Welcome to Mindset, Mood and Movement, a systemic approach to human behavior, performance, and well being. Our psychological, emotional, and physical health are all connected, and my guests and I endeavor to share knowledge, strategies, and tools for you to enrich your life and work. Today we are considering why chasing work life balance is a bad idea and what you can do instead. I'm joined by Claire Elms, my guest, and she is the owner of Inspire You Wellbeing. That's a global award winning therapy training and coaching world business. Today, we are considering why chasing work life balance is a bad idea and what you can do instead. I'm joined by my guest, Claire Elms, and Claire is the founder of Inspire You Wellbeing. It's a global award winning therapy, training and coaching wellness business. And Claire's a really great guest to have on. She works with stress, performance, lifestyle, executive coaching, the whole host of things that are really going to be important to work life balance. And Claire knows full well just how important this is, having experience. Burnout in 2015. So she's on a campaign to help people now, as I too am on a campaign to help people understand things through this podcast about how we can integrate our mind, our emotions and our body to make changes on a practical level. Now, when considering work life balance in this episode, we go into some key things. What do we mean by work life balance and help you understand that? What are some of the factors that are going to get in your way? Some of the cognitive biases, some of the personality styles, some of the behaviors that may be going on for you, which you just hadn't seen. And we're going to pull those out and hopefully help you understand it in a much clearer context. how to use attention, what's happening with your environment, things such as your smartphone, all of these things that contribute to whether work life balance is going for you or against you. And we kind of pull it all together with some really salient strong points of actions you can take to start finding your own way into work life balance. So welcome, Claire. Hi.

thanks for having me.

I'd love to start with what does work life balance mean to you?

I think it's one of those concepts, isn't it? That's really hard to talk about and really hard to define. But for me, work life balance is about making sure I have time to do my work, but time to do. The things that I enjoy in life as well. So spending time with family and friends, doing things for myself and as well as integrating work within that and how it works for me. So for me, work isn't a nine to five. so it's how I make my working day work for me in a way that gives me time to have life as

Really nice. Yeah. I guess maybe I should bounce the question back to myself. Work life balance. Yeah. What work life balance?

Yeah, absolutely.

I see it slightly differently. I don't actually see it as work life balance with a distinction as such. I see it all as life. So if I, I, I see things in a slightly different perspective, it's just how I see the world, but I see things as life, this totality of life that I have the gift of being given. And within that, some of my energy and my time goes to. and there's different nuances of my work as well from podcasting to coaching to, the running the business and they're, they have different qualities, but there's that aspect. And then there's other elements in my life. As you've alluded to, this personal. For me it's fitness is health, activities, all these kinds of things. And I find it more as a whole system that I try to get the right measure of. But of course, this is what we want to share today is about. Understanding this, I think from not just my perspective and Pat's Claire's perspective, but really help you find what your perspective is. So we, we're clear on it. I have clients in my coaching practice and they come to me and they're super busy. They, they're either directors or run a business or freelance, and they work hard. They put a lot of hours in there, they're, they're grafting and that's fine. That's okay. If that's your thing. But if there's no time and energy left for health, for fitness, for family, then it, of course, can skew into the other side of, of course, unbalance or being pushed into overworking, and too much attention there. When and where did you start working in your domain, Claire, with Work Life Balance with the clients that you work with? Perhaps you can share a little more about that story. So we understand your, your, your, your journey in this.

Yeah, sure. So I've come from, a therapeutic background. So I started. Practicing with clients as a therapist in 2006, which feels like a long time ago now. but, yeah, and I was working in the NHS and I was working, in the county council, doing stuff with the council with children and families predominantly at the time. and then I was looking for how to get what I wanted because I couldn't see a job that suited what I wanted. So I ended up. setting up self employed, a friend, a life coach, actually, she, she was quite inspirational to me. She said, if you can't find the job you want, why not create it? And it was enough to plant a seed for me. So I started going, okay, let's do that. And so I added, started the business in 2008 and then slowly, slowly added days and. Reduced time in, employment and I think for me, a lot of clients come to me around feeling stressed, overworked, burnt out, and, I've seen the back end, I guess I've seen like where people get to when they get to the point of no return, if you like, I've also, hit it myself a little bit in 2015, I was working 60 hours a week, I thought it was invincible, and then I really wasn't, and, had I not got married and had three weeks off on honeymoon, I would have, definitely been in a very dark place, but, as it was, I had enough time to step back and reflect, and go, actually, I don't want to do this anymore, and I think it's really interesting, I see so many similar patterns, and so subsequently, since 2015, I've been much more, focusing on the preventative rather than working with severe and enduring, which was what I was doing. So I was working with really quiet and stuff in, in the NHS and, yeah, and so pivoted more into coaching at that point and started focusing more on how to stop people getting to that point in the first place and using my experience as a bit of a, as, as a guide really, because I would never have gone to get help. I didn't see I had a problem. Like I just didn't recognize that that was a thing. and I think since COVID, there's been a massive shift for people, I think people have started to really recognize, that actually they don't want to do certain things the way that they've been doing them, and I think we we all carry on doing what we're doing because that's what we've always done, and actually, at some point, we can't carry on, so I think it's really important to, focus on this kind of elusive work life balance. thing because it's a concept and it's made up and it doesn't and it's different for everybody. but actually it's a thing and if we get it working in a, in a way that works for us personally and, and how my work life balance will, it will be different to how your work life balance looks, which will be different to how someone else's looks. And, like the word balance is, is always, like we've both talked about integration, haven't we? And whether There is a balance at all or whether you feel like you have to balance something because when you're balancing you feel like you're juggling something and then it feels like it's always going to be out of kilter. So it's quite interesting. the more I delve into working with people on a preventative level and we start to look at like your week looks like and where your energy is placed and how you focus. it's just a really interesting way of working now and I really enjoy helping people to, make it work

