjoy the space.  You’re sort of caught between a rock and a hard place.  They want the space…We have a large space.  We’re central and we’re not in an industrial area.  We’re in a building rather than being in a tin shed, type of thing, you know.  So again, you’ve got acoustics around the building, so it’s not as noisy, necessarily.  Yeah.  So, it is a big space and people want the space but that comes at a price and then what goes with that is if you’ve got those costs, you need to charge and then you get comments from the customers saying, “Why do we have to pay for this, why have we got to pay for that.”   It’s demonstrating that value, I suppose.   Helen: Absolutely, it’s demonstrating that value and I guess that comes with the whole diversity thing.  You have to diversify and show people what they’re getting for their money in terms of the range of activities that we have within the Rumpus Room space.  So, addressing those sort of customer expectations and just making sure that people understand and appreciate…I mean, our customers are great.  We have a loyal customer base, they’re very supportive.  The majority are supportive and they understand that we’re running a business.   So when you think of that diversity and offering of services that you’ve been asked to supply, do you see anything?    Helen: I’m not sure, yeah.  It’s still coming.  Someone will say something new and I’ll say, “Oh yeah.  I hadn’t thought about that.”  It’s really important to listen to our customers and to respond to them.    The thing with Rumpus Room is that it has the hospitality element to it and so you are dealing with people who are using your services, so you need to make sure that they know that you know who they are.  It’s really important to know your customers, to use their names.  If something isn’t up to expectation, to listen to them and find out what it is and to take action to address that so that they feel that they’ve been listened to.  I guess an example might be, we had a birthday party a couple of weeks ago where a younger party could come in.  The children were under 3 and they had a platter of food which is the standard platter of party food, pizza, cheerios, that type of thing and it wasn’t best suited to that age group.  We then got some feedback that said, “Hey listen, party was great but food not best suited to their ages.”  And we said, “Well actually, you’ve got a very valid point there.  Let’s do something about that.  What would you like to see on that platter?”  And then they come back to us with some selections and as a result, we then introduced the Under 3 Food Platter.  So you know, foods suited to that age group and why not because they’re paying the same rate.  Just things like that, being able to listen and say, “I’m responding,” in that way.          So now you’re 3 years old, apart from the building and the weather, what are some of the challenges you’re finding now?   Helen: Okay well, last year we took part in the TSB Business Excellence awards and the reason we did that was as an exercise to get somebody to take a look at our business and say, “Okay, right.  You’re doing this well and maybe these are areas you need to look at developing.”  We didn’t enter to win anything and to get some feedback.   The fact that we ended up with a couple of highly commended, Brand Design, Technology, and Marketing Highly Commended and a Highly Commended in the service industry as well.  So that was a real sort of moment, actually.  Pat on the back for all the hard work and the sacrifice.  So it was nice to have that.  I think one of the things that came out of that process was that we needed as a family, Huw and I and the kids, we needed to look at Huw moving out of the business so that financially…because it wasn’t supporting us both.  So Huw is now Information Systems Manager at First Gas working full-time there and it therefore meant that I’ve had to grow my left brain.  [laughs]   The start of the year was a very sort of emotional time.  Another thing that came out of the TSB awards was the Business Excellence Awards was maybe getting a business mentor.  So we actioned that as well and my business mentor has been great at helping me grow my confidence in being able to say…I think we’ve got to a crossroads decision point where I say, “No, Huw’s come back to the safety of employment.  Now here I am being stuck, being eaten alive by this multifaceted monster and what do I do?  Do I just roll over and just get eaten or do I fight?  Do I do something about this and pull myself together?”  So my mentor was great in terms of helping me make a decision around the future of Rumpus Room and passing the tissues initially.  She must have thought, “Oh my God, what have I gotten myself into?”  The more sessions I had with her, the less I cried and counselor’s first, mentor second.  So we got to a point where she allowed me to understand that I had the skills to do it.    So did you go looking for a mentor who was somewhat similar to Huw?   Helen: I went through venture Taranaki.  We had somebody, it’s like an arranged marriage.  They paired me up with her and she worked in a completely different industry.  However, at the end of the day, business is business, so the issues are the same.  Whether they’re selling ice creams or air-conditioning units or houses.  The issues that everybody, and I’m sure with all the other people that you’ve spoken to, there are common threats, doesn’t matter where you’re working and that’s what the business mentor scheme is about.  