## Transcript

[00:00:00] **Rachel:** When did you last choose what time you had lunch or whether you had lunch at all? For most doctors and healthcare professionals that they just unfolds urgent thing after urgent thing, and somewhere around six o'clock you realize you never actually chose any of it. The good news is that feeling of having no choice is almost always a story rather than a fact.

[00:00:19] And this week's guest, Robbie Swale, is an author and coach for leaders in complex roles. He's written the power to choose a book that was nearly 10 years in the making about how to reclaim agency even when the system feels like it's running your life. And in this episode, Robbie explains why curiosity is often the antidote to feeling stuck and how shifting the story you are telling yourself can open up options, which you couldn't see before.

[00:00:43] We also get into his 12 minute method for actually doing the things you keep meaning to do. And a brilliant exercise called. 50, wouldn't it be cool ifs That will tell you a lot about what you really want. So if you are ready to stop surviving your days and start choosing them, then do have a listen to [00:01:00] this episode.

[00:01:04] **Robbie:** Hi, I'm Robbie Swale and I'm a coach for leaders in complex roles and an author and a podcaster and various other things, as I'm sure we'll get to.

[00:01:12] **Rachel:** It's great to have you back on the podcast, Rob, because you were here a couple of years ago now I think talking about. 12 minutes to change your life, or something along those lines, because you first came to people's attention talking about the fact that you'd managed to write a book, I think in 12 minutes a day.

[00:01:27] **Robbie:** It almost, it was four books in 12 minutes a week.

[00:01:30] **Rachel:** Oh, wow. 12 minutes a week.

[00:01:32] **Robbie:** It, it's important to say that because that's like the, the magical thing about that story is the 12 minutes a week for three years was 80,000 words. And that is this, that was the series of four books about productivity and procrastination and how to finally do things that we've been meaning to do for a long time.

[00:01:50] And sometimes that's write a book or start a business and sometimes it's look after myself or learn something new. And those ideas, they've both inform my practice and have [00:02:00] had been very meaningful for a lot of people now. And also, yeah, they feed into all the work that I do because once you've published a book on something, then you have.

[00:02:10] You have to really check that you believe those things before you publish it, and then once you've got it there, what's great for me as a serial procrastinator is every time I start procrastinating or getting overwhelmed by the scale of a project, I know what I think about that. I think I have to sit down.

[00:02:24] I have to, yeah, contains the task within a small amount of effort and make a small amount of progress at least every week.

[00:02:32] **Rachel:** And so the premise of that is that you spent 12 minutes and it was 12 minutes. 'cause that was the commute you were doing on a train, is that right?

[00:02:38] **Robbie:** Exactly. That's how it started. So I love the 12 minute method because it, the 12 minutes is entirely arbitrary.

[00:02:43] It's not quite, because 12 minutes is actually a really nice amount of time. You can get a surprising amount done. In fact, I was running some workshops last year and 12 minutes felt like too long to give people in the middle of a workshop. I wanted them to have some action that they took in the workshop themselves.

[00:02:59] So they, [00:03:00] they were getting momentum on the things they wanted. 12 minutes felt like too long. I was nervous about five minutes, but actually at the end of it, the res, the things that people had managed to get done in five minutes was huge. So yeah, 12 minutes is a good amount of time because you can actually, in my case I was writing write, you know, hundreds of words, especially if you're typing on the on the computer.

[00:03:19] But originally it started because I needed to break my own procrastination and I got the train every day and a good. A good move if you want to create a new habit is to tack it onto another habit that you don't, you never forget to do. So I sometimes when I have to do physio, I realized last year I could do my physio whilst brushing my teeth because I never forget to brush my teeth.

[00:03:40] I always forget to do my physio, and, and the same with this. I can't, I can avoid my writing practice, but I don't avoid getting the train at that time. I got the train, I can't remember, six times a week or something. Never forget to get the train because if I forget to get the train, I don't go to my office Job.

[00:03:57] And then there's that space and then I can tack on the habit. [00:04:00]

[00:04:01] **Rachel:** It's interesting you say when you wanna do something, you link it to another habit because I've, I'm trying to write a book at the moment and also I'm trying to get my steps up 'cause I work from home and it's quite easy to sit on my ass all day and, and not actually move.

[00:04:12] So I've started commuting to work, which is doing a walk across the field and around the block. Takes about 20 minutes, but I managed to download a really good dictation app and I'm actually dictating as I'm, I'm walking, it makes the walk incredibly short. I've written two chapters already, just in like in two weeks and that's not very much.

[00:04:30] That's literally 20 minute today, so it works. People, it's so interesting that one of the bits of feedback we get time and time again from doctors who who are really struggling at work is. They've just put in like a 10 minute walk at lunchtime, a 10 minute getting out into Nature, 10 minute doing something different, and it's made such a big difference to their day.

[00:04:51] Even though the workload is the same, nothing really has changed apart from the fact that they are choosing to get out even when they're with loads of phone [00:05:00] calls waiting them or whatever. They've given themselves permission to do it as well.

[00:05:03] **Robbie:** And then you are also pointing to another crucial thing, which is they are doing something to make things better, and that's another part of that 12 minute method idea.

[00:05:12] If you do one walk today and one next week, or one tomorrow, one the day after, or one the week after that, then over the course of a year you're gonna have done 50 walks and your step counter is gonna tell you what a difference that is compared to having done no walk.

[00:05:25] **Rachel:** I think it's, yeah, doing something.

[00:05:27] Doing anything. And yeah, we, we often procrastinate saying, if I had enough time, I would, or when this happens, I would. I think the other thing that's important for me in that, in that thing is that they're, they're choosing to do it. Yeah. And one of the things we're gonna talk about on this podcast is something I know you've been thinking about a lot and I think is so relevant for our listeners, is choice.

