Episode 031 – Coming out of COVID, six steps to change, internal & external communication, re-value your life, relax your rules and more – Part 1

Harms: Hello, it’s Harms here and welcome to another episode of the Seekardo podcast.

Now the world appears to be going back to normal, albeit slowly, and the news pages now feature stories other than Covid-19. Globally there are protests creating change on an incredibly important topic out there, major sports are now back on the scene, with Liverpool being crowned the English Premier league champions. 

But the reality is that’s just the news, and these are global change events. 

Anchoring back to Covid-19 that was the real big scenario in 2020 to date, and the reality is, although there are some big news events it would have had a real impact on millions of people. 

In terms of families and health globally 489,000+ deaths and counting have been attributed, in terms of families and finances statistics in the UK say unemployment surged to 1.3 million people in the first quarter of 2020 and the reality of it is the effect of this will be very real in some households. 

The newspapers are talking about these global national statistics, but in households and in some people’s lives have had a massive impact. 

But whilst the government continues to publish the statistics I wanted to pull Ro into the conversation today and talk about the actual people being affected. 

How we can talk to those individuals and families who have been affected and I know Ro is a superstar on this topic. 

With that in mind we’re going to do it in the best way that we know how getting to the root of the problem, not focusing on news headlines, talking it through and giving you the listener a process you can use to get started with. 

I wanted to hammer home we at Seekardo, we understand the severity of what happened and is happening but the reality is much of it has also been out of our control, which has been even more frustrating. 

Start of the year 2020 Covid is not on the horizon, we set up goals within 2020 quarter one of the year, quarter two of the year and then all of a sudden, the intention is set, but because of Covid-19 these goals have just been smashed and obliterated and not in a good way. 

In the book Turning Point you talk about when something like this happens this can lead to loss of motivation, giving up on that original goal, frustration and then somebody is just left feeling lost and I wanted to bring this conversation to you Ro, because when a life shaking event happens to somebody or a group of people you are the person people reach out to. 

I know they do this privately and they do this through people, I know they come and attend your live events, so this is one-to-one or it’s a live event. 

The reason they come to you is because you have the skill set, the processes, the tools in order to empower them with transformational change. 

I know that’s your expertise and your passion and I saw it live and so did the Seekardo supporters where you were coaching an amazing gentleman called Richard. A live coaching session and you did exactly that life transformation in 45 minutes to an hour, it was incredible to watch. 

Ro with all this in mind, what do you think is the core of helping people transition out of this crazy scenario, crazy situation that we are in and have been in 2020?

Dr Ro: Great question and first of all thank you for introduction, although we’re close buddies and we share the stage together when we do a podcast, it is never quite as easy to introduce somebody in that way as we’re not bringing a guest in. 

In a way you’re bouncing off me, so it means a lot and really a great introduction. Thank you again for joining us on the podcast. 

Change is inevitable, but progress isn’t. What that means is that around us all the time there is change happening, but our progress as a human being, our evolution as a human being our development as a human being, is not inevitable. 

Even though there’s change happening, meaning that a lot of stuff like Covid can happen all around us, and then in this population we have globally for some people, nothing will progress in their lives. 

They’ll just continue, fumble along, they’ll complain about the world and have experiences that they blame other people for and they feel a victim or powerless as we heard just recently used by Ryan Pinnick. 

And they get frustrated and they blame change, but actually the opportunity is there when change happens. 

We can go through a way of turning that change into a chance to progress and to evolve.

Harms: Exactly we want to leave people knowing that there is a process to help them through this and although this seems way more severe than another form of change, the reality is, like you said change is inevitable.

Dr Ro: There is change happening everywhere but some change is more significant than others or more impactful on us than other changes. 

Neither myself nor Harminder want to take anything away from the situation that you are in where you may already be experiencing change irrespective of this experience of Covid-19. 

I know of people that were going through divorce before Covid-10 came along that has magnified the process. Other people have emotional challenges, health challenges, so I think what happens is when we experience something like 

Covid it brings together a culmination of lots of different things at one time, it turns our world upside down. 

Whereas some people a change might be moving house, somebody else might be a loss of a family member. 

Another person might loss of a job, another person might be an opportunity to have a new job. Another person might be a relationship breakup. Another person might be actually going into a new relationship but not sure if it’s going to work, these are all changes happening around us. 

Covid has thrown financial challenges on people relationship challenges, career challenges, emotional challenges, life emotional transformational changes. 

Somebody was possibly going to go through in 10 years’ time. 35-year-old may not go through that midlife crisis, all of a sudden that’s been compressed down and I’m hearing conversations, younger people now are asking the questions they would have asked 10 years from now. 

Because they’re observing older people having the whole world turned upside down, and they’re starting to say what if this happens again? I don’t want to be in that situation 10 years’ time. What can I do differently? 

So change is inevitable, but progress isn’t and how we tackle this is down to our emotional development. 

Over the years what I found is as I went through this experience myself I went and studied so many people, I went to seminars I read books, I went through different coaching programs and over the years, I kind of found stuff that worked and stuff that didn’t work. S

ame thing for you Harms at a young age.

You’re like a sponge, I’ve seen you absorb huge amounts of information over the last four, five, six years and out of that you kind of pull out what works for you and for me it was a process for transformation and it got to a point where it became second nature and anything I did with people, myself, and as you said recently on the Seekardo community with a gentleman. 

But it can be applied by anybody.

Harms: Ro another reason which almost supports why I wanted to have this conversation with you is just having been a part of your live events, having been a part of your transformational conversations with people and one of the things I noticed was people, maybe they don’t take times like this seriously. 

I would encourage listeners to really be conscious about what’s happening in this episode and take it seriously. 

Because you don’t want to be in a situation of sometimes when we do live events and we have a conversation with people we are talking about interacting with grown adults in their 30s, 50s, 60s, and what we find is.

Dr Ro: Well physically grown but emotionally, in some cases as you’ve seen still may be holding onto a seven-year-old belief system and it gets magnified by that environment.

Harms: And what happens is they are in their 40s, 50s, 60s, 70s, whatever, and making life decisions which should be so positive, almost a no-brainer decision, but they’re basing that decision on an event that happened to them decades ago. 

Maybe it was not their situation, it might have happened to their parents, so they make these decisions based on emotional things or situations that happened to them or their family in the past.

Dr Ro: Harms saw it live a year ago with a gentleman from our Seekardo community who for like 25, 30 years had locked up his communication. 

He’d been afraid to say things because he had been belittled or put down through verbal communication at some point in the past. 20 to 30 years of suppressing it so physically matured, emotionally mature in some ways, but blocks because of years ago.

Harms: What we don’t want to see is say for example my generation this is my biggest fear Ro and why I really think this should be taken seriously. 

