Episode 019 - What can you focus on during the COVID-19 lockdown?

Hello and welcome to another episode of the Seekardo podcast, it’s Harms here and we have a special episode today because as we know right now in the world, covid19, this virus, which is spreading globally is creating confusion.

It’s creating fear,it’s creating a level of what do I do, what do we do as a group of people, as well as an individual, as well as a family.

I’ve got Ro with me as always, Ro what are your thoughts on what’s happening now, and what do we want to leave the listeners with after this episode?

Thanks Harms first of all, a message I guess from both of us all appreciate that these are troubled times for people and I think for us first of all, we want to send our love and our warmth and consideration out to all your families.

If you are experiencing a member of your family that has got the disease, the virus and is struggling we hope that you take something from this particular episode, and at the same time it might be that there are some insights and wisdom, something that comes from this that you can share not just on a personal level with your own family, but people around you and maybe encourage them to have a listen to this.

Particularly if there is a lot of stress and confusion going on, sometimes it’s nice to have a different perspective and a different voice and what I thought today would be useful Harms, bearing in mind the years I have been in different circumstances with people through recessions, through even families going through their own meltdowns and changes and illnesses.

But also economic challenges as well to try and bring a bit of a structure to how people could spend the next two to three months looking at their lives and reflecting. But at the same time managing the current situation and learning.

The simple way to look at this is think of it as two worlds.

There’s the world that you’re currently living in, in terms of your global experience of the world, what’s happening in the news, the media, outside of your family and then there’s the world that is your family. The day-to-day existence, living, the survival whatever you want to call it over the coming weeks ahead.

If you have a bit of paper and you’re drawing this up I would actually say draw one circle with you in the middle and your family in that circle, that’s that protective place that you’ve got to create.

And then outside of that, there’s what’s happening in the world and there’s this integrative zone that exists right on the boundary of your family, and where your family now interacts with the world around you. It’s that spillover which on a day-to-day basis it’s just a grey line, it’s a blur.It’s almost a boundary less situation because we do on a day-to-day basis live in and out of the world that’s outside us, but unfortunately now we’re put into a situation where that boundary is becoming very clearly defined.

I think for a lot of people that boundary they never had to manage that and it’s the crossover between the two. I think that’s quite a good way to walk into this podcast, does that make sense Harminder?

That makes sense and in terms of boundaries I guess my generation for those with who weren’t maybe in the recession and the financial crisis in 2008, this is the first time my generation are seeing anything like this.

So I guess what we can do Ro is if there is a way to wrap this up at the end of it would be a hopefully are our amazing listeners are left with a steadying voice to help guide them through the course of what’s happening at the moment.

Like you said insights and again, these will be our opinions that have been formed from Rohan working with many people over many years and applying those learnings to what’s happening here on a global scale. Is that fair to say?

Yeah and you do a lot of work with younger people now as well as the people you work with on the seminars we go to who are older, so I think it’s quite nice to have the two voices coming in.

Normally we have an action plan which I don’t think is necessarily appropriate to today’s podcast, but actually in the conversation we’re having, I’m hoping there are certain things, actions and philosophies and thoughts and maybe things that you can take away from this and say, let me implement this straightaway. Particularly those in the UK right now as we go into lockdown I think is going to happen in the next 48 hours from when we are recording this.

For those of you in other countries you may be in that situation right now so I think let’s just jump in Harms. In fact I don’t want to have a finish,I’d rather if it’s okay work through these different elements and finish with maybe a rounded final message to encourage people to stay positive.

Okay I love that, let’s start with the simple question if somebody is maybe living under a rock and they’re not actually aware of what’s happening at the moment in terms of an emotional level, what is happening out there in the world right now from your opinion Ro?

Yeah, look if we take this all the way back to Maslow’s hierarchy of needs and if you’ve ever listened to me talk about this or happen to be in the Seekardo environment with us inside the community, this subject comes up quite often and we ran at our last gathering. These the six basic needs every human being has one of them, of course, is survival. And when your survival is threatened pandemonium in your world because the highest level of the six levels of needs or hierarchy of needs is the ability as a human being to want to desire to be able to give and contribute to other people.

But when your world is threatened, when your life has been threatened, when your finances been threatened, your health has been threatened, your family has been threatened, it’s very hard for a person to in that moment think of other people and to be able to focus on contributing at a great level to the world.

Which is why if you look at Maslow’s pyramid those needs are at the top as opposed to the bottom, which is our survival needs. That’s what is being threatened right now as we speak.

I guess what we are saying Ro it is almost like if you look at that period and Maslow’s hierarchy of needs because of what’s been fuelled and in terms of messages and the feeling people are having, those entire top layers are wiped off and now we are almost back in a mental state of we are in survival mode and we are seeing people’s behaviour as if they are in that survival mode.

What emotions are those then triggering out there?

I guess the first one, and there are so many.People react in different ways, anger, elation, confusion completely just indifferent.

The first one to tackle is confusion and there is so much information coming at us from different places. Social media is rife with facts, but also fiction, hypotheses and conspiracy theories depending on your nature, your level of development, emotional development and personal growth, how you react to that will be different.

Yesterday I overheard a conversation in a shop where one lady was literally in panic state and she didn’t think she was going to get out of her door tonight, as in last night and just literally bags and bags of food.

Whereas the gentleman she was speaking to said, “what their suggestion is this” and he was going through a more logical approach and he said to her, in reality, it’s likely that you’ll still be able to get out to get your essentials. And she goes, “No my sons told me we will be locked down, meaning that the house will be locked, they’ll probably be patrolling the streets and we can’t go outside of the house.”

There are completely different extremes and added to that are the public announcements. I think the government announcements personally, this is my view in the United Kingdom have been left wanting more clarity.

Another example was today I was at a shopping counter stood behind an elderly lady and she saying, I’m just coming here now because I know I’m not going to be able to get back out because we are told as elderly people we’re not allowed to go out the house. The lady said to her, well, that’s not exactly what I believe they’re saying, I think what they’re saying is it’s best to stay in the house, but if you need essentials we are opening up one hour earlier for you, opening up at 8 o’clock instead of 9 o’clock the general public can’t come in but you’re allowed to come in early and get your food and go back to your home.

So there’s a little bit of safety for you and the other lady was saying, but I thought we are not allowed out of our houses and the lady said, I don’t think that’s what they’re saying.

This is a major issue. My mum is 77 years of age, and even she’s confused. We’ve also got the schools. We have chosen to take our daughters out of the school and they haven’t gone in all week.

Our school is actually closing down tomorrow anyway. And some people said to us is that because we have to take them out? And we said my fiancé’s Danish and she’s been following the philosophy from Denmark and we made a decision between the two of us we are just going to keep them back and they can study from home this week, because the feeling is it’s going to go that way anyway.

The confusion isn’t just at the home level, it’s the outside world level as well. And of course that’s spilling into the home, creating stress in the family, husbands and wives confused about what’s going on. It is quite worrying to see the extent of that confusion; I don’t know if you agree with that but that’s what I’m seeing at the moment. It is a massive level of confusion.

I agree Ro.

It’s spreading across all age groups by the way.

It is and when you then attach like you mentioned social media to that, it’s like having all of those feelings on steroids because you increase the confusion by 10x, you increase the lack of control, the anger, the fear, all those emotions that you just described there are literally 10x because of the amount of information being published.

It’s almost minute to minute and if you take the big media news outlets they’re producing an article.Everybody’s article is going to be slightly different. It is going to be written slightly differently, they’re going to attach their own opinion to what statements been made and they’re going to attach their own what does this mean? Okay so the PM said this, so what does that mean and then attach their own opinion to that or confused message to that.

