 I bobi. Thank you. I'm conscious that this is your evening. So, I will hopefully make it useful. It feels slightly strange being this side of a lecture theatre, which I hope you'll forgive me for. I have told you a little bit more about me, but, when I was thinking about what I was going to say, I was thinking about what I could talk to you about ages and ages and things. ac rydych yn dal ar ddanoon hefyd. Felly, rwy'n meddwl amllunio i teimlo, i'r flodol yn gyfleiaid, dwi'n meddwl ychydig yn ôl'r gweinol i mor ychydig i mi wedi bod yn gweithio. Rwy'n meddwl am ydydd wedi gynnig… Nid yw'r maen o'r peth fydd, ond gweithdd ymweld o gweithbbydd ac rwy'n meddwl am gyflwng y gwirionedd ac yn y peth, ac mae'n meddwl am fymlwyr nad yw'r peth gennym gweithbwyll fryny, I will hopefully tell you some truths that you might not hear elsewhere, so feel free to ask me and if I feel slightly embarrassed about anything else, I'll tell you. So, what I thought I'd do was tell you a little bit about me and then talk a little bit about stress, because that's kind of a big thing, which I guess some of you will be experiencing already, and where it comes from, and how we can understand it a little bit better, how we can manage ourselves a little bit better. And of course I might talk to you a little bit about the Mindful Business Charter, which we have mentioned, which is an initiative in the legal profession, which is trying to do something about mental health in the profession, if that makes sense. And we'll put some context around and stuff like that, but as I say, if you want to, I mean, interrupt me and ask questions and disagree whether, I think you can be very relaxed. So, that's the book that we have mentioned, which is obviously my opportunity to plug me. Are you in the right place? Are you on mental health in the law? No. So, me. I could tell you loads, I won't. A few stories. So, I was, as Rick Hubs said, I was here with cats in 1998 to 1991. I was a really good boy. I have always been a really good boy from a very young age. I learnt to do as I was told. I learnt to work hard. I learnt to keep us from trouble, and there are all sorts of reasons why I did that. But partly that explains why I ended up here, because I've worked really hard. And then, having got here, I got a relatively good degree, got T1, and I joined a firm called Gouldans, which at that stage was a firm a bit like McFarlane's. I don't know if that brings any bells, but it was kind of a medium-sized firm that kind of punched in the other's way. And it was different. It was a very different kind of culture to most of all. And I did pretty well, though. But I'll tell you a story, which I was reminded of today, because somebody was talking about it, but in about six months into my training contract, we caught an article on that day, but six months into my training contract, I was feeling utterly overwhelmed by the amount of work I had to do. I was feeling like I couldn't cope. I was in the office late one evening, in tears, because I was thinking, look, I'll do this. And my boss was completely laid back, bloke, and he wasn't around at that time of the evening, so I couldn't go and talk to him. So I went to talk to him in the next morning, and I went into his room and said, Conrad, I can't cope. And he looked at me and said, OK, tell me everything you've got to do. And I said, I've got all of this to do. And he said, is that it? And I said, no, I've got all of this to do as well. He said, OK, is that it? I said, yeah, I think that's about it. He said, OK, what's the most important of all of that? And I said, well, this is. He said, OK, it's going to be done then. And I went and did it, and I came back and he said, have you done it? And I said, yes. He said, OK, what's next most important? That story is an interesting experience because it's probably the most helpful conversation I ever had in the law firm, that I felt utterly unable to cope with the amount of stuff I had on. I thought, and then with that, you start panicking and thinking, oh my God, I'm a failure and everyone's going to notice. And yeah, I never really was good enough. It's all been a bit tense and whatever. When in reality, most people struggle, most people find it hard. Most people go through times when it's like this is just too much. And part of the problem is that we don't actually mention it. We don't talk about it. We don't feel brave enough to actually say, hang on, I'm finding it a bit difficult right now. And I think that's particularly so when you, for some people at least, and we're all different, but when you make a transition from somewhere like here to a law firm or Paris' chambers or whatever it may be, and you've probably been pretty good at school, that's why you go here, you then work your asses up here to get your degree into there, and then you go and get a job. The idea that suddenly everyone else around you is as clever as everybody here is or cleverer. And nobody's really kind of admitting to finding things difficult or nobody's really admitting to feeling vulnerable or weak or human. It can be really, really hard. And learning to kind of acknowledge that is quite, quite important. A lot of the work we're doing right now is around that kind of stuff. So that was 1993, 1994. Fast forward 17 years or something. And by that stage, I had been a very good boy for a long time, and I was now a father. I had three kids who were at that age, goodness knows how old, they're now 23, 27. I was a partner, which, you know, that's a big job. I was running, I was on the firm's management committee. My next job was going to be running the firm, that was the plan. I had a lovely big house, lovely family obviously, mentioned them. We just bought a house in France, it was going really well. I was one of these people who said yes to everything, so I was on the school governing body, I was this, I was that, I was just doing everything. And anybody who looked at me would have said he's doing fine with me, and everyone would have said he's happy and he's, you know, isn't he doing well. And I probably thought that too. And the, I knew that I was a little bit under pressure. I