Join us in this insightful episode on the Mental Wealth podcast, as we delve into the intricate world of habits, both good and bad, with our special guest, Danny Greeves. We explore the challenges that come with breaking bad habits and the science behind why they can cause mental and physical pain and be so difficult to overcome.
From procrastination to unhealthy patterns, we uncover the psychological mechanisms at play and how they impact our daily lives, as well as how important it is to go the mind gym💪🧠
Welcome to mental wealth, the podcast to invest in your mind. Here I will help you make sense of your mind and behaviours, giving you the tools to have your best life. There is so much to share, so let's get into this episode and explore another great topic.
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So I am delighted to be joined by Danny Greeves and he has a book out called 6 Steps to self-confidence but also has a great story to share, one which I hope will resonate for lots of people. So welcome Danny, please introduce yourself.
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Hello, thank you so much for having me. Yeah. My name is Danny Greeves, and I'm a coach and hypnotherapist. And I mainly.
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Help people.
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Discover if you like their feelings of inner peace and just to tap into their own self-confidence.
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Nice, nice. And obviously that's something I think that we're all aiming for. I spend a lot of time working with people who think they want a better job, more money, a better relationship, and I'm sure those things are really important and the cost who want those. But the key to it all isn't it is that, isn't it that happiness? Tell us a little bit more about your journey because I know you've.
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Share a little bit about your own journey in terms of that.
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Yeah. So and to follow up on your point, I think really what we want is the feeling that those things give us, isn't it? So we're.
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We we find.
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Them many different ways, but we're we're looking for the feeling and what I found was when I was younger, so I actually trained as a physio. That was originally sort of my.
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Way in and when I was younger and my parents were divorced and that was quite.
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That was quite a.
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Big challenge for me and that kind of set.
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Off lots of different challenges in terms of feeling quite anxious, doubting myself lacking in confidence, particularly around relationships and that kind of makes sense in terms of where the challenges come from.
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From - I was very, very young. I knew I wanted to help people in pain, didn't quite know how that was going to work, but I knew that was something that I was really aware of and I found myself in the field of physiotherapy.
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And I was working in that field for about 10 years and I was just working with more and more people struggling with chronic issues. And I could do all the treatment that they recommend, and yet they've still got this chronic pain. And it was then then I started to ask like.
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What is going on with these people that's causing this? And then it really came down to a lot of emotional issues that weren't being.
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Addressed so when I tapped into that side of things, I had some wonderful mentors along the way. I then transitioned away from being a physio and then started working with sort of people as a coach and hypnotherapist.
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I love that and I think it's so powerful to be for people to to really focus on the fact that it's.
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So often physical pain is so linked to emotional pain. Mental pain.
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All that trapped.
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Emotion that is so often missed, isn't it? People often know that they feel unhappy, but they're so focused on their physical pain that they don't necessarily pause and think, well, what is the deep cause and the.
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Deep breath of that.
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Yes. And there's there's definitely been quite a big stigma in the past in terms of if anyone has a a chronic pain, the idea that it could be emotional was actually quite challenging for a lot of people. Whereas at least now the science is showing that emotions play a role. So it's not in every case. And it's not for everyone.
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But actually, being aware that emotions use the same pain pathways, I think open things.
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Up a little bit.
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Yeah, definitely. Do you have a little story or a little example that you think is the real one that resonates with most people around pain? Cause not everybody's walking around with chronic pain, are they? But they're often walking around with some level of pain that they're not necessarily sure, do you?
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Have a sort of an.
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Example that you often use when you're talking to people.
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Help. So they I like it that.
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People can really resonate with what we're.
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About on the show.
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Yeah. I think one of the and it's quite a common pattern that I see, but there's one lady in particular because I stay in contact with her. And initially she was really struggling with some degree of anxiety and she was aware of that symptom and she was.
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Also aware that she was needing to go see a massage therapist almost once a week to help with neck and shoulder pain.
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And she was also going to see her GP on sort of like a monthly basis with quite significant IBS symptoms. So really struggling sort of with stomach pain, cramps, bloating that type of thing and.
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She was aware.
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Of these different problems, but she hadn't actually managed to connect them.
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To notice that when anxiety flared up.
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Her neck pain increased and her abdominal symptoms got worse, and so she was looking for these various different treatments, and she was doing everything she could, but that was involving sort of medication from the doctor to help the IBS massage from the therapist to calm the muscle tension and then dealing with the anxiety, the best way.
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She could, whereas when we sort of actually worked on resolving the anxiety and that was based on some sort of painful past experiences.
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That she'd had.
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As soon as those issues were resolved, the neck pain released, the abdomen relaxed and all of the other symptoms just cleared up. So I think it is a challenge sometimes because we do box things off, but I think the the emotional side of things really is the link that can connect a lot of things together if that makes.
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Sense. No, I think that's a great example.
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And and know knowing in my work it'll be one that most people can make sense of.
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And I know for me personally, my clinic when I work 1:1 when when we do see people face to face is is a physiotherapy clinic and often we we cross refer you know I get a lot of their patients who come and see me because exactly as you've just described.