Now If I follow one news outlet and somebody else is following another news outlet that just amplifies the confusion. I think with social media if not used appropriately, or if these companies are not using it appropriately or if we do not absorb the information sensibly, then certainly this is what happens.

So Ro, we’ve described these now and I want to get as quickly as possible into the discussion of what we believe people can focus on and what based on all these emotions, what are you observing out there like on a practical level?

What have you seen because I know you’ve been out about and doing bits and pieces, what have you actually seen observing? And you just recently been presenting to an audience as well.

This is a great question, just before we go into it to actually I want to swing it back to you in just a moment to get your considerations on what you think the younger generations doing at the moment.

Going back to what’s happening I think the other thing as well is that people are feeling a sense of lack of control so this is going to lead to what I’m observing in a moment. So lack of control, meaning how am I going to be able to earn my money, who is going to look after the kids?

This is a conversation I’m hearing a lot at the moment from parents that are coming into the shops near us. Some parents are saying, oh gosh do we do home schooling? Fortunately they don’t have to go into work so they can be at home, but there’s suddenly this reactive behaviour.

Typically confusion going back to what’s happening.

Confusion leads to reactive behaviour, meaning instead of people practically saying, right let’s plan, they’re just running to supermarkets grabbing stuff off the shelves and buying mass amounts of food just in the event that they don’t quite know what’s happening.

So confusion leads to lack of clarity, leads to lack of control, then you’ve got fear. Fear directly linked to anger some people go into a place of fear others get into a place of anger.

Why didn’t we get told this earlier?
Why didn’t they react to this differently?

Remember there are these two levels of consciousness, one being you go into a shop and I see somebody who, for example, is taking a moderate amount of food or loo roll off the shelves, somebody else just literally wiping their arm across the shelf and just gathering into a bag. Just chucking it into a bag and then bolting, literally truckloads of food coming out the store.

This whole thing that is happening I think is very much down to people’s level of consciousness and I don’t want to categorise people as it is not fair to say it, but if you think of it from a human level of consciousness there are people in the world that are more conscious and maybe guided upon the principle of a more even approach to it and trying to be more abundant in their thinking.

There is another level of consciousness which vibrationally is lower, which is fear driven, lack driven and sod you I’m going to get what I can and run and stockpile it and live off that.

The word equanimous, feeling at equilibrium notreacting too extremely on either side, so not worrying too much and fearing too much. Also then not acting in a way like you’ve just explained there which is stockpiling and this kind of behaviour that’s been driven from I imagine, from the fear, the lack of control, “okay I don’t have control of my weekly shop now, so I better just stockpile because I don’t know what’s going to happen”.

Without the consciousness to think about somebody else other categories of the population and also that feeling of just being equanimous and saying actually, if we carry on and behave as we normally would there’d be enough stuff on the shelves for everybody. That kind of behaviour.

Yeah, I agree, and this leads into your other question which was what are we observing?

It would be interesting to see if you’re seeing the same thing from the younger generation.

My generation have a slightly different approach to it, so if you’re 50, 55, 60, late 40s, mid 40s we didn’t grow up necessarily with social media. We would traditionally lean on the news, on the radio, TV, newspapers and there was always this reading of it even when there was something quite big going on, I remember going through several wars back in the 80s right through to the last recession. And you see it, observe it and you process it and discuss it.

Then they’d be a reaction, whereas now, even for the older generation because it is in our faces all the time, it’s on our phones, it’s on social media. What I’m seeing is a different reaction now, it’s a panic’s style of reaction and even for the older generations that little bit of shit.

Instead of proactively pausing and thinking, okay, what’s the best plan of action for us, the family, where are we financially, physically, emotionally. Healthwise, food -wise, it’s like shit everyone else is doing this I need to do that too.

That’s what I’m personally seeing but I’m noticing a difference between communities and I’ll share this before I come back to my question to you. I went to one town today which you know fairly well as you live close to it, and it’s more of a general population of people. I went in it’s the nearest large supermarket to us and I popped in early to get a few things that I knew that we were missing, including, for example, some extra toilet roll, things like that.

What I saw was for example, I was in a queue as I went in and then I bypassed the queue because everyone was queuing for something specific and I went around and I started to go down the aisles. I got to one aisle where there was tissues and things like that. I was stood there and I think there were like five sets of boxes of tissues there. This woman looked behind me and she saw that I was standing there looking to go and we literally arrived at the same time, and I just slowed down to let her go first. She was probably in her late 30s and she looked around the corner of her shoulder and she literally took a bag she went one, two, three, four.

She went for the fifth paused looked around at me and then put it into her bag and literally walked down the aisle really quickly. I looked at it and there was nobody behind me I thought, fuck it I’m just going to take this one and I put this one box of tissues in my bag. I just thought that epitomises this sense of fear. The sense of lack, this kind of desperation point, scarcity.

Interestingly enough, there was another row where there were wet wipes to wipe your hands and things like that, and there was a gentleman there who was 23, 24, 25 years of age stood there and there was a small bunch of these wet wipes left, three or four boxes left on the counter.

There was this really nice elderly couple there one of them had a zimmer frame and the other one was a gentleman with a stick. They must have been late 60s early 70s, obviously come out of their house, hadn’t realised the store opens early so they just arrived with the mass of people. I was there about quarter past nine.

This young guy was there and I was behind them as I was coming around them and I could hear them saying,“I really think we should get some of those we don’t have the antibacterial stuff.”

He was talking about how she’d spilt food the night before and I think we need to just use those to wipe your hands and she said, good idea there’s enough there. This guy literally just went and he knew they were there; he did the same thing. He bagged everything except for one and he walked off and I just oh man.

There was no consideration whatsoever, and it is not for me to be judgemental, but it’s more about observing people’s level of consciousness. So that was two different age groups.

One was in his 20s, the other lady late 30s, but it’s the same behaviour and I guess in the back of my mind Harms and this is another question Harms, if you’re there with your kids and you did that. Knowing there are people behind you because kids are more considerate, they walk away and say, “oh mummy what about that old lady that was behind us?” Mum’s like no no, we’ve just got to take what we can and run.

What are we teaching our kids?

Because if we’re teaching our kids to be driven by fear, lack, just look after yourself, don’t worry about anybody else that is for me, one of the worrying thing that I’m seeing emerge.

We watch this in disaster movies you see that behaviour, but you’re observing it as somebody sitting in your armchair going, look at how they’re behaving, I would never do that.

It’s this whole thing about, I would never do that. But when you get into the reality of it that’s when the differentiation between those that genuinely would do it, and those just say fuck it, I’m doing it anyway.

I don’t know the circumstances of the people that took these things so I can’t make a judgement. But at the same time I’m thinking there’s an elderly couple here clearly not able to physically get there, but they managed to get there and they’re talking openly about what they need. Had he said there are four here I need a couple for myself would you like two and I’ll put them in your bag. None of that, it was like smash and grab and go.

What I love is the interesting point you made about children because this is a time when most of us have not genuinely lived through. There was a natural age group that lived through the war but now, as an age group, especially my age group we’ve not physically lived through this.

So we have this level of fear and we are observing this level of fear and that kind of behaviour in shopping centres. But if you have a child with you this is their time to shape how to behave when there is an extreme circumstance like this.

When the child grows up and it’s their turn to act in a similar way, which way will they act in?

If you’re just looking at it from a birds eye view you’re going to believe that they’re going to act in the way that let me take four and leave one or let me take five and leave nothing for the next person.

Would you agree with that in terms of modelling for children?