knew that sometimes I felt a bit stressed, but of course I'm a bit stressed. I've got a big job, haven't I? And I've got three kids and I've got this and that, of course I'm a bit stressed, but it'll be all right, won't it? Just kind of keep your head down, crack down, if you're all right. And then, kind of early 2011, and this is another one of those conversations that you kind of remember me, that was an interesting conversation. So early 2011, I am being groomed to be the next managing partner, so we're kind of cheap executive over the law firm. And the, and you know, everyone thinks I'm marvelous. And the, they said, why don't you go and see a coach, because a coach will help you kind of develop your management skills and whatever. I thought, fine. So I saw the coach, and he was a lovely bloke. And after a few sessions, so with coaching, you kind of talk to somebody, it's just like a private conversation, really, a couple of hours a week or whatever. And after a few sessions, he said, okay, I think I know you quite well, I think I understand you. And I know your law firm very well too. And I know all the people here pretty well. I can absolutely understand why the law firm wants you to be the next managing partner, completely understand that. What I don't understand is what you want. And I looked at him and said, he said, what do you mean? What do you mean, what do I, I've got a wife, I've got three kids, I've got a mortgage, I've got a pension, I've got this, I've got that, I've got a team, I've got clients, I've got this, I've got responsibilities coming out of my ears. What do you mean, what do I want? And he looked at me in a kind of supportive way that said, I think you might want to think about that. And I realised, I suppose at that point, or sometime after that, that I'd never really stopped to think, what really matters to me. I'd done what people wanted me to do. And I'd done it pretty well. But I'd got to age, whatever that was, what we want, having done what others wanted me to do. And I don't think, I'm not saying that the, that moment was a kind of, that caused me to have a breakdown, it didn't. But it was probably catalytic in terms of my illness becoming apparent. My brain works in kind of images. So if you imagine building a house and you start building, you start with the foundations. And then you kind of, once you've got your foundations done, you then start building up your foundations. And then gradually over time you extend and you redevelop and you do this and you do that. And 20 years later you've got a massive, massive, interdiscipline life sitting there. And then one day somebody comes along and says, you know those foundations, they're not there. And it was a little bit like that, him saying, I just don't know what you want. I don't know why you're doing this. Because none of the things that matter to me, none of the values, none of the sense of purpose that I had would be met at all by being a managing partner. So I went on holiday in the May half-term of 2011 with the families of France. And on the way back we were driving around in Paris-Faurique south of Paris. And suddenly I felt desperately ill. And there were some warning signs but I didn't really notice them. So basically the first thing I knew was we're driving from the most way. And there's lots of fast moving traffic all around us and I'm driving. And suddenly I think I've got to get out of here. So I stopped the car and got out and started walking across lots of lanes of fast moving traffic. Which obviously wasn't very sensible until somebody said, Monsieur, what are you doing? And I said I've got no idea. And I said they took me to the hospital and they did later tests on me. And then said, yeah, we can't find anything wrong with your heart. So go back to England and then go and see your cardiologist in the morning. Because we've all got our own cardiologist in the morning. So I went to see my GP in the morning who said, yeah, I don't think it's your heart. I think it's your head. I think you've had a panic attack. And I had no idea what he was talking about but I soon learnt. And I'd gone, so we were away for a week and I never went back to law after that week. Before we went away I had been somebody who could walk into any kind of office, any building. I had no fear of anything. I could take on any cases. I was managing and I was doing stuff. And then suddenly I was terrified at the door pop. I was terrified at the doorbell. I was literally crying behind the sofa when anybody came to the house. I was a complete wreck. And it happened in a space of a few very short weeks. So I ended up, after not very long trying to cope at home, my family said, we can't manage with you here. So I went to hospital. And again, one of those conversations is quite enlightening. My psychiatrist said, would you like to be admitted to hospital? And I said, well, I don't know about this stuff. And he said, I know it's all about what you want. So I asked him, am I ill enough to be admitted to hospital? And he said, yeah, you are definitely ill enough to be admitted to hospital. OK, I said, what are they like in there? Because we kind of have these images of psychiatrists who might be like that. And I said, what are they like in there? He said, we're like you. And when I went to hospital, sure enough, they were like me. They weren't other people. They weren't weird. They weren't whatever. They were just people like us. And I think one of the issues around mental health and mental illness is that because we don't talk about it, because we're not talking about it, and we don't talk with our families about it or with our tutors or whatever it may be, we don't know anything about it. And so we kind of hide it away in the cupboard and think it's about other people. And it isn't. It's about people like us. And the people in the primary, where I spent a good month, were just people like us who were struggling to cope at that time. So I spent a bit of time there and spent a long time getting better. And then eventually I thought I need to do some work. Can I swear on it, actually? Can I do that? I thought I can't spend my life