Nice, really nice. I just want to speak to a couple of things that you said that really caught my attention. The first one is, is we, we do what we do. We just carry on as we are. And this is such a, such a slippery customer. you probably know, but, if, if, if we're listening and you're not sure, we all have cognitive biases, which are thinking biases. We think in certain ways and we're predisposed to certain ones. A really big one is status quo bias. Now it's, yeah, it's status quo and I don't mean the, the rock group. If anyone remembers them. But status quo as in staying the same. Now we are, our mind is a bit like our body. It's seeking homeostasis. We like to remain the same. And there's, there's lots of science around this about how the brain works and so forth. From a practical point of view, knowing that we have status quo bias is that we will always lean into what we know and what we've done. The problem with that can be if what we've been doing and what we've always done is overworking, under prioritizing family or under prioritizing fitness and health, then it will continue. And it's not because anyone's doing anything wrong, it's probably because we're simply not conscious of these patterns playing. And the first thing around status quo bias is, is to simply name it and see it. But see if you're like, okay, I've always, I don't know, work a 12 hour day, don't bother eating properly, don't work out, then It's naming that and okay, how is this going to work in looking around you for some other people and getting examples of that. So knowing that we are predisposed to it is the first point of changing it and that that really intrigues me. Now, you also mentioned about balance and I'm always fascinated with linguistics and balance to me would seem 50 50 or 50 50 be perfect, right? And. I don't know if we, if we got this idea in our mind about, we have to have balance, then implicit in that, if your work week is 60 hours and your home life is less, you're already out of balance, just from an hour's point of view, you're already out of balance, so you're already losing, which is a negative, and I, I struggle with the word balance, if it's misunderstood, certainly in my mind, and for people I work with, we actually probably need to understand it better. And it's not an either or situation. I like, I'm only working. I'm only at home because sometimes when you go to work, you're, you'll bring your nervous system. You'll bring your backstory. You'll bring your biases, who you are. You can't not, right? And same as when you go home, you might, certainly for those of us who run businesses, do our own thing, We often have insights whilst walking the dog, in the shower, and it's not wrong, but it's understanding this and starting to see it for what it is. And the last thing I really want to speak to you about what you said, and we want to, I'd like to go deeper, is energy. Now, I work with energy a lot, from a quantum physics description to a body energy description, whatever term it is, but this is, our entire body has an electron, every cell has an electrical signal and the nervous system runs electrics, we all have energy, and I think it's something more interesting to talk to, and I want to get your thoughts on this, Graham, that would be awesome. Instead of balance, like where is your energy? how much energy does work take? Because some people's work doesn't take a lot because it's flow state. Some people's home life can be challenging and that can take a lot more. Perhaps if you've got young children or something like that, it's demanding. Claire, how are you working with, with this energy, perhaps principle around the clients you're working with, with work life?

I think similar to you. I think it's really interesting. I was talking to someone the other day actually in, in the NHS, it's very segregated. So you have your mental health teams, physical health teams, you have your different teams for different conditions. And so if you have a condition that needs support. You'll go to so and so for this, and so and so for that, and this team for that, and this team for that, and it's, it's very segregated, and what I have loved about fully leaning into my own business is that I bring the energy, I bring the physical and the mental and everything else together, because for me, you cannot operate on one without the other, you need to have an understanding of Tiredness levels, you need to have an understanding of where your focus goes. there's that whole, my, one of my favorite sayings is like, focus, focus goes where energy flows. So if your focus is in the right place, then your energy goes in the right place and it becomes like a flow state and it becomes, there's all the science behind it, isn't there? And, and it's, it's really interesting and I think. When the more I kind of work with physical practitioners and the more I work, doing more integrated practice myself, I've, I trained as a breathwork facilitator last year and that for me really, really opened my eyes to, breathing in a basic term, understanding that when we're not breathing properly, that actually impacts on absolutely everything, like our mental and our physical state. And. the more I'm working with different practitioners, I'm really leaning into, understanding my own body. I have hypermobility, and so my body doesn't do what it should do. so really understanding, I've just accepted that for years. And then I've worked, I found a practitioner who's gone from, yeah, you can change that. And I'm like, oh, I've just accepted that for so long. So it's really interesting. the more you lean into different things and become aware of things yourself, Just the kind of energy really interests me, and, and it can be seen as a bit woo woo, I think, and, and I never quite fully understood it when I worked in organisations. It's only been probably the last five years I've really leaned into it.