Yeah kids do model and that’s the challenge we’ve got now, you’re spot on. I had a long conversation with my mum and she was talking about when they went through the war and when everything was rationed, so she just naturally always been like that. If you went to my mums house you’d laugh because she has a stockpile of stuff and when there is some sort of sale on she will just naturally buy. And she is 70, she’s always been like that right from the early days. She’s always seemed to have bought a bit more than she needed, she sits on it and stockpiles it. If it’s a bit of a tough period she just eats off, it uses it.

When we talked about loo roll she was laughing as she’s got probably too much loo roll. She’s got tinned food, tinned food back in my mums day was, oh my gosh we’ve got a tin of spam we’re going to make it last for a week.

It’s a philosophy of an older generation older than my generation, whereas today everything is about instant. People are buying now not thinking about protecting the people around them and it does worry me and in the sense that it worries me what we are teaching our kids, because this is a significant emotional event.

If you work with anybody in the world of psychology, a significant emotional event is something that happens bang, it can be positive or negative, and it can leave a scar or it can leave a healing feeling and at the moment I think we’re in that place of scar. So even the Facebook lives online I did recently is how do we talk about this around our kids in the right way so we don’t leave that scar. But it’s also how we behave.

Fortunately, no kids in that scene that I saw but I’m damn sure if it had been a different time of the day in the evening, after kids are back out or at the weekend and the kids are the and the parent would have acted like that.

That’s now left the kids with a belief system that hey if there is a little bit on the shelf and somebody else needs it it’s okay to just take it and run, because that becomes their behaviour and no doubt the person that did that to the elderly couple probably modelled that from someone else. Maybe their parents I don’t know.

In contrast a village near us which you know well because we met them before, I’m not going to name the village as I don’t think that it’s appropriate to do so, unless you say name it. But basically there was a community where there’s a lot of people who are holistic healers, there are three organic farms as you know. There are about three or four organic shops lots of natural homeopaths and the community, there is very much a community there’s a lot of farming that goes on.

People are for one of a better word, and I think it’s the right word are more emotionally developed meaning there is a much higher level of consciousness, they don’t get fazed by a lot of the media hype that goes on.

In fact there is not a big culture around digital devices etcetera. So I drive back through the village which is close to where we live it’s about a mile away, half a mile away and in fact one of the organic places is right opposite us.

I go into the shop and I’m thinking let me see if there is any toilet roll or kitchen roll there because I just want to grab one pack. I walk upstairs and literally on the shelf and I think this is incredibly synchronistic there’s two large jumbo packs of kitchen roll.

I looked at it and there was a lady just in front of me as I walk up and by the way, this shop there is food on the shelves. This shop has bread on the shelves there’s lots of different things like green vegetables and tinned foods and it is all organic, etcetera. I’ve just come away from a major supermarket empty shelves, I go here and there is stuff there.

Don’t get me wrong there is stuff that is a lot less than before, and some of it is empty, but I would say 75% has been depleted, but not stripped bare and I walk up and there’s two jumbo rolls of kitchen roll there and this lady looked around and she said, “are you after one of these?” I said if possible and she does, “I’ll take one and you take one.”

There was no rush, no desperation, she actually handed it to me. As I went down to the queue there was another three other people all with one of those rolls each. I was going to take a picture of it and post it on social media. The two contrasts, completely different.

And these are people with kids, there are younger people there, I saw an elderly lady in there and this man was helping literally he had gone in with one of his kids who was very young, like a baby. Just in one of these straps and he is there and this lady was trying to reach up to get some vegetables and things. He said what are you after? She said some kale and he pulled down the kale and then she said also is it possible to help me with some butter, he took her across and her got some butter before even looking after himself completely.

That’s the difference between this level of consciousness and saying okay, we’ve got to look after everybody else. You’ve got two contrasts, a guy there with a child helping a lady who is probably 65, 70 years of age. That’s the contrast I saw today two totally different types of behaviour.

That’s fascinating and I think it’s important not to mention the name because if you’re listening at home or you want to share this podcast message with other people who you feel need this message, then for them it’s like actually we don’t want to tag a location, a type of culture, type of person to this event because actually this should be the behaviour period.

That’s why I think it’s important not to name this scenario because it’s very easy for people to say, it’s okay for that place, it’s okay for those kinds of people, and that kind of culture.

I don’t want somebody to tag an association with them and say it’s okay for them because actually it’s not. The scenarios are the same. We are all the same people essentially we’re just behaving in different ways.

Actually someone might go where is the town?They’ve got loo roll let me leg it down there.

Yeah exactly and then strip that shop.

But no I think you’re right, ultimately it comes down to a human behaviour and that is one of the messages I want to get across today is starting to reflect differently on how we react to the situation that’s around us.

I think from my perspective it’s interesting and its quite hard to pinpoint what it’s like for my generation at this time. I think there’ll be a few theories flying around, I think one of the challenges in addition to panic because no doubt there’s panic amongst my generation.

Because number one we haven’t been through it again, but I think the other thing I want to add to your topic and it will be interesting to hear your thoughts is my generation generally has a bit of a missed trust with the system. Mistrust with hierarchy of power.

My biggest worry is that my generation are going to get instructions and we’re just not going to listen to those instructions. I.e. don’t clear the shopping centres, i.e. stay self-isolated or whatever the instructions from the government or from the highest authority of our nation, we’re just not going to listen.

We are just going to be blasé about it because I don’t know what it is, but we just don’t trust experts. We dismiss experts, especially in the realm of politicians and we’ve got a bit of a distrust for them.

I think that’s my biggest worry that there are going to be some instructions, but they’re going to be communicated, so these are going to come from medical experts but they’re going to be communicated via political channels and my generation are going to say we don’t trust this party. We don’t trust this politician so they do not know what they’re talking about we are going to carry on as normal.

I’m starting to see some of that float around on social media, which is my worry for my generation.

So what do you think that’s leading to?
What sort of behaviour do you believe that’s going to lead to because I’m inclined to agree with you, and I see it I guess through a lot of personal development and wealth seminars that we run because there is genuinely this anger, frustration, and kick back against the system.

But in this situation, what do you think it’s going to lead to for millennials, for younger generations?

It can either go one or two ways because it is all about from my personal opinion it’s going to be about reinforcing the behaviour.

So if there’s a group of millennial’s and the news spreads that hey, we were totally fine during this time and we did exactly what we wanted. The next time something like this happens, which it will we’re just going to do what we want and that’s going to cause a problem for the greater population. So that’s the whole challenge with following an experts advice in times like this where we all have to stick together ultimately.

I think that level of mistrust is just going to cause a rebellious behaviour where we say, I don’t really care what I’ve been told to do, I’m going to do what I want to do anyway so as an example, simple example might be self-isolation“not interested I’m going to head out and carry on my life as normal and not listen to the advice.”

Yeah, I am inclined to agree with you. For the younger ones listening it’s a tough time for you, I would say start taking a slightly different approach to how you look at the world in the sense of ask yourself a deeper question, who around me can I contribute towards?
Who can I help within the community I’m in at the moment?
Are there people I can bring that youth, that dynamic energy to?
My insights, my wisdom, my thoughts, my feelings, my passion and how can I bring that in and help the smaller or larger community around me, so it’s not so much about self-focus which I think all of us have to be mindful of, even myself, my kids but is there something just a little bit more emotionally elevated that I could do?

It could be your own family, it could be reaching out to people you’ve lost touch with,close family members that you might have distanced from. But equally if you’re living in an area where you know there are elderly people just that little bit more focus on helping somebody else often shifts your rebelliousness.

