This episode is packed full of ideas you can practice immediately to restore the flow back to your relationship plus gives you communication protocols you can adopt to stop stress arguments from happening. 

#COVID-19 # Stress #Lockdownissues #Marriagetroubles

This episode is full of practical tips, techniques and advice for what to do in each instance.

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This episode is full of practical tips, techniques and advice for what to do in each instance.

xx

1) What health and crime effects we are observing on society and the world at large

2) What the triggers of all of these strong emotions are

3) 10 great Emotional release techniques which you can try out during lockdown or beyond!

This episode is full of practical tips, techniques and advice for what to do in each instance.

NO pressure or preaching, just 2 Trauma Coaches giving advice and keeping it real. 

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1) How our brains and bodies handle uncertainty and what we can do to help ourselves relax

2) If you or your loved ones are feeling more emotional and scratchy, how to handle the ranges of reactions you might experience day to day

3) For many people who are considering massive changes at this time, whether now is the time to pounce on those instincts or not

4) How to handle all the supermen and superwomen on social media who appear to be doing epic things all the time. Figure out if you should be turning yourself inside out to run a marathon in your garden, bake bread daily, start and smash your side hustle or complete the push-up challenge like Sarah and Brad

5) If you notice yourself being more lethargic than usual, managing the lethargy that so many people face daily in lockdown (remembering that this ain’t a vacation!)

6) How to ground yourself when your emotions get out of whack

7) Whether you should have a routine OR whether you should be keeping it spontaneous and what the best approach is for handling mass uncertainty

8) How to self soothe

9) How to manage your environment for success

10) How to lighten the mood when the whole planet appears to have gone pear-shaped

This episode is full of practical tips, techniques and advice for what to do in each instance.

NO pressure or preaching, just 2 Trauma Coaches giving advice and keeping it real. 

xx

People are rarely themselves during times of uncertainty

I want to call out that during times of great uncertainty, you find that people deal with things at different times and in different ways. It’s all rather normal and depends on how acutely someone is feeling the impact of this event. Someone working on the front line worried that they will infect their family is in a very different place to someone who is working at home and feeling bored of being cooped up. We must therefore have compassion for how everyone is going through this. Think of it this way:

So let’s be mindful of being kind and empathetic to the differing ways people are experiencing COVID-19.

What is going on?

I read a brilliant article in the Harvard Business Review all about the collective grief so many people feel during this crisis. In the article the writer asserted that the world is experiencing differing types of grief. The COVID-19 crisis has succeeded in changing life as we know it and although most of us know that the events we are experiencing are temporary, we realize that things will be very different when we come out of this. Life is changing and this was the point at which life changed. We all need to now adjust to this ‘new normal’ which includes the fear or economic toll, the loss of connection with others, the potential loss of those we love without even being able to say goodbye. We are not used this kind of trepidation feeling in the air. So if you find yourself feeling sad, welcome to the club. You might be feeling Anticipatory Grief, which is the feeling we get about great uncertainty coming. A storm is brewing and we have no idea how bad this is going to get but some will imagine all kinds of doom-and-gloom futures which can lead to catastrophizing and jumping to worst-case scenarios. We feel the world has changed, and it has. There’s something bad out there. With a virus, this kind of grief is so confusing for people. Our primitive mind knows something bad is happening, but you can’t see it. This breaks our sense of safety.

We’re feeling that loss of safety. I don’t think we’ve collectively lost our sense of general safety like this. Individually or as smaller groups, people have felt this. But all together, this is new. We are grieving on a micro and a macro level. We know this is temporary, but it doesn’t feel that way, and we realize things will be different. Just as going to the airport is forever different from how it was before 9/11, things will change and this is the point at which they changed. The loss of normalcy; the fear of economic toll; the loss of connection. This is hitting us and we’re grieving. Collectively. We are not used to this kind of collective grief in the air.

Let’s use this Cognitive Behavioural Therapy Model developed by Dr Rachel Morris for acute Anticipatory Grief:

Whenever there is great uncertainty, it triggers our FIGHT or FLIGHT response within our brains

The amygdala is the brain’s ‘alarm system’. It works to keep us safe by constantly being on the lookout for threat. The amygdala is very sensitive and lives by the rule ‘better safe than sorry’, so as soon as sign of danger are sensed it immediately kicks into action and prepares the body/mind to defend itself. It also records information from our senses (sight, sound, smell, touch, taste) about any dangerous situation. It all happens so quickly and automatically that sometime the amygdala has set off the alarm before we are even consciously aware of what is happening.

The uncertainty and its associated pace we are all experiencing with COVID-19 is activating many amygdalae’s out there. I would hazard a guess and say that there are not many people in the world who are sleeping soundly.

What happens when the threat system is activated?

The main purpose of the threat system is self – protection. Our survival instincts tend to make us do one of four things: fight, flight (run away), freeze, or appease (try to calm down the threat). When the threat system is activated a hormone called adrenaline is released into the bloodstream. This increases the release of cortisol which is the stress hormone.

The adrenaline and cortisol flow round our bodies very quickly, getting different body streams ready to quickly respond to the threat. The adrenaline increases heart rate so that there is more blood and oxygen going to our muscles. The adrenaline makes our muscles tense, making them ready to fight or to run away.

The adrenaline and cortisol speeds up our thoughts, so we can make quick (potentially lifesaving) decisions. All of these changes can affect how we are feeling. The diagram below shows some of the effects activation’s of the threat system can have.

When we feel under threat it is common to act automatically. We tend to act first and think later, and may behave in a way that we would not have if we were feeling safe or calm. We have very little, if any, control over these instinctual reactions and we rarely get to choose which ones we employ when we feel scared. Common instinctive reactions include:

• FIGHT
• FLIGHT
• FREEZE
• APPEASE

The slow, deliberate, rational, ‘thinking’ part of the brain (Hippocampus) often takes a back seat when we rely on our basic survival instincts. Cortisol also shuts down this rational part of our brain as the body mobilizes to protect us from whatever this perceived danger is.

Bottom line: When Emotions are High, Thinking is often Low.

It is very important to keep all this in mind as we can often blame ourselves for the way we may react during uncertain or traumatic events and wish that we had done or said something different. However, we probably just reacted automatically to protect ourselves in the best way we could at the moment.

So be empathetic to yourself, to others and to the world at large for how they are handling this crisis. Everyone is literally just doing the best they can.

What helps?

Understanding the stages of grief is a start. But whenever I talk about the stages of grief, I have to remind people that the stages aren’t linear and may not happen in this order. It’s not a map but it provides some scaffolding for this unknown world. There’s denial, which we say a lot of early on: This virus won’t affect us. There’s anger: You’re making me stay home and taking away my activities. There’s bargaining: Okay, if I social distance for two weeks everything will be better, right? There’s sadness: I don’t know when this will end. And finally there’s acceptance. This is happening; I have to figure out how to proceed.

Acceptance, as you might imagine, is where the power lies. We find control in acceptance. I can wash my hands. I can keep a safe distance. I can learn how to work virtually.

Let’s go back to anticipatory grief. Unhealthy anticipatory grief is really anxiety, and that’s the feeling you’re talking about. Our mind begins to show us images of the worst scenarios. That’s our minds being protective. Our goal is not to ignore those images or to try to make them go away — your mind won’t let you do that and it can be painful to try and force it. The goal is to find balance in the things you’re thinking and find ways to come into the present. 

Here are some steps you can take right now…

1. Create a GROUNDED ROUTINE that you can go back to every single day, morning, noon and night. An example includes:-
   1. Get UP with alarm I set the night before
   2. Take my Immune Booster supplements (Vitamin A, D, C, Zinc and Magnesium) with hot water and lemon which I wash my mouth out with
   3. Gargle with Mouthwash to wash away any possible lurking viruses
   4. Go get some exercise (30 minutes of HIIT on an app, join an online class
   5. Shower and get dressed as if I am going out
   6. Set the table and have breakfast
   7. Clear table and wash dishes
   8. Begin productive work session for the day (whether that be my job I can do remotely, DIY project I am doing, Course I am taking online with Udemy or MindValley or any other productive activity)
   9. Mid-morning cup of tea and rest
   10. Continue work
   11. Set table and have lunch
   12. Continue work until 4pm
   13. Go for walk and get fresh air
   14. Set table, cook and make dinner
   15. Clear table, wash dishes and rest, play board games, connect with friends online or watch television
   16. Self care activity: Paint nails or apply moisturiser, etc.
   17. Make list of everything you are grateful for in your life and write down what you like about yourself
   18. Listen to a calming audio program. If you want to use the Naked Recovery Anti-Anxiety audio program, just email my team and we will send it to you with my compliments ([email protected])
   19. Bed time and plan the next day
   20. etc.
2. Don’t allow anarchy to develop in your home. Create a cocoon of safety and routine. Keep things as “normalized” as possible incorporating lots of self care
3. Keep up with exercise and activity to release the excess adrenaline and cortisol in your body. Go for a walk or bike ride; put on the radio and dance; walk briskly up the stairs; stretch or do yoga; go for a jog; do some vigorous cleaning.
4. Be creative. Draw, paint or sculpt; write in your diary; sing; play a musical instrument; knit; sew; carry out a DIY project.
5. Connect with others. Sharing the thoughts to normalise them: talk to others about your thoughts and feelings. This in itself may help. Phone or text a friend; help someone else online; talk about your problems with someone you trust; contact someone in my team if you feel isolated or alone. Message us on ([email protected])
6. Practice soothing and calming activities. Take a bath or shower; stroke a pet; have a warm drink; have a massage; listen to soothing music; practice meditation, mindfulness or relaxation activities.
7. Practice constructive activities. Send an important email; spend 10 minutes tidying or organizing; cook or bake; garden; write a ‘to-do’ list; volunteer your time.
8. Practice activities which require concentration. Do a puzzle, crossword or Sudoku; play solitaire, computer games or apps; watch a movie or a funny video clip.
9. Try these grounding techniques:
   1. Organize your drawers and declutter your house
   2. Thoroughly clean your house
   3. Complete your filing
   4. Sleep with a cat or hot water bottle
   5. Take a kick-boxing class
   6. Rub Vicks Vaporub on your feet and put socks on
   7. Have an Epsom Salt bath to replenish Magnesium depleted through stress
   8. Soak your feet in hot water with Epsom salts
   9. Go to bed earlier
   10. Eat one home-balanced meal a day
   11. Cook your own meals
   12. Bake Bread
   13. Do Gardening
   14. Set the table and eat at the table
   15. Go for a long leisurely walk once a day (keeping social distance of 3-4 meters from others)
   16. Have a picnic with your family in your garden
   17. Complete your year-ed accounting
   18. Eat root veggies like potatoes, turnips, carrots and beets
   19. Take a class on healthy cooking
   20. Foster a pet from a shelter
   21. Establish comforting routines
10. Focus on what you can be grateful for each day. Completing a gratitude journal where you identify 3 things each day that you are grateful for. Gratitude is a great antidote for anxiety as it is (almost) impossible to feel both things at the same time.
11. Challenging (re-framing) the thoughts, e.g. my mum is going to die, what if I get it and die, how will my kids cope, what will my funeral be like… Look at the balance of evidence for the REAL rather than mind-created risk. then reframe it, e.g. the story I’m telling myself is: I am going to die and my children will be left without a mother, and compare this with the reality: It is unlikely I will die; I am relatively young and have no other health problems.
12. Control what you CAN control
    1. Social media: reduce the amount overall. Notice how it makes you feel and find your own balance. There is good and bad – it can be helpful to reach out, connect and find support, but it can also escalate things.
    2. News updates: set specific and time-framed periods to look at the news, e.g. 10 minutes twice daily. Consider using the press conferences.
    3. As far as possible, try to keep your usual routine and participate in usual activities, even if you have to be a bit creative, e.g. virtual coffee with a friend, watching a family film and chatting about it by WhatsApp as it takes place, doing a HIIT workout in the garden or indoors.
    4. Think of life one day at a time. What can you do to stay in the moment? – use mindfulness techniques (https://www.headspace.com).
13. Practice the Calming Techniques I lay out below…

Try these CALMING Techniques

Calming the threat system: Relaxed Breathing

Controlling your breathing sends a signal to your threat system that everything is ok. Calm breathing is slow, relaxed, and from the diaphragm (‘belly breathing’), whereas anxious breathing is quick, tense, and high up in the chest.

1. Begin by sitting somewhere comfortable but supported
2. If you feel comfortable to do so close your eyes, otherwise stare off into the middle distance
3. Breathe in slowly and steadily for a count of 3
4. Breathe out slowly and steadily for a count of 5. Our bodies relax most on the out-breath
5. Repeat for a few minutes. It’s normal for your attention to wander off. If it does, just gently bring it back to focus on your breathing.

Calming the threat system: Colored Breathing

Another technique for slowing your breathing and calming your mind is to use imagery while you breathe. Some people find it helpful to imagine breathing colored air. You can memorize these instructions, you could ask someone to read then slowly for you, or you could record yourself speaking them and then listen to the recording.

1. Imagine a color representing tension, or tense feelings
2. As you breathe, calmly and steadily, imagine breathing out air tinged with that tense color
3. See the colored air in your mind’s eye, and watch as you breathe it out and it floats away
4. Allow the tense colored air to become paler and paler, as you breathe out all of the tension
5. Now bring to mind a color representing calming, soothing feelings
6. Imagine breathing in this relaxed colored air
7. Just notice what happens in your body as you imagine breathing in the relaxed air
8. Continue breathing this way for a few minutes

Calming the threat system: Swing Breathing

Swing breathing is another imagery technique for slowing your breathing and calming your mind. You can memorize these instructions, you could ask someone to read then slowly for you, or you could record yourself speaking them and then listen to the recording.

Allow your breathing to become slower … and more regular. Just focusing your attention on your breath … on the air flowing in … and out … of your mouth and nose.

Your breathing finding a steady rhythm. Breathing gently from low down in the belly. Taking slow steady breaths. Breathing in gently … and slowly and smoothly exhaling … Breathing in gently … and slowly and smoothly exhaling.

And as you continue to breathe slowly and gently … in a rhythm that’s comfortable to you … I’d like you to imagine … and then begin to feel … that you’re on a swing. Gently swinging backwards … and forwards … backwards … and forwards … finding that you’re swinging in rhythm with your breathing … just gently swinging … relaxed and peaceful. Pay attention to how it feels to swing gently forwards … and backwards … peaceful … relaxed … at ease. Just swinging gently … and smoothly … smoothly .. and gently.

And you can carry on breathing calmly and gently for as long as you like. Relaxing into this gentle rhythm more and more as time goes by.

Calming the threat system: Muscle relaxation

When we feel under threat our muscles tense up – ready to fight or take flight. Keeping the muscles tense is one of the body’s ways of trying to keep you safe. One way of letting your body know that you are safe is to deliberately relax all of your muscles.

Progressive muscle relaxation involves tensing, then relaxing, all of the muscle groups in turn. Find a comfortable spot, sitting or lying down. Then, for each of the muscle groups in turn, follow this pattern:

1. Tense the muscles
2. Notice the tension for a few moments
3. Release
4. Notice the sensation of relaxation as the tension drains away

Relax each of the muscle groups in turn:

Fists

Upper arms

Shoulders (lift up slightly)

Upper back (shoulders back slightly)

Stomach

Buttocks

Thighs

Lower legs / calves

Feet

Neck (gently move neck back)

Forehead

Muscles around eyes (scrunch face up)

Calming the threat system: Creating a safe place

A safe place is somewhere that you create using your mind and imagination. It is a place that you can go anytime, wherever you are. For some people, it is a place that they remember from their past as being particularly safe and calm. For others, they cannot easily remember a time like this from their past and so they work on creating one for themselves now. Either way, the same process applies. You can have more than one safe place and it can change over time as you wish. It is your creation and your own personal ideal.

It is useful for your safe place to have certain qualities though: it needs to be a place you feel calm, not judged, warm, free and above all safe.

How to create a safe place:

1. If you feel comfortable enough, close your eyes and take a deep breath in and count to three. Then breathe out slowly to the count of five. Do this several times. As before, spend some time slowing down and controlling your breathing until you reach a calm and soothing rhythm. As you breathe in, imagine you are breathing in a sense of safeness and relaxation. As you breathe out, imagine you are breathing out all of the tension in your body.
2. Begin to imagine a place where you feel calm – where are you?
3. Focus on what you can see, take a minute to look all around you in your mind. You may perhaps even turn around to see what’s behind. Concentrate on any objects that you can see, the colors around you and areas of lightness and darkness.
4. Focus on what you can hear, take your time to notice the noises, even the subtle ones. What noises can you hear close by? What noises can you hear in the distance?
5. Focus on what you can smell. Again, take a minute to really notice the smells around you.
6. What can you feel? Is it hot or cold? Are there textures under your feet?
7. Focus on any taste in the image and notice this for a minute or two.
8. Now focus on how you feel in your body, feelings of calm and safety in this image. Focus on the release of tension. Where do you feel this feeling in your body?
9. Keep imagining your safe place in as much detail as possible and revisit that feeling of calm and safeness over and over, noticing where you feel it in your body.
10. Is there a word that might remind you of your safe place? If so, what is it? If you have a word, repeat it in your mind over and over as you keep your safe place in your mind.
11. When you are ready, take some deep breaths in again and slowly open your eyes, trying to hold onto that calm feeling.