pissing about on the sofa. So I decided I needed to do something. And I thought, what I'm going to do is something I'm following lines. I've been an employment lawyer. And so I've been used to dealing with the problems that happen in workplaces. That's what employment lawyers kind of do. And whenever there was a problem in a workplace, I'd always thought, what you need is an employment lawyer. That's the answer to problems in workplaces. So I spent 20 years throwing employment law at problems in workplaces. Now, employment law is important, but it's not if you do. And having been in hospital and then having spent quite a lot of time understanding how this works, I was beginning to think, ah, it's not the reason why things happen. The reason why people do stuff is not because of the law, or because of this. So if we can understand this a little bit more, then we might be able to help understand why things happen in workplaces and we might be able to stop things bad things happening and things like that. So I thought using my experience as a person, as a human being, as an employee, as a manager, as a lawyer, and also using counselling and psychotherapy insight from understanding this a little bit more, I could look at things in the workplace in a slightly different way. A load of different lenses were up on just through a lens of employment law. And before very long, somebody said, you should talk to Burn Dean. So that BG at the top left is Burn Dean. It's who I work for. And we're all basically ex-employment lawyers. You've got tired of dealing with the nonsense that employment lawyers have to deal with. The kind of discrimination body harassment claims and thought wouldn't it be more interesting to try to create cultures in workplaces in which people don't do that stuff, in which people are kind of fairer and more productive. So we do lots of work with all sorts of different kind of organisations around kind of fairer and more productive workplaces. We know what the law is. We know how things can go wrong, but we try to prevent that happening. And we work with lots of law firms and then lots and lots of other sorts of organisations, lots of banks and other financial institutions, lots of insurers, lots of media companies. We work across the UK and internationally and blah blah blah. I was supposed to be in Singapore last week for that court council because of the virus. So we do lots of international stuff. So that's a bit about me. It's easy to think that mental illness runs a bit like this, that you're well, and then you get ill, and then you get better, and then if you're really odd, you write a book about it, and then everything's fine. We all look happy ever after. And that's absolute bollocks. The idea that I've got better and therefore I'm fine for the rest of my life is absolute nonsense. And even though I spend most of my life in rooms not quite as grand or as big as this, but in rooms talking about mental health and talking about trying to make how everybody being more aware of their mental health, I still have problems. And in early this year, after having not slept properly for about six weeks, I had to take a couple of weeks of work because I was just completely blown out. It's better now, but it's something that we all have to manage, I guess. So that's a little bit about me. You can ask me stuff if you want it, or we can do that at the end, and it's still at the end, but if you want to ask me stuff if you do. A little bit of context about law. So I don't know how familiar you are with stats around mental health. That thing on the left is the idea that we all have a state of mental health. We're all on the spectrum. We have good days, bad days. We might be really healthy. Sometimes we might sometimes be feeling a bit rubbish. Another time we might actually be kind of on the left-hand side of that. But the idea that we all have a state of mental health, we're all on the spectrum. And there are lots of stats that say one in four of the adult population in any one year with experience of diagnosis or mental illness. Yes, that's true. And that's really important to remember. The reality is that we all have a state of mental health. The most important stats I think is one in one. We should all be thinking about this. Lawyers are particularly in danger. And I don't say this to scare you, but I say this just to kind of put a bit of context around this and say this is something that lawyers and law firms should be really focused upon. Law Society England and Wales, junior lawyers division, so that's five years post qualification experience and less. So people up to about age 30 or something like that. They do a survey every year. And this was the result from 2019 that just under half of lawyers, solicitors across the profession in the previous month I'd experienced the mental health problem, which is pretty scary. Most of them didn't feel they could talk to their employer about it. A significant number feeling suicidal. And three quarters experiencing disrupted sleep. There is a real, well I'll use the word because I use it when I'm talking to law firms. There is a crisis in the professional and we need to be taking it seriously. I think if this was any other profession, any other industry reporting figures like this, the legal profession would be all over them in terms of shutting them down. The only reason law firms get away with it is they're the lawyers. And it's the same internationally, Australia, the US. I was saying to Brendan, I was speaking at a conference in Seoul in October, which was the International Bar Association, so lawyers more around the world. So it's an issue. Thankfully it is an issue that people are getting to recognise and do something about. So there is some good news, which we'll come onto. Any questions about that? And these stats, this is not other law firms. This is your clip of chances, your soldier of mays, your whatever, the law firms we know. So what's going on? We could do an exercise, by the way. Stress. Who's experienced stress? Yep, it's part of life. We all get it. What does this feel like to be stressed? Give me some words. Everwellman? What happens