So she had been in the same profession at me.  She had been in the same crossroads, so that was nice for her to say, “Right.  Actually, I’ve been there, I’ve done that and look where I am now?”  So do you still speak to her?   Helen: Yeah.  We do.  It was at the start of the year that mentorship-relationship started.  She’s still got me for another couple of months.  [laughs]   Are there any challenges or learning?  Are you entering the awards this year?   Helen: No, because I think we’ve had enough issues to be working on as a result of doing the TSB Business Excellence Awards.  I will enter again but I will enter again with evidence of what I have put into effect as a result rather than just going on and saying, “Well, this is what I’m doing.”  I want results.  I want to be able to say, here’s the proof.  So not this year.  It does take a lot of time and effort to pay some people and do it well.  I don’t tolerate mediocrity very well at all and if I’m going to do something, I do it properly.  So that’s why I didn’t want to do a half-assed entry.  I don’t do half-assed.  Anyone who knows me knows that I don’t do anything half assed.    I know you have tried and tested numerous things with your marketing.  Tell us more about this.  What you’ve tried, what has worked, what hasn’t.   Helen: So we had a huge push in marketing initially.  It was important for us to build our brand locally and we’ve spent a lot of money and that investment was worthwhile, in getting us known within the community and so we’ve done radio, newspapers, we’ve done rap cards in motels and hotels, pamphlets.  We’ve done maps. We’ve done movie advertising, we’ve done public appearances in terms of being involved in community events, we’ve put our hands up over there try to be visible and had a loyalty program and we use social media.  Facebook is big for us.  Our market is Mums, young mums and they spend, in terms of their demographic, they are Facebook users.  The younger, the teenagers, my kids use Instagram, Snapchat whereas the Mums and people I need to reach are Facebook users.    What’s the one thing that you’ve tried that didn’t work?   Helen: The biggest thing with marketing is measuring its effect and that’s something that I’ve gotten better at doing  in terms of being able to justify my expenses and find out what is my return on investment on marketing.  So in terms of something that’s fallen on its face, I know we’re talking about trying to get people into the door in the summer and I have to say February sucks.  Big time.  I hate February.  So one year, we decided, “Right, let’s do $5 February” and let’s do that.  So we did and we promoted that and topped up enterprise but the reality is people still don’t want to commence into a play land in February, you know.  So all we ended up doing was freezing revenue.  We lost revenue and that didn’t work.  So we will never do that again.  But you’ve gotta try it.  You’ve got to try these things.  You can’t just go over…And then there are things like, we often get approached for piggy backs and ask somebody to go to an event and get a goodie bag.  The reality is, when you look at redemption rates, they are just a waste of time.  I’d much prefer as a business to be doing something on its own merits than just be another heap of pieces of paper in a goodie bag.                If you do something on social media like that last week, for example, the last week has just gone and we said, “Hey, let’s celebrate end of term!”  Nominate your child’s class and we’ll give them all a class pass and they can come to Rumpus Room during the school holidays cause we know that school holidays are an expensive time.  Nominate your class and we’ll hit them up where each child can come to the Rumpus Room for free.  Actually, what we ultimately did was we chose 5 classes.  So we said we’re going to choose 5 classes, so of course it went ballistic because the reality is in marketing, there’s a push mindset.  Everybody wants a discount.  Everybody wants a deal.  Even better, everybody wants stuff for free.  But the reality is you can’t run your business on free stuff yet.  You can use the opportunity to give free stuff to generate business.  So, we gave away 5 classes worth, so there was over a hundred passes.  But we had a 30% redemption rate and the reality is that those children came with siblings and then they came in and they had hot chips and drinks, mum had a drink, dad had a drink and so it’s that type of…I”d rather as a business be able to see…to be giving things in our own right, rather than join this collective mush of leaflets and pamphlets.  Junk mail…that’s what it is, junk mail.  We don’t do piggy back, we don’t do goodie bags.                The way we use Facebook, we’re very conscious of the rules around using Facebook and I think there are definitely businesses out there that aren’t and there are rules about how business should operate and so all these sharing and likes and things…you’re actually not allowed to do them and so we don’t ask customers to share posts, to share on your page and like.  If you look into Facebook user terms, you can actually have your page closed down for breach of it and I don’t want to take that risk, especially since it’s our number one channel to our market.  So, we do use Facebook promoted posts and we don’t promote our page.  We’ve never promoted our page.  