One of the easiest ways to stop someone rebelling so much is to give them something more contributory to do, because the rebellion is more about, “hey you’re challenging me, you’re challenging my beliefs, you’re challenging my passion, my youth.” Whereas if you then shift the focus towards contributing to somebody beyond yourself, it becomes less about you and it becomes more about others.

I know it sounds a little bit like, yeah but Ro everyone’s in a tough place right now. But even if it’s one gesture towards a neighbour it just, especially elderly people because it might give the younger people a slightly different sense of perspective on where those people have been and maybe you take some learning from it. I’m just throwing it out there, I wasn’t going to say that in this podcast, but that’s my thoughts on it.

I love that because when we started the podcast we said right now the large and this is not saying there’s not people within every category we’re speaking about are doing amazing things because they are, but it’s a case of saying we started talking about we’re currently in an area of security driven, survival mode.
Whereas doing what you just said there Ro starts to tap into those Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, the higher part of the triangle, the self-worth, the part where we’re giving and receiving that boost of that was an amazing experience because I gave.

I think working through that we can then tap into it outside of our work.

That feeling of and doing something of value outside of our workplace, outside of our business place because we’re doing it through the community. I think that is great.

At this time Ro do you think it’s a good time now let’s leave the listeners with, and it’s going to be hopefully the longer part of the episode, which is a structure which we can leave them with so they can tap into and say actually, let me just select that.

Let me add that to what’s happening right now because right now the biggest challenge is that we are going to be in lockdown, we are going to have to self-isolate. That news has come in already, so we are going to be spending time in an uncomfortable position or potentially doing stuff that we haven’t done before.

I was thinking of breaking this down.

You’ve got something which you put out into social media quite often, which is these five a day recipes these areas to focus on to become successful, and I was thinking if we just pull that a part and use those five areas and maybe we talk about one or two things.

Maybe one thing, each within each category that somebody can do specifically related to covid-19,self-isolation, this period of lockdown that we believe we are going into. Would that work and if yes, can you just let the listeners know what are those five things.

That is a great idea, so the concept of five a day emerged a few years back, and it’s an amalgamation of lots of different things over the years I’ve done in the different events and seminars and the Turning Point book.

But what I found was people saying what things can I do on a daily basis or weekly basis? You’ve heard of mind, body, soul well for me it was a bit broader than that.

The category is broken down into mind, body, self, relationships and money.

Mind being the conscious way that we show up as opposed to the selfish more internal, think of mind as the way you operate in the world when you are in the world and operating on a daily basis with time management, money management, communications, all those things that we consciously and practically do through our consciousness, through our mind.

Body is about fuelling your body the right way, deeding your body the right way, doing the right things to keep it healthy and vibrant.

Self now is delving down into who you are at the core of your identity, your purpose, your values, your beliefs. It’s working on the personal development side of you, as opposed to the mind, which is more conscious in the world.

Relationships is everything from the relationship with you right through to the relationship with intimate family, friends and people outside you in your sphere of influence and beyond Money is everything from how you manage your money right through to how you are earn money, create money, deal with debt, but also create wealth as well.

So there’s the five categories and they actually encapsulate everything we do. You can think of a situation in your life, it will fall into one of those five categories.

It is a great idea to bring that into this moment Harms.

I think if we can maybe put some meat into these areas for now, in association with this current situation I think that’s a spot an idea, love it.

Fantastic and everything we are going to speak about going forward will be in the show notes at growthtribes.com/podcast. So if you’re listening to this and you’re taking a stroll, you’re cooking in the kitchen and you don’t have a notepad with you not to worry, this will be in the show notes.

If you kick this one off then I’ll jump off the back of yours with any ideas I have.

With mind remember this is about consciousness so I think one of the areas that people are struggling with at the moment is the fact that they are in turmoil.

A classic example was today we woke up and the kids are at home and I’ve got a refurbishment going on in our house at the moment. I’ve got my PA messaging me to say there’s a bunch of mail, there might be some letters there that you need to have a look at.

Of course they’re in the office and I haven’t got to the office and I got a message from one of the people we owe some money to who’s a builder that said, “I have sent an invoice through did you get it? Will it be possible to pay before the end the week?”

There is a whole bunch of things going on and you and I wanted to do a podcast and we’ve got lockdown going on so I’ve got to go do some shopping. Now on a normal day that time management is fairly clearly marked for me. I got this whole process of how I would do it, but now I’ve got to look at the Maslow’s thing.
So Maslow’s like survival and I’m not waking up in the morning going, right what’s the triangle would do I do first?
Do I do the letters for my PA? Do I do the gentleman that needs his invoice clearing by the end of the week, what do I do first?

I think, okay, kids, from a time management perspective I’ve got to look after the kids first and the supermarket are about to open. If I wait till about 12 probably going to be empty, let me go there first.

So for a lot of people the management of time is really poor when they’re in survival mode. Because survival mode is like let’s panic and do everything.

Two things to consider here, one is if you broke the day down what do you need to do first?
What’s most important?
What’s the least important and organise your day accordingly.

Because if we’re going into lockdown or if you’re in lockdown at the moment, you’re going to be at home and for a lot of people the day gets completely disbanded. It just dissipates and I used to do a lot of work probably about five, seven, eight, nine, 10 years ago I did some voluntary work with people that were unemployed and helping them create a mindset that got them back into employment.

I said what’s your biggest challenges and they said the minuet we got unemployed initially there was fear, panic and then there was I’m struggling to get a job and then they became indifference and it became apathy.

Now I’m just going through the process because I remember it so often.

The apathy is “TV, sitting at home, don’t feel my sense of worth is being valued, I have worked all these years and nobody wants me. I feel frustrated and being at home means to I don’t have to go do anything so switch the TV on.”

I said okay what happens next, “I start watching these regular tv programmes, soap operas.” And now Netflix is around it wasn’t really back in the early days, but now Netflix and prime TV you’ve got sky etcetera. I found people would literally switch the TV on at 9 o’clock in the morning and when I got to do coaching with them I said what have you been up to? They said, “I’ve just watched TV Dr Ro.”

It’s like okay, that has to stop as it just consumes people.

I call it the unemployment rut and it’s when people got into a rut because they weren’t being proactive. They weren’t doing something with their time in a constructive way. They were just being fed, fed, fed and that’s the worry I’ve got for the people going into this zone at the moment. “Great I’ve got time off work. I know what I’ll do let’s switch off and watch TV for a while.”

That’s okay for a short dose but it’s bloody addictive, because it’s feeding your needs, you don’t have to do anything.You’re watching something that is maybe about the world that is worse than you and it just feeds that need for wanting to have time filled.

The first thing is manage your time wisely, start to use it to learn. Maybe you allocate an hour of the day to learn or two hours of the day to learn and an hour of the day to exercise, etcetera. Spend time with your kids and then, yes, have some switch of time.

But don’t make it a predominant focus.

Time management Harms I think is a really important thing because most people’s time is managed for them because they are going into a work environment where they have to do certain things because that’s what’s required of them, as opposed to now they have to manage their time.

Does that make sense?

That makes complete sense and you’ve got an incredible series of that called time management in the Seekardo vault. I’ll make sure to put that on the show notes as well.

This ties nicely into my point which I want to talk about under the category of mind which is, you as a person because we are constantly pulled and pushed by the day and we normally have a massively full schedule.

Every day is a full schedule whether it’s work, with the kids, down time, the cooking and all the stuff that happens within the day especially if you’re a business owner, there’s no day is exactly the same.

So now I think we have a natural opportunity whether it was forced upon us, or whether it has occurred naturally is the debate, we have now chance to be present with ourselves and take some time to lock off to use the word appropriately, but no phones.