Our generation who are 20, 30, 35 years old, when they are 50 years old they are making poor decisions or they’re scared to make an exciting decision for them and their family in 20 years’ time because all that’s happening in the back of their mind is, but remember when I lost my job because of Covid. 

Remember when I was sick for two weeks was because of Covid all these kind of situations will anchor back to this moment and I think if we can help people with a process Ro, I would be grateful because then my generation will be equipped with the tools or anybody listening from my age group will be equipped with the tools that they can use in 20 years’ time, so they’re not continuously blocked in their progression by what’s happening in these three months. 

It is three months in their whole life, but they could be making or shaping all of the decisions based on these three months.

Dr Ro: This is so true and actually you picked up on something that is a language that we use a lot in the world of transformation which is significant emotional event and I’m glad you spotted this as well, because actually when you’re in it, you don’t necessarily realise that’s what it is and sometimes it takes a very skilled coach to pick that apart go back to that point. 

These significant emotional events are what people spend thousands on psychiatric treatment or seeing the other phrase is going to see a shrink literally.

You and I have referred to this recently where people have gone to coaches who have dragged out the coaching process for 10, 12, 18 weeks and what a lot of that is going back and digging back into the significant emotional events that happened in the past, that create a set of beliefs, values and blocks that then become the person’s identity in the future. 

What Harms is saying is if we’re not careful this applies to us as adults listening to this, but if you’ve got youngsters who are old enough to listen to this certainly if they’re in the teens and early 20s is everything that’s happened these last three, four months. 

If we don’t understand the process now of how to deal with it is going to keep coming back and the significant emotional events will definitely leave emotional scars for people.

I used to do very specific private coach mentoring with people and I wouldn’t do it for a one or two sessions, they would want a year with me, so I charge 20, 25, £30,000 for a year, but a lot of it was focused on their finances and this is what they came to me for the finances and building of wealth. 

But when we went through the initial introduction before I decided if I wanted to work with them or not I’d go through a questionnaire. 

In the process of the questionnaire what came out was health, relationships, and emotional blocks, even though they wanted to work on money and finances and investments. 

I said, well, okay, but to get there we need to work on this and they would say it’s not a major problem. I’d say in our first session let me see if we can tackle that and my gosh tears, heavy volume, or high volume another word for that is arguments. 

Discussions between couples about everything coming out of the woodwork, so although they came to the table to try and fix their lives by working on the finances.

For example, there was one couple where he had been verbally abused by his father and he had become so meek in his belief system that whenever they went to build a business and attempted three businesses, he had always backed down. 

Not had the courage to speak up when he needed to with business partners. 

His wife was frustrated because he was making promises which he wasn’t keeping, he had got a belief system that he wasn’t worthy enough, and even the slight tonality in somebody else’s voice made him feel too small and he kept letting the business fail without realising. 

She was getting angry, so this had nothing to do with wealth creation. 

It was to do with his self-esteem, his belief and we had to pick it apart very quickly and that formed the first month of that year and when you pay that much money, you want to get results. So we had to get that right like straightening the tree first. 

Otherwise, if you try to grow the tree it would have gone off at an angle. 

My point is don’t think that you don’t have to deal with this stuff.

Harms: As a result of that, everything else lines up the tree grows strong and I think a lot of people miss that. 

They want the fruits of the tree without building a strong foundation and allowing the tree to grow. 

That’s a great point because that helps us now work towards what is that process? How should we approach today’s episode around what we want to talk about, which is why I’ve pulled you into this conversation.

Dr Ro: If we stop now anyone that’s got even the remotest level of awareness which you would do if you’re listening to a podcast like this, is probably processing going shit, I’ve put two and two together. 

There are things in my life right now where there is and I am dealing with it, literally on an hour by hour basis. 

But if you step back from that and ask yourself a big picture of your whole life, think about five or six different categories, health, relationships, money, business, aspirations, and purpose for those sorts of things. 

Where do you feel a sense of tension? 

Because if you’ve got a sense of tension, chances are that’s where you need to put the work in. 

What I want everybody to be aware of is that this session today is going to be a condensed version of we’d normally go through.

This applies anytime and Harms started the whole podcast with this. It applies any time. 

It could be if you had a job loss, if there’s been a death if you’ve experienced a divorce or some sort of significant emotional event anything at all. This process is a great check in, you don’t have to do in sequence. 

Once you’ve got to master it, you can jump in at any time to any area. I think if we apply it to Covid-19 today at least we can come back and revisit again in a future podcast.

Harms: What I’m hoping is and for my generation selfishly, but also for anybody listening is right now people feel hope, they feel courage, happiness, trust. 

They’re excited about the future, they’re motivated to get out of this slow period and just hit the road running they feel energised now they’ve had some rest, they feel focused and empowered. 

That’s my hope by the end of understanding the six-step process you’ll share with them to handle any kind of change. 

Rather than what people have been feeling right now through the conversation I’ve had with them, which is hopelessness, depression, maybe they’re living by themselves, fearful if they can’t get another job again. They feel sadness. There are genuine family issues that have happened. 

We understand that they feel lost, maybe they’ve been in a career for 15 years and the industry has now been shaken to its core. They feel untrusting of authorities, experts, politicians, maybe they’ve just fallen into apathy and laziness, they’re frustrated by the fact that these rules have been placed upon us, and we have no choice about them.

Or they spent 10 years, 20 years 30 in a career they feel like within an instant they’ve lost their job or they’ve been put on furlough and they feel directionless. The job was the identity. 

So my hope is they don’t feel the latter. 

The difference in the perception of those two scenarios is massive and the outcome for someone who falls in either those categories is massive as they go through this process. 

My hope is they leave with those positive feelings by the end of the episode or at least they feel like they can access them by understanding how to deal with change. 

Ro over to you to talk about these six steps of change.

Dr Ro: As you listen to it follow the process through first and you should naturally get a sense of where you should work on. 

If you are already familiar with quite a lot of personal development and some of these areas you say I’m good with that are great, then you might want to slide that part and go to other areas where you think you’re weaker. 

If you really want to do this thoroughly this is a great time to actually work top to bottom. Remember, this is something that can be done quickly or slowly, but the first-time round it’s generally going to take longer to do. 

The process is designed in such a way that most people have something happen to them and the reason the book got named the turning point was people saying I’ve had a huge turning point in my life. 

The more I looked into it the more I started to work on it with different people. I started to see that there are certain things they were doing that made this transformation after they’d gone through it. 

Most of us have to reinvent ourselves through something happening to us, but for a lot of the time if we could do it before that happened to us we might be able to avoid the problem. Avoid that bad relationship.

 Avoid being in the wrong job or the wrong business or the wrong business partnership or career. 

All these things, by the way, include financial status as well. How you manage your money. This process can be applied in the middle of a tornado, coming out of a tornado, which is what really is happening with Covid or any time before somethings going to happen to you. 