Remember, you can come back to it whenever you want to. The easiest way to do this is to start by slowing down and controlling your body and to repeat the word that you picked that reminded you of your safe place. In doing so, it will be easier to return to your safe place whenever you would like.

Safe place: Write a description of your safe place in as much detail as you can. Remember to include information from all your senses. What word have you chosen to remind you of your safe place?

Coping with nightmares: Use all of your senses

When we wake up from a nightmare, our awareness of the things around us in the here-and-now can be diminished. Just as we can re-experience traumatic images from the news or social media in all of our five senses, we can use those five senses to try and ‘ground’ us back in the present.

Sight

Look around you and use those sights to remind yourself that you’re in the present and that you are safe.

Touch

It can be helpful to carry an object with us that remind us that we are safe, such as a stress ball, a pebble, or a flower.

Hearing

Focus on all of the noises around you in the present moment. Use them to remind you of where you are.

Smell

Smell can be one of the most powerful ways of learning to soothe and comfort yourself Try using essential oils, your favorite plants, or any comforting aroma.

Taste

Strong tastes such as chewing gum can be helpful. For people who re-experience ‘taste memories’ it can be helpful to focus on the absence of taste in the present moment.

Coping with memories: 5-4-3-2-1

When our minds and bodies feel as if they are fully immersed in the past, using all of our senses at once can be a very effective way of bringing ourselves back into the present. Focus on:

5 things you can see

1:

2:

3:

4:

5:

4 things you can feel / touch

1:

2:

3:

4:

3 things you can hear

1:

2=

3:

2 things you can smell

1:

2:

1 thing you can taste

Sleeping better: Sleep Hygiene

Feeling stressed often affects our ability to sleep. We may have difficulty getting to sleep if we lie in bed thinking about how our life has changed and wondering if things will get better. We may avoid going to sleep for fear that we might have more nightmares. If we do manage to get to sleep we may then wake up after experiencing nightmares. It is normal to have difficulty getting back to sleep.

The tips and ideas below have been selected to try and help you increase the chance of getting better sleep.

1. Bed is for sleeping and sleeping happens at night-time

• Try and keep your bedroom and bed for sleeping only
• Avoid sleeping in the day
• Develop a routine before bed time such as having a relaxing bath or listening to some relaxing music and go to bed at around the same time each night. Try and wake up around the same time each morning. Small children find habits and routines comforting, and the same things work for adults too. As adults, we forget that these things apply to us as well
• If you cannot sleep after 30 minutes, get up and try an activity such as listening to some music. Do this for about 15 minutes then return to bed and try and sleep. Repeat this as often as is necessary until you go to sleep
• Make your bedroom a nice place to sleep – try smells or flowers (or some new bed sheets!)
• Put your phone on the opposite side of the room and if you wake up: DO NOT CHECK YOUR PHONE

2. Be kind to your body

• Do not go to bed hungry
• Try and avoid spicy food late in the day as this can act as a stimulant in our bodies
• Reduce caffeine but definitely avoid caffeine after 4pm-remember caffeine is also found in tea and fizzy drinks like pop. You can buy de-caffeinated versions of these drinks if needed
• Although alcohol can initially make us feel sleepy, it stops us from experiencing restful sleep and is not great for stress or Adrenal Fatigue. It can also make it harder to fall asleep again, if you wake up in the middle of the night

Try: Any of the other grounding strategies that you have developed can be helpful if you wake from a nightmare

In Summary

Many different treatments have been developed for coping with uncertainty and traumatizing events. Research has shown that they can be extremely effective.

Every crisis represents an opportunity for transformation

Sometimes it’s hard to find opportunities when we are right in the middle of the storm. BUT they are there.

Every day I want you to try to find ONE GOOD THING. Examples are below…

• Finding time to do the things you have always been traditionally too busy to do
• Spending more time in nature doing simple things
• Many organizations suffer from slow procedures and rigid ways of working. The coronavirus has forced many of them to skip or change rules instantly. Suddenly employees are allowed to work from home without direct supervision. COVID-19 shows that, as soon as there is a strong enough stimulus, things can change. This leads to remarkable innovations. Not being allowed to open their doors, restaurants, for example, are shifting to delivery mode. And schools suddenly do much of the teaching and even some of the testing online. This brings the opportunity to create innovations now that can be maintained after the crisis. And it also can help to keep the current speed and innovation mode afterwards.
• We are spending quality time with family
• Connecting or reconnecting with people online that you have lost touch with
• Nature is taking a breather from all of us humans: COVID19 causes a significant reduction in green house gasses and other air, water and land polluting outputs. In Venice this has allegedly led to dolphins return after just a couple of weeks. Polluted skies are blue again, rivers and streams are clear again, animals are curiously coming out to play again. Perhaps when all this is over we will become more aware of the planet and the role we must play as caretakers
• In today’s overheated economy, TIME is often seen as the most valuable and sparse thing we have. We are always SO BUSY. We fill our week with social gatherings and entertainment such as going to the theater, birthdays, cinema, restaurant, bar, sport clubs, gym, music, festivals, concerts and what is more. Suddenly, all of that is cancelled or forbidden, giving us significant amounts of extra time. DO NOT fill your time immediately with other activities. Rearrange how you spend your time and reserve time for nothingness. Not just during the crisis, but also after it. 
• COVID-19 provides an opportunity to reflect on things and to reconsider what we do, how we do it and why we do it. We have a great opportunity to rethink our habits and routines and make changes. Now that you haven’t been able to go to the restaurant twice a week, commute 2 hours per day, hang out with your friends or go to a party every weekend, you can reflect on whether you really want to continue doing so after the crisis. The virus forces you to make changes to your daily life that you might actually want to keep also after the crisis.
• As such, the virus shows us that, no matter how well-planned and organized we are —we are not in control. One simple virus is disrupting everything. This offers a great opportunity. In almost every aspect of life we want to be in control. Whether it is health, airline safety or our calendars, we live in the illusion that full control is possible. The virus can help us create awareness that this is not the case. It provides an opportunity to take a more modest role and accept that many things are simply beyond our control.
• An opportunity to end something which has been intolerable before. In the book Necessary Endings, Henry Cloud lays out that for new things to begin, some things need to be let go of like business partnerships, relationships, the job that you hate…
• Challenging times offer a great opportunity for social bonding and other ways of connecting to and helping people. Of course, not being able to visit friends or family has increased isolation and feelings of loneliness in some cases. But the feeling of “we’re in this together” has also triggered interesting ways of connecting. Some of those have gone viral—such as Italians singing together from their windows and balconies—but there are many small, local initiatives too to connect and help people who need it.

When everything becomes uncertain, everything that is important becomes clear

Anonymous

If you are really struggling…

Many different treatments have been developed for coping with uncertainty and traumatizing events. Research has shown that they can be extremely effective.

At Naked Recovery, we practice many different Trauma therapies including:

1. Trauma-Focused Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (TF-CBT) Involves talking in detail about the events you experienced. Going through the events with you and will help you to make sense of what happened.
2. Narrative Exposure Therapy (NET) which is suitable for people who have experienced multiple traumas
3. Compassion-Focused CBT is helpful for people who experience a lot of shame or self-criticism.
4. Eye Movement Desensitization Reprocessing (EMDR) – Involves holding an image of your trauma in mind while your therapist guides you in making specific kinds of eye movements. This method can be effective but the previous 3 methods are the most effective for processing trauma.

If you need to talk to anyone about your feelings, myself and my team are available and here to help. Working with a Clinical Trauma specialist can help you cope better with all the stress you are experiencing. Don’t suffer in silence, contact us.

Follow my tips and videos on https://www.facebook.com/AdeleTheronMentor/

My thoughts and prayers are with you all during this uncertain time. Stay safe and self isolate please.

Big Hugs

xAdele

This is not a time to panic. Panic leads to over emotional uninformed, unintelligent decisions. Choosing not to panic however is NOT the same as choosing in-action.

With any trauma it is our suggestion that you take informed pro-active actions…

Ultimately this is an unprecedented situation. Some would call this a crisis and a crisis demands adaptation. To adapt, we need to work on our Resiliency and there are typically two blocks to Resiliency

• Learning Resistance – Unwillingness to accept what happened

Signs: Denial, burying head in the sand, retreating, unwillingness to accept reality, running from reality, obsessive rumination, consuming a lot of energy reading social media updates etc.

What needs to happen to move on: Accept you cannot make it unhappen. Accept reality. Take a look at this post from someone who currently has Corona Virus in Spain. The reality ain’t pretty… https://www.facebook.com/paul.brooks.3576/posts/2859674540765943

• Learning Defiance – unwillingness to adjust to what happened

Signs: anger/ outrage, you ruined everything, unwillingness to adjust or cooperate with life experiences which happened, rebelliousness (I won’t adjust), opposition

What needs to happen to move on: Willingness to move to survivor mindset vs. remain in victim mindset – willingness to adjust. Being open to learning. Can’t control what happened but can control what happens next.

The Bottom Line is we must all as a planet surrender to this virus and adapt our lives accordingly. The sooner we adapt and surrender, the sooner we have the opportunity to contain the outbreak.

Here are some tips for getting ahead and not panicking during this crisis…

1: Pick your news sources

In this era of multiple and personal news channels, choosing who you listen to might be critical.

Everyone has a view, and many people are distributing those in ways that wouldn’t have been possible in previous decades. As always, the most dramatic messages attract the most ‘interest’, they may not however be the most accurate.

I would warn against news aggregators, unless you can configure those to control what the sources are. I would suggest you take a more pro-active roll in your news choices.

That said, you may decide to pro-actively that news aggregators provide a broader range of opinions. Whatever you do, please make a pro-active decision.

Here is a very good article of what Sina Farzaneh discovered whilst in self-isolation in China. There are some great tips here for adapting to the changes the virus demands: https://medium.com/@sinajahn/lessons-from-a-coronavirus-refugee-8cb245fca061?fbclid=IwAR3YNYv3Rn7gCM3IS3yDGixb5hxdgMEk6n4qFS0uhuhfJ_-c5TdjbzYFiUs

Here are some news agencies, and information providers you may wish to refer to:

• Xinhua – China, in English
• Reuters – USA
• Al Jazeera – Qatar
• BBC – UK
• World Health Organisation

The following links are links to specific articles from with WHO that you may find of benefit (assuming you feel they are a suitable source of advice):

WHO: How to use masks

WHO: Basic protective measures

2: Symptoms

It goes without saying that if you have any viral like symptoms you follow the best medical advice. At the time of writing that is likely to include self-isolating.

Procedures are different from Country to Country, and probably day-to-day. Check your local authorities for directions, and the steps to follow.

3: Act smart

Be good to yourself and to others.

Make bold, brave, and inconvenient steps to reduce your exposure.

Doing so will not only reduce your chances of contracting the disease, (and this may be the most important) you will also reduce any risks of you spreading the disease. Remember it is possible to have the disease for some time before experiencing ANY visible symptoms.

You may not be in a social group that has a high risk of death. Take steps to positively reduce the spread.

Wash hands:

I have personally turned to the BBC for what I consider to be a legitimate news worthy source of information. Here is a 20 second video showing how to wash hands correctly to help stop the spread of the virus. 

At risk of stating the obvious, washing hands to protect against a virus is different to the every day way you’ve probably been washing your hands (unless you are a surgeon) for years.

Please watch –

You will need;

• A suitable cleaning agent, such as hand soap
• Paper tissues for drying
• Waste paper basket close to hand with a closed lid
• Discipline to relearn a new habit

It’s hard to change our habits of a like-time. So even if you are at home, even if you believe you have not come into any contact with another person, wash your hands the right way every time throughout the crisis, it’s good habit forming.

Set a recurring alarm:

Wash hands regularly. I’ve taken to setting a count-down timer on my mobile phone to remind me to wash my hands every 2 hours. At the very least it’s a good reminder. And to get myself into new and better habits, I needed a tool like this to remind me.

Distance, greetings, gloves:

I have again turned to the World Health Organisation (WHO) for advise here, if you do not consider this a reputable source, please pro-actively find another.

Reduce outings and begin social distancing:

Consider;

• Can you do that workout at home instead of the gym?
• Can you order food online rather than do a daily visit to the supermarket?
• Can you buddy up car-runs (shopping, school-runs etc.) with a neighbour? Taking the trips in-turn will reduce exposure by half.
• Can you do that meeting online, rather than in-person?

4: Keep moving forwards:

This challenging time will likely need some re-adjustment by us all. Perhaps changes in our habits, in our goals, or in our careers.

Embrace the changes, you are a highly capable, highly flexible intelligent machine.

You’ve got this!

5: What I do know for sure…

The Corona-Virus will have significant repercussions across three major areas of our life;

1: Health

2: Wealth, and

3: Mental-wellbeing

6: Support others

Let’s be vigilant, please help support and love one another through this.

Does a neighbour or family member need help?

7: Support for yourself

How can we support you more – let us know?

As a company that helps people get over trauma, we are here to help. For this reason, I have put together a rapid-intervention program for anyone who is experiencing debilitating fear and stress with this COVID-19 crisis and wants support in overcoming that stress and getting your head back in the game. All proceeds will be donated to the primary global organization fighting the spread of the virus: https://www.who.int/emergencies/diseases/novel-coronavirus-2019/donate

You may have some challenging situations to deal with, difficult decisions to make. You don’t need to go it alone, contact us for support.

Stay safe

Adele

According to a working paper published by the National Bureau of Economic Research (NERB), this middle age is when people feel least satisfied with their lives, and it doesn’t matter where they are, what they are doing for a living or how their overall health is. 

Here are some excerpts from her article:-

“In nations that are still developing, it happens only a little later: 48.2. 

Professor David Blanchflower, an economics professor at Dartmouth College, compiled a massive dataset and found that although trajectories varied and looked somewhat different from nation-to-nation, the basic gist was the same. 

For the US, measured by the General Social Survey from 1972 to 2018, once controls are introduced, happiness goes into a veritable free fall from the optimism of an Americans’s 18th year of life and first of adulthood on into middle age. 

It’s not exactly ‘thirty, flirty and thriving,’ but the plummeting happiness quotient does slow its downward roll a little around age 30, before bottoming out in the late 40s for the US. 

For his part, Blanchflower doesn’t offer a a lot of explanation in his latest paper, but does heartily defend that it’s solid evidence that ‘the happiness curve is found in 32 countries. No myth’ (the final words of his paper’s conclusions, to which he’s devoted an entire page). 

Others akcnowledge that science hasn’t quite worked out why, but offer some compelling context and hypotheses. 

Journalist Jonathan Rauch wrote a book on The Happiness Curve, discussing the same 40s slump, noting that orangutans and chimpanzees also hit a midlife slump. 

Rauch also suggests that this is a time of transition – and we shouldn’t necessarily think of it as a crisis point. 

‘The best conjecture is that it is because of a change in our values and our brains,’ he says. 

‘It seems like we start out wired for social competition, we’re ambitious, but our ambition is a trickster. 

‘It is disappointing because it never lets you feel satisfied and by midlife we feel disappointed.’

Brain shrinkage also starts in the 30s and 40s, and accelerates in our 60s. 

The sex hormones testosterone (for men) and estrogen (for women) also start declining as early as in the 30s, and the shift may become more noticeable in the 40s. 

But, there’s hope. 

With time, happiness perks back up again, according to the new working paper. 

In fact, happiness climbs back to heights seen only in our 20s once more in our 70s. 

So no matter where you live, or how dark the middle ages seem, hold on, the happiness curve is everywhere,’ writes Blanchflower. “

Damn. Midlife crisis is seriously real people. The reality is that midlife crisis has more to do with our resignation over our lives and ability to generate happiness than anything else.

Happiness is an elusive concept for some of us and  according to Dr. Daniel Gilbert who wrote the book “Stumbling on Happiness”, we have a certain “set point” in happiness. Meaning, we usually get happy with whatever we have at the time. The best predictor of human happiness, however, is in the human relationships that we foster and enjoy with family, friends, and loved ones. Getting support is significantly more important than achieving money and even health. So, regardless of how much money or lack of money one can spend on a vacation, for example, everyone derives the same relative level of happiness from the vacation that they end up taking. Dr. Gilbert illustrated this by showing the results of the 1978 study by Brickman, Coates, and Janoff-Bulman on lottery winners and paraplegics. After a year of losing the use of their legs and a year after winning the lotto, lottery winners and paraplegics are equally happy with their lives. In fact, both groups were equally happy — which one would think is completely counter-intuitive.

Generally speaking, we have a “happiness setpoint” that can only be raised slightly through leveraging support and relationships. 

The Drivers of Happiness include these factors:-

Part of helping clients solve a midlife crisis is about resetting the Happiness Factors to areas which matter more than people think…

Video ⇣

Transcription ⇣

Simon: Cool. Okay so, here I am with Adele. Say hi.

Adele: Hello.