The likes on our page are organic and I think if you pay to promote your page, you end up with people that you don’t need to access but we will promote a post to targeted people within the area and that can be quite useful.  Promote posts for us will reach much better than a promoted event, so I don’t like promoting events but those are things that you learn when you’re dealing with social media.   As a leader, what have you learnt?   Helen: I’ve learnt heaps about business.  I’ve learned heaps about my husband.  I’ve learned heaps about my family.  You can always learn more about each other though I love him to bits.  And that’s one of the things that I think sometimes, when you enter business is tough.  As a couple, we like taking risks but I’d have to say this is the hardest thing we have ever done…EVER done together.  It still is.  It’s not as if he’s not involved because I’ve sat there at night in my laptop at 7 o’clock going, “Oh God…” [whispers] and we have governance meetings.  So he knows exactly what’s going on in the business.  He’s still got his eye on what’s going on.  And his background in IT, you know, means that we’ve got a damned fine system in terms of how we use technology within the business.  WE are a cloud based business and having done…I don’t know if you’ve come across a website called Digital Journey which allows businesses from all walks of life to actually do a bit of a check-up in terms of where they are digitally in terms of what they use it for.  We use ……Timely, Collect, iPayroll, everything.  Any point in time, anywhere in the world, we can even log on and see on 5 camera who’s in our business and what’s going on, so we’ve got this real access to that data and that information which you wouldn’t have if Huw hadn’t contributed that to the business.  That’s really good.   Back to the question, what I have learned?  I have learned to let go a little bit.  I’ve always been a bit of a control freak.   Tell us about that more about that because it’s a problem and a challenge that small business owners have.    Helen: It’s all about communication and that communication took various forms and so you can write things down in policies or in handbooks or whatever and you can make them aware of that but when it comes to staff, you know, performance management is key.  You need to take time to sit with them.  You need to take time to help them understand what your goals are to the business and listen to what they want at the job because if they’re at a job where they’re not happy, they’re not going to want…they’re not going to engage.  They’re not going to subscribe to your philosophy or be in the same page as you.    Do you have regular meetings with your staff?   Helen: Yes.  We have  performance reviews every three months and I have out of the core team of 4, there is one person that I regards as my OIC.  I meet with her every week and we go through an agenda-structured meeting just to update on where we are with particular things and fortnightly, I meet with the other core staff just to debrief them on where I’m at with the things that are happening.  With the projects that are going on and then I’ll use deputy as another conduit in terms of messages around what staff need to know.  They see what happens on social media.  In terms of things that go well…In terms of things that go well at a party, we make sure that the staff member who’s done it is recognised as having a good job.  It’s the little things, it’s doing the little things for the staff.  And we have social events.  We’ll go bowling.  During the school holidays, we had a barbecue and a croquet evening.  It’s just having that culture of fun.  What was really lovely to see, actually is we had a photo of all 14-15 of us altogether and one of the staff members put a comment on it saying, “Family, love heart.”  You know, and that’s how it should be.  That’s how I feel my staff should feel that they’re part of a family and everybody’s got a role to play and everybody does it…And everybody is being that positive, then it’s only going to show within your business operations.  The dynamic has to be right.  The connection has to be there.   Tell me what you’ve done in the past.   Helen: No, I don’t use a plot.  I might do internally but I don’t…there’s no value in going off with somebody.  No value at all and I can let me know how its made me feel.  My staff don’t want to let me down and they know if they’re stuffed up and they feel rotten about it, what’s the point in making them feel even more rotten by shouting at them?    I guess that comes from my background in working as a therapist - The psychology of people and relationships.   One of the things I’m probably known for is idea generation and I’m very much a believer that an idea isn’t worth having unless you’re prepared to do something with it.  So, even if it’s just pursuing if to find out if it’s viable or not, do something with it.  The implementation of an idea doesn’t happen overnight.  It’s not instant.  If you’re going to have an idea around your business, at least give it a shot or investigate it.  Investigate its feasibility.  I like doing that and worrying is a futile process and believe me, I worried a lot in the first couple of years.  I worried I got myself into an absolute state at times, but actually, that worrying didn’t…it just wasted my energy and it was really a negative experience.  