Yeah, I agree. I know some people still struggle with the term energy, perhaps don't understand it, but let's just clear this up now. It's neuroscience, right? We got data on this all over the place. This is neuroscience. This is neuropsychobiology. This is the electrome understanding about how the body works. This is quantum mechanics. Yeah, there's all sorts of heavyweight sciences, which now we understand this stuff. And to put it simply, metabolism is energy exchange, right? So if you eat a bowl of porridge and some nuts in the morning, That is trans, transduced into energy in your body. It's broken down to different things. And if you didn't eat any food at all, you'd be knackered. You'd be tired. Now, so we know this. So we want to just disband with any of this idea that energy is woo woo. It, this, this, this is exactly where we need to work out. The problem I have, and, I'm a big fan of Oliver Berkman, 4, 000 Weeks, if I should put a link in the show, brilliant. And cause he's a time management guy and he's written some amazing book and. Where we think about time, we might look at our working day and go, I've got eight hours, and we go, I go home, we've got four hours with family, or I've got, for me, it's like hours in the gym or something like that, but hours don't translate very well to energy, because if, for instance, so my work is, is, I'm not interested in hours, I'm interested in energy time, and I, there's a time boundary, of course, I know The the shape of it, but how much energy do I need for a podcast? How much energy do I need to do coaching work to really help people get what they want? That's less about the amount of hours I need to do. It's more about the amount of energy I need to bring to him. And the same with home life. if you go home and you are at home, quote. but your mind is still at your desk or your mind is still with your client. You're not there, right? So your balance is not there. I wanted to again, just to speak to something you said there, for my regular listeners, people know that my approach of mindset, mood, and movement, this ecosystem approach of. Wellbeing and personal development is, is how I work. And you can't not be yourself. Even if you're in a professional role. You have your body, the architecture, you have your nervous system, your digestive system. It is all there. And if your breath patterns are all over the place, as you've alluded to, if your emotions are dysregulated, 'cause that's connected to breath and sometimes to trauma, then it's very, very hard to achieve one's elusive work-life balance. If our physical. and our emotional system is out of balance or out of cohesion. So that's a really important thing. And I want to go a little more focused onto this as the individual. When we're thinking about energy as an individual and we're looking to, to, to get balance, how are you helping some of the people you work with actually achieve that? What, what are those practical steps that you're finding are now working to, to get a better, a better way, let's say.

there's, there's some amazing things out there, isn't there? And it's really hard to answer that question because obviously it's different for the, for the individual, right? But, One of the things I love doing with people is bringing that self awareness piece in, so Understanding yourself and how you operate is so pivotal. Like how you make decisions. You talked about the status quo bias, right? How you, how you think. Everything starts with the thought. I educate people on the thought, feeling, behavior loop and how, when we have, like quite often people come to me because they're stressed or they're anxious or whatever. There's a, there's a, there's a thing. They're not sleeping. There's, they're feeling a bit, Slap or whatever it is, we can then work out, okay, where's that coming from? And this, this is in business and in personal, right? Because you can't separate the two. So if you are a business owner and you're working ridiculous hours, you're making decisions every day based on your thoughts. So if your thoughts are skewed in whatever capacity, then you're not able to make those good decisions. I talk a lot around that loop initially, and also around, understanding your energy levels and how your body works and, and that side of things. But you've also got like your personality, like your sort of the way that your personality works and how, like my personality is generally quite a fast paced person. So for me to step back and be slower, that takes effort, that takes energy. whereas for someone that you sound like you're much more of a slower person, so you don't need me to like, I, I find sometimes I have to, adapt my energy levels to certain people. Like I, I know I'm a fast paced person if I'm talking with someone that's not a fast paced. If I'm talking with someone that's a fast paced person, we'll go off on all sorts of tangents and have a brilliant conversation. If I'm talking with a slower paced person, I have to really think and pull myself in. And notice the pathways that are coming up in my head and going, Oh, do I want to do that pathway? Do I want to do that pathway? And be much more reflective. And that's something that I've been working on a lot more recently because I know. the feedback from, from various things is like, just slow down a bit. And I'm like, I know, I know I can't help it. I get, I get excited and I get like passionate about things. And so I go off on tangents. I'm already doing that now. but for me, one of the things I really doing is, is really picking that personal part almost, you're going, Okay. So this is, this is you as a person, as a personality. But that doesn't shape who you are fully, so then you've got your values that you bring, so what's important to you, so for me, health, health is one of my main values, so being healthy, I would prioritise going and doing something for myself over other things, because for me that's really important, if I'm, if I'm going and doing work before I even start working, I will make sure I have time to, go to the gym, or go and do, I don't do the gym much anymore to be fair, it's like more of fittest bootcamps and runs and stuff like that but, or do yoga or something like that. I find that I need to do something. Like, when I look up my energy I need to do something before I start work. I drop the kids off, it's all a bit hectic. My kids are young, they're full on. mornings can be quite stressful and hectic. I need time in between that and starting work to fully get into work and into my flow state and if I'm not... If I, if I bounce straight to a nine o'clock meeting, I'm not fully present because I haven't had the time to decompress. And, we talk about mental loads a lot. I work a lot with busy mums. Busy mums that have about 20 different things they're doing at the same time. and it's really interesting, isn't it? The culture side of things. Like when we... yeah, 20 years ago, moms didn't necessarily go to work as such. It was much more like moms did the household stuff. And then the, the, the dad went to work and the money, blah, blah, blah, very stereotypical. but now as women, we're like, yes, we're going to go and do those things. Brilliant. gives us passion, purpose, excitement, all of that really positive stuff. But then also you're still having to do a lot of the mental load at home as well. And then you're also having to do like life admin and Quite often people then don't look after themselves and I think, the thing that we were talking about before was in itself was about a kind of importance of well being and looking after ourselves, being aware of ourselves and where we're at and where we want to spend more of our time focusing, and then, and then leaning into that and, and creating clear actions on how we're going to get there, because if we know that maybe we're not eating right because we're grabbing food on the go or we're not sleeping enough because we're going to bed at midnight and, Waking up at three o'clock in the morning, working and stuff. There's, there's things that we can do to change it. We don't have to just settle for the status quo. And I think that's really important. because quite often we just do what we've always done. so it's just, and it's, and it's our bodies and our minds way of, of functioning, right? We don't think about getting dressed in the morning. We probably put the same clothes on in the same order because it's our brain's way of. Not thinking as much and, and doing things on autopilot and we have certain things that we do on autopilot, but we can change those things. Those habits are not the way that it has to be. And I think that's, that's to me is like how to help people really don't lean into themselves. and ultimately that improves performance, productivity. It improves absolutely everything,

