 Hello and welcome to today's Business Skills webcast, Health and Well-Being, Mastering Your Mental Chatter. My name is Sarah Gonzalez and I'm from Redback Conference Inn. I think we all know what it's like to feel stressed and exhausted and sometimes you actually sit back and think can I actually put up with this work, life, balance. We hear all this jargon but sometimes we just don't know how to master it and get into control. Today I'd like to welcome our presenter Rose Luria. She's here to inform us on how we can all better get our health back to where we need it to be and also master our mental chatter to get rid of that negative voice that sometimes is inside of us all. So welcome today Rose, how are you? Thank you Sarah, really good. Thank you for having me. Great to be here. Thank you. First of all I just want to, everyone has a story and I've heard your story and I'd like you to share that with our online audience today. So how have you learned to balance your health amongst a busy life? Yeah, good question. So I'll give you a little bit of background. So growing up I was your typical Taipei personality. So I remember growing up and some of my earliest memories were when I was at school I got second in an exam and my mum would say to me why didn't you get first or I got 98% in an assignment and it was like well what was you know what happened to the other 2% so I grew up as a perfectionist always feeling like I had to do more, be more, give more. Very much a yes person growing up. And you know obviously those were good qualities to have to really try and be my best and achieve my potential and all of that. But it ended up translating as needing to always feel like I had to be busy, I had to do more and that couldn't kind of very much lead to stress. And so about five years ago working in a corporate role in a large Australian bank and about five years ago I was planning my big fat Italian wedding. I was doing CrossFit six days a week because I wanted to be the best at again everything that I did. Newly promoted in my job and I started noticing that because my life was so imbalanced, so intense I was getting virus after virus so my immune system was obviously compromised and I got to a point where I was getting daily migraines and my energy levels were just all over the place. And I was just feeling sicker and sicker but I didn't stop to take time out or address what the problem was. I just tried to ignore the symptoms because they were really just a disruption to my otherwise successful life. And also I had a fear that I didn't want to tell anyone that I was not really coping because I thought maybe I will appear weak or lazy if I did. So I just kept pushing myself. That was not the right thing to do. I learned very quickly that you can't ignore symptoms. Symptoms are basically a message from your body telling you that something's up. So because I didn't do anything and I just kept with that intensity I ended up being diagnosed with chronic fatigue syndrome. I was literally bedridden, unable to get out of bed, unable to do anything. And that obviously meant that I had to really be honest with myself and realise well something's not right here. So I had to make a change and the first thing that I had to do was change my mindset. I was seeing a specialist at the time who then diagnosed me with chronic fatigue syndrome and he said you should take a career break because I physically couldn't get into the office. So I took a career break and the first thing I did was change my mindset around how I viewed my situation. I started out as a bit of a victim saying well why me? I've tried so hard in life. Why would this happen to me? It's not fair. And I realised you have to take responsibility and you have to realise that it's your actions, your habits, your choices that have got you to where you are. So if there's something you don't like you have to do something about it and you have to take responsibility. So how does because I think a lot of people out there can really relate to your story and you know we're just going through the motions day in, day out sometimes we do feel very overwhelmed and then all of a sudden we just hit this wall and we don't know what to do we don't know how to cope with that. That stress and that anxiety what impact can that have on us? Obviously with you you got diagnosed with a terrible disorder. What about everyone else out there? How can that impact our daily life, our jobs, our friends, our family? Yeah definitely. So what I'll do is I'll actually explain to you how stress impacts kind of your brain and body and therefore how that would impact your performance at work and really everything you do. So I might just start by explaining and many of you listening may have heard of the vital flight response and and stress response in the body but just so we're all on the same page I just want to explain that and then talk about how that impacts us. So if you get to a place where you feel like there's some kind of danger, some kind of threat, it could be you're about to cross the road and a car's about to hit you, you know if you're you know you want to use the caveman popular caveman example you're walking through a forest and all of a sudden a sabertooth tiger comes crashing towards you or comes running sorry charging towards you. In that moment your body changes. In that split second you have blood redirected from the center of your body out to your limbs your arms and legs so that you can flee from that danger and obviously that's a survival mechanism and that's how humans have survived for so long. That means blood leaves the center of your body all of your vital organs and obviously impacts the way your body functions. Your brain also changes and I'll kind of go into a bit of detail about what that looks like. So in terms of the body because you have blood that's redirected from your vital organs the center of your body all of a sudden you can't digest your food properly so you're not producing the right digestive enzymes to break down your