So, you’ve just got to…There’s no point in worrying about what the future might bring cause you don’t know what it is gonna bring.  You’ve just gotta appreciate the present, enjoy it if you can, and if something happens, then there’s usually reason for it and it might not be at that time, you might not appreciate the reason, you might not think, “Right, it’s not a very good thing to be happening,” but it all comes out in the wash.   And I think the other thing in terms of things I’ve learned is that I have a tendency to put myself under pressure and I guess I’ve come to realize that the only person that puts me under pressure is me.  So I need to make sure that I control that and I come to a point where I say, “Actually, stop the press, I’m going to do something about it.”  Sometimes people say, “Oh, Helen, you’re a superwoman.”  I think “Okay, yes, I do a lot.” But it almost becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy because I’m going to maintain the perception that I am a superwoman.  I don’t have to.  What you think of me, it doesn’t matter at the end of the day, it doesn’t matter and if I continue to live my life worrying about what other people are gonna think of me, then I’m just gonna…   If there’s anything you need to be is authentic.  When people are authentic, they trust you and then they trust your business.  I’m now a fan of Kyle Sees.  He’s very much about the struggle that exists between the head and the heart and that you need to be true to yourself and that thing that being in the moment and appreciating here and how.  It is huge.  It affects your whole demeanor and it affects which way the people relate to you.   How has Huw helped your business in terms of technology?   Helen: I’m lucky Huw is an IT geek.  [laughs] I guess the benefits for my business come in relation to things like the process and efficiencies that come with it.  Having everything integrated and everything squirting into the thing.  Collection and everything is easily accessible.  You won’t find other venues like Rumpus Room with the same degree of digital competence sort of thing.  I guess that makes us different in some in way.   Where do you see your industry going in the next 5 to 10 years?   Helen: There’s a quote from a guy called Marshall McLelland and he said that “anyone who thinks education and entertainment are different doesn’t know much about either.  So, I’m very much a believer in what’s called edutainment.  So that’s providing a focused mixed of age appropriate, sort of highly interactive play experiences, really.  I think that play is perceived by adults as being frivolous and the importance of play for children’s development isn’t fully understood.  Play has huge implications for a child’s motor skills development, for their social development, for their language development, and we’re seeing children who are playing less and as a result, we are seeing children who are becoming obese, we are seeing children who are entering school with poor language levels, we are seeing children who…socially, not having the right level of competence, socially and emotionally and the implications of that for the economy in terms of health…They’re not necessarily playing less, they’re playing differently.  It might be in terms of technology.  How many children are we seeing children in front of iPad screens and playing that way instead of doing the more physical imagination type of play.    There are more challenges, there are more are more stresses and we all just choose the easy option, the easy route.  The one that’s going to not cause us as much hassles, necessarily.  So we just choose the easy option and if the easy option is pushing your kid around the supermarket with a screen in front of their face rather than giving your child attention and stuff.  Going to the fruit and labelling what the fruit is and stuff like that.  We just don’t want to deal to the agro that comes with it.  We shouldn’t blame the kids for this at all.  They’re being shaped by the experiences that we give them.  The other thing is, as adults, because we don’t understand them.  I ran a couple of workshops when I was working with the Ministry of Education and they raised something about play and I’m really shocked that as adults…of our inability to play.  We’ve lost sight of that or we have an idea that play has to have a point.  Play has to have a purpose.  It has to have a reason.  No it doesn’t.  What are we setting out to achieve by playing with these couple of boxes, you know.  Let’s play with Lego and let’s build something.  We get tied up with the end result and we don’t focus on the process of playing.  That’s why children need a rich environment they can act upon, manipulate, control.  We need to give them the tools and then they have a license to play and be kids.  Rather than us trying to instil a perception of this is what play should be.  We need to follow their lead.  We’ve got the bouncy castle, we’ve got the soft play.  We’ve got those toys but at the end of the day, I was looking at the boxes that we crushed to go into recycling.  I said to myself, “Right, I want you to pick out all the decent boxes and I want you to put a stash of them, 20-25 of them in a big pile.” They did it.  And the kids came in and we’ve got a quarter of a million dollar play structure and 25 boxes.  It’s the whole christmas analogy.  We think we know what the children want to play with but they spent hours and they loved it, you know.  