Prioritising relaxation when you’re under stress is easier than it sounds – but it’s possible, and it starts with saying “f**k it”.

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Welcome to our second replay of episodes from the past that are

so good that I really wanted to make sure everybody has heard them.

This is episode 130 from July, 2022.

Now I find it really difficult to relax.

And I know that John Parkin does too.

But he has made relaxing his life's work after discovering that being able

to let go and just say f it not only made his life much better, but also

killed a lot of his health conditions.

I reckon we all need a bit of this as we go into 2025.

Now, John is one of my favorite people in the world and has

such a different take on things.

I think this episode is really important for people in high

stress, high stakes jobs.

Just imagine what life would be like if we could, as Frankie says.

Relax.

If you're in a high stress, high stakes, still blank medicine, and you're feeling

stressed or overwhelmed, burning out or getting out are not your only options.

I'm Dr.

Rachel Morris, and welcome to You Are Not a Frog

John, you were one of our first guests, I think, ever on the podcast.

Late 2019, I think it was, wasn't it?

Yeah, I think so.

Before, before The Great

Plague.

Before,

before the Plague.

Now John is a writer, he's a coach, he's a wisdom teacher, and he's also

the author of the bestselling book.

Fuck It.

The Ultimate Spiritual Journey or Path.

What's the tagline there, John?

It's The Way, the Ultimate Spiritual Way.

Yeah, the ultimate Spiritual way Slightly.

It sounds it slightly tongue in cheek, isn't it?

That's what it sounds like.

You know, I love that.

Suggesting that, suggesting that swearing can be a spiritual

path, but that is what the, that is what I argue in the book.

I love that.

So if we think about Bucket as the ultimate spiritual way, how can that be?

Can you tell me why?

Because there's lots of good concepts around, there's lots of good ideas,

there's lots of good models and things, and I teach lots of models

in the Shapes toolkit, of course.

But, but you've found this as, as, as like a spiritual way.

So how did you end up with that sort of take on it as opposed to

it's just a great model to help you?

When we first understood the, the, the power of saying, fuck it,

and let's say we, I mean Gaia, Gaia, myself, my wife and myself, we just

set up a retreat center in Italy.

So we'd spent the last, the previous few years setting this up.

And, and the reason we were setting up the retreat center is 'cause we

were into meditation and Daoism, the kind of going with the flow

philosophy and Buddhism, the kind of, you know, the kind of supermarket

mix, the, the pick and mix version that is modern spirituality.

So we're into a lot of alternative health and alternative spirituality.

Which, if you kinda mix it up in a, in, in a few sentences, is about

giving up on attachment, letting go, going with the flow, dropping

into presence, those kind of ideas.

And what we found was having, you know, meditating every day

doing Tai Chi and Qung every day.

And we found that when we were really stressed, we were saying fuck it.

And that, that had the peculiarly similar effect to a lot of those things

that we'd been practicing as these Phil Eastern mainly philosophical elements.

So when you say fuck it, you kind of give up on something.

You let go on something, you drop outta this kind of world of meaning that

we're locked in, in the, in the mind.

So that, that was, that was how it became this really

neat, quick and very western.

It's quick, neat is a tool if you can use it really quickly,

and it's a very western phrase, obviously it came a western.

Version of a whole bunch of Eastern philosophers.

Hmm.

So it's just that, that shortcut to get you to that point of letting it go,

accepting it, not having the attachment.

Yeah, I, I, yeah.

It's a shortcut in lots of ways.

It's 'cause it's, it's very particular in, in our language, fuck it.

Because you kind of know what it means.

You know that your problem, the stress that you are feeling and the tension

that you are feeling is related to something, the it that you are placing

too much weight on and therefore you, you could do with saying, fuck it.

So it's, and there's, there's hardly anything apart from the, the use of

the swear word, which, you know, is, is very proven, scientifically proven

to be very powerful in our brains.

It's, it's, it's a, it does a very particular thing just, just with

the lang, the linguistic context of it, the meaning context of it.

And there is that thing that they found that, you know, most of

our language is generated in the left brain and the swear words

are generated in the right brain.

So it looks like, whenever we swear there's a jump in very simplistic

terms, and I know you have many scientists in your audience.

So in very simplistic terms, it looks like we jump to the, to the,

to the right brain and right brain.

Again, in simplistic terms, left, if left brain's more language, you know,

planning past future kind of more logic, if right brain, very broadly is

more and calm, playful, uninhibited, and the spiritual connection.

If that's over there, then just saying the F word takes us into that part of

the brain, which I think is amazing.

I was reading that last night in your book, actually, and I

hadn't really got that before, even though I listened to the episode,

the podcast that we did before.

You talk about that there as well, but it suddenly just

clicked for me that Yeah.

Ah, that's why we, we need to access our right brain to deal with

a lot of this stuff because Yeah.

Puzzling it through, thinking it out.

Yeah.

Works to some extent.

But then you, you just get stuck, don't you?

You hit you, you, you've hit the nail on the head.

Really?

Yeah.

You can't, you can't really sort this stuff out with the, the left

brain, the logic brain with, with, you can't deal with anxiety, stress,

and everything else by thinking it through, because thinking is the

problem for most of these things.

Thinking is the problem.

They know anxiety.

Most of it's about doom, doom laden scenarios into the future.

We have no idea what's gonna happen into the future, but we create a

false idea world of what might happen.

Whereas it hasn't happened yet, so it's entirely mentally created.

Most of the source of our stress is entirely mental, entirely mind

that part of our mind created.

So the solution is very rarely in thinking it through and

certainly not thinking it through from that side of the brain.

So that the solution quite obviously, really is to go somewhere else, not

to try and use that, to figure it out, to use something else, which is to try

and let go, to get into a different state, you know, where literally as

well as the different parts of the brain being activated, we drop into a

different frequency so the brains at a different frequency and the whole

body will change under relaxation.

So the body mind is changing and then the problems, it is like, you

know, looking at our problems from a completely different angle, a

different space, and uh, and then the answers come quite more, more easily.

Yeah, there's, there's a quite, I think it was Mark

Wayne that said, I'm an old man.

