Episode 042 – Dealing with uncertain times, gaining clarity, re-discovering your vision, live coaching role play and more

Harms: Hello it’s Harms here and welcome to another episode of the Seekardo show. Today we’re going to be diving straight into it as myself and Ro are sitting in the office and we started having a conversation which we paused and said, let’s bring this to the listener. 

What Ro has in his experience has discovered over the years when coaching people is they are often coming to him to be coached for change and that change comes from a place of I don’t want to be in the scenario that I’m in now. 

How do I make the change to get to somewhere where I would like to be? 

Our feeling from conversations and observations of our inner circles, but also the wider audience and the wider listeners’ that we have is people are in this place now. In this place if they feel like they’ve lost control they may be lost in the message of what’s coming to them and they therefore feel lost in their own personal life. 

There’s job losses, there’s an incredible feeling of uncertainty out there, so this is what myself and Ro were talking about in the background we literally said pause, let’s take this onto the podcast as if I was someone in this position of feeling like this almost as the voice of people in this current messaging or the outcome of the current messaging out there via the media, in terms of I feel like I’m in a tough, bad space and I am feeling that the future is not certain. 

Ro what is your initial reaction when we brought this conversation off-line online.

Dr Ro: Thanks Harms and hello to all of you listeners again, thank you for joining us on the show and you’re right. 

We were sat here and when we’re doing a show we have some kind of structure to it, we have an idea of what we want to talk about, but this was so free-flowing and it came about from what we are reading out in the media, social media off the back of change in the US government ultimately, Covid is upon, huge amounts of uncertainty as Harms just talked about there and the general feeling is that people are falling into one of two or three camps. 

One of those camps is different and they’re fumbling along another camp. This is a great opportunity, there’s change, chance to create prosperity here and then there’s what I believe to be the largest group of people that are like what is going on here. I’ve lost control of my life. 

Think about the fear that puts in people’s minds so this is a conversation we need to have. I don’t think it needs to be negative, but we need to paint the picture initially before we then talk about a solution. 

Ultimately, we want this to be inspirational and in a conversational flow which could go in any direction.

Harms: We totally understand and appreciate that we’re not going to be talking about specific scenarios in the sense that we understand people have been put into a crazy situation that is completely out of your control. 

Some of these are dark places who have had family members pass away because of what’s been going on. People have lost businesses, people have been made unemployed and hopefully by the end of this podcast that larger bracket of people feel like there is a little bit of hope, a positive message or some direction that they can do.

Dr Ro: Families are becoming desperate. Kids are starting to lose a sense of the genuine sense of playfulness because there is this heaviness around. I think parents are scared about that. Couples, relationships are being put under stress and yes, some people might be getting closer and I think a lot of other people are being pulled apart. 

I think people’s evenings and times are being sucked up by social media and watching TV screens etcetera and that connection with nature’s been lost. There’s a lot of things outside the hard-core financial world we’re hearing about. 

Added to that sense of uncertainty on an unconscious level and people’s self-worth has been hit. I think emotional stability has been hit and I’m not trying to be negative. This is a global thing happening and we’re hearing this. 

In the world we live in this is the stuff that we’re seeing and hearing.

Harms: We’re hearing it in the space of just naturally or trained entrepreneurial people who often are almost 100% positive think there is always a solution and even they feel that heaviness that you spoke about, and there’s one word that we’ve highlighted before the show, which was uncertainty. I think that almost trumps everything else we’ve described. 

Can you talk into the space of if I’m feeling uncertain what does that lead to? What does that mean? There are two scenarios here in the sense that somebody of my generation thinks about someone who is at university or going through a period of education to get to a place, a career, a job they’ve been so excited about. 

There’s also the social element to university then you come out of university and before this was all going on the reality was it was tough to get the job that you wanted anyway. That was almost the effect of technology changing the environment so people would come out and work for a fast food chain whilst they were able to get the job that they needed because they didn’t have the experience. 

That’s one bucket then as you go into the top end of millennials the 30s and 40s. 

Maybe someone like me has been in the first curve of the business and as we know businesses can take 10, 15 years to build. We had a fantastic guest Daniel Priestley on who explained that you’ve got to be in this for 10 years and most business owners statistically are successful in their mid-40s. 

Based on that scenario I maybe 30 so early in building my business and all of a sudden bang all that hard work has gone. I could be in a career where I was just on the brink of getting a promotion and suddenly that job vacancies have been taken away because they can’t afford it, or I’ve lost my place, my job in that career I spent 10 years working towards. Then someone who is your generation I imagine it’s exactly the same scenario, but now you’ve built your business, you thought that this would be the jackpot. All of a sudden, business has gone, your cash flows dried up. 

These are the kind of people scenarios they’re in, if I’m saying uncertainty I’m saying uncertainty from this situation, I’ve worked hard to get somewhere I’ve got plans and things in my mind I want to achieve and all of a sudden, something which is out of my control has just swept the rug under my feet.

Dr Ro: I want to pin this down to the human psychology element of this and you’ve heard us say this before, Maslow talked about the six human needs but I think in this situation right now the bedrock of people’s stability is certainty. 

Let me give you some scenarios. You walk into a room and you can see an exit on one side and another exit on the other.

Then suddenly the lights go off, pitch black somebody spins you around you’re disorientated. You don’t know where the exit is and then you hear the sound of fire behind you. You cannot see, prior to that with the lights on even with a fire you were certain that you could get out through those doors you had clarity of where to go. 

You walk into the house and you find a letter you’ve been married for 10 years. You find a letter on the table and it’s your husband telling you that he’s decided to leave you because he’s met somebody else or your wife that you happen to see when you’re out away on business one time and you thought she was at home and you happen to be in the same town as her and you see her and she’s with another bloke. 

All of a sudden total uncertainty, what’s going on? 

Your world has turned upside down. 

Or you turn up to work on a Monday morning and ask to be taken to the boardroom, which I saw when I was in the 90s and saying the companies downsizing you’ve got to go. Your world is turned upside down and the certainty you had literally at 9:01 and the certainty you had at 9:04 when you got told this has completely changed. 

The message that underlies this particular podcast is when you get your life certainty taken away from you everything goes upside down. 

Some people can deal with it really quickly. You’ve lost your keys and you’re late for a meeting now before you knew how you would get to the meeting and then you’ve got to drive and it will take 25minutes to get there. Keys are missing, I think I left them at the gym now you’re uncertain whether you’re going to get to the meeting. 