Simon: Okay, so again we’re doing our Ask Me Anything. And as the title suggests, these are just questions that have come in, a lot of these questions have come in from our Facebook group. Excuse me, got croaky voice this morning. And if there are people do have questions for the future, [inaudible] send those in, send them in to [email protected], [email protected], and just let us know that this is a question for the Ask Me Anything. It is our expectation that we will continue to do these from time to time. The general format of this is, I’ve basically picked some of the random questions, fire them at Adele, put her on the spot, and we take it from there. Sometimes they’re short, sometimes they’re long, et cetera, et cetera.

Adele: Absolutely no preparation whatsoever. Just off the cuff, right?

Simon: And I’ll try and trip you up occasionally just to see how it goes.

Adele: Just for fun.

Simon: So we’re recording this in kind of getting close to middle of December, but we’re probably going to put this out either just before the New Year or just after. So, just for context or if a reindeer goes past or something, understand the context. Okay so, oh actually the first question I have here, I did actually … Those are questions. Sort of ring around here and I want to start here is, question for you is where are you? And I guess before you answer the question, the thing behind that is of course, you’re always around, you’ve just come back from a trip, so perhaps you can share a little bit about that, where you are and what’s going on.

Adele: Yeah, so the nicer of the incredible job that I have, which I’m so fortunate to be able to do what I do, I mean, I absolutely love working with people going through various life changes, traumas, mid-life crises, that kind of thing, is there’s just lots of travel, as I travel to clients, we run retreats all over the world. And I’ve just come back from Peru. We were just at the Inca Trail with a group of amazing clients, and sort of stormed through 53 kilometres of up and down stuff at altitude. It was super awesome. And then we went down to Patagonia. Months before I was in Lisbon and then in London. And I’m now in Thailand, so just kind of wrapping up some retreat stuff towards the end of the year.

Adele: And very excited, because we’re actually going to be launching a whole bunch of new things in New Zealand from February, March next year after I get back from South Africa in between. But basically, we’ve worked out that a lot of people are extremely attracted to doing retreats in New Zealand. New Zealand is a fantastic location, because it’s just breathtakingly beautiful. But it’s also quite, the flight times and locations and settings just make it absolutely perfect for all of our clients and the people who come to us from the United States. We’re still going to be running retreats and things across Asia, as we always have done, but it’s just opening up a whole new territory. We have a lot of clients and people from Australia and Tahiti, Polynesia Islands, that kind of thing. So it’s just a whole new location for us. And we’re going to be spending a lot more time in New Zealand next year.

Adele: But we’re a global small business, we continue to run things all over the world. But yeah, I’m going to be locating myself a lot more in New Zealand from next year onward, which is going to be-

Simon: Yeah, we’re looking forward to that. So we’ll then have a real base in Thailand, South Africa, and New Zealand, which I think-

Adele: And in London, of course.

Simon: Yeah, we’ve done less retreats in London. And if people want to escape life-

Adele: Well we do, yeah, exactly. We do kind of more Lisbon or Spain or that kind of thing. Not many people like to escape to London.

Simon: Yeah, people are heading the other direction. And same for America, because I’m sure there’s many beautiful places there. But we do get a lot of American clients of ours coming over to us in Thailand and, hopefully, soon in New Zealand, as well. So yeah, we’re looking forward to that. So, that will be kicking off early 2020. Just touching on one thing you mentioned there about your recent trip, so just want to straighten out, that wasn’t actually a holiday, right?

Adele: Right.

Simon: That was actually an event. So, perhaps you can tell us what it’s called and just a little bit more of the-

Adele: Yeah.

Simon: Because we are … Just a little bit that, your intention about running that again.

Adele: Yeah, so the Peruvian/Patagonian adventure … One of the things that’s really cool is obviously we help people get over big life changes, and traumas, and things. But once they’re beyond that and they’ve moved their life to the next level, what they’re really interested in is how they can break through all areas of life to move the entire base level that they’ve set in their life completely to the next level. So I wanted to create a retreat for long-time clients of ours who were just up for the next thing. And this challenge was called Naked Discovery. It was all about achieving limitless potential and the science behind achieving limitless potential. All the latest developments in quantum physics, latest developments in manifestations, latest developments in intentionality and goal setting and that kind of thing. We basically had a 21-day retreat abroad, where we also set physical challenges, mental challenges all the way through the journey. So, every day there was a new challenge that was being set and the group had to push themselves through something quite tough to reach breakthroughs.

Adele: Everybody, they were kind of bonding with each other, they were bonding to themselves, they were breaking through various things in their lives, finding people from home, having these huge insights, experiences, that kind of thing. So, massively challenging experience to lead, as well, because I was also on the journey with them going through the challenges, myself. And unfortunately, on the Inca Trail my boots were awful. I had 18 blisters all over my feet, having to hike the 53 kilometres with-

Simon: Your own transformation.

Adele: Yeah, in pain myself, leading other people through their own physical transformation. I’m not really a personal trainer, but I sort of feel like I became one instantaneously. It was an immensely transformational experience for everybody. Everybody, upon return, it’s been two weeks, and just touching base with everyone and how they’re doing in their lives, they’re in the stratosphere right creating absolute chaos wherever they are. Almost unrecognisable in their lives as they’ve come back. We’re really excited about leading that particular adventure again, because the journey to limitless potential, you really learn how much you get in your own way. And how much limitations like physical pain or you tell yourself a certain story, “I can’t do that. That’s not who I am. Oh, I don’t do things that way.” And it’s just a barrier to limitless potential. And actually when you remove all these conversations in your head and physical gibbity gibbities that you keep generating and conversing about, actually anything is possible. You can actually create amazing components and adventures within your life. We all were on the journey together. It was amazing.

Adele: We had a moment in the middle where it was like, “Gosh, there’s some real conflict beginning to happen personally, within the group, or whatever.” But the way that we, I chose to lead it, we would address absolutely everything. There was just radical openness, transparency. And I mean, this group just bonded so deeply. I mean, there were war cries, there were sing alongs. The rest of the people on the Inca Trail were like, “What are you doing? What are you guys doing? You’re doing something, because you’re crazy.” We were like entertaining everybody on the Inca Trail. We’d stand at the top of this peak that we’d climbed, I don’t know, it was like 4,200 metres, whatever the thing is up there. We’re doing yoga. We’re leading like 80 other people who are on the trail with this yoga thing. And then we’re talking to them about transformations. And they’re just like, “You guys are crazy. We’re loving it.” So they’d follow us and they’d do our sing alongs and war cries with us.

Adele: It was an amazingly spirited adventure. Super fun. I can’t wait to lead it again. It’s just so much fun.

Simon: That sounds amazing. I’m sure you’ve got some friendships there that will be unbreakable and will last for three lifetimes, right?

Adele: Oh yeah, they’ve got this group chat that they’re on and there’s just so much banter. It’s very funny.

Simon: And one thing that’s really intriguing to me about that is the, I think there’s a tendency for us as humans to separate physicality and mentality. We always look at those very separate. And we do that a lot, right? We’re not a physical experience company traditionally. This is probably the first time really we’ve done something a bit more physical. And the two are intrinsically linked. If you force yourself to hunch over and walk slowly all day long, you will feel depressed by the end of the day. And the opposite is true as well. If you are down and you force your shoulders back and you walk around powerfully and speak in a strong voice, you’ll feel better by the end of the day. And that’s just a very simple example, but there’s such an intrinsic link.

Adele: Actually, and it’s, I’ll actually cover one of the points that we cover on the retreat around the science of emotion. For that, I studied quite a lot of pharmacology and that point, like actually what is an emotion. And from a chemical perspective, each emotion has its own chemical blueprint that it follows. And each emotion actually generates different chemistry within the body. And when you suppress an emotion, actually what’s happening is your cell receptors shrivel back, and they’re not connected, and the energy isn’t flowing throughout your body. So the generation of an emotion is actually not the problem, but the suppression really is. So if you’re feeling really angry and you just ignore that and do nothing with it, you can actually create complete chaos within your body as toxicity begins to build up because the cell receptors are not connecting and not flowing properly and they’re blocked.

Adele: And what we were really discussing on the retreat is that emotion is like a formula. It’s thoughts plus sensation. So, you can’t actually separate thought from your physical state, to your point. Your physical state has everything to do with the emotion getting generated. Because if you’re thinking, “Oh, I can’t do this. It’s impossible for me,” and you’re hunched over and you’re in that physical state, you’re actually holding your body in a particular way and you’re thinking these negative thoughts, you’re now really generating and feeding this negative emotion. It’s kind of like it then spreads like wildfire. And really when we’re looking, from a therapeutic perspective, at treating depression and really negative emotions, one of the first cognitive behavioural techniques is what we call behavioural activation, where you actually have to change your state. You have to get into action. You’ve got to move your body, because if you’re jumping around, doing star jumps, it’s quite impossible to feel really deeply depressed at the same time.

Adele: So, separating, you can’t separate your physical state in an emotion. Emotion is really that combination of a negative thought plus that physical state. So by shifting the two elements of the equation, but thinking more positively, accessing those negative thoughts through language, and by changing your physical state, you can actually change the way that you think and feel as a result of that.

Simon: It’s very empowering, right? When people realise it’s under their control.

Adele: It’s really empowering. And what I noticed about myself, which was kind of a personal breakthrough, I was in agony at one point, we’d been hiking for 10 hours that day, is that when I’m in incredible pain, I seem to get really funnier. I started singing and doing war cries and making jokes and poking fun at the tour guide and chasing after him and poking him with my hiking stick. I don’t know where that came from, but it was a really interesting moment of kind of going, “You could be in pain and still produce the results. You can still break through something and get there.” Whereas, actually what would normally happen in those moments, you go, “I’m in pain,” and sit there in a heap and cry.

Simon: Yeah, there’s a reason humour exists, right? I mean, it wasn’t just, it’s a needed, important emotion, I think. As a non-coach and as a non-scientist, it’s just my observations that, for me also, if I’m in a really ridiculous, stressful deadline, and this is more true for me if I’m working in a team than perhaps on my own, if I’m honest, but then there’s lots of jokes and it’s kind of great banter. And it’s actually quite enjoyable and there’s humour in those dark moments. Black humour, right? So, I think one of the purposes of humour is to lighten a grave situation, because it helps us move through it. We are complicated, complex animals. And just another thing, of course, emotion, I think e comes from some Greek word which basically means feeling, and the rest of the word is motion, right? It’s just a feeling which then leads to an action. And those emotions can be good or bad, depending on what those actions are. But it is us that’s choosing the action.

Adele: And also the reverse, that particular emotions can also lead to particular feelings. It’s a vicious circle. When you’re stuck in a depression, I mean, I’ve been stuck in really bad depressions at certain points of my life. So I can really relate to some of the very very traumatic feelings that people have. And we mus never downplay. When someone is massively and deeply and clinically depressed, it is like a circle you can’t get out of. You’re thinking and you’re feeling in this absolute circle. And really you need somebody to help you interrupt that pattern and kind of signpost for you, “Hang on, let’s just step out of that for a second. Let’s take a look. Let’s become aware of what’s happening and let’s take a look at actually these components. And manipulate these portions of the equation in a particular way.” So, I think having support from people when you’re in that dark space is really really critical to breaking out of it.

Adele: But when you’re at a place of mastery, and that’s really what a lot of the Naked Discovery was about was mastering emotion and mastering your limiting beliefs, you can really play and toy with those portions of the equation and it’s very very powerful, very empowering and very powerful.

Simon: Yeah. Next time, I think we’ve talked about this a little bit and we need to move on, but when we said it’s just brainstorm around this initial concept, it wasn’t that long ago, and it’s great to see it come through and really get to the field in such an excellent way. We will be looking at doing a Discovery again in next year. Me and you will have to sit down and decide when, where, et cetera, et cetera. So if people are interested in this and this is not a conversation about the Discovery, but if somebody is interested, just send us an email to [email protected], and we’ll get more information to you as soon as it becomes available, but we’re still putting that together as we speak.

Simon: Okay, I think we should probably move on. I’ll pick a light question so we can get going. Who is Piper?

Adele: Oh, Pipey, Pipey, Piper, Pipes, gosh, she’s got so many nicknames. She is our support angel. So she is an American gal who lives in Sweden, and she does all our client relations, bookings, chatting, invoicing-

Simon: Yeah, replying to customers’ inquiries and things like that. So you people may hear from her.

Adele: Yeah, customer service. Yeah, she’s married. She doesn’t have any kids yet. She loves ice skating. She’s awesome.

Simon: Don’t be surprised if you get a random message from Piper. That’s one of the gang. She tends not to be in videos too much, but she’s one of us.

Adele: She’s a bit shy.

Simon: Okay, next question. Okay, so I am a mother of three girls and a grandmother of eight. My divorce was tough and it was long, 14 years. Even if I “won” in justice, I still have a hard time to feel in peace and definitely get over this trauma. There’s not actually a specific question, but I guess the underlying question there is, despite this being a long time ago, and having completed that cycle and even getting the kind of logistical result that she was hoping for, sounds to me like she hasn’t got the mental peace or the mental conclusion that she perhaps needs. So what could she do to help achieve that?

Adele: Firstly, thank you so much for that question. I think it’s brave to admit that. I think a lot of people don’t really have the courage to admit that maybe something from the past is incomplete for them, because they judge themselves as well. Kind of thinking, “Well, it’s been so much time. What’s wrong with me. I should just-“

Simon: It’s also a good start, right? I mean, I guess that’s a good, to observe that, be aware of it is a first start to taking some action to move through it.

Adele: And I think this is not an isolated case at all. Every year we get loads of messages like this from people that have gone through a trauma many many years ago, 15, 20 years ago, and they’re not over it. And the deal-

Simon: Well, we’ve had people who’ve been divorced for 40, 50 years, was it? Yeah, incredible.

Adele: The deal is really that it’s all about this concept of time healing wounds. We’re incredibly passionate with Naked Recovery and Naked Divorce that time really doesn’t do anything, it just passes. Over time, you become more used to something or you become more numb. It kind of lessens its grip on you, because life moves on and other things begin to happen. But it doesn’t mean that you’ve actually processed what has happened. Processing is a very active journey. And healing is a function of learning, and healing is a function of active engagement with a topic. And if you have not actively engaged in the topic, actively learned whatever the lessons are that you need to learn from that trauma having happened, actively engaged with all the kind of ins and outs and left no stone unturned in that area, you haven’t processed this and you haven’t healed. Healing is a very active, very specific journey. So don’t make yourself wrong if you feel like 14, 15, 20 years later you haven’t healed from something. Don’t expect to heal if you haven’t done that kind of processing. It will still have a bit of a grip on you.

Adele: So processing is a journey that you have to grow through to actually unpick what has happened and look at it from every angle and do some kind of forensic analysis on it to put to bed and put to rest any of the things that are lingering and incomplete. And once you’ve done that and you’ve processed it, healing is a forgone conclusion.

Simon: Great. I mean, the analogy we often use is about an accident, right? Someone has an accident, like say your daughter or your son’s had an accident, fallen over, cut their arm, it’s going to hurt. And if it was down to them, they wouldn’t clean the wound up, because it’s going to cause more pain. So they leave it, scar forms and that scar’s going to be with them forever, right? Emotions work very very similarly, I think. Unless you actually go back to that wound and they say unpick almost literally, only then once you’re gone through that process … And there can be a little bit of pain to that process, unfortunately, but that is part of it, part of that learning experience. Then you get clarity and you can get real closure. And then that wound can, with a bit of effort and a bit from time, literally completely disappear.

Simon: So this is a long one. I might do these in bits. And perhaps I’ll need to repeat it as well. So stick with me. I left my husband three months ago after 29 years of marriage and loads of counselling along the way. We don’t own any property and there’s not too much in the way of finances to sort out. Before I left, my husband agreed verbally to our financial agreement, and I put it in writing and offered to pay for our separation agreement to be drawn up by my lawyer and to have our parenting agreement lodged with the court in New Zealand. We have to be separated for two years before we can get a divorce. However, at that point, he ceased to reply. So she lost contact. Now, I’ve moved out, and the priority is our 11-year-old daughter to ensure she is settled into her routine. Only communication we have is to do with her. I decided to not push the financial settlement, as he is well and truly in the grief cycle, as he did not want this. So, I don’t want to tip him over the edge. What, and this is the question, what, in your opinion, would be the recommended timeframe for me approaching him again to settle our financial affairs?

Simon: That make sense? It’s a long question.

Adele: From the moment you’ve lost contact, about seven to eight months. So that’s, when someone isn’t processing something actively, they’re just in the roller coaster of their emotions, that’s about the timeframe for enough new things to happen in their life that they’re a bit distracted. There’s enough new things coming on the horizon … I mean, maybe you start seeing somebody else or something begins to happen, that he’s a bit distracted from that initial pain and turmoil. You could probably have that conversation at that point. But don’t assume that he’s done any processing. Don’t assume that any therapy has happened or any growth or anything like that.

