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Today I will be interviewing Dr. Debi Silber, founder of PBT (Post Betrayal Transformation).We will talk about the pain of being betrayed and will help us understand and learn how to come out of it as a better person Creating a New Tomorrow for ourselves.=======================Ari Gronich0:05Welcome back to another episode of creating a new tomorrow. I am your host Ari Gronich. And today I have with me Dr. Debbie Silber. She is the founder of the post betrayal transformation Institute and is holistic psychologist, a health mindset and personal development expert and the author of number one best-selling book, “The unshakable woman four steps to rebuilding your body”. Dr. Debi, let me just ask you to talk to the audience. Tell them a little bit about your background and why post betrayal? That seems to be an odd thing to niche in. So..Debi Silber0:42Yeah, I don't. I don't think anybody says, Oh, I think I want to study betrayal. No, it's actually my 30th year in business. And as life would morph and change, so would so with the business. And I was in health and mindset and personal development, and then trauma. And I had my first betrayal from my family, and I thought I did the work to heal. And a few months when a few months, few years later, actually it was my husband, and anybody who's been through it. You're blindsided. You're shocked. You're devastated. You know, life as you've known it is no longer. So got him out of the house. And I thought about I said, Okay, well what similar to these two experiences. And I realized I never really took my own needs seriously, it was about everybody else, boundaries were getting crossed. I was like, something's got to change. And that's me. So four kids, six dogs, and a thriving business. I was 50. I'm like, that's it. Going back for a PhD. I didn't even know where that idea came from. I didn't know how I was going to pay for it, how I was going to do it. But it was in transpersonal, psychology, the psychology of transformation, human potential. And while I was there, I did a study, I studied betrayal, what holds us back what helps us heal and what happens to us physically, mentally and emotionally. When the people closest to us lie, cheat and deceive. That study led to three groundbreaking discoveries which changed my health, my business, my family, my life.Ari Gronich2:07Very cool. So betrayal. Let me ask you a question. All of what you kind of said was betrayal from others? And then you talk about working on you. Right? So the biggest question is the betrayal that we give to ourselves? So can you talk a little bit about that?Debi Silber2:35Sure. Self-betrayal is huge. And there's such a link between self-betrayal and betrayal. You know, self-betrayal is when you know, something isn't in your best interest and you do it anyway. You know, something doesn't serve and you do it anyway, you know, you shouldn't do something, feel something, keep going back for something and you keep doing it. So we're betraying ourselves, you know, it's not in our best interest yet. We keep doing it. So that's self-betrayal.Ari Gronich3:02Okay, so how does that extend into others betraying us? Because what I've found, at least in my experience is, the harder I treat myself, the harder I get treated by others, right, so it directly correlates to, I'm expecting, at this point people to betray me. And so I'm going to invite that in so to speak, versus No, when I have to have a barrier between myself in that or boundary.Debi Silber3:33Yeah, uh, you know, if we write the script for how people treat us, but there were so many things in what you said, like what one thing is, if you expect it, for sure, that's what you know, that's what you'll have. And that's why we see so like, I can spot an unhealed betrayal from a mile away. And one way is when there's a repeat betrayal, because here's this opportunity for us to learn something really profound, not that we're causing the betrayal, but there's a real opportunity here and until and unless we do we will keep getting opportunities in the form of people to teach us this, you know, maybe the bound you know, the rule is that where the lesson is, I need better boundaries in place. I am lovable, worthy, deserving, whatever it is, and you know, it's time to get that lesson so it doesn't have to keep repeating itself.Ari Gronich4:22Just so in the context of how we create a new tomorrow and activate our vision for a better world. You know, what do you say is like the number one, number two, number three things for people to do, so that they can understand this and begin creating a new tomorrow today for themselves?Debi Silber4:45Yeah, well, I mean, the first thing is, like I live real simply have a very simple rule. If it's going to hurt someone, don't do it. Mostly shocked and amazed that other people just don't follow those same rules. So it's really simple. It's like if you want to make a Better Tomorrow, do right by people, you know, lead with kindness, live and love, like, don't just don't hurt people period. But that's not you know, people are acting from their current level of consciousness from where they are. That's the, that's the choice they think is the best, the best move. So, you know, so what do we do, of course, the first thing is prevent something from happening in, in the first place, that's best-case scenario. the second best is to clean it up, clean it up for the betrayed person, there's tremendous opportunity for growth. But for the betrayer, there are two. That is what could be the biggest wakeup call of their life. You know, with some people, it's just on to the next there's a void, there's a hole, there's a gap, and they just don't want to look, don't want to see. So they just keep looking for something on the outside to fill that inside need. You're really not working with much here. So when that's the case, you know, you heal yourself and, and rebuild like, in my scenario. I learned rebuilding is always a choice, whether you rebuild yourself and move on. And that's what I did with my family. Or if the situation lends itself and you're willing, and you want to, you can rebuild something entirely new with the person who hurt you. And that's what I do with my husband. So not long ago, we married each other again. And there's the opportunity, but I never in a bazillion years would have done anything like that if I wasn't totally different, and for sure if he wasn't either.Ari Gronich6:33Interesting. So here's where I guess I'm struggling with, with some of this is there's a lot of there's a lot of self-accountability, right. But there's also this accountability to and for others. And so when you say something like, just don't hurt people, right? I think to myself, well, I could be just doing me being a good person, the way I'm a good person, and somebody may get hurt somehow seigneur in some way. And so how does not hurt somebody and take care of your business internally and your internal pain so that you're not basically being a pain thrower, throwing your butt off onto people. So I'm trying to, I want to get the balance here for the audience of this.Debi Silber7:38It's a great question. intentionality is really where it is, you know that that's what I'm talking about. When you intentionally are hurting someone, you can of course, listen, if you accidentally bump into someone, you weren't trying to hurt them. It's just it was an accident and things happen. Betrayal, the reason why betrayal is such a unique type of trauma is because of how intentional it is, when someone's breaking the spoken or unspoken rules of that relationship. And every relationship has them. Right? It's a breaking of those rules. One person was abiding by the rules, and the other person without their awareness or consent, broke the rules. That's where it's an issue. If both people in relationship, whether it's friends, family member, partner, whatever. If it's an understood thing, hey, there are no rules here. Okay. And if that's your rule, that's okay. But when there's an understanding, spoken or unspoken, you know, and when one person chooses to break that, and breach that trust, that's what I'm talking about. Ari Gronich8:47Gotcha. Okay. So then let's talk about businesses, betraying, you know, people, right, so let's talk about that a little bit. Because as I sit and look at politics, and look at businesses and look at all the things going on religion, there's been a lot of betrayal of the trust that people have been placing in them. And so that's where my question to you would be. Let's talk about the larger betrayals beyond individual to individual that, you know, community, to individual country to individual religion, authority figure, whatever it is.Debi Silber9:31Yeah, you broke up for a big piece of that. So I'm going to try to imagine what you were saying here. It's so widespread, it really is. I mean, even so, you know, I remember in my research, reading about consumer betrayal. I mean, we can think about it you can, and the study even found there is something called the love versus hate principle, something like that, where we would rather knowingly do something, we know is bad for buy something we know is bad for us, then be duped. For example, you know cigarettes, we know it's bad for us, right? But if someone were to purchase it, or they would rather do that, then buy a product that says, let's say it's good for us and it's not. Right. So it and then because quickly that love for that company turns to hate, we are furious. It's that feeling of being duped and yeah, so much. You know, we're feeling it in so many areas of life right now. Just even in this post COVID world we're living in. And, you know, where some people are just feeling the we could feel betrayed by our own bodies, we could feel betrayed by life by government, by God, I mean, people can universe source, whatever you say. So it's really, you know, even a breaking of those expectations, right. But the way it works with betrayal is the more we trust, and the more we depend on someone that deeper that betrayal. So a child, let's say, who's completely dependent on their parent and parent does something awful, it's gonna have a different impact than your best friend share your secret.Ari Gronich11:03So then, what is the mechanism, right? I talked about this a lot on the show the mechanism that causes people to act against their own self-interest, because I look at what's going on, just in general, the news, for instance, right? I think it's probably a high percentage of the population that feels betrayed by the news that feels like everything is being lied about, like we go down the aisle in the grocery store, we see all natural, healthy, and then you look at the ingredients, and there's almost nothing natural or healthy about it. Right? So how does somebody number one, emotionally deal with the fact that they are constantly being lied to betrayed and treated in a way that's, you know, against their own self-interest? So have the emotional side of that, but then how do we get people to act based on that so that we can stop those trends?Debi Silber12:07Yeah. You know, it's a great question. Because if anything makes you angry, it's that you're being lied to. And, you know, and that's where trust gets shattered. Because then we look at it. Like with the closer the more obvious betrayals, we say, I can't trust my betrayal. I don't even trust myself, how did I not see how did I not know? So how do I then trust this person, that person, so trust is completely and totally shattered. And that's why it's so traumatic. We, you know, we have to be discerning. So what we don't want to do is just be so unwilling to trust because if there's no trust, there's no relationship. There's no, there's no intimacy, there's no closest you're living half a life, right? It's like you're getting burned on the stove. And you're like, that's it. I'm never cooking again. Right? Yeah, it's not fair to you. So we need to have some level of understanding that people are acting from their current level of consciousness, this is the best they can do for right now. Now, how do you change it? yet? Like a role model? You do? You, you do you the best way you can. And if people ask me all the time, you when it comes to, let's say, kids, you know, they're watching everything you do way more than what you say, it's what you do. So just do the right thing as best you can, from where you are right now.Ari Gronich13:32Okay, so that is a partial answer. So that's the emotional side, write active site, to activate yourself to stop that behavior from not just affecting you, but when we see it, I consider that to be the bully, right? So the behavior is, it's the bullying behavior. So I always say silences are bullies' best friends. So if you want to stop the bully, you got to get loud, right? So in this case, how does somebody get loud start being noisy about the fact