to your thinking? Frontic? Yep. How effective is it? It's not very effective at all. We talk about stress quite a lot. One day I wanted to understand what it meant. So I googled what would stress me, and there's about 50,000 definitions of stress. But the one that resonated with me was this, that stress is the state of mind we get into when we think we can't cope. When we think that more is being asked of us than we can do. When we think the demands upon us are exceeding our resources. And there are two bits to that definition. One is the kind of the demands and the resources, and that's important. But the critical thing I think is, it's what we think. It doesn't matter whether I'm right or wrong. If I think that more is being asked of me than I can do, if I think that the demands are placed on me to do, I will feel stressed. It doesn't matter whether I'm right or wrong. If we feel stressed, our thinking starts going away. And what we tend to do is two things. We exaggerate the demands. We think that there are more of them and more time critical. That if I don't get that essay in, I'm going to be beaten alive by my supervisor and then my parents will be told and then whatever, and my life will be in there. So we exaggerate the demands. And at the same time, we start underestimating our resources. And I think we do that in two ways. First of all, we lose confidence in ourselves. Because our thinking goes a bit haywire, we lose confidence in our own ability to do stuff. But critically, and I don't know, this may not be as apparent to you now, but it will be when you're in an organisation. You don't think you can talk to anybody else about it. So even though I might be surrounded by one of the most highly skilled teams in one of the most highly regarded professional service firms in the entire world, I don't ask for help. I think I'd better shut up and keep quiet and not admit that I'm struggling. And so I lose sight of all the resources around me, if that makes sense. So at the same time as we exaggerate the demands, we're underestimating the resources. And it's in that gap that our stress lies. And the longer we're there, the bigger that gap comes. And most of it is about this. And if you sit down with anybody who's stressed and say, let's talk about it, you'll generally find that they are exaggerating the demands and they're underestimating the resources. And if they're not, then you take away some of the demands and you give them some resources, but most of the time they've got their perspective out of guilt. If that makes some sense. We might look at that a bit more in a moment. What's going on in our brains with this is quite basic and this may be nothing new to you. The oldest bit of our brain is the amygdala. A little bit of our brain sits at the top of our spinal column and it hasn't evolved at all. It was there when we were reptiles and it hasn't changed since. It hasn't changed since because it's really good at what it does and what it does is really simple. It's there to protect us from harm. It's there to alert us when we're in danger and to get us ready to deal with danger. And what happens is that when we perceive ourselves to be in danger, the amygdala automatically gets triggered. We don't have to be aware of the threat as soon as we become even unconsciously aware of the threat if the amygdala gets triggered. But because it's primitive, because it's prehistoric, it assumes that any threat is one of those. Now, in London at least we don't get many of those. But that's what's going on in our bodies the whole time. What would you do if you're facing one of those? I know this is law, not biology, but... You'll fight or run? Or run, fight or flight. You might freeze, you might fold, but fight or flight are two most common things. What are you going to do if you want to run away or fight? What do you need? More basically. If I want to run really fast I need lots of energy. Where do I need it? If I'm going to fight I need it in my... Our bodies are really clever. When we perceive ourselves to be on the threat we don't have to be consciously aware of the threat and it doesn't matter whether we're right or wrong. Once we think we're on the threat, the amygdala is triggered, floods our body with adrenaline and other hormones and their job is to create the physiological changes necessary to get us ready to run away or fight. Breathing goes up, getting more oxygen in, heart rate goes up, get that blood pumping around the body, we release more glucose into our blood. All very sensible. Then something really clever happens which we're less aware of. The arteries to unimportant parts of our body narrow to reduce the amount of blood and energy going there and to max the amount of blood going to our arms and legs. Which is really clever when you think about it. The body basically shuts down bits of our system that aren't important like our digestive system or our bowel and bladder control. It's not important when you're facing a tiger. But the most critical bit that it shuts down is our brain. Because I don't need to be able to do complicated law when I'm facing a tiger. I need to run like hell. The blood supply to our brain is reduced when we feel under threat. The bit of our brain that stops first is our prefrontal cortex, the bit of our brain that does our clever conscious thinking. Which is why our thinking goes frantic because our brain is just shutting down. Which is fine when you're facing a tiger. But the problem is we don't anymore. We face our supervisors, our tutors, we face our director of studies, we face our bosses, we face clients, we face the courts, we face the other side on the transaction, we face whatever. None of them are going to attack us physically. But we behave as if they are. And we get ready to run away or fight them. Which isn't very helpful. And we can't do much about it really. It's just the way we're made. We're not going to evolve anytime soon. But we need to understand what's going on. Does that make sense? If you think about stress, and obviously what's going on there and that's when we feel under threat. I don't think there is a bigger threat that we face as