 Welcome to Pukipondas, the podcast where I explore big questions with brilliant people. Today's question is how can we use psychology secrets to boost our well-being and I'm in conversation with Aidan Harvey Craig. Hi, I'm Aidan Harvey Craig and I am currently head of psychology at an international school in Malawi and I've been out in Malawi for three years and my family I've got two teenage daughters and my wife we moved out here three years ago. We all were looking for a bit of a change and we certainly got that when we moved out here. Before that I've been a teacher for I lose track a little bit, maybe 13, 14 years or so, something like that. And various bits and pieces I've done before that was a prison psychologist for assistant psychologist for a while and it's an editor. And just the last couple of years I've started doing some student counselling and we'll have you and then in a couple of years ago I decided that I wanted to do something to kind of help what seems to be a growing student well-being issue. You know partly from looking at the national picture but also in some of the students in front of me and the concerns and what have you. And so I came up with an idea for a book and I did a few chapters and sent it off and to my surprise was asked to write the book so I did that about a year ago and it was published recently. And it's published, oh yeah published very soon. We had this discussion before I press record about the fact that I've got a big backlog of recording so we're recording on the 20th of August but this will likely go out in a few weeks time. But I think is it not tomorrow in when we're talking about in real life tomorrow is your publication day and I have something you don't have. Those of you listening I'm holding up a copy of my book which you don't have right. That's right. I've not seen it yet. I'm dying to hold one. It's lovely. I mean I feel like I'm teasing you now like just holding a book here in front of you. So yeah it feels very wrong that I have it before you do is this because it takes a while to shift out to you in Milano in the current context presumably. So is this your first book? Yes it is. It is. Yeah and like I said it was one of those things it just came out you know when there's a sudden strange burst of creativity and all of a sudden it was over the Christmas holidays. I suddenly wrote three chapters and they actually you had a little part to play in it as well because I wrote the chapters and I was googling publishers I wasn't sure who to try and send it off to. So when I put in education publishers and Jessica Kingsley came up I think it was the first one that came up and I had a look and there was a big quote from you on their website saying Jessica and Kingsley are really like a family and they're really nice. And because I knew I'd heard of you know I was aware of all of your work and what have you so I thought well that must be a good place to send it. So that's that was funny how they were the first education publisher that sent it off to and they picked it up which was great. Oh that's fabulous and oh that's really nice to hear that I played that little part. In the context they just kickingsley publishers or well they always were a small independent publishers although they've since been kind of bought by Hachette but they're keeping that independent vibe. And they are yeah like I said on the website you know that's not that's not just me paying lip service to them they genuinely are like family to me and they've supported me through lots of different kind of book projects but also through quite a lot of stuff in my own life so when I was hospitalised with anorexia then the person who was one of my editors at the time would come out and see me and bring me book packages you know because the kind of care packages I like are generally made up of. So yeah they're fab, absolutely fab. So tell us about the book then because I was really interested to learn about the concept for this because I'm a big fan of kind of evidence informed practice and using what we know works. And so the book is called 18 well-being hacks for students using psychology secrets to survive and thrive so tell us about it the concept behind it and why you thought it might work. Yeah well one of the things that I found was when I first sort of thought about self help type books and psychology based ones and I looked at some and picked a few up. What struck me was that quite often because psychology is such a broad church and and when you when you specialise in somewhere you become you know you spend a lot of time in that and you become quite passionate about that so you become a cognitive neuroscientist or you know an attachment to a psychologist or a social psychologist and and what I what I found was that quite a lot of the books were from quite a specialist angle where there was there were one or two really really nice good ideas from it but then it was kind of spun out for the whole book because that was there that it was just from that specific area of psychology and what and it felt like some of them could be condensed down to a chapter and then move on to a completely different area of psychology. And so that that was really what I want to do and I suppose because I'm a teacher of psychology rather than you know a research scientist in a very specialist area. I was kind of a bit more used to looking at that broader picture with the various different angles to it and it was when I look back on it and and it was incredibly I was a bit naive and slightly arrogant to think that that would be a relative that would be a thing that you know any anyone could could really do because although I've done