So my point is that as fundamental as that is and I know there’s love and connection and variety all the things we need you take certainty away from somebody the first thing you do is get stability. 

Unfortunately, we’ve got a moving feast at the moment everything is moving. Financially, economically, health, relationships, families people are facing the highest level of uncertainty I think that we have experienced in my lifetime anyway. I don’t think we’ve ever had anything quite this big and I would say in my lifetime.

Harms: It’s the same kind of feeling in my generation where I think in that scenario you said we walk into a room, switch the lights off, the fire starts and you just can’t see what’s happening and there’s no way out. 

That is almost akin to most people feel comfortable, feel secure, stable and know that they’re going somewhere and they’re on the right path when they can see the entire road ahead. 

When I get into the car I have to put the postcode in the satnav because I need to know how long it will take me to get there.What is the route?

Dr Ro: In my day we would look at it but wouldn’t keep looking at it. Almost in our minds, map it and then use our own inner compass to iron out some of those things.

Harms: But in that scenario there I agree with that but what we’re saying is you’re driving down the road you glance at the map and then the map flies out the window. That’s where we are at right now the maps are gone, navigation systems failed, I’ve got another 500 miles driving across Europe I don’t know where to go.

Dr Ro: Even you saying that is brilliant as Harms has struck a chord for another podcast and that is have we become too reliant on just something feeding us a destination? 

I’m in this job, work this many hours, go out on a Friday night, have three weeks holiday a year, maybe save up enough to go to the Maldives next year. That’s one group of people that have been hit by Covid. 

There’s another group of people who have been aspirational for years and spent years planning to start a business or get married, and then that’s been turned upside down. I think we all map things out differently; it’s how we go back and navigate that if the maps are missing. 

That’s the situation.

Harms: Different things will be important to different people, but the loss of a job that maybe not someone’s career but that meant loss of income means they now have to move back in with mum and dad and lose their independence.

Dr Ro: It could have been they were planning to save up for that something. 

Often, we associate the pain of the loss of the job to the implications of that loss. It is the implications of my relationship breaking down or the kids are now starting to act slightly differently because unconsciously they’ve lost that connection and now they’re starting to turn to digital media and become obsessed with watching YouTube or whatever. 

I don’t think we’re going to see the repercussions for years to come unless we can deal with it now.

Harms: Agree and this impacts everybody slightly differently. We’re not saying or labelling anybody with this.

Dr Ro: We are all human beings; we have a need that is fundamental but it’s how we react.

Harms: A lovely example of how they reacted to what’s going on weddings have been postponed. We’ve got a beautiful friend, beautiful soul who didn’t really mind and they got married via live stream. 

Whereas some people are saying okay we’re going to postpone the wedding until a certain time. What I would love to get from this show is a way that regardless of what is important to who how somebody reacts, a way that universally people can approach this.

Dr Ro: Even that description alone should give you a sense of it is okay to have these feelings, there is no freaking stability for any of us. I’ve seen someone I know that has been posting about the lack of certainty going into the hospital not sure how the birth is going to be. 

Whereas you approached it completely differently, you just created in your mind what you wanted the birth to be and how best you can control that. 

The two conversations are so different. I think the point here is you’re feeling unstable, that’s okay. That’s the first thing to accept and I said this is the worst thing I’ve experienced in my life, but I’ve not sat through a war for example. Some of you might have family that sat through local wars that have happened in recent years and I am sure that also creates massive amounts of instability and uncertainty. 

Every single human being listening to this will have been through something different. 

What I feel about this pandemic is it has touched all of our lives and we have no control over how it’s coming into our lives as well, and that’s the biggest challenge. It’s the lack of control which leads to this sense of lack of certainty and lack of stability.

Harms: What you’ve said is I have lived through a war, a great depression. I haven’t lived in a time where there were just no jobs. I haven’t lived where myself and my children would have to go work in a coal factory and potentially have a short lifespan. I think it’s also worth regaining the perspective on we are all in this together, we’re all going through this together. 

We’re also incredibly lucky to be in certain developed countries, that’s a blessing and just the fact that where we live at the moment, we could be living to 100. 

We have the best education system we’ve had in decades. We don’t have to go work in a coal factory, we don’t have to live through a potential war and certainly depending on where we have come from we are extremely lucky from that side of things.

Dr Ro: We’re breathing and we are alive. 

We are able to feel and touch and experience the world and I think that’s a starting point for this. Oddly enough, I look back 55 years, I have been through a divorce, I have been through both my father passing away, but also close friends and family. 

I have been through situations financially where everything’s been stripped from me and when I look back and then the thousands of people I’ve worked with you get to a point where you can just see ways through. There are patterns that show up and I think that we need to get out of today’s podcast, let’s accept the situation. 

Let’s not see it for worse than it is but let’s not see it any better than it is but as it is and build from there. The argument that might come off the back of this podcast if we don’t frame this is, but that’s just Ro’s coloured glasses. 

You’re just trying to see everything in a positive light.

Let’s start with the premise that the current world global situation and your life don’t see it for any worse than it is. 

Don’t try and paint a picture where you feel like you’re the victim of something equally don’t make it so rosy that everything is going to be fine and in reality your financial situation is that you’re screwed and you don’t have an income and you lost your job, and you’ve got debt. 

We’ve got to see it as it is to start with and then we press the reset from there. 

By seeing it we can breathe and we can start to take a deep breath and go now I’ve got clarity in my situation, as opposed to most of the time we’re just picturing all these different problems and that creates instability.

Harms: I think you raise the point of heightened wisdom there because when I went on a 10-day silent meditation retreat and one of the biggest greatest teachings from the practice and going through the 10 days is you don’t see something better than it is, worse than it is, you just see it as it is but feel it. 

There’s one category of people you said at the start, which is there’s a numbness to this. They put Netflix on whatever and emerge at the end of it and just become even more numb that they went into it.

Dr Ro: They have to deal with the stuff they haven’t dealt with. 

It could be bills building up, relationships falling apart, the kids are being ignored because they don’t know how to handle that. You come out of that numb state and it’s like all of a sudden the fire is blazing.

Harms: How do we shift? 