food, your hormones become dysregulated. On the slides that you can see there's a number of symptoms there that you can kind of have a look through but the main ones are yeah you're the weakened immune system which is which is really important as well and higher fat storage, high blood pressure and very much drains your adrenal glands and your body just can't function in the way that it's meant to but what I find really interesting is how stress impacts the brain and this is really important for how it impacts our performance. So because think again about that blood redirection when we get into that fight-or-flight response so that we can survive so that we can get away from whatever threat or danger is there blood is redirected from that prefrontal cortex it's also some people know it as the executive function part of the brain the part of the brain which is responsible for logical thinking rational thinking making good decisions and instead we have blood redirected to the primal part of the brain it's kind of like think of it like your survival instinct part of the brain so it's impulse thinking how do I survive here and now and so you can't really understand the consequences of your decisions when that happens and also research shows us that when you're in that state of stress for so long prolonged periods you have long-term changes in your brain structure and this impacts you know memory loss of brain cells and obviously that's linked to higher levels of depression and anxiety so if you think about that in your work day if you're in a state of panic stress because you feel like it may not be a physical threat it doesn't need to be yeah if it's if it's a perceived threat meaning you know oh my god this deadline is freaking me out and you start to panic you get into that fight-or-flight response and when your brain is changed in that way you cannot think clearly you cannot make good decisions your productivity is significantly reduced and so that's this is a really important question you ask because a lot of people want to rush the stress and anxiety to the side so I think that's important because I think a lot of us um we know what it's like to feel stressed and like you said you do push the side and I think these days there's so much talk about wellness and mindfulness within a lot of organizations we know it affects us in some physical way but I never think about it impacting me on the brain or you know sometimes in those moments you know you're fight-or-flight and you're you know you're running around and you're a bit foggy and sometimes I think I just need to get it done so is that all we're talking about here the fact that you can't actually successfully get something done when you're in that moment definitely definitely and and this is and this is actually what a lot of people say so I um I do a lot of workplace talks and workshops just to help people get in control of their well-being and particularly that mental health and a lot of leaders will actually when we go through this they'll start to recognize in themselves but also in their team yeah they'll realize that a lot of their team get into this like tunnel vision um they may be given a fairly simple task but because they're in fight-or-flight and because they can't really understand the consequence of their decisions and access that logical rational part of the brain what would be a fairly simple task all of a sudden becomes so hard for them to manage and that's just that's why it's so important to realize you can't just brush the stress aside because it will significantly impact and it probably already is impacting your productivity and your ability to get things done so how do we not brush it aside then and how do we deal with that stress and that mental chatter that's constantly on us um from an individual perspective but also for people out there who may be in leadership roles or management roles and have teams you know if they do recognize it in someone is it as easy as saying you know take a few days off or something like that what are the steps that we can actually do yeah yeah so very good question um so i'll i'll start by kind of talking through how you can actually reduce that stress and with the stress hormones in the body and get out of fight-or-flight so when we have this feeling of you know the stress the anxiety the worries the mental chatter all of that very much is linked to being in that fight-or-flight state now the interesting thing is a lot of people talk about the mental chatter and they want to be able to reduce the worries in the mental chatter it's important to realize when you're in fight-or-flight we just spoke about what that means for the the brain for the body so think about it in that way when you're in fight-or-flight because your body believes that you have some kind of threat or danger around you it is in what i call problem seeking meaning i'm i'm worried that there is a threat to my survival so therefore my primary objective is to identify the threat identify any problem around me and try and solve it that means all of a sudden your brain is kind of heightened in the in that alertness and is trying to find every problem every every worry and that's why the mental chatter just multiplies and multiplies when you're in that stress state so in order to lower the stress hormones in the body get back into the that kind of regulated state that the body wants to be in get out of fight-or-flight into what we call the parasympathetic nervous system the fastest proven way to do that is through what we call diaphragmatically breathing so this is the simplest way as an individual like you asked or even as a team together this is the simplest way you can get out of fight-or-flight bring clarity and peace of mind so it's just um breathing because i've heard people who do suffer from anxiety and stress you know the whole take a few deep breaths is this what we're talking about well it is yeah um and and you know you of course you can get a bit more detailed and and talk about the actual