Totally agree. Totally agree. And it's something I see with the people I coach and work with in various capacities. the one of the first questions if I'm working with someone who wants to overcome an anxiety pattern, a block, most people don't come to coach him because it's all going well. This is normally something that's either got blocked or stuck or they can't figure out a transition or there's some deep self work to do. And one of the first questions I need to know is like, how is this person physically? Because if you are not sleeping, That fundamentally changes everything from your biochemistry to your psychology. If someone is not getting outdoors quite early in the morning, I know that the light's not coming in that person's retina, switching on their, their, which is the only part of the brain that's external in the eye. that doesn't switch on then the cortisol pulse, which everything is about circadian rhythms in our body. Circadian rhythms, if they are out of whack, Everything's out of whack. One of the simplest fixes is to be outdoors within ideally 30 minutes, but an hour as soon as you wake up. Light in your eyes, not looking at the sun, but light in your eyes. So we've got the most basic, wrong word, fundamental human requirements. We've got sleep, we have awake, we have the circadian rhythms running, all the biochemistry is running. And now we can go do a good day. For me. My day is always blocked out, right? No one's available. I'm not available to a certain time. Like my first thing in the morning is exercise. I run, I swim, I gym, I train, I do loads of stuff. And for wholerseries, firstly, I prefer it in the morning. I can't, I can't do it after work. It just doesn't work. But also it's about, it works for me. So it's about someone else. It might look like that. That pattern is afterward. That's okay. But if you get the fundamentals in place, sleep. Nutrition, Daylight, and the right amount of good, decent food. Then you're already building the base, which, which intrigues me. Now you've mentioned something here and that really caught my attention about personality. Now, I know, I was working with someone a little while back and he was, super successful, very, very busy, and he was so identified with his role at work. And it was it was everything that's so consuming as it can be as a business owner. This over identification was part of the problem because, if you're on the hedonic treadmill, that's this idea that we're, we'll be happy when. And if you're north of, I don't know, 35 and you still think, I'll be happy when something's not working. It's just not working because if you can't be happy now, you're not gonna be happy in 10 years. A few more quid in the bank is not going to change it. So this is really just about what you said about personality and I call it identity, similar stuff. Over identification, absolutely, over identification with, with, let's say your business identity. IC is part of the problem because then it becomes there's no space for, Claire or Sal to be the person, a partner or friend or whatever that is. that's one of the kind of red flags I'm going to call out to people. if you're over identified with work, and you're chasing work life balance, this is part of where we need to do some work. This over identification, because there's too much there. What are you seeing when you're working with people and you touch on what I call identity, you call it personality, how have you seen changes? Have you got any examples of something that you've worked with?

Yeah. So I think for me, like I see identity, as a full, as your, as your whole self almost, right? And then the personality, past experiences, I work a lot with trauma. and when I say trauma, I'm not talking about abuse and big things. I'm talking about, your mum's saying no when you're seven. there there's, there's quite varying levels, like big teacher traumas and that teach traumas, right? And they all have a massive impact. and positive experiences as well. I put a post out on LinkedIn this week about, as 16 years ago I did a free fall to do accelerated skydive. And for me, that is one of the best achievements that I've ever had in my life. I think it's, it's an absolutely fantastic thing. And if anyone's thinking about it, they should definitely do it. it's, it's, it relates so much to the work that we do. you pressure yourself out of your comfort zone, comfort zone. We talk about a lot, right? but you you strive in for that process that, that I have an adrenaline buzz. I need, I need. It's a challenge. I need something to do, to, to fulfill. And I really resonate with, Johnny Wilkinson. I don't know who knows Johnny Wilkinson. He's a professional rugby player. Showing my age, certain people under a certain age. It's quite funny. I was talking in my team about him and they didn't know who he was because they are of a certain generation. So I then started to feel quite old. But, Johnny Wilkinson, has openly come out. And so has Tom Daley, quite a few professional sports people. It happens a lot in their world. that kind of constant need to strive for the, I'll be happy when I'll be happy when, and then he was talking about when they won the world cup, like what next? that was what they were striving for. And rather than feeling happy and content and. celebrating that, he just felt really flat and, and, and unclear and he went into a bit of an identity crisis and I think, I, I see that happen and play out in so many clients that I work with where they're striving for something, striving for something, striving for something. Either it's unrealistic and they're never going to get there. or they get to it and then they're like, what now? And I think that's really, it really resonates with me and that kind of really being present in the moment, we, we do lots of stuff around goal setting. We do lots of stuff around looking at the past and the barriers and how to overcome the barriers. But for me, like feeling pretty content and happy in the is quite hard. To get it, because, because of culture and society and this constant need to stride for something and, it's about recognizing how far you've come and I think that's, that's a lot of the stuff I do around identity. It's like how the personality, the values, the experiences all make up that person and then how. That sort of helps you to make decisions in your life and like how it, how it frames your thoughts. And I think when we start to look at the sort of emotional intelligence, in a, in an overall arching kind of concept, like trying to work out what is important to us from an emotional intelligence perspective and how we can strive to improve that really helps people improve.