[00:05:50] Because in medicine and the NHS at the moment, one, one of the biggest bits of feedback we get from people is, but we have no choice. [00:06:00] We have to. And that leads to people feeling profoundly stuck and. When I teach about the drama triangle, when we talk about being in, in the victim role, feeling stuck is one of the, the things that happens to us.

[00:06:14] Now, I'm not saying that we are all acting as victims, but I, it, it just, it, we can so easily slip into that role when we feel we don't have any choice, when that feels like it's being taken away from us. So be really good to just explore that with you. Now, Robbie, lots of people have written an awful lot on choice.

[00:06:33] What was it that links this thing about your 12 minute habits through to choice? What was that trajectory that took you there?

[00:06:42] **Robbie:** So around the time that I started the writing practice on the train, which became those 12 minute method books, I had another idea for another book. And these two things, they were really, I'm seeing it more clearly now.

[00:06:53] You having, you asked that question than I have before. They're intrinsically linked in me because a lot of that. [00:07:00] 12 minute method piece is about exactly what you've just been talking about. Me feeling like I have no choice, wanting to do something, which could be anything. It could be having a writing practice, it could be singing at karaoke, it could be asking somebody out.

[00:07:16] It could be learning something new or changing my career, making these big ch starting to exercise on part of me wanting to do that, and another part, feeling unable to do it. So the 12 minute method was in some ways my way of unlocking that, of giving myself the toolkit to take the agency that on some level I knew I really had, but was finding it impossible to take.

[00:07:39] 'cause it's all very well saying, yeah, of course you have a choice to somebody who's in a system feeling like they're at the mercy of the system, feeling like their life is just happening to them. It's the most annoying thing in the world for somebody to say is you could always choose to do something different.

[00:07:54] Yes, and I've definitely done that too. People I care about before clients probably. [00:08:00] And so we've gotta be really careful of that. So they are inextricably linked for me, both from an internal point of view in, in that where they come from is this sense of life happening to me and wanting to shift into a sense of life created by me.

[00:08:13] And that's what both the 12 minute method books, they're about that from a really practical, but also ideas based place and the power to choose, which is the, the more recent book. That's a more complete look at this. Just how much choice we really have.

[00:08:28] **Rachel:** I think it's really important point that you just flag out that this thing about you always have a choice, doesn't land very well with people.

[00:08:38] And I, yeah, when I first started doing keynote talks, I'd always include that. Yeah, you always have a choice. Essentially. Unless someone's got a gun to your head, you always have a choice. But very recently, I, I don't use that anymore because. It just feels like another stick to beat people with because we all know we have a choice, but in, in actuality, [00:09:00] most of these choices feel like impossible choices.

[00:09:02] If you say to thought you've got a choice, you could just stop doing it. They're like, what on earth could I do? I don't have any transferable skills, which is rubbish. By the way, this, this idea that I am choosing to be working like this in a way it's true, but actually. It's not because the, the alternative feels like letting our colleagues down, letting our family down, letting our patients down, and our internal programming and default way that we operate is that, that doesn't feel like a choice.

[00:09:34] That feels like a complete abdication of respons, our own responsibility of our professional duty, and makes us into a terrible, terrible person. And so who would ever choose that?

[00:09:45] **Robbie:** Yeah, and we've gotta hold that. The way I think about it is I think there is a philosophical way in which it is absolutely true that we are always choosing how we spend our day, and then this gets us into this, one of the crucial, one of the [00:10:00] reasons it is valuable to own the fact that we have choice, which is that it feels really different.

[00:10:08] To say to myself, I have to deal with. These really, really difficult childcare challenges that I've got when I've got a super busy job, which I really care about with people relying on me and it's getting disrupted because somebody's got, we had one once where they, like the nursery accused, our daughter incorrectly accused our daughter of having, having chicken pox, which meant we had to take her out straight away.

[00:10:30] We had to get the doctor to check it and it was just like, it wasn't even that, it was so annoying. Right. I have to do all this childcare stuff. No, I choose to do it. So that in my life I get to have work that is meaningful and my daughters. So I am choosing to put myself through that. And as I understand it, and I wish I had to hand the actual research to be sure about this, but I have heard somebody say that in a, in a controlled study, they had people with depression change the language they used from I have [00:11:00] to, I must to, I choose to, or I get to, or I could.

[00:11:04] And that had a notable and significant impact on their depression. And it, it, and the reason I mention it without the kind of study to hand is because I felt it be true for me to do that. And so I think it pays in wellbeing and in the choices we make, it pays to choose to believe that we have a choice.

[00:11:26] **Rachel:** I love that. What is having a choice and just changing that language from I have to, to I choose to, that is so important for us. How does that work neurologically?

[00:11:40] **Robbie:** But I would guess that for neurologically, that for somebody who is under a lot of pressure, feeling like you have to do something and have no choice, it feels like it's a kind of threat response environment.

[00:11:56] You being a bit run by your neurology, by [00:12:00] your physiology instead of what can happen when we are in our more clear thinking selves. I think it shifts us out of old patterns and into the kind of wiser, more skillful parts of us, which is, which is who we want to be. And if we're thinking about, I would, we call it polyvagal theory.

[00:12:18] Dunno how much about that. But there's, for listeners who, who don't, there's this sense that of vagus nerve and vagal system has two states, threat state, which is flag the the fight, flight, freeze response and social engagement state. And in social engagement state, that's when we can learn and think clearly and engage socially.