You might anticipate you’re going to lose your job, you might feel the relationship struggling a little bit, get on it now. Get it now, so that’s my caveat to start with. 

First things first. 

Older generation, younger generation listening to this be a silent witness. 

Be an observer of yourself. This is not going to work if you just dive in and try to do it, you’ve got to step out and observe yourself. 

You’ve got to be open to ask your husband or your wife, your boyfriend, girlfriend or someone you trust if you’re not sure about one of the things to talk about next maybe go out to someone and say, I’ve been trying to reflect on this area of my life. 

What do you think, what do you see about me in this area? 

Be a silent witness. Ideally, witness yourself, but if you can’t ask someone to help you with that.

Dr Ro: There is so much noise and Harms has tackled this several times in our previous podcasts, there is so much noise out there in social media. Harms gave some fundamental tips on how to tune that out or to tune that down. 

I’m talking about tuning out all the noise in such a way that you have the space to do it. You just don’t allow anything to come into this process because the minute you get distracted you will start to have a separate conversation with you about something else, which takes us to step one, step one is mastering your internal and your external language. 

There are six forms of communication and I’ve taken it from a large list down to six and in fact even closer down into two forms, which is internal and external. 

Essentially you’ve got internal communication which happens all the time, even while you’re listening to us right now. 

You will be having a conversation in your head with yourself, your unconscious mind and it’s that internal communication that ultimately manifests itself externally.

Internally you’ve had that conversation you structured certain sentences and certain thinking and then that comes out through your external communication. 

Internal communication can serve us, but it can also screw us up because if it’s negative, it’s riddled with negative beliefs, poor value system, a lot of emotional abuse it becomes so negative that you see it in people literally every other sentence is a victim state. 

Victim, meaning that they feel like the world in real terms, the world may have given them some really difficult situations. 

All of us have had them. 

People feel powerless from their circumstances, but it comes out through the language so you have internal communication, then you have external communication.

Harms: One tip which I found fascinating. 

Everybody understands internal communication logically in the sense that, yeah, there’s always this chat inside our heads, but if you want to really understand what your internal communication is I would encourage you to sit there for an hour and meditate. 

Be silent, no distractions and just sit there for an hour. 

The chatter and words that would fly around your mind will start to make you aware of what that internal chat is because sometimes we can’t see it because of all this external noise. 

30 minutes, 60 minutes, just sit there and just start to become aware of what that internal chatter is which will then identify if it is positive or is it negative.

Dr Ro: If you just take a pen and paper and apply that to what Harms is saying and write down every single thought, put a line down the middle of the page, positive and negative, and just capture it. 

You’ll start to see that conversation but it’s got to be natural you can’t sway it. 

We’ve got external, which is how the world hears us communicate to them. The next one is statements; another form of communication is statements. 

Statements can be made internally and externally and they are simply a reflection of a belief, so any time you say something that doesn’t have a question mark on the end of it, it means you’re making a statement.

A statement can only be made if it’s tied to a belief. 

If I say to you it’s a very hot day today, I believe it’s going to be a hot day today. It’s not a question, it’s me externally communicating from an internal communication statement about a belief and this is a game changer. 

Harms and I went for a bike ride last night while cycling round, he made an observation about the live coaching. 

It’s fascinating to watch because the first five, seven, eight, 10 minutes you were really quiet and he was just making statement after statement, but those statements Harms literally create a picture of his world. 

As a coach, we could see he was painting a picture for everyone, it was a statement about his beliefs about the world.

Harms: If you’re thinking what are statements that applied to me in Covid right now the statement is I lost my job because my boss was running the business poorly. 

That’s a destructive statement. There are positive ones as well.

Dr Ro: Statements work hand-in-hand with questions which is number four. 

Ultimately you’ve got to be in control of each one of these forms of communication. 

If you’re not, they are in control of you. If you’re not in control of your internal communication it’s like a weed and the thing about this is that if you took a garden and you looked at weeds coming up and you watered it with water, which are your thoughts effectively. 

The thoughts are reflected by an internal communication if you give enough water to the weeds they’re going to thrive. 

If we strip the weeds out and then we put something positive and then we water that changes. Your garden will return what you put into it. 

So if you put enough weeds in there it will return weeds. 

If you put enough good flowers, wild meadow grass. 

It will return that to you, so this internal communication goes hand-in-hand with the external communication which just happens to be then in two forms statements which is number three form or the fourth form of communication is questions. 

At which point you say is that true? 

There is a question. 

We only ever make statements or questions and questions come from a lack of clarity internally or something we see externally. 

We’re talking about internal conversations so am I worthy of this? Yeah I’m sure I’m worthy of this. Let me check with someone else. 

We look for an external, we ask questions to somebody else externally. 

Even that external statement to Harms about something I’m about to do if he’s remotely tuned into a person’s psyche he’ll know that that isn’t just a simple statement, that’s actually come from a lot of internal dialogue.

Which probably goes back to something in my past, maybe 10 years ago and all the internal has led to an external statement and it’s not a statement it’s a question. 

I’ve got more to the point where the internal dialogue has gone backwards and forwards. And finally I ask a question. 

That question can reveal a lot about who we are as a person inside or I make a statement to Harms and it’s the same thing.

Harms: Is it fair to say Ro that these statements and questions can both be applied to internal conversation and external? 

I can also ask myself a question to myself internally which nobody hears.

Dr Ro: Yes exactly. 

The beautiful thing about this is, and this is the whole point is that when we make a statement it’s primarily linked to our beliefs. If we can start to clean up our belief system and we can start to change the quality of the questions that we are asking internally as you just pointed out or externally to people around us. 

Imagine we’ve got a completely beautifully weeded garden and it’s just pure soil. What we place into that soil will now result in an output. 

The output could be weeds or it could be beautiful flowers and that comes down to the questions we ask ourselves. 

A good quality question represents a nice seed, poor quality question represents a weed and the same thing with our statement. 

Instead of saying to yourself, why can’t I lose weight? We ask a different question which might be, what can I do to enjoy the process of losing weight? 

Now that question then goes okay, what can I do to enjoy the process. I know I like to bike; I’ll call Harms to go for a bike ride every day and if I do that I’ll burn calories and lose weight. 

It’s the process of the quality of our questions and statements, then laying a different type of seed into the garden.

Harms: My wife and I when Covid-19 hit and, of course it affected our business, so when me and my beautiful wife Geena were in the office the first statement is this thing is real.

The government is now going to lock us down. 

That’s a statement. 

Once we had got that kind of what the hell is going on statements out the way the question very much turned to and to be fair I’ve gone through this again and again and again. 

It’s a lot easier for me, even in tricky situations, but the quality of the question here is critical at an early stage, so we were having this conversation a week into Covid being announced. 

The question was encouraged by you in terms of the quality question. What can we do as a family to best make use of this time if we’re going to be locked down for 12 weeks? 