Adele: I think also when you do make contact, you’ve got to tread lightly. It’s sort of a fact-finding mission initially, rather than, “I’m tired. I want to get this over with.” I wouldn’t go in guns blazing like that. I would go, “Hey, I, firstly, just want to say thank you for the way that you’ve handled things with the daughter.” Definite compliments and appreciate and commend them on the way that they’re parenting and that that has been their focus, and that you’re really appreciative of that. Ask the question, “In terms of moving forward and reaching some closure, when would be a good time to have some conversations to-“

Simon: Address this.

Adele: “… move this forward and address it?” I think, again, because what’s you’ve got to get is if you’re the one that pulled the plug, that person that you’ve done that with has lost all control. Now life is not by their control, it’s totally by your control. What they’re going to instinctively do is find ways to regain control in their life. And the way that they do that is by refusing to engage. “I won’t engage. It’s now my terms.” That kind of thing. So when you reengage with someone who has lost control, it’s important for them to be in control of how they reengage. So getting them to actually set the timeline or to have some control in the way that the process moves forward is beneficial. Try to find a way to make them feel empowered, rather than your call, your decision, your timeline, your everything.

Simon: And I guess it must be very tempting to, “Okay, it’s been eight months now. Enough of this.” It must be very easy to say that, but I can totally understand why that wouldn’t be the best approach. This is to myself here. So yeah, that’s good. And I guess, if there is a disagreement or conflict, which is very easy to have in that situation, trying to remind both parties there is some agreement. So, “I’m sure you agree, we both want our 11-year-old daughter to grow up to have a good education. Dah dah dah dah dah.” Find a point of agreement. “We just have slightly different agreements about the best way to achieve that. So let’s investigate that.” Reminding yourself and reminding the person you’re talking with that there is actually a shared goal here. And that’s important, that’s really important to encourage them to participate and move along.

Adele: And also sandwich everything. There’s got to be acknowledging and appreciating something that they’ve done, then tackle something difficult, and end it with, again, acknowledgement and appreciation. So it’s not just, “You’re taking so much time. You’re wasting time. We have no clarity. What’s happening? When are you going to get back to me?” That is a bit aggressive, and it doesn’t really lead to a good outcome. From a financial perspective, taking time to unwind finances is a smart negotiating tactic. Sometimes people collapse the unwinding and conclusion of the divorce settlement and the finances and all that stuff, they think if they do all those bits, they’re going to get closure emotionally. It’s totally separate. You’ve got two camps. You’ve got the business side of this thing and you’ve got the emotional side of this thing. The one has actually very little to do with each other. People have signed agreements, the ink has dried and they’re still crying, because they don’t feel emotionally complete about anything. It’s because these things are totally separate.

Simon: Which kind of reverts to the previous question as well, doesn’t it? Yeah, which talks about someone had gone through, got the agreement she wanted, but still hadn’t got over the trauma. That’s good.

Simon: Next one. Will I ever, sorry, yes, will I ever have a love relationship again? That’s all it is.

Adele: This kind of makes me sad when hear a question like that. I’m just like … I mean, obviously, we have no context. We’ve got to imagine a context, you’re trying to answer the question, but-

Simon: Well, I guess we could kind of come up with some context and answer that.

Adele: I will assume the person, maybe it’s been some time since they’ve had somebody. They’re feeling a bit sad, feeling a bit lonely. And when there’s been some time, you begin to make things up in your head. “Oh, there’s no one there. There’s no one for me. I’ll never meet anyone. It’s never going to happen. All the good ones are taken.” And we start to enter into these cliché thoughts about things. The thing is, certainly with my research into how thoughts become things, and really, the link between mindset and manifestation in reality, these things are so interlinked. When you start to get into a negative mindset, it’s quite dangerous. You really begin to find evidence for the negative mindset to be true. And you begin to manifest things that you really don’t want.

Adele: There’s a saying that when you worry about things, you’re almost praying for what you don’t want, because you’re fixating and focusing so heavily on this thing that you don’t want, panicking almost superstitiously like, “I don’t want this thing to happen, but all I can do is think about this thing happening.” Thinking about that thing happening obsessively is really dangerous, because you’re actually at risk of creating it.

Simon: You’re really focusing on it, right? I mean, you’re almost kind of making it.

Adele: Exactly. And I mean, from a quantum physics perspective, there’s this really, go and research and check it out, there’s this thing called the Double Slit Experiment, which is basically shooting electrons at a board behind a screen, and basically … I’ll try and summarise. I’m not a quantum physicist, I’m just going to totally blow the way that I explain this. But I want to kind of do it in layman’s terms as much as possible, which is that scientists have found that, in many many experiments, electrons behave in different ways. One minute they looked like a wave, and they can kind of hit the back screen in a wave of potential and possibility and that anything’s possible, the electron can go anywhere. But sometimes, they act like particles and they can quite specifically land in a particular location. And the most fascinating part of that experiment is that when they put an observer … When there’s no observer, particles act like waves, and they can go anywhere. When there’s an observer observing the way that electrons land, they actually fixate very particularly on a particular point. And that the observer’s thoughts completely influenced the way that the experiment ended up. Meaning the way that you are thinking, the way that your mindset is geared is totally influencing what shows up in your world, how it shows up, what’s possible for you, what isn’t possible for you.

Adele: So if you’re like, “Oh, I have no money.” You’re just thinking, “I have no money. I have no money.” You will start to actually create having no money. Money will get lost, bills will suddenly come in, boilers will blow up. Things will start to occur, where you’re like, “I’m just losing money. What’s going on?” “Oh, there’s no partner for me. Will I ever find love again? Never. There’s no love. All these other people are so lucky. They find love, I don’t find love.” You begin to actually create that, because this thing in your head is not actually separated from your reality. From an actual particle, physics perspective, it’s very very connected. What you’re thinking about the most, actually begins to really expand in your universe.

Adele: So my coaching for somebody like that would be like, “Go get a coach. Go and examine this. Go have a look at it. Where did you come up with this idea that you will never find love again? Get out of your own way by putting that really limiting belief to bed, so that anything becomes possible again.” I’ve coached so many people who have been single their whole life, 40 years single, and within six months, they meet the love of their life, get married, and have a wonderful time. How did that happen? That’s got nothing, it’s actually just removing the limiting belief and seeing that ocean of possibility in front of you and taking actions congruent with manifesting what you want.

Simon: I’ve seen hundreds of people go through your programmes and at the start, there’s absolutely no way in the world they’re even remotely considering another partner. I mean, and I do a dating service, just like alien. And that’s not what the course is about, right? You move through them. At the end of that course, two weeks later you get an email going, “I’ve just found a new guy. Or I’ve just found a new chick. And he’s awesome. She’s awesome.” Because once we are actually clean of that stuff, 99% of us actually do want to be to somebody. And then they’re open to it and then, guess what, they find it. So I find that-

Adele: And I think part of it is, just a final point, is that really what you’re saying, “Will I ever find love again?”, you’re actually, that’s what we call a scarcity mindset. So there’s various mindsets. In our mentoring programmes, we discuss mindsets and the danger of falling into them, because you do. You wake up one day and you go, “This is now my model of the world. Will I ever find love again?” That’s called a scarcity mindset. When you’re coming from a scarcity mindset, you now begin to do calculations in your brain like, “Oh, there’s only like three people in the universe for me. I already had the love of my life. He’s gone. There’s no one else there.” Now you go to the shopping mall, everyone looks married. “Everyone’s happy except me.” You really start to feed this thing.

Adele: And actually the reality is there’s an abundance of people in the universe. And if there’s an abundance of people in the universe, that actually means that you don’t need to feel so afraid. You don’t have to put up with things that don’t work. You can actually end things, because you know that you’ll find something that fits your needs more appropriately. And you can set things free, because you know things are going to move in and out as they should. You don’t need to put up with negative situations. “Oh well, she’s fine. She’ll do.” Or “I have friends. I don’t have love in my life, but I have so many friends. These people are wonderful.” It’s like, “No. Where did that come from?” Examining these limiting beliefs and getting out of your own way. That’s really critical.

Simon: And okay, we don’t have the context here, but if I were a betting type man, I would say that this person hasn’t done anything active about it. I mean, just reading it again. Will I ever have a love relationship again? Just sounds so passive. And they’re not actually doing anything about it, and they’re not going to environments where there’s going to be other single people.

Adele: Well, actually it’s worse than that, because a lot of the people we’ve worked with in our dating programmes and stuff, they have tried. They’ve gone to a few speed dating events, or they went to a party and they tried to talk to somebody, or they went on a date and the person didn’t call back. So they have taken action, and they’re now resigned, “It’s never going to happen for me.” But you’ve got to understand, again, there’s a formula. There’s a formula for everything. And I love coming up with formulas for stuff, because I’m like, “Let’s try and make this simple for everybody.” The formula is really you can take actions until you’re blue in the face, if your mindset is wrong, the actions you take are inside this container that is totally disempowering and is designed incorrectly to actually manifest the wrong thing. You have to have that combination of good mindset with action appropriate to the intention and the thing that you’re trying to create and generate. The combination of the two is what gets you the results that you’re looking for.

Adele: Bad mindset, you can take actions until you’re blue in the face, yeah, you’re not going to find love, because ultimately, underneath everything, you don’t believe that you’re lovable. You don’t believe that the person is out there for you. You think there’s not enough people out there. You have scarcity, you don’t have abundance. I mean, there’s a host of stuff in that negative mindset, which needs to get, like a thorn, you need to extract that, so that the actions that you take are more effective. It’s about effectiveness, not just taking no action. I mean, there are definitely people that take very little action, but it’s probably because they’re resigned. They’re probably like, “It’s never going to happen. I’ve tried everything.”

Simon: And is that person being the person they need to be to attract the best person into their lives. I mean, unless someone’s in what appears to be a depressed state to somebody else observing that, well, that’s not a particularly attractive person to most people. Try and become the person you think you’re ideal partner would want to be or want to meet. I think that’s quite a nice-

Adele: We call it raising vibration. You need to imagine … if people can … Ninety percent of the time, if you’re going to a party or whatever, there are people at the party, you don’t know why, your eyes just are fixated on them, there’s something about them. They just seem so alive and colourful.

Simon: [crosstalk]

Adele: And it’s basically like there’s something about them, you can’t explain it. They’re just shiny, they’re exciting, they’re exciting, their butt or whatever. And you’re attracted to this person and you don’t know what it is. Really what it is is their vibrating at quite a high level. And you’re drawn to them. They’re magnetic. That really means that they’re out of their own way. They’re in flow in their life. They are processed, dealt with. There isn’t drama and issues and crises going on over there. They’re done the work. And those people are very enigmatic and magnetic people, because there’s no stuff really going on there. I think that’s really what we aim to achieve in our programmes is to kind of get yourself to be in a place where your stuffless, for whatever better expression, it’s [crosstalk 00:40:20]. You’ve gone through the stuff and you don’t have all this stuff in the way, so you can connect and bond with people at an epic level.

Simon: And I’ve seen people in that state and it’s an incredibly alluring state. I’ve seen it in men and women. Obviously, I’m a straight guy, I don’t get attracted sexually to the guy. But you can see them in their state. And in a conversation with a female friend and there was a singer on stage. Just a small, local band basically. And she was fancying the pants off this guy. And it did appear to be a good looking guy to me, and I thought, I was just really intrigued. And she like, “There’s just something about him.” And it was like, “Actually, yeah, now I see.” Just the energy, sort of freedom he was expressing and was just in his zone, in his flow. And she said, and yeah, I could see it was totally alluring. And of course, that can be from anybody. And yeah, very captivating. I have seen that.

Simon: Cool. Good. Slight change of topic, but still very valid. It’s particularly around New Years theme, which we are approaching as we record this. Do vision boards work? Suppose we should explain what a vision board is, actually start there.

Adele: Yes. Yes, yes, yes, yes. Not in isolation though. Let me just say that as a caveat. So, okay, goal setting, massive topic, huge, rife with complications. A lot of people, we always get these messages. I think one of your questions will undoubtedly be, “Why don’t New Year’s resolutions not work? My goals don’t stick. What am I doing wrong?”

Simon: Dumb question, but yeah.

Adele: There’s been a lot of studies, some of them Harvard, Stanford, loads of studies being done on goal-setting and [inaudible 00:42:15]. And ultimately, there’s a few principles. Number one, if you write something down as a goal, you will outperform anyone who’s just thinking about something and hasn’t written it down. So that’s number one, if you write down your goals and you write them down in a particular way, where it’s as if it’s already happened, so there’s that formula-

Simon: “I have done X, Y, Z.” I think proved, yeah.

Adele: SMART. We’ve all heard this thing, the SMART goal: specific, measurable-

Simon: Action?

Adele: Actualized, and then realistic and times based. Can’t remember the exact thing, but it’s basically, write the thing down as if it’s already happened in time. Then, if you involve other senses in the articulation of a goal, you, again, outperform anyone who has then written the goal down. That’s where vision board comes in. Vision board-

Simon: What you smell, what you hear, what you’re seeing at that time, right?

Adele: Vision board is now you’ve taken your goals and you’ve created pictures on a board, you’ve like, “by this time, 31st of December 2020,” or whatever the date is that you’re aiming for and these pictures of what you’ve achieved and there’s pictures of what you’ve achieved. There’s a house, there’s a- And I mean, I’ve created vision boards where I dust them off years later and I’m like, “Holy cow. Almost all these pictures on here have come true. How the hell did … What?” It really is like eerie when you create these things and you forget about it. You put it in a drawer. You really actually, your ability to manifest outperforms just the written goal thing.

Adele: So I’ve always been incredibly goal-focused and orientated. All our programmes are like that. Naked Divorce is massively goal-focused and orientated. And there’s a technology within Naked Divorce, the Break-up Reboot, where people are listening to this audio programme, and in the theatre of their mind really visually, experiencing the end state of what it is that they’re looking for. And I used a lot of interesting technology and things in developing that audio. It’s like clinical hypnotherapy, timeline therapy, there’s binaural beats. There’s all sorts of hemi think technology and stuff inside that programme.

Adele: And we had so many clients that were like, “I fricking love that thing. Literally, the healing goal is exactly what I manifested in the programme. Can you do it- Can you make this thing in another way?” And that’s where we came up with the GOal Getter programme, because we were like, “If you want to make it more generic, where it’s like ‘I have these goals and I want to manifest them.’ Can we use the same technology to achieve that?” So really the thing is write them down, brilliant. It’s better than people who didn’t write them down. Put a vision board together, yeah, that’ll totally outperform those who have written them down. Create the goal in every sense: visual, auditory, kinesthetic, gustatory, olfactory created in this theatre of your mind where this thing is coming alive and you enter this parallel reality where you are totally single-mindedly visualising, experiencing that goal, now you have outperformed all of them together. I would say, it’s kind of yes, vision boards work, but not in isolation. You’ve got to actually have, if you go into the theatre of your mind, you really can see, feel, hear, experience that thing coming alive. That’s really where the rubber begins to hit the road.

Adele: In addition to that, the importance about goal-manifestation is congruence. Like I’ve sort of talked a little, I’ve touched on some things around limitless potential, manifesting, the focus on whatever you’re thinking in your mind is what expands, your mindset, all these things. If you have congruence, again, you will outperform everybody put together. That single-mindedness, almost dogged single-mindedness, “This is what I am manifesting to here and no further. This is what I’m going to do. This is the life I’m going to live. This is how it’s going to be.” That doggedness is really key. If you are like, “Well, it would be nice if I could have that. I’d really love that. I’ll try my best to get that.” That kind of language is like a limp biscuit, nothing’s happening. It’s like when you dunk your biscuit in coffee and it just disintegrates, that’s what happens to your goal, it’s just meh, just goes meh. You actually got to be dogged and single-minded and focused. And when a negative thought enters your mind, you need to know what to do about it. That’s part of what we cover in our mentoring programmes, all our programmes, is how to have that doggedness with what you achieve in life. So the outcome and the goal at the end of it, your ability to actually create and manifest that, you can kind of predict reliably that it’s going to happen.

Simon: Yeah, something that comes up for me there, I remember asking a group of young kids actually who would want their dreams to come true. And everyone sticks up their hand and yeah, I know all want their dreams to come true, but then when I actually interrogate that, none of them had actually dared to dream. Literally, none of them had actually created a conscious dream about where they want to go. So they all wanted their dream to come true, but they didn’t have a dream. Well, you’ve got to have the dream first, right? So you’ve got to pick what you want to achieve and then your dream has a small chance of coming true, doesn’t it?

Adele: And actually on that point, I want to give credit to you, Simon. So many of you don’t know, Simon runs this event called Play Brave. It’s an event that he runs a few times every year for underprivileged kids that live in orphanages and that kind of stuff. And on your point, Simon, about some people don’t dare to dream. And a lot of the kids in orphanages, they’ve learned to just make due with life happening to them. They get removed from their homes and things happen to them. Their victims of the Rohingya massacre, their parents become drug addicts and suddenly they end up in this orphanage. And how do you dream when life just happens to you so cruelly?

