 Hey folks, welcome to the podcast. This was one of my favourite ones I've done so far. I spoke to a great lady called Mel Crate, who's the founder of Luminate, who will work with people to help improve mental health and the workplace and all of that good stuff. We covered a few things, we talked about why we find it difficult to stick to healthy habits, how can we redesign our habits for better health, and we talk about energy levels, eating the right stuff, exercising, meditation. I hope you enjoy the conversation. Hey, it's Lewis. Welcome to the podcast. Enjoy our conversations anytime, anywhere. Cool, and we're live. Thanks for joining me Mel. Thank you for having me. It's great to be here. Pleasure, pleasure. So what is your background? So I run a wellbeing consultancy called Luminate. We work with businesses to try and help them create happier and healthier environments. So I've run that business now for almost four years, which feels like a lifetime. And before that I worked in broadcasting. So I worked as a talent agent for almost a decade and then decided I wanted to retrain. It's very stressful. I had my own experience of mental illness in my 20s and overcoming that decided I wanted to work in the wellness area, which is what led me to set up Luminate. And here we are. So it's a talent being models. It was presenters actually. So news readers, factual documentary presenters, people like that, which was really interesting at the time. And yeah, so glad I did it. But it wasn't for me forever. No, true. And then your own mental health experience, did you in good stead now for the work? Yeah, definitely. Like a lot of our work is talking about mental health and trying to educate and build awareness and give people the confidence to deal with mental health a bit more effectively at work. So definitely having my own experience of that, I think just gives you a firsthand insight to know what it's like to experience mental illness, know what helps at those times, know what certainly doesn't help. And that has definitely helped when kind of building that side of the business. So do you think there's like a mixture of environment, chemical stuff? Yes. So mental health and mental illness in particular is very complex. But our environment is incredibly important. And, you know, that includes society as a whole where we live. But in terms of our workplace environments, we spend so much time in them in our waking life. So it is incredibly important that that environment is conducive to positive mental health and not doing the opposite, doing more damage, which is sometimes the case, sadly. I just did a podcast on flexibility in the workplace, like flexi working. I did a little Instagram survey on my stories. And 59% of people said that their companies offer flexi working. But I just find it really interesting because people always talk about work life balance and the opposite of life is death. And people are creating work to death. So they're coming in to work, not really wanting to work, let's say. And then with flexi working, you're kind of most people want to try and spend more time at home. So they're not having human contact. Yeah. And I just feel like, you know, humans need human contact. Absolutely. I think that's a real challenge now in this modern world where we have lots of remote workers, home workers. And that does have a big impact. We always try and encourage face to face interaction. Because as humans, we are social creatures, we need that actually to survive. It's impossible to survive without it. And it's so crucial to our mental health. It's something we stress all the time. Yeah. What do you think about companies? So most companies, big companies, they don't have enough desk space for their employees. So let's say maybe two thirds of the amount of desks for their employees. Yeah. They encourage people to work from home. This will cost saving dressed up as like we're really cool, flexible company. And then you're living in a big city. So people could go through life, not really having human contact, not knowing their teammates, no one really caring how they feel. Do you think that's contributed to the increase in? Yeah, I think so. And also what we call the gig economy of lots of people being freelancers and contractors and not having that security. But I think that definitely has contributed. I think it's great to offer flexible working. And sometimes that works in people's favor, especially if you have a family, for example, or other commitments. It does help to have the flexibility to have the option to work from home. And if you do that one or two days a week, no harm done, absolutely fine. If that is your whole working life, working on your own in solitary, that's tough. And I think that definitely has an impact on your levels of well being and mental health overall. Yeah, interesting. So definitely environment. Yes, definitely environment. And, you know, the people that are around us, that is so important as well. So our management, our leadership teams are so crucial in forming that environment and making sure it's a conducive one to good work, good health, etc. True. People find it quite hard to change the people around them. Yes. The work people, it's hard to resign from somewhere, but also it's hard to change your like a closed circle. It could be your friends. Yeah, absolutely. It could be people that end up having a negative impact on you. Yeah, we always try and get people to assess that. It is hard. I mean, any kind of change is hard in a way. But we always try and ask people to assess the relationships in their life. And if they're contributing to