And again, as adults, we go, “Well, why do you want to play with boxes?”  “Because it’s fun!”  It was like a cardboard city!  I guess that’s where I see the industry going over the next 5 to 10 years.  WE need to look at that whole perception of play.  We need to start selling the importance of it for our children’s development and we need to get more grownups having a little bit more fun, engaging and playing and understand that it’s not all about what’s at the end, it’s about being and it’s about process.   We’ve had an adults night at Rumpus Room and it was hilarious.  Absolutely hilarious.  WE had a great time.  That comes with a whole license thing and the costing involved with that.  You don’t need alcohol to have fun.  I know it can reduce people’s inhibitions.  But again, you can do that without having to have a glass of wine.  The extroverts might be a little intimidating to others so it doesn’t matter who turns out.  You’ll be surprised, actually that that sort of whole letting go and having a laugh…we started off with a game of tag and they were running around like kids in the playground.  It was hilarious.  So yeah, there is potential for corporate team development but again, it’s the whole ideal of selling, the importance of playing and allowing people to understand how important play is in adults with developing creativity.  If you let go of all those sort of frameworks that we put around each other and let go of those…   Exercise, laughing, endorphin releasing…but it’s getting business again to understand that investing in that type of corporate day is beneficial rather than frivolous.  What relevance does Rumpus Room have to my business?  And that’s something to look at.     QUICK FIRE ROUND:   BEST MARKETING TIP:  Be authentic.   BEST OPERATIONAL TIP:  Always be able to help or go one step further than expected.   BEST STAFF MANAGEMENT TIP:  Appreciate them   BUSINESS GROWTH TIP:  Measure.  How do you know your business is growing unless you know how to measure growth?   Well, Rumpus Room can be found at 151 Gill Street in New Plymouth.  We have a website which is www.Rumpus-Room.co.nz and there’s always our Facebook page which is Rumpus Room New Zealand.   www.rumpus-room.co.nz   https://www.facebook.com/TheRumpusRoomNZ/?fref=ts                            

Audio File:  Download MP3Transcript: An Interview with Helen Greiner Co-founder and Chairman of the Board, iRobot Corp. Date: June 11, 2007 NCWIT Interview with Helen Greiner BIO: In the early days of iRobot Corp. (Nasdaq:IRBT), co-founder and Chairman of the Board Helen Greiner envisioned robots as the basis for an entirely new class of products that would improve life by taking on dangerous and undesirable tasks. Greiner's vision has been brought to life by products such as the iRobot Roomba® Vacuuming Robot, which has sold more than 2 million units to consumers throughout the world, and the iRobot PackBot® Tactical Mobile Robot, which is helping to save soldiers' lives in Iraq and Afghanistan. Greiner's nearly 20 years in robot innovation and commercialization includes work at NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab and MIT's Artificial Intelligence Lab, where she met iRobot co-founders Colin Angle and Rodney Brooks. Before founding iRobot in 1990, Greiner founded California Cybernetics, a company focused on commercializing NASA Jet Propulsion Lab technology and performing government-sponsored research in robotics. Greiner holds a bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering and a master's degree in computer science, both from MIT. In 2005, she led iRobot through its initial public offering. She also guided iRobot's early strategic corporate growth initiatives by securing $35 million in venture funding to finance iRobot's expansion in the consumer and military categories. In addition, Greiner created iRobot's Government & Industrial Robots division - starting with government research funding leading to the first deployment of robots in combat in Operation Enduring Freedom. Currently, the division is shipping iRobot PackBot robots for improvised explosive device (IED) disposal in Iraq. In part because of the success of these initiatives, Greiner has helped enhance public acceptance of robots as one of today's most important emerging technology categories. Greiner was named by the Kennedy School at Harvard in conjunction with US News and World Report as one of America's Best Leaders and was recently honored with the Pioneer Award from the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International (AUVSI) in appreciation for her work in military robotics. Greiner has been honored by the World Economic Forum as both a Global Leader for Tomorrow and a Young Global Leader. In 2005 Good Housekeeping Magazine named her "Entrepreneur of the Year," and Accenture honored her as "Small Business Icon" in its Government Women Leadership Awards. In 2003, Greiner was recognized by Fortune Magazine as one of its "Top 10 Innovators of 2003" and named the Ernst and Young New England "Entrepreneur of the Year" with cofounder Colin Angle. Greiner won the prestigious "DEMO God" award at the DEMO 2000 Conference. In 1999, she was named an "Innovator for the Next Century" by Technology Review Magazine. Lucy Sanders: Hi, this is Lucy Sanders. I am the CEO of the National Center for Women and Information Technology or NCWIT. This is part of a series of interviews that we are having with fabulous IT entrepreneurs, women