Adele: And what I love about the event that you run is that it’s designed to break through those negative mindsets and give people the ability to dream again and to think of being creators of their future and their destiny, and actually that they can author their lives a little bit, or a lot actually. And to kind of give them the skills and techniques to do that, like negotiating, creating products, creating businesses. It’s been really beautiful to watch the progression of the kids and the teens that, almost the same group that you’ve worked with over the years, and just to see them becoming more bolshie and getting smarter with the games. Where they’re actually coming up with stuff where we’re like, “Oh crap. We didn’t see that coming,” is really really cool. It’s really great.

Simon: Yeah, I’ve always really … I mean, it was quite nerve-wracking the first time I did it to 300 kids, but I’ve really enjoyed delivering it. Then for me, I get a lot of value out of delivering it. It’s not a selfless thing at all. I really get a lot of value … I learn about myself, about them. And one of the things that, because we’ve touched on it, one of the things that really stands out … I know we remember this last time, I think there was a particular game, which we found really hard. I really found this game hard. And I’d given it to you and other people as a test, and no one got this game. And it could have totally backfired, but I had this idea that actually with less education, we can actually be more creative and actually … Education has very good mindset of trying to achieve very good things, but it’s really controlling, and it really strips out a lot of our creative thinking away from it.

Simon: And some of the youngest kids, I mean, I have usually ranging between eight to 18, there’s usually a couple a little bit older, couple a little bit younger. And you’ve got these six to eight, and they did it in like three seconds. We got problems that we could give to some of them mid-forties, you could give them a day and couldn’t solve it. All right? And I’m not joking. I’m not, because I don’t I think I’m an idiot either, just wired differently. It’s kind of tragic that we lose a lot of that. And particularly in Thailand where I run the event, their education system is very very rigid, and that the teacher is like a god and everything they say is never criticised or interrogated. There’s some benefit to that, but there’s also some harm in it sort of loses that creative thinking. And that’s what I was trying to do. I don’t teach them in the sense that I tell them anything. You know already. I just give them environments and problems and we just sit back and watch them come up with solutions. And it’s really stunning to see them do that. They teach us some stuff.

Adele: I think a lot of people that have kids can attest to the fact that your children teach you. You just learn your whole world from that. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to have kids. But I absolutely love being around them for that reason. I think as adults we can really learn from this concept of daring to dream. And then actually dreaming is a really important facet of life. And if you’ve got so resigned about life and life happening to you that you’ve stopped daring to dream, you need to interrupt that pattern. Because one thing we’re really aware of in our company and the way that we live our lives is that life is short. We don’t know how long we’ve got here. And I think when you get that at a really intrinsic, deep level, you want to make the most of the journey. And you don’t put up with things that don’t work at 100%. You don’t settle for second best. The world is full of people that have just settled for second best, and they’re not fighting for limitless potential in their lives. And I think there’s a lot to get from that concept. When you bed in really deeply, you take that trip, you go on that motorcycle ride, you go do those things, you go on that date, you ask that girl out. You go and do what it is that is scary, because life is short.

Simon: Absolutely. Okay good. Thank you for the Play Brave plug. Unexpected, unintentional, but thank you very much.

Adele: It’s awesome.

Simon: Yeah and I’m proud of that event. New Year’s resolutions, staying on this theme, New Year’s resolutions don’t work, so why bother doing them? So this is obviously, a little bit related. I guess you’ve already gone into some detail about-

Adele: I kind of feel we’ve sort of answered that. I think they don’t work because you just did them in one modality, being you thought about them in your brain. Like if you wrote them down, or if you did something more evolved with it or you actually created a project plan, you’re, probably a lot of your New Year’s resolutions actually happened. But if you just thought about it and sort of made a quiet commitment to yourself where you didn’t even declare anything on your social media, where other people are like, “Oy. You said you were going to do this. What happened?” Don’t expect them to stick. They don’t stick because there’s not enough of an existent structure to bring them into being.

Simon: Just thought that literally just come up to me for this second. We call it New Year’s resolutions, right? And by, let’s say, end of January, February, well, it’s no longer New Year anymore. No wonder that thing evaporates and leaves us.

Adele: That’s a really good point.

Simon: If we called it This Year’s resolutions that would be very very different, right? This Year’s resolutions-

Adele: Because actually there was a study done. I think it’s the 17th of February is the sweet spot. That’s when all the people, everybody joins the gym on the 2nd or 3rd of January and then by the 17th of February everybody’s vacated again.

Simon: Because it’s no longer New Years.

Adele: I think that’s a really good point. We’ve actually in the labelling of it being a New Year’s resolution, we actually make it a, failing at it a forgone conclusion.

Simon: Yeah, for me This Year’s resolution sounds so much more, I don’t know, solid somehow, instead of just temporary. I think we’ll probably wrap it up there. The last one though, I think to finish is what are your, let’s call it resolutions for next year?

Adele: Oh goodness. I have this little procedure. I have this little process that I do. And Thailand’s really great for it, because there’s this kind of temple of beginnings and endings. It’s really cute. It’s called Doi Suthep, it’s high up in the mountain, overlooking the whole of Chiang Mai. They have this little ritual that you do around the temple and things like that. Even if you, I’m not a massively, I’m not Buddhist or anything like that, I just like the little thing that you do around the temple. It feels like a very spiritual little place. So I do this little thing every year. And I’ve done it in a very committed way. I always complete my year. I always powerfully look at, “Right. Let’s look at the year, everything. What are the high points, the low points? What can I learn? What wasn’t good? What do I want to do differently next time?” I think it’s really important to have that kind of stuck take, honest assessment of a year and actually review a year, rather than just stumble into the next one after four bottles of wine or whatever. I always complete the year and then I kind of take a look at ultimately what I’m aiming to achieve in my life. And I look back if I’m aiming to achieve that legacy of my life, looking back of what do I want to kind of get out of the year ahead.

Simon: [crosstalk]

Adele: Exactly. Next year is really, there’s some kind of themes that I’m looking for. I always have something around health and fitness, so sort of looking at the wheel of life, like health and fitness. Next year, I’m, after 22 years, taking up my squash again. Terrified, because you know obviously spending more time in New Zealand, literally everyone and their mother seems to play squash. So I’m like, “Damn it. Good time to get into that and get a kind of fitness goal.” I’ve decided I want to be a really hot 45 year old. So I’m on this mission. Get back into my triathlons, get back into, because I haven’t done any this year. My last was a marathon swim. So health goals and focusing on being young, vibrant, hot 45 year old. Like, “Let’s do it. Let’s go for it.”

Adele: And then I think definitely some goals for the business. We grew the business 20% this year and to kind of keep on that growth mission, keep missioning on that. Expanding, we’re moving our online programme to a different platform. So we really want to have new web technologies and things we are offering to people. I want to really launch in New Zealand and Astro Asia. It’s an area of the world that we’re quite passionate about now. So I think that kind of launching of that part of the world.

Adele: From a personal finance perspective, I’ve got some goals around investments, finance, properties, that kind of stuff that I’m looking at. And kind of from a personal perspective it’s just spending time with people that I care about, love, more time with my family, more time with friends, connecting with people that I really care about. I’ve got some trips planned next year to connect with people I haven’t seen in a while.

Adele: Yeah, very specific though. I get very specific and then I use my own audio programme, even though you’d think, “God, aren’t you tired of listening to your own voice?” Yes, but if I could get someone else to record the damn thing, I would. I could listen to someone else.

Simon: [inaudible]

Adele: Yeah, so that’s kind of my plan. What’s yours?

Simon: Actually, I’ve yet to it, honestly. I do, as you know, still focus quite a lot around the business and can echo some of the things you’ve stated. So yes, we’ve got a lot of real solid plans next year, which are already well-firmed up, I think. So yes, we are building a new platform. It’s going to take some time to build, and it’s definitely going to be some evolution to that putting our staff a little bit at an MVP, minimum viable proposition, and grow that. But I have very specific goals about where I expect to get that to. I tend to be a little bit shy about revealing that, but yeah, I have very … I think it will be the best platform of its type in the world, quite frankly, in our niche. It will take some time to get there, but I feel we can achieve that. And so excited about that. Excited about the Discovery, excited about you in New Zealand and the possibilities that’s going to bring. This is a business as well, and I love that we’re going to have, in particular, South Africa, New Zealand, and Thailand as three beautiful locations that people can escape to and do some of the programmes, as well as other locations as well. That’s just touching on some of them.

Simon: Me, personally, I haven’t gone into that as much. I have another little project I’m working on at the moment, sort of just filling that up a little bit. Skiing, putting skiing back on my radar. I’m off to Switzerland for 10 days in a little bit, which I’m looking forward to. And some health and fitness stuff as well, which is also, I’ve dropped five kilogrammes in the last month or so. That wasn’t a particular goal, it’s a consequence of some of the stuff I’ve been doing. So, yeah, not doing New Year’s resolutions. I’ve just realised how bad that is, but I’m doing Next Year’s resolutions. And I’m-

Adele: 2020 resolutions. I think let’s all look at that as a really good statement for the year. It’s like, let’s actually create 2020 resolutions, as opposed to New Year’s resolutions-

Simon: 2020 eyesight, 2020 vision,

Adele: I like that.

Simon: We can do something around that. Let’s wrap it up here. Just a quick mention, because it is relevant, actually really relevant. You touched on GOal Getter. We will put out a message, but I know it’s one of my chores. Need to put out a message pretty sharpish about that. That is actually to help people in this process. Perhaps you can just give us a little bit of a-

Adele: Yeah, let me just talk a bit about it. Every year we run, we have various modules within our mentoring programme. One of them is GOal Getter. It’s this really important starting off a year very powerfully, where you do a full, kind of like the exercise I was talking around. You run through the previous year, learnings, ups, downs, all that kind of stuff. And then really assess where you’re at in your life and create some goals for the future year. And then we break it down and work out how you’re going to get that done. So, we automatically do that with all of our clients, but we’ve had a few messages and people on the website and friends of clients who are like, “Oy, I want to do this thing as well.” So we actually make GOal Getter available to anyone. If people want to come and book in a GOal Getter, it’s like a two to three hour assessment where we actually run through everything, we set it up, we give them the complimentary audio programme that goes with that so that they can listen to it for the full month, and actually quadruple the possibilities of manifesting their goals.

Adele: We’ve got an offer on that. If people are interested, they can take us up on it. But it’s such a powerful programme. In our mentoring group, we’ve, about, a ridiculous number, over 80% of the goals that the group have come up with have been manifested, it’s now December, have already been manifested for the end of the year. It’s so … I love it. I think it’s a very very powerful-

Simon: We ran it for the first time last year, and it was already very quickly producing real significant results in people said it was amazing. To clarify, Adele said all our clients, what she actually means is all our mentoring clients. So, we have some of our clients, usually after they’ve done a programme with us, will be invited to actually join an ongoing monthly programme with you. There’s different levels. And those clients get that included. It’s just part of their package. They get that as a sort of honorary, for free. But if you’re not in that programme, we have to charge, because it takes so long to do. But it’s really really valuable. I’ll get a message out probably in the next few days about that. We can go ahead and book you guys in. You can start creating this vision in the right, the best, most powerful way that’s going to get the results that you need. And at the end of the day, we’re a results-based business. It’s where we’ve always separated ourselves out from many of the life coaches out there. Tell me your story and stuff. We’re much more interested about folks achieving results. Adele works incredibly hard with her clients to achieve that with great results.

Simon: Cool. I think that it’s it. Thank you Adele for your time. Always awesome. I will be working on this and getting this out there pretty soon.

Adele: Brilliant. Yeah. Fantastic. So thanks for that. And again, for all our listeners out there, if you’ve got questions and things that you want answered in the next Ask Me Anything send those in. We always keep everything confidential. We’ll never mention who you are or anything about you, but it’s an opportunity to get answers to anything you want to know.

Simon: Yeah, absolutely. Okay. Over and out. Thanks guys.

Adele: Okay, brilliant. Thanks. Bye.

Simon: Bye.

Note: Annoying echo on Simon’s mic, but the content is good

PodCast ⇣

Video ⇣

Transcription ⇣

Simon:

Hello, everybody. This is our second edition of Ask Me Anything, and here we are with Adele.

Adele:

Hello.

Simon:

We had some questions come in. I’ve got some questions from last time. I’ve got some of those left over, and some new questions have come in. We’ve taken a few random ones. Let’s give them a go.

Simon:

“I live in Asia, and Asians frown at the word divorce. It’s the most unforgivable, unpardonable sin in one’s life. Today I have no job, no money, no home, no friends and most of all, no dignity. My brother is no longer working, and I’m drifting away. Is this what life is all about?”

Adele:

It’s very common for many cultures that are conservative, or have a lot of rules and obligations attached to them. Divorce will be incredibly difficult in those cultures. We do a lot of work in Asia, so we have seen this across Asia; that people really struggle with divorce as a shame based trauma is not fitting with their culture, their community, and no one needs to be associated with a failure. But we see the same pattern in the Middle East with clients in Abu Dhabi and Dubai, we see the same in Utah with Mormon clients, we see the same in South Africa with incredibly conservative Dutch Reformed clients.

Your question, although painful, you’re not alone. It is a phenomenon that many cultures and people share, which is very hard to bear and deal with. I think what you have to do is a little bit of research and realise that divorce is quite common, even though in your current context and paradigm it seems like you’re the only one in the world, and you’ve lost everything, and it’s really terrible. What you have to do is get some perspective, and do some research. When you are doing research you’ll find out that between 37-31% of all marriages actually end in divorce, so it’s very common.

Secondly, it’s very difficult for people to go through divorce as a shame based trauma, it’s a very painful trauma to recover from. All the feelings you’re feeling are common of that trauma that you’re going through, but your job is to move through these steps and to get over it. You’re expecting defeat a little bit. It’s implied in your question that life is terrible; you have no friends, no nothing, no job. I think you’ve got to pick yourself, dust yourself off and start fresh. And if you’re not able to do that in your current context or current environment then you need to consider moving. But you’ve got to get back on your feet, and if you’re struggling to do that on your own, then you should find some support and get some coaching to help you process has happened and to help you understand that it isn’t such a terrible thing that has happened to you; that you will recover and you will survive this, you will strive, you will learn, you will grow, and you will have victory at the end of this. It isn’t such a terrible embarrassment or shame to have gone through. 

I think what you’re missing right now is somebody in your corner that is rooting for you, supporting you and helping you process this. And think that should be your top priority. Get perspective, so do some research and find out the truth about divorce. Not just the truth in your particular cubbyhole that you’re sitting in. Secondly, you need to get some coaching and support to help you process this, so that you can move on. Because whatever you’re thinking in the mindset that you have, and the view of the world that you have, you’re going to attract more of that into your world and that’s dangerous for you if you’re in a very negative space. Work through it to get yourself back to a positive space. That’s what I would say. 

Simon:

Quite a comprehensive answer there. Looking at these question, they’re all deep and significant.

Adele:

Maybe it’s a deep and significant day.

Simon:

I think it is. Maybe I’ll find some light hearted ones in there as well. I’m going to jump over to this one; this is also coming from a guy: “Which is more important? Loving the sex, it’s unbelievable but she could be a little more cute, attractive, or she’s really cute and I feel so proud of her in front of my friends.”

If I understand this question correctly, have got two options that there. Does he pick someone where “the sex in unbelievable, but she could be a little more cute and attractive, or someone that’s really cute and I feel so proud of her in front of my friends.”? 

Adele:

[crosstalk 00:06:11] There’s no right answer to this question. At the end of the day, everybody must decide for themselves what’s the important part of it for them. If unbelievable sex is important to you, then you should pick the person that you have unbelievable sex with. But if being proud of your partner, and having a cute partner, and having someone who is aesthetically pleasing next to you is more important, then that’s what you should go for.

I really got into this show in the UK called Love Island, which was more of a psychological experiment. I wanted to see what this was all about.

Simon:

That was your excuse to get into the show?

Adele:

That, and I got addicted. Every second I wanted to understand and know what was coming next. What was interesting for me was watching complete strangers coupling up. We’re trying to figure what were their criteria, and how did they select partners, and what made one person fancy another. When did they have attraction, when did they have a connection, and when did connection move into love? A lot of the things are so projective. One guy was into a woman, and then he discovered that she was a smoker and then he was completely put off and that was it. The dalliance was over. Someone else thought somebody was really good looking, and they fancied them and then they found out that this guy shaved his legs and he was disqualified. What they ultimately found, the conclusion of Love Island was that all these aesthetic, surface level concerns actually meant nothing or equates towards developing deep connection, or a relationship that leads to love.

I think your question is still at the level of that sex, and looks. Even that is a little bit at the aesthetic level. What you’ve really got to ask yourself is what is it you’re looking for in your life. Are you looking for a trophy person that is standing next to you that you can show off to your mates? Are you looking for someone that you can lock up and you can keep in the bedroom that you can just have unbelievable sex with? Or are you looking for a real connection and a relationship that can lead to love? There’s no right answer. You’ve got to figure that one out. But I think your question at this stage it doesn’t indicate that you’re interested so much in the connection part. For me, if I was coaching you, I would ask why? What is it that you are avoiding, and why is that you aren’t interested in forming a deeper connection, and why are you not talking about a connection? Why are you only talking about how somebody looks, or how they perform in bed? Maybe that’s a question for another time. 

