Today we are joined by Gareth Dauncey.

Now Gareth, we met, well, you told me you remember Laurence from when the first

time we met.

I, but I don't think you and I talked.

So, uh, I met Laurence when Drew used to be over at Forest,

many, many, many years ago.

Yeah.

I think it was 2013, almost a decade.

I honestly don't know.

It's all just a blur.

And, um, but you were close pals then, I remember.

And I think you were just starting to think about or

just started, happy Startup.

I remember, I think Lorin showed me a little manifesto or a little, I

can't remember exactly, but there was something written down that he showed me.

Wow.

So yeah, there's a, a lot of water under the bridge since then.

We'd like to start off with a quick check-in to just, you know, share

how we are arriving and, uh, we'll get a temperature check of the mood.

Um, gareth, how are you today?

I'm pretty well.

What's your color?

Well, I'm always, I never get to the top and I never get to the bottom.

And if I'm in those three predominantly second one down, I'm really happy

with things because I think you always need somewhere to go at the extremes.

Generally feeling pretty good because ended up having to go to London

three times in the last two weeks doing stuff that I really feel like

I'm outta my comfort zone doing.

And they all went pretty well and I met loads of really decent, tidy

people on the same wavelength.

And all of a sudden now things are starting to feel more relaxed as a

consequence of doing the stuff that I've run away from for decades.

Awesome.

And, and were these things, were these events you were going to and talk to?

Oh yeah.

It one of the design festival, was it I saw?

Yeah, two of the design festival.

Another thing was meeting this thing called One Question, which

that's a kind of question and answer where you have this panel.

But a small audience and it's a conversation.

And then out of that they try to make societal change, um, because the people

in the audience are all sort of thinking that way, but most of them are sort of

connected with big companies and things.

And that was really cool.

And the London Design Festival stuff was just mad because I didn't

really know what I was expecting.

And I turned up on Sunday in the v V&A in this huge auditorium with these kind

of, you know, world class types and they were all talking metaverse and

I was talking about privacy and the individual and all this kinda stuff.

So I think I must've been there as the kind of extreme end of one thing.

But it was brilliant and Met was superb.

They were absolutely Brill and the people I met afterwards, it was really cool.

I was curious when you said about kind of going outta your comfort zone.

Um, and I'd like to maybe touch on that because it's some of the things

that, one of the things that we're always curious to poke people about

in our community and when they work with us and what that can lead to,

'cause that also, I think hopefully it's relevant to the conversation we're

gonna have about your journey and, and the things that you're doing now.

But on that, before we jump into the story, maybe share a bit for those of

the listeners who, um, haven't heard of Mood before or may not know about you.

Uh, just a brief Descript of, of the app and, um, what it's there to do.

Okay.

Um, it all came outta scratching my own itch.

So I had this, uh, big problem that I sort of slept.

I don't, I never know if it's slept, walked, or sleepwalk, let's

say sleep walked into this sort of long-term, major depression.

And when I made all these changes to sort of, um, help alleviate that 'cause it

was no help around, I was still, wasn't sure if they were making a difference.

So I realized I kind of had to see how I feel, so to speak, in color because,

you know, the brain is tricking you all the time into, in terms of what I,

telling you see in terms of what you, you think you remember and the reality.

So, that took the phone for calendar and pens.

I then ended up joining the Frazzled community after using it for a long time.

That came about 'cause of Covid.

Ruby Wax went online.

They liked it.

Ruby liked it.

So I designed it and then she said, can I write about it?

So I designed it a bit more.

And she then gave me a credit at the beginning of her last book.

And then, um, she made me accountable publicly to do it.

So then I had to find a way to do it.

And the whole thing is just simply, it's designed for me at my worst.

And therefore, because that's a kind of often a universal con, you can find

that, I'm not saying that's a special condition, that's a typical condition

that affects many, many people.

So, because I've found a way to help myself simply, It seemed that there

was no choice really, if I could find a way of, um, making a way for that

to be easy for other people to do.

So basically you just simply take the words outta the equation and

you just get a simple notification.

It comes up, it asks you a non-leading question, which is how do you feel today?

The lighter your mood, the lighter the shade.

It's a point of reflection, and I think of your mood as the sort of emotions

over a period of time, the prevailing emotions over a period of time.

And you could say, well, let's do it every day throughout the day.

And that's fine at that level.

But I used to initially used to do it several times a day, and

then it became too burdensome.

Then I used to add notes and it was still too burdensome and I lost the habit.

So what I realized, I keep coming back to the core audience of why I did it.

And unless you make it as simple as possible, and I was informed by a lot of

the sort of tiny habit stuff, which is why I keep saying one type a day, um, so when

the motivation isn't there, you still, you make the ability as easy as possible.

So you can do that without even checking into the app if you want.

So the notification is outside, you just make that entry, and then each day it

stacks each new entry on the one before.

So what you get to see is this realistic picture.

But the, the thing then is that to get perspective, you need to be able

to go through that historically, but also see it at different scales.

So sometimes, you know, if you're looking at a painting, you can

only see the breast strokes.

If it's a paint, actually, you know, but then as you zoom back, you start to

see the picture, and if you zoom right out, you start to see the big picture.

So it's just a really simple tool that allows you to form a habit that then

allows you to become self-aware, which I see as the sort of foundational

layer for managing your mental health, but in a, in a sort of better way.

And then if you ever need to ask for help, it also by taking the words away, makes

it easier to initiate that conversation.

So on a bigger scale, I'm thinking if you empower enough

individuals and privacy as well.

So it's, it's, it's only on the phone, but if you empower enough

individuals, you, you have the potential to make a societal difference.

So that's the way I think about it and it suits me.

It's really handy because I would never want to create more stuff

in the world or have big servers with loads of, you know, energy.