techniques and and and i'll actually do it now to be good even for the audience just to do it okay even to it together roll time yeah yeah so um but it is simple it's deep breathing die the reason it's called diaphragmatically breathing is because you breathe deep into the belly so that you actually shift the diaphragm so that's what creates that change in the nervous system and gets you out of fight-or-flight into that relaxed state so it's it's really just breathing deep into the belly and then letting it go so that's kind of the simplest way you can reduce stress so if we want to do it now um you can have your hand on your belly if you want because the idea is think about it like a balloon when you inhale the balloon should expand so when more air goes in so you inhale the belly expands and then as you exhale the belly sinks back in and so that's kind of as as simple as as really you can do it so it really is so let's say you're a bit stressed at work let's say you're nervous there's a a meeting or a presentation you're about to do and you're a bit nervous about that and you can feel yourself getting a bit uh kind of all fluttery yeah take a few deep breaths so we can do it now just breathe in and then exhale out in and out through the nose if you can otherwise the mouth is okay just breathing in deeply to the belly and then letting go just one more time feels nice doesn't it and again just letting go it's something so simple that we could do but i think once again when you're in that state of mind you just got to get everything done it's hard to think about it exactly right and that's why it's important to create the habit yeah and so i'm all about simple simple habits because it's one thing to know what to do it's another thing to actually apply yeah and so that's why i always recommend doing a practice like that at a particular time of day and make sure that it's the same time every day because that's how you're going to create the habit so for example every morning um i always recommend to people a lot of people catch public transport in and out of work so take that time on the bus on the train do your deep breathing that has long-term benefits and actually i want to just talk through quickly what the benefits are so um you might start to relate what we just did to lack of meditation because it is right the deep breathing it's like a meditation and there is so much research now and it has been for a long time but so much research on the benefits of doing that so that simple diaphragmatic breathing doing that every day again reduces the stress hormones in the body which is so important so important for brain functioning so important for body um and and there's a number of benefits there and there's a slide that's in front of you now again which talks through a lot of those points i mentioned that when you're in the state of fight or flight you have brain cells that are lost science actually shows us that meditation regenerates those brain cells so that's just one example of course this helps with long-term greater emotional intelligence and compassion which is important for leaders as well in the workplace it helps you solve problems easier when you access that clarity part of the brain you can call it it's so much easier to solve problems it's just so much easier to get through your work day a busy work day with ease and i'm all about ease yeah who doesn't want more ease in their life yeah um so it's really important become more resilient and it really improves sleep sleep is one of those health issues that so many people struggle with and so doing a regular breathing activity like this really helps with that yeah exactly okay so when we actually talk about these exercises that we can do there's another one which is a practical exercise which we've spoken about before so something else for people to take part in what's the other the four seven eight method that you speak about and that's really to manage stress and maintain that balance how do we all achieve that it is it is so yeah so that the breathing that we did before which was simply inhale exhale again that's just a simple thing at the minimum for people to do i talk about this four seven eight breath and it was actually introduced by a doctor called andrew weill and he's uh he's an american doctor and he started he kind of um came up with this breathing activity i don't know exactly when it was years ago but he's all about helping people reduce stress in the body because it has so many um or by by having high levels of stress in the body it increases your risk of so many diseases and illnesses yeah that's why he's really big on this and so the four seven eight breath i'll talk you through it but this is a really practical exercise that people can do again first thing in the morning just before bed dr weill actually recommends doing this before bed he calls it a natural tranquilizer for the nervous system so it's really nice um just before bed or you can do it again bus train whatever all the same benefits that i just spoke through so four seven eight is again think about breathing diaphragmatically inhale for four seconds hold for seven and exhale for eight the key in this is that exhaling longer than the inhale and that's what really creates that shift in the nervous system and helps to reduce the stress levels so just for fun why don't we go through it again breathing in and out um through the nose or um and dr dr weill actually recommends in through the nose and then out through the mouth is another way you can do it both work really and so what you want to do is i'll talk you through it again if you're watching it's a really nice way to just relax if you're in the middle of work and you need that time out take advantage of your time yeah this is your time or if you're watching this later this is your time to do it no excuses so again if you want to put your hands on your belly that just helps you be a bit conscious of the belly going in and out um so again breathing in for four seconds hold for seven out