Although it’s not related to a global pandemic as such. You’ve seen these patterns show up in the world and people you’ve coached. Certain situations take most people to the edge moving to a new house.

Dr Ro: The three most stressful things are moving house, death and getting married.

Harms: That would typically take people to the edge.

Dr Ro: It is putting uncertainty so you’re going through that year and everything seems to be fine you planned it out. 

You set your goals, start the year at a place of equilibrium which is certainty. I’m certain when I wake up today I’m going to do this, I’m not going to lose my keys, I’m going to finish the year, make some profit, go on this holiday, and plan to get married next year. 

But then next year arrives and all of a sudden the pressure and the uncertainty comes up. Who is going to sit next where the dates have been changed so now you’re starting to throw these uncertainties in and that makes people stressed. Forget what we’re going through at the moment.

Harms: Here’s a big question now I’m that person in the audience and I’m saying, yeah great, I would love to have certainty but all of my plans have been thrown out the window. I’m not going to have the holiday next year. In fact, I don’t know if I’m going to have a holiday for the next four years. I just feel 100% uncertain. 

How do you talk to the audience or that person?

Dr Ro: What you described there are two things, one is metaphors. We use metaphors a lot to reinforce a painful experience. We can also use metaphors to reinforce a positive experience. 

People say I’m hanging on by my fingertips that is a classic metaphor. The minute you say that you and I can picture somebody about to fall so if we can change the way we use metaphors is really important. 

As you asked the question I’m thinking let me boil this down to one simple thing, but actually now you’ve just described something which is important as well, which is our language. I was doing a coaching session yesterday with a couple and they were looking at real estate and they said if we take the equity out of our house and we don’t put the money into a deal straight away then we’re screwed financially. 

That was the description that was used. 

I’m thinking if they take their money out of the house they’re going to have monthly payments, but those monthly payments will be more than covered by three or four properties they can buy which will produce a cash flow to enable them to then become financially independent. But all they saw was the cost of the mortgage before they got to bring in the cash.

Harms: In that scenario the metaphor is we are going to be screwed financially.

Dr Ro: Yes, financially we’re not going to be able to cope because we’ve now taken out a mortgage. 

So part of this is how you reframe that metaphor that’s the first starting point. If we don’t tackle that language anything else we do after that they go yeah, that’s fine, but you don’t understand I’m at the end of my tether. 

Or my relationship feels like a battleground. So these are metaphors people are using and that language is self-destructive before you even start.

Harms: One of the ones that you did not pull me up on, but when we were having a conversation and it was at the start of this whole scenario I said, we may have to get ready to get into the trenches for the businesses that were involved in. 

You were like you may want to reframe that language because you are talking about getting into the trenches that’s putting you into a certain state.

Dr Ro: People think about the trenches about being thick with mud, blood everywhere, difficult, challenging.

Harms: It just paints the wrong frame. 

What you’re saying is maybe be aware of the metaphors that somebody is using towards you and also in your own mind.

Dr Ro: When we used to do turning point and CWI that’s one of things that comes out is language, people using metaphors and I had a lady whose husband died and the kids were all leaning on her. 

She said I feel like I’m in the trenches, in a battle and somehow I’ve got to drag my family out of the darkness. She wanted to make a change and she was my age, 55, 60 but she had a young family. 

I said to her how about you are a leader carrying a torch crossing a bridge to a beautiful green field on the other side and her whole face just changed. We made a label up and she was like the leader, she was the family leader crossing the bridge but it changed the way she perceived the situation. 

It meant she looked at it differently and we have to start from that premise.

Harms: Describe it differently.

Dr Ro: It doesn’t mean the situation has changed, but why give it a shit metaphor when it can at least have an empowering metaphor.

Harms: When you shift it and change that picture in your mind, you do look at it differently and you do go from I’m helpless, I’ve got no chance, to out of the desk now and I’m looking for potential solutions. 

My vision is wide and I can start to see.

Dr Ro: The unconscious mind only believes what you tell it consciously or unconsciously. Any news that you hear will automatically filter into the trench. Whereas if you’re out and you are climbing the mountain to seek higher ground to get a better viewpoint as you climb that mountain and you’re overcoming some of these challenges along the way, it is different. 

Because when you hear the news you don’t need that, it’s irrelevant to where I’m going. I’m going here I don’t need it in the trenches and as I’m doing this I’ve got one hand in the trenches. Body language is another thing as well. 

When you use your hands and your body language to communicate, elevate it because people are heavy and they point down into the trenches. They become the thing they’re most fearful of experiencing. That’s the challenge. 

That in itself is a powerful statement.

Harms: I’m in the audience now I’m saying, an awareness revelation I totally get that. Say somebody else in the audience pops up and they say okay, I feel like I’m using the right metaphors, but I’ve now got no direction. 

I see the situation in a solution orientated way. I get that but my uncertainty is still there because I have lost my career, lost my business. I’ve lost this thing I was working passionately for, that’s the scenario that I’m in.

Dr Ro: I’m watching Harms’ body language to see if there is a shift and he is playing a role. 

You said to me I’ve lost the thing I was working for. What’s the thing you feel most painful about? 

Is it about losing the job or the destination you’re working towards? Because that’s the thing that created the uncertainty for you now. 

Yes, it may have been the job loss, but you also might have a sense I could get another job back. Where is the uncertainty coming from?

Harms: I’m playing a role in the scenario, but that loss of job, I would say I woke up in the morning and I was really excited about the thing I was working towards.

Less about the job. I absolutely loved the career. But I’m not going to find this project, a mission I’m working on anywhere else.

Dr Ro: This is a challenge now because the uncertainty is multiple fold. Let’s go macro to global now. You’ve got your own stuff and that is your life as it is on a daily basis but then outside that we’ve got this news. 

There’s stuff coming out and someone says this particular part of the economy is going to be hit really hard in the next five years and you’re thinking I’m in that part of the economy. 

The external world is coming to your macro world and throwing even more dirt and it is fuelling the flames and this fire is really going now. 

The first step is to go back to the vision. 

I would say to you, I know you’ve lost the career, job, the income has come down. I know that things are happening financially and you talked about purpose, but rewind me to before this all happened. W

hat were you most importantly focusing on at that moment in time? 

Let’s go back to December 31, 2019 or the start of 2020 before this pandemic really hit us. What were you focusing on? What was your vision because we’ve got to go back to that point that was your compass correct?