So the fact that everyone's got a phone anyway, and being able to piggyback on

the back of that, plus the privacy and all of that being important, it's a real,

really fits nicely together as a kind of, um, proposal in the first place.

Mm-hmm.

I was talking to, I've been talking to people about burnout.

And this idea that you never know when you are burnt out until you're burnt out.

Absolutely.

And the other thing that spanked to mind, you know, when they talk about

boiling a frog, you know, you stick a frog in warm water and you slowly turn

out the temperature, they just don't know it's getting hotter and hotter.

No, completely.

I mean, it's just, I, I know that if I had had this tool at the time, there's

no way it ended up where I ended up.

There's absolutely no way because now then see that with the hindsight of never,

ever wanting to get back to that point.

So that might not be totally true.

But the, um, so when I see a little trend form in now, I do two things.

I usually look at that trend on the weekly scale, but in the monthly view.

And more often than not, you realize it's a blip and it's not this.

Horrific month after month after month after year, after year.

That usually helps not catastrophize the future so much.

'Cause you know what it's like when you're thinking it in the moment,

it's like, oh my God, this is, this is it again, sort of thing.

But the other thing I do is I step in straight away.

So I've learned now the things which help and the things which don't.

And I just do much more of the stuff that does help if I see perhaps three

or four of the one up from the bottom.

So if I see it going that way, 'cause it never seems to go from black to white.

I, I've seen that with quite a few friends.

They go from one extreme to the other extreme.

So we're all different.

But with me it tends to be more of a, um, a few stepping stones first to get there.

And then when I basically, that's what I mean by becoming self aware.

I know myself so well now.

That I'm able to manage myself far better, but then that's also in the

context of putting more boundaries in place, saying no to things.

All this stuff I've learned, but I've.

I learned it the hard way.

Hmm.

And I wish I'd learned it.

I wish I'd been introduced to this stuff at school and then kind of learned it

in my teens and early twenties, which is what I'm trying to do with my boys now.

And you can see a big difference as a consequence of that.

Yeah, there's very much, for me, a part of this is one, the

strong thing is the awareness.

Just having at least an awareness.

'cause if you don't know, and, and I think of like even, you know, you

have the different shades of color and how you can track that, but even just

think of a petrol tank, it's like when you know who is down to your empty,

you go and fill yourself up again.

And it sounds like you have an awareness now of how to fill yourself back up.

And then there's this other aspect which is quite curious about this.

It's all relative.

There's like, there's no absolute scale of like, eh, I'm a 10 and

you are a 10 and we're all 10 and that means we're all good.

It's like, it's, it's about how the, the shift, the difference that happens

over time and, and then interpreting that for yourself, it sounds like.

But but relative to you.

So those five parts, one person will be there for another person, they're there.

And because it's a relative scale to the person, that's the thing about

making it as simple as it is, it's, you become self aware of where those

extremes are and it's on you to think where those divisions are in between.

So the barometer is just literally a barometer of yourself.

And, and I think that's, that's the key really.

Because, well, from when you fill in out questionnaires and things,

those numbers seem to be kinda universal as if there is a five, you

know, that it is five for everybody.

And it's such a ridiculous thing.

I mean, I'm not saying this from any sort of trained point of view.

I'm only talking from my own experience, which is why I can

only really talk about myself.

But, um, I do think a lot of the things I've sort of come across, I know people

won't fill out forms for doctors, um, when they're on medication, for instance,

but they will show them this picture.

I know people who will show therapists this picture, and it's very easy to

show people this picture because it's pretty, and it's beautiful, you know,

and the colors engage in, and the tonal range is the same across all the colors.

So what I tend to do sometimes is, sometimes I, I know this sounds

a bit bonkers, but sometimes I just can't look at red.

And other days, you know, red is like really what I love the most.

So I change the colors all the time when I'm looking at it.

But then I don't look at it every day either because I log it every day.

That's the important thing.

Hmm.

And then looking at it is when you, you want to or when you need to.

You know, you talked about slow trends and just for some of us, we don't think,

we don't know whether we're going down a spi a, a slope or we kind of feel like

we're not, we're not allowed to feel bad.

It's like life is so good around us.

It's like, well, you know, there's what?

There's no justifiable reason for my mood to be in such a sort of dark way.

I just wanted to just maybe just hear a bit more about your story

of your awareness and what you thought was affecting your mental

wellbeing and how you came to just un coming to terms with, with managing

it and also being aware of it.

Well the strangest thing, um, I feel like this is a confessional though,

is that, um, I've kind of felt like it my whole life that I can remember.

So even being a little kid, I would feel injustices, whether it's in

school or bullying or whatever it is.

And then as I grew through teens and into sort of early twenties,

I was very, became very conscious of, um, our place in the world and

what that's built on the back of.

So I've always had this kind of, um, guilt associated with that.

And I used to feel like I was wearing this ruck sack for donkeys use.

And that ruck sack was heavy and it was nothing I could do.

You know, I, I was instrumental in making that ruck sack as well, so,

um, I didn't really know what to do with that other than I just had this

feeling I wanted to help people.

But then the frustration that comes outta that is, um, makes the whole

thing worse because there was no tangible way for me to do that at scale.

You know, I was an architect.

I was working on decent public projects and doing, you know, smart domestic work

and things like that, but that, especially the domestic side of it, can often seem a

little bit hollow because you're helping someone who can afford to pay you to help

them, and the impact is only for them.

You know, and I wasn't into smartphone, social media or any of this kinda

stuff because I'm quite cynical about the, the sort of larger effects of it.

Um, which is why this is a massive irony.

And the fact that I'm trying to enter into a proper business because I've

got other charitable aims, which if it's a business and can make money,

then that can be diverted into actually achieving bigger things at scale.

And I'm kind of grateful really for what happened because if I hadn't, you, you

talked about this kind of slide in scale.