[00:12:37] And when we're in threat state, we can't really do that. And it has the feel of that. To me, when I say, I'm trying to think of a real example. I get it. I get it on a day like this, Rachel, where I was slightly late for this recording 'cause I had another coaching call, I'd slightly messed up my calendar.

[00:12:51] I'll wake up in the morning and this is often my default place. I have to do these coaching calls I've got today. There's, there's too [00:13:00] many of them. I've got a, like I have to do that conversation with Rachel for You are not a frog. And I'm in this state and it's stressful and I feel the anxiety and luckily because a bit like the 12 Minute Method book, now that I've published the power to choose, I like can't really avoid remembering that.

[00:13:15] And if I'm lucky, I take a breath and I remind myself, okay, I have the power to choose here. Mm-hmm. I can choose to see it differently. And this morning I remembered that on, well, how I feel at the end of a day where I've done coaching calls with clients that I think are amazing, and a conversation with somebody like you, which I know is gonna push my thinking right to the edge and create new thoughts.

[00:13:34] I know that at the end of that, I'll feel wonderful and that when I sit down for dinner and we have this practice where we talk about what were our highlights of the day, I'm gonna say, I'm gonna be, I'm gonna be torn. Between the coaching clients and the other coaching client and the conversation with Rachel.

[00:13:49] And I'm not gonna know what to say to my family, but at the start of the day, that's not how it feels at all. And, and I could choose to just, uh, I could just let life happen to me, [00:14:00] feel this kind of anxious stress that feels like threat mode to me in the morning. Or I can remind myself and take a deep breath and say, okay.

[00:14:09] What if actually it's gonna be different? What if actually today is gonna be a beautiful day where I'm gonna get to have some incredibly meaningful conversations? The kind of conversations with coaching with leaders and entrepreneurs that I would've me of 10 years ago would've dreamed of having. And I'm gonna get to speak to somebody on one of the most enjoyable podcasts I've ever been on again.

[00:14:27] And then we're gonna get to create something together. And what if that's like, how does that sound as a day? And, and it feels really different.

[00:14:34] **Rachel:** It's about reframing it, isn't it? It is. As you were speaking though, I was just putting myself into the position of when I used to be working as a GP and the job itself didn't suit me.

[00:14:47] Now this, the judgment, different things, suit different people, but it would've been very hard for me to think I get to go and feel these patients today because I didn't enjoy. [00:15:00] What I was doing. And so I think if anyone is looking at the job, the thing they do most of for a lot of time during the week and it never feels like I get to, it always feels like that I have to, then I would say, do something different.

[00:15:15] Don't become a pathologist if you don't like to deal with, with dead bodies. There is that thing about if everything feels like an absolute, I have to, then you do need to look at some of your. Life choices in your career choices and things like that. So most of us, hopefully are in jobs where it used to be like, I get to see the patients, I get to go to the operating piece, I get to go to this leadership meeting because I love the way that we can shape and lead our service or run our practice.

[00:15:46] But then when it just becomes overwhelming and overloaded, yes, I sometimes think, oh, I have to go and record that next podcast. I love doing this podcast. I, I get to do it, but when it's like really early in the morning or I've got five back to back, sometimes it feels like I have [00:16:00] to, how do we distinguish between things that just really aren't suiting us and we're just, and it's maybe just one of the crappy elements of a job in any, in any job, there are bits that you, you won't enjoy.

[00:16:15] And I think you can reframe it as I get to do that because if I want to. Get to do that bit of my job, I'm gonna need to do that. And so I can choose to do that to allow me to do the rest of it. But what if everything you are choosing starts to feel like I, I have to not, 'cause we don't actually like it, but it's so overwhelming and it's so much, and the thought of choosing to do less or set boundaries.

[00:16:40] It feels unrealistic.

[00:16:44] **Robbie:** It's a bind. It's a real bind. If we, if we slow down with that example that you've just given, and it's an example that resonates for me from, from clients I've had in busy high pressure environments, physical exhaustion, making it [00:17:00] harder to enjoy any of the work, feeling unable to draw boundaries because it's not who we are because good in this case, good doctors don't say no.

[00:17:11] They don't, that's, that's the story that almost all of us have that is a bind because, and, and the only way it ends, this is a, this is a harsh thing to say. The o hard thing to say, this is a hard thing to say. The only way it ends is with something breaking. And usually my guess would be it's the person when we don't want that.

[00:17:30] So it's important to say we don't, like I get to is one choice and it's a fun one to choose, right? If you think I have to go to the gym. So like try just again, pause the recording and say, I have to go to this lead leadership meeting. I get to go to this leadership meeting. You almost can't help but say it differently.

[00:17:47] And when you say it differently, you feel differently. But remember that what I am really inviting people into is I choose to, and like you say, sometimes that. That might change things like, I choose to go to this leadership [00:18:00] meeting, not because I think it's fun or interesting, but 'cause the alternative is someone else goes and I think they're gonna make worse decisions than me.

[00:18:06] Or I choose to do it so that I can get the promotion so that I can get the money so that I can do this thing. And there, there are good reasons to choose stuff even when it isn't fun. And most of us have to do some things that aren't fun. I think children are a fantastic example of this. If you were to, if you were to do a cost benefit analysis on children based purely on fun, no one would ever have them.

[00:18:23] **Rachel:** Toddler,

[00:18:23] **Robbie:** it's, it's definitely not fun. It doesn't really make you happy in the kind of traditional pre-children sense. That's what I've, my experience has been, it's not really nice and in lots of ways, but we do it because there's more to it than that. But we, we could talk more about that, but, so let's hold it and then if we, if we sit in the, the choice, if we sit in, really sit in, I am choosing to do this job where my energy is going down and down and I feel like I can't get out.