Harms: This is I’m working in a career and I was ahead of this project and within that project we were close to achieving something and we were working for this for a long time.

Dr Ro: When you started the year and this is important because if you notice Harms is describing a scene and most of that description is pain and everything goes out there. 

You don’t understand Ro, my career has been screwed, finances are not in a good place, the vision I had for the family I can’t achieve. I’m thinking this person has four areas: their pain is from money, career, this vision they had and one is also the pain in the family. We’ve got to go back to the start of the year and that’s what I need you to do. You have to revisit the original vision that you think you’ve lost because I do not know what the vision is.

Say for example I was a listener and these four things are going on. How are you communicating with them? 

How are you disseminating to say park those four things?

What we’re saying is let’s just imagine I’m talking to you before the pandemic. What would the conversation have been? Describe it for me. When I say vision, what were the goals and aspirations you had? How did you see the next few years going?

What were you excited about?

Harms: What i was telling my partner over Christmas and dinner is if I achieve this mission within this company that gets added to my CV and that means reputationally I can work for anybody.

Dr Ro: Does that include financial bonuses?

Harms: Yes and two we do not have to worry about finances ever again because I am always hireable.

Dr Ro: That’s a career vision that’s something happened before this, what else? I’m being specific here because when someone says you don’t understand my life is shit, I don’t know what that means. I don’t know what has fallen so we’ve got to go back to what the part looked like.

Harms: If you take me back to around Christmas dinner based on the bonuses that were going to come we were going to do a big family trip and I promised the family I’d take a month off from work.

Dr Ro: How old are your kids?

Harms: One is seven, 12 and 15. That was the family conversation.

Dr Ro: Remember we are role-playing here and I’ve thrown Harms into the deep end. The point is this whole thing about falling apart let’s bring it back together. 

Those parts that you see in your mind, which I can’t see unless you paint it for me have become fractured so I’m asking Harms to bring that vase back together and put the vase on the table in front of me so I can see what it looked like at the beginning of this prior to the pandemic. 

I can see a great career with a bonus and the opportunity to launch yourself maybe independently?

Harms: Yes I could be a consultant for any company.

Dr Ro: But then there’s another part of the vase I’m looking at which is your family and you’ve got three amazing kids and you were going to take them on an adventure?

Harms: With a bonus I was going to step away before I became a consultant, and we were going to do a big family trip bit of travelling.

Dr Ro: How did that make you feel? 

As I’m asking the question of him going back to that space as already he’s smiling, even though this isn’t actually his situation. But as I’m doing it with you describe to me the feeling of heaviness that we had prior in the beginning. 

Without you knowing I’m trying to get into your skull a bit and take you back so you’re that person.

Harms: Fascinating insight actually because when we first had this sort of introduction to the episode even in our body language we hadn’t smiled for the first 17 minutes it was coming from a dark energy and we were painting a picture yes respectfully for what’s going on, but that’s also how we felt. 

In that conversation, we were almost putting ourselves in the moment that people are experiencing and all the things that we’ve experienced this last year. 

As you’re asking these questions, we’re now talking about vision and that’s such an exciting, aspirational conversation.

Dr Ro: Even me asking you to create a vision of a family member or family man in this case and what he’s thinking of doing that biologically is changing you without you even being able to control it because that’s what the mind has the ability to do.

Harms: In this moment as we’re having this discussion I forgot about everything else. 

Ro has got goosebumps the role play is becoming so real. 

That’s how passionate we are to get this message across to the listeners because when you are able to have those conversations and be in that moment, the newspapers don’t have an impact on you.

Dr Ro: Exactly, that is the point. 

Which they don’t anyway in reality, the news article about the States actually isn’t affecting you at the moment it is what you are interpreting it to affect you. You’ve just gone back there as you described with your family and then what was the other area?

Harms: The change in career will happen with the bonuses once I tick this project off on the CV it means now I’ve got the final piece of experience I needed to go as a consultant, so that’s what I was working towards. That was supposed to happen in 2020.

Dr Ro: Step one is reframing the language and changing the metaphor. Step two is creating a different vision, but we’re not going to get there yet because we have to go back and revisit it. My question to you is does that still hold true to you? 

Do you still want to experience and have that experience with the kids and have this independence in your career? Do you still have the same passion towards your career, having reflected on it now going through nearly seven months of a pandemic?

Harms: I would say in this scenario because I was looking to step out of that career and move into self-employment consultancy yes, I’m still passionate.

Dr Ro: About the career or the job or the journey that it was going to lead to?

Harms: I would say the journey and then the outcome of the journey, which was a big financial reward, more time with the kids, more time with the family because I’m now in control of my own time with the consultancy.

Dr Ro: Let me pause for a minute, how is this feeling for you?

Harms: I think I should add another career as an actor. But I’m putting myself in the scenario and I feel relief in the sense that I probably in my mind if I was in this scenario or actually in this moment didn’t revisit that scenario. 

On a day-to-day basis I would be constantly in the future like my today is based on what’s happening in a years’ time?

Dr Ro: What you’re hearing here is what we’re doing is taking my world falling apart and basically identified three components essentially one is the finances, one is the family and the aspiration of the family which is time away. I’ve promised the kids and none of us like to break a promise, and also a career change as a result of a certain project getting finished. That’s it. Three things. 

Now we’ve got the vase and the next question I have to ask Harms is does he still want to achieve those things and you pretty much said yes. You want to take the kids on a holiday that hasn’t gone away. 

What’s the biggest pain?

That by the way is what’s happening at the moment people are angry because they have lost control. You either become a victim and then blame everybody else, or you say let me step out of this victim role. How can I take back control? Which is what we’re doing now, but at the moment what would you have felt angry about?

Harms: I was so close to completing my plan. I could taste it, feel it. 

We already had the holiday brochures out, we were planning where we were going to travel.

Dr Ro: Have they been out in the last four, five months or tucked away?

They just sit there and no one looks at them?

Do the kids still look at them?

Harms: The kids still look at them and they are still as excited and I don’t know how to explain to them that we’re going to be moving this to 2021, who knows.

Dr Ro: Anyone listening to you might be thinking that’s so true, there’s another pain for you. That’s probably more painful than the career. If I asked you a question right now of those two handling and managing your children’s reaction versus you taking back control which one do you feel in most control over which when you have that you’ve got more certainty with you get control over?