budding professionals than the idea that we may not be able to cope. The idea that I'm going to be found out and that actually, yeah, I am a bit of a fraud after all and I'm not as clever as I thought and now I don't know all the answers and blah blah blah. That is a huge, huge existential threat to any of us. Stress is a really big trigger when you feel stressed. Oh my goodness, you think you're facing a tiger. So there's lots of stuff around it in terms of symptoms. And I'm guessing that some of this stuff will be stuff that you recognise in terms of your own experience. I'm not going to go for all of these, but this is the kind of stuff that happens. This is why, and this is because, in terms of how we think and feel, this is because the blood supply to our brain is being shut down. So you can't remember stuff. You can't concentrate. You can't make decisions. Not sleeping. Anybody have sleep problems? But it makes sense. If you're facing a tiger, don't fall asleep. You'll get eaten. So when you're anxious, you don't sleep. Lots of stuff. Our dreams, they can often tell us some quite useful stuff. So lots of stuff about how we think and feel. These are all kind of physical, these are all symptoms to be on the lookout for it. Stuff around how our body reacts physically, how we behave. This is all the response to an imagined, savoured toothed tiger. But as I say, it could be exams. It could be all sorts of things that trigger this. This isn't always the most helpful reaction. Knowing that is quite important. What I think is most important is this, that all of that starts with us thinking I'm under threat. If I perceive myself to be under threat, if I think there's a threat, then my amygdalae gets triggered. This is all about how our brains work. It's all about what we perceive to be under threat. Now, this is a little model, which I don't know it might resonate or not. We use it a lot in our training. So think about how we can cope. And it's very simple to bucket, as you can tell with a little tap on the side of it. And the idea of this model is if I can cope, we all have the bucket into which all of our shit flows. All of our worries are difficult to use. And it doesn't matter where they're coming from, our families, our friends, our love life, our exams, our this, our that, it's all going to the same bucket. Donald Trump. All going to the same bucket. And if we can keep our stuff in our bucket, then we're coping. If our stuff starts overflowing our bucket, that's when we're getting into difficulty. That makes sense. So what we need to do is we need to keep the stuff in our bucket. Does that make sense? And this is that. It doesn't matter whether it's all going to the same bucket. What three things will determine whether or not my stress overflows my bucket? Being as literal as you like. The size of my bucket. If I've got a big bucket, I can get loads of stuff in it. The amount of stuff coming in, yeah? Third thing is that tap. How do you let stuff out? So what do you think goes to how big your bucket is? If you've got a massive bucket, you can chuck loads of stuff in it. How do you make a bigger bucket? Look at this as a positive thing. How can you make yourself more able to cope? How can you boost your resilience or reduce your vulnerability? Self-confidence, experience as well would help with that. If you've done stuff before, you might know. Sleep is going to be a massive thing. Imagine how much more you're able to cope with if you've had a good night's sleep compared to if you haven't. What we eat and drink, that goes to our resilience. Our friendships, our support networks, our sense of purpose, what else? How much alcohol we drink? How much caffeine we have? How much nicotine we have? All of that will affect the size of our bucket. The weather. If it's sunny, we feel better. Bigger bucket. Rates of depression are higher in winter because we get less sunlight. Our skin converts sunlight to between D. So getting outside is good for us. There'll be some genetics and other things in there as well. But what about that tap? How do you relieve stress? How do you get stuff out of your bucket? What do you do when you're feeling stressed? That's helpful. Or even that's not helpful. Procrastinate, that's probably not helpful. But it's a very common trait. It's a very legally trait. Procrastinate. And it comes from perfectionism. If I don't think I can do something perfectly, I will not do it. There's lots of things that might relieve stress. This was some research done a while back by Government Commission Research, looking at how do people who cope, people who seem to be able to manage life, what are they doing that the rest of us could learn from? And they took the top five behaviours. And they took the top five because they wanted to mirror our five fruit and veggie day. But a lot of wellbeing programmes in organisations are based upon these five things. And it's not rocket science. The idea is if we can do all of these. We can keep our tap flowing. We can get that stress out of our bucket. So being active exercise. And this doesn't have to be taekwondo or whatever that jumper is. It doesn't have to be anything vigorous. Just walking can be quite enough. 30 minutes exercise, four times a week, positive impacts on our wellbeing. Connection, talking to people. Having good interpersonal relationships kind of makes sense, we know that. Learning. Being at uni is good for you. But our brains are curious. Our brain likes to explore. If you imagine doing the same thing day in and day out, it's pretty dull and you'll soon feel pretty shit. Whereas if you are able to explore and learn and be curious and whatever, good for us. Giving. There's a lot of research now around the positive benefits to us of altruism. If we look after somebody else, we feel better. Which is nice. Obviously that can be in all sorts of different ways, but simple stuff. Being nice to your neighbour. And taking notice. Don't really do any meditation. Mindfulness, a little bit maybe. Yeah. A bit. Just spending more time in the present moment. Spending more time just noticing what's going on. We spend so much of our lives worrying