That was the assumption that was happening, so we then asked that question to the business for health. The health meant running and bike riding. 

The business meant okay, what can we do to generate revenue in this short space of time? These were the statements and questions which were back and forth and what was really interesting I found was the statements started negatively and I can’t deny that. 

But as the quality of the questions got better the statement started to clean themselves up. It was the statements that had direction; the statements had purpose. 

The statements were like we now know what we are doing. This is great. 

The questions helped us clean up the statements.

Dr Ro: This is an older younger generation conversation, for those of you who are older if you’re listening to this thinking I’m too old for this stuff, anyone can go through this. 

I’ve worked with people up to 70, 80 years of age and older than that 90 but on average 60 to 80. 

There is a group that comes into our events that are emotionally developed enough to want to change. Please don’t assume that because you’ve got to a certain age you can’t apply this, any single human being if you want to can do this. 

Doesn’t matter if you’re 70 or 17 it’s still asking questions and still having internal communications, still making statements, and still having external communications. 

The only difference if you are 70, 50, 60 even a 40-year-old is that your weeds in your garden will have a thicker stem. The roots will be deeper; it’s going to take a lot more yanking out. 

A 17, 20-year-old, 25, 30-year-old those roots have not bedded in long enough. 

The older it gets, the deeper those roots get but they can be removed.

Harms: What is also really useful there is that if you remember, every garden gets weeds.

Dr Ro: Mine included. 

I was having statements of myself early on because a lot of this is about shocks. When something hits you hard there is always a natural knee-jerk reaction and that’s nearly always a shock reaction internal, external, so don’t beat yourself up and think we’re perfect because we’re not. 

I had the same conversation with myself but quickly we shifted the focus, but they will still be there. 

It’s okay to have them as long as you’ve got the tools to quickly change that focus.

Harms: The more you do this the easier it is to remove the weeds.

Dr Ro: I asked Harms a simple question, probably about four weeks back now, bear in mind that we are three months in and a lot of change has happened. You’ve done positive things on the business, et cetera my question was, how do you want to remember this period as a couple without children knowing that you’ve got a baby coming in about five- or six-weeks’ time.

How do you want this last period to be because it won’t be like the average person given birth two years ago you’d be out doing all these different things. 

But you’re locked in, and if you remember my only question was along the lines of what experiences do you want to remember? 

In addition to the great achievements you have in your business. 

What was your reaction to that question because it came although I’m a friend, it came from an older voice coaching question with a pre-frame. 

Please note, I’m saying this from a place of love, didn’t ask for anything back.

Harms: I think if we use the example of the garden I was spending 8 AM to 8 PM working on the business that’s creating weeds within the relationship, that’s creating weeds within this time I could spend with my wife. 

The first reaction, the gut feeling is if I don’t focus on the business and this is internal talk, if I don’t focus on the business, then there’s not going to be a business. 

That kind of internal talk was going on.

Dr Ro: I also placed a statement in there to say I’ve been there myself and it was a self-reflection, on a Saturday night having spent a lot of time with Harms that week and I thought I needed to share a personal message because I’ve been through as well. 

It’s not like some righteous message. 

It was just kind of 20 years down the line looking back, how do you want to remember these last six weeks.

Harms: The quality of the question allowed me to quickly sift through these negative statements probably thinking Ro it’s alright for you to say that there and all these kinds of things. 

That is a natural reaction, but these are my natural reactions that have nothing to do with what you are saying and I kept anchoring back to the quality of the question which is how do you want to look back and remember this time? 

That quality of question again cleaned up statements which was yeah actually how do I want to, and it’s up to me how I want to act on that, but that statement and question communication, then having the internal comms with myself and the external coms with you and then my wife and working how do we want to. 

Then it became a whole list of statements and then the next thing you know me, my wife and I are listing down all the amazing things we want to do within the next two, three months before the baby comes. 

And when we reviewed it last week fast forward two months we’ve done 90% of these things. The quality of the question, although sometimes we may not want to hear it actually cleans up the act.

Dr Ro: There’s a timeline process if I were coaching Harms and I would have taken him into the future, sat on a rocking chair and gone all the way back through literally, week by week. 

The week leading up to the birth describes a dream situation, he describes it, and then I’d ask the question is that what are you doing now? 

He might have gone yes, or actually no and the problem is, once you’ve gone through that it’s the first one off experience he’s going to have, his first child you can’t go back and change that. 

This is the beauty of having the ability to ask those questions before the event occurs.

Harms: That could be during Covid, that could be at any point that’s irrelevant to Covid we have to adapt our plans. 

I think what’s really powerful is the change against whatever situation is going on is going to be personal to you, anyway, for me, the big change was there’s a baby coming. 

Covid just happens to coincide with that. 

I think that is powerful because I think within somebody’s garden there are different patches.

I think that’s powerful and a very open, honest share there in those kinds of conversations which anchors back to the awareness which is it’s sometimes hard for you to be aware of yourself regardless of how emotionally developed you are. 

I know this process inside out now as well but I wasn’t aware enough so you came into the life of that moment and asked that question. 

Sometimes guys you have to go and reach out to people and say this is a scenario what’s your thoughts?

Dr Ro: The last two parts or forms of communication, we’ve gone through internal/external statements and questions.

Next one is desire. We basically communicate from two places. One is desire or from fear. We’re driven from pleasure or pain. 

If you’re going to do this properly, you’ve got to be absolutely clear that when you’re communicating you’re channelling internal/external, your statements and your questions and you want to decide where that communication is going to go. 

It channels through a place of desire which is basically about what you would like to achieve and even the way you language that needs to be changed as well. 

Are you communicating on a daily basis from a fear driven place or is it coming from a desire perspective and the difference would be this, I’m really looking forward to doing this. I can’t wait to experience this. I’m so excited to have this opportunity to do this. 

That’s a very different experience when somebody talks, I find myself doing this as well, I’ll check in and say did that come from a place of fear or from desire. 

Another word for fear is desperation, a quiet sense of urgency something like that is nearly always coming from that energetic space as opposed to I can’t wait to get this done over the next half an hour, completely different form of communication.

Harms: Now is a nice anchor to positive. 

Is it coming from a place of want, desire, love, purpose, or is it coming from this idea that if I do this what’s going to happen? 

Is the worst-case scenario going to happen? that’s another way to help you understand what is a positive statement and question and what is a negative statement or question.

You can also ask whatever’s going on, is this coming from a place of desire or from a place of fear? 

That’s another question you could attach to your final either internal or external talk.

Dr Ro: Just to wrap up this part of the language and communication for anyone listening my suggestion would be today as you come off the back of this is to start to look at the language of results. 

What I wrote in turning point was all about the directions and the direction of the communication you’re making, so to simplify what we’re talking about because there’s a lot to take in a short space of time. 