that hey, this is going on. And yet doing it not in a victim way but doing it in let's empower ourselves and the rest of the community to say, Hey, we should probably not do this.Debi Silber14:20Right. So I mean, I don't think it really you accomplish anything from a victim standpoint, except making yourself sick. And that's really all you do. from a place of strength. It's having boundaries in place, and standing firm with them not being flimsy with your own boundaries. And the easiest way to see this is what would I recommend to someone else? If I'm, if I would say, if someone were to come to me and say, What do I do about this, or should I tolerate this or that or the other thing? You know, what am I doing? If here's the thing when it comes to betrayal to if I would be Completely an unwilling to completely unwilling to accept anything less than what I deserved, let's say from that person who betrayed me, Well, I have to be completely willing to show up in that strong, powerful way myself. So I have to be unwilling to accept anything less of myself. So I can't just, you know, anything goes, No, I'm holding myself to a higher standard. If I'm gonna hold someone else to it, I start first.Ari Gronich15:27Right, I understand that. So I don't want to go bigger with that again, you know, my whole thing I want to go bigger, with bigger and deeper, bigger and deeper. So, again, I go, this is cool. And let's talk cancer is a betrayal, right? It's a betrayal. The betrayer is, let's say, in some case, the cigarette company, right? The cigarette company is lying to you for 50 years telling you that it's good, right? And now. And now it's done right now. Now we know. So now you're you've become the betrayer yourself, because now you have an open relationship with what used to be the betrayer, which is the company. Debi Silber16:15Right? So now my role is to not spend a penny with that company again. Because if I do that, and the next person does that the next person does and the next person does that. We're not supporting something that isn't in our best interest.Ari Gronich16:30Okay, so how do we develop the chain reaction? If we see something that systemically bad not for us, but for everyone, right? How do we stem that chain reaction? So I'm going to go to a deeper thing cigarettes is like, easy, right? We already kind of have that around, let's say pesticides in our food, right? Which cause cancer, which are very toxic to your nervous system, your immune system, all those things, right? So let's talk about that. How do we get in not just you and me who have gone organic or whoever who, you know, says let's all go organic? And let's hug trees, right, which completely divides people? How do we get that train going to the companies that are providing those chemicals to stop the governments that, you know, like, how do we stop people? Yeah, other than just saying, I'm personally not going to do that, because one person's pennies don't mean as much as 100 people's pennies.Debi Silber17:35Absolutely. But you know, it's like, they're the only word that comes to mind is critical mass, if I do it, if you do it, and then if our message gets to the next person, the next person, the next person, you know, that's, that, to me, is more effective. Listen, some people are activists, and they're going to be the ones with the signs and you know, protesting outside the company headquarters, and I get that I'm going to do my part and not supporting something and sharing the message to, let's say, my community, and doing my part. And if everybody does their part, it's we can have that that critical. That critical message, it reminds me of that starfish story, you know, you hear the starfish they're all the starfish on the laying on the beach. And there's the I think it's like a grandchild grandson and a grandfather and or something, no son, whatever. And they're just throwing one starfish in and one starfish in , and they're like, well, what's the difference? There are so many 1000s it's like well, this one made a difference to this one made a difference to this one. So I look at it like we're beautiful. We have a beautiful opportunity to do our part, share with our community, be the role model and let that let that grow. So I don't think the anger is what moves the angle if the anger motivates. That's beautiful. But coming at it from a place of strength not a place of just reaction.Ari Gronich18:59Right. But I guess what I got from you, which I was looking for, was the share.Then get out and you know, not just keep it within for a year yourself. Right? Well, but share it right?Debi Silber19:17Well, of course. I mean, that's why I opened up the PBT Institute. What's the point of me just healing? I mean, I made a vow. I said if I, if I heal, I'm taking Everybody with me. You know, why on earth would I just do this for just myself? It's like, I feel like we owe it to others. If we've been through something, how do you not share that and shorten someone else's learning curve. And if everybody does that with their own experience, someone has a financial crisis. They teach how to avoid it. Someone has a health crisis. They teach how to avoid I had a betrayal crisis. I teach someone how to heal from it. I mean, I think that's, that's how we contribute. Ari Gronich19:53Awesome. So I like the anger. The anger absolutely motivates me. In some ways, and I like action, right? I like the movement of action; which activism is that? And I'm like for my audience you know, I'm calling for activism these days for people to be actively not going against the system but actively looking for ways that they can improve on the system. So Buckminster Fuller, one of my, you know, mentors, I guess. inspirations, I'd say, you know, used to say, you don't build something, or you don't fight the system, you build something better next to it, and people will come. That's a paraphrase. But that's the idea. So what are we building? Right? for people to come to that's better than the system that we've had. And so for you, you've created what you know, you call the PVT right?Debi Silber21:08The post betrayal transformation Institute, there is nothing like it that exists. It's like how people know, a is if you have an alcohol issue, the PBT Institute is if you have a betrayal issue, you're not meant to stay there long. It's the training wheels until you don't need them. But there's a roadmap and a predictable way to heal now. So if we can avoid it, next best is heal from it quickly.Ari Gronich21:30Awesome. So then I'm going to go into something I talked to you a little bit about in our pre interview, which is the body, the cymatics, the trauma that lives inside of your cells. Because at least in my years of experience, I don't really see talk so much, or cognitive behavioral, do very much for a person long term, it usually brings up the stuff more and you know. So I talk a lot about cymatics and bodywork and getting the issues out of the tissues. So we talk a little bit about that, and how that relates to what you're talking about.Debi Silber22:11Oh, yeah, it's a it's a huge component of healing. You know, the talk therapy, it can do one thing, if you're unpacking it so that you do something with it. That's beautiful. But if you're just unpacking it, so you're just looking at it. I just don't see the point of that. I mean, and here's the thing, we found, the wrong type of support does way more harm than good. Because if someone is in highly skilled, you know, we're talking about betrayal here, if they're not highly skilled, and how to move someone through betrayal, it's it can re traumatize and just keep them re traumatized because so many therapists actually blamed the betrayer. Right, you know, let's say I we've seen this so many times, husband and wife goes to she drags him to couples counseling. And if that therapist isn't highly skilled in let's say, narcissism, let's just say right? Narcissus, crocodile tears, very charming. And the therapist can look at the betrayed say, you know, he just learned to communicate better. It's like, Are you joking? You know, so. So it's that has a role. Certainly, if it's a qualified therapist, there's an important role there. But you're right. It's it goes so much deeper. And you know, that was one of the discoveries that there's this collection of symptoms, so common to betrayal, it's known as post betrayal syndrome. We've had about 25,000 people take the post betrayal syndrome quiz, actually pulled some stats, if you want me to show you absolutely, and we have, every age represented just about every country in this is men and women. So this is so you see, how betrayal, shows itself physically, mentally, and emotionally ready. 78% constantly revisit their experience. 81% feel a loss of personal power. 80% are hyper vigilant 94% deal with painful triggers, those triggers can take you right down. These are the most common physical symptoms. 71% have low energy 68% have sleep issues, a 63% extreme fatigue, so you could sleep you wake up, you're exhausted. Those are your adrenals that have just crashed. 47% have weight changes. So in the beginning, maybe they can't hold food down, and then later on, they're using food for comfort. 45% have digestive issues, anything from constipation, diarrhea, IBS, Crohn's, colitis, you name it. The mental symptoms 78% are overwhelmed 70% walking around in a state of disbelief. 68% are unable to focus 64% are in shock. 62% are unable to concentrate. So imagine here you can't concentrate. You have a gut issue. You're exhausted and you're supposed to work and raise your kids or whatever you're doing. That's not even the emotional ones. 88% extremes sadness. 83% are angry, just mix sadness and anger and that's exhausting, right? 82% feel hurt 80% have anxiety 79% are stressed. Here's why I wrote the book trust again 84% have an inability to trust. 67% prevent themselves from forming deep relationships because they're afraid of being hurt again. 82% find it hard to move forward. 90% want to move forward, but they don't know how? Ari Gronich25:32Well, those are some pretty intense statistics, I'm actually very glad that you bring them up. Because, you know, I'm a woowoo scientist, I like science. I like research. I'd like, you know, the double blinds. I like that stuff. And I like the woowoo at the same time. So, you know, so yeah, so let's break some of that down a little bit. If you break down each one, like, what does that story tell you, like, just tell the story of what those numbers are?Debi Silber26:07Yeah, the story is and one thing I can share, too, was one of the other discoveries, the five stages that we go through from betrayal to breakthrough. But what it shows is someone can be fresh out of the shock of their experience, or drowning in it. It can be decades; it could have happened decades ago. And they think just because time has passed, they're better and they're okay. And they're not. And it's interesting, because in the quiz, there's a question that reads, is there anything else you'd like to share, and people write things like my betrayal happened 35 years ago, I'm unwilling to trust again, my betrayal happened 40 years ago, I can still feel the hate my betrayal happened 15 years ago, I feel gutted. So we know, you know, we've all heard Time heals all wounds, and I have the proof when it comes to betrayal. That's simply not true. So this is a representation of people who are stuck and struggling.Ari Gronich27:04So what do you do? what would you consider a percentage of the population that has betrayal? Because I would look at the world right, and birth to death? I don't see anybody getting out of life without several betrayals, let alone You know, major ones, but several major betrayals, so what does that mean, for a country a populous. I mean. Debi Silber27:33You know, it means we have, we have so many things that we do so well, and so many things that we suck at. And where we really, it would really serve us to step up our game, something like betrayal. I mean, you see the havoc that is left in the wake of a betrayal. So you know, when that's what's left, after someone just breaks that unspoken or spoken rule, right? There's so much cleanup, there's so much heartache, there's so much damage, right. So it would really serve to just learn more about like, I wish everybody knew these stats, I wish everybody knew. So this way the betrayal could be like, again, do I really want to cause that, you know, these symptoms? To me, the person I say I love, right? I mean, because it's, it's inevitable. Now, that's not saying you have to stay with these symptoms at all. You can heal from every single one of them. I did. But that's where you land. And that's where you know, you can stay if you choose, you know, staying stuck is a choice. Ari GronichYeah, so what's, you know, talking about those five steps? Debi SilberSure. So, so, you know, even but can I give you a little analogy, I think