two degrees in psychology but it was quite quite some time ago and as I was stepping from one area to the next. I really felt as though I had to get up to speed with at least roughly where it is now and so just in that bit of getting the context of it took quite some time and then within that I was just at that point. I was just looking for to cherry pick, you know, the best idea from, as you say, from social psychology and prognosis psychology from neuroscience and psychodynamics and all of that. So, so choosing that the bits to to pick out in terms of of this sort of a nice straightforward idea for well being wasn't too bad but I really, I really wanted to make sure I wasn't kind of really out of date with everything and and so that that that bit of it and getting the context and making sure that it was it was relevant and the research base was was still really with it. And that took a long time so it was, it took me a year, basically to write the whole thing. And then across all the fields of psychology it's kind of a greatest hits of all the things that young people could use to kind of improve their lives. Exactly that that's that's a really nice work and that would have been a better title probably. Now I like hacks I like hacks I have anxiety hacks on a YouTube channel and and yeah particularly kind of younger people get it just one one question before you maybe dive in and explain some of the hacks and their well being hacks for students a I disagree because I think it's a great book and I've already started using it myself and I'm definitely not a student anymore sadly. But B when you say for students what age range are you actually thinking of there because it's quite an answer. Yeah, yeah no no sure. Well, because I'm a psychology teacher and my my main pitch was was sixth form sixth formers because that's where I'm sort of at. And the book. So the book is really aimed at 16 to 24 so teenagers and young adults I'm thinking really kind of in my mind it was six formers and undergraduates but obviously there's some, there's some gray area right the side of those and and as you say a lot of the, a lot of the stuff that we did that it will talk about in the book is pretty much universal but it's really it's the way it was pitched and when we were when I was. It's going to bring that up because when I was talking to to the editor about it we were discussing it early on, you know there was some talk of maybe it should be should it be pitched at teachers and adults who are looking after or have some, you know have a stake in in young people. But it really, it really was a lot fresher and it just kind of came across a lot clearer talk as though it's just talking directly to to a young person so we won't for that. But my hope is really that it would be something that a young person can can access but also, as I say, an adult can access and something that might generate conversations because I mean one of the, one of the things that triggered it actually was a conversation with a really, really old friend of mine who's, he's starting, Simon was struggling. He was in a really, really difficult relationship and and whatever the parents seem to do it kind of seem to make it worse and they, they really didn't, you know they fell out of the depth and what have you. So one of the things that I was really hoping that might happen with the book is that it could, it could start conversations around a difficult issue rather than going straight in with sort of confrontational things you could kind of come out and say oh look this is this interesting thing here about relationships, you know, or there's this, this, you know, whatever it might be. And so it's, that's why it's sort of, it's directed at the young people but I'm, I'm hoping that it's going to be useful for, for a range of people. But maybe, you know, volume two is well being hacks for teachers, who knows. You look like you might cry when I said that. I feel like that every time I finish writing a book, I said this to my husband for at least the last three and I've said it to my editors and I'm like I'm not writing any more books, but I hand the manuscript in. And then it's so long from that point until you hold it in your hand and then you get it and you're like, oh, I love it. I can't wait to write another one. I think a bit like having, I think it's like pregnancy and birth. I think it's like that with books, you know, pregnant, you get really, really fed up of it and then as soon as you've got your baby in your arms, you're going, oh, yeah, totally worth it. So, so okay, so there's there's kind of a different kind of thoughts behind what you were hoping it would do that and I think that idea that it generates discussion and kind of provides ways in when we might be working with young adults essentially is a really nice thought actually. Which of the hacks are your favourites? Like which one would you pick out is your the one you most enjoyed writing about? Probably, I mean, this is a bit of a shame because it's the one that's got the least to do with psychology, in fact, but I probably the one about this one about perfectionism and the ancient art of Kintsuki, which, which I like because it was it just kind of it all seems to when I just it was one of these things I started that thread, and then it just kind of really worked all the way through the analogy and it's so Kintsuki is the art of mending ceramics using resin and gold paint in such a way that you actually accentuate the cracks rather than try to cover them up. There was a shogun in in I think it was the 1400s who had a pot that he really loved and he sent it away to get mended and it came back with metal staples