[00:18:55] Yeah, that's honest. And then sometimes the, what comes from [00:19:00] that kind of honesty with ourselves is, like you said, I actually need to choose to do something different. So that's one piece and that's, but that is, that is hard for the actual, if you are in the bind, there are kind of two moves that I would recommend.

[00:19:16] One is you have to really define for you what a good person does. One of the binds we get into is a good doctor does this. A good mom does that, a good brother does this and a well for me, it be so me, it be a good, a good coach does this. A good husband does this, a good brother does this. A good son does this.

[00:19:36] Uh, I can't remember if I said dad already, friend. And we've got all these things and the world is too complex for me to fulfill the definitions of good in all those places. So you have to start defining what does a good person do. In this situation, what does a good person do? And this is, this is values work.

[00:19:53] On some level, it's why values work can be so useful because then we get to really slow down with it [00:20:00] and begin to choose for ourselves, not from the definition of what a good doctor does, for example, that we have picked up from friends or family or medical school or the hospital or wherever it's, we might work, but what do I believe a good doctor does?

[00:20:12] And at some point. You're gonna come up with a definition, which it has to include. They don't kill themselves in service of the work, and therefore we've got some space then where we might be able to choose something different. And the other piece, which is, which is heavily in the book, is this idea that I, I share in there that curiosity is often the antidote to the kind of the contraction we're feeling and the contraction word that I'm using here.

[00:20:38] That, that's along the lines of what we've already been talking about. Feeling like we have to do something often has this kind of contracting feeling in us, and a good place to go to start to create some space from that is what's really going on here? What's really happening to try and get into that curious space to get some more understanding.

[00:20:57] 'cause often what feels like [00:21:00] it's about what's happening right here, right now is not actually about that.

[00:21:04] **Rachel:** I've observed that often when people think they don't have a choice. It's not, they don't have a choice. They really don't like the options that are open to them.

[00:21:13] **Robbie:** Yeah.

[00:21:15] **Rachel:** So does being curious, open your options.

[00:21:20] **Robbie:** So sometimes if we question those stories, what's really going on here? Ah, I feel like if I say no to this last patient, even though I feel so exhausted. I'll be a bad doctor, but that's, and that's a story that I'm telling myself and what if I tell myself another story? Then like an option might feel like it opens up for that person.

[00:21:42] Actually, it would be okay for me. To take 10 minutes now before the next patient to walk around the garden outside is now because I've questioned it and got curious, I can see that I'm, I'm not, I'm not seeing that possibility. I'm not seeing why it would be of value to do that. I'm not seeing [00:22:00] that. I will see and notice things about that patient.

[00:22:03] If I'm less exhausted, I will see more things about that patient if I'm less exhausted because I go for the walk. So sometimes literal options. Open up between us. Sometimes there are, yeah, there are choices we can make that show us new things. I, I don't think this is any, there's no place that I see this more than in relationships with people.

[00:22:24] We tend to jump to humans for, for really good, I would guess evolutionary reasons, but in a simpler world, jumping to the first most obvious conclusion about someone or something, and for people jumping to that, being a kind of a threat of this person might be a threat to me. Those things probably make loads of sense.

[00:22:41] In the 21st century. In a country like the uk, it makes no sense to assume malice when you could assume something else because most people aren't out to get us. That's the truth. And also the first conclusion we jump to is, is often not the right one because there are so many possible reasons someone could be doing something.

[00:22:56] So in the book I took about this idea, what if we assume that the [00:23:00] person we're interacting with is doing their best? Is a good person doing their best? And what happens when we do that is instead of assuming, like I say, we seem to jump to these conclusions where someone's out to get us. Or there's some malice there.

[00:23:13] Often we can see just other possibilities straight away. Often just like another hardworking person who's under more pressure than, than we are struggling with the complexity of the 21st century. Again, if I was a gp, I'm pretty sure I would see that all the time 'cause you're seeing people under in, or any doctor really seeing people under pressure, under stress, trying to deal with how tough life is.

[00:23:37] And on one end of that, you must get a lot of. Really tough conversations with people and it'd be easy to think that those people are idiots or that they're all about you. And the truth is, is probably mostly about the stress and pressure that people are under in their lives. And if we remind ourselves, see people are, are, they are doing their best.

[00:23:58] Then often that we can [00:24:00] see different options in a relationship straight away. And again, I'm not saying they are doing their best, I'm not saying this is true. What I'm saying is try that mindset on next time you're getting really stressed or anxious with somebody and see what's different.

[00:24:13] **Rachel:** Interesting.

[00:24:14] 'cause I think we, we deal with our patients and difficult patients and stuff very differently to how we deal with difficult colleagues. We're very. Able to give patients the benefit, the doubt. 'cause they're sick, they're in pain or whatever, and we fit up with it. But then when it comes to our colleagues, we're very black and white and we, we don't, we don't look at our, look at our assumptions and what we, we assume about that.

[00:24:38] I'm wondering how this all applies to workload though, because we've had people come up to us say, you say I've always got a choice, but I asked my practice if I could drop a session. They said, no. End, end of story. And so for them, the black and white choices, I really wanna stay working in that practice, but they said no.

[00:24:55] So the choice is to keep working the way I am or nothing. [00:25:00] How does seeing the practice differently in assuming good intention work in that sort of situation?

[00:25:06] **Robbie:** Yeah. It's really important to say that no matter how much we acknowledge, we can choose. We don't always get everything we want. If you ask and they say, no, that's, they're allowed to do that.