this would really serve, because I see this all the time with people where they are the ones who do get stuck, you know, I here's the difference between resilience and transformation, resilience is restoring. And you need that fear every day. When it comes to betrayal. It's more like trauma and transformation. So using this analogy of a house, and I talked about this in in my second TEDx, do you have post betrayal syndrome? So imagine the house needs a new paint job and you paint, right, that's resilience, you're bringing it back, you're restoring it, or it needs a roof you give it a new roof, that's restoring resilience. Here's trauma and transformation. A tornado comes by and levels your house, right paint jobs, not gonna fix it, and a new roofs not gonna fix it. Here's the thing, though. You have every right to stand there at the lot where your house once stood and say, Oh my gosh, this is the most awful thing that's ever happened and you'd be right. And you can call over everybody you know, and say, look at this. Isn't this the most terrible thing you've ever seen? And they all agree, and you don't have to do anything. However, if you choose to rebuild your house, you don't have to but If you choose to, why on earth would you build the same one? There's nothing there. Right? Why not make it so much better, so much more beautiful. That's the opportunity. Betrayal is the setup for transformation. And when we look at it like that, we could be like, okay, it's leveled, it's dead and gone. I can at the very least rebuild a strong solid me. But who knows? A strong, solid, new couple, you could do that, too. Anyway, I wanted to share that before I got to the five stages.Ari Gronich30:29 Yeah, no, I appreciate that. Because it brought something up in me, which is that rebuilding stage? And so one of the things that I've said, as somebody who's had a brain tumor all my life, right, is, I don't know who I would be, without this tumor with without the pain without the struggle without the angst. Without the trauma, without the betrayal without any of those things. I don't know who I would be. And then somebody gave me this glass or this coffee mug that said, life is not about discovering yourself, it's about creating yourself or something like that. And so when I look at, or when you're talking about the rebuilding part, decorating your house the way you want it, building the rooms and the space the way you want it, how does one even envision that from the place of betrayal from a place of, of damage?Debi Silber31:36Yeah. And in the very beginning, getting out of bed, maybe all they can do. So I'm just acknowledging that because that's, that's real. And I'll walk you through the stages. In this way, you'll see exactly where someone is, and, and you'll know and I invite everybody to think about, as I'm going through them, picture yourself, if you're if you're there, if you were there, you know, where are you? Because you'll see yourself clearly. The first stage was a setup stage, I saw this with every study participant Me too, if you imagine four legs of a table, the four legs being physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual. What I saw with everybody was this real heavy lien on the physical and the mental, and kind of ignoring the emotional and the spiritual. What does that look like, looks like we're really good at thinking and doing, not really prioritizing the feeling and being, but that's where intuition lies. So often, we turn that down. But if there's a table with only two legs, easy for that table to topple over, and that's us, that's not to say, if you're busy thinking and doing, you're going to be betrayed, it's just that was what I saw. Stage two, this is by far the scariest of all of the stages. And this is shock, trauma, the day, discovery day. And this is the breakdown of the body, the mind and the worldview. You're shocked. So you've just ignited the stress response. Now you're headed for every single stress related symptom, illness condition, disease, your mind is in a complete state of chaos and overwhelm, this makes no sense. You cannot wrap your mind around what you just learned. It's like a weird time warp thing that's happening right now. And your worldview is shut has just been shattered. That's your mental model. These are the rules. This is our life works. Don't trust that person go there, right. And every rule that governed life is no longer it's terrifying. Bottom is bottom down on you. But think about it. If the bottom were to bottom out on you, what would you do you grab hold of anything you could to stay safe and stay alive? That stage three survival instincts emerge. It's the most practical of all of the stages. If you can help me get out of my way, how do I survive this experience? Who can I trust? Where do I go? How do I feed my kids? Like it's that practical? Here's the trap.Debi Silber33:47Once you figured out how to survive, because it feels so much better than the shock and trauma of where you just came from, you're like, Okay, all right, we got this, and you start planting roots here. We have no idea. There's a stage four and stage five waiting transformation doesn't even start till stage four. But because you think this is it, you better figure out a way to make it work, a few things start happening. The first thing is, you start getting those small self-benefits, right? You get to be right, you get your story, you get someone to blame, you get a target for your anger, you get sympathy from everybody you tell your story to you don't have to do the hard work of learning to trust again, should I trust you. So just forget, it's easier not to trust anybody. So you plant deep, deeper roots. Now that you're here longer than you should be? Your mind starts doing things like well, maybe you deserved it. Maybe you're not that great. Maybe this maybe that deeper roots. Now because like energy attracts like energy. You're calling circumstances and people and relationships towards you to confirm this is exactly where you belong. It gets worse but I'll get you out of here because it feels so bad. But you have no idea there's anything better. Right here is where you resign yourself to thinking, this stinks. I'm in so much pain. I don't know how to get out of it, but I better figure out a way to make it work. So right here is where you start using food, drugs, alcohol, work, TV, keeping busy, reckless behavior, to numb avoid, distract yourself from what's so painful to feel our face. So think about it. You do this for a day, a week, a month now, it's a habit a year, 10 years, 20 years. And I can see someone 20 years out and say that emotional eating, you're doing or that numbing in front of the TV, you're doing work that drinking you're doing Do you think that has anything to do with your betrayal? And they would look at me like I'm crazy. They would say that happened 20 years ago, doesn't matter. You see, all they did was put themselves in a perpetual stage three holding pattern. That makes sense. Yeah, absolutely. So anyway, if you're willing to let go of those small self-benefits, you have to do a couple things, grief, you know, mourn the loss, do a bunch of things, you can move to stage four, stage four is finding and adjusting to a new normal. Here's where you acknowledge, I can't undo my betrayal, right, but I control what I do with it. So I always use the example of if you've ever moved to a new house, office, condo, apartment, whatever your stuffs not all there, yes, not quite cozy yet. But it's going to be okay. When you're in that mental state, you start turning down the stress response. You're not healing just yet. But you just stopped the massive damage you were causing and staging in stages two, and three. Also, what I found so interesting to the stages, if you were to move, you don't take everything with you, right, you don't take the stuff that doesn't represent the version of you, you want to be when you're in this new place. And what I found was, if your friends weren't there for you, if you just had those like-minded stuck friends, right here is where you've outgrown them. And if you don't take them with you, I saw that all the time. And when you're in this stage four you making it Okay, you're making this your new mental home, you can move into the fifth most beautiful stage and this is healing rebirth and a new worldview. The body starts to heal, self love, self care, eating well exercise, he didn't have the bandwidth for that earlier. Now you do your mind, you're making new rules, new boundaries, based on what you see. So clearly now. And you have a new worldview. Based on the road you just traveled. And the four legs of the table. In the beginning, it was all about the physical and the mental. By this point, were solidly grounded because we're focused on the emotional and the spiritual to those are the five stages.Ari Gronich37:34Okay, so you have the five leg table, center, one just right, rounded down into the earth. There you go. All right. So let's talk about stage three, a little bit deeper. Mm hmm. Because that's where I think most people are in a chronic automatic patterning, right, that we know about our bodies, traumas that our cells regenerate. Every you know, however, many months to however many years, we are completely cellularly a new person, every seven years, I think, seven years, but like our livers like a few of however many months in our lungs, or however many months. And so, in general, we're in a constant state of completely regenerating who we are as human beings, on a physical cellular level, right. However, what we know is that our genetics continually repattern the same traumas, whether they're physical traumas or emotional traumas that last in the body that are like, you know, in you. So what happens is, when at least when I start doing the somatic body work, is that the body no longer reproduces the scar tissue? You could actually see, like somebody who has a 20-year-old surgical scar, for instance, that disappearing as we end up working on that in those areas. Right. So how do how does? How does that translate to what we're talking about in stage three? Yeah, there are. We're completely rejuvenating and regenerating, but we're creating the same automatic patterns. And then how do we, how do we technically get that to switch into stage four? Mm hmm. Yep. From stage four, the mindset that allows us to go into stage five, because I think that there's something emotional and then mental about going through those two places. So Debi Silber39:49100%. So to answer your first question, I just want to answer before I forget, there was the part two. So the first part of that is, you know, how we're regenerating right new cells and everything. But when we're fueling ourselves with the same thoughts over and over and over again, that's absolutely what's keeping us stuck. Because think about it, it's the same thoughts that drive the same feelings, the same emotion, that drive more thoughts more feeling more emotion. So we're creating these neural networks, this, these well says groove like grooves in your brain that are so we become so hard wired. So it is so easy to keep going down that well-worn path, taking us to nowhere, we've we've done it, you know, so often, and it's there, there is a point, you know, in the beginning, we're ruminating, we're trying to make sense out of it. But then we have to prevent ourselves from marinating where we're just drowning in it, right. And it's when you've gone down that road 100 million times coming out no better than the last bunch of times, then it becomes, and this, this may annoy people, you're indulging, you're indulging in it. And there's that fine line, where you have to say I'm coming out of this no better than the last bunch of times. And now I have to be a little ruthless with myself. And I have to create a new neural network. So what you're at what you actually need to do is break that connection and form a new one. And what happens is, it's not like you forget your experience, it loses its emotional charge. So to your point, yes, your body's changing. But when the mind changes along with it, that's the chick that's, that's what really moves the needle for us. People in stage three, there with that same thought pattern that's keeping them with the same thoughts, habits, behaviors, actions that are keeping them exactly where they are, and really hurting their health in the process. That's your first question, right.Ari Gronich0:00Am just gonna break up the second one. So I know with like, say Tony Robbins, state change, right, a 45 seconds state change. So do you have state changes, for instance, to move through those places?Debi Silber0:25Yeah, you know, one of the things that when we work with people, you know, within the Institute, it's knowing, first of all, they have to know where they are, they just have they ruminate enough, and now it's, it's causing some harm. So when, when