Yeah, it's really really nice to hear. Funny isn't it that we we don't see it. There's there's There's, there's the old, what do they call it? A parable. I'm not really good at doing this very well, so I'll make up my own version. But there's two fish, there are two fish swimming along one day. And this older fish swings, swings by and goes, Morning guys! The water's nice today. And off he goes. And the two young fish look at each other and go, What's water? Because of course, they're so immersed in water, they can't see it. They have no other reference point and culture really pushes us for this work life balance. And yet it also has a, almost a contradictory message like just drive harder, succeed more, get more money, grow, scale, whatever it is. It's push, push, push, push, push. And. Daring I think lies part of our work life problem because we assume it's a perhaps a future orientated thing like if I just make enough money or my business grows to a certain level then I'll have the work life balance but work life balance is actually a state of mind on a day to day, week to week, month to month basis and here's a funny thing that we can wrap our heads around. We already live in the future. That's a fact. We live in the future of who you were five years ago.

yeah

it's really nice to go, God, yeah, I remember being X, Y, Z, let's say 30 or 40, whatever we are like, Oh, when I was 45, I was going to do this. And I like, yeah, you live in that future. So if you were doing it back then the, I'll be happy when whatever that is, and you're not happy now because you just need a few more money, a few more pounds in the bank, or a bit more scale in your business, then. Your process of doing it needs looking at, and then if we're striving for work life balance and wondering why we don't have it, it comes down to perception and behavior connected, which we've already said about finding about people, which is, which is lovely. Now, I want to call out one of the red flags that really get in the way of work life. balance in a healthy way which is the difference between how culture was probably 25 years ago if you were, a working parent, whatever you are, doing your thing compared to now because of and I'm waving a smartphone at Claire and on this smartphone is my telephone, my contacts and pictures, and yet there's my email, whatsapp, it's all the facility for me to be still connected to my work identity or my work process and I think we haven't seen it but it's a little like leaving all your home doors open and inviting your colleagues just to walk in and out all day all night and it's very hard to beat because everyone has a smartphone. and everyone's got all the connections on it. question being, when we come home, whatever that is, or when we're not at work, how tempting is it to pick up Don's smartphone? Very. Yeah.

This is really tough, right? This is one of the biggest things I'm talking about with individuals and teams. I was doing some team coaching, not that long ago and they disclosed there was 46 WhatsApp groups for that particular organization. and I was like, wow, um, and I think, WhatsApp is brilliant. There was definitely a place for smartphones is definitely, we had a conversation and then someone unsubscribed from all the groups. And I was like, that's not, that's not what I'm wanting, it's not about doing that, but, there's, I, I. and turned it back on and there was 150 messages and I was like, wow, yeah, four different WhatsApp groups, pinging, pinging, pinging about various different things, not all work related. a lot of it is mum groups. Anyone with kids of a certain age will understand the, the kind of WhatsApp parent groups, can be a bit full on as well. but absolutely. We talk a lot about switching off, right? How do, how do we switch off? Yeah. Because if we don't switch, do we have to switch on and off is another conversation, right? Do we have to switch on, now I'm in work, off, now I'm off work. but, you've talked about in previous podcasts, the, the link between the sympathetic nervous system and the parasympathetic nervous system. If we are on all the time, we're not in rest and recovery. We're not in that parasympathetic nervous system at all. and we've got a fantastic device that we use for people, which is brilliant, called FairSpeak. and it measures high variability oxygen levels. It, it goes deep into looking at your stress zones. And I love it because it's actually a bit of a slap in the face of look, you're not as getting any recovery. you drink caffeine in the afternoon, you're not sleeping, you sleep isn't good quality sleep. and it shows that, if I go for an event in the afternoon and I'm drinking coffee, and for me, I've got tinnitus, so if I'm at an event and there's lots of people, my body's working really hard, I love it, it lights me up, it gives me energy, but my body's working really hard to, to hear what people are saying, to be fully present in the room and all of those things, that when I go to bed, if it's an afternoon event and I, I struggle to go to bed, I have to do a breathwork session or a yoga session or something, because otherwise I don't get into a rest and recovery until three in the morning. and, and I have this awareness, right? So I'm not going to not go to an afternoon event because that's not real, right? But it's, it's understanding. I think for me, using some of the technology now, it's really fantastic because it allows us to look at the impact it has, and the impact that it has. You know, like I got, as a business owner, I, I had all of my phone stuff on one phone. Last year, I got a new phone and I was like, that's my work phone. all the time I've been employed, I've had a work phone and a home phone. So that is now my work phone. This is my home phone and it's made such a difference because I don't check emails. when I'm not working, I don't, like I choose a time. So if I, if I'm, if I want to check emails, like I don't work on a Monday, but I've had, some students working. So they've been working Monday. So I've had things available on a Monday and it's been exhausting because I've not had that rest day. so when they finish, I've really noticed a difference because I've actually had Mondays to switch off, which I didn't have before. So just you can turn notifications off on your phone, and that's what a lot of people don't realize. You can actually have it set for a schedule. So I set my emails for 8 till 7 or something. And then they don't get synced automatically. They sync if you open it and scroll it, but they don't get synced. And I was trying that at the weekends before I got a separate phone. But for me, it, it was too tempting. It's too tempting to just squelch, right? And, and I think I get FOMO, fear of missing out. So I don't want to, I don't want to miss out on something that might be important. And it's also habit. I think, clicking into WhatsApp and clicking into emails is almost like an automatic thing we do now without even thinking about it.