So I'd experienced depression off and on for my whole life, but it'd

never be for more than a week or two.

It might be really deep at that point, but you start to learn that it does come

and go, and then you start to learn that actually it comes more frequently the

more you overwhelm yourself in my case.

But when it goes on for years, you were getting up in the morning.

Well, let's say you get up in the morning, you're fighting.

Then one day I can remember sitting in the living room working out, uh,

the money for this church project.

And I can remember my stomach just dropped completely and I thought,

oh, that's not a good sign.

And then day after day that just got worse.

And this went on for months and months.

And as you get lower, you start to think, well, I'm not

sure this can get much lower.

But what you realize is you are about here and there's all these

other stages you go through.

And as I was going through them, it would, it would just resonate in different ways.

So you, you end up perhaps not wanting to get outta bed is the first thing.

Then the next thing is you don't wanna wake up.

And then the next, you know, after months of that, you still keep going.

And then you kind of wishing to be ill.

And eventually you reach a total crunch point where you've gotta, you, well, I can

only speak about myself, but you end up deciding am I staying here or not, kind

of thing, which is a terrible place to be.

And um, when that happened, that's when I just had to, you know,

ask people close to me for help.

And, uh, still didn't sort of advertise the fact or anything, 'cause being

self-employed there and you're sort of paranoid that you're not gonna be seen

as a safe pair of hands and you're not, you know, people are not gonna want you

to work for them and that kind of thing.

But the reality is, was very different to that actually.

I think what you were touching on there, and what I heard and what I've heard

in the past from your story, there's a sensitive, the way I'll, I'll interpret

it, there's a sensitivity that you have and not sensitivity in any kind of

negative sense, but there's an awareness of the things around you, the world

as it is, the way people are living.

And there's this kind of, why also is this sense of responsibility.

It's like, you know, yes.

How can I contribute to this as well?

Yeah, exactly.

I'm complicit in the stuff that I'm criticizing and I'm, I'm

feeling impotent to change it.

And that, that's why I said the thing earlier about not wanting to make that

situation worse by creating more things.

So, . I'm really not into the idea of design and things which then create need.

I'm far more about I'm gonna need, and hopefully universally.

And that's really frustrating in the past from doing, um, a

lot of domestic architecture.

Yeah.

Because it's not really making any significant difference.

Fair enough it's making a difference for the people who are inhabiting that house

or, or whatever it is, but it's not, you know, if, if you can help people in a way

that's preventative, that is a real need.

Mm-hmm.

And if you can, um, you think of the knock ons to that in terms of treating symptoms

at the end, it took me years to get better, and all I really know in hindsight

or what would've been 10 times better, there was just not a slight so far in the

first place and to recognize that fact.

So I keep talking to people at the moment who are working from

home and I was talking to a lady the other day and I just said, you

know, who's keeping an eye on you?

And, and actually I thought, my god, that phrase sort of summarizes this thing as

well for people who are home working.

Because if I'm working with you and seeing you every day, I can say,

God, you're looking good today.

Or I might say, are you okay?

Because you look, don't look your normal self?

Or how, just simply how do you feel?

Um, and if there's no one to do that, I think that it's handy to have a little

thing where you keep an eye on yourself.

But I'm really trying to push as well on the corporate level is that

that would be part of some sort of meaningful offering from your employer.

So it's not here's hundreds and hundreds of pounds to join this

club or do this or do that.

Because I think the main thing is that if an employer would really care, you need

to be given the tool yourself rather than top down and, you know, looked at and

spied on, so that you feel comfortable enough to do it properly, but that you

have this kind of management structure where you're able to check in whatever

period is appropriate so that you have been given the structure to, and the tool

to be able to initiate to ask for help.

And then that help could be the other stuff.

But unless you've got this baseline and this foundation, I don't think it

makes a lot of sense because I think a lot of the times people are running

around trying to do things to make them feel better, but they don't actually

know how bad or how good they are in the first place relative to themselves.

What you said there about who's keeping an eye on you, um, is fascinating as a

con, I think, in relation to our work.

I was thinking Laurence, about the idea of community.

And to have people that you are in touch regularly with.

And you said in, in terms of work, when we're working in an office or a building,

you know, you will see people regularly and then if people care, they will mention

something and say, you know, give you see something that you might not see because

you don't always look in the mirror.

Yeah.

Well I think one thing that we do like on this call, which we

probably never would've done a few years ago, is just have a check-in.

Even if it's just me and you or me, you and Lana, who we talk to weekly or

any community call we, we have is not assume that everyone's okay or that

everyone comes ready for what they're about to enter into, even if it's just

a coffee or a chat or a, a workshop.

And so that feels like a shift that's happened and, and I think

more and more people are comfortable.

Well, we see it in our community 'cause we encourage people to

be vulnerable, but I think I.

I, I'm hopeful that that's, that's, uh, something that's happening

more widespread, that people are given permission just to show

up with whatever feelings are coming up for them in that time.

Um, but I, I think it does take, well, it takes permission, doesn't it?

It takes modeling for people to know that that's okay and, and a

safe space to be able to do that.

But when Gareth was talking, I dunno why, but Goldman Sachs came

to mind because I thought of all this, all the stories that came out.

Well, no, it, it thought, it made me think of, when you talk about companies,

I was thinking the companies, well put it this way, the places and spaces

that need this the most, are they receptive to this, are they aware?

' 'Cause I'm, I'm thinking during lockdown when a lot of these companies had a lot

of bad press about how they were treating their employees and giving them access

to Zoom calls and yoga classes when they're working 20 hours a day and yeah,

being treated terribly by their boss.

I think it depends on the institution.

'Cause what I, what I sort of conversations I have, if someone's

taking it seriously, they, they get this straight away, but there's a lot

of kind of token stuff going on as well.

So I don't think there's a kind of universal answer to that.