their well being or sometimes doing more damage than good, and then looking at how can we manage that a bit more effectively. At work, obviously, that's harder to control. You know, the people that manage us, the people that work alongside us, we don't usually choose those. So a lot of the time it's about trying to understand people's behavior a bit better and grow our emotional intelligence, to have a bit more empathy, learn how to work with people of all different personality types. And that I think really helps then people kind of settle into that team. True. It's hard. They don't teach at school. They don't teach at school. They're starting to. They need to, they need to. Yeah, slowly, slowly, I think that will hopefully change because I still find it astounding, actually, the amount of groups of adults I work with that have such limited knowledge around mental health altogether. And I think if we can teach that in school, then I think that's amazing because you've already given people the tools that they need to look after their mental health to understand what it is. And that we do need to proactively look after it just like our physical health. So yeah, hopefully over time, that will change. It's hard. Like my, I've got a couple of daughters and my wife was at a party with one of them. And the girl he's partied with came up and said, my daughter's called Florence. She was like, are you Florence's mum? And she was like, yeah, I don't like Florence. I find it really annoying. I don't want her on my party. Oh, no. So it's quite interesting. It was an interesting scenario, right? Yeah. Because most adults have a problem with knowing someone doesn't like them. Yes. You know, like it's a real hard, you go to bed thinking, oh, you know, this person doesn't like me. How Theresa May does it? I don't know. Oh, God. I'd like to think. But so Florence came home and she's like, oh, she's, she's five. She's like, oh, you know, this girl said to this to me. And I said, well, not everyone has a good taste. And she doesn't want to play with you. Go and play with someone else. Absolutely. But I was just trying to get this mentality. It's really tough, actually, that. And that's never easy to take. But we always try and focus on what is within our control, you know, whilst being authentic, being ourselves. And I think something that especially adults struggle with nowadays is, you know, we're always told to be ourselves, but often deep down, there's this voice going, but who is that? You know, we don't spend enough time with ourselves. So our lives are so packed, they're so full with activities with, with doing that actually it's quite hard to get to know ourselves who we really are and then show that authentic part of ourselves to people. And if we do that and they don't like us, then so be it. There's very little, you know, as long as we're not being unkind to anyone, not everybody is going to like you. And that's something that you have to learn to accept. And I think the less you can care about that kind of thing, the happier you'll be. But it's a constant work. It's certainly not easy. No, it's hard. It's hard. And then so this links to your other stuff around sticking to healthy habits. Yes. Which is really interesting, because I was thinking about this the other day when I knew I was going to speak to you. And, you know, I love certain unhealthy things, chocolate or whatever. Yeah, we all do. So how does it work then? Why do we find it so difficult to stick to these healthy habits? So what's important to understand first is kind of how our cognitive systems, our brain works in that sense. And we have to think of it from the perspective of our ancestors, from the hunter-gatherers. So the brain takes tens of thousands of years to evolve. You know, we essentially always adapt and evolve to our environment, but that takes a long time. And we haven't currently evolved to the point where we're able to live that healthily in the environment we're in today, which is why I think as a whole we're experiencing so many health problems. But our brains are driven, our primary function of our brains is survival. So all of the other stuff comes secondary really. And part of that survival mode is we're incentivised, for example, to find out, seek out and eat food. So when there's food in front of us, our initial reaction is to eat it because we need food to survive. And back when we were hunter-gatherers, food wasn't so easily available, especially high fat, high sugar foods that would give us energy. We needed that. So if we saw that, we would immediately go for it. And that hasn't really changed in us. So we've got to kind of constantly try and apply this self-control. And our self-control willpower is like a muscle, it gets tired. And we're constantly having to resist things in life, the things that we're not supposed to do, the drinking, the eating, the sitting down for too long. It's that constant work of trying to resist that. And we get tired ultimately and then we cave in. And the whole environment around us is geared up to selling us stuff, whether that is food or a certain lifestyle or buying certain things. And that certainly doesn't help our case in trying to resist those temptations. Very true. No, it's completely great. So it's hard. And I think we're quite hard on ourselves. We give ourselves a hard time when we fail, when we don't reach the goals that we want in terms of our health and fitness. But it's important to understand that it's very tough. Our environment does work against us. And our brains even work against us when trying to form new habits. Yeah. What strategies do you use to