Simon:

That’s a fascinating question, isn’t? I think. Let’s listen your answer there. What was going on for me there, I think it’s very easy to initially to go for the none sex option, because the sex is frivolous and perhaps it shouldn’t be heart of a relationship. But the more I think about it, I feel like the way someone looks is more superficial than how the intimacy is between two people. If I were forced to answer this question, I would be tempted to threat them to the person they’re having unbelievable sex with because that I think that indicates a deeper, if you’d like, natural connection than someone you can show off to your mates. I sort of get that, it’s really nice to have a trophy person on your arm.

Adele:

What you really just pointed to is, ultimately, what is your goal? What is it that you’re looking for? What’s your intention? If your intention is to have a trophy person that you can show off to your mates, great. Then, totally pick the cutie that looks nice on your arm. But if your intention and your commitment is to have connection, then the person you’re having that incredible connection, chemistry, and unbelievable sex with, you’re probably going to have a deeper connection with that person that could lead to a relationship. I think we’re only seeing things that are superficial level at this point.

Adele:

If I was coaching this person, I would want to know a lot more detail, because the devil’s in the details, about what kind of relationship do you have with both of these people? Why is it that you’re embarrassed to have this person out with you in public, what’s that about? What is going on? Why do you care so much about what other people think? If you’ve got a great connection with someone, why is that not more important than keeping up with the Joneses or the opinions of others? I think it’s short snippets in somebody’s life. I would definitely be interested in having a much longer conversation with this guy, and get to the heart of the matter.

Simon:

[inaudible 00:12:01] Presumably this person isn’t a certainly unattractive to them because if not I would imagine they wouldn’t be having unbelievable sex, so they must still have some physical attraction. It sounds to me like that is still there to a significant level, but perhaps his other option is even more. But at risk of contradiction to myself, you’ve got a relationship where maybe the sex isn’t amazing, maybe, that can come in time; through talking, through discussing personal preferences, and exploring each other physically together. That could come, right?

Adele:

Not always. It’s actually from the perspective of saving a relationship, that’s one of the things to unwind and to create. I had some fascinating debates of discussions with several women who were ex-prostitutes, and I was fascinated, “every day you guys had to go out there and have sex with random people, but you made them feel like they were amazing, you made them feel like they were the only person in the world. How did you fake that kind of attraction? How did you make that person feel that if you weren’t attracted to them?” What was interesting, one of the people in particular, she said that she found something completely amazing about that person that she could fall in love with, and she made it much bigger, and she magnified that. She found herself completely blowing that attribute out of proportion so that she could really get attracted to that person in a big way. So that she wasn’t faking attractions, she was genuinely feeling attraction and giving her clients the girlfriend experience.

Adele:

The problem is when you’re in a long term relationship, the time period within which to fix a sexual connection problem is within the first year. If you already have a situation where a relationship with the sex is not great, and you’re more than a year into the relationship it is very difficult to unwind that because your history with that person is extensive. And the ability to magnify certain attributes is really challenging when you’re in a long relationship with them because your brain will do a counterargument, it will be like, “he’s got beautiful shoulders.” and then you’ll be like, “but he didn’t take out the trash yesterday, he’s an awful husband.” we need these things that happen where it’s the benefit that the working girls have is they don’t have that familiarity so they can’t zoom in and focus on one or two attributes.

Adele:

A sexual relationship doesn’t always improve with time. If it’s bad in the beginning, it will not always improve with time. That actually takes a lot of work from the couple. Particularly, sex and intimacy coaches that I work with, I think we all pretty much have an agreement that this is one of the hardest things to fix in a relationship, is when that sexual chemistry has died.

Adele:

So they can actually be arguing every day, the communication is terrible, they have nothing in common, but the sex life is great. Then it’s like, “This relationship has a much better chance of actually being saved than another one.” Where they’re brilliant mates, they get on every way and their sex life is terrible, they’re basically just housemates.

Simon:

I think there’s this idea that a partner provides everything they need to their partner, be it sex, love, adoration, great holidays together, perhaps great parents and everything else as well, friendship etc. But, perhaps that’s our idealistic view maybe its a bit more realistic to where actually no one person can provide everything. There probably are some things which have to provided by a partner. Most couples require monogamy, so if sex is a problem then you’re not going to be able to go outside of that relationship for it, so that would be a really key [inaudible 00:16:49] If for example, intellectual stimulation was a problem, you can go on networking. You can go networking once a week, and maybe you can get that fix there, and that would be probably the next step for a thing to do inside a relationship, just to get that [inaudible 00:17:02] There are certain things, and you can choose any one of them that can be fixed externally, at least, allow it to be acceptable to the partner.

I think we’ve covered that question, quite something deep, but fantastic question. 

Let’s jump onto another one, short question but not sure it’s any less intense, “Why would my wife leave me after 27 years married, and leave me for good?” 

Adele:

That’s such a hard one. I actually had somebody a week ago, out of the blue left him after 25 years. And he was dumbfounded and stumped. It’s a really difficult one, and it goes for both men and women. When somebody out of the blue does that, it’s not just such a shock, it’s such a betrayal because if somebody does that for good, that means they probably were feeling like that for quite some time. And they, for whatever reason, didn’t feel that they could communicate that or communicate it in a way that sufficiently stated the seriousness of their feeling, and they just left without working on it. They disappeared, they let the whole thing slide off the cliff, and they [inaudible 00:18:36] they didn’t actually put any effort into doing anything to save the relationship, so that’s a really hard one.

What I would say is that to begin the processing of that, it’s never a mystery. From a forensic analysis perspective, which is very much the kind of coaching and programmes that we write, and prescribe, and work on. You have to go into the detail, you’ve got to actually write down your entire relationship story from the very beginning.

When you actually write the forensic analysis in detail down to your relationship, in almost 99% of cases people find there were bread crumbs all along the journey, where there were things they were stepping over. There were actually moments where they could see that the relationship wasn’t all fantastic. This person did change and become more quiet. Actually, they were probably a bit depressed, or they were unhappy and maybe they were communicating in one way, but they didn’t have the words or the language, or maybe they didn’t say anything because they didn’t want to hurt their partner. They were miserable and didn’t know why and they didn’t know what to do about it to the point where they felt like they were almost under water, and they needed to do something drastic to gasp for air. That’s why people would end a relationship out of the blue, it’s almost, “I must grab air now, I must blow this up. I have to get out of this cage that I’m in and I need to live a different past.”

I think you should write your story down, and very honestly do some analysis to see where can you see the signs began. Your relationship wasn’t perfect, and it wasn’t perfect from your side either. You probably just stepped over a whole bunch of stuff because you told yourself it was fine, it was good enough. You were sort of happy, and other couples are also sort of happy you put up with something to a certain extent. I think that begins to put the pieces together.

The other thing I would say is if you can get some support in coaching to get yourself to a more neutral place where you’re less angry, outraged, shocked, and horrified by the moment, and actually more curious and interested as to who this happened, you might actually find that you can engage with your wife in a dialogue. You can say to her, “Look, you caught me out of the blue. I don’t really understand it, but I want you. I can respect your decision, but I want to understand when did this happen for you?” Because I think if anybody was asked that question in a nonangry, nonconfrontational way by somebody who was truly curious and what wanted to learn and grow, they’d probably answered that question honestly. I think half the reason people end marriages out of the blue, and disappear, and ghost their exs is they fear the splash back, the anger, the vitriol, the blaming, “how could you?” the outrage and all that stuff. And they fear that confrontation.

In my experience, seeing this time and time again, people that lig it out of their relationships they fear confrontation. They don’t like hurting people, and they don’t want to create a drama. But, by not expanding themselves they create a drama anyway. You’ve got to make it easier for them to tell the truth, or you need to do your own analysis to see if you can find all the things you stepped over along the journey and the bread crumbs that will point to the truth for yourself.

Simon:

I think that’s very true. Just thinking about this as talking, what comes up to me is a couple of things is, either there’d be bread crumbs there that could be with hind sights or physical. It must exist even they’re subtle, even if they’re in a communication style that that person is not receptive to, maybe is nonverbal, for example. Or it’s written but not verbal, or vice versa. Or he’s a behaviour, but if it’s really been hidden for some time that probably means that whatever that thing was missing they found elsewhere. That’s why it wasn’t visible because she wasn’t getting it serviced.

If it wasn’t being serviced that would reveal in anger, it would come up in random conversations because there’d so many not being addressed. If it was being addressed by an external source, for example an affair and if it was very well hidden, it would land as a surprise because there wouldn’t be a need to progress this frustration with this thing not being met because it’s already getting it met elsewhere. Suddenly, the day come where they decide to call it a day, to jump ship, they’ve got a better offer or diss in their eyes.

That’s when I think it appears to be the most out of the blue situation. Of course, I cannot say that situation here, but I need to be honest that’s what’s coming up for me. I think that is a possibility. 

Adele:

I think that’s astutely put, but also sometimes, there is so much outrage at the shock of this person doing what they’ve done. It almost puts them further in distance, and in a corner where they actually don’t want to talk about what was missing in the first place, so that’s just a label, “she’s had a middle life crisis, and she’s blowing everything up. In fact, every one thinks she’s crazy now, and she’s just lost it.

I think there’s so much labelling that can go on. I think people get silent because they fear some judgement , and they fear that no one is going to understand how they feel. They can’t put into words how they feel, they’re trying to gasp for air, they’re trying to figure out how they can get out of the situation that they’re in and they don’t really know how they can do that. Sometimes, it is the cowardly way to end it without much explanation. Maybe they didn’t actually know how to say it. But I think if the person was more curious and asking questions, and trying to take a look like, “how did we get into this situation?” because it’s not actually “she blew this up.” People don’t drop relationships that are awesome. How did we get into this situation, what can I be more responsible for on my side as well?

Simon:

Let’s move onto another question, “Why is it so hard for your wounded heart to let go?”

Adele:

I think a lot of it is because of the future that you were living into with that person. The expectations and everything associated with that. When you get married you a whole picture image of a movie that you’ve designed and this is what life is going to look like. And as human beings, we get attached to those pictures and movies that we create. That’s why, I think, for a lot of people we get stuck in a comfort zone because we get so attached to this picture. The thought of blowing it up or it disappearing is incredibly confronting and it challenges your psyche, it challenges who you are as a person, it challenges absolutely everything.

I think the wounded heart struggles to let go because of those expectations, and being married to the picture of what life was supposed to look like. Neuro biologically, the wounded heart is physically aching as well because of all the hormones and neurotransmitters that are flying around the body when you go through a shock or trauma. It makes your heart ache when there is too much dopamine. It makes you not want to eat and you feel nauseous, and you feel so wounded, almost physically incapacitated as well. That combined with this feeling of the future that has been snapped and pushed away, it really is a battle to let go. I think the only way to let go is you’ve got to process what has happened, which means you need to go on a bit of a journey where you examine all the elements, and depths you’ve gone through so that you can learn, heal, and get to the other side of it and feel a sense of accomplishment or realise, understanding or knowing; that helps the wounded heart to put a lot of this to bay.

Simon:

Next question, “How does someone avoid, or how does someone work on their jealousy?”

Adele:

I think jealousy is an interesting one. I think all human beings in some form or another will be jealous of something at some point. You can never say, “I’m not jealous of anything. I’ve never been jealous of anything in my life.” There’ll be certain things in life that you will have a tendency towards jealousy. I think anywhere where you feel this lack or destity some way. If you feel in yourself, “maybe I’m not good enough, or maybe someone else is better. Or in work, maybe I’m not smart enough, maybe someone else is smart enough, or smarter than me. Or in a sport or a hobby that you do, maybe they’re better than me. Maybe they’re going to beat me, and I feel jealous of their accomplished.

I think in all these different arenas, in anywhere where we think wherever we are isn’t good enough. And wherever somewhere else is, is better. We’re comparing and contrasting where we are in comparisons to somebody else. I think that can create that feeling of imbalance, that feeling of lack, and abundance over there with the other person. If you want to get rid of, or use the amount of jealous that you’re feeling, I think it’s really about healing starts over here. It’s got nothing to do with what’s over there. You don’t stop being jealous of someone over there just by looking at them, and then going, “They’re not all that. They’re not that great anyway.” It’s focusing in here, and going, “I’m enough, I’m good enough. Where I am is good and I feel good about stuff and I am okay, and it’s okay that they’re brilliant too, and there’s more than enough love and awesomeness, and success and intelligence to go around. We are all great. I’m looking to celebrate my successes, I’m going to celebrate other people’s successes. If I think someone else is more beautiful, or more attractive, great.”

Let’s celebrate to beauty and attractiveness because she is beautiful and attractive, and we should talk about that and not try and pull her down to make yourself feel better. And think some way if you think someone is smarter than you, celebrate their smart, celebrate their successes from their perspective. I think celebration comes from a place of abundance, and there’s more than enough to go around, and I think you realise there is jealousy to a certain extent.

Simon:

What we don’t know with this question is if it’s inside a relationship, or after the relationship has ended, and I wonder if they’re feeling jealous about their current partner, or an ex. I’m not sure that changes the answer at all, it’s probably quite interesting. Jealous does have a purpose. There’s usually some pros and cons to any free emotion. Well, there is pros and cons to every emotion. There is a positive side to jealousy could inspires us to make more of ourself be physically or intellectually. It can useful, right?

Adele:

Yes, I think it can be useful. It’s all about the context of the jealousy. If you’re just experiencing jealousy and then getting scarce and angry, and evil, and resentful about it, you’re going to pull back and pull that person do or rejoice when they’re pulled down, or rejoice when the have a bad day, or they get kicked in the teeth, or something. I think it’s not particularly nice to do that. It’s not particularly evolved either.

I always think whether it’s an ex or you’re jealous because somebody has run off with somebody else, and you’re jealous of that situation, or you’re jealous of them; you’re jealous of your ex moving on faster than you have, or you’re jealous because you went out somewhere and you saw your ex with somebody else, or you’re in a relationship, or you see your partner dancing with somebody and you get really angry because they’re dancing with that person. What neutralises all of it is to remind yourself that you’re great. You’re great as you are. If you feel that some boundary has been broken in the context a relationship, then you need to have a conversation about that. But in terms of the scenario of exs, and being jealous of people moving on quicker, or exs where you’re jealous they are with somebody else, you’re jealous of their relationship, I think it’s about reminding yourself that you’re great, you’re awesome and good things are going to come into your life. And if you focus on good things coming into your life, and you focus on yourself having good luck, success, abundance, you will attract that and manifest that.

Simon:

I’m getting the next question, and it’s quite long. The question itself isn’t very clear, I’m going to read out what we’ve got in, and then we’ll kind of distil it and try to pick out a question from it, so bare with me.

“Why can’t I believe in myself? I really can become financially independent. I’m just [inaudible 00:35:16] and I like focus because I don’t feel safe to the core of my being. I feel fear at this [inaudible 00:35:22] around me not being there. And the full cost feels as though I will with my dogs age…”

I’m a little bit lost here.

“…and my pasta landlord who is part of the safety net that’s been holding me.”[inaudible 00:35:37]

So there is some fear around the court system. “Adele, I have complex PTSD, and I believe I have had it since childhood, and have had a tremendous healing in the past decade. I want to be more certain, and make choices for the business [inaudible 00:35:58] so, for the choices of my business I can make, but personally I don’t esteem to. I desperately need to be able to get financially stable and stop living in lack fearing, and fearing that I will be alone, broke etc.” 

So the core question here is, “why can’t I believe in myself, I really can become financially independent?”

Adele:

I think a lot of our beliefs lead to what we call a self-fulfilling prophecy, and you’ve really got a God. What you believe and you tell yourself, and the thoughts that are running in your mind because it shapes your entire universe. It’s the believe that you have that there is not enough money, and I don’t know how to get some, and I don’t feel that I can make enough money and there isn’t enough around. If there’s something negative about becoming financially independent or having financial success, you’re at risk of creating a self-fulfilling prophecy by attracting what your worst fears into your life. So if you have complex PTSD, you absolutely need to get treatment for that because what complex PTSD does do is it creates a whole raft of messing with your core belief system, and creating what we call a cognitive dissonance, where your global views and world views about the life and universe is massively disrupted. And if your trauma, or the thing that you have experienced have actually disrupted you at a deep level where you’re afraid of the world, you don’t feel supported by people, that’s absolutely going to have to do with owning and making money. Get over your trauma, get that processed, and then begin to map out what your believe system is as a result of all trauma you’ve had in your life, and just in general, what are your belief systems?

We have a programme where we examine a great amount of detail what all the cognitive dissonances are in your core belief, and how you can rewire that and transplant a more successful belief system into your life, and we do that with a combination of NLP and clinical hypnotherapy. But we are basically extracting these negative beliefs, but there is no point in just extracting negative beliefs if you don’t also have a coach or a support, or somebody that is actually monitoring and helping you develop better habits with your language. If you are talking yourself down all the time, talking negatively all the time, in every moment it doesn’t matter what you tell yourself what your positive beliefs need to be, you are writing the script for negative life.