[00:25:16] It's their practice, and you are, you have still have a choice. You just don't have the choice you want and you can't get everything you want. Now, if it was my client coming to me like that, I'd be saying, okay, how did that conversation go? And can we have it more skillfully? Can we work out what they would want that would make it worthwhile for them to let you not work that thing?

[00:25:37] One of the things people often go to in those negotiations is, if you don't let me do this, I'll leave. And that, that's one tool that's always available to people that's exercising my choice, right? But if you really don't wanna leave, let's not give that ultimatum. But what's the, how could you get something that they want?

[00:25:52] What might it give for them? And you can do that work and you can have those conversations more skillfully. But again, we just wanna be really clear. [00:26:00] It doesn't matter how much choice you have in life, you can't control the universe. We don't always get the results we want. Even if we do everything in our power, so that'll be the underneath it.

[00:26:11] That's often the question I come to. I call it the honor question in the book, because to me it feels like it's the question, this question I'm gonna share in a sec. It's a question which gets to honor for me is doing the right thing, even when it's hard. So it's like I ask this, this question so that we can work out what's the thing, the right thing for you to do even no matter what the outcome is here.

[00:26:32] And the question is, what do I need to do such that regardless of the outcome, I'll feel at peace with myself. So for that person, it might be, look, I need to have the conversation with them again. I, I've gotta have it at least twice, maybe three times. I've gotta really ask it and I've gotta get some help from my colleague who always negotiates raises and gets whatever he wants.

[00:26:54] I gotta ask him for help. And if I don't ask him for help and I don't have the conversation three times, I'm gonna be resentful of this practice [00:27:00] forever. Then you get the answer, and then you do those things. And it has to be stuff that you can completely control. It can't be, I'll feel a piece of myself if they say yes, because that's not regardless of the outcome.

[00:27:13] And so we, we get into these kinds of ways that we can choose, even though we can't control all the outcomes, which is really annoying. And again, I, I've got little kids, I noticed it with them a lot. Like not with them, rather with my attitude to them. Mm-hmm. I want to. Mm-hmm. I wanna guarantee that they don't get hurt.

[00:27:33] That's, that's my honest parental ink instinct. I don't want, I don't want some kid to, my 5-year-old came home yesterday, said that some kid headbutted her. She seemed totally chilled out about it, but I was like, not want that, but I can't control that because some other kid is having a bad day or whatever.

[00:27:51] Or, or maybe didn't mean to. And she's, I dunno where she got the term headbutted from, but. It's like I can't control that. What can I control? I can control how I am with her when she tells me it. [00:28:00] I can be there for her if she needs, and if I do that until the one of us dies, I'll be able to look at that and feel, wow, I couldn't control whether she got hurt by the five-year-old in the playground or the boyfriend when she's 15, or the horrible boss when she's 25, but I can control how I was with her.

[00:28:23] And I can be at peace with myself there.

[00:28:25] **Rachel:** It's interesting, as you were saying, all of that, particularly about the thing about having that third conversation to feel at peace with yourself. I think sometimes we think we are stuck even when we haven't had the first conversation. 'cause I know what they're gonna say.

[00:28:38] They're just gonna say no. Or we've hinted and hoped we haven't actually been really clear and so we've automatically feel like we, we, we have. We have no choice and it not actually, you've got no choices that you haven't got the courage to have, have the conversation just in case they turn you down.

[00:28:53] **Robbie:** Yeah, absolutely. That can hold us back or we have unconscious things going on in us that keep us [00:29:00] from expressing what we want. Basically. No one in a country like the UK is taught to answer that question very well. We're not really asked it. So a lot of people have a real trouble answering the question, what do you really want?

[00:29:11] My coach at the moment, rich, he has this cool frame for that actually, that he shared at an event I was at recently. He said, if you're somebody who struggles with what do I really want? So when someone says, what do you want? Okay, you don't want this, this job at the moment, what do you really want? He said, people often really struggle with that.

[00:29:25] So a good one is you can answer this 20 times. Wouldn't it be cool if. Wouldn't it be cool if I could do this job seeing these patients without feeling so exhausted? Wouldn't it be cool if I could work one session or less? Wouldn't it be cool if I got to do a 40 minute walk every lunchtime outside?

[00:29:47] Wouldn't it be cool if on a sunny day I could see my patients outside? I dunno what, what comes up and you have to, you have to keep going with it, but it's a, it's a less pressured version of what do I want? And it, it sometimes opens things up in [00:30:00] powerful ways and, and for sure. Rachel, just to really underscore what you said before, we, we are getting into some of the really tricky situations where things are really outside of our control and we really don't have choice, but those situations are far fewer and further between than we think.

[00:30:16] There are often far more options in the real world than we have seen yet or than ourselves have. Let us see. And there are definitely far more options for us to choose how we see the world than we think.

[00:30:31] **Rachel:** Yeah, it's interesting. One of the cool ways in which, um, I've been able to shift how I see the world is when I think about the, the ways to wellbeing that we teach.

[00:30:42] We've got the five ways to wellbeing, but we've added a few more on there. Is something about connect, connecting. So connecting is really important. Feel like you've had good connections with people. And if you connect with people that give you energy, then that, that's really good. Now, there's somebody in my life I connect with quite regularly who completely trains my energy, if I'm [00:31:00] honest.

[00:31:01] And while I was looking at the ways to wellbeing and looking at, okay, so one of them is giving, so how much am I giving in my life? The rate of myself I suddenly thought. What if I see when I connect with this person, if that's my giving portion of my, of my world rather than my connecting portion. 'cause it's net energy drain.