on it he was really displeased and he felt that we could do that they could do better so he have got his best craftsman to work on a really good way of mending this pot and they came up with that idea and it's it's used in terms of perfectionism in as much as the process is very careful in so much as to like to start off with you take the broken pieces of a pot and you soften the sharp edges that's the first thing you do and there's analogy analogy there with you know we all feel broken and imperfect at times and you do need to you need to soften the pain of that and to seek help and things and then you when you're putting it back together with the resin you have to hold it in place for quite some time and there's again analogy with the patients that's required sometimes to put yourself back together when you feel broken and but then at the end of it is the thing about celebrating the cracks because what they do is actually make that piece of pottery unique and beautiful and so rather than trying to you know of human nature a lot of the time we try and hide our imperfections and our brokenness and the analogy there is to actually celebrate some of that because it makes you unique and also it kind of shows that you are like with the pottery it shows that this is a piece of pottery that's worth repairing and that is loved you know and the fact that it's been put back together you can see that it's been put back together means that it has meaning and all of that kind of helped in a discussion about dealing with feelings of imperfection and dealing with feeling broken and why it's how it can be reversed and rather than trying to hide that and be ashamed of it to celebrate it and to to see the ways in which it in which it can show that you've you've you have seen a bit of life you know you've you've you've dared to get out there and and be knocked around and but you're also worth putting back together and those scars and bruises that you've accumulated along the way actually make you unique and beautiful and why did that feel like an important chapter to include in a book for students was there a particular motivation right now or Well I see again maybe both both kind of statistically and so the personally speaking from my interest is that it seems as though perfectionism in a in its worst form is on the rise and there's lots of different ideas about where that might be mostly it's to do with the fact that increasingly we have a kind of individualistic competitive culture where you're kind of your own brand all the time you know you're I mean to some extent that's always been you always had to go to job interviews and serve yourself but now it's kind of 24 hours a day you're on LinkedIn but it's also moved into the social arena you're a kind of brand on on social media as well as in your professional life and so this is not black and white but there's some thinking that that kind of that that cultural context has to do with why people are less and less able to be imperfect and to or more and more worried about any imperfections of them that they might show and certainly I know from my own experience in the classroom that it's a very debilitating thing even in even in quite a mild form you know I have students who just will will not want to or one or two that simply refuse to kind of give me a draft of a piece of work that they're doing until they're absolutely sure that it's going to be great which is the opposite way around to what I need because I'm if they send me something that's perfect is I've got no use as a teacher for you know so I'm trying to engender you know doing drafts and re drafting for a lot of people plus then also the you know the extreme pressure that a lot of people put on themselves in terms of grades and that is that element of perfectionism is that is that your achievements become part of who you are and that is we all know that that's you know that's that's a big issue and it feels as though to some extent that's an increasing one and again I think that's to do with that increasing everything seems to keep ranking up the business of your you're in a competition you personally as a person are in a competition with everybody else for jobs you know because you're going to have to keep applying for jobs and change careers and do all kinds of things and keep up to speed with everything that's going on as well as on social media keeping up with looking amazing and going to fabulous places and having amazing experiences every day and all of those things together I think can cause that that kind of need to try and appear to be as perfect as you can and that's really pressurized I think it's a really beautiful a beautiful one to have chosen I'm a massive fan as well of kintsugi and it's an analogy that a particular friend of mine will often come back to if I've been through sort of challenging times and I find it a helpful one to think about particularly in relation to self harm scars actually that for me, viewing those scars as part of my journey and you know time when I've survived and and you know part of an imperfect but unique person is important I think and I think yeah lots of people take different things from it. So you said that that was one of the least psychology chapters. Tell us another one that it's very much based in psychology let us know another hack we won't tell them I'll make sure people still want to buy the book. Well there's another one I quite like about which is about social psychology psychology is is is you know, as you know is is odd in as much as it has very fashions come and go. And social psychology is is slightly out of fashion it seems to me at the moment because neuroscience is