I've known many troubles, but most of them didn't happen.

Ah, yes.

Beautiful.

It's a

great, it's a great quote.

And when I think, yeah, about the stress and the anxiety that a lot

of our listeners are going through, I'm going through a lot of people

working these high stress jobs.

It is, it is thinking about things that haven't actually happened yet.

There's probably a bit of dwelling on the past, but mostly it's, it's worrying

about the future and yeah, you're not gonna use the same tool to solve it.

And so just using, using the right brain, it's gotta be helpful.

I, I had a quite interesting experience the other night where.

Did a free webinar.

We had loads of people signed up to it and Zoom has changed its settings.

Ah.

So yes, even though I had bought the large meeting, paid a lot of money

to make sure everybody could get in.

I hadn't clicked the button to convert it or something had happened.

It had changed, yeah.

Normally it had been fine, changed overnight and only a limited

amount of people could get in.

And luckily I didn't find this out until after the webinar.

And then I got messages and I just felt awful.

'cause you know, people have given up time to come and

they'd really wanted to come.

And I felt immediately I felt this sort of weight of stress.

And I knew I was talking to you this, this week actually, and

I just, I said, you know what?

Fuck it.

There's nothing I can do.

And genuinely it worked because even though the problem was still there

and I did what I could to, you know, make sure people had the replay

and make it up to people and stuff.

Just that saying, fuck, it really, really helped and it, it

was quite surprisingly powerful.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It is.

I always imagine it as acupuncture.

Is that more what I'm used to with when I have a, something going on, so

I get some needles stuck into various bits and it feels like the needle

going into just the right spot, just the perfect thing when the, when the

tension and the pain really builds up.

Yeah.

'cause it makes us really, it make it, it, it, it punctu, sorry, I'm mixing

the metaphors now, but it's puncturing the, the balloon of meaning isn't it?

Of massive.

Meaning attachment to that thing, this is so important to me.

You are also brilliant at kind of reframing it, as you

say, making up to people.

But yeah, it helps no end

I guess, when it's something that's happened that

you can't change what's happened.

Even though it is really important to you, there is genuinely

nothing you can do to change what has happened in the past.

So to me, that's, that's really, really helpful

when you think things are have gone wrong and there's been

a mistake and then something else comes out of it and later on you're

able to see that, oh my goodness, that wouldn't have happened unless

that apparent mistake had happened.

It does seem to be the case that, you know, when you've lived long enough

on this planet and you, you look at the big, the things that you went,

oh, that was awful when it happened.

It's like awful.

It's terrible.

You look a bit later, you go, well, that wouldn't have happened if that bit

hadn't gone wrong, or whatever it is.

Hmm.

So this whole thing is about letting go of the attachment that

we have to the outcomes of stuff.

Is that right?

And then the meaning behind it.

Have I got that right?

Yeah, you could argue at a real kind of basic

psychological level that it's our.

Attachment to the meanings of things that don't matter so much.

So it is getting perspective over things.

So if we've got a, a kind of e let's say, energy, energy in terms of

traditional energy bandwidth, we use our mental energy bandwidth and we

some of it to worry about, as in, I won't worry about the bills, but

at the moment we have good reasons to be worrying about the bills.

But you know, some of it's worrying about the bills, some of it's worrying

about whether the government's gonna change, some of it's worrying about.

And so you are basically, you're using more and more and more of the bandwidth.

To worry about things that in the end don't matter so much.

And then the bit that we worry about, the things that we should be worrying

about, which is, you know, health kids, the survival stuff, really

survival of us and our loved ones takes up this little bit in the corner.

And so, fuck it partly is about going, Lord, that why are we, why are you

taking up so much energy worrying about that stuff, El if you're gonna worry,

worry about the shit that matters.

And I think that's been a big wake up call for everybody, hasn't it?

During Covid?

Yeah.

It's like we have all started worrying about the shit that matters.

Or maybe I'll rephrase that.

We started realizing that some things really, really matter and

other things really, really don't.

Although I think probably after Covid we've all started slipping

back into the way we were before.

What for you about the whole fuck it philosophy, spiritual way

has changed since the pandemic.

Well, I mean, as you say, it was, um, it was a big reminder of

what, it was a massive fuck it for all of us in many ways, which was

a, a recalibrating of the priorities

for doctors, people in healthcare, people on the frontline.

It's been really traumatic, obviously, and I think coming out covid, the

workload was really bad beforehand.

Yeah.

The workload is even worse now, and a lot of the work that I'm doing is

helping people accept their limits.

Yeah.

Embrace their limits and go, I'm a human being, say no set priorities.

But the issue is not saying no and setting priorities.

The issue for people, I think, is that when they try to do that, they

get pushed back or they worry they're gonna upset people or they feel

guilty or whatever, and then their boundaries crumble and so they just keep

going and going and going and going.

And so the thing trying to teach people is how to.

Accept the pushback they get, accept maybe upsetting a few people.

Accept not being able to be everything, everybody.

So just accepting that stuff that's outside the stuff that

you can directly control.

And it's interesting, you know, like I said, I work with lots of

professionals, high stress jobs, and we are very left brained.

So we try and think our way out of everything.

And actually you can use the zone of control to think,

okay, what am I in control of?

What am I not in control of?

And so whatever I'm in control of, what could I do?

What are my choices?

Set some actions.

Brilliant.

That that's, that's easy.

The bit I struggle with, the bit outside your control, the bit then

that you have to try and accept.

So other people's responses, other people being a bit annoyed with

me when I've said no to them.

Accepting my own human limits or even accepting when relatives

are ill or, or things like that.

So I'm, yeah, and this is why I was really keen to talk to you and just

find out how this whole fuck it way can really help with that acceptance

of stuff that is outside our control.

It's those areas that I actually added to this new edition of the book.

So I was writing it mainly last summer, so in the, you know, second

part of the second year of Covid.

And it did feel an urgent matter to address really, that I hadn't

really addressed much in the first round of writing it, which was

about, and I called it How to say Fuck it when you can't say Fuck it.

So how, how you say fuck it when you can't say fuck it to death and dying.