who have started IT companies in a variety of different sectors, all of whom have absolutely fabulous stories to tell us about being entrepreneurs. With me doing these interviews is Larry Nelson from w3w3.com. Hi, Larry. How are you? Larry Nelson: Well, hello. Boy, am I happy to be here. Lucy: Why don't you tell us a little bit about w3w3 because these will be podcasts on w3w3 as well as on the NCWIT website. Larry: Well, just briefly, we started in 1998 before anybody knew what radio on the Internet was all about. And finally we learned a number of interesting lessons. We started doing podcasting a little over a year ago, so that's a big leap since then. We have been very fortunate to have a number of interviews with top‑notch heavy hitters, but after I saw the list that Lucy put together I was just absolutely stunned. Lucy: To really just get right to it, the person we are interviewing today is Helen Greiner. She is the co‑founder and chairwoman of iRobot. I have to admit up front that I am an iRobot stockholder, and Helen knows I am one of her best salespeople ‑‑ maybe not her best sales person but certainly one of her salespeople. Helen Greiner: I hope you are not just a stockholder, but I hope you are also a Roomba owner. Lucy: I am a Roomba owner. It's getting double duty now because we're doing a kitchen renovation, and we set it loose in the house at night to pick up all the dust and stuff so it's getting a workout, Helen. Helen: You'll be needing the Dirt Dog model for wash ups and construction areas. Lucy: Absolutely. Larry: We're going to have to have a link to all of these on the website. Lucy: Absolutely. We are really happy to have you here, Helen. We are really looking forward to talking to you about entrepreneurship. Larry: You know, I can't help but wonder: we have four daughters, and how did you, Helen, get really involved and interested in technology? Helen: Well, I think this is a common story in technology, but I was inspired by science fiction. I went to see "Star Wars" when I was 11 on the big screen, and I was enthralled by R2‑D2 because he was a character. He had a personality and a gender, and he was more than a machine. I was inspired to start thinking about, can you build something like that? As I was hacking on my little TSR 80 personal computer, obviously I had no idea just how complex it would be. Lucy: What are you thinking about those new mailboxes that are R2‑D2 mailboxes, Helen? Helen: I think they're pretty damn cool. Lucy: I think it's pretty cool. As a technologist you obviously look at a lot of different technologies. I am sure you have some on your radar screen that you think are particularly cool and compelling. Maybe you could share some of those with us. Helen: Well, of course, the coolest is robots because they are just on the cusp of adoption today. Other than the robots and ones that very well might feed into the robot, are large scale memories, multiple core processors, cameras on cell phones. Technologies as they go to mass market are getting cheaper and cheaper which enables them to be bringing them into other applications, like on the robots. Larry: I just want to make sure that the listeners do understand that you are talking about robots everywhere from the kitchen to Iraq. Helen: Yes. We have over two million Roombas out there in people's homes doing the floor sweeping and vacuuming. We have a floor washing robot, the Scooba, that you just leave on your floor and when you come back it's clean. We have a robot for the work shop called the Dirt Dog, and what most people don't realize is we also sell a line of robots for the military. Our Packbot model was used for the first time in cave clearing in Afghanistan and now is being used for bomb disposal over in Iraq. One of the neat new developments we have is we just put out a version of this with a bomb sniffing payload, so it can actually go out and find improvised explosive devices. Lucy: Well, I've heard you speak about the robots over in Iraq, and it's very compelling to know that we can use technology like this to really go on these types of missions instead of our young men and our young women. Helen: The robots allow a soldier to stay at a safe, standoff distance. He doesn't have to go into unnecessary danger. Lucy: Right. Helen: Our servicemen and women, you know, are exposed to a lot of danger when you send them to roadside bombs when a robot could do the job instead. We think that's really something that should be changed quickly, and it has changed very rapidly. Just two years ago they would suit up a soldier in a bomb suit and send them down range, and now you have to get permission to do that. The common operating procedure is to send a robot into the danger. Larry: That sounds like iRobot is doing everything from saving backs in kitchens to saving lives in dangerous situations. Let me see if I can migrate to the entrepreneur part of you. What is it that made you become, or why are you an entrepreneur? Helen: I was deeply interested in making robots into an industry. People have been talking about robots. They have been in science fiction for decades and decades. Yet, when I started in this field I looked around and there were very few robots that people could actually purchase and could actually use. When I was at the university at MIT the people worked on wonderful robot projects. It was really, really cool technology, but when the PhD got done or when the project