about tomorrow or yesterday. Which we can't do anything about. And when we're thinking about tomorrow or yesterday, we worry. But all we can do with right now is be in it. So if we can spend more time in the present moment. And it could be through meditative practice, whatever. But just paying attention. Taking notice. We can go for a walk noticing what the weather is doing, noticing the seasons. Something I'd do in the present moment. When I was what I was going to do for two years was that you feel that the more that you take on, the better you are, the more stress that you're feeling, the more productive you are. So how is it a little bit of a sort of tone that line between what you're doing and what you're doing right now? And then taking on the last lecture that you feel is productive? If you, Matt, lovely question. What should I do? If you, Matt, pressure and both the oncology or for that you can have the happiness as well probably. But we all have to go on and look a bit like what do you call that? Normal distribution care. Normal distribution care. There you go. So we all have that and we all have that sweet spot here where it's not too hot and not too cold. Where the pressure is just about right. If you haven't got anything to do, you don't do anything. Or if you haven't got very much to do, somehow you've managed to piss out a whole day without again anything done whatsoever. If we don't have enough to do then we don't do anything. But equally, obviously, when we get too much pressure. So it's finding that sweet spot. We all need pressure, but it's just not having too much. That makes sense. And when you start getting into that territory, that's really where stress lies. When you start getting into that, that's when you're experiencing a lot of those symptoms around anxiety all the time. If you're finding it hard to concentrate, if you're not sleeping well, if you're always at risk, if you're always at whatever. That's a good sign to give you. Does that make any sense? And we all have a good grasp of this and it moves. So if I think about actually, but if I think about standing in front of a lecture space like this when I was 18, God know what I've done that. I'd have been absolutely broken myself. But now I can do it. So my curve has moved along a bit. But equally, there are times when I, most of the time my curve might be here. Sometimes I might be struggling a little bit and it'll be here. Learning to say, it's getting a bit hard. To ourselves first of all, admit that. And then to somebody else. Lawyers. Lawyers extra here. Then they haven't got enough to do. So I think, oh my God, I haven't got enough work to do and therefore that must mean that I'm a rubbish lawyer and I'm going to get sad. Not all boys for some reason. The, and that can be quite, you know, finding that and of course you never know there's that lovely expression that's not enough more than you can chew. Which is perfect. Except you don't know until you have. That makes sense. You don't know until you have. But once you have been enough more than you can chew, take it out. Because otherwise you'll choke. You know, if you find yourself here, still doing some stuff. You have to stop. And probably when you are finding yourself here, the first thing to do is to stop. Hang on. This isn't a very good place. That stuff is all about how we keep our tap flowing. And weirdly, you know, if you think about that model and think about being really busy. So I've got loads of stuff on and my bucket's really full. What we tend to do then is to say, well I haven't got time to exercise and I haven't got time to see my friends and I haven't got time to be nice to somebody and I haven't got time for any of this stuff because I've just got so much to do. It's when our bucket is full that we need to stop more than ever. That makes sense. Could we say that, you know, I hear many people saying they're busy, always. And to meet up, I need to plan that three weeks in advance, say. In my perspective, I don't see them as busy because I know people who are really busy. Like co-founder of startups that are really genuinely busy. Other people that say they're busy, I don't think they're busy. I think they don't prioritise well in terms of, you know, they say they're busy but they don't prioritise when they're on, in terms of being active, in terms of being interested, in terms of learning. I think that's absolutely right. The most successful people are people who are taking themselves and then I think there's someone else. Come on, too. But taking yourself seriously enough, caring about yourself enough to actually take care of yourself is hugely important because nobody else is going to do it. I've spent quite a lot of time assuming that somebody else would look after me. Nobody else will. You've got to do it. Which is fine, but you've got to actually take time and efforts to do it. So that's about how you do it. What about the stuff coming in? Anybody who knows who that bloke is know that kind of similar, kind of epitodus, who was a Greek philosopher who famously said this, it's not events that causes the difficulties but how we think about it. It's not the world that causes our problems, it's how we think about it. There was a lot of, so we've just been through the liberation of the concentration camps. If you read any of the philosophy that came out from the Jewish philosophers who survived those camps, they will say this, they will say we had no control over what happened to us. We had absolutely no control about the way we treated it. All we could do was control how we responded to it. And notwithstanding the way that we were being treated, notwithstanding the humanity in those camps, we responded with humanity to ourselves, to our fellow prisoners and even to the guards, we responded with humanity. It's not the events that causes our problems, it's how we respond to it, if that makes sense. It's not the world that causes our bucket but how we think about it. So to come back to what you were saying, the reason why some people seem to be able to cope with a load of stuff, some of it is about how they think. It's not... Does that make sense? If