Yeah, you're bang on there about how habits form so quickly because you pick up your phone You think I'll tap my email, just check if there's anything important. Any of this, if you say I'll just, you're on a slippery slope it could be five minutes But it's it's about where does your attention go? So a couple of things here Environment design is really interesting and I've worked with people who've done this and we've set this up in for people I've worked with. But if you design your environment in a certain way, it will have a certain output. For example, if you work from home and you're trying to get this work life balance, you work from home and you've got your desk in your bedroom or your desk in your kitchen, fallouts from COVID. The visual stimulus around you, it could be like your personal space, will still trigger you into connecting to personal and vice versa. If you're working in the kitchen and you still got your laptop set up when you're having dinner, you are visually still, your peripheral vision, your brain saying your laptop's there. Maybe I need to just write that note or just send my client a thingy and off we go. So what is in our visual field, our environment is. In some ways, very easy to design, we can change our room, you, as you said, you could buy a second phone, you could work from a separate place, I use, I use co working spaces sometimes. Environment design is one of the easiest ways to leverage habit, because if we are, quote, trying not to check our emails, that takes effort and energy, that's draining. creating habits around environment, where is the phone or is no phone, or, for instance, I never take a phone in my gym, never. Yeah, I just train because that's my space. It's on Do Not Disturb. It's locked away. And, but I see people on the phone in the gym and I'm like, wow, I know, I know some people are looking at being online trainers and that can work, but your attention's not there. And for those of us who know me, I train a lot and I do a lot of strength and conditioning and loads of fitness work. If you are doing strength and fitness of any nature and your break time or rest time is you're on the phone. You've put your body into a state of Misattention. I just checked my work email before I do my next deadlift. It is the worst way to train because you're not present. You're not in the physiology of what you're doing. And your attention you've just outsourced it. And it's draining. this whole thing around environment design I think is super, super important.

really, really important, isn't it? And I think as well, the, like the working from home thing, like if, if you've got mess somewhere, I have children, they create mess. It's like a, an avalanche of disaster before they leave the house. and if I was to then go around and if I was sitting at I have, a garden office because if I was sitting in the house, I would be doing the, I'll just do the dishwasher, or I'll just prep dinner, or I'll, I'll, I'll, I'll just, there is the I'll just, isn't it, all the time, and, I'll just tidy up their rooms, or I'll just sort this out, or I'll just sort that out, and I, and like you say, and I think, there's all this conversation around multitasking and monotasking, isn't there? But we can't multitask. It takes 23 minutes to get back on task again. and so before you know it, your working day has disappeared and you feel like you haven't achieved anything because you've, you've been like your attention and your flow has been elsewhere and you haven't focused. It's the same when you're scrolling on social media. there was a really interesting, conversation you had with Matt and your podcast where you were talking about social media, scrolling and stuff. And it was really interesting because it just really resonates. So many people have that issue where they are just check Facebook or just checking LinkedIn or just check, TikTok or whatever it is. and then before, you're on like a video frenzy of, of seeing other people mapping out their lives. which A, makes you have comparisonitis, good old comparisonitis, where you go, Oh, I'm not good enough. And what am I, I'm not doing that. And maybe I should be doing that. and then it also makes you look around and go, Oh, that's what I want to strive for. And then it's sometimes that could be healthy, right? You can go, Oh yeah. Okay. I'm going to change some habits and I'm going to focus on, that conversation that Sal had about like doing this, that and the other, I'm going to do that. but quite often you get suckered into the next thing. And it's, it's. ads and stuff that come up and a lot of people dunno. They can just turn the ads off as well. and, just like little, little hacks I guess as you go

Yeah. It's such an important thing. I've got a client and I'm going to be sharing to me, she's super, super busy, super successful, super busy, parent, all this stuff. I was doing a lot of time on social media and we, we got into the question like, okay, because it was around about energy and your home life and work life. So it was the work life balance conversation. And, and I got interested, okay, So what's, what's driving that? What are you looking for when you're on Instagram or TikTok or one of the, one of the platforms? And, because I asked, could you tell me how good Instagram was last night? And what post did you see? And they're like, I can't remember any of it. literally couldn't remember any. okay, so it has no stickiness. It's just busy. And actually what we found was, this person was looking to downregulate. They were longing to switch off. Now, now the sentiment and the intent is perfect, right? I want to switch off. I've had a busy day. You can't switch off when you're being dopamine spiked, right? You're being pumped. That's like trying to switch off while sprinting. It doesn't work. your nervous system is going jacked up and then you move into sympathetic nervous system. But the sentiment and the need is there. I want to switch off. So sometimes it's about checking that homeostasis in the mind. okay, I know I have this habit of scrolling and I know it doesn't work. How can I choose better for my work life integration, which might look like, for me, it's always getting to the body, some form of movement. Reading is a beautiful discipline. I read loads. I love reading and just simply being kind to yourself. I think it's important thing here. We all want to switch off. There's nothing quote wrong with social media scrolling, but for every minute of attention you give that. You've, you've given that minute of your life away to someone else and they ain't paying you and if you are tired and you're using things like social media and, and, tech to take your attention away, that is not downregulation, that's distraction. So sometimes it takes a bit of a kind of slap around the face to realize that I'm just distracting myself. Yeah, I know what I'm doing. That's okay. We don't want to get beat up, but it's like, what do you actually want? I want to sleep well. Okay, cool. Let's put better practice in place. Phone away, book out, walk before bed or whatever it is you need to do. But coming awake to what is going on. And I wanted to say something that you said there and I pick up on it, attention, so if we're looking for work life balance, then where's your attention? As you've already beautifully alluded to, where's your attention as a busy mom? If you're multitasking, are you like, I'll just do this, do that. If you cannot control your attention and again, don't, there's no need to beat up on oneself about this because it's not easy, but being able to hold attention on something is becoming a real masterful gift. It's hard, right? Yeah, it's like why I do heavy, heavy weightlifting because you can't not pay attention when you're trying to lift your body weight off the floor, right? You can't be thinking, oh, should I just call so and so and how's my shorts? You have to focus and that's why I love strong practice, strong physical training practice because you have to pay attention. Yoga as well, you can pay attention, but for some of us your mind can still go off there. So whatever way works, but how we manage our attention, what practices are you working with your clients about attention management and attention, control to some degree? How do you work with that?