ended, all of it would kind of stop and then somebody would start a new project potentially building on some of the results. But the actual robot that was built. many times progress stopped on it. Just like the computer industry, I believe it takes a company that can reinvest some of the profits back into the next generation and the next improvements on the products that really has started the industry to take off. Lucy: Well next the definition that I carry in my head of true innovation is taking research and the types of projects you are talking about, Helen, and driving them out into the consumer space and into the mass market. That is what innovation is all about. Larry: You bet. By the way, what is it about being an entrepreneur, what is it that makes you tick and turns you on as an entrepreneur? Helen: Being an entrepreneur is creating something out of nothing. You know, when you start it, it's all consuming. It takes your whole focus. It is very compelling to me. I tend to be someone who when they jump into something they jump into it with absolutely full force, and it allowed me to learn so much along the way. Everything from how to hire people, how to apply for and win a military research contract, how to raise venture capital, how to set up a management structure and, very recently, how to take a company public. Lucy: Helen, tell us, obviously, entrepreneurship makes you tick. You love to create things from nothing, and along the way as you chose this career path, who influenced you? What kind of mentors did you have? Helen: I have had a lot of advisors who I could talk to about the different stages of the business, and that's been an incredible gift. That is one of the most valuable things you can give: the benefit of your own experience. Early on I was influenced by my dad having founded a company, so entrepreneurship was part of my culture growing up. Larry: So, it's not genetic. It's part of the culture, right? Helen: I believe that. Larry: You, I'm sure, like all of us entrepreneurs ‑‑ you know, Pat and I, we have been in business together and entrepreneurs for over 30 years. There are a lot of bumps and things along the road. What would be some of the most challenging things that you have experienced? Helen: Well, iRobot has been in business for 17 years, and it's a lot different company today than when we founded it. Early on, this was a bootstrap company, credit cards filled to the max. Larry: So you made money right away? Helen: Yeah. Larry: You were profitable right away? Yeah. Lucy: Like many of us. Helen: No, we really had a bumpy beginning because in part the technology wasn't ready yet upon time. So we came up with a method to develop the technology and to develop business plans so when the opportunity was right we could capitalize on it. Lucy: So, as we shift a little bit now toward the future entrepreneurs, if you were giving advise to people about entrepreneurship, young people, about the career path you have chosen being an entrepreneur, what would you tell them? What advice would you give them? Helen: I would say, definitely do it, because it's probably one of the most rewarding career paths you can take. One of the most challenging, but one of the most rewarding. I would say very strongly, don't do it like we did it at iRobot. IRobot, we didn't do it with a business plan. We didn't start a real crisp idea of what these robots would used for. We basically started with the future of the technology and it happens to have worked for us, but it was a long haul in the early years. I think if I had it to do over again, it would be done a lot more efficiently. Larry: When did you finally get the real management team put together? Helen: In 1998 we decided to take venture capital for the first time. And that was a big decision because that's what took it from being more of a lifestyle company, somewhat of a research lab. Folks were building any kind of robot, because they were passionate about it. Some of them are quite frankly cool to a real business concern. You could almost consider the company a re‑start in 1998. It only took the first venture capital, which allowed us to invest in the management team and take it to the next level. Also to invest in our own product lines, rather than relying on government contracts coming in or strategic relationships with larger companies. Larry: Well, you have been very passionate about iRobots and you've also been very humble in terms of what you have done, what you have been through. What are some of the characteristics that maybe have been a benefit to you in becoming a successful entrepreneur? Helen: I'd say the biggest one is persistence. There will always be speed bumps along the way. And generally being able to say, OK, I might not have the solution to this problem right now, but I know that there's a way. And either by talking to people, getting advice, by brainstorming with people, by being creative, by thinking out of the box. There is always a way to get through any problem that presents itself. It's takes persistence to do that because you will get knocked quite a few times along the road. Being able to pick yourself up, dust off and say, I learned from that experience, I won't do it again. We don't look at anything at iRobot as failed. This got us to the next step and the next step was different, but they were all stepping‑stones to where we are today. And many of them were necessary. Larry: I have heard