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That's a wonderful thing to have, I think more therapy clinics should have that. I think it's so important.
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Yeah, definitely. So let's move on to a.
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Bit more about your.
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Work now and the fact that you've realised that let's focus on the mind. Yes, we still need to focus on the body too, but the mind and tell us a little bit about.
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So when I was working as a physio, I actually bumped into a neurosurgeon. He was a a Mexican chap, about 6 foot 5, built a bit like a Thor from The Avengers movie and we were sitting down and having sort of a few chats over lunch and he asked me.
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Do you ever say to your patients at that time you just have to live with your symptoms? You know, like knee arthritis or something like that? And I said, well, yeah, as a physio, we say that quite a lot. And then he started to ask me some questions about if I really wanted to help people to change on the inside as well as the outside.
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I was going to have to learn how to help people change their mindset.
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So he taught me some particular tools, and then I was really fortunate to learn with master hypnotist who really opened my eyes to the power of language. And then I also was really fortunate to be mentored by another couple of behavioural change experts. And so from each one of them, I kind of.
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Extracted what I thought was most important, and then kind of put it together into a process. So what I do now is really niche in terms of helping people to resolve anxiety to to feel that inner peace and.
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Incidents and it's about clearing those emotional pains from the past and developing a more positive mindset. So that's really what I I love doing now.
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Nice. And I love the way you've.
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Sort of taken the bits that you felt were were right for you and work for you because that's that's sort of my story too. I've got lots of different approaches that I use, and I often describe I've got a tool.
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Kit and in the toolkit I've got lots of different disciplines, different approaches. I started off as a CBT therapists in the NHS and then I moved into NLP and hypnosis also, although I don't do as much of that now and also clean language which I use a lot of and certainly when I'm working with teams and businesses I've combined.
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All these things, and I like that I think instead of just being.
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One thing you.
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Know it's it's helpful.
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To be able to bring in different aspect.
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Of of it all, so that you've got this really as I described this great toolkit. So it sounds like you've got.
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Something quite similar.
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And I use the same word so but one thing that I have noticed is that one of the main reasons people struggle is that they don't have their own toolkit, so they might have maybe one thing that they rely on.
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Ah, I mean.
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But that doesn't always work because you know, circumstances are different. Life happens, there's family changes and things like that. So when we have no tools or we have one tool, we can get unlimited quite quickly, whereas when we have like a toolbox.
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As you described.
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Then depending on what's happening, we've got a variety of different skills.
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And I think that helps us feel more in control because what we've got we've got choices. So I think that that talk is really, really important.
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Sure.
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And I think something else that's important for everyone to remember is to have their own toolkit.
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Because we can often be shown something that works brilliantly for one person, but that doesn't necessarily mean that it's gonna work brilliantly for you. And I think that's something else that I'm keen for people to do is to think about what's their one small thing that they can get going, and then once you've got that going, what's the next one small thing you'll hear me on this show talking about what's your one small thing that you can take.
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Our conversation now, Danny, what's the one small thing that you can just do this today and and then you can build on it, because otherwise it becomes overwhelming, doesn't it, with all of the things that you could do to help yourself. And I think that's sometimes what happens to people.
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They get a lot of information about what they can do. They know what they need to do to make themselves feel better and feel happier. But actually it feels overwhelming because there's just too many options.
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Yeah, there's definitely a huge difference between having an idea and then implementing that idea. And I think one of the challenges.
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Just as humans is that we love learning and we love novelty so often we crave lots of new information, but it's actually not the information that helps us make the change. It's actually implementing it in small, manageable chunks.
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And then celebrating along the way.
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And I think that applies to habits. It applies to mental health. It applies to so many different areas, whereas we tend to just crave more and and one of the mentors that I work with gave me this analogy. What I think is really nice is when we tend to struggle, what we tend to do is become a white belt.
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In about 10 different disciplines.
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Rather than becoming a black belt in one of them and then adding the next one to it, so which kind of fits into just what you said, but that analogy is really nice because there's a lot of white belts out there, but actually it's the the black belt that really helps us change.
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Yeah, I like that.
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I think something that I see a lot of people do is they'll start something.
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They'll they'll start having a little go at.
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Meditation or mindfulness, or.
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Getting to the gym or eating healthily, or reading some books or whatever it is, whatever they've picked up.
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Along the way. And then they give up because it hasn't worked quick enough that the novelty factor I think is really something we should key key into, which you shared. Definitely we love something new and it wears off and it's at that point that then people get disheartened. Ohh, it didn't work out.
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I tried that and a lot of people say I've tried that.
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Well, how long did you try it for?
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Did you feel the benefits yet? We often give up, don't we so much? Yeah, just on that brink of it. Starting to work. I know. Fitness is definitely like that. I lots of people.
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Say they've been.
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Been going to the gym. They haven't seen the results they wanted and then they sort of give up.
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A bit, and I always describe again a little metaphor that I use again is the mind is like a muscle and we need to take it to the mind gym. And when we go to the mind gym, we need to do lots of.