for eight so i'll talk you through it so let's go inhale for one two three four hold for seven two three four five six seven exhale slowly for eight two three four five six seven eight again inhale for four hold for seven exhale slowly for eight we're going to do two more rounds inhale for four hold for seven exhale for eight last round inhale for four hold for seven exhale for eight even just having that time just for some quiet and just to focus on yourself and focus on something other than other people around you is quite nice it's true it's true even just that quiet time yeah no noise yeah um yeah exactly so you notice that i just did that for four rounds and that's what's recommended so as you can tell it doesn't take long yeah and this is this is what i'm talking about creating that habit so you like you know what to do if you suffer from stress or anxiety or even just a constant overwhelm about two-thirds of the Australian workforce and most of western societies suffer from regular overwhelming stress yeah that's so significant um so and a lot of people have panic attacks and then that constant anxiety so doing something like this every day making it a habit like i said look at your schedule and think when is the most convenient time for me to do this is it first thing in the morning i like to do it first thing in the morning it makes me feel positive and ready for my day so i love to do it in the morning but as i said a lot of people have free time on the bus the train you've got that time anyway you might as well use it really effectively definitely yeah okay before we move on to resilience um i just want to let everyone else know out there that we are taking questions for your for a q and a session which is coming up so please type them into the chat box they'll come through the iPad and then we'll ask for those questions any ideas or any tips that you want for your own environments as well we'll be happy to give you some of those so um what about a strategy for improving resilience during a busy work day because we all have them and we've gone through the stats and we know that everyone probably has them as well how do we improve that resilience on a daily basis okay good question so um there's a a term called reframing okay and basically what reframing is okay we'll take a step back actually so i spoke about the fight or flight response and how all of those symptoms um such as survival being in survival mode not being able to access that logical part of the brain it comes up because we perceive a threat okay so when you see all these things in your life as negative you know traffic yeah deadlines uh something your partner said to you or your kids screaming or whatever it might be really they're not life-threatening situations but we perceive them as negative stressful overwhelming anxious triggers there's a so reframing means you change your perception and this has a direct influence on how you respond to that situation so all of those negative effects the body and the brain that we spoke about when you perceive a situation is bad if you reframe and see it the challenge as you know what exciting um or just an adventure like my motto is life is an adventure you know if things don't go to plan that's okay that's part of life yeah experience it enjoy it and so when you reframe it completely changes the way your body and your brain reacts which means you can much better handle the situation which is what resilience really is about you can cope with those challenges okay so i think it does sound like one of those things that we might need to practice on a regular basis because sometimes it's just it's a last thing you want to think about a positive situation a negative situation so what are some examples of how we can achieve this especially in the work environment yeah okay so one thing that i recommend to do and i'll give you another thing as well there's a ted talk by a um she's a i think she's a health psychologist i think her her title is her name is kelly mcgonagall and if you're sending out resources after this or email great um so i can just um yeah before everyone leaves just make sure you complete the exit survey with your email and we'll make sure we send you a recording with all of the details that we've spoken about today excellent excellent so i'll make sure then that you have the copy of this ted talk um so it's it's really interesting so she talks about so she's worked with harvard and a number of universities on this particular topic why seeing stress as a good thing or a challenge as a good thing totally changes um the way you respond so i mentioned earlier that being in the fight or flight response for response for example increases your risk of certain diseases like heart disease when you change your belief around stress and see a challenge as positive this research actually shows that you don't have that blood thickening like you would if you were seeing the stresses as as bad so you actually reduce your risk of heart disease by just changing your perception so this ted talk i really recommend you watch because she talks a lot about that there was one statistic that i mean i've added here on the slide so there was a study with about 30 000 people and it actually showed that those who experienced high stress in their life had a 43 increased risk of dying but that was only true for people who believed stress was bad for them the people that believed stress or a challenge was good for them actually had a lower risk of dying than people with low stress in their life wow which is so interesting so it is that reframing isn't it in your mind and the way that you perceive it absolutely absolutely so watch that ted talk but what i recommend doing is when you have a stressful situation come up get into a habit of stopping and asking yourself how can i actually see this as positive how can i get excited about it um there's a i'll just actually mention a quick example some of you might have heard of a lady called dr liby she's a yes okay great so she's a uh