Doesn’t matter if you’re listening to this young person or older person you’re going to be making one or two things, statements, or questions. 

Over the next week start to track the type of statements that you are making and just be mindful of it. When you’re talking to somebody just tune into whether it’s a positive statement or negative. 

Don’t try and steer it at this stage because you are aware of it now even after the fact that we’re saying it, you may actually already start to steer your statements towards more a desired type of outcome than a fear driven one. 

I want you to be as natural as possible because only through this process that you’ll actually be clear on it. 

You’ve got to move towards statements that are not driven from a place of desperation, but for now just track it. If after two, three days, you’re becoming very clear in your mind about where that is you can now start to choose what direction you want to make those statements go in. 

I’ll read you a quote from the turning this is to do with shifting statements from negative to positive. An old statement might be, I need to make money. 

That’s it, a desperate one, as opposed to it will be fantastic when I develop my new business and receive more income. 

Another one might be, I need to have new experiences because my life is boring, as opposed to, I would love to experience and then… whatever that would be.

Harms: I love those examples. 

If this is the first time you’re listening to this you may not be aware of is this desire orientated, is this fear orientated, is this in the right direction that gets results? 

Where is it going?

Dr Ro: If you start asking yourself questions like why is this happening to me and why can’t I do this? 

That’s a negatively driven question, whereas if you just put the word how, just change the word why to a how, why can’t I get fitter as opposed to how can I find a way to get fit and have more fun? 

That would be enough.

Harms: Extremely powerful. 

One action from me is go sit down for 30 minutes in silence and just have a listen to the internal talk really simple one from me, as a go to anchoring back to right the start of what we described, which is mastering your internal and external language.

Dr Ro: That might be the best thing to do first. 

Then look at the statements and the questions that come out of that moment of silence and then having them reflected as Harms just talked about, then throughout the course of the next week any conversation that you have internally and externally just be mindful. 

Don’t beat yourself up, have a journal with you. 

Be mindful of that and you know what’s going to happen. 

You’ll start to notice it in everybody around you. Some people are loaded with positives and others negative.

Step two is re-valuing your life. 

Every single human being operates off a set of values. 

In my mind a value is just a feeling that you want to have in a specific area, meaning that if you want to feel healthier on a regular and consistent basis, that means you value health. If you want to feel more successful in your life in a specific area, then that means that you value success. 

If you want to feel more connected or loved in an area of your life, then you value love or connection with other people. 

So in other words I’m saying anything you want to feel a lot of on a consistent basis that means you have more value that has a greater sense of value. 

You can have all sorts of feelings and some feelings you’re going to want to experience more of than others, which means that there is a hierarchy of value attached to these values. 

For example I know Harms he values health very highly as do I. 

That would reflect in the way he lives, I live and anyone else for that matter, whereas someone else who doesn’t value health as much you would see them just pick up any food and eat that. 

Whereas somebody who values health more would be that little bit more selective about where they choose to get their food from. The level of value that you put on that value will affect the way you operate. 

It is the same thing with integrity. 

If you value integrity you’re going to operate in a very different way in your business. On a day-to-day basis our values define how we show up. 

If you can nail this one step in the process, everything changes and why is it appropriate to Covid and for any other situation is because when you go through change it stops us in our tracks, and it makes us ask questions, which is interesting because that’s the first step process. 

Those questions are nearly always linked to our values. 

If you’re a 55-year-old and you’ve gone through Covid and now you’re thinking about going back to work you might have a question, do I really want to keep going and spending all these hours doing this type of work or do I want to spend the next 10 years doing this? 

I want to experience more variety or I want to experience more excitement. 

That means that someone who is 55, who is going back after Covid now who has been in that same job for the last 20 years is asking questions like, I want to have more excitement, variety. I want challenges, which means they value that now more than they may have done for the last 10 years because the last 10 years they’ve got two kids going to university, high value mortgage. 

They’ve worked to provide security for the family, which means security and financial security has been a high value to them. 

But now, after Covid that isn’t enough, they’re asking serious questions which is, I want something different now. 

So suddenly the value of change, the value of variety and excitement has now moved up the hierarchy of values, so it’s become more prominent. It may be number three or number four, number five, whereas before it might be 15 because it didn’t mean a lot. Security was a greater value than variety.

Harms: It allows people to understand that with this pause comes this opportunity to re-evaluate and realign the values of your life, in the sense that the values will drive what you do. 

I think you made that super clear. 

Another way this also shows up, which is in relation to Covid which is either it will make you aware of but also make sure you don’t do this, which is started to do things out of desperation, which are not aligned with your values. 

What may happen because of the situation we’ve been put into is we might start to act in a way which is counterintuitive to our values, which is the complete opposite of what we believe in. 

For example, our finances may be hit so it means we are feeding the family on McDonald’s because it’s cheap and convenient or are we trying to get creative with another way of making sure the family stays healthy. 

As an example, putting cost aside as an example, you could still do a shop, a vegetable shop as such, which still aligns with your value of health. 

If you’re going to make a business decision, a career decision and you’re now in this opportunity, where maybe you’ve financially been okay, but you’ve been furloughed, or you’ve lost your job. 

Now you get this opportunity to now reapply for a career.

Do you do it based on I need money or do you do it based on what value is important to you? 

Is your value creativity and for decades you’ve been in the job, which is maybe engineering which I used to be in, which is not creative.

Dr Ro: What Harms is doing really well here is just bringing a different perspective.

Harms: We’re just trying to set the scene.

Which is again like if this were somebody’s personal scenario, you could quickly work through this process with them and they could be on the cusp of sometimes people come to it as simple as a challenge as, I’m about to embark on this business or this start-up with this new idea and I know the questions you ask before that, which is what are your values? 

If this business suddenly turns up and it does not serve the values that they just explained to you for example, my values are family. 

Okay, one thing you really picked up on me and my wife many years ago was okay Harms if one of your values is family, you’re about to start three different businesses, how much time are you going to be able to spend with your family? 

Then it’s like putting yourself into the future and realising this decision you’re about to make is going to make you miserable, because actually it doesn’t serve the values that you just defined. 

Extremely powerful, and I know I appreciate it’s quite difficult to understand that on the surface.

Dr Ro: The key thing is we’re trying to get you to stop and re-evaluate so that the process of re-evaluation of values is not to criticise those values but to be aware of what your core values are. 

An easy way to approach this for now is to take a piece of paper and to capture what you believe to be your core values may be. 

Be mindful one way to do it is to write down what you think they are versus what you want them to be and this is the challenge when I started doing the live process with people on turning point. 

You’ve got to start by writing down what values you believe you’ve been experiencing so far. With every value you’ve got a set of rules. I’ve got a list of like 20 or 30 different types of values and there are more that but let me give you some clues that might help you.

I’ll give you five examples of values in your life, and I discovered this through a combination of lots of personal development, observation of human beings, and working with people as well. 