everything social psychology was massive in the 60s and 70s and and then it was cognitive now it's all neuroscience and what have you seen a little bit as I think it's a little bit kind of woolly in the context of the and yet it's just, you know, it's so important. There's, there's one which I call it, join or leave a group, because it's all about social identities and the importance of that. It's important to all of us but you can see how that with with young people that's that's an especially sort of powerful kind of thing. And, and in terms of psychology actually what what was interesting to me was that I started off with the Milgram experiment which is an absolute classic in psychology which just is about. Milgram was was an American Jew who was interested in in the Holocaust and how people seem to be able to carry out some horrific acts and and the mantra during some of the war crime, war crime tribunals was, I was just following orders, and he wanted to know if you know if you put in a set the correct situation would we all do terrible things if we ordered to in a certain context and he seemed to prove that you could get people, most people to give an electric shock to someone in another room, just by having somebody standing there ordering them to in a, in a lab coat in a, in a context of a prestigious university. But some was Professor Stephen Riker, he's also he also social psychologist, looked into the data again and pointed out that actually in the Milgram experiments most of the prompts that were given by the researcher were not actually orders. And the first one was please. Please can you continue. I think it was something like that. Please continue. And the second one was the experiment requires you to continue which is more of a statement. The first one's a request. There's only one order which is at the end which is it was that you have no other choice, but you must continue. And actually nobody continued nobody obeyed the actual order at all. They went along with the previous ones. And what so he was reinterpreting Professor Riker's reinterpreting that is because given that there are no orders here that the thing about you'll do anything if you're ordered to in the same way that the war crimes, that didn't really fit. And what he pointed out was what Milgram set up was a situation where the participant was in the middle of, of two different things he had the researcher on one side saying, it's, you have to, it's important that you continue with this experiment. And he had somebody in another room who he thought he was giving electric shock to who was screaming at him saying, stop. I don't want any more to do with this experiment. And the, the, the participant had arrived and turned up with the purpose of carrying out this experiment and experimental was the guy who was with him on this business of completing the experiment so that they had that shared purpose and shared therefore kind of shared identity. And that it seems was so powerful that it was overriding screams and, and cries from somebody who didn't have that shared identity and that shared purpose. And what I thought for me what that was why that is interesting is because time and time again in schools you have situations that I found I previously found difficult to understand. So I use the example of sexting for example where you have, you have young people sending a new picture of themselves usually to a boyfriend. And it's a disastrous thing to do and everybody can see that it's a, it's a disastrous thing to do and we've told, you know, in schools we've been telling young people that that's a terrible thing to do for many years now. And it still happens and you think well how can that happen and when you think about it what you've got then is you've got a young person and what are the voices that they're listening to. If they are listening to their other people in their social group who they identify with saying this is a normal thing this is what we all do. And then you've got a teacher getting up in a life skills lesson saying that's a terrible thing to do. It suddenly becomes a lot more easy to understand why that's going to happen because it doesn't matter how much we, how much kind of we scream and shout if you make the analogy with the Milgram experiment. You know that you had a person there that was literally saying you've got to stop, let me out. This is, you know, you've got to stop doing this. They were really impassioned and it was a life or death situation. And yet the power of listening to somebody who is who you identify with is part of your social group. It seems to be so strong that it will overwrite, you know, their most powerful voices from those outside those groups. And so if you're going to, what that said to me is that if you're going to try and influence people in terms of well-being and making good decisions, you've really got to work hard at building up, you know, rapport but also maybe trying to get the voices of the messages come from other students that, you know, that the students can identify with because it doesn't, you know, I think the, I mean, some of that is obvious, but you just thought that if you got up, you know, as a teacher and you were strong enough and you had enough evidence and you, you know, you were powerful enough, then you could get through and everyone would understand that they mustn't do this. And it turns out that that's not the case. It's all about is this a voice from somebody that they identify with or is it at least, is it more powerful than other voices that they're listening to? And in terms of the hack for the young people, what I mean, because it's a difficult thing to, you know, to kind of