Have no access to the news for a while, no social media, no screens and even no music unless that helps you be present with yourself. And simply just be because how often are we as a population in a process where, hey guys spend two weeks at home, no work or you know whether there is less work to do, because everything interconnected is now slowing down, we now have that chance.

I think observe off the back of that observe and this is something I took away when I did my 10-day silent meditation retreat Ro, is what kind of thoughts are going on in your head?
Are they naturally positive?
Are they naturally negative?
Is there anybody you’re thinking about during that time?
Do you need to reach out to them and like you said, connect with them.

What I love naturally is when you’re in that state of just being with your own mind is do you find your thoughts take you into the past, or are you starting to worry about the future now?
Are you recalling pleasant memories from the past or are you thinking oh my goodness, what’s going to happen in the next two weeks?
What’s going to happen in a month?

I think at this stage without going too deep into it just observe it, spend that time with yourself without the distractions going on in your own home and just take some time to be present with yourself.

I think that’s a nice alternative to the craziness that happens out there. Whether it’s meditation, mindfulness it’s up to you how you want to define it but I think that’s a nice simple process to go through.

I agree and actually that sort of leads into the other area. Remember with mind, it’s about what you’re doing on an outward perspective, it’s what you’re doing in the world.

We talked about time management and you’re talking about present there as well, very important. The other thing is network actually so obviously if we are expecting a lockdown, you’re in your own home, you’re with your family a lot of people have been so pulled into this world of negativity that it creates frustration and the communication that happens around people is quite negative.

So if you’re looking at your own network think about who do you know that’s in a positive place. Maybe you’ve got a WhatsApp group with very positive minded people, maybe you’re in a tribe like we have with Seekardo.

Yes, they subscribe on a monthly basis, but they communicate they get access to lots of positive information and there’s nothing really in that community that is negatively driven. Unlikely you’re going to be able to meet people, so it needs to be Skype calls, it needs to be supportive groups, but think about the network of people that are around you. And who could you talk to who is actually genuinely emotionally developed to a different level and at the same time is not in a place of panic, but in a place of proactivity.

I think that’s another big thing to consider in this particular area Harms.

Yeah, and I’m in a Whats App group with a unique set property investors who are fantastic.The moment this instigated we all asked ourselves the question, yes, we’re affected but how can we help those others in the community and I think on a daily basis almost an hourly basis we are dropping solutions in there. And there’s very little negativity.

So the power of your network whether it’s virtual, online is extremely, extremely important at this time.

If you define body for us then we can dive into that.

With body what we are talking about is really two things.

What you feed your body and how we can nurture that, this amazing temple that we have, and it’s been a passion of mine for many years which is why it’s important we include it in here. Don’t just think of it as the physical exercise the running, the walking, going to the gym, aerobics, yoga and Pilates whatever it is that you believe that the body about.

The body is also about how we nutritionally keep it safe. How we protect it. So what we drink and what we feed it with and that’s essentially what the body is.

Do you want me to throw a few suggestions or do you want to start?

I’ll start because you’ve been talking about the subject body for years in your seminars, you had a health seminar as well, where you had people green juicing and all these phenomenal things. So this is not a new thing to you.

Whereas, let’s assume that the listener hasn’t necessarily been doing all of these things consistently and many of our listeners do, but let’s start from some simplistic solutions for people so it doesn’t become so overwhelming.

I was going to start with the fact that I think just briefly research, research around the topic of the immune system and how to keep it up to scratch I guess is really the answer here because, this should ideally be happening on a regular basis regardless if there is a virus globally. It should just be a thing that we’re always conscious of.

If you can talk into the space of the immune system because that’s currently a hot topic at the moment that would be amazing.

Yeah, I’m mindful of us giving advice and I know there’s some sensitivity about this out in the public space at the moment. There are people saying X, Y, and Z and certain things are being said are literally being taken literally, and I think there are people selling products online that are making sorts of claims.

I’m mindful of that but if we think of it and I talked about it in a live just recently, think of the immune system as this brick wall between you and the outside world. If somebody is attacking you, then the brick wall is your immune system and I know it’s a simplistic way of looking at it, but actually if you look at it like that, every brick that you put into the wall, builds up the wall, the immune system. Everything you do that knocks a brick off reduces the immune system and there is a point where the enemy that is attacking you and your family if the brick wall is low enough, they can get over that brick wall.

That is essentially how our immune system works in a very, very, very simplistic manner. How do we build that brick wall? My personal belief is putting food and liquids into it that actually help it grow to build immunity.

For example, there’s pretty much a lot of evidential proof now to suggest that if you have sugar in the body, processed foods in the body it lowers the immune system, attacks immune system. There’s a thing called acidification of the blood, which is where if you have too much sugar your blood acidifies to a point, in fact, I have seen my blood under the microscope. I think you’ve done the same thing.

Yes.

Blood microscopy and blood analysis where you can look at the quality of the blood and the cells. In fact if anybody wants to look this up online, you can actually look up live blood analysis on YouTube there are videos of this and you can see these lovely round healthy cells for somebody that’s drinking good quality water, eating live food, staying off sugar staying, off alcohol, staying off processed food, so the blood is clean and clear.

It’s lovely to see and you can see these circular round blood cells that are actually separated from each other and they’re flowing freely.

However, if somebody eats and by freely what I mean is they’re delivering nutrients to the body. They are oxygenating the body and the immune system is saying, great I feel good and the exchange between the lymphatic system and the blood system is working because the lymph system doesn’t actually have its own pumping mechanism.

You pump by movement, but the toxins build up in the lymph system need to be excreted out through urine and poo. So if you’re actually not looking after the body the lymphatic system can build up and this is where you can get spots around the lymph nodes, or toxin building up and they’re not moving etcetera.

So what you can eat affects the whole system, the lymphatic system and the blood system. There are probably examples of this online, I remember looking at this a few years ago and we’ve seen it live in front of an audience, we’ve done these tests. Somebody eats something very sugary or processed and then goes for a live blood test the blood actually changes, the cells change shape.

You might remember this from your test but they’re not circular and if coupled to that they’re dehydrated, drunk or eating things that have caused the body to be dehydrated, suck that moisture out the body, the cells they stick together.
Did you see this?
Globulation of blood cells and that’s when you are not hydrated and you’re not oxygenated.

Of course, if the blood cells stick together they can’t move freely, which means the immune system starts to go low because it can’t get out and deliver what it needs to deliver. I’m trying to be simplistically scientific, is this making sense?

That does make sense and how I know that the general population again, this is not targeting at you personally the listener, but when we went to the shopping centre very recently, just for our normal weekly shop there was plenty of fresh greens, fresh vegetables and of course, the caveat is when do they stock the shelves.

I think it’s quite an interesting observation, fresh greens, fresh vegetables, lots of items with vitamin C and antioxidants in them, were all freshly readily available. Yes, slightly depleted but available. The tins, the things with very little nutritional benefit to your immune system was all gone completely, the shelves were empty, but the veg was there.

My wife and I were just intrigued because we had a full weekly shop and with all the typical greens and immunity strengthening foods that were there, but everything else was gone.

That is quite an interesting observation in the sense that when we are fighting a virus our priority should be to stock up on the greens, antioxidant, vitamins C punching power with these foods that have incredible nutrition in them versus, all this other stuff which people are buying on the stock basis, which is fascinating.

Yeah, I saw a guy with two big packs of Coke with his kid and then when I walked passed the water, that the bottled water area there was loads still there. People are just like kids are going to be at home what can I give them to keep them happy. I’m going to cola, a soda drink I’m not going to put a brand on this.

So it was bottles of soda drinks and things like that. Here we are now we’ve got opportunity as a collective culture, what if you spent the next couple weeks looking into this?