Yeah. For me, you've alluded to it anyway, is the awareness, like quite often we, we're not aware that it's a thing, especially as, as, as a parent, my kids will be like, oh, can you just do this? Can you just do that? Can you, mum, can you do this? Mum, I don't know how many times I say mum in a day, it's painful. and the amount of times I say to them in a minute, and, and I've really become aware of that recently. I think like from COVID, obviously, We're on our phones. I was trying to manage the business while being with the kids. you're on your phone instead of the computer trying to juggle stuff. and I think my daughter, took, did a, a picture of me with my phone. And that for me was like, wow, that's not how I want to be represented in her world. That's not. What's important to me and that, and that for me was enough of a, of a boundary kind of setting. actually, I'm not going to be the mom that's on the phone all the time. That's not something that I'm going to be. So for me, it's looking with, with people of what are your boundaries? like we're in a culture where we like to say yes to stuff a lot. we're in a culture where everything is at our fingertips. We can get anything we want whenever we want, pretty much. so how do we secure really clear boundaries for ourselves to be able to give attention to the things that are important to us? like when I do my exercising, I listen to, I have my phone because I listen to Spotify or I listen to a podcast. I quite like listening to a podcast when I go for a run, it's quite, it just, because running then feels effortless, it doesn't feel like I'm running because I'm listening to something. But to be fully present and have the attention on the thing that you're doing is a really, really hard thing. And I think it is that understanding and awareness, it starts with that, because to make any kind of change, you need to be aware that there's a problem. and a lot of people aren't aware that there's a problem because they just, that's just what they're doing. so having that awareness that there's a thing, and then looking at, how do I want that to look? If I want to focus on eating healthier, or I want to focus on doing more exercise, or I want to focus on, we've got seven, seven pillars of well being, so like, when we think of well being, we think of the physical, right? We think of sleep, we think of eating, and we think of exercise, but that's only one element. We've also got the mental health, like, how are you feeling? the amount of people that say like, how are you? And it's a flippant white hello, right? But like, how many people actually ask that? Friends and colleagues, like, how about you actually, like, how are you actually doing, are you okay? I, especially if you're concerned about somebody, it's that, real attention, asking really clear questions, having the right question, I think, with coaching and therapy, any intervention that's like a helping practitioner intervention, having the right question to ask someone to get them to think, to, to trigger an emotion. to trigger a feeling in their body and it's that, like, how it connects to your body is so important because once you're connected with it, you're aware of it and then you can change it if you need to and so having that kind of really clear outline for people of what they need to do, how they need to be and, and working on themselves, I think is we talk about self care, right? And we think, oh, yeah, it's It's fluffy, it's like going to a spa and, having massages and stuff and, oh yeah, that's lovely, isn't it? But there should be something in your day, every day, gives you something for you, in whatever capacity that is, that's not work related, that's not, know, something that you feel like you have to do, but something that you want to do, something that, that makes you feel good. Because if you don't have anything that makes you feel good, what's the point, right?

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. All this work and no play. It's seriously, what is the point? And I think that that's one of the brutal questions that needs to be asked. And questions are, vehicles of attention, to quest. That's where the word question comes from, to quest, to seek, and a, and a, and a good coach and therapist will, will know this. perhaps other people's Oh yeah, that's what it means, but it's, it's powerful thing. And when we self quest, where we go yeah, what really matters to me? Yeah, it's fine growing my business or working hard in my company and all that, but what really matters to me? is your marriage or your job more important? They're brutal questions sometimes, but someone's you've got to ask it, right? oh god, I haven't really paid attention at home. I need to get my, get my things together. Or, are you, 16 years and catch up with them later? Because you can't buy that back, no matter how many millions you've got in the bank, you can't buy time. So these questions sometimes are really uncomfortable. And really enlightening, so I, I, I heartily recommend to all, if we're seeking work life balance, ask the questions, like what really matters to me, what do I value, as Claire, you've already said, who do I want to be, and, and know that stuff, and then start to get really clear, okay, I've got some choices to make here, if you want to be fit and well when you're midlife and older, you can't get away with not exercising and eating well and sleeping well, it just, it just won't happen for you, there'd just be too many biases against you being healthy. So you've got to choose what you want and with choice, the word decision comes from decide, that's the same origin of homicide. It means to kill off a choice and have one choice. Multitasking, just stop it. You just do lots of things badly, right? Take a choice, see the kids, watch the TV program, go to your meeting, try, be there and be there fully is way more powerful. Now I want to,