Harms: The family and kids because that is within my direct control. What I was doing actually and again I’m playing the role for listeners is I was placing more emphasis on what I couldn’t control i.e. career, the pandemic, the government, lockdown et cetera and completely forgetting the fact that I can control in a positive way the family at home.

Dr Ro: Which one gave you the most emotional pain in the situation?

Harms: The family at home, I was focusing on the wrong thing.

I’m asking questions that I think most people haven’t realised and that is that your focus on the area that’s most frustrating and you’ve got least control over and then the one that is most painful actually is probably the personal.

Putting Harminders hat on, I’ve been blessed to spend time with you Ro. 

I’ve seen the scenarios play out with people you’ve coached, done transformational interventions with. I’ve assisted on events where people in the audience are facing these real-life challenges and they come to have conversation with us and we work through the same process with them. 

I wanted to have a wide enough example, but common enough that almost all of us will go through this at one time whether it’s career, business, whatever and the toy with family and kids.

Dr Ro: Those three are the big ones. 

Either it’s the family, health is the other one. The health will be a direct knock-on effect from our reaction or I can’t get out and do training whatever it is. There is that aspect as well, but generally it’s career and family. 

Everybody’s living day by day what’s going to happen next and our distractions have been what’s happening in the American elections now that’s happened it’s what will happen with Covid again. We’re being drawn by the media as well.

Harms: If I am somebody and this is typically how most people live and it’s the opposite of what we talk about is, if somebody lives 99%, 80%, 70%, 50% into the future on a day-to-day basis then they’re going to constantly feel uncertain. Because they’re missing what’s happening now.

Dr Ro: This is the balance between having a vision but then bringing that vision into the now.

Harms: Somebody else in the audience gets up. I will remain this character for now, then someone else says Ro I have to say something based on this scenario I am no longer passionate about this vision now what do I do? 

I had a vision to start with and whilst you were doing this exercise I thought about my original vision.

Dr Ro: Let’s say it’s a lady and whatever her vision was it might have been to start a business in a certain field for example.

Harms: She wanted to start a boutique coffee shop. I have a couple of friends and people close to me who were trying to be high-level baristas and as we know the industry has been shaken. This lady

I’m vulnerable. I am in a certain industry and I do not have the solution but my vision has changed, what do I do? It’s okay for him, his vision is the same, I’ve lost my vision completely.

Dr Ro: I’ll say hold that thought for a minute. Come back to you and say has your vision remained completely the same or has any of it changed? 

Is the vision still financial vision, holiday vision is the same?

Harms: Why is it important, I’m just asking a question for the listeners who are maybe coaches in the room. 

Why is it important to complete that process with me in this scenario?

Dr Ro: Because in completing with you I can start the process with her. What I need to know is that Harms will still be grappling around in his mind, but in that process I didn’t finish my question to which was, is that vision that you’ve painted for me beginning of the year prior to Covid is it still the same in those three areas? 

Because you talked about it falling apart, now I’m doing two processes at the same time and she says yes my world is falling apart, but I’ve got less certainty than Harms because he knows what he wants. I go back to you and say do you really know what you want?

Harms: My response would be actually, my vision is not exactly the same because now my importance and focus is actually at home with the family. Whereas I was focused all about work and career but that has changed.

Dr Ro: If you could still have the same holiday, but not necessarily have such a massive catapult in your career how would you feel?

Harms: I think that would make 2020s feelings completely go away, the bad stuff I felt about it, that would be what my family is so excited about and I’ve been excited about. We’ve been talking about it since Christmas

Dr Ro: When you talked about the fact that you wanted to get away for a month with your kids, why did you want that? Has your career been intense over the years?

Harms: Yeah, I just feel like I haven’t spent time with them, times flown by I haven’t even had weekends with them. I’m not a Monday to Friday worker.

Dr Ro: Where was your biggest focus was it on the finances or just getting to a point where you just sit and have time with your kids?

Harms: This is why I’m in such a tricky situation. That’s a metaphor there.

Dr Ro: You said to me at the start of the year you wanted to get your career to a point and have a bonus and one of the reasons for that was independence consultancy, what did consultancy give you the opportunity to do? 

Hold on a second, have you got the skill set madam that would enable you to instead of a coffee shop do something else that could still fulfil some of your needs?

Harms: Quite possibly yeah.

Dr Ro: Okay think about that for a minute. Harminder your skill set will enable you to go into consultancy.

What you’re telling me is that if you got this project over the line you’d get a bonus and you felt that would be the tick in the box for your CV, but more importantly would give you some funds to have a month away with the kids as you’ve been working your nuts off and you feel that’s more important than anything else.

Harms: Here’s a tricky thing, which is coming to my realisation now based on this conversation I had given up weekends and weekends with the kids in the aim of the 2020 was going to be that month where I spent time with them, proper quality time and that’s now been taken away.

Dr Ro: Although you are pursuing a career telling yourself that was the solution to you spending time with the kids actually the truth is that you could have chosen to do that at any point.

Harms: I’m only realising that now.

Dr Ro: What have you just done during lockdown for the last three months, three months, not one month?

Harms: At this point I’m just speechless and then this is when goosebumps and if I was in the audience observing.

Dr Ro: I’m emotional thinking about it because so many people.

Harms: How many times does the same thing that people do, and it takes them 20, 30 years to realise that?

Dr Ro: What I don’t think this happened is people have got this realisation that this year the sands in that glass have been put on this side and people have been given a chance now to do what they’ve been talking about for years. Instead of saying this is the opportunity they’re now focusing on a career they worked their nuts off in which took them further and further away from the family.

Harms: Which is what they wanted in the first.

Dr Ro: If you could see this now, Harms has genuinely got tears in his eyes.

What are you feeling now?

Harms: It’s an emotional realisation and I went straight there. 

I knew where I wanted to go with this because I’ve seen it sometimes and I was blessed to come in contact with you and realise that kind of wisdom I feel like 30, 40 years before most people do. 

I wanted to share and it has come out naturally, that outcome for people because you just said it and we are in that moment where everybody is at home with their kids and that’s what they’re working for. That time with their kids at home and watching them grow up.

I’m role playing and I’m feeling that person and even though I’m feeling that person it comes down to family and the time with loved ones.