What if you just spent an evening looking at live blood analysis on YouTube to see what it looks like and see the impact between somebody eating processed sugary food and look what it does to their blood, versus somebody that’s actually hydrating properly.

I think that’s the first thing is, is just starting to understand how the immune system works. Anything we can do to eat that allows us, and if you asked me what we do that’s fine, I’m not going to give advice but you can say what do you do Ro, that’s a different question. And if you want to do that in this section I’m happy to do that Harms.

I think, let’s leave that for listeners to follow you on Facebook and Instagram, where you share some of these thoughts anyway.

I think that’s a good time because actually in the last week leading up to all the news that has been happening you’ve been sharing some of these great messages saying, okay, this is the kind of stuff that we do this is the way we send a message to children, these are the kind of things I eat, these are the supplements I take. You do it in a respective way where sometimes it’s not about the brand that you’re talking about, it’s more to do with why that’s important, why this particular supplement is important.

I think let’s leave that for the live because I’m conscious that people listening to this I think the focus for them should be to research to go and learn about this.

Go and input the fact that how do I strengthen my immune system, this brick wall how do I make it as strong as possible, versus having fizzy drinks, which is one of the components that will tear that wall to pieces. I think let’s leave them with that.

Whilst we are on it can I do a plug for the Seekardo right because in the Seekardo community inside the vault there, if anyone listening to this is actually a Seekardo member there is actually a health series there.

We have had some really good feedback on that series and it’s me actually going into a lot more in terms of the scientific side of it and just some of the things I do on a habitual basis and have done for many years now, so if it’s okay maybe they can have a look at that instead.

That’s fantastic, because for most of these there is actually a really comprehensive video series. So for each section if somebody is interested they can go check out the video series, because apart of their self-isolation could be number one I want to learn how to manage my time now I’ve got a whole day free.

Number two, I need to understand more about the health because actually I’ve taken it for granted and I’ve just followed basic level information let me actually learn about this, so when something like this happens again me, my family’s immune system is strong and we have the confidence that we can fight whatever this is coming to attack us.

If you describe self again we can then talk into that subject.

Self is different to mind and a lot of people confuse the two.

Mind is how we are consciously being in the world whereas self is the internal part of who we are. So if you want to simplify it, it’s your core, your identity and your identity comes down to essentially your beliefs, you spirituality, who you are as a person on a spiritual level. Also, your value system and your sense of purpose in life as well. So it’s much more meaningful it’s deep but also dealing with fears and all those different areas that exist on an internal level, whereas the mind is more about consciously how we exist and operate outside in the outside world.

There is a difference between the two and inside here this is the area I love to play because if we get this right often it changes how we operate in the outside world, both with other people, with our relationships, how we manage our money, etcetera. So if you asked me which of these is the most important I think most singularly this is without a doubt the most important.

Great, let me talk about especially from my generation I’ll start talking about it and then if you jump in with any observations you have from yourself, as I imagine yours will be extremely powerful as you’re saying this, if you’re listening at home, self, self, self, start to prioritise that.

I want to start talking about I guess it’s my generation because your generation may not have felt the same experience as such. Whereas my generation, I feel are extremely comfortable. We have got almost used to or expectant that we have the ability to get things instantly.

Whether that’s results, whether that’s food takeaways, whether that’s the ability to take a pill and have six pack abs, whatever that is we expect instant gratification for whatever we’re doing.

I found that to break this pattern, we sometimes have to put ourselves in uncomfortable positions.

Ro you’re aware I lived in a small village up north where the nearest takeaway was quite a distance away. There was only one kind of takeaway that delivered to us. It was quite a drive to get to the shopping centre, so I felt everything I got used to and uncomfortable with was suddenly broken and after two months of being uncomfortable I became comfortable with that uncomfort, if that make sense.

What I encourage people to do is actively seek out being uncomfortable.

So rather than stockpiling all of our creature comforts we have in the world that we are used to having let’s try something different. Why don’t we simplify our menu for the week. Why don’t we, instead of wearing a different outfit every single day simplify the kind of clothes we wear and where I first learned about this Rowas a part of this whole Stoic philosophy study.

Which is really cool to go explore because they encourage you to actively go and do things that are out of the norm that you wouldn’t typically be very comfortable with, so I just actively get uncomfortable. I think practising that we are at an opportune time where we can practice that. What I’m saying is rather than go and try to hoard and try to stay in the normality we have to face the situation that this is not a normal situation. So we have to adapt and by adapting we have to simplify our life slightly.

I think that’s going to be very tricky for my generation because if they switched off certain things like food deliveries, there are certain companies out there which for safety reasons, which is completely fair and accurate are saying we are not currently servicing. Amazon are saying we are only delivering essentials, shopping centres are now overwhelmed.

So now we are in a tricky situation for my generation that we are going to be uncomfortable, but I think the message I’m trying to say is embrace that. So we break the pattern of this expectation, does that make sense Ro?

Yeah, I totally agree. I think it’s a radical change in mindset and I don’t think it’s about just an age thing as well. I think it’s about a philosophy thinking beyond yourself. We are at the point of panic, confusion, and out of that comes clarity and some people will stick their heads down and work harder, others will stick their heads up and say change of direction and I think that is what it is about, moving out of that whole philosophy getting uncomfortable and learning to do that on a regular basis.

Absolutely, so what would you add to the self-section?

I think on a personal level, I think this is a chance to review which leads into what you’ve been saying actually. It’s time to review if you’re making notes great thing to remember, it’s time to review.

What I mean by that is what is the most important thing in your life right now? Not watching Netflix it’s not, great I’ve got a week off let’s do sod all, just chill out and relax like another holiday. Actually what if you just took a completely different view on this?

What if you said right from an emotionally developed perspective now we breathe. I’m under a forced opportunity to have a holiday here. This is literally, I’ve been given a two week, three week break normally I’ll be going out travelling, I have to stay at home let me allocate in these next seven, 10, 12, 14 days whatever it is, a certain number of hours per day to totally disengage from all the noise out there and start to ask some serious questions about who am I?
What do I stand for?
What do I believe?
What’s my sense of purpose?
What does this really mean for me as an individual looking ahead into the future?
How’s the landscape of my life going to look?

If everything gets back to quote on quote normality, nothing is ever going to be the same because now we’re going to live from a different place of experience. I think there’s going to be more fear around travelling to certain countries. I think there’s going to be slightly different behaviour patterns in groups, any signs of illness etc is going to make people nervous. And with that there’s going to come a change of how people do business, how they live.

The sense of security around jobs has changed and I’m trying to paint a picture here to say, stop, breathe, look at the landscape and say how do you want your landscape to be in the future. And it’s not you can necessarily change the overall global landscape but you can navigate through to a different, you might be heading towards a desert right now, but whilst at the top of the mountain instead of coming off the mountain and going right down the passageway and through the rocks, which leads out to the Sahara, what if we go left which goes out to the green meadows and the rivers and out to the estuary going out to the ocean over that side?

It is about re-navigating the future and that starts with you. That was a bit intense.

But you said this was one of the most important parts of these five components, these five elements to us as a human being as such. So yeah I think that was needed.

If you define for the listeners how this can link to what’s happening in the current scenario, but relationships can truly I believe be enhanced during this time.

By the way, whilst were on this I’m glad you’ve picked this up because it is a passion of mine and because it’s so passionate what the result of that was over the last few years is that each of these areas we’re talking about, there are actually video series on each of these inside our GrowthTribes vault.

So if you’re listening to this and you’re a member fantastic. You may not have looked through all of these yet, you may have been focusing on one area, it could be money for example. Or it could have beenpersonal development.