Language is one of the most important things you’d have to monitor and get on top of. You’ve got to really have that positive language, and you’ve got to have your worst deeds actions and all your commitments and what you’re doing have to be congruent in existence. If you’re telling yourself, “My belief is on my [inaudible 00:39:41] and I’m awesome.” and then two days later you’re like, “I’m never going to make money, I’m shit at making money.” You just undid whatever you tried to do before. You’ve got to have absolute congruence to have success. That way every action you take it starts the attraction, and then you hit momentum, and then you start attracting those opportunities in your life.

Simon:

That’s really good, and what comes up to me is the most important coach any of us actually have is ourselves. We’re constantly coaching ourselves, “I’m good at this, I’m bad at that” and that internal dialogue is so important. And if an external coach is saying one thing, that’s great, and they can perhaps pull them in the right direction. But if that internal voice is still there, still strong, then it’s an uphill battle. So there definitely needs to be a frying work, mind work mind shift there. Could really come up in the language they use, right?

Moving onto the last question for today. I actually spoke to this, so I know a little bit about whose background’s this is. ” I was married for 25 years to a man who couldn’t love me.” She has now left the relationship, and she’s got a lover for the last four years, and that lover is married and he’s decided to give that marriage another go. So it’s a huge irony here, right? “How do I heal from this without losing my mind?”

Adele:

The bigger areas that we focus on within Naked Recovery is this whole question of if they’re recovering? One of the most difficult things for people and clients that we work with that have had affairs, they said, “Everything is happening in secret” it’s all under the radar, quiet. So when you’re in turmoil and agony the morning of that relationship also happens in secret. How do you come out and say, “actually I’m wounded because my lover has dumped.” It’s a really difficult thing to recover on your own, and it’s not an easier journey to navigate on your own. What I would say is you absolutely have to get support through this. If you’re getting stuck, you’re getting stuck because you’re in the neighbourhood of your mind, and your mind is a bad neighbourhood right now, this is not a good neighbourhood to be in. You’re in dark and dingy territory. You need to get yourself a nice fire stole clearing, and you can’t do that if you’re just working on your own. There aren’t cool helps or techniques, or things that I can give you, “just try these 5 things and you’ll be fine.” No, you literally need somebody that you can tell everything to that is going to help you navigate and process all things that you are going through.

At the end of the day, it’s a bit of a hazard. It’s a hazard of having an affair, and it’s awful to say that cause it sounds so callous, but its what you accepted when you took this one, unconsciously. You betrayed your married vows. You got into another relationship and this is unfortunate has it that sometimes happens. It’s the same kind of situation where I had an ex who got really upset because his partner his had run off with his best friend, but he was in an open relationship, I was like, “that’s kind of the hazard of being in an open relationship, and sometimes these things happen.” It’s accepting without beating yourself up or getting too depressed about it, it’s sort of, “it’s a hazard, it sucks but how do I move on?” How you move on is not on your own. Transformation like this doesn’t happen in isolation and you definitely need a confidant that is going to walk with you through this and to process what has happened.

Ultimately, you need to accept that this is the choice that your lover has made. You have to honour that, there is some honour to completing something before you move on to the next thing.

Simon:

I think it’s a really fascinating question. I think it’s a really difficult one. I think you’ve brought up an interesting point about the sole secrecy of it that means you don’t have the normal outlets, you need to take about this sort of stuff. [inaudible 00:44:50] I should point out I can’t recall the question doesn’t explain if the four years with their lover was while he was married or not, I can’t recall that right now. But it’s already got lots of infamy because she, in her words, married to somebody for 25 years who couldn’t love her. She found someone that kind of did love her, but that guy is committed to his marriage more than her ex was. So the [inaudible 00:45:25] is that she did attract the right guy, unfortunately because he was the right guy, backfired on her because he’s a go with his marriage, doesn’t know if it’s going to work or not. But it makes me think he’s a good guy, so maybe [inaudible 00:45:43] is that she did attract a good guy, and she can attract a good guy again, maybe.

I think we wrap it up there. Thank you for [inaudible 00:45:56] in the questions to us. Thanks Adele, for answering some pretty difficult questions.

Adele:

They were pretty difficult, those were quite hardcore.

Simon:

We did have one about Arsenal, I think that’s actually a harder question, so maybe we’ll put in there next time.

One quick announcement, which I meant to do earlier. If people are listening, to give a little bit of when it is, we will be launching our treats in New Zealand in the start of 2020. Information is a little short right now in terms of the exact dates, but we’ll be launching those from kind of the second week in January 2020. If that’s something that appeals to people, pin us a message usually way, and we will give you more detail as soon as that become available. 

Any last words or thoughts?

Adele:

No, it’s so heartening that we get this stream of questions that come in every week from people. I know sometimes in some of these forums and groups can feel a little bit shy about posting a question, but you are always so welcome to send in your questions, and we can answer them in this kind of format. Some of them are a bit complicated, and we didn’t get it quite right feel free to send us another question so actually have a better shot at answering the question correctly, because all that detail is quite important to have the context to answer the question at a deeper level, otherwise we don’t get it right.

Simon:

It can be hard to interpret some of these questions, but we give it our best shot. That’s all from us. Thank you, and that’s quite enough.

Adele:

Thanks, everyone. Bye.

Video ⇣

Transcription ⇣

Simon:

Okay, so today we’re going to do our first ever Ask Me Anything recording. My name’s Simon. I’m the MD here at Naked Divorce, Naked Recovery Online. I’m here with Adele.

Adele:

Hello.

Simon:

Hello. I’ll be acting as our kind of presenter, the guardian of the questions. Got lots of questions here. Thanks to everybody that sent through a question. I think they mostly came from in our database and our Reclaim Your Life website. Thanks for those. Actually had loads of questions come in. Some funny, some crazy, some a bit weird, and some really deep ones as well, some dark ones even. What I’m going to try and do today is really just basically set a bit of a random. I kind of scribbled around a couple of these I think would be good, and after that I’m just going to select a few randomly. My intention is that this will really be primarily an audio kind of product, but we’re going to do some video as well, and maybe we will whack that together in a YouTube video as well, and get it out via that way.

Simon:

Adele, are you ready?

Adele:

Yes. Hit it.

Simon:

I’m going to start [inaudible 00:01:17]. Okay, so first one. Actually before I get started, I think I did write this down, I’m going to make all these questions anonymous. Actually I haven’t even written down who the question’s come in from. We don’t always know. We’ve deliberately chosen to do that because it’s a sensitive subject. It’s relationships, or it’s personal traumas. We wanted to create an environment where people, just an anonymous channel, so we won’t be giving any shout outs to anybody.

Okay, first question I’m going to hit you with. If you could get into a time machine and go back to yourself as a 20 year old, what would be the one piece of advice would you give yourself about life?

Adele:

One. Can I have three?

Simon:

Well, okay we can do two. How about two?

Adele:

Two. Okay. I think the first thing, I mean when I was 20, life was very hectic, dramatic, everything felt-

Simon:

Where was you at 20?

Adele:

I was living in South Africa. I was in Cape Town. I was just finishing off my degree at the University of Cape Town. I remember being very stressed. I thought I knew what stress was at that time. Everything was very hectic, and very dramatic. I was a real drama queen at that age.

Simon:

At that age.

Adele:

Cheeky. Anyway, so I think what I would say to myself at that age is, with any problem that comes along, don’t get all heavy and significant about the problem, work the problem. Actually, and don’t quit. Keep going and work the problem until you find solutions, because there’s always solutions to everything.

Adele: If you look at a problem and go, “Oh, this is terrible. What are we going to do? This is like the worst thing in the world.” You’re basically just admitting defeat and getting into the drama of the problem. Actually what you need to do is grit in, dig in, and just go, “Okay, this sucks. This is crap. I don’t like it. I’m just going to work the problem until we get to a solution.” That actually, by getting into action, that delays, and sometimes can suspend the drama, which is quite cool.

Adele: The second piece of advice that I would give myself at that age, which I wish I had known in the first few years of business, is the distinction between abdication and delegation. Really the idea that if there’s an area of life that you don’t like, you can just throw it at somebody else. There’s this whole thing called admin, and marketing, and finance, and whatever, and we’re just going to hire someone and they can do it, and they can deal with it. That’s called abdication, when you basically just throw something over the fence and make it someone else’s problem.

Adele: The thing is then areas of accountability, if you own your own business there is no such thing as abdication. You’re accountable for everything. If you throw it over the fence to an accountant that doesn’t know what they’re doing, ultimately if something goes wrong you’re accountable for that thing going wrong, because it’s your business and you’re accountable for everything.

Adele: I think in the early years I really learned how to delegate properly, and that actually ultimately you have to work things out yourself, and then really train and empower the people that work with you to do it properly. I think, man, that would have saved so much time, so much money, so much everything in the early years of business. I wish I had known that. I wish somebody had said that early on, learn how to delegate properly and ask for support in the right way, as opposed to just throw stuff at random people and winge if they don’t do it properly.

Simon:

Yeah. Actually I’ll pitch in on this one a little bit as well actually, I was just thinking about it as you was talking. Very much in line with your second point. I might be in an environment where I’ll be talking to some kids soon, and I was thinking about some of the things I wanted to get across to them, and I was thinking about asking them, who wants to go into business? Now there’s only going to be a small handful that are going to put their hands up for that question, but I would really want to explain to all of them, well I’m really sorry, but actually every single one of you is a business.

Simon: Even if you’re employed by a company, it’s kind of your job to look after your finances, to take control of your life. I feel like everybody is a mini PLC. Maybe it’s a PLC of one person, but I think that would have been really good information for me to have got that at a really young age. Because for the first 10, 15 years of my career I was working for other people, and just receiving a salary, and that was fine, that was easy. I think if I had considered myself a business from the start, that would have been really beneficial.

Simon: Anyway, okay. Good. Number two. It’s been a little over a year since my separation, about six months since my divorce. I still oscillate between intense anger and intense guilt when I think about my former marriage. Now I’m starting to feel like I’m just not interested, I’m not even capable of another future relationship. The question is, how can I get over these things?

Simon: I’ll just repeat that actually, because it’s quite a long question.

Simon: It’s been a little over a year since my separation, about six months since my divorce. I still oscillate between intense anger and intense guilt when I think about my former marriage. Now I’m starting to feel like I’m not interested or not even capable of another future relationship. How can I get over these feelings?

Adele:

Yeah. I think first and foremost, thanks for the question. It’s actually really normal to oscillate between really extreme feelings when you’re kind of healing from a trauma. Don’t get me wrong, divorce is a trauma, and it’s actually a really misunderstood and really complicated trauma to get over. It’s classified in the realm of what we call a shame based trauma. Shame based traumas are really tough. It’s in the same ilk as being diagnosed with a shameful disease, like HIV or something like that. It’s a label that you get that you’re ashamed of, and it’s something that you were supposed to get right.

Adele: You were supposed to get this thing called relationships right, and the fact that you didn’t get it right is an embarrassment to you, your family, society, whatever. You just kind of want to, you have all these tough feelings that you want to deal with, you have to deal with, but at the same time you’re also dealing with embarrassment that this thing should never have happened in the first place.

Simon:

Do you think the sense of shame is similar between men and women, or do you think it’s fundamentally different? Yeah, I think it’s both.

Adele:

Yeah.

Simon:

Okay.

Adele:

I think, and depending on your religious and cultural background, that can be even more extreme. More traditional cultures and people who grew up in a really religious context, this will be off the scale. It’s one of the toughest things that people deal with, certainly clients that we’ve had, this is really hard core for them.

Adele: Because of the strong feelings that you’re experiencing and the embarrassment of dealing with this thing, that makes you want to shove it down, because you’re rejecting, it’s like that shame makes you reject looking at this thing in the first place. Because you’re kind of like, I don’t want to be near this thing. It’s like an insect, I don’t want to touch it. When you talk to people about it, they get uncomfortable and awkward about it.

Adele: You actually only have so many goes with your support network of discussing your divorce before everybody gets kind of uncomfortable because they think it’s contagious. They’re like, “Ooh, I’m going to catch this thing. I don’t want to talk about your bad marriage. My husband and I are strong. We’re strong.” You have all these people come up and go, “We’ve been together 26 years. We’re so happy.” You’re like, why are you telling me that? I’m going through a divorce right now.

Adele: I think that makes you want to reject it, but actually what you have to do, there is no shortcut to healing from an emotional and trauma based thing that you’ve gone through. You have to go through your emotions. You have to acknowledge and own your emotions, and do what’s called process them. Now the journey of processing, what does that actually mean? It sounds so woo woo, but actually it’s really practical.

Adele: When something happens, like a failure, or a shame based trauma like that, the first stages are feeling like this thing has happened to you, that’ll make you feel like a victim. That’s actually quite a normal stage. Do not reject that stage. It’s normal to feel victimised. Almost like, I didn’t want this. When I got married, I wanted everything to be great, and now this thing has happened, I didn’t want this. Victim is your first stage that you will go through.

Adele: Then you’ll oscillate between victim and the next stage, which is survivor, where you start to develop some coping mechanisms. You begin to kind of get on with your day, get dressed, go to work. You can go out a few times. You can talk to friends. You’re surviving, you’re actually coping. Over time your coping mechanisms get more sophisticated, but ultimately they’re wired in a particular way to make you avoid emotion, because that actually just puts you straight back into victim, and actually you prefer the space of survivor.

Adele: Survivor after a long time makes you resigned, which is why in your question you’re like, “Well, I just don’t have the willpower.” You’re actually resigned because you’ve suppressed this emotion because you don’t want to look at it, you’re ashamed of it, you don’t want to go there. Now you’re actually at this place where you’ve survived and coped for so long you just feel like void of emotion, and you’re actually now feeling a bit dead.

Adele: Really processing is about moving to the next two and three stages of the journey. You must get from survivor into a space called learning. Learning is confronting, because you have to then look back on the relationship, and your relationship to relationships, and reflect and process, what are the learnings from this whole situation? What can I be responsible for? What is it that I can see that I stepped over, or I could do better moving forward? What is it that I can learn from all this stuff that’s happened that will help me reflect and move on?

Adele: Learning is a critical component of healing. In fact, healing and learning are synonymous with each other. If you process all the learnings, and you really get to the crux of all the things you can learn, you will then heal. Then healing leads to the next stage of the journey, which is where you begin to have a feeling of victory, and teachings from your journey. You feel a real sense of, I really got over that and I feel kind of wiser for it. When you’re in that wisdom space, then you can, without judgement and preachy-ness, kind of share your own empowerment through the journey.

Adele: I would say in answer to your question, stop feeling embarrassed and ashamed that you’ve gone through this experience. About 50% of the world has had a divorce, at least one. It’s actually more common than you know. You shouldn’t feel like you’re wearing a scarlet letter on your chest, and beating your brow over what has happened. What you’ve got to do is stop the coping mechanism and the short term emotion avoidance tactics that take you out of feeling. You now need to embrace the feeling and embrace the learning. That’s kind of why we designed the Naked Divorce, because it’s a really structured process that takes people through that journey of learning, and healing, and getting to victory.

Adele: Because life is short man, I mean in reading your story, or your question, it indicates a little bit about the space that you’re in, and it’s sad. I feel sad listening to that question, because I’m like, why are you suffering? Suffering is always optional, and we’ve really got to take charge of our meanings that we make in life. You can’t control what’s happened, but you can always control your response to it, and the meaning that you create from it. Let this just be a chapter in a very, very long life, as opposed to now this defines your whole life, and it is a whole drama, and you’re just going to be beaten by it.

Simon:

Yeah. I get the sense, and obviously it’s a simple question, or it’s a short question, and it’s easy to add context to it which perhaps doesn’t exist. I do get the sense that they might even be trying to force potentially in the future, if not now, force a relationship, which maybe they’re just not ready for.

Simon: I mean, from what people I’ve seen go through, when they have gone through the processes, and they have gone through the emotions, which can be a difficult journey for sure, but when they get to the end of them they feel very light, and the idea of a relationship is totally okay. Whereas just a relatively short period of time, a week or a few weeks beforehand was inconceivable, and would have been a bad idea quite frankly. It’s like, yeah, why the hell, why wouldn’t I?

Simon: The conversation I had with people, many are saying that, “I’ll probably never find another partner.” It’s like, well we don’t need to worry about that right now, but actually you will, because we’ve both seen people go through. When they’re clean about it, actually this is kind of a follow up question, but my experience is that pretty quickly they’re really open to dating again, and kind of exploring. Is that your-

Adele:

The thing is, the critical component is, what is your context for dating? If your context for dating is, I’m really lonely and I feel like some broken creature that needs my other half, and I’ve got to find my other half. Then you basically just latch onto Fred, or Sally. You don’t even conduct due diligence. You’re just like, “You’ll do. You make me not feel lonely. Finally, I’m in a couple again. Whew.” That’s not empowering.

Adele: Really what you want to be is whole, and healed, and complete. Then you’re fulfilled as a person, and you’re whole and complete as a person, and you’re back to your empowered self. Because that raises your vibration, which means you will attract somebody at that same level of vibration, as opposed to a whole bunch of people clinging to each other on a life raft.

Simon:

Good analogy. Yeah, I guess if you’re feeling good about yourself, you’re feeling clean, you’re probably going to attract a better quality of person. I mean, to put it quite bluntly, right?