try and keep yourself healthy? So like actively planning is really important. And for me now, it is a habit. So it's not difficult anymore. Would you mean like actively planning? So I mean like sitting down and writing it out. There's so much information that goes through our brains or so much information we're taking in every day. When we just actually sit and write something down, our brain pays attention to it. It realises that this thing is important. So I'm going to remember it. And that can make a huge difference. There's a lot of research studies to show that when people plan actively around their health in terms of writing down that plan, they're much more likely to stick to it. So there was a really interesting study done with people who had undergone hip replacement surgery. And they found that those people who wrote down a really detailed plan of recovery for themselves. For example, how many times a day they would go for a walk, how often they would do their physio exercises, where they would walk to, who they would walk with. As the more detailed, the more success they had in carrying out and the quicker recovery they made than those who just kind of mentally thought through a plan. So actively writing down, I have one of those brilliant goals, diaries, which everybody- Do you like handwritten? Yeah, absolutely handwritten. Like, you know, this week I'm going to meditate five times. I'm going to work out four times. Whatever it might be, everyone's goals are different. But like actively sitting down, writing them, figuring out where they're going to fit in with my schedule, which isn't always easy with we have clients all over the country. So it's trying to make sure that I prioritise those things and that they're scheduled in and that makes them much more likely to happen. Did you actively schedule in, like, chill out time, exercise time? Yeah, definitely. All of that stuff. Which sounds like I have a life that's really over scheduled, but actually I leave a lot of room in there. So sometimes be spontaneous if that's what I feel like on that time, but also just to make sure that these like pillars, they're the foundation of my life, the exercise, the meditation, all of those. I know if I get those right, then the other parts of my life will be much more enjoyable and just kind of fall into place if that makes sense. Yeah, yeah. So how much time do you spend meditating and exercising? So I try and you know, things happen in life. I had a back injury recently, which took me out for a couple of weeks, but I try in general to do five to six workouts, which includes yoga as well. So maybe like four, three or four hip sessions, two or three yoga sessions a week. And then I try to meditate daily, but realistically it probably ends up being four or five days a week and about 20 minutes at a time. On the weekends I try and do half an hour. And use an app to do that? So I use a combination actually. So I'm a trained mindfulness teacher, so I teach as well. So sometimes I take myself through my own practice. Sometimes I use Headspace, which is a really great app, which I always recommend to people. And I have a few other recordings that I draw upon. And how do you find it benefits you? Oh, amazingly. I just have a sense of clarity when I meditate that I just don't have otherwise. There's running a business, as you know, there's so much you have to think about all of the time. And that can be quite overwhelming. And it just helps me feel a lot more grounded and centered. And also helps the concentration as well. I really struggled with that before in that our concentration spans have got much shorter over time, due to various different reasons. But part of mindfulness and meditation is training your concentration span. And you're always bringing your focus back to the breath back to the body, whatever it is you're currently focusing on. And that helps massively, it helps me be able to carry out work that is meaningful, that I can concentrate on for a certain amount of time, then helps me get the stuff done that I need to do. Do you find exercise and meditation helps with mental health? Definitely. So there's a lot of talk around meditation, mindfulness and mental health. And one thing that is really important to point out is it's not a cure for mental illness by any stretch. So if people are currently experiencing severe anxiety or depression, we don't recommend that they start a meditation or a mindfulness practice. It's too intense, it's a lot of looking inward as well. Which can be amazing for kind of self-awareness, building your emotional intelligence over time. But that has to be a time where you feel kind of stable enough to take up that practice. Also, if you're experiencing anxiety, for example, you'll have a lot of problems concentrating, you won't necessarily get a lot out of the practice. So we talk about it as a preventative strategy, something that we do like fitness. You don't start fitness once you've got an injury. Yeah, generally, once you're in a place where you feel stable, it's a great thing to do that can proactively look after your mental health and keep you in better mental health over time. Awesome. And what about the exercise? Because for me, I do about four days a week. I do CrossFit. Oh, great. And then I do yoga once a week. Amazing. I don't meditate. I tend to get, I don't know, I like to get fidgety pins and needles in my legs if I've crossed them. And in the yoga, they do like five, 10 minutes in the beginning. Absolutely. Yoga is a form of mindful movement. So it is a type of meditation if it's taught correctly. But yeah, exercise is amazing