I think people are stand to learn the importance of it on the big company

side because they understand the costs that come to them financially

as a consequence of employees ending up not in work and things like that.

And even if that's the, the lever that makes them take it

seriously, I still think it's, it's a good place for them to get to.

So, and also some of the charities I've been talking to, Not just Charit,

actually even private organizations are putting together programs now, which are

more meaningful to go into these spaces.

But often I'm finding that if someone is already committed to a, an expensive

piece of something, nobody really wants the simplest tool because it

could undermine what they think they'll get from the most expensive tool.

And that's why I say it depends who's responsible for these decisions within an

organization, which obviously then depends on how big the organization is and whether

it's publicly funded or privately funded.

So I have a question for you, Gareth, actually, and this, I'm

gonna frame it within the kind of the messages that we talk about at

the Happy Startup School about this idea of working from the inside out.

And in your context is like there was this own your own need.

You had a need to fix a problem for yourself.

You created something, and now if you've got that need, there's gonna

be other people who have that need.

And there's a case of actually going out to others and essentially

communicating the value of what you do.

And from my experience of this, you know, a lot of the time value is in the eye

of the customer, not necessarily what we know, you know, we think is valuable, but

until they're able to communicate it to themselves, then that's, you know, it's

gonna be a, sometimes an uphill struggle.

So in your experience when you're thinking about charities or companies,

and you're even talking about now, it's like, oh, if it's not expensive or if

not complicated, it's not valuable.

How have you broached those conversations or what experiences you've, are there

any other experiences about trying to get people to see, actually it's

simple, but it's also really valuable?

Yeah.

This, this is where I gets really interesting because I, I'm not

here to sell this thing at all.

I'm not here to prove it.

I'm not here to twist anybody's arm.

And because when I was starting to become ill and got bad, I remember

joining a, um, a Mind group and there was only six people in it.

And, uh, I used to travel 45 minutes and I didn't even give 'em my full name because

I was so sort of still not wanting, you know, the kind of the bag kind of thing.

But the best thing about that, it wasn't that I learned anything different

to what I was already learning.

It was the fact that there were five, five other people around the

table who felt exactly the same.

So for that brief moment, you didn't feel so alone.

And the loneliness that comes with depression and anxiety is

probably the worst thing about it.

You feel literally like it's sort of having space on an umbilical cord

and even if you're in a packed room.

And, um, that's what I found really is that that core audience and

community in Frazzled, which was the motivation for doing it, and other

people I knew felt like I did about things, they just get it straight away.

So you show it to someone who's been in that position, and this is what I

mean, it's a bit like when you see it in someone's eyes who's also in the

same place, you don't feel so alone.

And as our same effect, if I show it to someone and they've been somewhere

like that, they just get it instantly, and the idea of the notification

even being outside of the app.

So when chap testing it couldn't talk to me about feedback 'cause he was

so depressed at the time, but he just sent me an email saying, you'd be glad

to look, no I haven't looked at the picture yet, but I have done it every

day because I'm invested in it now.

And then when he came out the other side, he said how great it was when

we did talk because he looked back and it wasn't as bad as he thought.

So then it helped him not catastrophize the future so much

and it didn't turn him around.

Mm-hmm.

So what I, what I'm trying to say in a nutshell is that, say I tested it

with over a hundred people, but say, let's just call it a hundred, then.

Probably two thirds of those people Got it in terms of their own lives.

But the third that thought, well I don't need this.

And that's absolutely fine, still could see the value in it for

people they knew around them.

So they were all happy to then introduce me to other people, you know?

So that's what's happened over the last year.

I've just talked nonstop to people and trying to build this

solid foundation of people who find it useful, helpful, get it.

And now I'm at the point of talking to people who can amplify this massively.

And it's starting to feel like it is getting towards a tipping point.

Because what I really wanna do is get this kind of global, I know this

sounds bonkers when I say it, but I'm thinking of a kind of global

campaign called See How You Feel.

As simple as that, which is just there to initiate and de-stigmatize

conversations around mental health.

So if you could imagine like sports teams or athletes who are, um, ambassadors

for mental health and perhaps doing some sort of campaign where they chart their

journey up to a certain point, like the Olympics or any, it could be anything.

It could be local, it could be famous, it could be not famous,

it could be people posting.

But I, I'm trying to find a way at the moment to galvanize that as a

kind of thing that could not just happen on a day, but become something.

So you've taken the words out of expressing how you feel to make it

easier to express how you feel by simply taking the language away.

And I, you know, I know people that have done that with husbands and

wives where they wouldn't have had that conversation before and they've

just said, can I show you something?

And all of a sudden it is opened up what's probably been needed

to happen for years in certain.

The element I was curious about, again, for the people who, who might

be listening to this, I'm really now tuning in to people who just wanna start

something new or they wanna do something that feels impactful and purposeful.

And one of the things that we like to talk to people about is like, what is, what

is this mission question that you have?

And I think David Hyatt talks to this, what's this mission question?

Um, and in, in the sense where, where I'm articulating what you, you are

saying is like, for me, the mission question is like, if we are able to show

how we feel, what would that mean in terms of the wellbeing of a population

of, of, of people in the world?

And, and in terms of being able to have even conversations about wellbeing.

And so my question to you, 'cause one of the things that we find quite

curious is like, I, some people say, all right, what's your purpose?

And then make something happen.

It's like, did it start from the beginning or has it come out of this journey?

I, I, I don't feel at all like that in any way.

So I've, I could trace this back to 20 years ago when I was depressed on holidays

once, and the kids were little and I were, one son had nearly died being born

and all this kinda stuff, and he done major heart surgery, uh, arteries the

wrong way round, all sorts of things.

We were on holidays and I should have been happy, but I just had this thing

come over where I was so depressed, and it was nothing to do with that.