We’ve got 15 to 20 different video and audio series that are tucked in there and each one covers different areas. One is on relationships. There’s definitely one on self which is about self-evaluation, values, there is another one on beliefs, on purpose. Fill your boots up, go and have some fun and learn it’s a good opportunity to do that now.

That leads me to relationships, oh my gosh big subject.

Remember we’re talking about mind, body, self and last two before we wrap up are relationships and money.

Relationships meaning the relationship with you as a person, relationship with your immediate family so that’s your children, your partner husband, wife, parents and then we go outside of that to family and then we’ve got very close friends and then we’ve got friends and work colleagues. The radius increases as you go further away from yourself.

It’s learning to work on and be present in those relationships. There are a couple I thought about for this particular section.

If you’re a parent listening to this, I know you’re not Harms at the moment, but for those of you listening if you’re a parent, I think this is a great time to start educating your children in a way that will help them understand what’s happening in the world.

I talked about this in a recent post on Facebook live. I think a lot of parents aren’t quite sure how to explain this, or their kids are by default, getting information from social media through phones or through watching their parents on social media. They’re hearing things outside of their world.

Remember there is inner world and the outer world. The outside world is bringing the information to our kids and I think there’s a heaviness, a concern, fear. Younger kids really don’t know how to deal with it.

My daughter was asking questions about what if something happened to daddy, if he goes off and does speaking if he gets coronavirus,will he die mummy?

This is the conversation that young kids are having because they’re hearing death, destruction. We’ve got a politician in our country that just recently said be prepared to lose a lot of loved ones. These are statements I’m not sure are the healthiest statements to make in a public space where kids go, “ahh” and they start to panic.

We know Ro off the back of that, that when news, media, articles grab that, that is fuel for their media machine. They’re going to start pumping that message out this is what the leader of our country said, we need to expect to lose people. We expect to lose loved ones and that’s a pretty strong statement, regardless of how true it is, there can be ways it can be communicated better, especially to kids, I imagine.

Yeah and I think for children they just hear that and it becomes their reality and that’s the challenge we’ve got as parents is their reality is what we create for it and if we don’t certainly in the early years, if we don’t create the right reality for them or we give them exposure to other worlds which become their reality, they will just assume that to be the truth.

So we have to have a really strong set of values and communication tools to be able to explain to our children what’s going on. The whole idea of the brick wall is a nice one because kids understand that, you build the brick wall up it looks after your health if it comes down by eating the wrong things then things can get into attack them, harm them, harm their health.

Leave the children empowered. If they say what can we do daddy, mummy? Create a different space for them. Create a place where they feel comfortable to talk to you in an open way. Show them there is a way through this, show them how this is going to make the family stronger, better.

We had a family chat today about we’re all pulling together and daddy has gone off to get some food. Savannah was doing something for mum, Liv was running around saying can I help with the dishwashing and it’s just little things like this that the children feel this is an opportunity for us to come together, instead of everyone just disappears to a chair where they’re watching something on a phone or an iPad, etcetera.

And don’t get me wrong, I think that may have to happen because when children are in one space and there is not a lot for them to do, depending on how you’ve got your home set up they may have to be periods where they are doing that. But if that is the norm in the house where every wakes up, disappears into different parts of the house comes back for dinner, goes back after watching something comes back again in the evening for dinner. If they even do that. That’s not so much a pulling together.

So what can you do to build those relationships?

Make this an opportunity to create an even stronger bond between you and your kids, that will be a good way to look at it.

That’s fantastic and actually there’s not much for me to add to that because my thoughts were very similar Ro, which was again, to use the phrase lockdown sometime in the day for your kids, your loved ones, your partner.

I was guilty of this yesterday. I was flicking through the Facebook feed around the five, 6 o’clock mark to get the latest information and news on what’s happening so that we can ready our business and instead of spending 20 minutes on it and then stopping, I allowed that to spill over into the evening to the point where Geena my beautiful wife said, I thought this was our time. I was like oh shit, yeah, it was our time.

So I switched off the phone, so I encourage you to lockdown that time. Because often I was actually a culprit for this when I was growing up, in the teenage years I would just disappear completely, unconnected to the family. I think now is the time where you are all together again to take example of what you guys are doing in the household as well.

If some people you can’t access I think rather than a voice call certainly leverage a video call, which allows you to see that person face-to-face, interact via video call and say everything is good, this is what we’re up to, what are you up to?

I think that’s powerful. In addition to that Ro, tying into how to explain this to your kids I shared a fantastic video with you yesterday which I’ll put up in the show notes. A YouTube video of a teacher who puts black pepper into some water and says to the children, theses spots of black pepper are the virus that’s out there at the moment, kids does that make sense? They said yes.

They said right, put your fingerin to this bowl and of course the pepper would stick to their finger and they said this is how the virus gets to you. Then she said now coat your finger into some soap so they did that. Then they put their soapy finger into the same water with black pepper and like a science experiment, the pepper just darts away from the finger because it’s like anti soap, however that works chemically. She said now kids does that make sense on the way we can help to stop this is just simply wash your hands and all the kids are like yeah that makes sense.

I think, just trying to get creative with how we educate not only ourselves as adults as that was a big one for me, I said okay, that is simple and it’s never going to leave me now that lesson.

That’s brilliant, I want to show the kids that.

I’ll put that on the show notes and that is exactly why I set that because I saw your live talking about different ways we can explain this quite dramatic scene that is going on in the world to our children in a way that is not too dark. Anything else you want to add on relationships before we move into the final part which is the money.

I think the other thing is community so, we talked about children, the other thing is go broad now.

Let’s go outside of these two boundaries you talked about, let’s crossover the boundary now into the community.
Who can you help?
Is somebody locally to you, somebody you’ve seen around for many years, or somebody you know that is maybe more elderly possibly, physically challenged or emotionally challenged and needs some support.

We know of somebody just recently that lost his wife there are people in the community that may be just in a vulnerable place.

So yes, absolutely, look after our family keep them safe. If you have the capacity, if you have the emotional capacity as well as the time capacity or even the financial capacity to do it. Who around you could you just give some time to? Maybe somebody just needs help or carrying food backwards and forwards, delivering groceries, making sure the house is safe. I don’t know.

There is a fantastic lady that we both know I won’t say her name, but she knows who she is. She is campaigning currently because food banks are running completely dry, nobody is donating. She is saying whoever has food leave it on your doorstep I will come and collect it and deliver it to the food bank, because she has a capacity so that’s an example of what you’re speaking about here.

Yeah absolutely, I think that was the other area I wanted to cover. There’s a lot we can talk about on a personal level, personal relationships, but for now, bearing in mind time I think that’s a good tow, three things we’ve covered on relationships.

So money is, you might think of money as being what’s in your pocket, and it is but actually the concept of money in the five a day and the principle of money in this whole ingredient process, this recipe for success is money is everything from your debt.

How you manage your money, how much you earn, how you allocate that money, how you manage that money when it comes into the household. Your relationship with money and this is all to do with the outside world, as well as how you cash flow forecast in your household, but then how do you earn money and how do you create wealth.

It’s everything from the debt side of money right through to the extreme other end, which is managing extreme levels of wealth or attracting wealth into your world.

That’s the philosophy of the money subject and it integrates with everything else. In terms of what we can do in the current circumstances reviewing your finances I think is one of the biggest things at the moment.

I hear a lot of people talking about this, I had a conversation with a gentleman at a café yesterday. He said, “I think it has suddenly hit me the impact this is going to have on us.”I said sit down and look at your outgoings and what your incomings are. What have they been in the past? What will they be in the future do you think with the current situation? How long do you think this will last?Maybe assume eight weeks. How does that impact you on a business level?