Dr Ro: If you feel that you’ve got a family and you’ve got a career and your careers have been screwed, granted your vision for the career at the beginning may have been screwed but think about what this has done. 

This next lockdown leading into Christmas we’ve effectively got two months holiday period. Have an amazing time, start Christmas now do something the kids. Going back now to the question for you and the lady over there, which is I’ve just realised that I don’t have the same vision. 

The next thing we have to do in the step of the process is decide what your purpose is now moving ahead. 

How are we going to redefine this? 

Same thing for the lady, start to go back and ask the question why do I want to do this in the first place? You’ve answered that question. It was to spend more time with your family. I’m going to ask you a question, Harms as that man playing the role do you even need this project to be so successful, to be able to sell yourself or what if you just took this time now to sit and revisit your CV and really blow it out. 

Start to communicate it with more impact and start to sell yourself and forget the need for the crutch of being able to fulfil a project, why don’t you start now by redefining a new sense of purpose for your career and become a consultant now. What if you start that journey now? What do you need to do to become a consultant? Who do you know has been a consultant in the past? How did they get there? What did they do?

Harms: I love we’re getting to this stage now because once somebody’s had the realisation now it’s a case of taking that realisation and putting it into action. 

Now we understand the situation, are we saying go emotion to logic now?

Dr Ro: Both. 

We’re trying to shatter uncertainty. 

Even by me asking that question how could you take more control of that? If your level of uncertainty at the start of this conversation was 10 as everything is falling apart, how are you feeling right now as this is another important question. By asking those questions and bringing you back to a sense of focus and resetting the compass, where do you feel your uncertainty is right now?

Harms: I’m down at the two, three.

Dr Ro: The first two steps are revisiting the past vision and redefining that vision and then giving a new sense of purpose that’s step two. Step one is metaphor and language, step two is revisiting the original vision, redefining that vision.

Going back to the lady very quickly I’ll ask her what was the purpose of you setting up a coffee shop? Because it’s a passion of mine and I have always wanted to do it. Is it possible that vision could still be fulfilled? It may be that we have to move it back a little bit? 

Could you still see that happening?

Do you mean you don’t want that vision or because of Covid you can’t achieve that vision?

Harms: That’s a good distinction because I thought I should change my vision because it’s now unachievable, but actually if we could move it back then I would actually stick to my original vision.

Dr Ro: Do you love the idea of running a coffee shop? What was the reason for it? How did it make you feel?

Harms: It gave me a sense of ownership. It’s my thing.

Dr Ro: Why a boutique coffee shop, what does it do for the people coming in?

Harms: My big third final item is community.

I want it to be a hub for people who like that kind of artisan coffee, but also it’s a sense of community seeing friendly faces.

Dr Ro: So that is a big passion, you’re not going to let this freaking pandemic strip that vision from you. 

Can you see a world in the future where people still want to go to an amazing place and sit, have a coffee and still be able to get together and communicate and taste something amazing that you’ve created.

Can you see that?

Harms: Yes, I can see that crystal clear.

Dr Ro: Let me ask you an opposite question. 

Can you imagine a world where nobody goes for a coffee? Do you believe that in the next 20, 30, 40 years we’re not going to have coffee shops and places for people to go and hang out?

Harms: No. That won’t exist.

Dr Ro: If you still have the vision we just need to redefine how that looks and shows up.

Harms: I feel like it can be done.

Dr Ro: Now at that point there we won’t go down the rabbit hole as we are on a podcast, but that’s the next step, but you being her now how do you feel now?

Harms: What I love is as her I’m observing the conversation you’re having with the gentleman there and by going through the process internally when you asked the questions to the gentleman, I’m almost answering them in my head.

Dr Ro: I’ve seen this play out.

Harms: My greatest hope is listening to a story like this in your own scenario is you start to ask yourself these coaching questions and we’ve seen this play out in audiences. I’ve seen people around me sit up, cry, that’s my scenario and everybody gets a sense of relief. 

In answering one or two scenarios everybody gets a sense of relief.

Dr Ro: In this lady’s case it wasn’t that she didn’t want to do it but actually it was that she didn’t see how it could be possible. Then the way to tackle this you’ve got to have the vision is still there and can you imagine years to come that people are in this case come to you as a consultant or go to a coffee shop? 

Yes of course I can. 

Can you imagine a world without coffee shops? No. 

In which case this is just a blip in a lifetime of experiences. We just have to redirect our compass around the obstacle and then carry on in the same direction. That’s where we are at the moment. 

Three steps, number one change the metaphor, number two revisit the old vision that you had before the or the crisis whatever you’re facing at the moment and then ask the question, do you still have it and the answer is slightly different for you is as the man for your family as you could still be a consultant but the lady wants a coffee shop. 

Two scenarios there and then how can we redefine that? I would say to you from the man now can you still see yourself being able to take your kids on an amazing holiday in the future?

Yes.

Can you imagine yourself being able to do that through your own independent way of consulting albeit it may not be through this path because it’s overgrown now, can you find your own path?

Harms: I’ve got a machete in my hand and I’m wading through like a jungle and cutting trees aggressively.

Dr Ro: That machete is you basically calling on your CV redefining what you do, think about the career you’re in and what other industries right now need your skill set remotely through zoom, a phone call, face-to-face but you can still offer a good service. 

Do you have that skill or do you need to wait for the fricking pandemic to end? That’s the question.

I’ve got a skill set.

So what was holding you back prior to the pandemic? 

Was it the fact that you believed by some brainwashing that you had to pursue this career to get to a certain level? I left my career at 29 years of age and they told me that I was too young to be a consultant. In 1998 I left, I walked out of my career and I said, I’m going to go do consulting they said, but you’re too young. 

I said what makes you tell me I’m too young? 

You need to be in our age group 50, grey hair or no hair. I was 29 years of age with a PhD but I had a passion. Even in my career people ask you questions and you’ve given them advice whilst doing the job cross career, across industries, across business’s friends you’ve got in other businesses other companies. Has that happened to you?

Harms: Absolutely.

Dr Ro: I thought I would just charge for it and that’s what I did. I’m telling the story as that’s what actually happened to me.

Harms: Most people’s response when you ask that question and in the gentleman’s response is I thought that was the way I had to do it.

Dr Ro: Which is what I thought at 29 but I broke that pattern. This is a part of coaching where now I’m telling the story, although telling a story about me what do you think Harms is thinking?