It was just this thing we talked about earlier about, um, uh, just feeling

impotent to change anything in the world and knowing that I'm complicit in misery.

And I, I remember being on holidays with my parents and wife and two little kids.

One of them wasn't even one.

And, um, just saying, I've been put here to help people and one day I'm

gonna do something and people will be able to hold it in their hand.

And I had this crazy idea at the time that if you touch something, you'd be able

to feel the pain that had gone into it.

Now, that's not the right way to approach this stuff.

But I, it's odd that I was saying that 20 years, well, 18 years ago

when phones didn't even exist.

So what's really strange is I can look back over those 20 years now and see all

these crazy things that have happened.

Mm-hmm.

There's no way I should have bought a church.

I wanted a field, and the only reason I wanted a field was to be semi

self-sufficient in terms of food and fuel.

But then the only way to get to live somewhere like that is to,

you know, church comes along.

It makes no sense whatsoever.

The next thing, I'm in charge of a graveyard.

So, you know, if Covid hadn't happened, I wouldn't have met Ruby Wax.

If I hadn't met her, she wouldn't have written about it.

So there's all these bizarre things that happen and they make

absolutely no sense whatsoever, other than in hindsight, looking back.

And the more this is going along, I've got quite, I've got two

bigger ideas than mood, but they're contingent on Mood becoming successful

and then would lead into this.

And it's to do with pairing up mental health and soil, but under an umbrella

movement like Park Run so that it can mushroom all over the world.

So you could do something like that at Scale, but that's gonna

need a bit of money behind it.

So that's where.

So, so there's no plan to any of this stuff whatsoever.

All I've done is whatever's the right thing at a certain point in

time, and then it's just happens to have turned into this straight line.

But I would never, ever set out to, being filmed on the internet,

talking publicly, um, having social media accounts, all of these things.

They're all because I felt so bad, I don't want anybody else to feel the same way.

So, mm.

I, I don't really want to do any of the other stuff.

It's just that that other stuff is necessary to make this happen.

And the messages I had off a few people, well more than a few people now, um, or

have come and talked to me afterwards, have said things which have just made the

whole thing completely worthwhile in terms of, you know, set out to do it because of

X would never choose to do it, would never say, I need a purpose, I need a business.

I mean, the purpose I've always felt is just, can I help people?

That's it.

Um, but I think, so I would never be the sort of person that would think,

oh, there's a gap in that market.

How do I fill that?

How do I do this?

I don't find that satisfying at all.

I just find living and how I spend time in the garden, family, friends, see that

kind of thing, I've realized that that's actually gotta be number one from now on.

Because if I don't look after myself, I know good to anybody.

Whereas in the past, I used to think, um, I cared about everybody.

I cared about my commitments to people, and I thought I didn't care about myself.

That was true.

But what I realized after doing the first of these talks, which is only in

July, which was um, Do Lectures thing, is in preparing for that, I realized

that actually I didn't care about all these people like I thought I did, I

would've looked after myself better.

It's as simple as that.

Mm-hmm.

But, you know, it's weird to be learning all this stuff at late forties and 50.

But I'm so glad that it all happened now because I sort of feel now like I

understand enough and it's not complicated either, that I've got a good chance of

riding out that however long I've got properly, you know, in, in a kind of,

well, you can see I'm a lot more energized and happy than I've probably ever been.

Happy is the wrong word.

Content, I should say.

Mm-hmm.

I feel much more that there's much more balance in my life than I used to be.

And, um, If anybody ever wants to talk to me about anything, I

can just give my own experience.

And often that experience is pretty similar to most other people's experience.

So it, it is often helpful.

Because, I mean, I've got a few friends in the past, I've seen it in their eyes.

You can just tell when you look at somebody, if they're in the same place

that I was or I'm from time to time, and I just say, oh, you look like how I feel.

And usually that's just going and the floodgate's open and it's

like, oh my God, we, we ought to talk tonight or tomorrow night.

Because you're only expecting a little bit of, but often it's so ready to explode.

Mm-hmm.

That you only need to give a little bit of permission by sort of opening up yourself.

That it, it happens.

I'm curious about this difference in response to, in terms of

impact, the feeling that you're getting from this versus the design

work you've done in the past.

Um, so that's one part of it.

And then an extension of that is have you had to put any boundaries

in place for yourself on the basis that a lot of the response seems to

be other people offloading to you?

Yeah.

And I say that because there's a friend of ours who ran a business trying to help

other people with their mental health, and it actually realized he didn't wanna start

a community, 'cause actually he would, he would actually struggle with that himself.

Yeah.

So there was, yeah.

Yeah.

By helping others, you end up making yourself more ill.

Absolutely.

I'm very, very conscious of that because often, you know, you empathize

and it, it's not just draining.

You actually take it on board and feel some of it yourself.

The pain.

Yeah.

So that's very tricky.

Um, so yes is the answer.

I've started to recognize that that could potentially be a problem.

I mean, the ultimate irony would be if I'm made myself Ill again doing this.

Yeah.

And recently, I mean the, the public speaking side of it.

So I, the first time I ever did it was the Do Lectures in July, and then I

had to do it in London three times in the last two weeks, or once was as an

attendee, but it was quite intimate, and the other two were proper public talks.

And I was so nervous for days and days and days that that was not great either.

So you go in there already depleted.

Mm.

So you're not even like sort of full enough to be taking all that on as well.

But it was great because what actually happened was it just validated no end

I went up there thinking, okay, and I met Charity, you know, that I really

wanna work with and they're interested.

And the conversation we had is that I'm starting to say all this

sort of stuff and they're starting to talk to me about me being the

best ambassador possible for this.

And all of that.

And I'm saying, yeah, but I'm very conscious of exactly what you are

talking about and I don't want to build a massive audience and

community and things like that.