deal with. But one of the things that seems to me is that what we need to offer is as many social identities as we can for young people and to get young people to understand that they need to do that. So, you know, if you feel part of many different groups, then the voices within any one of those groups become a bit less powerful. So if there are kind of malevolent voices in one of your groups, I think you're going to feel much more empowered to fight against that if you feel like you're, that's just one of your social identities and you've got many more. So it's, it's really advocating, you know, all kinds of clubs and mixing up social groups and friendship groups and drama and sports activities and all those kind of things where you where you're going to meet different types of people. All of those become become really, really, really important. So is that where you use the new to me term flex divert, flex divert. Flex divert, yeah. Was that your term or is that I'm not aware of that term before. I really like the term and I really like the way encapsulated those things which are both. Sorry, I lost you for a moment there. So sorry, just if you don't, if you don't mind just going back to so I just asked what the flex divert was your term or where it came from and I then lost you so you don't mind just repeating sorry. Yes, sorry. Yeah, sure. No flex divert is a term from Professor Karen Pine. And she she has come up with a construct of what that means essentially is like a personality trait. It's kind of a mixture of openness and but a I just really liked the word and be it kind of gets straight into it straight into that the thing about trying out new things and being open to new experiences which which seems to be just a really, really good good thing for for well being and something, especially with young people where you can, you know, they are anyway, generally going to be open to new things but it's a time where you can maybe start to close down a little bit so fostering that keeping up keeping the openness going. You know, it's a really good thing. And of the various hacks in the book are there any that you use yourself so now you've had your various kind of ups and downs throughout your young and adult life. Yeah, for sure. I guess the ones that I use most. There's a there's a thing that I call it combat breathing. Most people know as box breathing. But I just, again, I thought combat breathing sounded a bit feistier. And that's the really I just love the simplicity of it the really simple breathing for account for hold for account for without account for rest account for and and keep going around that and activating the parasympathetic nervous system in order to calm your body down and then your your mind will generally kind of follow with that and that's the thing that I've I've used a lot and and I was really proud actually yesterday I was I was in my bedroom and I heard my daughters teaching it so my wife and they were they were counting for her and what have you said and so they're using it to there is obviously there's there's the exercise I couldn't exercise snacks trying to you know the benefit of even a a five minute walk you know done regularly is huge and I use that I use that a lot. There's a nature one because about maybe halfway through writing the book. And I had a few problems and I started writing outside I started doing much more exercise and I started using the breathing. And those, those three a lot of the stuff about sleep, you know, the being sleepers as a kind of bedrock of well being so sleep practices like trying to keep to routine calling dark bedroom. No screens for 90 minutes before you need to go to sleep stop drinking coffee after midday stop drinking alcohol most of all pretty much all together but that's partly because you can't really get very nice alcohol out of here so I'm hoping to read it I'm hoping to revisit wine when I get back to the UK but but nevertheless that's helped with the sleep of it I think. And there's another one which I which I use not in March as I should but it's called do almost nothing. And it's the importance of of of taking some time to do nothing. It's called do almost nothing because a lot of the research suggests that if you just sit and try and do nothing at all, then you can slip into remuneration and actually start focusing on negative repeated negative thoughts. And so when the nice, it's a couple of nice bits of research and so if you do some sort of undemanding tasks, like doodling, or you know if you're crafty then knitting or anything like that with you, you can do it almost without thinking. That's that aimless walking, you know, as long as you're not trying to get somewhere once a walking beat is a really nice one. It's, it's really good. That's another one actually that where there was psychology that I haven't come across before which I thought was really nice. That kind of thing active activates the brain's default mode, which is what your brain does when it's not really doing anything. And it turns out that it's a really, really useful process that your brain goes through. It's basically a kind of daydreaming and and and it's really good for creativity. And it's really good for identity formation and thinking about who you are and where you fit in the world. So that's also why it seemed especially good for a student hack because the problem being that most of the time now we fill up all of those gaps of time that used to this used to happen with picking up a phone and swiping for a smartphone is absolutely not an undemanding task. It's a very focused thing is purposefully trying to keep you focused in a kind of fractured sort of way. So I think