they know and it's everybody's, you know, situation is a bit different, bit different, but when they know, then Okay, then it's time to come up with something new. So it can be something as simple as wearing a rubber band on their wrists not and so this way, they would snap the ribbon, not to hurt them to remind them. So when they find themselves going down that that rabbit hole that they've done a million times, what they want to do is kind of snap the band, you know, and then beforehand, they also wanted to maybe envision a really happy, peaceful scene, that feels better, right? And so that would be the time to implement it. So let's say they're triggered, they start going down that path, wait a second stop, and whether you have to scream it out loud screaming in your head, whatever you have to do, because those thoughts are running away with you snap the band is that reminder, implement that peaceful, beautiful scene, generate the feelings that come with it? You know, and you'll physic physically, you'll feel different, you're creating a physiological change. Do that enough? Because you can't think of two things at once. Right? So do that enough. And then the old track kind of loses its charge as the new track just, you know, slowly takes over. That's just one of the thingsAri Gronich1:57You know, it's interesting, when you were talking, I was remembering, being in Israel, and going down a cobblestone street that had groove marks in the stone from the carriages that would go through and how well grooved into history. Those grooves are from so many people. And what I find interesting is like, you know, those tracks are pretty thin, yet? Everybody went in the same tracks. And nobody. Look, it's almost like, nope, nobody went outside of those tracks and said, hey, let's create some new grooves. Right. So let's just kind of go. I know, I often go to nonlinear places. But let's go into why do we continually follow the same group that we know is not working? Debi SilberBecause we don't have to think. Thinking is hard. So we don't have to think that way. We assume everyone knows better than us, we assume it's right and true, not because we're tapping into our own inner guide. We're just assuming everybody knows better than us. So sometimes it's self-esteem issues. Sometimes it's, you know, a worthiness issue right here. But what happens is just because it's easy, just because it's familiar, doesn't mean it's good. The only benefit is that it's familiar, right? Like I use an example of, let's say, it's, there's snow on the ground, right? And someone, you know, paves a path for you very easy, right? You just keep walking on that thing. And maybe it's taking you nowhere, but if you were to then shovel a new path, right, it could be Rocky and unstable and you could slip and you can fall. But if you commit to going on that path, not allowing yourself to go on the other one, eventually that path is going to be as well-worn as the first but it's taking you somewhere so much better. But it's a commitment to stop walking on that first path and venture into the next one knowing that it's not going to be easy. We don't like getting uncomfortable. We don't like that. We will do all we can to avoid discomfort. You know but think of the caterpillar and the butterfly the most classic example of transformation think about that Caterpillar is just done being a caterpillar die think of it the symbolism hangs itself from a branch to die to the life it's known. spends a cocoon around itself is willing to be deconstructed emulsified unrecognizable from anything it once was only because it went through that does it get to be the butterfly, most beautiful creature on our planet, right? Can't do that. If it wasn't going through that process. Ari Gronich4:49And it has to fight to get out of the cocoon. It can't be helped, out of the cocoon, right.Debi Silber4:55Yeah. And I remember someone telling me also if you were to go over, before it's ready, and just get really close to that cocoon, he would like shake a little as if to say Buzz off, I'm busy at you know, and it shows you transformations are very personal process, people won't like it. They like knowing where you stood, they like knowing what they can get away with, they don't like it when all of a sudden you have something else to say. Ari Gronich5:21So part of the grooves teaches me about the difference between leadership and following. And so we tend to follow our own grooves that we've created. I know when I'm driving in the rain, right, and I see the grooves of water that all the cars have gone through. I always go outside of the grooves, it's a smoother ride, right? It actually is smoother than going inside of the grooves of other people because I'm not being controlled, my steering wheel isn't getting locked into the grooves, right? I'm not being controlled by the grooves as much of other people. So let's talk about what comes out on the other side of all that pain that transformation and struggle goes through. And, yeah, let's just let's go to that.Debi Silber6:17Yeah, you know, it's such an amazing process, when you realize just because that's what other people do doesn't mean it's right for me. And it's when you say Okay, you know what that may have worked for them. But this is my own path here. And I'm, you know, when everything crashes, and burns, I can, I can create whatever path I like. And I didn't even realize I needed to until this crash happened. And now I have that opportunity. So it is. it's such a beautiful space, to create something when I say create something entirely new, I mean, I'm talking a new identity, you take everything you like, about you and about whatever and you leave behind everything that doesn't serve. So that transformation piece is the step by step process of facing your fears and slaying your dragons and dealing with these painful, uncomfortable emotions, and deciding who you want to be at the end of it. You know, there's a version of you so healthy, so healed, so whole, so strong. And when we settle for the old, we never birth the new. Ari Gronich7:40Hmm, I like that. So, as I listen to you, right, I think of what the audience is thinking? What is the audience hearing? What are they? What are they needing right now? And because I think, you know, we basically told people, you're gonna be really, really uncomfortable for a little while. Right? And what's gonna come out on the end of that is, who knows, you get to create it. So let's talk about some modeling. Right? Yeah, for creation that doesn't include the comparison models that we're used to have. I'm comparing what I want and what I'm going to build for myself in this new person. And we're not going to compare to Madonna and to Jay Z, and to Elon Musk, and to all those other people we're going to, we're going to build from scratch. So how do we build from scratch? When all we have our comparisons to go by?Debi Silber8:49Yeah. It's a great question. I think when you cut the comparison it is just the death of your creativity. That's the first thing. The second thing I would say is and listen, I gave birth four times it hurt. But look what you get at the end, right? So yes, we try to avoid this discomfort, you're not going through it for no reason. And I tell everybody in the Institute, this is the hardest, but the most rewarding work you'll ever do. You're not doing this for no reason. You're not doing this just because you want to punish yourself further. You've been through the hardest part of it already. This is the part you owe to yourself. But to find out who you are at your physical, mental, emotional best at your personal professional best. It's gonna take some work. And that's why, you know, people who come into our community, they're like, they realize this is not just like a support group. No, no, you're here to get your job done period. And that those are the only people I attract. But to answer your question, you didn't go through this to model anybody. You did this to discover who you are meant to be the highest and best version of Have you? You know, what, if you without your limiting beliefs without your old habits, without your old rules, with all of that out of the way? Who are you? Who are you? Right? That's what that's what's left to discover. That's what's available to you.Ari Gronich10:19And, and to make that into an adventure rather than another chore. So here's, what I hear, you know, like, from, if I'm looking at clients that I've had patients in the past, right is, holy shit, I already have a job. That's a whole other job. And that's going to take that's even more important than the job that is making me money and sustaining me finding time. So Time, time and organization, time for the work time for regular work time for relaxation, recovery, rejuvenation, self-care, all those things. So let's talk about that. Because there's got to be balance here for the audience, right? There's got to be a way to, for them to go. Okay, I was overwhelmed. And now I'm.Debi Silber11:07Alright. And here's the thing, your changes? They're based on you, you know, do you want those changes to be slow and gradual? Do you want them to be drastic? It's completely up to you as anything you do every action has a behavior thought you have takes you in only one of two directions, further or closer to the body health, life, lifestyle relationships you want? Which way are your actions taking you. So if you're the type that needs a slower, more gradual approach, beautiful, then just do that. It's, it's the people who say, Oh, that's just going to be too much work. Forget it. I mean, if the only reason we do something is because it's easy. What do you really expect, you know, think about anybody who's, who's in really great shape, they're working at it, anybody who has a great relationship, they're working at it, anybody who's great at their job, they're working at it, there are plenty of people who are unwilling to put in the effort in that area. Okay. But then be okay with just okay. If you want something good, it's, it's just gonna take the effort. And, and what I find too, is a lot of people stuck in stage three, it's not that life is so bad. They figured it out. It's okay. You know, it's like, they have their partner comes home at the end of the day, their kids aren't failing in school, they can button their pants, you know what I mean? to them? It's like, but it's okay. Okay, but what about all that they could have, if they were just a little more willing to turn up the heat just a bit.Ari Gronich12:44So that willingness that you're talking about me is part of the trauma and the pain, right. So how does one get past and beyond the two parameters, right? Have you? I am traumatized, and I'm willing to be more traumatized on the way out? So that I could get through? Yeah, but that's a personality that says, Bring it on, right? So how do you develop that personality to bring it on? real transformation brings on. Debi Silber13:25You're not feeling that in the very beginning. Like I said, in the very beginning, getting out of bed, maybe all you can do and that's plenty. And then, you know, you get a little bit stronger and a little bit stronger and a little bit stronger. You're not, you're not fresh out of your betrayal saying, okay, you know, let's take on the world. No, you're not there's too much to process. But willingness is, it's just I love that word. Because with willingness, you will at whatever pace you're you can handle continuously move forward. And it's interesting, too, because in the study, like I said, there were three groups who didn't heal. One group that did not heal was completely unwilling to accept their scenario. They just weren't having it. They were like the people, you know, standing at the lot where their house one said, they're like, Nope, I'm just gonna kick and scream and mourn the loss of my house. They have every right to, but they didn't move. It's the ones who say, I don't know what it's gonna look like, but it's got to be better than this. You know, and so often, you need a little extra incentive. And so, you know, if you have kids, it's a beautiful opportunity. They're watching you, if you don't do it for for you, you do it for them. Like, you know, in my own instance, my kids, my kids saw me and I was like, I wasn't gonna burden them but I wasn't gonna hold you know, like, withhold the truth. They knew the truth. So they they saw mom crash, they were gonna see mom rise. And I said, it's, I have no idea what's gonna show up here. I love you. And I'll do the best I can give me a little bit of a pass. And I didn't know what it was gonna look like, but it's a willingness. You don't have to be all ferocious about it, but just just willing to keep going.Ari Gronich15:09Right. But I like what you just said, as well. Give the warning to the people around you too. Right? He said, People around me, I have had this experience. And it may take me a little while. Let