for our mental health. Again, as a preventative strategy, so if someone's severely depressed, suggesting they go for a run isn't going to help them much at that point. They probably need professional care before then they can move on to what we call self-care. But yeah, there's been lots of studies to show that exercise as a preventative strategy for mental health is amazing. It's really, really good for us. And in terms of our kind of current busy, stressful lives, we tend to build up a lot of this chemical cortisol in our systems. And because our lives are very sedentary, we spend a lot of time sitting down, we're not burning that chemical off. And that becomes a problem in many different areas of our health, both mental and physical. So exercise is great for burning off that cortisol and just moving, you know, it doesn't always need to be, I say this to people, doesn't need to be, you know, five hours of working out a week, although that's great if you can, but just getting up in the day, going for a walk, getting outdoors a bit, moving our bodies in the way that they're supposed to be moved. Yeah, no, we've got standing desks where everyone's sitting right now, but we can just move them up because I slipped three discs in my back a while ago, and then I got into doing CrossFit and it's great now. I was doing a lot of running and then I think the pounding on the concrete killed me. Yeah, that's a bit hard on the body. Yeah, it's fine. It's something as well that works for you, your body, what you like as well. We're gonna enjoy and getting through that initial pain barrier with exercise, which is tough because when you first start exercising, it does not feel good for the first time. Well, I've always liked sport and a lot to exercise, but I started doing marathon running just after uni with a friend of mine and the first kilometer I got sick and then I ran two kilometers and then I can just build it up. Just build it up. So you ran a marathon? Three marathons. It's a really good for my mental health. It's really good. It's quite meditative. You find yourself in this like, about sound a bit cheesy, but you're getting this like zen state where the thoughts is coming in and out of your mind and you're thinking about stuff and all you think about my leg hurts or I need to keep going or when's my water stop and it's really hard to think about anything else. Yeah, absolutely. A lot of professional sports people, athletes use mindfulness as well. There's a guy called, it's a heavyweight boxer called Tyson Fury. Yes. And he, he's quite public with his, his mental health problems and he almost committed suicide and the stuff and he was saying in an interview that he just went seven days a week to the gym and he found that it really helped all the endorphins and the work for him. Absolutely. It definitely does help. Like it's it's one part of the puzzle, let's say. And that's really important to understand because you know, some professional athletes have had mental health illness. It isn't the only thing that's going to protect us from getting unwell and there's, there's lots of reasons. There's past traumas. There's, you know, other lifestyle choices. There's our environment that can really impact the relationships we have in our life that can impact someone's mental health. So yeah, it should definitely be part of your preventative strategy. It's so, so good for us in so many different ways. But yeah, it's by no means the, the whole picture. Yeah, yeah. I think a lot of my mates do no exercise or they let themselves go and they've got every single excuse. I'm getting married. I've just had a kid. I've just had another kid. Haven't got time, all of this stuff. How would, how can like people who, who really needs to start moving and getting a good diet and stuff like reprogram themselves to Yeah, small steps, I think are really important. So, you know, it can seem really daunting to think about, you know, suddenly going to the gym five times a week when you don't currently go at all. And the most successful changes that people see in their life is when they implement things over time. So it's that marginal gains theory, which also comes from sports of like trying to tweak things just a little bit. So maybe it is like one yoga class a week to start with and just try that. I think sometimes when we set ourselves these really big ambitious goals around exercise and health is when we tend to fall down, you know, saying we're going to cut out sugar all together. Some people do that successfully fine but for a lot of people, for a lot of us, if we work in offices where there are cakes, chocolates all the time, resisting that constantly and saying we're never going to cave I think is unrealistic. Definitely. So having some, yeah, some small goalposts that you want to try and achieve and then adding things on slowly. So it might start with one 20-minute run a week and do that for four weeks and then see what you can add in after that. Maybe that's another run, maybe it's a gym workout, whatever it might be. But very small steps, I think, because for all of us, I think we can all commit to one 20 minutes a week to look after office. Well the one acceptable thing is we all have 24 hours in a day. Exactly. And then half an hour. I mean, I think everyone can find half an hour in a day. Absolutely, they can. It is tough, I do understand, especially taking that first step. Yeah, it's hard to get out of the couch. Yeah, absolutely. And that, you know, there are many days where I wake up and I think I've got so much to do, I could do with the hour back that I'm going to spend exercising and getting