the doing nothing thing is a is an endangered activity and it's a shame because it's a really important one. And so I tried to build I tried to build that into my life, but it's I'm not as good as I should be with those kind of things constantly trying to get on with other things. It's hard. There isn't it. I find this that as a parent, the things that I expect of my children and the things that I enable for myself often are further apart than I'd like them to be. And I think sleep is a really, really great example there. You know, my children are 10 now and I've always always championed the importance of sleep and overlocked down. They've mucked around a bit and they've had sleepovers in each other's rooms and sometimes they've not had as much sleep and I've lectured them on it. And then I've stopped and I thought to myself, but then I sat up until whatever time in the morning mindlessly scrolling or reading or or what have you and it's something I have to yeah very purposefully revisit actually. And I think as well some of those things that you mentioned these are the things for me are always the go-tos when I feel myself beginning to slip if the anxiety is creeping in or the depression is looming. Then I know, you know, think about sleep, think about food, think about exercise, get out, go walk. These simple things often make a huge difference, don't they? Yeah, yeah, they do. Which is you just talking about actually for some reason reminded me this. Alain de Barton talks quite a lot about how well religion does a lot of things in terms of communication. He's an atheist, but he's impressed with it because essentially because in, you know, in religion there's an awful lot of just repeating the same thing because over the centuries religion is has worked out that you just need that constant repetition of very simple messages because otherwise, even that, you know, we have great messages and then we forget all about them and and go off and do good and do terrible things. So absolutely right. It's it is it's about routine isn't it and trying to embed it. And one of the things that I did because I was really concerned as I got towards the end of the book that I didn't want it to be a sort of interesting thing that somebody would look at and then put onto the shelf. And so I developed an app to go with the book where and that's part that was really entirely with this in mind with how is it how could we do something that would make it more likely that that some of these things would would become a daily habit so the app is a sort of habit app where it gives you a little choose which packs to sort of to work on and it gives you a little daily task to to carry out as a sort of prompt to to try and and do that and then bed it into the into your life. Wow, I haven't looked at the app so tell us more about where do we find the app and is it ready and available and yeah yes it's it's ready and it's free and you get it from the app store Google play and it's called well sense so well and then it's se and Z at the end so well sense with a Z on the end and and it's free to download and and I say I think it's pretty pretty straightforward really when you get onto it you just choose. It's not got all of the 18 because they didn't all lend themselves, you know to the hacks and there's this so many sleep, sleep apps and exercise one so I didn't put those on there but there's like neither flex divert one and and the do nothing one and there's those those kind of things where it lends itself a little bit more to give you a daily prompt and a task for it. I think would be would benefit from using that app because I know a lot of the people who are listening to this might be thinking that might be something great to recommend to their students or families. Yeah, I mean for that one I would have thought any from from secondary school upwards it's because it's pretty straightforward to use and it's yeah it's it's it's a simple simple tool. So you you've done that and that's a free app what's in it for you. Well, like I said that for me it's it's because I really want. I really want this book and the ideas behind it to actually have an impact and for people to use them and that was the, you know obviously I was thinking of students. And I think what you know how do you get in front of the student and a young person and smartphones came to mind, even though I've got a whole chapter on how not to get addicted to smartphones but we'll leave that to leave that aside. But yeah it was it was that it was a really a desire to actually make it real rather than just a sort of nice theoretical exercise in a book. I think I think the other thing you do really well and really appeals to my sense of kind of, yeah focus and order is that you know exactly what to expect that the chapters are laid out similarly, which I like and it's exactly how how I write as well. And but also that you summarize at the end of each chapter so actually you can go through and you can read it in whatever order you want but you can always go back and refresh, or if you just want to share you know the basic idea of a chapter, I can't if it's the right one right now I particularly found those summaries really helpful and I know from experience of writing that those bits look easy but they're often the hardest bit to do aren't they? Yeah, yeah they are because, and you'll see why that because that was a that was a thing, again that was towards the end of the process when I thought exactly as we've just been talking about how you know how is it how is it going to be more easily accessible. And it took ages doing that and it was a sort of painful process because it's so difficult to figure