me go beyond that. What did you ask them to do for you? If anything?Debi Silber15:28Yeah, you know, I guess maybe it was a unique scenario, because my husband was actually the one who told my kids. So, you know, I think on some level, they were it was like, Teen Mom there for a while. But I just, I really my only intention. During that time, I really went from like, kids, clients, you know, dogs, crash kids, that was it. And, and I just told them, I'm not working with a full deck here, right now, I'll do the best I can. But don't ever think for a second, this has anything to do with you. And I just, I kept talking to all of them. I mean, any, any parent will know your kids are so different. You can like I have four kids, they couldn't be more different than one another. And they each needed me in their own way. And I would try to be there as best I could, in the way that they needed. But I was very honest. You know, letting them know, I'm, I'm not, I'm not good today. I'm doing the best I can. But it has nothing to do with you.Ari Gronich16:34So for people who are going through betrayal as an acute, right, it's acute, it's not chronic, it hasn't been a long time. It's just really this is Give me like, give the audience kind of your I know, you have the steps that what? Step one, I just got into this experience? Do I share it with people? Do I stay and hide in myself, you know, like. Debi Silber17:09These are the questions that come up, it's so common to protect the betrayer at our own expense, you know, because let's say they're well known, they're well liked the whole family, I don't want to shake the you know, shake things up. So we, you know, there's also so much shame, here we are, we've just been put in a club we never wanted to be and we're so embarrassed, we're so ashamed. We didn't even do this, and we're ashamed. Right. So and then there's the immediacy of, of just life, things that are happening. So it really depends on the person, they need a trusted other. And by that I mean, whether that is the right type of support, you know, a trusted friend, trusted family member. And then they, you know, there are certain things that are more immediate than others, if they're in danger, they need to get out of danger. If they're not sure about any of their finances, they need to figure that out. So you know, that's a priority. If it's just emotional support, that's a priority. Everyone is, is fresh out of their experience needing something, you know, one is different than the next. So it's meeting that initial need, but also, what I find is they need to know, you're not crazy, you're not alone, and you can heal from all of it.Ari Gronich18:23Awesome. What is your suggestion for somebody who has gone through the transformation? They're there at the end of stage five. And they're looking off into the distance, so to speak. Yeah. And anything is possible. Right? They can create their new tomorrow today, they can activate their vision for a better world. Let's talk about those steps. Because I think that those are the steps that sometimes get really lost within the heaviness of those first three.Debi Silber19:10Yeah, yeah. That is such a fun stage, we actually have a level of membership just for that type of person who is at that stage. That's where the fun begins. That's where you create that new body, that new business, that's when you're ready for that new relationship. That's when you're ready for that, you know, all of those things when you are carrying around like this 500-pound boulder of pain, and you put it down, look what's available to you. That's when you strategically, you know, move towards what lights you up. And you may have had no clue what it was until you get to that stage five, but that's when we usually see it in the community so often. That's when someone is a coach, a healer or a doctor therapist, they want to become one of our certified Coaches because they're so excited. It's like, they just want to pass it forward. But others, that's when they write the book, that's when they're committed to this new, you know, this new business idea that they thought was crazy. But now they have the confidence for it, that's when they're ready for that new relationship, they're ready to move, whatever it is, we never know what's gonna show up then. But when you're at that place, that's when you start planning for it. That's where it gets really exciting.Ari Gronich20:26Awesome. What, what do you say is like, the biggest impact not just the individual, but like, let's say your community, we take your community, your, your institute, right. And we extrapolate the impact from your institute, how many people you've seen and how many people they know, and how many people they know, and yada, yada, right? Let's extrapolate this into so that people can get a sense of how powerful they are.Debi Silber20:59Yeah. You know, even when you just look at one person, take one mom, right? Here's this mom, she's been blind, like, Look, at my own experience. I have four kids, right. So when you think about it, here's my experience through healing, that impacts four kids who now have amazing coping skills, because they've seen firsthand what healing looks like, right? Now. Think of the people that each of them know their partners, you see. So that's just one, this is me. So imagine how many how many people between the people that you touch just throughout your day? Where we're, you know, they're like, What? You look good? What anything new, you forget just healed from the most traumatic thing ever. Right? Or how it affects the kids how it affects, you know, a new partner or that same new improved? partner, right? It's endless, the new businesses that are started because of it, the new, it's it, I can go on and on?Ari Gronich22:02Yeah, you know, I look at what it is that I really want in this world, right? You know, I talk a lot about creating a new tomorrow, I talk a lot about health, and science and fixing the systems that are kind of broken. And you know, how people can stop doing behaviors that not only harm themselves, but also harm their community and their family and their people around them. Right? And I look at this one statement, you can't love anybody more than you love yourself. And I always have found, like, felt like that is a false statement. I've always been able to love everyone else more than I've loved myself. Right. And I think that's true about most everybody. And I think that that golden rule is a little bit switched as well. Like, we don't want people to treat us the way we treat ourselves. We want just the way others. You know, treat us.So let's talk a little bit about that. And how we get that internal self-talk, how we get those things. Kind of dialed a little bit down so that we can really truly have that freedom.Debi Silber23:21Yeah, I have a bit of a different perspective. And I guess I see so many. So many people come into the Institute, they're chronic people pleasers. And what they're doing is they're giving love, so that they get love in return. And that's not, it's not sustainable. It's not real. All it does is it's exhausting. But I do believe that we have to love ourselves first. Because if you do, you have so much more to give, you're giving without trying it's oozing out of you. It's a different energy. One is I'm going to give so you give me back. It's a lack of scarcity. And the other is its abundance. And, and everything is energy. And we feel that we feel that. So I feel like whatever work needs to be done, so that we're coming from that really full space, the and it happens when you do this kind of work. It just does. Because you'll like, you know, the version of me from years ago, I was so harsh and so critical and so judgmental. You know, now, I'm like, I really like me, we even have a new rule in the house. And I used to be so hard on myself. And then post betrayal. I decided, you know what, when I do, let's say I always get lost wherever I go, you know, and I used to just criticize myself in whatever. Now anything I do like that. I'm just adorable. And everybody has to say this that I am. You know, it's like, that's the thing and what we're doing is we're giving ourselves some grace, giving ourselves the love that we want. How much better is it when you just give it to yourself? It just he can't help but give it to others. When you do that. Ari Gronich25:01Yeah. I always tell people when I get lost I'm not lost. I'm just adventurous. You know, so yeah, so I appreciate you so much for coming on. Is there anything else you'd like to leave the audience with anything? You know deep dark dirty that they could do today tomorrow and start right now themselves to create that new tomorrow today?Debi Silber25:27Yeah, I would say I mean it really finds out that I have shared the stage, see where you are. And at the very least, get the trust again book but at least you know, or take the quiz. Take the quiz to see to what extent you're struggling. They can just find that at the PBT Institute. com forward slash quiz. But don't stay stuck. Don't stay stuck. You owe it to yourself. You owe it to yourself to heal. And I promise you you're going to be blown away by who you meet on the other side.Ari Gronich25:57Awesome. Thank you so much for being here. It's been a great episode. I think we have a lot of good information, a lot of takeaways for the audience. And just want to say thank you again, so much for coming on, and providing so much wisdom for the audience. This is Yeah, this has been another episode of creating a new tomorrow. I'm your host, our Ari Gronich. I love these conversations that get dark and dirty and deep and help you guys with tips and tricks to change your life and your future and the future of our children. So anyway, thank you so much for being here and we are out. I'll see you next time.

On our journey to define the ARE vs SHOULD problem (Episode 50), we must first define the 'existing conditions'. Like many scientific endeavors (and I'm NOT saying this is a scientific endeavor, rather, that I will take a scientific APPROACH), the Are vs Should investigation needs to know where it's coming from to understand where it's going.And, really, the personal inventory is just that - it defines where we are at the beginning of our adventure. Doesn't every good movie do the same thing? Isn't this really just a classic 'set the scene' device we use to tell stories and keep them interesting?And so on the path to personal growth and figuring out the Are vs. Should problem, we will first lay everything out on the table and start from there. Carlos Castaneda, in the books he wrote about Don Juan Matus, talked a lot about the table, and the tonal, as being the field of the 'known' or the 'earthly' possessions humans carry around with them.But the personal inventory is about much more than just physical objects. It's the feelings we have, the people we know, the relationships we build, the cars we drive, the foods we eat, and so on, and so on, ad infinitum.Truly, the personal inventory is the story of everything that has happened to us in our lives up to the point at which we build the personal inventory. And, yes, it's a huge job and no, I don't expect you to nail every last thing.The idea is that, if someone asked you about the 'basics' of the inventory: your likes, dislikes, wants, needs, desires, values, etc. you'd probably be able to come up with a handful of things quickly. And you might even think that those things 'pretty much' described who you are. And that's the problem. We don't see ourselves as being all that complex. Or maybe not AS complex as we truly are.We are ourselves and our experiences. So TIME is a huge factor here. Our personal inventory is also our personal HISTORY. Much of the personal inventory is things we haven't done, or thought about, in a long time. It's our past and our present. It's who we ARE and who we WERE. It's physical and it's metaphysical. And, again, the idea is not to be complete nor obsessive. The idea is to think about this as much as we can, to establish a 'who am I' table full of things, and then to move forward.Building your personal inventory can be fun. You will be surprised how interesting you are if you push yourself beyond your comfort zone and tolerate the pain of a thorough investigation of your self. And, truly, if you don't put forth an earnest effort (and you must define what that is for yourself), you will not make much progress on the Are vs. Should problem. The more you reveal about yourself, the more material you will have to work with.While I'm not entirely sure what will come next, it will very likely focus on an ASSESSMENT of the personal inventory to think about where and how these pieces of you came to be. And whether they need to stay. Or go. And whether there are things missing that you wish were there. Please comment below with thoughts you might have about what comes next. More next week in Episode 52.