[00:31:20] But actually if I'm giving, would that work? And you know what, it's so interesting the way that that has just changed my interaction. So I'm choosing to go meet up with that person and it's part of me giving, but I'm not expecting to come out being massively energized, but I'm choosing to do it. It's honestly changed everything.

[00:31:40] Ridiculously small thing, but it has made a huge difference.

[00:31:44] **Robbie:** Yeah. And, and you just can't underestimate how many chances there are to do this. And it's not easy. I wanna say, like I, I wish writing the book had meant that I do this effortlessly all the time and that therefore my life is wonderful all the time.

[00:31:55] It's really, it's not, but there are these times when we can make these [00:32:00] choices and instead of spending that little bit more time angry or in this case, isn't it interesting that. Yeah. If you choose to see the time you're spending with someone differently, it's not about mutual connection. This one is about me giving to this person a thing that I can give.

[00:32:18] Then your experience of that situation and your energy more broadly shifts

[00:32:22] **Rachel:** the rob. What situations commonly to people seem to get stuck in where they really feel that they have no choice? Where you have seen actually they do have more choice in their actually allowing themselves.

[00:32:35] **Robbie:** Workplace systems would be one.

[00:32:42] Your example, I know there will be many people who are working, for example, the NHS, that that feel that, that this is, this is how it has to be, this is how it always is. This is how it always will be. This is how they say it should be. Like we have all these ways of, of doing it. This is just what doctors do.

[00:32:58] So perhaps Sure. But I've seen it [00:33:00] in other industries. Um, I'm thinking at the moment actually, those researchers that I was talking about before, they would feel like that too. This is the system and there's nothing we can do about that. And it, it's, it's never true that there's nothing we can do it. It's not, again, we need to really hold it carefully.

[00:33:15] It's not that you can get what you want, you can change the system, but there is always, there is. It's rare that I've had somebody who comes to me with us. It's never happened, actually. Is that really true? I'm just trying to, yeah, this is interesting. I've never had somebody who feels stuck. This is amazing.

[00:33:37] This has never happened. And then I've asked that question, what would you have to do such that regardless of the outcome, you'll be at peace with yourself? I've never had anybody say, I've already done it. So no one's ever said, actually, now that you asked that question, I've done enough already. I don't think I've ever had that.

[00:33:53] It's, it's not coming to mind. And so what that tells me is already everyone [00:34:00] basically when I ask that question, knows that they haven't exhausted all avenues. They haven't done their bit yet. And then after they've done their bit. Partly it's, it's because it's a powerful question and it enables you to really own, this is my bit of this system.

[00:34:14] My bit of the system is I need to raise it with this person. I need to talk to my colleagues, and I need to look after myself better so that I'm in a better state when I'm reacting with them all. That's my bit. Once I've done that, I can feel like I've tried, but nobody's ever, we don't feel stuck where I think this is a really interesting thought.

[00:34:34] I, I wonder if we don't feel stuck when we've done our bit in the system. We actually feel stuck really with, ah, this, and this would make sense psychologically, right? We are projecting our stuckness onto the system, onto the, this is the, so like the practice managers in that, in that example you gave before or, or the partners or whoever it would be making that decision.

[00:34:58] The, the hospital leadership, [00:35:00] whoever it might be, that actually the stuckness is, is in us and once we've done our bit, then we get to feel at peace and. And I guess the thing to add into that is you can get help to do your bit and to do it more skillfully. Like the thing, the Powers issues really is a book about how do we be the more skillful parts of ourselves more often.

[00:35:20] And that's, that's really what the one-to-one coaching work. That's what I love about it. It's always got two levels really. The, the work that I love. It's, it's got some big ambition level. I, I've got this ambitious project that I'm working on, but we're always in the weeds as well. We're in the, okay. Yeah.

[00:35:36] In these day-to-day, how are we going to like actually have that conversation more skillfully? And when you get with somebody to think that stuff through, and it doesn't have to be a coachee, pay a lot of money, it can be a, a skillful colleague. We can do all those things more skillfully. And some of that is by thinking differently and some of it is by saying things more differently, practicing how we, how we do those things.

[00:35:57] **Rachel:** I think that's really fascinating that you've never crossed [00:36:00] anyone. You've never come across anyone who. Who is truly stuck when, and they've done everything that they could do. It reminds me of someone watching a business video by by Donald Miller, and he was talking about the fact that his coach had said to do, Donald Miller is a business marketing expert, also written a couple of amazing books, but he said that his coach had said to him, stop pretending to be confused.

[00:36:28] He'd gone to his coach saying, I don't know what to do, and his coach said, you know what to do. Stop pretending to be confused. You know what to do, you're just scared to do it.

[00:36:36] **Robbie:** On my podcast years ago, I had a woman called Marsha Reynolds, who's guest ranked top five coaches globally in the world, and she said, when someone and a client comes to her saying, I need help making this decision.

[00:36:50] She first stops them and says, is that actually what you need? Because mostly when people say that to me, what they really need is the courage to make the decision they've already [00:37:00] made. And so it's very similar, right? We've got this sense, yeah, we've got this sense that you're not confused, you just need to be bolder.

[00:37:08] It's just too scary to take this step until you've thought it through a bit more, and that's a, a very reasonable and honorable thing to do. But I love the punchiness of that, of that coach for sure. And. Yeah, I think it is really interesting to think about stuckness and doing our, our bit of it. And I think the problem, one of the reasons we probably shy away from doing our bit is because we we're, like you're saying, we'll be, we're afraid that once we've done our bit, we won't get what we want and we won't live in this wonderful dream world where they let me drop a session.