Not a small subject and not easy to write about how you say fuck it

when you can't say fuck it to being down low mood and depressed when you

saying fuck it when you can't say fuck it to being broke and so on.

Pandemics, climate change.

What I call first world problems, you know, there's no kind of

international scale of suffering.

We, we can really suffer around things that other people might not regard

as particularly strong or important.

There's no relativity, scale of relativity for that.

Um, so yeah, it, it, and a lot of what I was talking about there, which

is, which is how to use, fuck it in these contexts, these really, really

difficult contexts where you can't say, well that doesn't matter so much.

That's the 'cause.

That's what we can do most of the time with.

Fuck it.

We can say, fuck it, it doesn't matter so much, you know, and I can

concentrate this, this does matter.

It does matter.

The, the, the relatives dying and the, you know, uh, ill

health and everything else.

And so much of what I ended up writing in each of those bits as I came to them

was about saying fuck it to ideas of how we should be around these things

and feeling our feelings as they are.

So it's, it's a kind of fuck it to whatever you think I should be doing

when I'm supposed to be grieving.

You know, in, in the end, fuck your ideas of what grief is and what

the stages are, and how I should look, dress, act, speak, and behave.

This is how I'm feeling now.

We're talking about acceptance there of one's own feelings.

In, in, in the, in a context of a world where people are telling

us how we need to behave or act and fuck it is the, the kind of

permission to, to listen to ourselves, feel, and express what we feel.

And acceptance, as you are talking about it, is often the way through.

If we can get there, the problem is just the word acceptance brings up

as, as much difficulty and resistance as it can help with, because it,

it, it can sound quite passive.

It can sound as if we should accept it and not ask again or push through

or tell people how we're feeling.

So when we find a way to understand acceptance in our lives, that's

not a form of passivity, then it's incredibly powerful.

It works for me in terms of flow, a kind of Taoist idea of, of how life

can be, which is that in Daoism, everything has like a natural flow.

So things are moving naturally in one direction or another.

And the trick is to try and try and move with the flow

somehow, and not resist the flow.

And that doesn't mean being passive.

It means that if the flow is towards, let's say, really expressing ourselves,

if you can feel it, there's something that's absolutely not right for me.

And that everything in me is saying shout, you know, everything in

me is saying, protest about this.

And then protesting is the thing to do.

You know, but it, we, we will all have different ways of

picturing this and, and starting to make it work in our lives.

I guess if this philosophy works, it, it works just as well

for the little things as for the really big things, doesn't it?

And it's really interesting you say about accepting, sounding passive.

'cause I've had exactly that thought recently.

And when we use the zone of power, we sometimes talk

about the serenity prayer.

You know, give us the serenity to, you know, courage, the change, the

things we can control, the serenity to accept the stuff that doesn't.

And I didn't like that much.

I'm like, that really sounds a bit wishy-washy.

It sounds really passive.

And then I looked up the definition of serenity in

that context, and I loved it.

The definition of serenity is unclouded acceptance.

So this, it's almost like this very clear acceptance of what is,

and it's almost like an active acceptance as opposed to what I think.

A lot of us really resist the acceptance.

Like I've, I've gotta accept it, I don't like it.

I'm gonna rail against it.

Or trying to fudge it and say, well, I'm gonna accept that and not accept that.

But this clear, this unclouded thing means if there are some things that

you really aren't gonna accept, like if you put in a boundary, say, well,

I'm not gonna deal with that urgent test result and you know, a patient

will come to harm, well then your in clouded acceptance will be that,

well, I'm not, I'm gonna do something different because I'm, I'm not

prepared to accept that consequence.

Yeah, you can change depending on the consequences, but there are

some things that you are just forced to accept, like a serious illness.

'cause you actually can't change them.

In which case, no matter how much you shout, scream about, it's not

gonna not gonna make any difference.

So you do need that unclouded acceptance in, in those bits as well.

But I'm still trying to work out really.

What that looks like.

But I think, like you said about the feeling, the feelings

not being scared to go there.

Well, yeah, I mean, even in that context, and I've

never received that diagnosis.

I've been ill in my life, but I've not received the diagnosis

that would really knock one.

But the natural flow is probably, I don't wanna, don't

wanna, don't wanna face that.

I don't wanna face it, don't wanna face it.

Then there's gonna maybe complete upset anger and then, then there

may be a bit further down the line of level of acceptance.

I don't know.

It's like, fuck it is often, fuck it to the messages from the outside,

the shoulds and the aughts about how we should behave, about what we

should do in certain circumstances, which usually are just fashion.

It, you know, I, I don't mean fashion, uh, uh, clothes, the fashion of what

one should do in certain situations.

It is in an etiquette fashion or things we should think or say.

It's very different now in a more individualistic and individualistically

spiritual society or, or a, a more agnostic atheist society that

would've been a hundred years ago.

It's a fashion at any one time.

So, fuck it is about whatever's going on out there and what the, what

people are saying we kind of should think, should do, should respond.

What's going on here for me?

Or if when I tune in what's happening here, I want to, I want to hear that.

I want listen to that and I want to express from there.

And that does make sense.

So at the moment, a lot of my friends have children going

through A levels, and I'll be going through that next year.

And, you know, some of my friends' children have had covid, some of

them maybe haven't done as much work as they should have done.

There's all this sort of anxiety and this worry over stuff that.

Really, really matters, but is also out of their control.

So what you're saying is if they said, fuck it, it's not, fuck it, I don't care

about my child's future and it's not, fuck it, I don't care about my child.

It's, fuck it.

I'm gonna lose my attachment to the fashion of they should get these amazing

grades to go to this, and that's what needs to happen, blah, blah, blah.

Yeah, absolutely.

It's absolutely right and it's, it's always one of

the hardest areas to apply.

Fuck it.

Another way of expressing this is extreme listening.

It's an extreme form of listening to ourselves rather than the,

the condition way we have, which is listening to everybody else.

And, and I include putting so much weight on people with.

Letters after their names or before their names, or in white coats or

journalists or politicians or whatever.

Much as it's gonna be important, what we receive from the outside to listen

as much within is, is part of the idea, which is a spiritual direction as well.