ready. But I just remind myself that I can't afford not to do it. Yeah. Because when I'm sick, there's no one to pay me sick pay, unfortunately. Yeah. But you know, you can't work. You're then, you're no good to anyone if you're burnt out or exhausted or sick, which happens when we don't look after our health. So it's constantly reminding myself, and I have to do this too, that it's tempting to skip meditations, exercise, but I know that in the long run I can't afford not to do that. True, true. No, it's definitely true. I tend to see a lot of people that go on, like they do it for a little bit, you know, like January's classic. Yes. I hate the Jimi January. You just see everyone at the gym, and I'm like, hey man, how are you doing? And then I just never see them again. Yeah. Or a lot of people go on like, because I think there's a difference between going on an A diet and having a good diet. And you're like, you see people, like they go on a diet and eat badly, then go on another diet and eat badly. And it's just trying to get into like a healthy lifestyle. Totally. And you know, diet culture, again, is something that is sold to us as consumers. It's a way that a lot of companies make money. And you know, so much evidence out there shows that diets just don't work. You know, we have, like you said, a diet we all have to eat. But it's trying to make something that's sustainable for you. And it's all about how does your body feel. So when we teach mindfulness as well, we teach a lot around mindful eating and it just is becoming a bit more conscious around how we eat. So mindful eating being. So it's paying much more attention. So a lot of the time, especially in modern offices, we might eat a sandwich in front of our computers. We might eat some biscuits in the afternoon. We might eat our dinner in front of the telly. We're not concentrating when we're eating. And this also leads to overeating. And it makes us feel less satisfied from what we're eating. So we tend to eat more. So with mindful eating, it's thinking about, you know, trying to pay attention when we actually eat, thinking about bringing awareness as to why we're making the choices that we are. Maybe it's the food we like, maybe it's habits, maybe it's convenience. But just bringing awareness to that and then noticing how it makes you feel afterwards. And you know, our food is our fuel. So if you're eating stuff that gives you good energy and different things work for different people. Some people favor a vegan vegetarian diet. Some people gluten free, whatever it is. But it's noticing how it makes you feel and not buying into something because it's a fad. But actually what does my body need to run well to feel good today? And I think when you're eating the things that make you feel good, you'll know that you're eating well. That's true. But then the nice mouth pleasure of a nice piece of chocolate or pizza. You know that's okay, right? Like as long as you're not eating chocolate for three meals a day, like if you want a bit of chocolate, that's not going to kill you. I promise you that. Like don't, I think this constant deprivation that we put onto ourselves, it's so difficult. And it's just being aware as well. The world that we live in is very difficult to keep up that constant resistance. So don't beat yourself up if you want to have some chocolate after dinner, whatever it might be. But again, work out when that works best for you. Like if I'm going to have something sweet, I won't have it during the day because it'll crash my energy when I need to work. I might have something after dinner. And I'll enjoy it and I won't feel guilty about it because you know what, at the end of the day, life is too short. Sometimes a bit of chocolate is good for the soul. No, definitely. No, it's so nice. On energy levels, because you always see in the workplace people crash at like three o'clock and then they have caffeine and sugar. Which I think is as bad as getting drunk in terms of decision making and stuff. What would you recommend people? So I'd say especially your breakfast and your lunch, try and make those mills food that's going to give you good energy. So it's trying to avoid kind of too many white stodgy carbs where possible and trying to make sure we're getting plenty of fresh fruit and veg. But sometimes it's also about taking more breaks as well. So we tend not to take that many breaks because we think we've got so much work to do and we don't have time. But if you think about that crash in the afternoon, when we've all been there, where we're sitting at our desk kind of yawning away, feeling so sleepy, you know you're unproductive at that point. You know you're not getting your good work done then. And that can last an hour, sometimes more. So you think about the time and the productivity you're losing then. If you can just take a couple of shorter breaks earlier in the day, get outside, get some fresh air that makes such a huge difference. And we weren't designed as humans to operate inside buildings all day. So if we can take a quick walk, get moving a couple of times earlier in the day, that will probably make a big difference. Also we need to make sure we're looking after our lifestyles as a whole, we're sleeping enough. So if you're getting a big crash at some point in the day, it might be a reflection that you're not getting enough sleep. So we've got eight hours you should be or? Yes, ideally. Do you get your eight hours? I try. So between seven and nine we recommend. I try for eight every night. Realistically it's somewhere between seven and eight, usually seven and a half. But I really try not to drop below