I said, I actually want to get it to a point where it's got enough traction

of its of its own that I can actually step back, become anonymous again,

and work on the charitable side.

That's what I really want to do.

But I also understand that me talking about it and why it's happened and

how it's happened gives it integrity and it's like that initial push.

Mm-hmm.

So I guess what I'm trying to say is there's boundaries which are kind of day

to day, but I'm also thinking boundaries, you know, over longer timescales,

because I can't do this forever.

I've been doing it intensely for a year now, you know, talking

every single day to people.

And it's great because that, that foundational layer of original people

who like it, it's pretty solid, you know, because like I said earlier, the ones

that it didn't resonate with, that's fine.

That's absolutely fine.

I'm not, you have to convince anybody of anything.

The other thing I'm finding is more and more I need to put routines in place.

So I'm not somebody who's ever worked with proper routines.

And I think that's half of the reason why I would end up depressed,

because you'd just be literally doing what you feel on certain days.

And if, if you didn't feel certain things, you wouldn't be doing them.

So, but I started going the sea about two years ago, just by chance

because I've met the seal in the sea one day and I just kept going back.

I'm sure I've told car, I, I might have told you this on the quiet, I don't know.

But every time I went back, I'd see a seal every other day, and all of a

sudden I started to feel very different.

I felt humble, small, all the things I like, I felt of no consequence.

All the thinking just stopped 'cause it's cold, and that's like unplugging

the TV and all the static disappears.

Felt connected to nature.

It was just brilliant.

And I just kept doing it and doing it.

And now I try to go every day if I can.

It's not quite every day because things have got busy.

But, and then I could see that reflected in my calendar.

The more I was doing it, the more I was seeing the kind of bleed from a Monday

into the rest of the week deteriorating.

And then I realized that, and then I started to change how I treated a Monday.

So there's a, from what you were just saying here, from sort of prompted, from

Laurence's question, there's this thing about really understanding your own

boundaries, and I would say also in our language, this idea of your own needs, um,

whether that's for peace or for, you know.

I would agree with you a hundred percent because

Restoration and being able to use that as a way.

To decide whether to do something or not.

Even this idea of like, I, I don't want to start a community.

I don't want to be in the end of just everyone's beckon cork, because there's

certain needs that you have that go contrary to working in that way and being

able to be quite intentional about that.

And there is a need for impact and to see things, to, to feel like

you're helping people on a broader scale, it sounds like, anyway.

So that, that for me was, was interesting in terms of anyone listening to us who, to

this, who, who is familiar with our work.

'Cause it, what I'm trying to is a lot of things that you're talking about, kind of

an embodiment, an example of the things that we're trying to get people to do

when they're thinking about the work they

Can I add one to it as well, Carlos, which is that I can only ever be myself.

There's absolute, I can't be one inch different to me being me.

And I think that's a key as well, is that, when you're just honest and

straight and you're being yourself, what happens is that the people who

you get on with is quite solid because there's no bullshit there and there's

no, uh, trying to get something as a consequence of your behavior or anything.

I'm literally just talking about myself in an honest way

without trying to convince it.

Obviously, I want to gain traction and I want it to expand, but

that's never the ulterior motive to how I behave or post anything.

The other element to this though, I'm curious about, 'cause you know,

you, you talked about, you know, the, the discomfort of leading up

to giving a talk, but then through talking once and then twice and

through having lots of conversations, it sounds like you got more clarity.

If not about what the thing is, but how you want to talk about it

and the story you want to tell.

Totally.

Because it's, it's almost the responses from people when I speak to them almost.

They, they keep evolving how I see this thing.

So the thing is as simple as possible, but it's so interesting to hear when

you boil something down to absolute simplicity, that allows it more easily

to be interpreted in different ways.

And when I listen to people and I hear back how they use it, it, it's great.

It's really great.

And it reinforces a lot and validates a lot.

But I learn a hell of a lot as well.

Like a lot, because we're all the same, but we're all different as well.

It's such a conundrum.

Well, this is a message I think that I think is quite powerful for someone

just doing it and, and, and, and being able to express it is in terms of how

it's valuable to them, is this idea of like, you can start off with an

idea or a preconception about what it is it is and how it works and how

it's people are supposed to use it.

But until you, you know, the pedal hits the metal and you actually, the

rubber hits the roads, it's, you never know if that's going to be the best way

for people to interact with something.

Yeah.

Because I tell you, the funny thing is quite a few people, so a

lot of people listening was key.

I would say that's probably majority.

So they, you'd have a little thing about the day, nothing too heavy, but it wasn't

about an intuitive thing in the moment.

Then lots of other people have come forward now through talking

or whatever, and they might do it first thing in the morning because

that's, that's actually the thing that they've recognized they struggle with.

And that therefore is boiling it down to a more detailed way of using it

where they just tap it without thinking.

So they wake up in the morning and just tap it.

This is how I felt this morning.

And then they notice in whether, so that is the barometer and the baseline

they're trying to assess and improve on.

So, and then some people do it in conjunction, like I think it's the

missing element in a lot of these things like Headspace and Calm and

all that is that if you're doing these things, how do you measure if the

consequences that you feel better?

So I think that all of this stuff, whatever you're doing in life,

it's really good to have a baseline before you start doing things and

then you can see if things are shifting as a consequence to it.

So I'd like to finish off, um, just talking a bit more about just

this journey of building, and this process of just getting to something

that people had in their hands.

One of the things that I hear a lot is this idea of, oh, I need to protect my IP.

I need to like, get a patent.

And, you know, uh, there's like, they get bogged down in the details

and the legals of making something before they've actually made anything.

And I'd just love to hear your experience of this and what you would say to someone

who's, who's preoccupied with protecting their idea before even making something.

I think there's so many, I'm not sure what the right word would be.