Most of the time your top three to five values out of maybe 20 or 30 values you hold will literally be what you dominate and show up most of the time because that’s where you gravitate most. Health, creativity, joyfulness, wisdom, and integrity. 

These are things that you want to experience on a regular basis and things you place a lot of value on so they become values in your life. 

If someone said to me I value health and I said describe your typical day. 

I get up early and basically I go to work as quick as I possibly can, sort the kids out and I jump in the car and on the way to work I grab a coffee. I get to work normally. What happens is a lot going on so I grab a burger something quick and then that can give me fuel for the day. When I get home and if I can I’ll make a smoothie and eat. I used to run a lot and go to the gym five times a week and run because of my job at the moment and because I’m trying to get this new pay rise my boss said if I get this project done by the end of the year I’ll get a promotion which is brilliant. 

If I said to that person, you said health is one of your primary values. What else? 

Family and success. If they said to me health, family and success. 

Immediately anyone that has got any level of observation can see that persons putting their success as a value above everything else. 

What the family is getting is them at the end of the day when they’re knackered, they’re leaving early, coming back at 7 o’clock at night, then spending maybe a couple of hours with the kids at this time or the partner. 

But what has not been looked after is the health and if you think about it, they’re eating fast food squeezing stuff in not connecting with the food and actually fulfil the body’s need for nutrition and not fuel. 

Because fuel is not nutrition. 

You can eat a burger and chips and without doubt there’s fat there are definite carbohydrates there so you will get fuel, but you won’t get nutrition and if that’s done long enough, the body will start to suffer.

Harms:  Would you ask them to rank them? 

They would probably say to you based on the scenario is actually its family number one, health number two and success number three, but we really know actually what’s happening.

Dr Ro: What Harms is alluding to there is, first of all, what I’d normally do if I’m coaching is ask the question, describe your life. I’m literally sitting there and in my mind they’re living for success first, because when they get that pay rise what do you think the boss is going to be looking for the next year?

I want to see you perform; you get a new job. You get any title, all you want to do then is perform well. 

This story we tell our family is daddy will be able to spend more time with you once I’ve just proved myself in this new job, which by the way, has taken them a year of not looking after their health and spending time with the kids. 

That is now I’ve got to prove myself in this new job role. 

So for the next year I’m going to put in longer hours, I’m going to eat shit. If you just live by that and you’re not fuelling yourself, not giving nutrition. 

All these things year number two becomes two years of now trying to prove yourself and all of a sudden you go home and you open the door and you notice a dear John or dear Sarah message and the family’s gone. 

As the very promises you were making to your partner and your kids that’s just got to a point where they can’t deal with it. 

This is where we have to deal with it because people say you don’t understand I have to prove myself. Well, actually you made a promise to your wife, your husband, and your kids. 

They’ve put financial success above all these other things. 

For the younger generation it’s a tricky one because it’s not even about generations it’s about emotional development, but do you see the 20 to 30, 35-year-olds living by a set of values?

Do you see them defining values as a rule, do you think that’s happening at the moment? 

Or do you think they’re being tugged by another set of pools around them?

Harms: I think up honestly 99% people do not go through this exercise of defining what their values are, never mind re-evaluating the values often. 

I think that’s just across all scopes. 

I think my generation’s values are defined by the culture, defined by documentaries on Netflix, defined by what headlines are being pumped out by social media. I think their values are being defined by everything external but nothing internal, that’s my observation of my generation. 

When your generation says the values are different, of course, they’re different, because the culture and society, technologies are different, which is dictating their values.

Every so often you find a youngster or somebody of my generation, who appears as a youngster to them and the elder generation are saying this person is really wise for their age or this person seems emotionally developed or this person is 10 years older than they are. 

These people if you spot them they’re the people living their life by their own set of values and then they show up against those values. 

They don’t have this paradox where they say, yeah, I want to be super healthy and then they go to McDonald’s and next day, they’re not living this paradox, they know what their values are and most of the time nobody is perfect, but most of the time they’re doing their best to live by those values they believe in. 

I think that’s 1% honestly. I rarely see it. 

Everybody else is just following what everybody else says outside the popstars, celebrities, movie stars and music has a great influence and their values are then defined by those external influences.

Dr Ro: I think this is a good point and try not to take this as a criticism, it’s more an observation in the sense and it’s a question if I am doing it, then how can I change that. 

I think the point you’re trying to make, and in my generation it was more the big movie stars and TV stars. 

There wasn’t such easy access to literally instantaneous viewpoints from so many different people out there and it’s in our faces now, whereas people used to say values don’t change very much, because we were old school. It was passed on from our parents. There’s a lot more respect. 

There’s a lot more listening to the older generation and holding value on that. You and I were commenting on an interview with Dave Chappelle with Maya Angelou, who is an incredibly beautiful human being. 

I remember reading her poetry 20, 25 years ago, and her insights and wisdom, and she commented at the end of the interview that she wanted to talk to him because he is the inspirational voice for young black people and at the same time, he listens to older people. 

She said when people listen to other people you can tell that they’ve been brought up by a strong set of values to respect wisdom. She said, doesn’t mean to say he has to agree with everything we say. 

But he takes the time to listen to what we say and process it, that is old school values processing, whereas today people, and again I’m not criticising but what I see is people tend to change that viewpoint so quickly. 

The values aren’t rooted down like an oak tree into the ground, they are in our garden but they feel like a new grown tree, possibly a weed and there isn’t the same depth of those values. 

They don’t hold onto them; they are driven by external almost like bling type influence.

Harms: Something which was a massive cultural influence on what defined how people should behave in values, what values they should live by was Disney movies, Disney movies shape a generation. 

If you narrowed that down and say okay how females were portrayed in Disney movies back in the day and what does that mean for the values that they should live by. 

If they did not live by those values, they would be discredited in society. 

So some of the old school Disney movies maybe didn’t portray females in a healthy way or empower them with the right values and what I’ve loved is these collaborations with Pixar and Disney evolving as an organisational culture, you’ve got now these movies, like Moana, Frozen and every adult has seen them. 

Movies like Brave, Pocahontas were the original one and these values now are imparted on this generation and that’s how these shifts in culture start to occur. Again, just talking back to that phrase, which is the younger generation don’t live by the values that we used to live by because they’ve evolved. 

Cultures have evolved, the way that change has put out into society here evolves as well, so the conversation is different and I would then kick back and say maybe the older generation need to re-evaluate their values. 

They should go through this step that we are talking about and just check in and say are my values up-to-date?

Dr Ro: It’s a feeling at the end of the day so if you just simply go back to the basic definition, what do I want to feel more of on a consistent and regular basis? 

That might be our action actually, for this part of the process, step two, which is go away this next week and ask yourself, forget trying to label as a value to start with, just sit down. 