seven. What time do you get to bed usually? Usually I try and be in bed around half ten quarter to two eleven. That's right. And then you get up at half six. Half six. Yeah, so it's yeah, again, it sometimes varies depending on where I need to be. Yeah. But keeping a good sleep schedule roughly the same time. And what I try not to do on weekends is sleep until 10am because that just screws your schedule on the week ahead. Definitely. But yeah, that is so important there. We have a sleep workshop which I love because I do. Yeah, people don't always, people don't realise this but our sleep is tied to every part of our health, our memory, our concentration, our immune system. I mean, absolutely everything in our body starts to suffer when we don't get enough sleep. So if there's one thing you can change in your lifestyle, like just trying, again, think of it as a time investment. So those tired slumps that we get are really, really damaging to our productivity. If we sleep better every night, we'll probably get more back in the day as well. What do you do on your sleep training? So we talk about at different stages of sleep as well, the cycles of sleep and what they are good for. So we have REM sleep and non-REM sleep which is the deeper phases of sleep. So we look at what they're useful for, some really interesting research. So there was, so we try and give people a picture of what sleep is doing for us and then what happens when we don't get enough sleep. So we reference some really interesting studies, one of which talks was a kind of wide scale study where they took different control groups and each different group was allowed a different amount of sleep every night. And the most amazing thing that I took from that study is the group that were only allowed six hours of sleep performed comparatively worse than the group that were allowed eight hour sleep and they found that after 21 days of sleeping six hours a night it was as bad for our productivity levels as going a whole 24 hours without any sleep. Does that make sense? And most people sleep around six hours a night that we come across, especially in lots of very high powered industries for firms, banks. It's very common that people might get five or six hours of sleep a night but what that's doing to our productivity levels and also our health is so damaging. So then we look at how can we build better sleep routines and better wind down routines looking at our lifestyles as a whole making sure we understand caffeine, how long it stays in our system that kind of thing how important that last hour of our day is we get people to make a plan for what they can do to make sure they get a better night sleep and looking at everything So what, not going on Facebook and Instagram? That's all of that. So no scrolling before bed. Really? No, it's so hard to do. Technology's another one. You know, those apps, smartphones are designed to be addictive they're designed to get us going back and back again. So it is tough but trying to sleep with your phone in a different room if you can or just not scrolling in bed. Do you do that? Yeah, I do. Do you? I really I have a novel by my bedside table and that's what I do last thing before and it's a very relaxing novel. So sometimes we watch, you know, Luther or Line of Duty and that's great but if we watch that just before bed and we go we try and go straight to sleep our minds can be kind of there. So yeah, trying to just do relaxing things making sure the environment's right as well your room should be cooler than it is during the day clean, uncluttered all of those things just to make sure we can get the best night sleep possible. Yeah. Really it's trying to get people to prioritize sleep to understand its importance and to make sure that again, you know they can't they can't afford not to sleep well every night and make sure they are getting enough hours of sleep is important. The social media thing's tough because I think when I'm it is tough. My friends next to my bed I probably look at it the last thing I do before I go to sleep. Yeah. Absolutely. It is hard and you know if you feel like you sleep really well when you feel refreshed and energized throughout the day every day great but if you feel like you're not for whatever reason those are the start those are things I would start to look at and think you know I bought an alarm clock you know it's an old fashioned to know my phone is like I think the phone's like as addictive as crack probably. Totally. Yeah. Lots of really like when that light goes off you could like oh no someone's emailed me and you can't help but like pick it up. The emails the email thing is the worst you know this wasn't a problem for us 20 years ago we did not have email access at all hours of the day and you know people work at different times of the day so you might be receiving emails at 9 10 at night and that is what kind of keeps us constantly connected to work and that means we don't really get the proper down time that we need and that again has an impact on our energy levels throughout the day so making sure you have time a really disciplined and time of the day where you know you're switching off you're not going to be looking at your emails you're not going to be connected to work thinking about work and that will really help you sleep. Crazy. So this is all like after the event right all of the adult we're probably all in bad habits now and we're trying to yeah. In terms of like our kids and like teaching our kids to be good adults in the future growing up in this world of tech and stuff how can how can we start to get them in good habits right from the