But it’s the same thing in the family so a few tips here are take an evening to just open up your accounts and if you haven’t got a set of accounts, open up a spreadsheet. If you’re not good with spreadsheets just simply write down what are our main outgoings on a monthly basis, what does that equate to.

That’s unlikely to change massively because although you might be staying at home, you might not be eating out as much and although you’re at home, you might not be spending as much money on fuel for example.

So, what are your overall outgoing costs for the household and then projecting ahead for six, eight weeks you might want to go out to 12 what is going to be your overall cost of living over that period?

Now, on the basis that you might have a mortgage, you might be renting from the landlord, you might have loans out or credit cards out any type of borrowing. They are also costs, so what you have and you know this Harms because you’ve done this with me in the past, we have essential costs and non-essential costs.

Essential being, feeding yourself, looking after the kids, keeping the house warm, getting water everything you need to survive physically. Then you’ve got nonessentials which would be things like cable TV, subscriptions, money owed to credit cards, banks and loans. Although it is important isn’t necessarily essential for you to survive, so you could separate those and say can I reduce those temporarily.

For example in the United Kingdom the banks are talking about holiday periods where you don’t have to pay a mortgage for a month or two or three months, but then that gets added to mortgage in the future.

I would suggest maybe a phone call to your mortgage lender to see what the current situation is with the coronavirus situation at the moment, how long do they consider they can help you. So they might say, we are offering a holiday period and it is four months and it will be added to your mortgage. If you’ve got a landlord, find out what the landlord’s philosophy is at the moment.

We are landlords you and I Harm so each landlord is going to have a different approach to this. The banks and government are trying to enforce certain things to help both parties out both landlords and tenants. Those rules are evolving in front of us, but maybe if you’ve got a relationship with your landlord find out what the philosophy is from your landlord directly.

If you’ve got a loan out with the bank, credit card companies see if you can get a stay of execution. Explain the situation you are not working you’ve got no income coming in for the next two months can they help you out? Can they move that commitment back a couple of months and add it on so you have some slightly higher payments in the future.

That’s where being a part of a fantastic network within your business niche is critical because we’ve been sharing this, Ro you’ve sent a few things to me, I’ve shared things with you, I’ve got a group where we are actively, proactively doing this exactly what you’re talking about, so we can pre-empt whatever is going to happen.

Yes, I think that for now, from the money side is a really important step because remember when there is a lack of clarity, there is often confusion and confusion create fear and panic.

When you’ve got clarity, you might say, but Ro now I’ve got clarity I know exactly how bad I am at things, but at least you know.You can do something about it when you don’t know you’re managing uncertainties and uncertainties you can’t get solutions to because when somebody say, how can help you?I’m not exactly sure. If you say I need to reduce my mortgage payments by 50%, great let’s talk to the lender. Or I need to see if I can reduce the interest rate I’m paying on that loan, let me to talk to the bank. Would you reduce my loan for the next six months to help me out?

But now we’ve got clarity.Without clarity, you can’t make decisions, so clarity is power in this current marketplace.

Agree Ro and I think just to add to that, not to go too deep into it because I think right now it’s a case of reviewing the money systems you have in place and again, I’ll point people towards the money management series that Ro’s got in the Seekardo vault, which is incredible and we’ll will talk about this in detail.

I think one of the first things you get them to do is actually review and extract that data. If you need some guidance with that I would highly recommend that series. Then, in addition to that Ro rather than a practical thing they can do, I wanted more of a mental stimulation and maybe something they can journal around which is, really asking the question did I get complacent?

This applies to every single one of us, which is we have to typically own the money situation that we have in our life. If this was to happen again, which I do believe it will. What would we do differently?
What would my family do?
What would I do with my money differently?
Would I start to collect a war chest with a higher percentage in comparison to other things and that will make sense when you do the money management video series which talks about that.

I guess here Ro it is owning the situation as right now I imagine there’s going to be a percentage of people a small percentage who say, okay, this is great. This is one hell of a learning experience and I can go into review mode, I can go into a business forecasting mode, scenario mapping mode.

But there is also going to be a percentage of people who just blame and that’s really saying, I’m blaming coronavirus for this, I’m blaming the government for this, I’m blaming the airport authority for this, I’m blaming this country that country. Whatever the scenario is but blaming everybody apart from themselves.

I think we need to move away from that and treat this as one hell of an extreme learning curve so that when this does happen again, and there are actually rumours, certain very intelligent people who are forecasting that because of these outbreaks we are going to have to go into regular periods of isolation rather than okay, don’t worry guys this will happen in 10 years’ time. It may be once or twice a year that actually we do this so, how do we hedge against that going forward. What could I do differently?

I think this is more just firing questions at the listeners that they can write down and then just explore it with their own creative minds and tap into experts who may help provide guidance for that.

So, I think that’s all I have to add to the money section Ro, is there a way we can wrap this up?

I think we’ve covered a huge amount here in a short space of time and hopefully if you’re listening thinking there is a lot here, go back over this take some notes. And even if you just pick out the five areas pick maybe three areas you want to work on or spread it over the period of the next few weeks. But do something we’ve just chosen these because we think they’re very appropriate to the current situation. If we were to talk again in six to 12 months’ time there’d be different messages here.

I think all these are extremely important in the current climate where we stand at the moment.

To wrap it up just get access to people with the right mindset. Try and avoid victim conversations and try and talk to people more in a constructive way. Yes, we can’t avoid it if there’s a piece of news we’re going to talk about it.

For example, tonight in the UK we might get an announcement all roads closed tomorrow, or Saturday as I’m recording. There is going to be a reactive response to that which is okay, so what do we do next?

But equally, don’t forget that there’s a bigger picture you’re looking at the top of the mountain, which path do you take down the mountain?

One is going to be a rocky one talking to people in a negative way, one is going to be not necessarily less rocky but it’s a navigated path, twists and turns. You go through some trees and come out the side to a bit of a meadow over a river, it’s a bit rocky again, but at least you’re going in the right direction.

It’s about the mindset conversations, try and avoid victim mode listen to people in a positive mindset so that would be YouTube videos where there are people being constructive.

You can join us in the vault if you want to in the Seekardo to learn from people that are really in that space of emotional development. Help others if you can, in whatever capacity it is and above all else grow from this, don’t shrink from this.

I think that’s my final statement really.

Fantastic, I think that’s a great way to sum everything up and I think there’s been some underlying themes here, which is learn, grow and expand through times like this rather than contract.

Something which you also mentioned Ro which is once you’ve handled your internal situation, your family and your own four walls how can you help the greater community? Ask the question with all the fear and fear driven behaviour, what is the consequence of my action right now?

So, when you go and take four items when there’s only five left on the shelf, what is the consequence of that action? I think if we all take this approach, we can all start to behave in a sensible, rational manner as a community. There is you there handling yourself and also them, the wider world. I think there’s an underlying theme here, which is grow and then once you’ve grown, how can you help the others around you.

On that note Ro I think like you started the episode, which is we send our love and thoughts to your families and everybody affected by this. Whether it’s mildly, whether it’s severe the same love and thoughts go to everybody.

Continue I guess to trust the information that has been staggered out there into the public domain, stay safe, stay aware and I guess my final message is act for yourself, but also in the interest of all the others out there as a wider community.

So, from a special episode I guess in unprecedented times this is myself and Ro signing out and remember everything that we’ve spoken about today will be in the show notes and links to each of those video series, which will help you expand and grow through these times.

Myself and Ro signing out, we will see you on the next episode.