Harms: I’m thinking I can do exactly the same.

Dr Ro: Do you know people that have left the career prior to this who are already consulting?

Harms: Yeah.

Dr Ro: Do you think they might have times when they’ve got clients they can’t deal with and they’re looking for somebody to maybe support them? This is what happened to me. 

My PhD supervisor had several clients at the time and he said that I can’t do this for you, but I know two people. Is there someone who you can double up with who has got the skill set similar to you, but you compliment each other? 

That’s what happened to us and I can tell you now that in my first month I earned more as a consultant I had done in the whole year. To be specific I earned 16 K in my first month as a consultant and this is crazy and going back to that figure now is small but 75K. 

I earned in my first year as a consultant. I remember thinking this is ridiculous, I was earning about 20 at the time as an employed person and that was a consultancy figure without working six, seven days a week. 

When you tell a story like that how does that make you feel in this role?

Harms: It makes me feel like it is possible and other people like me have done it and it gives me a sense of purpose. I feel like I’ve got my path again. I can see the path.

Dr Ro: You’ve seen this happen live on stage where we’ve taken someone and they’ve walked off stage like that is amazing and the shift happens over the next few days. 

So that’s step four, purpose. The minute you’ve got clarity on the vision, redefining it, how it’s going to look now you’ve got to create a purpose behind that. 

Why am I doing this? It’s not enough to say I want to get there, why do you want to do this? Would it be fair to say that you almost spent this year you are working towards the job and it was still controlling you.

Harms: I love that phrase as well. 

Then this, if this happens then this will happen. The rules are strict and I think what everybody has to do is relax the rules. What does that mean in 2020? Some people do it naturally they’re like I’m at home, I’m going to relax my rules and enjoy this moment with my family.

Dr Ro: Relax the rules and enjoy the time at home with the family when in history are we likely to experience this where we are forced into a lock down? 

Where we are forced into a situation with our kids the very thing that we’ve been working towards, and then as soon as it happens everyone goes oh my god what’s going to happen and they’re straight away in the future. They’re thinking beyond the pandemic what’s going to happen next year. 

No one ever said can we have a lockdown, can we have a pandemic so I can spend more time with my family. We’ve got to redefine the meaning of this and you just put a great sentence to that which is relax the rules. 

Relaxing the rules means most of the time you make it too strict to experience something, in order for me to be successful your rules were I’ve got to get this project out the way and make a success of it and then I get my bonus. 

Once I get my bonus only then can I look for other opportunities to be a consultant.

Harms: And it has to happen in 2020.

Dr Ro: Five rules you’ve defined this year, why don’t we redefine those? Why don’t we relax the rules and enjoy the time with the kids. 

Don’t be afraid of opening up that brochure. Enjoy it. The conversation that comes with the kids inspires them because all they’re hearing is death, pandemic, granny is sick.

Harms: The media probably never had as many clicks and likes and views because not in a horrible sense, but are excited that there are dark stories to write about because they know that triggers human nature. 

When you switch them off it becomes a way to just focus on what’s happening now, you don’t need to attach your rules to what’s happening.

Dr Ro: I think it is a shift in consciousness because if you look at the American elections recently whereas in the past slander campaigning work because people were fascinated with this. 

We had the whole thing previously with the prior elections with the Clinton situation and what was being said about that family all of those things which was sad because people were still drawn into that. Whereas this time when the slander came out lightness shone through and actually people were done with it because we’ve had so much of it. 

We’ve had so much information thrown at us, so much fear so much of this gloomy experience, I don’t think people want any more and it’s the first time in my lifetime watching American elections where actually people were watching switching it off they didn’t want to hear it. Even the media, the news interviewers shut down statements being made by the US president as they are tired.

This isn’t to do with pointing fingers or conspiracies, it’s just to say that information sometimes when there’s too much of it and it’s not positive people have enough. I think they have right now. We have to learn to shut it down in our minds.

Harms: Explain what the next step should be, the first place somebody has to spend time focusing.

Dr Ro: We’ve hit the two biggest ones because that is the big emotional shift there’s an inertia. Uncertainty creates a lack of inertia. People just lockdown. If this building started wobbling now the first thing we would do is anchor down our feet, unconsciously emotionally as it’s to do with our lives. 

I’ll just focus on this at the moment and breathe and I won’t think about anything else and that’s what has been happening. We’ve brought stability back by saying that’s okay things are moving you can stay in a moving platform. 

But the way to do that it’s a little bit like being in a ship. If you’re on a ship and you’re looking down at the ground and you notice it moving you can get seasick whereas if you look up and you look at the horizon that gives you a sense of stability. 

If you’re in a car and you read and there is this motion going on around us. The body loses its sense of trajectory and it gets a sense of imbalance but the minute you look up, look out at the scenery, the future, the vision, there’s something unconscious and our biological part we go, now I’ve got a sense of stability. We’ve got people to look up, reset , breathe, and ask sensible questions about the future. 

Let’s put the meaning behind it. 

Why do you want to pursue a career as a consultant? 

Because I want to have my ownership back. I want to be able to have control of my income and not be influenced by other people. I want to have more control of my time so I can leave my kids in the morning a bit later. That would be your purpose, so don’t mix purpose with vision. 

We’ve got a friend who owns a coffee shop very close to me and his wife has gone back into the industry of nursing and caring and he’s decided to be a stay at home mum. He is doing really well and he’s loving it. 

I just want to wrap this up in the role play.

What we’ve identified is you want to go on holiday with the kids, you had this incredible three or four months and from what you said you’ve actually had time with them, you connected with them. 

Maybe with this next lockdown it’s your chance to take that even deeper, what are some of the things you could do with your children now as though you are on the holiday outside the fact you might be on a beach doing those things, what would have been some of the things you would’ve done with your kids on the holiday? 

Why don’t we do that on the next lockdown. 

Tell them we’re going to have a holiday lockdown experience and that will give you new things to do on holiday next time round as well, bring some of that forward and don’t wait for the holiday. 

The other question I’ve got is let’s imagine that everything is back to normal now and you’re working your nuts off in January next year. You’re working your nuts off and your head is down on the project, leaving early in the morning getting back late at night to run that scenario. 

How does that feel? 