And in those cases where we're talking about our children, just

listening and listening and listening to what they're saying and to what

the situation is, and to being open to, as you say, not to have an idea

and a preconceived idea in our head about where we'd like them to be.

But listening to them about what's appearing for them,

I can see that it's saying, fuck it to the way, the traditional

way, everything should be done.

So it's very much fuck it to preconceived ideas of what should

of what should be happening.

How, how would you say fuck it when you are overwhelmed,

overloaded, you can't see a way out.

You've got a business depending on you keeping going.

You've got patients that won't be told no, et cetera, et cetera.

How does that work then?

'cause I was really interested in, you said you've been, you know,

writing stuff about how to say fuck it when you can't say fuck it.

Which would be an awesome title for this episode, by the way.

Yes.

I've already been the title.

It's lovely.

Yeah, because I'd actually written down before, how do you be imperfect

in a job that demands perfection?

How can you fail when you know you shouldn't fail?

When failing might mean that somebody dies.

And how can you embrace your limits in, in some professions, which just

ignore the fact that you have limits.

How do you say fuck it?

In those situations?

We

can pick any of the things we've been talking about

really and apply them as ideas.

But just to apply the listening, the listening thing.

And I suppose listening in a healthcare context as well.

Listening is interesting because it's often about

listening to people, isn't it?

But it's, it's then listening to ourselves and.

I mean, I, I'll tell you a bit about the, the tiny summary of a process

that we actually have had for bucket for years and years and years when we

teach it on retreats and in workshops would always be something like this.

It's amazing.

Things happen when you are willing to relax and then it's relaxed.

So you have to kinda relax down and then you have to listen deeply.

So if you listen, when you're not relaxed, it's often not the, not the

greatest result because you get a kind of agitated, stressed response there.

So you have to try to relax first, and then you tend to get quite

strong messages when you listen.

So you know, it might be you, I'm completely exhausted, I just

need to go to bed for a day, or I need to say no to that social

engagement or whatever it is.

But there may be messages coming up both about from our own bodies and

systems, but also more mental things.

So the listening process needs to be proceeded by some form of relaxation.

And then needs to be followed by some form of action where you've basically

adjusted the value you place on things.

So normally we're placing the value, as we talked about, on the outside

or on on certain obligations, certain shoulds and oughts.

So you raise the value relatively for the inner messages,

for the listing inside.

It doesn't mean that you give up the rest of it.

It doesn't mean that you walk straight outta the surgery and you know, and

people, people are falling apart around you, but you on a kind of mixing desk

of importance and priority, you are upping the level of internally listening

and listening to the situation.

And, and by doing that, listening more and valuing it more, you

then make sure you act on that.

So it's a kind of, again, it's like a radical form of listening and

then acting from responsibility, whatever the context is.

I mean, if we get it to some kind of.

Difficult conversation.

If you gave 'em the scenario where there's absolutely no way given the

responsibilities of that person, that people would die if they gave up even

10 minutes of the, their really pushed day, then it gets more difficult.

But the answer always and only is for that person to listen

and listen and listen, I think.

And then the answers come and there's almost always an answer to make

things even a little bit better and usually a whole lot better.

And even if, let's imagine that nothing changed objectively.

The first part of the process of relaxing is gonna help.

'cause relaxing will always help everything apart from the moment

where we're faced by the tiger or we're in an emergency room.

And that is the question I've often had from people who are I, I got

that question from a doctor who was worked working in a war zone who I,

I whom I was teaching relaxation to.

And she, she, she went, it's not, not very helpful.

Relaxation in my job.

Disagree actually.

Yeah.

Relaxation is helpful because Yeah, even as a doctor, there's very few situations

where you truly required to be in your fight, flight or pre, so, okay.

Yeah, because I've had an incident recently where we had to do a full

on CPR resuscitation of somebody out, out of, it wasn't in in practice, it

was in the middle of No, it was awful.

Yeah.

Really stressful.

And you really needed your adrenaline there.

You really needed to be in your stress zone to get into,

this is what we're doing.

Do it now, do this, do that.

Boom.

Actually even, even in a war zone yet.

Yes.

If someone's rushed in and they're bleeding from every

orifice, yes, okay, you need that.

But I would still think most of their work was in a time where actually

being calm, having a calm hand, doing the surgery that you needed to,

would be much, much better than that.

Absolute urgent.

Literally every second makes a difference.

Yeah, yeah.

Thing, even in a war zone, I don't think every single

second will make a difference.

So there are times when you need to be in that zone, but actually

most times you need to be in your

para.

Well, that's perfect.

And I'll quote you on that, Rachel, because Yeah, because you're right.

I mean, even in a war zone, you know, we imagine even, even a war,

people are fighting all the time.

There's, there's patches of not fighting, and it'll be the

same in any job, wouldn't it?

Even if you're right there in the.

Emergency.

What

I'm interested, you know, and if anyone working in the

emergency department wants to comment and write in, I'd love

to hear from people because Yeah.

Yes.

In, in, in a resuscitation, you know, in the, the crash call, that's

where the adrenaline kicks in.

But there's an awful lot of stuff that goes, that goes on around it,

like communication with people, like communicating with relatives, like

all that sort of stuff where you don't wanna be in that stress zone, but

actually to be in that stress zone would be very deleterious to your Yeah.

Your, your practice.

But the problem is, in healthcare, most of us are in that stress zone

because of, like you said earlier, anxiety and worrying about things

that haven't actually happened yet.

Yeah.

And when you were saying about, you know, you'd find it difficult to tell

someone to say, fuck it, if obviously the decision they were gonna make every

10 minutes means somebody's gonna die.

I completely agree with that.

Obviously you can't really say Fuck it then, but, and I've literally just done

a webinar where we ask people in Nepal.

What stops you from saying no and setting boundaries and I gave them

the options for feeling guilty.

Don't want to upset people.

Fear of missing out some.

It might have a serious patient safety consequence or as something else.

42% said they don't say no because it makes them feel guilty.

3% said they find it difficult to say no because it will cause patient harm.

Wow.

3%.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Only 3%.

The rest that's stopping us is guilt.

Yeah.

And fear

of what other people might think.

Isn't that interesting?

It, it is fascinating.