This comes into the process of creating a new identity, as were coming out of something that has been a massive change. 

First of all, looking at your language. Think about the future now coming forward. 

How do I want to be in the future? How do I want my language to be? How do I want my communication to be? How do I want my questions to be? How would I like to redefine myself in this new norm? What values do I want to have?

We can look at our existing ones that are important, but then we start to look at what are the new values I want to have in this new norm. This new lifestyle. 

Instead of you trying to be someone else. 

What about if you just press the pause and say who do I want to be? How do I want to show up? Who inspires me in the world? Where do I get my greatest inspiration from? 

Not from a financial perspective, although that is a big part of it. But relationships, health, integrity, emotional development, financial, wealth look beyond the surface. 

Ask the deeper question, go to black belt questions and ask who do I want to be? 

That will help you emerge a set of values for yourself.

Harms: See if you can spot some conflicts where you may say, health is my top value, family is my top value and then try and map that against what is your typical week and see if you show up how you explain your value hierarchy to be. 

I think that is a really cool step.

See if that aligns with the values that you’ve written down or is it in conflict with the values and then you can go deep into this exercise to then start revaluing those values for your life. 

What is step three? 

The final step today.

Dr Ro: Step three is change your conditions. 

I need to explain what I mean by this. If you draw three circles in a row on a page big enough to write something in the middle and the first circle says core values, that’s the one on the left-hand side. 

Then you’re going to put a plus in between these two. So circle one plus circle two equals circle. The second circle is strict conditions right or rules. In order for me to experience my core value, which is the first circle I have a set of conditions around that. 

That equals and then the third circle is difficult to experience. 

If you want to make something really difficult to experience it’s circle number one plus two equals circle three which is difficult to experience. This is what most people do. 

They make it too difficult to experience a set of values and they complain. For example when your core values are love. I’d say tell me how you experience more love. 

Now that classic question that leads to a set of conditions is whether that person tells us next is what the meaning is they give to love, how they achieve their love in a relationship. 

This lady was strangling this value of love she wanted to value love, she wanted to have this feeling of love in a relationship, and I said how do you feel love? 

She said well if he does the following, if he messages me all day long, if he texts me to tell me he loves me. 

If he remembers the things that I asked him to do at the beginning of the day, he has to call me every single night, and he has to do this and there’s a whole bunch of different things that this gentleman that she was dating whoever it might be had to do in order for her to feel loved. 

I said there are six or seven different things. 

What if one of those things was, I think it was he has to text me every day and tell me he loves me. 

What if he doesn’t text you? 

He’s done all the other things here, but what if he doesn’t text you? In that case, that tells me he doesn’t love me. What if he had a really tough day. Exhausted and he’s done all the other things, he dropped you a message earlier on, he called you. He remembered what you asked him to do in the morning, but he forgot to send you that text. 

That tells me he doesn’t love me. 

The audience were like oh my god. 

What she told us was the minute one of these rules, conditions had been dropped. 

The minute her partners stopped satisfying this formula for her exact formula, by the way, I asked the question what would happen? 

She goes well I’d just finish the relationship after a couple months because I can tell he doesn’t love me, and it left a real tension in the room. 

How is that achievable for someone on an inconsistent regular basis to fulfil every one of those rules every single day?

Harms: That feeling of tension was also because I think a lot of people were realising, maybe not in a particular love scenario that other people attaching these rules to different parts of their life. 

If we tie this back to Covid and say I love this health value by the way, because when we had previous experts and Mel and Rob on the podcast. 

One of the things they said was to focus on strengthening your immunity, so I think we should always continue to hammer home certainly, awareness of health and get that into people’s awareness. I think that’s so useful, but if we look at the same scenario and put this to health. 

The core value in circle one is health plus strict conditions equals to difficult experience. If you asked me what are your rules around and health during Covid?

I said let’s run at least and I didn’t put kilometres around it, just at least run twice a week. 

That was a goal. Let’s get one cycle, socially distant cycle ride with Ro once a week. Let’s make sure I’m having green juice once a day and then I started to add a whole bunch more. 

So then I started to say I want to go sleep at 10 o’clock every night. Wake up at 7 o’clock every day, then I want to make sure I can do a kettlebell exercise in that same week. 

Having already known this and been aware of this scenario, having gone through turning point reading the book, I started to add a whole bunch of rules which were aligned with my core value of health and realised after a week why it is so difficult to experience? 

Why am I not feeling like I’m being healthy? 

It was because I gave myself, 10, 15, things to do at the start of Covid. 

What I realised is actually when I started to relax the rules I still was being healthy. But now I actually felt like I was being healthy rather than putting myself in this no-win situation.

Dr Ro: I use a balloon scenario, think of Harms has got this huge beautiful balloon, green and it says healthy filled with lots of hot air. 

He’s in a basket beneath and over the side of his basket are ropes and around these ropes are the sandbags. Each sandbag represents a rule, a condition in order for him to feel healthy. So now he’s got like 10 to 15 and plus he has got a pregnant wife as well as, he’s trying to get that balance in his relationship and his businesses. 

You’ve got a classic situation now where everybody does this when they’re wanting to really live by this value. 

The challenge is because it’s so meaningful to us we then want to really bolster up how to achieve it. So one sandbag goes over, I want to go for a cycle. Another sandbag over, I want to go running twice a week. 

Another sandbag, I’m going to have a smoothie. That is probably okay. The balloon can lift off. Those are okay. 

Now he throws another one, another one and these sandbags are all weighing down the balloon. The challenge is they’re like tethers. 

These conditions become tethers. We need to find a balance so if he starts to chop some of these rules and make this easier. 

I can relax my rules, that’s the phrase that’s become a bit of a joke around our events. 

There is a point where there is enough weight to allow the balloon to take off and to achieve his goal, but at the same time done in a sensible way. 

The balloon gradually lifts up and achieves it in a sensible way, as opposed to too many rules it never gets off the ground and too few rules it will just fly up and he’s not really achieving it.

Harms: That description is really useful actually.

Iit paints a different picture for the listeners and to answer your question how I was able to relax the rules is number one, I was aware of this process.

 I was very quickly within three or four days, realising I’m doing a lot, but I don’t feel like I’m being healthy because some of my rules were not being met. 

Some of my strict conditions were not being met in order to be healthy so I went really extreme with it and said what is one thing I can do? 

Just start with one thing and that was just running. It doesn’t matter how far, how fast, how long just get one run in, that became my strict condition. 

Now that’s quite easy to achieve, so it was really easy.

From there I would add a few other bits, but my default was the run. Everything else was a bonus but my condition was if I could just get a run in.

Dr Ro: This is not to try and escape the fulfilment of that value. If Harms’ balloon takes off too quickly and rises too quickly we need to slow this experience down, enjoy it more. He might throw another one and say I’m going to go for a run and juice once-a-day and now he goes to sleep and the speed of that journey feels more sensible to him and now he can add more to it. 