beginning? Yeah absolutely I mean look kids don't have the self discipline or the willpower that adults do which is why we have to kind of enforce certain rules and make sure that there are boundaries there for them so really it's it's our responsibility as adults to make sure that the default mode of entertainment is not always an iPad or a phone which I know I don't have children so I know it's much easier to say and I know how tempting that must be having looked after some before and you know again that's okay some of the time but when we were children we just didn't have that we were allowed to be bored that let our minds wonder that helped us be more creative it helped us play which I think is lacking in a lot of children's lives today and you know sometimes we take the easier route in the short term but it leads to more difficult behavior down the road so just trying to have discipline again a bit of screen time is okay but making sure it's not all the time and having some boundaries clear boundaries around that Yeah no that's true it's funny because you see parents tend to not want their kids to be bored or you always feel like you need to organize something and what we're doing today and and so we've tried to do like one day every three weeks where we're not planning anything on the weekend that's great and we can just like chill out and do stuff totally yeah adults have that too like we don't like to be bored we think it's a really negative thing but actually it's it's okay to be bored and that is where a lot of great ideas come from it's where a lot of creativity comes from but we don't give ourselves that space anymore because our lives are so full and even if we're waiting in line for something or waiting for a train we'll be on our phones there is very little time for our brains just to wonder and yeah you know be freer no you're right if I'm kicking out for lunch like just pick your phone up yeah we would do it we would do it again just try and to introduce like small habits like saying at lunch time for example or waiting for the train home I won't pick up my phone and just you know once or twice a day where you commit to not doing it that makes a big difference it's hard it is hard it's not none of this stuff is easy and the key thing I always try and get people to take away it's like it's not about being perfect and getting it right all of the time it's about trying to do what you can and getting it right a lot of the time and understanding that at times you know you will fall down like there are times when of course I look at my phone in bed or I miss a workout or have a week where I don't work out and that's okay right you just pick up you start you try again small steps and you'll you'll get there yeah can you ever unplug completely go for a weekend in the country and turn your phone off I try to yeah it is it is tough to do because we rely on our phones for so much as well like maps for example you know a lot of the time when when we're in a new place we rely on our maps to get us about we don't have an old fashion paper map anymore there's so many things that you don't realize that you use your phone for calculators you know paying for things it's incredible I try to I've actually got a silent retreat coming up in August which is a silent retreat six days and nights with no phones technology but wow paper but no speaking no speaking for six days for six days wow it's quite terrifying so I've done that for a weekend before but I've never done it for that and are you organizing or you're attending it no I'm attending it so it's this lovely retreat in Devon and yeah six whole days which is a terrifying prospect of not speaking to anybody you're not allowed any technology you're not even allowed books so it really is just time to meditate and to give your brain some space so what's going so it's like yoga and meditation yeah exactly for for the whole six days you have teachers who lead the retreat and they'll take you through some guided meditation then you'll do some meditations on your own you'll do walking meditations all kinds of different things but yeah it's essentially just time for for meditation which I spoke to someone who is going on something similar they've done two days or something like that yeah yeah it's amazing thing to do you it's incredible how refreshed do you feel afterwards and have you done it before I've done two days sorry to yeah not to this this length of time so I'm I'm also a little apprehensive but scared about it it's a long time and yeah it's just it's so alien to us because to have the whole six days of not talking or doing anything you're going with someone else no no just on my own so yeah because you can't talk to anyone I think it makes it easier to not have anyone there that you want to definitely so yeah I'm going down on my own so yeah we'll be quite daunting but I'm looking forward to it in a way when are you going in August so August tends to be a quieter time for business because people are on the holiday so hopefully the world won't fall apart while I'm there no no awesome well let me know how it is I will do amazing to chat to you you too how can people find you so we our website is weareluminate.co and so we have some blogs some resources they're uploading some new meditation soon as well so you can look up for those amazing we're also on social media Instagram and Facebook as we are illuminate so we're posting there as well about things we have coming up amazing thank you very much thanks so much for having me speak soon pleasure bye hey folks thanks for listening don't forget to subscribe in all the usual places