I think it's fine, I know all of my contract law and yes there's an exam tomorrow, but I know I've learnt it all and I've got it all off pat, then I won't feel so worried about that again. If however, I think I haven't done any revision whatsoever and I think I'm really daft, then I will feel really worried about that again. Neither is right or wrong necessarily because it's not the exam itself that is affecting how I'm reacting to it. It's how I think about it, if that makes sense. Which is this. I've got to show up soon. ABC. This is a CBT, anybody familiar with CBT? Cognitive Behavioural Therapy. It's a form of therapy. It's one of many, but it's useful for this model. This explains how our brains work. Something happens and we respond to it. And we tend just to notice those things. So, I don't know, our tutor comes into the room and we start feeling worried. A tiger and I run away. It's not the tutor that makes me scared. It's not the tiger that makes me run away. It's what I think about it. It's my belief. What happens when I see a tiger? I believe it didn't double. So, I'm sitting in my room and Brendan is my boss and Brendan phones me up and I start getting worried. Imagine that last week Brendan had asked me to do some report and I haven't done it. Brendan phones me up, activating event, something happens. I start feeling scared. Why am I feeling scared? What am I thinking? Last week he asked me to do a report and I haven't done it. And now he's phoning me up. Get back a few steps. First of all, I'm thinking he's phoning me up about the course. Secondly, he's going to find out that I haven't done it. Thirdly, he's going to be angry. Fourthly, I'll get tired. Fifthly, I'll probably then my wife will leave me and then I'll have to do it on her page and I'll fire up at the venue and then I'll probably shouldn't be joking about that if I should be annoying her. Sorry. It's not Brendan phoning me up, the activating event that makes me scared, it's all of those thoughts. I don't know why he's phoning me up. I've got no idea why he's phoning me up. But my brain has decided it's because he wants to know about the report. That's why he's phoning me up. And then I'm going through all those steps. I don't know. I'm sitting in my room, shit scared. And my brain is now not working. Which is very good because my boss is on the phone. And we do this all the time. Not necessarily with our bosses, but with our tutors. He might be phoning me up to say Richard, that report I asked you to do don't worry about it, we don't need it anymore. He might be phoning me up to say Richard, I just wanted to say how lovely you are. I don't know. But our brains tell us he's phoning me up because I'm in trouble. It's not the event that causes us our problems. It's all to think about. That leads us to being scared. And that then triggers the amygdala which then triggers us to be better. So if we can capture those beliefs, if we can understand how this works, then we can do something about feeling anxious and stressed. And there are some really we all have our own messed up nonsense in here. And that's what therapy is about. But when we could spend some time talking about that, if you like. But there are some really common thinking patterns that we all do a bit of. And if you think about these thought patterns, do you think about being a little stressed? And believe me, in a Northburn environment there are quite a lot of people stressed. And you talk to them, and I do this a lot, you talk to them about tell me why you're worried. Tell me what you're stressed about. It'll be riddled with these things. So first of all, catastrophising. Worst-case scenario. Making amounts out of my hope. Worrying about everything that could possibly go wrong. Everyone does this. But the lawyers have paid to do this. That is a brilliant job is to worry about everything that could possibly go wrong and then to stop it happening or at least to provide what should happen in that situation. That's what we do. And the more we do it, like anything, the more you practice the easier it becomes. And the more you do it automatically. That makes sense. Anybody playing the piano or a music dancer or any kind. When you first start doing it, I know this because I'm trying to level it again at the moment, I have to think about every single note. And if you've got to think about every single note, it sounds shit. But when you look at a concert pianist, they're not thinking about every note because they've done it in loads. The more you catastrophise your job, the more you're going to do that. Personalisation, the way it's all about us, it's all my fault or if something's gone wrong, it's my fault. If something's going to go right, I've got to make it happen. If something's happening to me, no. Most of what happens out there is not about me. But we kind of see it as being about us. So when and lawyers, like most professionals are pretty good at personalising. Over generalisation it's always this, always that. Black and white thinking. Things are either good or bad, right or wrong, nice or nasty. People are either on my side or not. The world is great. But when we force things into the extremes of black and white. And it's what lies at the heart of perfectionism. And therefore professionalisation. If you get 100% no, if you get 70% right, the older but GCSE you get an A grade. The A level you get an A grade. The university you get first. In a law firm, if you get 70% of it right, you get seven. You're not allowed to make mistakes. Everything is good. If it's not perfect, I'm a disaster. No, that's not actually true. That's how people think. Negative inferencing. The way we think we know what people mean. So I walk down the road and I see you tomorrow when I wave and you don't wave back. And I think, oh, I've upset it. She's angry with me. I'm a bad person. When in reality you might not have seen me. You might be busy. You might be pissed off with somebody else and pissed off with a friend. You might just be rude. But no, no, we make it about us. We make it awful. Email is a really good way of where we confuse people's meaning the whole time. I don't know