It's fascinating.

It sounds like we've been talking about boundaries at the same time.

'cause I was, I was on a, on a retreat recently talking

exactly about boundaries and, and why, why we don't say no.

I did this retreat, whatever, two and a half weeks ago on

the Paradise Island in Trombly.

Off si.

Off, off, just off Sicily.

And we had 20 people come to learn how to relax.

Being ridiculously relaxed was the weak.

It took me the first three days to persuade them that relaxation,

like a lot more relaxation than their lives is a good idea.

So there's, there's actually an issue where most of us, I

think we're, we're lost a bit.

'cause most of us know that stress is not good for us.

Anybody in the healthcare professionals know that physiologically

stress is a terrible thing.

But we don't seem to have taken the leap into the deep understanding,

kind of embodied understanding that relaxation is astonishingly good for us.

Is, is the key to healing, is the key to good relationships, is the key to

good decision making is, is as you were talking about, you know, giving

people news, listening to people.

We, we listen, we talk from a completely different place

when we're relaxed and we all.

Somehow know it when we talk about it, but we don't have that really

strong in us that it should be my priority to relax by 20% every single

day and it will change my life.

And change the life of others.

Thomas, Lisa, be a kind of evangelical movement of like,

we need to calm down, please.

Oh, I totally agree.

We all need to calm down, but you, you are right.

Everyone's going about how bad stress is.

Yeah.

But they're not talking about relaxing, but they, there's a

lot of talk about mindfulness and stuff, which I absolutely think

is really, really important.

You know, that, that taking control of your thoughts, noticing the fact

that it calms your, your mind down.

But yeah, I know so many doctors that are wound so tight, so tight, and

they just bounce from one situation to another, to another, to another.

'cause that's really what the job has, has done to them.

Yeah.

A lot of us, and I know we talked about this on the last podcast, but it's

really good to go to, again, a lot of us don't know what to do to relax, John.

Honestly, well there's, we need to go, we need to go to the,

the scientists to look at that.

'cause there's so much science now, isn't there around stress

and relaxation, the effects of meditation, et cetera, et cetera.

Even as you say, mindfulness tell you, what made me think

was that we, we detach the idea.

Even when we think about the fact that I'm stressed and I need to relax,

we've kind of putting it into a box that feels quite difficult to open.

It's like you're, when you're in the thick of things and somebody says you

need to be a little bit more mindful, you're likely to tell them to f off.

It's like we need things that we can do like this and the

become part of our lives.

'cause we need to develop like a, a kind of real, pretty much unconscious

response to stress in ourselves, to relax and that, and practice does it.

But we need very quick things.

And one of the quickest things I know, and this is relatively recent

studies, and I can't remember who it was, but I think it was a, a, a.

An academic in, I think at Dublin University, one of his PhD students

was doing something around meditation and they focused it on what happens

in the particular part of the brain.

And I think it's, do you produce neuro adrenaline in the brain?

Is another the type of noradrenaline in the brain.

It's a neuro, it's a neurotransmitter.

Yet

here we go.

Thank you.

This breathing was affecting that part of the brain.

And what they found was if you did this incredibly simple breathing

technique of breathing out more than you breathe in, so the, their thing

was you breathe in on to four and you breathe out to six and you breathe in

to four and you breathe out counting to six or adjusting it as you need to.

The main thing is to be breathing out more than you're breathing in.

It would actually change the amount of that hormone that it was

producing and would calm you down.

And I remember when I listened to an interview this, this chap,

and he said, this is the most.

Potent non-pharmaceutical tranquilizer you can get.

I love that and that, so that does it for me.

It's like, okay, that works.

Another aspect of that is that you can do the opposite if you, if

you do the opposite breath, so you breathe in more than you breathe

out, it starts producing this stuff.

So it kind of gets you going.

So you have this ama just in the breathing.

And I've, we've worked, we've worked with breathing

a lot over the last 20 years.

Guy, my wife is a breath worker and we've always talked about the breathing

as a pump, and, but this is it.

This is the scientific, this is the evidence for the, for what

happens when you adjust those, those, the ratio of at least time

in, in, in terms of how you breathe.

So I want more energy, breathe in more than I breathe out.

I want to calm down, breathe out more than I breathe in, and it's

very, very quick in its effect.

And that's working for a lot of people.

I'm, you know, chatting with them, sharing this stuff with, so it's

really quick stuff like that.

Not becoming mindful, it's just becoming aware of breath and if you do it enough.

What we're after is building in a kind of, pretty much a perpetual and

relatively unconscious awareness of our stress levels so that we build in a,

an autum almost automatic response to those sensations of stress in our system

where we do know we need to breathing.

I would, for example, what I would do is I, I do the breathing.

I slow down in the way I talk, so I'm talking a bit quickly

now because I'm excited.

So when we slow down when we're talking, that actually just calms

us down, calms everybody else down.

It's not good if you've only got 10 minutes with a client, but if the

slower you go, the more calm you are gonna feel, they're gonna feel.

I slow down if I'm walking anywhere.

So if I feel stress when I'm walking, I just calm down my pace.

And the other thing I do, because I'm sensitive to sounds, is that

I then tune into any sounds around me and that calms me down and.

The people that I've worked with over the years in this, in the kind

of mind body, spirit game that are really good at the meditation, et

cetera, they do have this thing of they're always aware of how they are.

They really are.

They're, they're super sensitized to stress in that, apart from

it, knowing how it affects them, they, they adjust when they're

feeling any form of tension, they sit more still when they're

feeling any, any type of tension.

I think in the two people in particular, and one person was, she was a, a Chinese

doctor, Anna Western doctor actually was trained in the West as well.

Dr.

Go is her name, and I remember she used to talk a lot about keeping your.

Kind of battery full effectively.

So most of us only, it's, I mean, I like, I like the phone as a,

as a, as an, as a, a metaphor for this because I really, I haven't

got it plugged in now, but I like keeping my battery quite full.

I get a bit, I get a bit bothered if it's getting

below about 30% and I'm out.

Most of us, most of us only really pay attention to our health or to our state

when, when it's pretty much beeping that the phone's about to turn off.

And that's the case.