You’re working absolutely every hour of the day to get the project done

Harms: Based on what we’ve spoken about I thought that’s what I wanted or that’s what I thought was the right thing to do based on getting the outcome I wanted, but I need to shift that because my priorities and importance are with the kids. 

Otherwise I will do another year 2021 and I will miss them growing up.

Dr Ro: I understand that but at the start of this conversation you were like my world is falling apart, my career I was going to get this bonus, this holiday. What has changed?

Harms: I was putting the importance in the wrong place in comparison to the home life and the family.

Dr Ro: On that basis, then if anything, that has accelerated the need for you to know whilst you’re in lockdown reluctant to do the research needed to know how you can pick up clients? How can you market yourself online? 

This is a chance to actually not build the job that you are in but build the relationship with the kids and build your new future from a career perspective. So what do you need to do? 

Who could you speak to?

Harms: This is so exciting because what normally happens to someone at this moment in time is now they’re having an aspirational conversation at home with their partner. The partner will be overjoyed. It is a different aspirational conversation, it’s exciting, a new venture , dynamic conversation. It’s you’re doing something to solve a problem and you’re in control of that solution.

Dr Ro: Do you have a greater sense of certainty now?

Harms: Yes because I’m the one doing the work. I’m the one making things happen whereas before I was just letting it happen to me.

Dr Ro: Mindfulness is about being aware of what’s around us, but actually being present in the moment. 

That’s the biggest power and it really is about being aware. Sometimes we’re so busy in a place of fear because things are moving around us we forget, what about our kids? 

Think about how much stability and fear they had. What if we could become the rock and you as the father now coming into the household and that energy doesn’t come with you anymore you park it outside and you walk into the house just knowing that you are that solid base that they can walk upon when they need to.

Harms: We’ve got a 16-week year old and he does not know the pandemics happening. He has no future pacing he is in the moment. 

When you’re doing your walks in lockdown and you see the families, young children this is not affecting them, and we can take a lesson from that.

Dr Ro: You’ve really got to then redefine your identity. 

The last part of this is to think about who you associate with. Moving ahead there are two things you’ve got to filter the information you’re hearing outside: don’t allow it to control the internal world you’re in, i.e. the news. 

Yes, we know the markets are going to be affected, we know the economy is going to be affected. You’ve now got to navigate through that and also start to associate with people that have got completely different visions of the future. If you keep listening to fear mongering it’s going to keep drawing you down.

Harms: You have got a phrase you use Ro, SNIOP.

Dr Ro: Susceptible to the negative influence of other people. I heard that like 25 years ago from an American speaker. 

He said don’t let allow SNIOP affect you. In other words, we are so susceptible that whatever they say affects our own being, what we believe, how we perceive the world.

Harms: People in the scenario can be the media.

Dr Ro: In one of our podcasts you talk about filtering.

Harms: In this particular episode we talk about the impact of social but how to also get around the right people in terms of what you’re taking in.

Dr Ro: Give us two things they can do if they didn’t listen to that podcast.

Harms: Filtering is all about limiting the information that comes in and this information can be good or bad, in between but the key here is that a lot of information comes in and the thing that we’re missing is we don’t go out and seek the information. 

That information is being broadcasted to us 24, seven, and is typically done via your mobile phone. The thing that catches your attention first is that notification. I mean that red dot, orange, blue dot that’s circular and says you’ve got 400 unread notifications, your friend just sent you a message. You’ve got six new emails upcoming that are unread and we are all susceptible to this. 

My suggestion would be just one thing to start with and that is switch off the notifications for a weekend sometimes it is quite tricky, switch them off for a week and then just allow them to remain off. 

What this will do is it will mean you then enter the app seeking information rather than being distracted and the app saying, hey look at me. There is a documentary on Netflix called the social dilemma and that would explain a lot about how we are being influenced and how all of us are susceptible whether we like it not. 

That would be my two tips off the back of what you shared Ro, but those are some practical things. I think that’s just something you do in an instant. 

But what is the process? 

What would be your final share with how does somebody get this vision conversation and have that with themselves or with somebody else.

Dr Ro: If you’ve got a coach great, because that’s someone who can extract it out of you. There are coaches and then there are coaches.

Because what we did today was not a standard approach and that is me slowing down what I’d normally do because it is quite in your face but it gets results. I think the best thing to do they can certainly listen to our podcast on values and beliefs. I believe we did one on vision but again that’s worth a visit. 

Genuinely even if you just go and support initially to take advantage of these early ones go and do who are you purpose video series and there’s also series on values and beliefs, because that’s me on video. 

Each one is about two and half hours’ worth of content broken into six parts and I’ve broken it down as though I was actually coaching somebody. I think almost before going to a coach, go and do this which is just a fraction of the price and actually they can press pause and go back and it’s me doing what I did with you to them and they can run through that process. 

It does need a little bit of guidance and the challenge is motivation to do it. In the turning point book there is a chapter on purpose so they might want to have a look at that as well. 

An interim between now and engaging a coach might be to, for example, go watch the videos. Siobhan Birmingham, who we had on as a guest in the past as well as she coaches I think also we’ve got Corrie Donohue, who was amazing talking about peak performance.

Harms: That is the messages and start with videos, the book. Take ownership of it before getting a coach. 

They’re amazing they’re going to get you there quicker, but if you go to the coach with some level of awareness, much better.

Dr Ro: If you notice on the podcast we don’t promote stuff we just give loads of value on this occasion your question is valid, if somebody really needs help go to a trusted coach, so both Siobhan and Corrie have coached people that I have had come to my events before simply because they know that level of coaching. 

They’ve worked with that level of intensity they’ve had to step in on an event on stage and both have picked that coaching up to finish it off whilst we’re at the event.

Harms: There are people who have that relief moment and then there’s also people like, oh my goodness, that is me and they have a breakdown. They need a breakthrough and that’s where these incredible coaches will then help them.

Dr Ro: I think that’s probably the next stage, but for now there’s enough tools here plus with the videos for those people supporting us to go look at those first. 

Harms: Thank you for joining us today, I’m glad we took this offline conversation online for the listeners. 

On that note we hope that the picture we painted at the start has transformed in your minds and now you’re going to be working on the rewiring, recreating this vision relaxing the rules around the vision, that shall take us into 2021 in an incredible way.

That’s it for myself and Ro. 

That’s us signing off we shall see you on the next episode.