god i think she's done phd biochemical nutrition so i can't remember but uh she's done a lot of study she's really great and i was watching one of her talks and she said that she went to uh do a talk for a an audience who were either suffering from cancer they just being diagnosed they were just getting over it and she said that after so because she was talking a lot about stress and and how you react and afterwards she spoke to a lot of them and she said she was just absolutely um surprised because when she said to them you know do you stress you much stress about sort of things you know how are you going they all said no i feel like the luckiest person in the world and um you know each of them was just so grateful you know whether they were just diagnosed whether they were getting over it they were through treatment but they all reframed so they all said you know what sure i would rather not be in this situation but they were just consciously being grateful and gratitude is actually a really good way to reframe grateful for what they actually had and um and and i mentioned before you're a motto for me is life is an adventure if something doesn't go to plan that's okay because you'll learn you'll grow your experience life is built on contrast you can't enjoy happiness and warmth and light and sunshine if you haven't experienced cold or darkness so you know you start to kind of be grateful for that exactly yeah something i always say as well is you always have the choice a lot of people i spoke about that victim mentality earlier a lot of people will say i can't help but to react or to get stressed or to be anxious what i want to say to you is yes you can help it the way humans are designed is that we have the ability to make a choice we have the ability to understand a situation and then decide how we're going to respond there's my favorite quote which i've got up on the slide by a psychiatrist called victor frankl he was a jewish man in the second world war he was kept in concentration camps he saw some horrific things and if you haven't heard of him or seen any of his writing or his quotes i recommend looking him up victor frankl is his name and my favorite quote is this between a stimulus so something happening and our response there is a space and in that space is our power to choose our response and in our response lies our growth and our freedom so we always have the ability to make a choice it's just about making it a regular habit and that's how you can get into that habit of reframing so that you can be more resilient and just see things around you as more i think you know that small tweak in the way that we like you said react to people in the workplace or you know your manager or maybe your staff and things that that things that are said and your reaction determines how that's going to go that conversation but how the rest of your day is going to go and then you get home and i've heard this thing in the past um maybe you might have told me and it's this concept of having a tree outside so when you do get home as well you hang everything up on the tree and then you go inside afterwards because you don't want to bring all that baggage or everything that's happened with you into your life at the same time so it's sort of like this balance but then you know i think the the issue is a lot of people say you know you know things that work they affect my personal life and vice versa and it's impacting my family but you can actually take those few steps back and reframe your work situation can't you exactly right yeah so there's a book called the third space it's kind of what you're talking about which is you know you've got your work space your home space but you obviously you need to be a different person at home than you are at work and like you say you don't want to take home that baggage so that third space concept and you can do whatever you want but it's about transitioning from work me to you know to to kind of home me so yeah yeah but it really is our choice yeah good good advice once again we've got a few questions coming through so we'll go to those in a moment but let's just finish up on the resilience strategies here because we've spoken about busy work life so our nine to five or for a lot of us maybe beyond those hours you know and we've spoken about resilience strategies within those environments what about strategies that you would recommend to improve our stress and that mental chatter or even you know describe mental chatter for a lot of people out there who might not even be aware of it okay great so mental chatter really is that constant worrying and voice in the head so a lot of people say they want for example a lot of people say they want to be able to meditate or just quieten down their mind and they find whenever they start to do that the thoughts become louder well there's just so many it's almost like conflicting voices in the head you know and usually that's just reflective of things that you need to do you might be thinking about the future the past all these sorts of things and so really those worries and that mental chatter is what keeps a lot of people in that state of stress and fight or flight and I grew up as biggest worry ward always worrying about everything and I think that that happens when you maybe grow up with a lot of other people who worry all the time and so having that constant mental chatter and worrying is something again that really holds people in that state of stress and anxiety so there's a particular strategy that I used to actually get out of that worry ward persona that character and it involves kind of an element of neuroplasticity which is really rewiring the brain so I call this basically rewiring your resilient mind and so what what neuroplasticity is about is we grow up we're very much raised with certain beliefs and ideas and habits in the mind certain patterns so if if you have a particular trigger your brain is kind of programmed or wired to respond in that way so if you grow up as a as a worry ward maybe