out what are the key, what really are the key messages from that whole bit of text. That's it because I find that it's very easy to say something in 500 words but very hard to say it in 50 and you have done that really well. I wondered is this a book that you would have benefited from when you were a student? I'm sure I would have benefited from it. I mean, I don't think I picked up a book that I didn't absolutely have to until I was about 24 so I can't sit here and say that I would have picked it up and read it from start to finish and loved every word of it. But I also think, I mean, I was lucky you know I had to I had a really, really excellent kind of upbringing with no real problems and and and I feel like the pressures were different then and with you know they were obviously there were pressures but I don't remember feeling, you know, full of angst about anything I didn't. And there wasn't that kind of, you know, there wasn't this sort of the wider culture wasn't discussing it. And it's hard to know I mean I don't know whether or not that means it was just underground or whether it simply wasn't wasn't there as much I'm not I'm not at all sure about that but I mean I was lucky I didn't really have any issues at that point so if someone had put that in front of me I'd have walked off and picked up my football. And you said in the in the notes that you shared with me beforehand that when you were younger your hopes were to become a rock star, which strikes me as similar to one of my daughters wants to become a famous YouTuber and that I'm not suggesting the two are the same but I think that you know we're we're a slightly different generation to my girls and that perhaps it's one of those things that maybe the adults in your life might have seemed similarly to me seeing Ellie's aspirations I don't know or perhaps were you a very gifted musician I Yeah, that's a good question I my parents. They didn't know what to make of that. And luckily, I mean not luckily this sounds terrible but I'd they they moved to London, while I was at sixth floor when I, I moved in with another family. And so I was, I was kind of slightly distant from I think they just kind of think they washed their hands of that whole thing because it was. My dad was a was a Anglican flicker. And so rock star and you know I don't think he didn't really know what to do with it. So they left me to it really. And it never happened but but I don't at all regret it I've had that thread of music I spent basically four years, really, in a way trying to properly trying to be a rock star, or at least being a rock musician and it's a it was, you know, I think it was, it was, it was a worthwhile thing to have a go at. But as I say it stayed with me throughout my life, oddly enough, this is the way that these things kind of work. Last, last year, I was, I released my first album, because just before coming out to Malawi. There were a group of of dads who all had children in the local primary school and we would get together and play just just jam and what have you. And we got picked up somehow by the BBC on a program called the UK's Best Parts Time Band. And we were on, we always ended up playing at the Scarlet in London and to about 1000 people. It's one of the scariest things that I've ever done in my life because playing live is one thing, but at least if you it's in the moment and if you make a mistake it's all over. But playing live when you've got TV cameras on you seem like the worst of all worlds because you have the whole live thing but then if you make a mistake is there for everyone to see. But it was also great fun. And out of that we cried for funding an album, a released album. So, you know, it's, you never know when these, when these things are going to, are going to come to fruition in a way. And also just playing guitar, there's always been a great, lovely sort of thing. I mean the kids, you can imagine at secondary school, every now and then there's a teacher band or something and you whip out the electric guitar and let us leave, break, go. And they just, they love it. They think it's great singing or grandad playing, playing some rock guitar. I think that's amazing. I think that's absolutely brilliant. And I think it's really fab that you did, you know, you were bold and brave and took that opportunity to do the scary stuff and get up and do it and give it a go when the opportunity presented itself. Because I think that is one of the things that sometimes when you look back on your life then people will often say well I was very lucky because, but I think there is a certain extent and I don't know maybe you'd have a view on this as a psychologist that we kind of make our own luck about whether we're open to opportunity sometimes even isn't it? And whether we're prepared to then give it a go and be a bit brave and go with that. Yeah. And I mean in a sense it goes back to the flexure and that if you, it's just kind of makes sense that if you're open to more experiences, then some of them are going to work and also you have more options to drop things that are not working and you know to pick up that and be more sort of adaptable to it. So yeah there's certainly a lot with that. Yeah because I've certainly found that sort of through my career that I often find that you know I'm really lucky in the opportunities that seem to present themselves but then you know I do work hard and I speak to lots of different people all the time and I try to be helpful. And so I suppose it's kind of you know it's perhaps somewhat inevitable that opportunity does every now and then come along that's the right one. But yeah I don't know I get asked this quite often by if I go