I'm guessing for people who are providing the health service and

the people coming in that, that the, the warning signs are going off way

too late for us most of the time.

And so the trick is to try and charge the battery, try and get it higher

and higher and higher, and, and then get it so that we're full up again.

So that we feel, we feel relaxed and we feel, you know, okay.

And there's space in our lives and we feel calmer.

And then be, and then sensitize ourselves to the signs much earlier

than the, the beeping light and the 5% left or whatever it is.

So you get to, you know, you get to 75%, oh well I can start to feel something.

I'm feeling a little bit tired.

I, I, I should rest, I should slow down a bit.

Now this, this may be pie in the sky stuff, Rachel, for some

people really in the thick of it.

But this is what I've seen, you know, in people that really are into the,

the relaxation with health stuff.

Mm-hmm.

I think it's good to look at the extremes though.

To think about actually what are the stuff you can do and other things.

So, you know, if you have got a huge long list of patients, you

know, you've gotta get through.

Even just going, sitting outside under a tree for five minutes,

doing a bit of breathing.

Yeah.

It's gonna help, isn't it?

Yeah.

Yeah.

And maybe slowing things down and you know, and then I'm thinking

listeners be thinking, yeah, but I can't slow things down 'cause I'll

have lots of people waiting and that's probably when you have to go fuck it.

And.

You know, I'm gonna do what I'm gonna do.

I'm gonna practice the way I need to practice in order to be safe

and effective and, and, and good.

But I love that thing about being a little bit more sensitive and what you

were saying about the whole breathing, we know that the, I think this is

what, uh, just another way of saying exactly what you said, that, that those

long out breaths get you into your parasympathetic zone away from your

sympathetic adrenaline based zone.

It's your noradrenaline based parasympathetic zone.

And Paul Gilbert's done a lot of work, which really resonates with me

about the, the three different zones.

We going out of your, you've got your threat zone, ah, lion,

you've got your drive zone.

Achieve, achieve, achieve your dopamine.

You know, they think I'm good, the person thinks I'm good.

And then you've got your rest and digest zone, which frankly, in

the Western, and particularly with doctors and other people, listen

to this podcast and probably myself as well, we bounce between drive

and threat, drive and threat.

We forget to go anywhere near that, that rest and digest zone, which is where we

need to be to calm our physiology down.

Otherwise, you are in that heightened state of physiology the whole time.

We should probably flip it.

I mean, let, let's take the classic kind of Paretos 80 20 that we

can apply to almost everything.

You know, it's probably that we're eight, at least 80% isn't it?

In, in the driving threat and only in, I mean, probably the only time

we're resting and digesting is when we're unconscious and asleep or

we've been knocked out by alcohol or something or, or whatever, whatever

the poison is for, for people to come and knock ourselves out.

And I I to flip it might be too much, but one way to, to start to

flip it so that we're more in the resting a lot more of the time,

maybe not 80%, would be to challenge the idea that we have to be in a

certain state to do certain things.

You know, we have to be in that state to get that done.

Or to be with a client or to make decisions.

And I mean, you, you beautifully kind of responded around this emergency

room in a war zone thing by saying, actually you don't have to be in

that state that much of the time.

Even in that situation, relaxing a lot of the time would probably really hope.

And I love for that.

It's a beautiful example.

'cause as you say, we've gone to the extreme there.

And so, and I, and I do this in, in, in my kind of what I do, which

is mainly at a laptop most of the day and talking and videoing things.

And I've got a, a, a to-do list every day.

I've got my stuff and I, I really find that the idea that

I have to be in a certain state to get through the to-do list.

In fact, just these last couple of weeks I've really, having done the

relaxation retreat, I try to, I experimented again with what it's

like to be basically sitting in a calmer space most of the time.

You know, in a real tranquil, peaceful present state and operating from

there, because that's what matters.

That matters more than, more than anything on my to-do list.

So if, if my to-do list suffers, I don't care.

'cause I want to be in this state.

So I've been in that state meditating a lot and meditating.

I love meditating when I'm walking 'cause I get two brilliant things done

at the same time I walk, which I love.

And it does me a ton of good and I meditate.

So I have to have to do it on your own.

But it's great and it takes a little bit of practice, but I can do that.

So I do that again to a very kind of quiet space.

And then I bring that quiet space into the, into the, at the desk.

And the amazing thing is, these last two weeks, I am getting stuff done that

I've been had on my list for months.

I'm, 'cause I'm, somehow, I, I, I haven't really analyzed it yet.

I just know that it's happening, that I'm getting more important things.

I'm more productive than I normally am and I'm coming from

a really slow and calm space.

It's, it is the question.

It's like an experiment experimenting with, okay, I have this thought

that I can't be that to do that.

Flip it.

Well, let me just, I'm gonna try and do that from there.

And I was doing this in, you know, my, my job when I had a job long

time ago in the nineties, which was an advertising, I was doing

this with things like meetings.

So I'd go into really important, you know, board meetings and things.

It's effectively meditating and seeing what happened and

interesting things would happen.

You'd basically kinda half to half zone out and then suddenly

you'd get the best creative idea and say, and then it would, you

know, been important contribution.

So it's worth flipping it, I think, and looking at the possibility of

what it'd be like to come from a, a more relaxed state in whatever we do,

in whatever we do, apart from the.

Maybe apart from the person coming into the emergency room in that moment,

or the tiger, I

totally agree it.

Yes.

Yeah.

Don't be too relaxed when there's a tiger coming along, or if there's a bus

heading towards you, that's when you wanna be in your stress zone and run.

Just remind me of the saying.

There was some sort of famous preacher that said he got really early and prayed

for an hour every morning, and someone said, well, what if you're too busy?

Said, well, if I'm really busy during the day, I need to pray for three hours.

It is, yeah.

It's almost like that.

The more, the more busy and stressed you are, the more you

need to relax, the more you need to be in that relaxed zone.

I haven't got time for meditation.

Yeah, that's that.

It's true.

Yeah.

Totally.

Totally.

And mm-hmm.

You know, so, so you can access your breath and.

I do remember quite recent now I was listening, I think a

meditation from you basically saying, you are really relaxed,

you're very relaxed, just relax.