you saw that your parents or someone would always worry if there was a knock on the door or something like this so the default reaction was to freak out worrying exactly exactly you can reprogram that and that's what that neuroplasticity is all about and there's a diagram there on the screen and if you think about it so look at the first diagram there on the left that thick white line that represents a pathway in the brain so a belief a mental pattern a habit so that thick white line is that default belief that you've been raised with could be any belief about anything at all health your yourself anything at all so the idea of neuroplasticity is you weaken that and you create a new belief which is just next to it there's a thin yellow line that's because it's not the default belief yet over time when you start to rewire the brain and you start to strengthen that yellow line which represents the new limiting belief end up over a series of a month or two have a long it takes usually it'll take about two months to really reprogram that you end up on the second image which is the yellow one which is kind of like the new belief that you want becomes your default and now let me explain that a bit further with an example of exactly what I did because I grew up as a worry ward and I found myself worrying about things that were not in my control things I didn't really need to worry about things that were unnecessary I heard this particular mantra affirmation quote whatever you want to call it from a a lady called Christine Haslar she's a motivational speaker and author based in the US and she said worry is just the imagination used poorly and when I heard that I thought well that's really really profound worrying really is just your imagination kind of going crazy it's not really serving you at all and it made me realize you know if it's not in your control then you're really just saying well what if this what if that it doesn't serve you at all so using the neuroplasticity concept I started saying to myself every day worry is just the imagination used poorly worry is just my imagination used poorly by saying that to myself every day for a series of months there was a good few months that I did that I changed absolutely changed that's because my new default response my new default thought if there was something that used to trigger worry my new default was or it's just my imagination used poorly I don't need to worry so that ties in nicely um a question from one of our online attendees and all the questions all the questions are anonymous by the way so this attendee suffers from anxiety and they've tried meditation news in headspace which is an app for the meditation the problem is that it's super hard and then mine never stops racing so would you agree that it's about using all these techniques together you know you've got your meditation you've got your mantra you know your your change your reframing and using all those techniques together are more than likely going to help you progress and get rid of this mental chatter and this worry less mentality yeah definitely definitely and that's why it always has to be approached holistically because everyone will suffer anxiety or stress for a different reason so it's always really important to speak to someone about it so if this particular audience member I would recommend speaking to someone about it at work see a doctor they might be able to recommend a therapist as well because they can help you get to the root cause which is really important as as to why you're suffering anxiety on a regular basis but what I will say about not being able to because I think you said that this particular audience member said they can't quiet the mind yeah just that chatter yeah the chatter so the thing is when you start meditation and this is key it's a bit of a myth to say that as soon as you start meditation you're only doing it right if you completely quiet the mind that's not true I will often do meditation and I still have thoughts in my head my tip for you is don't put pressure on yourself to think that you have to completely quiet your mind you don't what you want to do is help to redirect your focus you want to redirect your focus from a lot of those thoughts which are maybe negative and you want to help to build that focus muscle and feel more positive and and focused and focus just means that you don't have all that constant chatter so what I suggest is just kind of reframe change your mindset around that it's not about completely quieting quietening the mind eventually you might be able to do that but it's about calming the mind and changing your focus so for example if you find your mind wonders to one of those worries or anxious thoughts just say to yourself that's okay the mind my mind does that that's what the mind does I'm just going to now bring it back so for example if I'm sitting there working on meditation trying to be in peace and then I find my mind wanders I'll say that's okay just redirect my focus back to my breath back to the voice if I'm listening to an app and just be really easy on yourself because that practice will build again what I call the focus muscle and make it so much easier as time goes by but again I also do recommend speaking to someone about it to address the root cause of why you're so anxious as well and I think um it's practice right you can't expect it and I've done it a few times and like oh this is too hard I don't even know if I'm meditating or not because I have no idea what I'm meant to be doing so it is that practice and like you said just coming back and realizing that it's not going to be perfect every time is it no well that's exactly right I think you raise a really good point Sarah so meditation again take the pressure off the poor firstly ask yourself why am I doing meditation yeah is it just because you want a bit of time out in which case you've done it successfully if you had time out if you took that time out don't put pressure on yourself to be a perfect your meditator whatever that means