that persistence is omnipotence. Lucy: Sometime we refer to it as relentlessness. Larry: Oh, is that what that is. Lucy: Yes. I also have to say something about Helen how and just as a sidebar: Helen gives one of the best talks on robotics I have ever seen. Helen, your talk at the Grace Harper Conference was outrageously good. Helen: Oh, well I appreciate that. One of the things that I would like for folks listening to know that it is important to be able to grab the microphone and get your message across. My personal background is: I was extremely shy, terribly afraid of public speaking. You know, reports that people who would rather do anything else sometimes than get up in front of a group of people and speak. I was one of those people. It doesn't come naturally to me. But I recognized that it was important in getting the message of the company across. I really worked on how to improve and just by taking speaking opportunities I got better and better at it. Which doesn't mean I will ever be a natural just really, really want to jump out and do it. If I can do it, anybody can learn to be a better public speaker. So they can take advantage of the opportunities to get their message out that it provides. Larry: It might not be natural but you certainly are unique and passionate. Lucy: The best talk I've heard, a mix of computer science and business and humor, it's wonderful. Helen: That is very nice of you. It means a lot because I did have to work harder than people who are naturals, "Yes, I want the mike!" Lucy: One of the things that our listeners will be interested in. The entrepreneurial life is a tough life. It is a lot of work and yet it is important to bring balance between our personal lives and our professional lives. So what kinds of hints do you have to pass along? Helen: I don't think I'm a shining example of balance in my life, but I can say the philosophy I've always had is: work hard, play hard. So, when I do take off from iRobot, being able to go out snowboarding, being able to tight‑board, being able to go scuba diving. I'm just learning how to tight‑board. I have a goal to learn one new sport each year, because it's good to take up something new and to me I like doing it in the athletic arena. Lucy: Well, it sounds like fun to me. Larry: Lucy likes to go out there and jog every day after... Lucy: Well, you're right I'm not that good at it either, but I still get out there. Larry: I can't help but ask this. You know, you have had a very exciting and challenging ‑‑ and obviously with the persistence and the talent ‑‑ you really accomplished a great deal. I know you want to accomplish a great deal more with iRobot. What's next for you? Helen: Well, the challenges that iRobot faces today are different than when we were a start up company. Now we have over 350 people. In 2006 we did just about $189 million in revenues and now it's about making the organization click, to function as a team, and making sure that things work like clockwork at the organization, while still keeping that innovative flair, so you can get the next generation of products into the pipeline. Lucy: So, I have to ask, just because I love iRobot so much, what's the next great product? Can you spill the beans? Helen: I can't tell you what the next consumer robot products are, but on the military side, we have a hugely exciting robot that can run over 12 miles an hour, that can carry a soldier's pack. It's got a manipulator on it that can pick up a Howitzer shell. That thing picked me up the other day. Lucy: Oh. Larry: Wow. Helen: We're very excited to get that type of capability also into hands of our soldiers. Lucy: Wow, that's pretty exciting. Larry: Nothing like getting picked up. Boy, that's for sure. Lucy: I don't know what I would do if a robot picked me up, but I guess one of these days maybe we'll experience ‑‑ we'll get you to bring that to one of our meetings, Helen. That would be very cool. Larry: I'd love a picture of that for the website. Lucy: Yeah, thank you. OK. Larry: Helen, I want to thank you so much for joining us. We are so excited about this program. When we get to talk to people like you with your background and your experience, it makes it just that much more exciting and motivating to a number of young people. Helen: Well, I appreciate it. Lucy: Well, and we want everybody to know where they can find these podcasts. They are accessible on the NCWIT website at ww.NCWIT.org And along with the podcast, his information about entrepreneurism and how people can be more involved as entrepreneurs and also get resources on the web and also from other organizations, should they be interested. Larry: Yes, and thank you for all of the great hints and probably more than that, some really golden nuggets in there. One that's sticking out in my mind right now is the mass‑market adoption. I guess that is what we all want to charge for. Helen: It's not where we started out, but it is where we're fully focused at. Lucy: Well, thank you very much. Helen: OK, thank you. Have a good one. Series: Entrepreneurial HeroesInterviewee: Helen GreinerInterview Summary: Helen Greiner is co-founder and Chairman of the Board of iRobot Corp., maker of the Roomba® Vacuuming Robot (over 2M units sold) and the iRobot PackBot® Tactical Mobile Robot, which deactivates mines in Iraq and Afghanistan. Release Date: June 11, 2007Interview Subject: Helen GrenierInterviewer(s): Lucy Sanders, Larry NelsonDuration: 15:30