Does that sort of thing really help as well?

I mean, I must say I did feel quite relaxed after I listened to it.

And with your permission, it'd be good to put that in the

show notes for people to access

Please.

Yeah, please.

This is around kind of affirmations and how they, how they work and one of

the, one of the tricks there is to say something that you are not already.

So if you say, I am, when you are not relaxed, when you are very

obviously not relaxed, if you say, I am relaxed, it sends a whole

range of signals all over the place.

And I'm, I'm not gonna try to guess what's exactly what exactly is happening

there, but your body is kind of, kind of going, oh, well, oh really?

Okay then.

And it, it starts to relax.

It's, and it, and it, this happened not just with relaxation.

You could do it with almost anything.

So it, it seems to be a little magic trick.

There, there is.

'cause they've done, they've done research on these forms of affirmations.

I think if it's, what they're saying is for some people, if it's too far

from what your actual state is, so let's say, I dunno what, let's say

you are, you are, you know, really seriously anxious and you say, I'm

the most tranquil person in the world.

The discrepancy between the, your state and the message doesn't have the

beneficial effects that we we'd like.

But generally speaking it's a really way of, you know, it's a kind of faking

it till you make it, which is what, you know, that's what a lot of relaxation

exercises are from the earliest kind of 1950s autogenic training type of things.

They watch people, this is, this is how relaxation, you know, as we

know it now developed, wasn't it?

It's like there's people, there's scientists watching people relax

and seeing what happens to them when they're relaxed and asking them

what happens to them when they're relaxed and then kind of going well.

Okay, so that this is what happens to them.

This is now a technique and it kind of works like that.

Your body kind of goes, okay, yeah, my limbs are heavy.

I'm feeling the weight of my body on the chair.

I'm feeling a sense of sinking my, for one of them is a forehead is warm.

So there's a whole range of things kind of works the the best.

The better thing to do with relaxation though is work out what your own

bespoke things are, because we all have, so, you know, what is it for me?

Like the sounds.

The sounds really does it?

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

And do you know what you talk about that affirmation about Yeah.

Make it till you make it.

Bringing it all the way back to, fuck it.

You think, fuck it works in that way as well.

If you really can't think fuck it about something, just

actually saying, okay, fuck it.

I guess that's what helped me with the webinar.

I really cared and I was really worried about it, but just by

saying, fuck it, it helped me.

I was like, okay, well I can, I can say that even though I'm

not really feeling it right now.

Yeah, it just helps you a little bit more to that, that journey.

Not that I didn't care about it.

It's just, there was nothing I can do about it.

And like you said, we don't know

what the outcome, the outcome is.

I don't know.

Yeah.

I think it, it is working in a variety of ways.

Fuck it.

But it's certainly, in terms of thinking ourselves into being

more, fuck, it would be there.

But I, I do think one of the main reasons it helped is it's makes

that a little jump from one side of the brain to the other, from the

bit of the brain where it's the, where whatever it is, is the biggest

thing in the world to the bit of the brain that's that not so bothered.

And I, I dunno whether we've talked about this before, Rachel, but

the, there's a book and a, a Ted talk actually by Jill Bolt Taylor,

it's called A Stroke of Insight.

If anybody Googles a stroke of Insight.

Do you know that?

Oh, it's fantastic Ted Talk.

It's, and

I, I just, I just got such a lot, such a lot of clarity around

what's happening in the, in this area, just from hearing her story.

'cause it's so extreme.

Somebody having a stroke where that part of the brain that we're normally

thinking in is basically hemorrhaging.

So it's knocked at the bit of the brain that we are mainly in is knocked out

in a person who's a neuroanatomist, knows what's going on, even as it's

happening, kind of picking up what's happening from the fact that the sounds

are very strong, which is running the bathroom, that that part of her body is.

So she, after a while, she knows she's having a stroke and she

knows after a while she won't be able to remember numbers, so

she won't be able to get help.

And yet she feels this astonishing sense of calm and okayness, total sense

of peace and, and entirely connected.

So, I mean, it's an, an astonishing

testament exploration into.

What, what happens?

And it's like you couldn't, you couldn't design an experiment

better, could you see to, for, for somebody who knows what's going

on to then go into that thing.

And, and she, her story once she, you know, she, she obviously survived to

write about it, but her, she talks in the book and about the talk, but

in the book about the rehabilitation.

And her mother was helping, you know, there were certain

exercises she could do to try and rehabilitate the left brain.

And she had this decision to make at one point, which was, she was

in this completely calm, beautiful space where she was very intuitive.

She could tell if somebody walked into her, her hospital room,

whether they were, whether their intention was good or not so good.

She, she, you know, she was working at a completely different level because

her left brain was effectively out of it and she had to make the decision.

Do I.

Get my kind of practical ability back by rehabilitating the left

brain and be able to kind of navigate my way around the world and do

things, everything else, or do I stay effectively in this heaven?

So practically no good, but I, I can just sit here kind of like a, a monk

meditating for the rest of my life.

And she clearly, she, in the end, she decided to rehabilitate it, but

her mission then became to remind us all, don't forget the right brain.

Don't forget the, the hobbies, the relaxation, the letting

go, because we're too far over there and that's the problem.

Mm-hmm.

Wow.

That's just such a good message.

If we could just shut off that left brain thinking, access the right brain

and hey, we can using Fuck it, right?

We can.

And the breathing.

And

the breathing.

Yeah.

But fuck

it.

Fuck it really does it.

Yes.

It's like the breathing.

It's very quick, even quicker than the breathing, but I, yeah.

Combine it and work out your own ways.

To, to relax.

But first of all, and this is the thing I learned on that retreat, we

have to massively value relaxation.

Not just recognize that stress is a problem, let's raise relaxation and

a kind of calm state to write the way up our priority list in life.

Also, knowing then that the things that probably are high up the priority

list, we're gonna get more easily, more automatically if relaxation is there.

Because when people, what's important to you?

All my family's important.

My friends are important.

It's like, you know, the weekend, the la, la, la, la, whatever it is,

achieving why all those things that're even easier when we're relaxed.