and talk in schools to young people which I do less and mainly work with the teachers but if I talk to young people they'll always be at least one or two or say how do I get to do what you do when I grow up and I always think I have no idea. Not a clue. What was it that inspired you to do that? Well it was as I say it was really I mean because I have done quite a few different things in my professional life you know I've not been a teacher all my life and so I think having been a teacher for 10 years or so you know it was quite odd for me to still just be doing the same thing and I really needed a change or it felt like I was in danger of becoming a bit rusty in that sense. So that was it for me I mean I was lucky that both my daughters and also my wife were also interested in mixing it up and giving it a go. I feel kind of guilty at times because we dragged my elder daughter out right in the middle of her GCSEs so she had to do GCSEs out here in one year. But she did fine and then my younger one was okay. And yeah we were just all looking for a change and to be honest with you it's been really tough. It's been much harder than I thought. I was a bit naive. We thought that we would come out and our main aim was really to kind of get to know local people and to kind of get involved in the culture. And that's been harder than it than I thought it would be not through any fault of anyone's but there's not very much tourism here. So if you go even to in the center I'm in Blantyre which is you know pretty big city but even if you get just to the edge of that being a white person is quite a big deal. And so you're kind of almost instantly a celebrity and sort of a thing of interest and an attraction. And what that means is that having a human connection becomes very difficult. I mean if you know what I mean it's you can't what you want it I just want to be wondering around and seeing what's going on and having the occasional chat with somebody but actually as soon as you're out in rural Malawi so for sure it's a big deal you're just being there. And also because I'm really shy and so at that what kind of I mean I'm certain in certain situations that kind of situation kind of makes me really uncomfortable to some extent I mean it's really nice having you know you tend to get children coming up and adults kind of staring at you and and you know they're really friendly and lovely but it's just it's not it's it doesn't as I say it doesn't allow for that kind of for me so far for that kind of easy human connection and that's been kind of difficult. It makes me think of I interviewed last week, really inspiring woman called Charlotte who has cerebral palsy, and she spoke quite similarly about how people never look beyond her disability and the whole thing we were talking about was how she's actually a really fantastic writer, but she always feels like she has to really excel and overachieve to be seen as credible because she thinks that people say, oh well you're a good writer for someone with a disability and that it's it's really hard that wherever she goes she takes a disability with her and that's what people see first and it feels a bit like maybe your whiteness is like that in Malawi. Yeah yeah that's that's a really that's really interesting and yeah I'd not I wouldn't have put this in together but I can I can see exactly where exactly how how that might be and again it's it's all of that kind of thing of of anything that that interrupts just just kind of as a human connection in that way. Yeah, well, well I'm aware of time and say we should probably draw to a close but I wondered what would be the thought you would like to leave everybody with your final thought. One thought. Yeah. I think I would I would just to go into the wellbeing thing. I would just go back to sleep, you know, when the what all of all the things that I looked into in terms of psychology. The amazing things that are coming out, especially now through neuroscience and being able to look at what's going on while we sleep. It's just incredible and sleep is just this amazing thing that is designed personally for you to boost your own immune system in the exact way that it needs to be boosted at that particular point in time. And also, it has just amazing things that to do with emotion. So that for example, if you've had a really troubling experience, gradually through REM sleep and dreaming what happens what seems to happen is that you gradually detach the painful emotion from the memory. Which makes you able more able to kind of think back and and to process it, but also it fine tunes your ability to read expressions and to to deal with emotional experience in the future. So these are two of the I think less obviously, well, maybe perhaps less well known things about sleep. And also that was nice about that is that it's that's changed a lot since I first started teaching you know when I first started teaching students were always interested in dreaming but we didn't really know what it was for, which is crazy because we do so much of it and it uses up so much energy. It's obvious that it must be really important but to not know really what that was about is just, it's just crazy and neuroscience is really begin to unpick that and it has a lot to do like I say with processing emotional experiences. So this is way longer than one thought. So my thought would be sleep eight hours, minimum eight hours of sleep per night is the bedrock of everything else of all of the well being, I think. And so all of the other stuff, if you're not, if you're not really focusing on sleep, then all of the other stuff is going to be not not going to fall into place as well as it might.