Uh, let's just call it concerns on every single level that if you start

trying to, um, address each one of those, I don't think you'd ever do

anything like a rabbit in the headlights.

Now, I'm not saying I've got an answer either because the, you know, I've been

through that and the problem is that if you do anything which is simple,

easy, but really good, obviously you're gonna have people copying it.

But unless you're prepared to go to court, you could say, what is the point

in all of that IP anyway in the first place in trademarks and, you know,

design, uh, copyrights and things?

So I think, I mean, I literally live and breathe it every day

for a year, and I will continue to for the foreseeable future.

So I think it's like anything where stuff gets copied, people can copy

things, but they can't be you.

And this is the only thing that I'm have as a kind of safety Nhat in my mind is

that I don't think anyone could be me.

So I've got all these ideas about how I would evolve potentially in the future.

I've got other ideas about what it can turn into.

Getting it on a screen, the size of a house at the v and a last day

helps because that'll be recorded.

Um, Ruby Wax writing about it a year ago, or I, I can't even remember how long ago.

It helps, and I just try to take public ownership.

I also think at some point, you know, I, I will probably have to evolve

to differentiate myself further.

Mm-hmm.

But also I think, you know that because I'm motivated on a charitable

level and that doesn't mean I don't wanna earn a living from it.

I do, but I want to earn a living so that I don't have to think about that, be

able to go and do all these other things.

Because what I'm finding is, I'm meeting so many people in disparate places that

it would only take connections between them to make other things happen.

It's just they don't know each other.

So what's really cool is thinking that you might be a sort of bit of a, um,

not a node or anything, but you know, just some point that all this stuff

is connected to, but all of that other thing doesn't connect to each other.

So I love the thought of.

Like, for instance, I was talking last week, um, there was a lady, I don't know,

well I know now Space 10, they, they're like a same thing that feeds into Ikea.

And this lady Helen Jobs, she gave a talk the same afternoon as me.

Very good.

And she name checked a couple of people.

And the one lady she name checked who you must follow sort of thing

turns out was sitting next to me on the panel on Sunday at the V&A.

Her practice is called Matter.

I've got a working title for this pro other project called Matter about

soil and mental health and thinking of it like a Park Run type movement.

We start talking and hopefully we'll have a conversation.

Well, we will, we'll have a conversation at some point.

And great.

I mean that's bonkers and things like that keep happening.

My brother said to me, you must get in touch with this rugby player.

And this rugby player is talking a lot about, um, early onset dementia.

The next thing, I literally put the phone down and.

It was less than five minutes later, I had to text off another friend

mentioned the same rugby player saying, he offered me about his mental health.

Do you want me to put me in touch?

Put you in touch with him?

And these things just keep happening.

Really, really odd.

So what I'm learning more and more is not to, I've got a direction,

but not a master plan as such.

And I'm just going with things as they happen.

And that's the same with like making little social media posts and things.

I, I only got like 10 of them lined up and then I press a button.

I'm, I'm reading a book one day and I think that resonates with

exactly what I'm thinking now.

Like, between those London trips, I was completely frazzled and I had to

go in the garden and I looked down and I could see all the tomatoes.

'cause of the time of year we're just sort of on the way out.

And I thought, I thought for a long time that the garden is like a, a mirror

almost direct of how I am, 'cause I didn't touch it for two and a half years

when I had no interest in anything.

And I thought, yeah, it's time to sort the tomatoes out today.

And at the same time, that'll sort of get my head straight as well.

And it, you know, just a little poster on it.

And that's cool.

You know, it's, it's, it's nothing too, it's not premeditated.

It's just.

Not too contrived.

No, exactly.

And that's what I meant about being yourself.

And, you know, I've already designed a couple of different evolutions for

this thing based on what people have said to me, but I keep coming full

circle back to the thing of the core audience and what it was meant for.

And I think I've gotta gain traction in that first before

then turning it into other things.

But the one thing, one book I would recommend, if anybody ever wants

to think about apps, 'cause it was brilliant, um, good friend recommended

to me, and it's by Basecamp.

So if you look up, it's online, you can download it.

It's, it's excellent advice all the way through it.

So it's a Basecamp guide to apps.

And it, it tells you, you know, it's so true.

Some of the stuff it says, it doesn't matter, say a hundred people

request a certain additional feature.

You know, it encourages you to just ask that question or just say no,

say no, say no, you know, just keep questioning what is the minimum viable

product and to basically what is the core audience that that was built for?

And I keep coming back to that all the time.

I've over summarized it, but there's loads of good advice in that book.

The, is that getting real?

I think.

Did you say, is it called Getting Real?

I think it might be.

I can't remember 'cause I haven't looked at it for about eight or nine months,

but it, well probably over a year.

But when I was first thinking about this stuff, I went through it and

made notes and it turned out there was a lot of notes 'cause there

was so much good stuff in there.

The thing that stood out for me when you were talking was the

serendipity and the awareness of the opportunity that was coming to you.

And, um, I'm.

Guessing because you, you had this clarity, this kind of need to, to help

yourself and to help other people, these connections that were coming, they may

have came anyway in the past or with, may have been coming in the past, but they

just weren't relevant because you weren't so clear about what it is that you're

trying to do and what you need help with.

And so there's this element of keeping it simple, keeping it clear, going

back to who it is that you want to help, what's important to you, what's

important to them, helps to filter out, not only filter out the noise,

but really amplify the signal of, okay, I need to talk to that person.

Okay.

I need to do that thing.

It's legible.

You know, I, I know I sort of can talk a little bit too much in

terms of simple question, right?

But I can, I should, I can also just tell you it in several sentences.

You know, had my own niche scratched it, found other people with the same age.

Let's try and empower the individual to change society.

Boom.

Uh, on that, there's one question.

I think you talked about it before, but I just wanted to just acknowledge

it because, uh, because we were talking about the app and Sarah

was asking, the idea of privacy.