And you're a better person when you're relaxed, aren't you?

You are more patient.

Oh yeah.

More tolerant, less snappy.

Just better fun to be with it.

It's win-win for everybody.

You feel better and so does everybody else.

Quite frankly, it

is true, and we all know it, don't we?

And yet we still let ourselves get frustrated and.

Everything else touchy because?

Because we

feel

it's not productive, John,

you know it's not productive.

That's right.

If I'm just relax, relax, I've created a new word.

If I'm just relaxing, relax.

They heard it here first.

If I'm just relaxing, I'm not getting anything done, am I?

And I've got all these things to do, so it's just not a

good use of my time to relax.

And that's the left brain you see, that's the, or if you want to go

more spiritual about it, that is mind.

That's what the ego is always going to do.

The ego is gonna always persuade itself and everybody else,

that relaxation is no good.

That kind of calming is no good.

That that 'cause that.

The only thing there is thought, the only way through

it is this all the time.

So it's like there's a bind and there's a.

There's a bind in addiction, I think at so many levels.

I'm guessing there's a, there's a bind in terms of the hormones as well.

I'm guessing, and you, you, you guys will know this better than I do, but

I'm guessing there's an addiction to the adrenaline and the cortisol, et cetera.

There's an addiction to being busy, you know, probably the, some kind of

fear of the, of gaps, of the space of quietness because maybe we're

scared about what would come up.

It's not quite as easy as just relaxing because there's gonna

be reasons where we're stuck in the not relaxing, I think.

And you kind of have to think about that.

As you're going, it's like, am I addicted to this state?

Probably am.

Why is that?

What, what would I have to give up if I'm gonna give up on this state?

I, I think, busyness it particularly for, you know, very high

achieving people, high stress jobs, they just, it validates you as important.

And I remember last year I took a, a week off work and I did a tennis course.

I love playing tennis.

I wanted to get better and.

I, it, it was in, it was in Cambridge.

So I was doing the tennis and then I was going and doing my

emails and stuff like that.

And the tennis coach said to me, it was about four 30 I was going home.

He said, so you have to have, you know, to just chill out now, Rachel.

I said, oh no, I've gotta go and do all my emails and, and, and

I've got all this stuff to do.

And he just said to me, he said all, congratulations, you must

be a very important person.

Just you put me right in my place.

I just thought, oh my God, listen to how I sound.

It was, it was, it was very cutting.

But I thought, okay, touche that.

Yeah, absolutely.

Absolutely.

We, and we all, that's the guru

speaking, isn't it?

Yeah, totally.

Totally.

Oh my gosh.

So John, we could talk about this for a long time and I'm so grateful for you.

Oh, good for you.

Coming back on.

And I just advise people to go listen to the first podcast.

'cause we talk about a lot more of the evidence around

the, the, the use of the word.

Stuck and the reason why swearing actually couldn't be quite helpful

and some more of the sort of main principles that this has

been really, really helpful.

Relaxation.

The stuff about acceptance or left brain, all that sort of stuff.

And I know you run lots of retreats, you do lots of work with your wife about

this, so if people wanted to do more stuff, how could they find out about it?

How could they get hold of more of your, your work?

The best thing to do is to get on our email list, so just going to

our website, which is if you google fuck it, actually, you'll come to it.

It's called the fuck it life.com.

And just signing up for anything on there.

We'll, we'll basically allow people to get an email from us once every

couple of weeks where we talk about what we're doing and as we've been

talking about in one way or another, therapeutically, spiritually, but

mainly about letting go and relaxing.

Brilliant.

I I'm definitely gonna try and come on one of your very relaxed retreats.

Yeah.

Whatever you go and wonderful.

I love doing it 'cause it relaxes me so much.

Yeah, yeah.

Particularly

if they're in very beautiful places as well, by the sound of it.

Yes.

You

say

relaxing places.

The place I do it is on a live volcano, which adds another element.

So had to relax on a li on a volcano that's exploding every half an hour.

So they're lying by the pool and there's like bits of Morton lava

dripping on them and you're like,

just relax.

Not quite, yes.

But there's certainly the explosion of like a booming explosion of

the, of the volcano kicking off.

So you, it's, there's a genuine threat so that that's the

kind of fight flight thing.

There's a genuine threat and we are there to learn how to relax.

Right.

It's a bit like working as a gp, you know, with any emergency visit might

come in at any time, so, you know.

Brilliant.

Yeah.

Brilliant training, right?

Yeah, exactly.

Right.

So before we go, have you got three quick top tips for our listeners?

Maybe the thing we're talking about, what are the three main things you

just wish everybody would know?

Well,

I, uh, we've talked a bit about this.

Number one, understanding the power of relaxation.

So remembering for those that know about what stress can do, remembering

the power of relaxation, and really contemplating how powerful it is

in every way in our lives, what it can do with our health, et cetera.

Number two, once understood this power of relaxation.

Number two, prioritize it like nobody's business, like you wouldn't

prioritize anything else, prioritize relaxation, and then watch all the other

priorities start to work themselves out.

And then number three, practice relaxation.

And not just as a, you know, half an hour, maybe that 10 minutes on a, some

relaxing app or something, but practice it so it becomes an every moment thing.

So there's, there's always some awareness there.

Of what level of stress to relax you are and, and making it almost

automatic to adjust your breathing when you are, it's getting a bit

quick or you're a bit stressed so that you build in another system, into,

into your self-regulation system.

So it's, it's putting relaxation right at the heart of your self-regulation on

moment to moment self-regulation system.

Brilliant.

Well, thank you so much for coming on.

That has been really interesting.

I've made pages and pages of notes here, so thank

you so much.

Oh, thank you, Rachel.

I, I, I love talking to you and we, we get to some really fascinating stuff,

and also because of your audience, I understand this, the, the importance

of, of this as well, the importance of your audience to the rest of us,

but also the importance of these kind of messages for your audience.

So thank you for inviting Molly.

It's lovely to chat.

Thank you and I as ever, I'd love to get you on a game,

so we'll, we'll hopefully get you back and we'll speak soon.

Thank you.

That'd be great.

Thank you, Rachel.

Bye.

Thanks for listening.

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