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Reps we need.
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To do lots of regular exercise, lots of different variety, just like you would again going to the gym. But it's not giving up, but equally not being overwhelmed.
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With how much and you know, I think it's something. It's really key for people to remember.
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Yeah. One of the things that.
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I help people do is create healthy habits and productive habits, and one of the authors that I read is a chap called James Clear and he has a book called Atomic Habits and one of his ideas in there. It's a bit of a a fancy phrase I.
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Think, but it's called the.
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Period of latent potential, and it's essentially when you're doing the right things.
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But actually the right things haven't had enough time to make a change yet.
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So so many times, just as you mentioned, we give up in that period, but that's actually when everything's working correctly. We just haven't built enough momentum yet. So I think at least if we know that that this is normal, it's it's sort of part of the journey and we might be able to just push through it a little bit more.
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I think you're right and it's that people have the knowledge, they know what they should be doing, but getting it into a habit, getting it as a skill 1st and then having it as a habit takes time, you know, and I and I think that's something I'm often remembering myself and and others is that these things take time. They they don't fix.
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Something like this overnight and I think how do we then that's my question always to people.
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How do we?
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Keep that going. What is it that you're gonna do? And and yeah, the toolkit idea of let's have lots of different things in there that you can rely upon.
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At different times.
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One size doesn't fit all. Is my other big thing, remembering we are all.
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Individual and we all need different things.
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Absolutely. And if we can approach that sort of toolkit with the idea of we're gonna explore and we're just gonna be curious and find out what works for us. Then if we come across something.
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That doesn't work.
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We don't get disarmed. We OK? I I explored that. Then we can move on to the next one.
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So I think that's a that's a helpful thing.
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To think about.
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Definitely because otherwise we are giving up too easily or we're comparing ourselves to others, which, yeah, also a lethal combination because we are.
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We're not each other.
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And just because you're looking at someone.
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Else they might be able to do something that isn't right for you.
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Or they've been doing it for a long.
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Period of time and that's why they can do it.
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Yeah. Yeah. We we often make a snap judgement, whereas actually that other person might have had 10 years extra experience and now it looks easy.
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So are you willing to do the 10 years to get there and then a lot of people go - Maybe not.
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Exactly, but if you're comparing yourself rather than comparing yourself to yourself yesterday or what was it like yesterday? Well, I I did better than today. Great. Let's build on that rather than be comparing ourselves unless we are looking to be motivated by.
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Yeah, yeah. I mean comparisons we didn't want to make them all bad as you mentioned, because sometimes they do give us a nudge to think. Ohh alright, maybe my life isn't quite what I want it to be and sometimes that that can give us a push. But I think it's the it's the healthy comparison that we need.
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And when we've got a meaningful goal, that's when we compare to ourselves.
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Because then it doesn't.
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Matter what's going on? We're just comparing to our own.
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Progress. So I think it's a, it's a really good point cuz.
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A lot of the time comparisons does just get bookmarked as all bad, but actually we do need it sometimes to give us a little bit of a nudge. There's been many a times after our Christmas holiday where I've looked over people getting fitter in January and then thought, yeah, OK, it's time for me to do something.
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So it does have a role.
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It definitely does, but making sure we are being kind to ourselves while we are comparing.
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Yeah, we're telling them a little bit about your.
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Book. You've got a book out.
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Yeah, my book is called 6 steps to self-confidence and it fits really naturally in terms of what we've been talking about because it's helping you build your own series of tools to help you systematically build confidence. So it kind of gives you a manual of sort of variety of different techniques.
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That you can then implement and then experiment to find your own morning routine.
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So one thing that I found is that if we can set things up in the morning, that tends to be a more productive time. Some people it just doesn't work, but for a lot of people, if we can do something productive in the morning that will set us up for the rest of the day. So the book is all about helping you to get that morning bit.
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Planned and prepped so you can enjoy the rest of your day.
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Nice. Sounds brilliant.
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OK, so tell everyone where they can find you.
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Danny.
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So I'd recommend first of all going to my website which is www.dannygreevescoaching.com and on my website there's a score card which is all about helping you to discover your own inner peace. So it'll give you a new view about where your blocks are at the moment and then we'll give you some action steps to actually get moving.
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So that's probably a great first step and that will get.
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You going towards your goals?
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Thanks. Thank you. Thank you so much for coming and talking to us. It's been I could chat to you all day because obviously we have a lot of common common ground. I think our backgrounds in terms of training are quite similar. So for me personally, it's always lovely to have somebody who we can have lots of ideas bouncing around.
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Yeah, absolutely. Pleasure to be.
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Here, thank you very much for having me.
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Thank you. Thank you so much.
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Thank.
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For listening and sharing in this episode of Mental Wealth, Remember You can subscribe wherever you get your podcast. My last question to you is what is the one small thing that you can take action on from this episode?
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Message me on Instagram or through our website with questions you'd like.
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Me to explore.
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We'll find the links in the show notes. I'll be back with more tools and tips to make sense of your mind in the next episode. In the meantime, be kind to yourself. Bye for now.