How are you protecting privacy for customers?

There's a Mozilla article which goes through the privacy on apps.

And basically everything that you could, you wouldn't want is what happens.

So, and the worst ones for not being private, believe it or not, are prayer

apps and then mental health apps.

So the ones which you would expect to be the most private are not.

And when I described earlier about not even giving my name at this group, when

I joined Frazzled, I didn't give my name.

I would just take my surname off and it would just be Gareth, that's how

much privacy was important to me.

So, anyone downloads this app, we don't even know who's downloaded it.

It's anonymized.

It only lives on their phone.

So their data is their own.

And that was key for me that, and that's why, you know, people

obviously make money by selling data and all that kind of stuff, and I

don't want to do anything like that.

So the reason I started off thinking I could do this for free, the clear problem

with that is that I would've made myself ill finding the money to make it happen.

And then the next thing then is, okay, if you've got all these other ambitions

and you want it to be completely private, how do you, how do you maintain it?

How do you evolve it?

So therefore it couldn't be free, which is why the one for one thing has come

in and we are just working out that now how we can at scale, hand a load over

to a charity or whoever is appropriate.

So, um, I think privacy is absolute key.

It like literally is one of the foundational layers of it.

It, it's meant for an individual.

It's meant to empower an individual and for them to only share if

they feel they want to share.

And that's why I talked earlier about within a company structure, I think

it's so important that that's within a management structure where the individual

has somewhere to go rather than this idea of being locked down at what's going on.

Because A, you won't tell the truth, or B, you might not even do it.

I mean, I've talked to big, big organizations that just find that

they want people to self-report like that, but within a structure where

the top can see what's being reported.

And you either get, um, misinformation or just no buy-in whatsoever.

So that thing of privacy, I think, especially if you are

feeling like, bad, you know?

Yeah.

Well I think that's the key message is like, you know, how much if you're

feeling vulnerable, if you're feeling not, yeah, like you said, bad.

Yeah.

The last thing you wanna do is be worrying that someone else might

be seeing what you're experiencing when you don't want them to.

And, and like you could, you know, that could lead to that

information being abused as well, in terms of how you treat somebody,

Before we close off, um, is there anything that you are doing in the near future

that you'd like to point people to?

Is there any talks or is there something that you'd like people to do for you?

If anybody tries it and likes it And find it helpful, just if they don't

mind posting about it and sharing it, 'cause that's what I'm trying to do

is just gather some sort of momentum where you might see something crop

up over here and then all of a sudden over there and then perhaps over here.

And it's a bit like, um, this is a funny thing.

It's a bit like when I described this story, there's no straight line to it.

And when I, it's like painting a wall.

I find it very difficult to paint a wall methodically.

End up doing a patch, a patch, a patch.

And eventually all those patches join up, don't they?

And the wall is painted.

And if anybody wants to have a chat about it, just gimme a shout.

I'm on LinkedIn, Gareth Dauncey.

I love Gareth's story anyway.

I think it's just a powerful one because I think it's, like Carla said, it reminds

us of the power of tapping into someone, something in within us really that maybe

doesn't make sense until you look at all the component parts and rewinding 20

years and you go, oh, of course this is what I should be doing with my life now.

It didn't make sense maybe a few years ago.

Uh, the other aspect to it is just the simplicity of the app, which

I love and I think is a reminder.

Maybe it's inspired by Basecamp, but this idea of sometimes the most profound things

are actually the simplest and it's really, really, really hard to keep things simple.

it really is.

'cause everybody wanted different things as I was testing it.

So I designed it before Basecamp because I had to show it to Ruby.

That was where it came from.

But then obviously it evolved through working with my friend Marco.

And um, the, uh, the base camp thing just reinforced all that and there's

a real touchstone going the testing, they did that for four or five months.

Mm-hmm.

Everybody wanted it to be their thing.

So, you know, whatever they have.

Basically learning to, learning to say no

Yeah.

Is the hardest thing, isn't it?

It really was.

But what really helped a lot was, um, the, uh, when I started going in the sea,

David Hyatt is a friend and he, he comes in the sea every time I go, we go in

together as, you know, nearly every day.

So he's probably had earache for the last 18 months of me, so to say, you know, this

is what's happening today, sort of thing.

So that, so he's excellent in terms of, um, You know, stick

pre coaching.

Nice.

Wow.

So yes.

Great have that.

Yeah, thing I was gonna ask was just if anybody can think of a good

outlet for this, whether it's an organization or a charity, and feel

that they would be happy to make an introduction, then just give me a shout.

For those listening, um, on the recording, would you like to share

your email address or would you like them to go through moodapp.io?

Um, if they're on LinkedIn, just message me on that or ask to connect or anything.

And there's an email on the website, which is moodapp.ioatgmail.com.

Awesome.

Thank you very much, Gareth.

I think cheers.

The, the thing that's, uh, ringing in my ears at the moment is, uh, one of

our summer camps, a guy called Floris kt, was, did a workshop on turning

your weaknesses into superpowers, or into a business, I should say.

Um, the, I'm linking this because for a lot of people, sort of, you

know, tackling your mental wellbeing, tackling depression, having depression

is a weakness, then using that and understanding that and that sensitivity

and that need to help, turning that into a business that actually means

that will help other people, feels to me like a, a resonant journey and,

and a way of thinking about that.

So thank you very much for connecting those dots.

Thank you very much for

Sweet.

Yeah.

Sharing your story and also giving, uh, I think a real world experience of

what it means to just work out loud, move forward with an idea, with a clear

intention, but allowing yourself to be open to the serendipity that brings

it to you or your, arises when you are just allowing as well as moving forward.

It's just taken a long time to learn that.

Awesome.

Well, we hope your lessons will accelerate the learnings of people listening to this.