I saw, based on that, sorry to interrupt Sal, but, when I was looking at what to talk about for today, I saw a quote, which I pulled out, which I really like, and it's, I'm not a product of circumstances. I'm a product of my decisions and it just goes really well with what you've just said. So I just thought I'd throw that in, but yeah, to me, decisions is really important. And we have a choice, right? We have a

the ultimate gift of being a conscious human being, that's a belief I hold, and that is that we have choice, and I recognize that some of those people have more privilege and some people have less, of course, that's the truth of the world, but there's often a choice, and okay, what choice can I make? And even if your job demands are difficult and you've got Put the hours in. Fine. But what choice can I make here? Can I, when I come home, be really at home? whatever it is, what choice can I make? Because that is your power. And if you give that choice away, plenty of people take it. whether it's an internet company, whether it's a Silicon Valley company, people want your choices. So sell them wisely.

And with choice comes opportunity

Absolutely. So how about we bring this to a close? I, I, we've taken everyone on a, on a bit of a journey here around all the things. If we've come away from striving for work life balance, but understand we need it in the context that we understand. What's last? Guidance points. Would you like to share, Claire, that you would say these are key things that are gonna really help you find a healthy and a, and a, an odd, more appropriate work-life balance.

think it's, I think a few top tips, is like understanding yourself, understanding where, what, what, what's important to you, where your values are, what you want out of life, like what, what gets you going, what, what makes you who you are, how you want to live your life. Understand that you can make choices within that process. For me, it's, it's having an understanding of your wellbeing. So looking at the pillars of the well being, which we haven't really touched on today and it's a whole conversation in its own right, but having an understanding of how you as a person links in with your well being, links in with your emotional intelligence and links in with your mental fitness, mental toughness, and how all of those things enhance you to get, to, to do, to, to get the performance that you want, and, and to do the things that you want that are important to you, having really clear boundaries. And setting clear expectations.

Really nice, powerful. Yeah. Super salient points. I, I, I, I agree. I works with me. I love what you've said there, and I hope, hope if you're taking notes, get that down or replay it. one thing I'd just like to speak to is, is understanding the, It starts within, the ecosystem of you is your physiology, your emotional system, and your mind. We often look outwards, it's how the human system is designed. We look out through our eyes, we see the world around us, but Start at home. Take care of your body. Be strong, be active, and, this isn't a quick fix. I don't buy any quick fixes with the whole health thing. this is a lifestyle. It could take you ten years to get the body composition you want, or the health you want. But you'll be there in ten years. So keep going start with the body check your emotional state and as Claire spoke about we've only touched on it But learn about breath work get the basics get the basics of how to breathe and regulate because emotions drive our Thinking to a large extent and checking with your with your mind as Claire you said values What do you really want your choices if you come from those spaces? Your work life choices will become quite clear and they will probably become much more, more in line with what you want. So there are my thoughts on how to perhaps pull this together, for a better work life coherence, perhaps.

Yeah. And it's understanding that everyone's different. It was quite interesting. even this morning, somebody phoned me literally just before I came on and I said, Oh, I am, I'm just about to go into a meeting. And they said, Oh, I could phone you at lunchtime. I know that's not appropriate, but how about one o'clock? And I was like, he's assuming that I have a lunch break at one o'clock, but I don't have a lunch break at one o'clock. So it's quite interesting, isn't it? How that kind of awareness just generally is, is with other people, but taking breaks is really important. So having an understanding of the, when you, when you do choose to work in an evening. Why you choose to work in an evening, if you choose to do something at the weekend, Why you're choosing to do something at the weekend, and if you're choosing to take time during your working day, to do things like fitness or something for you, they're not feeling guilty about that as well because that can really take

Yeah, absolutely. Yes. Make choices wisely. Yeah. Own your choices. Own your choices. And keep an eye on the sneaky guilt that can sneak up and yeah, just, get present. Claire, thank you for sharing, lots of thoughts, experience, knowledge, and wisdom from your perspective. I very much appreciate you coming and joining me in the conversation. I trust if you're listening that you have scribbled down notes, you've tapped them in your phone. If you've just listened and gone, that's all really interesting. Do you really want work life balance? I would say, and this is what I do in my podcast when I listen to other people, I take it like a lecture and I play it back and I make my notes and I integrate it into my understanding. So if there's something that's just chimed with you, play this back, get the notes, make the points, and lastly, take action.

I do the one thing, I don't know if you do that Sal, but just choose one thing from what we spoke about today and that you're going to do different.

Choose one thing. We shall leave you on that. Choose one thing. And as, of course, you can always reach out on the various, connections on the pod page. You can reach me at the site. All details will be following up after this, piece. Thank you, dear listener, for joining us. Thank you, Claire, for being in conversation with me. I've really enjoyed this. And, until the next one, take care.

care. Bye.

Thank you so much for listening. If you enjoyed the episode, please subscribe and if a friend would benefit from hearing this, do send it on to them as well. If you would like to get in touch yourself, then you can go to my website, which is sal jeffries.com, spelled S A L J E F E R I E s sal jeffries.com. Hit the get in touch link and there you can send me a direct message. If you'd like to go one step further and learn whether coaching could help you overcome a challenge or a block in your life, then do reach out and I offer a call where we can discuss how this may be able to help you. Until the next time, take care.