The key message here is don’t overthink it but at the same time, you do have to have some level of measuring how you know you are feeling healthier or it could be integrity. 

If somebody suddenly said, only if and only if this and only if. 

There are five or six different conditions there. If one of those doesn’t get met, then I don’t feel like I’m operating with integrity but you actually did something here, you were honest and professional with that person. 

Yeah but I also need to make sure I don’t compromise this. 

But what you did was you were honest with them and professional with them and what you did was you compromised on the price of the product and you gave great value. On this occasion they walked away and you had integrity. 

Okay, so what if you relaxed it? 

If you said, if I honour my word, or if I operate in a professional way or if I focus on people first. If I don’t compromise my values, then it’s one of those rules as opposed to every single one of those.

Harms: That’s another way in which you can execute this. 

For example, the way I executed it was I stripped it all down back to one. It was to get rid of them. 

I’m just doing one and then it’s easy for me to experience and then when it became too easy, the experience was too easy I added another one just to make the experience enjoyable and challenging.

The other way to execute this is the way that you just described Ro. 

I love it because they’ve got two different ways to execute this one list them all out, but you don’t have to feel like you have to hit all of those conditions in order to feel a certain experience. 

It can be either or.

Dr Ro: For example joyful is an amazing word. 

This is one of the highest frequency resonating words in the scale of consciousness. Joy actually. 

If you said to me at the moment I’m feeling heavy and my internal language is not very joyful, I want to feel more joyful, so you value joyfulness. You value joy and fun. 

In that case, for the next week start to have conversations with yourself about asking questions like how can I have more fun and feel more joyful when I go out to work or when I make my zoom calls or when I spend time with my kids, whatever it is you’re doing. 

Ask a more productive question and that may result in you for example this weekend Harms spoke to my partner yesterday and said let’s get together for dinner. 

We do a socially distanced thing where everybody just has a chance to catch up and that was a question which then led to a constructive way of doing it in a healthy, vibrant way, which is socially sound. 

That was a very constructive question. 

Not like, oh my my gosh, what are we going to do? How can we do this? It is a very different type of question. 

That also links into a value of connection with people that we’re close to and we can make the rule around that. 

The rule isn’t we have to get together this weekend in order for me to feel connected. It’s actually, it would be great if we can connect, if we can’t do a meal maybe we go for a walk together. 

If you listen to that conversation it was like let’s see how the weather is, it doesn’t have to be perfect. 

Three relaxed rules that make the weekend joyful, but it’s not so strict that everyone is like my gosh, but we were supposed to do this, we were supposed to get together but we can’t do that. 

The minute you relax rules, you still have fun.

Harms: I think that’s a really useful example because so many people are going to be transitioning back to meeting their families, hanging out with friends and taking that example as a way just to relax and ease yourself into it.

Every family has those people or scenarios where there’s so much tension, some of the family experiences have to be perfect. 

When they say we have to have a family dinner, it has to be a three-course meal, we have to have everybody there, we have to have a barbecue, the weather has to be perfect. 

I would say step away from that and just remember why we are reconnecting, what have you missed, what have you loved and don’t attach all these rules to it and that will make the experience so much more joyful, happy, light and fun. 

Because the alternative is you’re going to meet your family again and then you’re going to be like this is why I only wanted to have dinner with them once a quarter or this is why we only meet at Christmas. 

This is such a great powerful tool in the way in which you can re-bond with your families after Covid in a transformational way by relaxing some of the rules.

Dr Ro: For those of you coming back in and there are business opportunities or getting back into your swing. 

It’s the same thing there, you have to look at that internal reaction in your body. I got the opportunity this weekend to speak. 

I could have earned a reasonable amount of money it was an online presentation and 10 years ago in five years ago, I would have jumped to say yes even though my whole world is upside down at the moment, Harms came to help out yesterday because we literally have builders in our house going around the house laying wooden ceilings and floorings. 

But in order to do that we have to move our bedroom, our living space, cupboards, and everything, room by room.

We had to find a way to creatively do it. 

The pressure of that me and the family is immense and I could have done it. I could have got ready and got ready to do the presentation. 

However, it would have put a lot of stress on me and the family and in the past I would have lived with that. 

But I relaxed my rules. I just said I don’t have to do this. I changed it so it will be nice to do it but I’ll do it next month instead. 

What’s important to me right now is making sure that we do the transition for the family and it made the experience completely different and it took away that feeling of I need to be doing this now. 

That’s a financial example where you’ve got to look ahead now with the three steps we’ve talked about and start to ask yourself the question, how could you enjoy the experience of transitioning out of Covid in a different way. 

And if you asked that question, you’d get better results.

Harms: We’ve covered an incredible amount.

We wanted to get across the six steps of change fundamentally to help people understand the situation we are in, have been, are going through is a situation of change. Yes, the impact is greater. 

The severity may feel greater for you. 

We understand all of that, which is why we wanted the focus to be around the topic of Covid and spoke about a whole bunch of different examples around relationships, money, health around refocusing your communication so that you are pointing in the direction of a positive result versus being driven from fear. 

The way we did that was Ro shared with us the first three steps to this six-step change process and just as a reminder step one is, we firstly want to master our internal and external language. 

You will go ahead as a listener and focus on what we spoke about in that section and some of the action points and go and master your internal and external language. 

Step two is to reevaluate your life and the way we do this is we go in and focus on your values at the moment. 

How are you showing up in the world? 

Step number three, which is to change your conditions, specifically change those strict conditions which are holding you back from these amazing experiences we should be feeling versus constantly unable to experience fun, joy, laughter, health, and all these cool values that you will have on your hierarchy.

Dr Ro: You can apply this at any time but for now, don’t try and do everything. 

There’s a lot we’re covering just simplify it. 

Be mindful of what’s happening internally and how you communicate externally. Be mindful of where you’re feeling joy and tension. 

So when you’re feeling any tension in any area of your life ask yourself which values is that causing me some challenges with? 

What do I feel like I’m not fulfilling as I look forward to this new journey, this new choice I’ve got ahead of me. 

Then ask yourself, am I being too strict about that? If you are because you have high standards that is fine, but just don’t make those standards so strict that it affects every area of your life and different people around you as well. 

For now, I think start with those three steps and hopefully you’ll come back to the table more evolved over this next week and more aware. 

Don’t spend hours on it but be mindful. Keep a journal and do the quiet moments. 

Certainly, if nothing else this week observe your language communication and start reflecting on your core values. 

Don’t worry too much about the rules for now.

Harms: We shall see you in part two of this process to help you transition whatever is going on in your life right now. 

Whether it’s Covid related or not, hopefully this is serving to be super helpful. 

That’s it for myself and Ro, we’re signing out. 

We shall see you on part two of this amazing deep dive on the six-step change process.