[00:37:43] Actually, if I do my bit here, I might learn that I'm faced with a choice. Do I stay working in this practice that I love working in, but I feel my energy drain 5% every week until I know at some point it's gonna be too much. Or do I leave the practice that I [00:38:00] like working in and be in? In this what, in this kind of void?

[00:38:04] And I dunno what's there. And if we think about it from that point of view, those are two really real, almost existential situations to end up in. So it makes total sense that that person, like I have great love and affection for somebody. Who would be avoiding getting to that point? Unfortunately, they're kidding themselves because they're gonna stay in the practice.

[00:38:26] They, they're get their energy's going down. It's not gonna end well. And it's better to know. And usually as soon as you ask that question of somebody, well, you can ask it yourself, what do I need to do such that regardless of the outcome, I'll be at peace with myself. The whole thing feels different because then we, you know, it's like, and we're really accepting the.

[00:38:47] The unfortunate complexity of the world, which is that we can't control it and, and we can't make it fit to what we want.

[00:38:57] **Rachel:** Gosh, this has suddenly got quite deep, hasn't it? 'cause I'm thinking [00:39:00] maybe we're also avoiding it. 'cause what if I do get what I want and it doesn't solve my problems?

[00:39:05] **Robbie:** So yeah, I think we are avoiding getting what we want.

[00:39:08] We're avoiding not getting what we want because in some, on some level, some parts of the part of us thinks it's more comfortable. To just stay where we are.

[00:39:18] **Rachel:** Yeah, it's definitely more comfortable to stay in the discomfort that's familiar than to step into some potential discomfort that's unknown, but it might not be discomfort.

[00:39:26] But we, we don't know that it's really, it's really hard.

[00:39:30] **Robbie:** It's,

[00:39:31] **Rachel:** do you think you can ever make the choice not to do something? I've been thinking a lot recently about the default responsibility and trying to talk to doctors about. The fact that just 'cause you could do something doesn't mean you should.

[00:39:48] And so when there are lots, you're feeling stuck in a, maybe say in an organization or a system and you're feeling really frustrated and there's so many different things that you could do, but you just haven't got the capacity to do that. [00:40:00] You say, okay, I could do that, but I'm actually just not going to right now.

[00:40:03] Does that give some strange sort of release as well?

[00:40:06] **Robbie:** One of the big most important things we can acknowledge is that we can't do everything. In the, I I would guess that in the 20th century in a lot of jobs, you could actually, you could actually finish the work. It is almost impossible in, in, I don't know, I'm making this up, but I would say 75% of the jobs that that people do, and probably like 95% of the jobs that people do who are listening to this, it's essentially impossible to finish the work.

[00:40:36] But then the, the challenge with that is we have to choose what really matters. And that's why the choice that the GP is making or the the person in the hospital, the choice that they are making is, I could choose to do this thing, but saying yes to one thing is saying no to something else. You might be saying no to seeing a different patient, or you [00:41:00] might be saying no to having enough energy to continue doing this for another 30 years.

[00:41:04] You might be saying no to Joy in your life. You might be saying no to being with your children this evening at the thing that is really meaningful for them. And the reason that choice matters so much to me is in the end, time runs out for us. It's really the only certainty. And, and in a way, doctors know this more than almost anyone else in society, right?

[00:41:25] You people die and at the end of it, you're right, we are, we are getting racial right? At the end of it, we we're gonna have done some stuff and we're gonna be wondering, am I at peace with myself? Have I done enough of what really matters for me to feel at peace with myself? Have I been bold?

[00:41:41] **Rachel:** What did I spend my one wild and precious life doing?

[00:41:45] **Robbie:** Exactly, and, and there are these books now and there's some beautiful ones, beautiful books from people who have spent a lot of time in palliative care really listening to what people say. I do it with my clients sometimes, actually I have this, this question, I ask them if they're ready for it, if they're in for it, if [00:42:00] they're really in for doing more of what really matters, what would make you sad at the end of your life, and then we end up with this list.

[00:42:06] And sometimes it's an outcome related thing, but, but mostly it's exactly what the people who have worked in palliative care for a long time say people would regret relationships, believing in what other people thought more than I should have, doing the things that everybody always does, not the things that I want to do.

[00:42:22] These kinds of ideas. And then what I do with the client is we clients, is we turn those into a set of commitments that somebody can live into on a day-to-day, week to week, month to month basis. I'd regret at the end of my life, I'm never having traveled again. You can say to yourself every, every week or every day, I am a commitment to traveling.

[00:42:42] Again, not not traveling to New Zealand this year or whatever it is. Just that what, that's part of who I am right now. And then we're back a little bit too, redefining what matters to us, like the values work we talked about before, such that. I'm not, I'm not defining my [00:43:00] success in life by what would a good doctor do?

[00:43:01] What would a good mother do? What would a good sister do? What would a good daughter do? I'm defining it by who do I believe I should be? What would I be sad about? At the end of my life, I am somebody who's a commitment to traveling again.

[00:43:13] **Rachel:** Wow. It is so interesting when you start to dig into it and, and think about it.

[00:43:18] And I think most of us probably keep ourselves really busy so we don't have to think about these really important questions.

[00:43:23] **Robbie:** Yeah. Rachel, let's, let's, let's, like that thing you said, there is not a small thing. It, it's hard to cope with the complexity of the 21st century, so we numb ourselves in lots of ways.

[00:43:34] I had to give up caffeine for a retreat I went on in the autumn and I was appalled at how sad I felt when I gave it up.

[00:43:41] **Rachel:** Mm-hmm.