It's Tuesday! So Time for Spiraken Television Tuesday In this dramatic episode, Xan talks about the latest episodes of NOS4A2 and DC's Stargirl. First he talks about NOS4A2 S1 ep 6 "The Hourglass" directed by Hanelle Culpepper He also discusses the shocking new Star Girl S1 Episode 11 "Shining Knight" directed by Jennifer Phang. While not going into too many spoilers, our host goes over the big reveal of the episodes and the possiblities moving forward with these shows.  If there is a show you want us to watch and discuss email us at xan@spiraken.com  Remember to follow us @spiraken on Twitter and @spiraken on Instagram, also if you would kindly, please go to www.tinyurl.com/helpxan and give us a great rating on Apple Podcasts. Thank you and hope you enjoy this episode. #spiraken  #wheelofmanga #snowpiercertv #televisiontuesday #stargirltv  #nos4a2 #spirakenreviewpodcast Music Used in This Episode: Closing Theme-Summer in the Neighborhood by Bad Snacks (Youtube Audio Library) Our Instagram https://www.instagram.com/spiraken/Our Email Spiraken@gmail.comXan's Email xan@spiraken.comOur Twitter SpirakenYoutube Channel https://www.youtube.com/user/spirakenOur Amazon Store http://www.amazon.com/shops/spiraken Random Question of the Day: What will Bing do to Charlie?

Hello, and welcome to the not so traveling introvert. Today I want to talk about managing multiple projects or multiple clients. Because a lot of people are now working from home. And this is for you freelancers out there, you consultants out there. And to be honest, even if you are a career person working in a department, you might have more than one boss, or even within that department working on more than one project. So I want to talk about a couple of things with having a simple method for managing multiple projects to make sure you don't feel overwhelmed. One of the biggest causes of overwhelm is managing multiple projects at the same time, and they might not have the same timeline and that sort of a thing. And there's hardly a business owner or Freelancer who doesn't have to work this way, at least some of the time. So how do you go about managing multiple projects without feeling you know? overwhelmed, don't multitask. That's the first thing as this contributes to more stress. Instead, give each project the time it needs every day in order to feel like you're making progress. So let's say you have three projects A, B, and C. Ooh, imaginative. All right, so set a time limit such as an hour or 20 minutes for you to each project, whenever project a one off project D when after project C, setting aside daily time for each project, in a balanced way prevents one from taking over your whole day and preventing you from getting anything done on the others because you know, once you start fires occur, or you need to wait for emails and that sort of thing. It also helps you make take control of your daily schedule, because there's other things that you'll be doing. And this ensures that the other things that you must get done you have time for as well. And you know, you need to consider does each project need an hour do certain projects need more, you can adjust these time boxes accordingly. And you might set more time for a project that is bigger or has a closer day. deadline, that is for sure. But try and give roughly the same amount of time each day. And when you're approaching a deadline for the, for a, for example, you'll have a sense of how far you've come and how far you need to go. And if you need to make adjustments. Now, you also need to think about if you have more projects coming down the line, can you fit your schedule and plan ahead. For example, if you had a project slated to start Friday, can you block out time starting Friday to give that bit of daily time it already needs and I talked about sort of blocks of time and that's the other part of dealing with different projects and that sort of thing. You know, it's a case of time blocking what you're doing. And I find this really important and I do it myself and sometimes I forget and I have to go back. And there's only so many hours in the day and so much needs to be done. And as I said before, you know you might spend too much time on task a and then you get nothing done on task or project being seen. Nevermind the routine daily stuff that you need to do. Do So, time blocking involves taking each regular task and giving it its own time block in which to work on it. And this works great because it takes each task and treats them all equally. And so you get some work done on something. For example, say your daily to do list is something along these lines, social media work information on a product, you're creating work for client project, think about marketing and conduct market research, right? That's each of these items are super important. However, the client project and the information product a big task and you should work on those each day, you might want to put the client work first because it has a deadline and it means you get paid, and there's consequences if you don't finish. But what if you get engrossed in it and realize it's much bigger than it expected and it eats up into your social media and planning time. So Time, time tracking or time blocking helps you balance all your to dues by assigning each one a daily timeframe and it could look something like 30 days for social media, one hour for the information project, 90 minutes for client work 30 minutes planning your business and like an hour for research. With time blocking, you can make steady progress on each task and nothing that way can kind of slip through the cracks. The other huge benefit is you don't need to multitask because you know that you're going to spend another 9am to 930 on one thing, and you will be focused on that designated activity. So these are a couple of ways that can help you focus and get more done. Try the these time management strategies and see how it works for you to do this, you know, give it a week or two and see what happens. All right, thank you for listening. This is Janice from the not so traveling internet. And I am founder of the career introvert helping introverts build their brand and get hired. If you have any questions, please email me at Janice@thecareerintrovert.com Thank you for listening and I will see you next week.

Laura Stevens: Hello and welcome to the Government Digital Service podcast. My name is Laura Stevens and I’m a writer here at GDS. Today we’re speaking about mental wellbeing at GDS. We’ve chosen to highlight this now as November is Men’s Mental Health Month. But we will be talking about mental health and wellbeing in the workplace more generally today.  And to tell me more is Ben Carpenter. So please can you introduce yourself and what you do here at GDS, and your role in supporting mental wellbeing here.   Ben Carpenter: Hello. Yeah, I’m Ben Carpenter. I’m Inclusive Services Lead in the Service Design and Assurances Programme. And I co-lead the Wellbeing Working Group, and I was, before we kind of rebranded as the Wellbeing Working Group, I was lead of the Mental Health Network.   Laura Stevens: So can you tell me a bit about the GDS Mental Health Network and where it fits into the Wellbeing Group here at GDS?   Ben Carpenter: Well the Mental Health Network used to be kind of everything in the mental wellbeing space. Now that we’re expanding things to try and incorporate all aspects of wellbeing, physical and mental, the Mental Health Network in that name, really comprises basically of a Slack channel and a newsletter and of the people within the Slack channel.   That’s not to trivialise it ‘cause those things are really important, and a lot of work goes into those things, so the Q&As etc. But whereas we used to refer to GDS’s mental, GDS’s Mental Health Network as being all things mental wellbeing, I’d now say that’s more falls under the whole wellbeing banner.   Laura Stevens: So, these Q&As. These are regular anonymous peer-led mental wellbeing Q&As on Slack. And can you describe some of the topics that come up?    Ben Carpenter: We organise those around topics that staff nominate and then vote for their preference. And so the topics can just vary all the time, from Imposter Syndrome to general anxiety to dealing with heavy workloads to dealing with a lack of a heavy workload, having had you know changes in, fluctuations in workload, that’s what you say. Bereavement and loss, you know, just the full range of emotional challenges.    Laura Stevens: And how have you found people have responded to the Network?   Ben Carpenter: So it’s not my day job at all. It’s like, it should be a fraction of my time and often it takes up a big fraction of my time. But it’s a funny area to work in and on, because it’s hard to get feedback on success. So the nature of the topic, the nature of the beast is, you might not hear from people even if something’s going really well.   A good example would be the Q&As that we hold on Slack each month.    Laura Stevens: Yeah.   Ben Carpenter: So you have an anonymous route through, in those Q&As, to ask questions or answer questions. And you never know how many people are watching and reading, you never know how many people read the transcripts for information afterwards. So it can be very, it can be a very kind of quiet space to work in. You can, I sometimes think ‘oh god, is this work, is it worth it?’.   But when you do get feedback, it’s very very positive and. But yeah, it’s often hard to put something more tangible on that, to sort of prove value.    Yeah. Yeah, it’s just, yeah. It’s hard to know exactly what is most valuable to users but I think it’s really…by users, I always talk about us. I talk about the Network as, and the Wellbeing Group, as a service and we should think of staff here as our users. Because I firmly believe we should be a user-centred service so…   Laura Stevens: Sort of like doing the GDS principles in all aspects.   Ben Carpenter: Absolutely, yeah. I mean this more than anything right, is a, if you’re going to try and help people with their wellbeing, you should be doing it in a way that you believe to be organised around what they need.   Laura Stevens: And so yeah, a sort of more general question. Why, which might sound obvious but I think it’s good to ask it anyway, is why is it important to have a Mental Health Network and Wellbeing Group at all? What does it bring to the workplace?   Ben Carpenter: I’m not sure. You tell me.   I mean so, that was a facetious question as in ‘you tell me’. Because I always think I want the GDS staff and colleagues to say why they appreciate the network’s efforts or presence.   But we know that people with healthy wellbeing are generally more productive in their work. So on a boring sort of corporate side, you know people work better. But we’re also a human-centred organisation, I think we are. I’m a human-centred person. So I take on this work because I care about people here.    And so there’s no, to me there shouldn’t have to be any metric in terms of productivity or sort of value, ‘cause it’s just the right thing to do. I mean imagine, flip that round. Imagine a workplace where nobody thought, or took the time to organise around their staff’s wellbeing.    Now that we’re doing this work and we have things like the ‘Time to Change’ pledges and commitments that we’ve made as an organisation, and we have a bunch of people in a working group saying, “hang on, lets try and provide things that the staff need to improve their wellbeing”, it seems perverse to everything, you wouldn’t do that.   Laura Stevens: And can you talk a bit about the ‘Time to Change’ pledge that you’ve mentioned?   Ben Carpenter: I can a little bit.   Laura Stevens: Ok.   Ben Carpenter: Yep, so Alison, Director General, signed the pledge last month or the month before. So Time to Change is a charity and they help organisations like us, companies, organisations to make a stack of commitments.    So we’ve got 7 commitments under the Time to Change pledge. It covers things like, encouraging staff to be able to be frank about their mental health, training line managers to have conversations with staff about mental wellbeing, and broader wellbeing.    