if you... So I am old enough that I didn't have email when I stuck with it. But the... When we communicate normally face to face about 30% of our communication is words. The rest of it is our body language and our kind of voice. And that's what really helps us. With email all we've got is a 30%. And so we make up the rest. We infer the rest. And so when you send me an email I've got your 30% of words and then I have to fill in the gap and I fill it in with whatever shit is going on in here. If I'm having a really good time and thinking you are really being nice to me even though you've given me a telling off to see if it's being a positive thing or if I'm having a bit of a bad time even though you're saying Richard that's quite good what you did. Why here is that was really rubbish. We infer. So let's have abstraction. What do you mean by that? I mean by that. The way in which we... you get four firsts and then two one in your final papers. And instead of going way thinking four firsts that's really good. You start worrying about the two one. It's a small part and they call that you probably don't. Does that make sense? Those thinking patterns, those beliefs are sitting in between our activating of NRA and RC and this is what causes us to get stressed and catastrophising in particular. Richard leaves that which is my favourite saying to note just because I think something doesn't mean it's true. We go around the world thinking stuff and most of it most of what this says is utter nonsense. Because it's based upon catastrophising based on this based on the fact that I think Richard doesn't like me. No, she's just rude. But now I'm really upset and miserable just because I think something doesn't mean it's true. And so being kind enough to ourselves to notice when we're having thinking that it's getting a stress and say hang on, the only way I actually read what am I making some stuff up here? What am I making some stuff up here? What am I making some stuff up here? We will always be making some nonsense up. I'm going to shut up in a moment so I'm going to skip through that and I'm just going to tell you about this, that. Because what years are you in? I know you've been in this first year. So we saw those stats at the beginning of that question and how there's quite a lot of mental health problems in the profession. And it's not just the legal profession but there's quite a lot of legal profession. And there's a recognition that there's a lot of pressure and actually we quite like this. We've always quite liked it in here. You know, you spend quite a lot of time there. And that's good, you know, we love that kind of trust and more of it. Life would be boring if it was all down here. But there's an awful lot of stuff that goes on in the workplace which is unhelpful which is stressful and unhelpful. And if we could try and remove some of that unnecessary stuff then we could make our workplace healthier and more productive as a result. And this is an initiative which was begun by a couple of law firms. Vincent Mason is an official good art and the legal team at Barclays. So Barclays, I don't know if this is, Barclays have got a big legal team and they give out loads of work. So if you are a law firm in London or Britain or anywhere else in the UK that's doing commercial type work, Barclays is going to be a client of yours. Like lots of other banks. And when Barclays say jump the law firms start jumping and they carry on jumping until they fall over dead because Barclays is so important. You know, like other banks, Doleman Sacks or whoever it might be. And the lawyers at Barclays said we don't want to rubbish because we don't, first of all, we don't want to kill you. Secondly, when you're stressed you don't do very good work because your brains aren't working. So that's not good for any of us. You know, you don't like being stressed. It's not good for your health. It's not good for the work that we get from you. So could we talk to each other? Shit, talk to each other? Let's have a conversation. Let's try and remove some of the unnecessary stress that goes on in our relationship. You Barclays are really important and we, your firm, we're a bit scared of you. And if we could actually just talk to each other and say, be able to say sometimes you've asked me to, I don't know, do this particular piece of work and you've said you want it back on Monday we can do that but that doesn't mean that none of us will sleep for the next five nights. We'll do it if you want but it'll be better if we can have a bit more time. Things like that. And just be, you know, when you say to me can we have a meeting at 8 o'clock in the morning that's a real problem because much as I'd like to do your work I also like taking my kids to school or I like doing yoga or I'm just really lazy you know, 8 o'clock is not good for me being allowed to have that kind of conversation. So this began a couple of years ago with, let's say, the lawyers of Barclays and a couple of their law firms well, it began in October 2018 with three banks, RBS, Lloyds and Barclays and nine law firms, London law firms and now, at the end of the year we were appointed to promote and develop this and we've got about 38 organisations now involved law firms and then lots of clients, banks and others saying, let's put this on the agenda let's talk about this let's try and do things differently and it's not, you know, we haven't sold you everything overnight but what we're doing with this is creating the opportunity for people to talk to have a framework for discussion to say actually, you know, how we are matters and can we try and do things in a slightly different way. So, if you are applying to law firms for example, one of the things I would say you should think about raising if this is interesting is, what do you do around that? and are you? sign up for my government shop and if not, why not? what do you do to support your trainees' wellbeing? what do you do to support? what supports do you have in place? where do I go to? what are the hours I have to do? I'm going to shut up because I said I would do this all the way up now questions, thoughts, anything?