[00:43:41] **Robbie:** At how much I was numbing, sadness and numbing exhaustion. With caffeine, but we know ourselves with busyness. That's the most, one of the most, what we say, tenacious tools. We have to avoid asking and answering these big questions about our lives, and I don't blame anyone who does it because it's a [00:44:00] tough world that we live in for all the abundance that we're surrounded by in a country like the uk.

[00:44:05] It's a tough, it's a tough life. It's a tough world to live in. We didn't evolve for life to be as complex as it is,

[00:44:11] **Rachel:** but this thing about choice. It is so important. Robbie, we're at the end of our time. If I was to ask you for what's the top three things, the top three tips you would give to someone who doesn't feel like they have a choice right now, what would those tips be?

[00:44:29] **Robbie:** That's a great question. So honestly, if you, if you are really in the feeling that you don't have a choice about something. I would say this, you, it would probably pay, not pay, but it would be useful to get external perspective. Some, some way you could use it with chat GPT these days. You could do it by yourself, but imagine you're someone else.

[00:44:52] This is this weird thing that humans can do really easily and surprisingly effectively to say if I was. [00:45:00] Giving advice to a friend in this situation, what would I, what other options would I suggest? And suddenly you'll come up with some 'cause of the way, the way the brain works to get some external perspective.

[00:45:11] Because it is really hard to do this on our own, especially if we are embedded in a way of seeing the world. 'cause we see the world as it is, not as we are. So that would be one piece, and you could do that in a whole bunch of ways. You can pay a coach, you can, you can just go to a, you can call a friend.

[00:45:27] Like you say, you could use AI these days. The, the aim is to get curious. So in the book, I use an example of this old optical illusion with, they call it like, I think it's actually called my wife and my mother-in-law. And then when you look at it from one direction, you see a kind of young woman looking over a shoulder and if you squint and change the way you look at it, it's a older woman looking down.

[00:45:47] That's how the whole of life is. If we change the way we look at it, it looks really different. And we don't know which is the true way of looking at it. Is it a picture of an old woman or a young woman, or both, or neither? It's really impossible. It's [00:46:00] quite a philosophical question again, but life's like that.

[00:46:02] So when we're getting that external perspective, what we're not looking for is the right answer. What we're looking for is another way to look at this. A choice that you have no matter how unpalatable, you may not choose to take it, but if you feel like you have no choice, let's find a choice, even if it's not palatable.

[00:46:19] Going back to our conversation, this at the start of the conversation. Or the 10 minute, the 10 minutes, walk outside, find something somewhere. No matter how small that you can make a choice, that you can reclaim some agency, some of that, I call it the power to choose right in the title of the book. So find that little place.

[00:46:42] That little place where, okay, I can't, I can't create a writing practice where I'm gonna write for two hours this week I could get a pad of paper out. When I pull up to work in my car, I could, I can put a notebook in my car tonight and I pull up to work tomorrow. I'm gonna set a timer on my phone for 12 minutes.

[00:46:59] 'cause that [00:47:00] weird guy on the podcast said to do that. And I'm gonna write on my pad handwritten, even though it's gonna be annoying later up later on to try and write that up. No, that's not on murder. I'm just gonna do something today. I mean, then if you like, it's powerful to create a habit of that. We just wanna remind ourselves that we, we can do something.

[00:47:17] And then what's been present in this conversation is I think the thing that I would. I would give people is probably that, that little assignment from Rich, right? So the theme would be, define more what you want. But the assignment would be, dunno 50 50. Wouldn't it be cool ifs? 'cause the first 10 are gonna be easy and the second 10 are gonna be quite hard.

[00:47:40] But by the time you're on number 46, it's gonna be wild and outlandish, but it's gonna be stuff that you do want. And I think that's gonna start to open up things. And after that there can be some reflection. Get some help. Do something no matter how small that shows you have choice. And then really ask yourself what you want and define [00:48:00] what a life well lived is to you.

[00:48:01] And a cool low pressure way to do that is 50. Wouldn't it be cool ifs? I need to go and do that assignment for myself? For sure. After this,

[00:48:09] **Rachel:** I think I'm gonna do that too. Robbie, thank you so much. It's always a great pleasure talking to you. If people wanna know more about your work, where can they go?

[00:48:16] **Robbie:** Pretty much everything is@robbieswale.com. You can find the power to choose, and there's 12 minute method books there on Amazon and also in all the other bookshop places that you might look, what Water stones or blackwells in the uk, Barnes and Noble in the us, all that kind of thing. But, but you can find everything@robbieswell.com.

[00:48:31] There's loads of writing there. You can contact me there. Links to podcasts, all kinds of stuff. And I'm, I'm not, I'm on social media a little bit less these days. I'm choosing. To be on LinkedIn a little bit less. So if people wanna get in touch. I love hearing from people. Last time I was on the show I had some really lovely messages.

[00:48:47] Thank you to those people if you're listening. But yeah, email is the best way. If you go end up in my LinkedIn messages, it could take months or years for a reply.

[00:48:57] **Rachel:** Great. So we'll put all those links there. And the other thing I'm really [00:49:00] excited to announce by May is that Robbie is going to be joining us for Frog Fest in November.

[00:49:04] So we've got. Frog post virtual coming up in June. That's all about how to increase your confidence assertiveness, and to beat imposter syndrome. And in November, Robbie is gonna be joining us to talk about meaningful productivity a little bit more. So that's gonna be really exciting. And if you're a Frog Extra Gold member, you get both of those tickets absolutely free.

[00:49:23] So head down to the link in the show notes and get your tickets for those. So Robbie, thank you so much for coming on and I look forward to speaking to you again really soon.

[00:49:32] **Robbie:** Yeah. Thanks so much Rachel. It's been a total pleasure and really looking forward to Front Fest.