Adele:

Yeah.

Simon:

Cool. All right, so number three. What question do you think I should be asking you? This is also a question that’s come in, not me. What question do you think I should be asking you? I thought that was quite a good question.

Adele:

Do I regret anything?

Simon:

That’s the question they should ask you?

Adele:

Yeah. That’s actually a question that most clients ask me, is there anything you regret in your life Adele? It’s a hard one because philosophically I don’t believe in regrets, because I think that everything that happens in life is an opportunity to learn, and heal, and grow, and that kind of stuff. I think I regret moments where my actions, or lack of action, have unconsciously or consciously hurt other people. I think that is an area of sadness. I think that it’s important on your healing journey that if you have unconsciously or consciously hurt others by your actions or inactions, you must make reparations. Actually it’s an important part of that journey, is to kind of go, “You know what? I hurt somebody there. I’m going to do something to fix that.”

Simon:

Get it out. Cool.

Adele:

Reparation versus regret, it would be for me.

Simon:

Okay. Just hit my funny bone, that really hurt. Next question now, a bit more random. Okay, how do I work out the difference between lust and love? How do I work out the difference between lust and love? I like the way that’s phrased actually, how to work out the difference.

Adele:

It’s a good one actually. Lust is kind of almost has an addictive nature to it. It’s kind of like a can’t get enough of the person, but in a almost unhealthy way. You feel out of balance around that person. You sort of lose your mind a bit.

Simon:

A bit stalker-ey.

Adele:

A bit stalker-ey, but also not so … Yeah, a little bit stalker-ey, because you kind of can get a little bit you want to swallow this person whole and just like completely become engulfed in that situation. You’re completely heady. You don’t work properly. You don’t eat properly. You don’t function properly. You’re not a whole, and complete, and fulfilled human in that space. That’s like when somebody starts dating and they disappear, you don’t see them for a year. They’re in an unhealthy dynamic where they’re not actually being their best selves.

Adele: I think a definition for me would be, if you’re in a real lust relationship, you’re in an addictive situation where you lose your head, you’re feeling completely obsessed and like you must posses this person to feel whole and complete. You can’t function properly and you’re not the best version of yourself.

Adele: I think love, it’s quite quiet. It’s like a quiet knowing. It’s not panicky and full of frantic fraught-ness and anxiety. It’s a very peaceful knowing. Kind of a real connection, where your heart still sings. You still really, you have such a connection and a kindred-ness with the person, but you feel balanced. You can operate. You can work. You can miss the person, but you can still operate properly and work properly. You don’t need to literally be with them 24/7 to feel connected.

Simon:

Interesting. I would have probably tried to describe that quite differently. For me lust is much more of kind of a physical interaction. Visual, physical, sex, kissing, visually, a visual kind of-

Adele:

Okay, because I would have said lust could be either an emotional connection or physical. That’s interesting. You would have said just physical.

Simon:

Yeah. Visual, physical for sure. Whereas for me, love probably has some of that, and maybe even as much, but in addition, or possibly instead of, it’s more of a caring kind of energy. It’s wanting them. For me I think lust is a bit more selfish. It’s all about things that I would receive, sexy time and stuff like that. Whereas love is a lot of genuine still personal enjoyment, but out of giving to that person. I don’t know, cooking for them, or taking them to a restaurant that they would enjoy, or buying them a dress. A bit more of a giving kind of energy, and sort of broader. Walks in the park, or holidays. Whereas lust I personally think is a much more sort of physical interaction.

Simon: Okay. Actually there’s one I did want to not miss, so I’m going to jump to that now. Getting through, this is a bit of a kind of confessional almost initially. Getting through divorce has been terrible. Still no sleeping, no eating, but plenty of grieving for a long time. People say time will heal. A month out and the situation is still immensely and physically decapitating. How will taking an expensive cruise help if only time gone by is the answer? Again, I’ll read that again.

Simon: Getting through divorce has been terrible. Still no sleeping, eating, but plenty of grieving for a long time. People say time will heal. A month out and the situation is still immensely and physically decapitating. How will taking an expensive cruise help if only time gone by is the answer?

Adele:

No, it won’t, because the [inaudible 00:23:40] person you pack in that suitcase is yourself. No, I don’t think any cruise, or whatever, just like removing yourself and putting yourself in a different location is somehow going to make this journey easier. What you need to do is start taking steps to process what has happened, and actually go through a bit of a journey to get yourself out of that horrible pain feeling. Examine it from all angles so that you can learn and heal.

Adele: I mean, I see so many people do this. I don’t know how many of you have ever been to Bali, but if you ruck up in one of these exotic locations, it’s just full of people that have run away to heal. It’s just nonsense, because they’re not actually doing any healing, they’re just congregating over there, and letting their hair grow really long and get kind of hippie-ish in the thought that somehow this is what healing should look like. No, it’s just actually weird, because they stop washing and they get a bit strange. Actually what you need to be doing is actually-

Simon:

Basically not washing is not going to help, is that what you’re saying?

Adele:

It’s not good at all, no.

Simon:

Good to know.

Adele:

Because it’s not a healthy, what we call grounded routine. The reason your emotions are all over the place is probably in your nutrition you’re not helping yourself. There’s actually, in The Naked Divorce we have a whole nutrition plan, and actually writing a book about that. You’ve got to avoid certain foods. You’ve got to have more of other foods, because it will make you have that pain feeling even more. You’ve got to adopt healthy, grounded routines that kind of stabilise you. It’s probably if we had to analyse exactly what you were doing every day, we could probably pinpoint about 10 to 15 things that if you removed them, you would stabilise a lot more, and the emotions would calm down. Yeah, no. An expensive cruise, nah. Save your [inaudible 00:25:45] and do a programme that processes it instead.

Simon:

I mean, it’s a slightly different situation, but I did try the same thing. I remember myself, I had been working as a graphic designer in London for 10, 12 years, and some annoying person invented this thing called the web, and I knew that my, I was working in publishing, and I kind of knew that this spelled the end of my career. I did want to kind of avoid that knowledge, and so I basically went on a tour around the world to have a rethink about my career, redirection, and most of the time I just spent my time in the pub. Having lots of great journeys, and it was a very great time, and it was educational in its own way, but probably about two thirds of the way around I was like, yeah, no lightning bolt has come my way. I have actually got no more idea about which direction I’m going to go in.

Simon: I went and bought a bunch a books. I can’t remember what those were. Found my Parachute was one of the books I bought. Then I did actually do some work on myself, and eventually I did reach a conclusion. I came back, got an interview at the university. Yeah, nothing happened until I had to kind of annoyingly had to go through some process. I found it really hard actually to work out what i was going to do. I guess what we’re saying there that, yes, just a different location in itself isn’t good.

Simon: I would add that there is something to be said for a different location, if you’re doing some work. [crosstalk 00:27:20]

Adele:

I’ve had clients who they’ll take themselves off to a different location and then go and read lots of books. That doesn’t help either, because transformation is not, it doesn’t happen in isolation. You actually have to process it through a structure, and a journey, and you have communications and stuff. Retreats are great, because that’s an opportunity to actually, it’s an intensive learning journey and a healing journey, facilitated and are basically-

Simon:

Sorry to interrupt. I do think when people are in a different location, their mind does expand a little bit, they’re away from having to do the dishes, and the vacuuming, and that stuff.

Adele:

I think that context is good, but it must be a context set up for healing. An expensive cruise is not set up for healing, it’s set up for drinking cocktails and engaging in hundreds of short term emotion avoidance tactics. Okay, great. You can basically say, “I’ve had a good holiday.” I come back from the holiday and i basically unpack the self that I packed originally, and now I’m still in pain and not moved on. It’s just silly.

Simon:

Yeah. Okay. I’m just seen the maid over your shoulder cleaning the windows, which is quite hilarious. I have to ignore her. Okay. I think we’ll probably do one, maybe two more questions. Okay, I’ll do this one actually. This is about you as an author. Now you’ve published several books, what are your top tips for someone planning to write their first book? There’s actually a follow up question, which I’ll give to you now. Are your books the main way that clients find you, or are they the option that your more price sensitive clients can go for to get help if they can’t afford to work with you in person?

Adele: Okay, so I would say first and foremost the reason to write a book in the first place, that’s really where to begin, is to get clear why are you doing it? You’re doing it because you’re committed, you have something you want to say about a particular topic. You want to do some thought leadership stuff in that topic, and you want to add something that no one else has really added. You’ve got to get clear about that. Don’t just write a book so that you can be a published author. You’ve actually got to have a bit of a mission to add something and make something leap forward. You’ve got to have that intentionality behind it.

Adele:

The second thing is, unless you are John Grisham or whatever, you’re not necessarily going to become a millionaire from writing a book. I wouldn’t expect that, and I don’t actually care about that. What it is, is if it’s about making a difference in thought leadership, that’s really the right context.

Adele: It is a way for people who can’t afford my services to engage with my ideas and to do some of my programmes, because I care about that, that’s my mission. I think it’s more that than it is a very definite way that people find us. Yes it is, people do find us through the books and stuff, but I would say that more effective marketing channels are probably online marketing, referrals, talks, podcasts, that kind of stuff. Book is just one of them. It’s just another way that people can absorb your content.

Adele: In terms of writing a book, it takes so much discipline.

Simon:

Let’s not say how long it took to launch the last one. Let’s skip over that bit.

Adele:

Indeed. Let’s not say it. That is our secret. Anyway. I think it’s an immense amount of discipline, an immense amount of dedication and hard work. You’ve got to kind of, the way that I would say it is, I would plan the whole thing out before you write anything. I have mind maps for all the chapters, be like, all right, if this is the problem that we want to solve, and this is the book I’m going to write, this is the problem. Then you break it down. If this was the problem we want to solve, this is all the different aspects and elements of it. I would have each one has its own mind map with its own topics.

Adele: I would basically plan the entire book and every single chapter before you write anything. That’s what I did, and that’s what I do when I write things. You’ve got to have a good editor. I’m really lucky, I’ve got an awesome editor. She’s just an amazing woman who used to work at Penguin. Yeah, and just keep going. You’ve got to structure writing often, and a lot. I find writing around what I’m doing much simpler to do than to go on a book retreat. Book retreats have never worked for me. I get up at like 4:30, 5:00 in the morning, and I’ll write for two hours, three or four times a week, as opposed to disappearing for two weeks where I actually just end up drinking lots of cocktails and forgetting everything.

Simon:

Yeah. I did kind of the same thing. I’ve also written a book a long time ago now, and I felt the mind maps was a really critically essential piece. It didn’t take actually that long, a couple of hours, some quiet time. Maybe allow yourself two or three hours, based on my experience. Come up with a central topic, branch off 10 things which are probably other chapters, and off of those probably come up with 10 items you’re going to include in each chapter. For me what I did was then put an expectation in terms of the quantity of words against each bit. That just gave me something to kind of aim for. Some would be a little bit more, some would be a little bit less. That would be it.

Simon: Okay. All right, so about to do the last question. Don’t think we need a quick pause. Okay we don’t need a quick pause.

Adele:

No, it’s fine.

Simon:

Okay. All right. Now this was written I’m assuming by somebody that English wasn’t their first language, because there’s a few funny sort of typos in here, so I’m going to have to piece this together a little bit.

Simon: It seems nobody stays together anymore. The word, now they’ve actually written convection, but I assume they mean conviction. The word conviction, fighting for each other seems to mean nothing. People are looking for the easy way out. It is exhausting trying to find someone who is ready to fight and stay true to a relationship. The question is, why do you think our society has evolved to that? I think that’s what they’re trying to say. Why has the term conviction died? The core question is, why do you think the society has evolved into a lack of conviction, and why has the term conviction died in relationships, or commitment?

Adele:

I think it’s a great question actually. It really, if you look at how society has changed over the last few decades, there’s this real trend towards instant gratification. We have this kind of, you need something, you go to the internet, you get it immediately, you answer a question, you get it immediately. You order it, Amazon delivers. It’s all super fast.

Adele: In the ’50s and the ’60s we really had this concept of, if something’s broken, you fix it. Nowadays, if something’s broken, we’re more entitled, we’re like, “Well, it’s broken, I don’t want to be around that. I’m just going to get rid of it.” We throw things away much easier, and that’s a real societal thing that is a big trend sweeping particularly western cultures and the western world.

Adele: What I will say is that’s not true for everybody. If you’re attracting that into your world, you’re attracting people that seem to quit all the time, and don’t seem to have much staying power in relationship, and you’re seeing only that, you’ve got to keep in mind that what you see and what you attract is very much-

Simon:

A reflection.

Adele:

It’s kind of given by your context and your own beliefs about the world. If your beliefs are, there’s no one out there that has staying power and that kind of conviction to fight for something, that’s all you will know and all you will attract. You actually have what we call a cognitive dissonance. There’s something within you, which is a belief towards something you don’t want. I don’t want people that have no conviction, but I believe that everyone has no conviction, therefore all I see are people that have no conviction, that’s what I attract. Because what you perceive is what you project, and that’s actually what you will attract into your life.

Adele: What my coaching would be for you is don’t worry about being so right about that point of view, about why the whole world is like that. Yes, there is that happening, but I don’t attract that into my life. I know a lot of people that don’t attract that into their life. You’ve got to ask yourself, why am I attracting that into my life? I would coach you to say you need to do some work, and some healing, and some learning around where does that context for life come from? What are the steps that I can take to actually shift that context so that I can have a more empowering context? Because everything I attract and get in my life will be dictated by my context.

Adele: If there’s some coaching and stuff you want to do, I mean, that’s something we do within our Naked Recovery programmes. We help people shift these kinds of cognitive dissonances and issues. Really what it will be is there’s an unresolved trauma from your past, where that has happened, and either happened time and time again, and you now have evidence that supports that that is what the world is like, but it’s not necessarily true.

Simon:

Yeah. Actually even if it were true on the big scale, that’s actually really relevant to an individual person.

Adele:

Totally.

Simon:

National or international trends, they might be factual perhaps, and I think there is possibly some proof that could be out there to sort of back up, I’m assuming it’s a he for some reason, about that. Actually when it comes to an individual person that’s really irrelevant, and I think that’s a really good point.

Simon: At the same time I do wonder on the big scale if that was true, and I think there could be a number of things that would potentially add to that. I think more people have careers these days, a lot of those careers are much more international than they have been ever in the course of history. That’s a difficult for a relationship, where one partner is maybe moving to America, or New Zealand, or Asia, or wherever. That other person, well they’ve got their own plans, they’ve got their own careers. There’s a lot more dual careers in relationships now than there has been in the past.

Adele:

I think then my point will be, something that has to be said is you have to conduct proper due diligence at the start of a relationship. I think a lot of people that wind up in relationships where there are these fundamental big changes that happen, where their staying power doesn’t happen, at some point you skipped something in the due diligence. You didn’t check, okay wow, she actually does want to have children. Oh wow, actually she doesn’t want to live where I’m living, she always wanted to move back. It might not be that that person doesn’t have staying power. It might be a function of your own lack of due diligence, you didn’t determine issues that would have come along down the track enough in advance, so then it occurs like a conviction problem, but actually it’s just you didn’t do proper due diligence from the get go.

Simon:

I mean, due diligence sounds so kind of corporate, right? I guess if you go on first dates and stuff, you get a feel for somebody, and some of those you know are at best going to be a short term fling, and that’s unlikely to have a lot of staying power. Others could grow into a longer term relationship, so that might be something there.

Simon: Okay, I think we will wrap it up there. Lots of other questions, but I wanted to keep this fairly short, and we’re getting close to the sort of 40 minute market. I think that’s a good kind of size for this event. There’s no pitch. There’s no thing here. We just wanted to give this content to people. We would ask, if people do have any thoughts, if they thought this was valuable to them, just ping us an email to [email protected]. [email protected]. If this is something that you felt [inaudible 00:40:39] from, this is probably something we’ll do again. If you didn’t, then let us know too, or if you thought there was a better way we could do it. Just really want to get your feedback. If it does engage people, then I’m sure we’ll do this again. I though it was valuable actually. I quite enjoyed doing it. How about you?

Adele:

Yeah, I did actually. I think if you have any more questions, just feel free to send them through. We have enough questions, like I said too, we could do so many sessions out of this. We’ve got like seven or eight sessions we can do now. I think if you just keep the questions coming, we can just do this every few weeks and answer these questions, and try and debunk some of the myths or the misunderstandings that people have in this. Whether it be divorce, or any PTSD, or any trauma that you’re going through in life, I mean that’s what we do. We can answer those questions and possibly assist you along your healing journey.

Simon: Yeah. Just one boring detail there. If you do send an email through to us, just please let us know, this is a question for the Ask Me Anything. Because of course sometimes we arrive at a question like, oh, what the hell are we doing this? It’s not always clearly labelled. That would really Piper, our assistant, to actually understand what’s going on. Just send an email through, [email protected], and just note there this is for the Ask Me Anything thing.

Okay, that’s it from us. Thank you people. Thanks for listening, and hopefully we’ll speak to you again soon.

Adele:

Thanks. Bye.