All Senior Civil Servants here are going to undergo, go through some training on wellbeing awareness and support. Commitments in there as well around mental health first aid.   Laura Stevens: I mean I was really interested when I was researching this to hear about the mental health first aiders. And when did they get brought in at GDS?   Ben Carpenter: Well so they, they exist in...some people brought those skills with them to GDS. Some people were able to go on mental health first aid training courses while they were here.   But what we’re doing at the moment is trying to organise that group of people, because again they’re just volunteers. These are not paid, there’s not a paid role, these are people who are volunteering to be mental health first aiders for their colleagues.   So what we’re trying to do is move away perhaps from a sort of set-up that we might have had before. It was like ‘oh, you know, that bloke over there happens to have been trained as a first aider, everyone go talk to him if they’re miserable’. And instead we’re trying to say ‘hang on, there are 800 staff here.    Laura Stevens: Yeah.   Ben Carpenter:  Right, how many mental health first aiders do we need to be able to look after, or provide that kind of support, to that number of staff?’. And what we’re aiming for is 1 in 50. So for every 50 members of staff, there’s a mental health first aider.    Laura Stevens: What are they qualified to do, what are they not qualified to do and why would you go to them?   Ben Carpenter: They’re not practitioners. They are listeners, they’re confidential listeners and signposters. And as simple as that sounds, to do that in a robust and reliable way without yourself struggling too much perhaps with what you might be talking to people about, takes a couple of days training.   But yes, I think it’s really important to run that as a service, not as a thing that just happens. By which I mean, base it on what we believe that users need. Make sure it’s run in a sustainable way, you wouldn’t want to have 15 first aiders now and then you talk to me in a year, and we’ve suddenly only got 3.    Laura Stevens: Yeah.   Ben Carpenter: So you’ve got to know how many we need, we’ve got to have funding for that, we’ve got to be constantly making sure that we’ve got volunteers to take on those roles if needed and so on.    Laura Stevens: And how do you think, how long have you been at GDS?   Ben Carpenter: 2013...six years.    Laura Stevens: And how have you seen support for mental health change since 2013?   Ben Carpenter: Well...do you know when I was first here I probably wasn’t thinking about it very much. It was much more a sort of start-up feel, very whirlwind.   I’ve been more and more open about my own mental health as well in recent years. I mean I’ve always been pretty open about it, ‘cause I’ll talk to anyone about anything. But..   Laura Stevens: That’s how you’re on this podcast.   Ben Carpenter: Right, right. But I think I’ve also more, proudly is the wrong word, less self-consciously happy to be known for having some mental health challenges while in the workplace with my colleagues. That was probably something I would have felt less comfortable doing even in the early days at GDS. And definitely at previous organisations that I’ve worked for.    I would always have shared that sort of thing with line management or friends, but I don’t think I would have sat on a podcast saying, ‘I lead this network as best I can and I also have mental health challenges and occasionally, I’ll write about that on Slack or a blog post or something’.    So that’s something that has changed for me but I wouldn’t...I think the signing of the ‘Time to Change’ pledge is a big deal for GDS. It’s a public statement under those 7 areas. And so in terms of policy, you know the mental health first aid commitments within that are, they’re really good and they’re really big.   So it’s up to us all to actually make sure they happen.   Laura Stevens: Would there be any other things you’d like to see change here at GDS, oh, and good practices, or that you’ve seen elsewhere that you might want to bring in here?   Ben Carpenter: I’m really pleased with the direction things are going. It would, it really does just come down to people and time.   I’d say that fully user-centred approach to what we provide is something that I would like to see really properly embedded across all of our wellbeing mental health work.   And personally, I’m much less interested on working on something that I don’t know, or have good confidence, to be useful for people, my colleagues that I work with in terms of their mental health.    So I don’t want to just tick any boxes. And I don’t want to make us look nice within the Civil Service. I don’t, I’m not interested in any of that.    Laura Stevens: You don’t want to pay lip service to something.   Ben Carpenter: Right. It can sound repetitive but I think it’s really the thing that matters. So for me with wellbeing, it might be that the very best thing this organisation can do for its staff is to continue to provide places for them to talk, continue to train line managers, continue to train mental health first aiders, continue to run things like the Q&As and speaking events and make people feel, even if they never speak up and say ‘oh that was brilliant, I loved that talk’, you know, even if they’re very quiet about it or silent about it, we know that it’s valuable to staff for these things to take place.    So we don’t have to be coming up with new things.   Laura Stevens: Uh huh.   Ben Carpenter: Might just keep doing simple, quiet, useful things. Which isn’t always cool and isn’t always popular. But that’s what I like.   Laura Stevens: How would you say the mental health sort of practices here, employee wellbeing, compares to other workplaces? Or have you’ve spoken, in your work with this network, have you spoken to the other people from other workplaces and have they brought in ideas or you’ve shared ideas there?   Ben Carpenter: Lots of people are really impressed and pleased to see what GDS has set up by the way of this open spaces to be able to talk about this. And the network and the community around to support people. But the most, lots of people who come into GDS say, ‘gosh this is, this is new to me’   Laura Stevens: Yeah.   Ben Carpenter: ‘This is remarkable in that, just that it exists’.   Laura Stevens: Do you think if there’s, if people are finding best practice here at GDS, is there potential for it to be shared across other government departments? Obviously if you’re involved and you go elsewhere, you can take that...   Ben Carpenter: There is a cross-government network. People do try and share ideas and approaches. We did try and pool approaches to mental health first aid provision and training and business cases to support the recruitment of people to do that, for example.   Laura Stevens: So there’s that opportunity for if stuff has been learnt here and tried and it’s found to work.   Ben Carpenter: Yes. We need to get better at blogging about what we do and what works. You know we’ve done a couple of blog posts but not enough really.    Laura Stevens:  Yeah, I saw your Slack Q&A one and...   Ben Carpenter: Yeah, wrote up that. And that was good. So I did a blog post about the Q&As that I’ve been talking about. And I’ve had 3 or 4 organisations, I’ve had meetings with since then to show them how we do, and they’ve gone off and run their own.   Laura Stevens: And how does that make you feel? Like sort of, it’s sort of out in the open now, it’s sort of being spread.   Ben Carpenter: It’s nice. Yeah it’s good.    Laura Stevens: Yeah.   Ben Carpenter: It’s nice. It seems such a simple idea but it’s, behind the scenes it’s surprisingly sort of complicated to make sure you’re trying to ask, field questions in a sensitive way really keep on top of them. The last thing you would want would be to miss, miss questions coming in or feel like peo-- I wouldn’t want staff here to thi--, I’d be mortified if I thought staff felt it was sort of poorly curated or was not sensitive to their needs or feelings. So.   Laura Stevens: Do you think things like the Network, the Wellbeing Group, are sort of helping encouraging people at GDS to say that’s ok to say that I have mental health, have you seen that as a response in your, anecdotally or?    Ben Carpenter: Anecdotally, yeah. Definitely anecdotally. I know that many of the comments that we see on the Slack channel, either through the Q&A sessions or just spontaneously, are people saying you know, ‘I feel so glad this network exists, I feel so glad this is something that people talk about here, I feel supported by the existence of this channel and that you guys are here piping up with this stuff and it’s not taboo, or it’s not taboo here.   Our Slack channel, I know it’s Slack it’s just Slack, but it’s the second most, it’s got the second most number of people in it of all the channels on GDS’s Slack after the community. So you know, and that’s nobody’s been forced onto there so people come in to read and listen.   Yeah, so we get...it’s another very hard thing to measure.   Laura Stevens: And can anyone on that Slack channel, if you’re part of the Slack channel, can anybody respond to anybody else or is it just if you’re part, if you’re a mental health first aider or is it just open to all?   Ben Carpenter: No, no. It’s just an open forum. So that’s why I think the anonymity of the Q&As is so valuable. So what we do with the Q&As is a 2 hour session every month. And you can post questions through an anonymous Google form in advance which I, or whoever is coordinating the session that month, would get and copy and paste them in Slack basically. Just say here’s a question and then people reply as a thread within Slack. And if they don’t want to answer the question publically either.    So we get, last time out I think there were a dozen questions, none of them posted live. So nobody wanted to ask what they wanted to ask straight into Slack with their name next to it. Maybe some of them would have if there hadn’t been an anonymous route. But if it didn’t matter, they would have done it. What’s the opposite of anonymous? Nonymous? Nonymous?    Laura Stevens: Identifiable?    Ben Carpenter: Yeah, right. They would have identified, they would be happy to be identified so. So if 12 people ask 12 questions anonymously, to me that’s a massive indicator in itself, that out of an organisation of 800 of a Slack channel of three or four hundred people, you get a dozen you know…I don’t know what, you imagine there are a dozen who do dare to ask an anonymous question.   Laura Stevens: Of course, yeah.    Ben Carpenter: There must be a whole stack more who are finding it hard.   Laura Stevens: A tip of the iceberg.   Ben Carpenter: Right, yeah. It might not be a massive iceberg but it’s still an indicator.    Laura Stevens: And do people, how do people respond like do you have to monitor the responses or do you just let people respond how they would like?   Ben Carpenter: I keep an eye on them for worrying signs, but nothing else. We never claim for it to be something of experts, it’s a peer-to-peer support thing.   Laura Stevens: Yeah.    Ben Carpenter: It was only, actually a couple of months ago, as a confession, running the Q&As and I thought it’s always been in the back of my mind, worrying that I would get a really scary message anonymously.   Laura Stevens: Of course.   Ben Carpenter: And you think, ‘oh my god, there’s somebody here who’s gonna hurt themselves or hurt someone else, or sounds really on the brink’. I’d always thought that felt like a risk of doing the Q&As. But to be honest, actually it’s only a risk of hearing about those thoughts, not a risk of creating those thoughts necessarily.   So it was only then that we suddenly jumped up and said we need to have a statement ready. So I do have, while I’m running the Q&As I’m ready with a document if I get something like that. I would copy and paste my message, this agreed comms message that we’ve agreed with comms and senior management, across all staff as an email and across all the Slack channels as a message, not just the Q&A, to say ‘if you sent this message containing this word’, so we wouldn’t share all of it just to make sure they knew we were talking to them, ‘then please contact one’, and we’d lead with 999.   