so just kind of go back to well what is it that I want to achieve do I want to just bring a little bit more peace of mind or you know what is it and then just be really easy on yourself okay so we're towards the end of the presentation now so what next steps do you recommend for people online who are really looking to improve their health their overall well-being and sort of get back on track whether it's life work life balance or just in personal terms yeah sure so in terms of next step so if you if you get the recording of this obviously watch it back and the key because again everyone's different everyone has a specific challenge even in the realm of stress and anxiety everyone has a different challenge or something that they're dealing with so really important to take some time to reflect on where you need the support what are the specific challenges that are coming up for you what is it that you don't like right now and you want to change just get really clear on that because oh I will say there's so much information out there you can research till the cows come home but but at the end of the day you need to just focus in on on what your goal is and what your challenge is and ask for help so important so many people aren't asking for help yeah I mentioned my story at the beginning I had a fear of you know if I tell someone that I'm struggling then I'm going to appear lazy or weak I'm so glad to say that that that stigma is is is is really going away so ask for help even if it's going to be in confidence and then the other thing I suggest is go to my website recipeforhealth.com.au go to the blog section you can sign up to my free newsletter because I send out free resources on a regular basis just around that it's a holistic well-being but a lot of focus on reducing stress and anxiety getting in control of mental health but also holistic well-being as well you know diet emotional eating all of that and that'll give you those resources and tips to again take that information and make it a habit which is really important if you need so if you're a business and you have a team or or you need some workplace assistance you can go to the corporate wellness tab of my website just click on that link and that will give you some examples of the types of activities you can do with your team to help the team become more resilient and energized and obviously I love helping so if you need help or if you want to have just a a chat about how your workplace can benefit you can click on the contact tab and in that way I can give you some tailored advice as to what to do for either yourself or your team in the workplace great so that's um corporate sessions and stuff like that lunch and learn sessions yeah exactly anything anything yeah okay um so also someone else has just asked Sam when we touched on this um any apps that you would recommend useful to reduce mental chatter sorry um a lot of people say that it does get a little bit out of control at night time especially so are there any apps and we can also send you guys some links to these in their recording email which we'll send shortly yeah definitely couple of my favorites there's one app called calm c-a-l-m calm app I recommend that and also smiling mind but the calm app I found just personally my favorite and that's the one that I usually recommend and people take on board and really like that one it's got some good bedtime ones as well there are so many but but I mean I don't want to list off you know 10 of them yeah you want to be a bit focused so either try the calm app otherwise try smiling mind um someone mentioned headspace as well works so um the key is always and this is always the case when it comes to whatever you're doing meditation yoga anything you want to be able to connect with the guided voice yeah so I would recommend just listening to a couple seeing what voice you like what voice is quite calming the calm app I find that the the voices are really calming and that's what helps well that would make sense yes um and finally um you know after all that said and done um if people still are having issues where do they go for help with anything like this yeah sure so as I mentioned you know you can you can go to your doctor um speak to a coach or a counselor or a therapist some people in their workplaces have like an EAP like an employee assistance program it's really important to ask for help um if you if you want that confidential help because a lot of people still aren't comfortable talking to people um then then again you know speak to a doctor or a therapist if you need again everyone's different so if you need tailored advice feel free to contact me you've got my um website on the slides um you can even send my email out as part of the the email afterwards and I'm more than happy to receive your email or your message and then again I can give you some tailored advice on what to do depending on your specific issue I've been there done that I know what it's like to be in a state where you feel out of control overwhelmed so important not just for your own well-being not just for your the sake of your relationships um and your happiness but also for your performance at work so taking that little bit of time to invest in your well-being just will make all the difference for having a more fulfilling life excellent well that brings us to the end thank you so much um such amazing advice and like you said it impacts all areas of our lives so being able to take those little steps before it does get out of control I think is important um to everyone within Australia and every organization as well so definitely something to be taken seriously exactly we'll be sending out all the recordings and also any of the links that Rose mentioned today in the recording email within 48 hours otherwise thank you so much for your time it's been great having you online um hopefully you'll be able to chat to Rose in the future if you have any questions otherwise thank you once again for joining the Redback Business Skills series bye for now