Laura Stevens: Yeah.   Ben Carpenter: Or talk to a first aider. You know we’d give them contact options.   I mean it’s an odd, yeah it’s an odd leading a network like this and getting involved in this kind of work, I do feel a massive sense of responsibility.   Laura Stevens: Yes.   Ben Carpenter: And in a way that’s one of the things that makes me want us to do less, really well rather than take on too much. So sometimes in the network, it can be hard in the working group for all of us to find the time just to meet and just organise ourselves just to provide a few events and speakers, and get posters and you know, sell some pin badges and coffee mornings. That can be hard just...   Laura Stevens: Yeah.   Ben Carpenter: Even to get to that level. So I feel like whatever we do, I want us to do it well rather than lots of things averagely.    Laura Stevens: And how are you, you said about feeling this responsibility particularly for a network that deals with things like this, how are you supported in running this?   Ben Carpenter: David Dilley is our mental health champion at GDS, a Senior Civil Service, Senior Civil Servant. Fiona James is the wellbeing champion. So I can talk to either of them whenever I like. Abby Peel co-leads the Wellbeing Working Group with me. So we work really nicely together, Abby’s brilliant. And there’s actually much more of like tour de force behind the stuff that does get done in the working group.   So I mean I’ve got my line manager, and I’ve got the first aiders and I’ve got the Q&As.    Laura Stevens: So...   Ben Carpenter: This whole thing is just therapeutic for me right.   Laura Stevens: Yeah.   Ben Carpenter: That’s why I’m doing this ‘cause it gives me, it’s my own private brilliant therapy network.   All the anonymous questions on the Q&As I just, are mine for example. I make them all up myself.   That’s not true, that’s not true.   Laura Stevens: So you are supported and?   Ben Carpenter: Yeah, of course, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Definitely.    Laura Stevens: And can you, you were saying, so mental health is part of the wellbeing group, can you talk a bit more about the wellbeing group, and the wellbeing, and its aims?   Ben Carpenter: So yeah, so we had the Mental Health Network which was, as the title suggests quite focused just on mental health. And I think quite rightly, particularly when Fiona joined GDS and is the senior wellbeing champion for GDS.   Laura Stevens: Is this Fiona James?    Ben Carpenter: Yes.    Laura Stevens: Yeah.   Ben Carpenter: Sorry, yes. You know, it’s correct I think to pull everything together in terms of wellbeing and say, because we know there’s such strong links between physical wellbeing and mental wellbeing for starters. And if we’re trying to say you know, a bit of a common tropey type phrase about mental health is, ‘well if you broke your arm you go and see the doctor, so when you’re feeling down why don’t you go…’.   You know which is a bit of an ugly comparison made in those, because they’re not comparable really but, we should be trying to bring them together so to totally normalise mental health. We’re not, nobody’s got any qualms about physical health or moaning about physical health, so lets moan about our mental health. Let's be honest about it. Let’s ask for help.   Laura Stevens: Yeah.   Ben Carpenter: So that’s the evolution of that, and I really welcome it. In many ways the discrepancy, bothering to split these things up is really just a semantic exercise a lot of the time. Ditto for, so there’s a daily meditation session, 10 minute session, happens every day anyone can go 10 minutes of peaceful reflection. That’s meditation, it’s not, it doesn’t happen on my watch right, we don’t talk about it in the Wellbeing Peer Group.    Laura Stevens: Yeah.    Ben Carpenter: But it’s everything to do, there’s a running club that takes place every, every well at least every week. I’m not sure how often they run.   Laura Stevens: No, I can’t say that I’m part of that so I don’t know.   Ben Carpenter: Mental health doesn’t all have to be about crisis. It’s just about ongoing care. Yeah, looking after yourself.    Laura Stevens: Are there any sort of tips you can give me to create a better workplace for mental health, for employee wellbeing?   Ben Carpenter: If you’re looking to provide this for staff rather than you’re somebody yourself who has mental health challenges and you’re thinking, ‘what can I do, I’m at work what can I do?’. I think it’s the openness of the topic is primary. So be bold and be brave enough to stand up and say, ‘here’s what I struggle with’. And you know talk to people, give that message out loud, ask people to reflect back to you how they feel, does it ring any bells with them.   So I think there’s been, so Helen Nickols, who ran the Mental Health Network before I joined it as well, I feel like she really led by example you know. She wasn’t afraid, still isn't afraid to stand up and say ‘this is what I struggle with, this is how I deal with it’, you know.    Laura Stevens: Yeah.   Ben Carpenter: And I think if you can’t do that then it’s gonna be hard to expect other people to sort of come out of their shells and start to talk about things that might help them, in a way that might help them, sorry.   So, yeah, it really helps to have champions, people who will treat this seriously and not as a taboo.    Laura Stevens: So be open, be bold, be honest, and have champions.   Ben Carpenter: Yes, keep talking.   Laura Stevens: Would be your sort of, yeah. And…   Ben Carpenter: Yeah.   Laura Stevens: And make sure that you, there’s a space as well I guess for people to be able to have these open conversations.    Ben Carpenter: I think we have to be really aware in organisations that it’s a massive luxury and privilege to be able to be frank about your mental health. It can take a massive amount of privilege. So I’m a white middle aged man with every privilege really. So, and career wise, I’m probably pretty robust. I don’t mean in GDS, ‘cause they could sack me tomorrow, but I just mean I have the luxury of being able to stand up and say you know, the reason I couldn’t come to work last week for a couple of days, was you know, mental health.   To expect that of everybody is not fair. So I think it falls upon people who do have those privileges just to use that capital a bit and try and break those taboos, ‘cause it’s massively biased towards people like me.   Laura Stevens: And how do you get in touch with the mental, how do I join the wellbeing group?   Ben Carpenter: You go on the Slack channel, you listen, you ask questions. It’s not something you can join, it’s just there for you. It’s not a club. The only aspect of it which is a club is that you need to join the Slack channel if you want to read what people are asking or saying, but even within there for a few days at a time, it may only be little nice bits of chat and people asking questions or sharing things they’ve read. So it’s not intense.    If you want to get involved, if you want to give help you might want to train to be a first aider. If you want to give help you might want to put the Q&As in your diary, last Friday of every month 10 to 12 in the morning. And listen to people and offer them your support, if not expertise.   Sometimes people just want to be heard. Now certainly the Q&A, some of the feedback I’ve had is, ‘it’s so good just to be able to write this down and be heard, even if people didn’t know it was me who said it’. And people just say, ‘I hear you, it’s valid, you’re fine, it’s ok to think that and feel that’. So you don’t have to be like I say you know a therapist going on there with amazing clinical advice. So if you want to give help those are good ways to do that. Or you could offer to, you could think about what you could talk about if you’ve had challenges of your own, anything.   If you want to receive help, so if you need help, then there’s a mental health first aiders. Look on the wiki, search for mental health support, look at all, look at the wellbeing pages on there, see what activities and timetables there are for you to get involved with.   Go to the yoga sessions, go on the lunchtime walks, go to Abby’s crafting sessions, dial in to the Q&As, call the Cabinet Office listening service, call, go and see your GP. You know whatever you think works for you. The most important thing is to do something, it can be anything.    Laura Stevens: So if I’m listening and I’m not at GDS so I can’t join the Slack, how would be a good way to get in touch with you if I want to find out more about setting up a Slack channel at my own organisation or running this sort of network?   Ben Carpenter: Totally happy to be emailed, Ben.Carpenter@digital.cabinet-office.gov.uk. That sounds right, is that right?   Laura Stevens: Yeah, that’s right.   Ben Carpenter: Yeah. I can’t give mental health advice but I will talk to you about what we do as per this podcast.    And so I often talk about leaning forward, and I think this was actually the name of the Facebook CEO’s book wasn’t it recently? And I think she stole it from me.   The analogy being if you want to jump off a really high diving board and you’re terrified of it, don’t go up to the top of the diving board and think ‘now I’m going to jump 200 feet into this cold water’. Just go to the top of the diving board and lean forward a little bit and think, ‘I know what I’m going to do, I’m just going to lean forward’. And before you know it you’ll be in the water swimming around. Right?    Laura Stevens: Yeah.    Ben Carpenter: So I think, as with any life's big challenges, take the first step and then just try and let the other steps follow.    Laura Stevens: So thank you to Ben to talking to us today about mental health and employee wellbeing. You can listen to all the episodes of the Government Digital Service podcast on Apple Music, Spotify and all other major podcast platforms, and you can read the transcripts on PodBean.    Again, thank you very much to Ben for joining.   Ben Carpenter: Thank you.   Laura Stevens: Goodbye.

f you haven't already, be sure to fill out our poll here and tell us what you think!This week brings us some awesome Supergirl news, an absurdly expensive accessory, and anti-virus that eats itself and everything else on your computer. Also, don't trust a politician who says they've never sent an email because they're either lying or have no business living in 2015. Just saying.Headlines:Jon Ives: Apple Watch is just too good for your mortal understandingApple's new MacBook is ultra-thin and weighs just two poundsThe most expensive Apple Watch costs upward of $10,000HBO Go available next month if you have an Apple deviceSupergirl’s costume unveiledMarvel to skip SDCCRogue One; will be the first Star Wars movieAMC orders two seasons of Walking Dead spinoff (The Adventures of Carl Papa)Search for Norman Lee called offFormer Google exec Lee confirmed to lead U.S. patent officeLindsey Graham: Another Series of Tubes?Facebook's 'Wedge' network switch will soon be on sale to alluTorrent silently installing bundled Bitcoin mining softwareGoogle Launches Cloud Storage Nearline, A Low-Cost Storage Service For Cold DataPanda Antivirus gave itself LupusZuke’s Favorite: Chuck Norris kicked Father Time once. So Time turned him 75.Schmidty’s Favorite: Avengers 2 Trailer - Kids DubCollin’s Favorite: Marvel Contest of ChampionsZohner’s Favorite: Together again See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

This Heart Technique helps declutter drama, chaotic energy, unbalanced or fearful thoughts that get stuck on top of each into your heart chakra and create confusion and misunderstanding. This is the visual given during the full moon transmission and if you listen to the (audio) podcast it will make sense. So Time to declutter and ground heart! Check it out!!! Enjoy and let us know how it works for you! Lilly Natures Blessings http://psychicspiritinyou.com/2013/02/09/heart-technique-to-declutter-chaotic-energy-of-the-heart/