MARK Thank you everybody, thank you for joining us on Mind Monkeys Welcome Bananas Optional, where we name, explain and reframe the most common hesitations that get in the way of the successes we deserve. I'm Mark Franklin, I'm your guide as we embark on raw, honest, irreverent and important conversations designed to acknowledge and normalise the fears that we each face at work and at play, in order to help you, our wonderful listener, reframe the perspectives around the stories that you've been creating for yourself, the stories that have been feeding those monkeys. Now today I am joined by coach, guide, mentor, the incredible Sarah Southey. Sarah is founder and co-director of Southey Way that she runs with her co-director and daughter Jenny. Their health and lifestyle skills company is built around one core belief, your life, your health, your way. Sarah's a mother, entrepreneur, personal trainer and life and health skills coach using her own transformation journey past corporate career in HR training and development and over a decade coaching experience running TSW - The Southey Way. She helps purpose-led individuals cut through the noise and find their way back to themselves, thriving and enjoying life again. Sarah, how are you doing? SARA Oh good, I sound quite cool. MARK You do sound cool, you are quite cool. That's only half of it, I could have kept going but I'm going to let you talk about the sort of magic and the things that you do. So, let's get going. Mind monkeys, hesitations, I mean you're kind of in that wonderful space where you're helping people both with their mindset and their physical well-being as well, so there's kind of like that double whammy. SARA Yeah, triple whammy. MARK Triple whammy, tell me about the third, okay, tell me about the triple. SARA Physical, mental and emotional. MARK Lovely, very good, very good. Okay, so in that triple space in terms of the sort of the mind monkeys, the hesitations that people kind of bring to you, are there any that you would say the most common, the ones that kind of crop up most frequently that you help people with? SARA The biggest thing that stops people making any of the changes and taking the step to come forwards and look for help is a fear of the unknown. What you're going to have to do to change your life for the better, whatever that looks like for you. There is so much out there, especially in the fitness world, that says you've got to do it a certain way and if you're not that person, does that fit for you? That stops people in their tracks every time. MARK I know, again from the way you work, because it's incredibly bespoke, there's sort of no, again, no one single approach that you use, you very much kind of build your support around that individual. Tell me more about that. SARA So, I have a great belief that everybody has exactly what they need inside of themselves, we're just not taught how to use it, we're not taught to trust in ourselves, we're not taught to just go, no, this is what's right for me. And I think when you meet people exactly where they are, whatever fears they've got, whatever is going on in their life, then you are able to walk alongside them and help them so that it works for them. And I think if I was going to put one thing on it, it's that faith in yourself that can change how you work and where you move to and what your life looks like. And that's what we do, is we help them do that. MARK And that must take sort of, again, an element of confidence, self-belief, sort of bravery on your own part to have that kind of determination to do the right thing for the person in front of you. SARA It's something, I would say it's my superpower. Going through the journey that I had, which was learning, unlearning, exploring and relearning how life worked for me, I realised that one thing that has been consistent throughout the whole of my life has been the ability to say the right thing to the person that I'm talking to, to support the person that is actually talking with me and listening. And it is my superpower. I'm useless at planning. I'm useless at doing anything with any kind of structure. What I'm really, really, really good at is hearing what is going on in the head, translating it back to them in a way that they get. I don't know where it comes from, but it just is. MARK But I mean, there's a lovely line in the book we're going to refer to. This was last year, wasn't it? SARA Yeah, that was last year's project. MARK Last year's project. How's it going? How is the book going? SARA It's so, do you know what, it's a kind of, it's a roadmap, it's a reference, it's a potluck, it's a, you know, you can pick it up and look at it. And I use it; it's based on everything that I've done over the last 10 years of The Southey Way. That's, you know, I knew I had a book in me. It took 10 years to figure out where that road was taking me. And that's what I put in the book. And people get it. It's taught, it's told in a language that, you know, is fun. And it's, you know, opening up different pathways. People learn about me. I'm less scary, which is quite, quite good. MARK You're scary? SARA I've been described as a Rottweiler, a yapping Jack Russell in my past, yes. I think when you've got a certain amount of confidence in yourself and a certain amount of presence, and you know your stuff and, you know, it comes with its own aura. And if you are in a place where you are not feeling confident yourself, it can be quite intimidating, which is why I'm kind of warts and all. You can ask me anything and I'll tell you, because that's what life is about. It's not about standing up here and going, I am the expert and I will teach you all these things because I'm not the expert and I won't teach you all the things. It's your shit, you look after it. But it does create that aura, does have a barrier to it sometimes. And that's what people can, you know, that's why I get the names, you know, I'm a bit scary, I'm a bit this, I'm a bit that, but I'm really not. I'm like an armadillo, crunchy on the outside and soft on the inside. MARK But there was a lovely line, so when you were sort of describing yourself there at start in terms, there's just a comment coming from Jenny Hagen saying you are not scary and you're not scary at all. But I think the very first thing you said, yeah, the very first thing you said was when that other person is not in that sort of best place and they're not feeling their confidence, it's their take on who you are. And that's really important, is it? When we are, again, creating this sort of roadmap to our best life within the book, there'll be moments where we hesitate because we're pulling against the life that other people are expecting us to follow. You know, there's all that kind of, you know, schema and culture and all these things going on that we should fit in with and to be true to yourself. And again, there's another line which I'll come back to in the book, which I think is really powerful about, you know, being selfish is the most selfless act you can go through. But that kind of bravery to commit to your best self and acknowledge that anyone else who's sort of judging you and thinking, well, they're a bit scary, they're a bit too loud, they're a bit too much, that's a then problem. SARA Absolutely, it is a them problem, but we've been trained to make it our problem. MARK Yeah, yeah. So within the kind of roadmap then, so how do you help people drop that attachment to other people's opinions of them? SARA Do you know, there's a huge power when you look at mental, physical and emotional in a one-er, that each one of those elements can teach you so much about the others. And if you make the step to start looking at this stuff, then, and you look at it as a whole, then you can learn so much about what's deep down inside of you by exploring all three at once. And in the environment of the shed, the Shed Of Strength, SOS for short, it's such a safe environment to explore where you're at. I have found people that just want to come for personal training to get better physically, and that's great. And I've got people that come just purely to get out of their own heads, and that's great. Quite often, we'll start doing something physical, and it will promote the movement in their brains, which will allow the emotion to flow. It will allow them to step outside of the norm, the expectations, the shoulds and the shouldn'ts. And when that happens, that's a moment that you can really step into and ground yourself in and go, what could I do differently? How could this change? And by taking those tiny little steps each and every day, it changes how you look at life. It changes exactly if you've got a purpose, a driver, a passion, how you get from A to B. Because if you look at a big journey, I mean, in the book, it says A to Z of life, A is when you're born, Z is when you die. We kind of don't choose either of those things. But the journey from A to Z, we get to choose. But most of us are guided by people choosing it for us or allowing people to say, right, this is what you've got to do. You've got to complete your studies. You've got to go to university. You've got to find a life partner. You've got to have kids. You've got to have a proper job. You know, all of these things, all of these expectations, don't have to do any of them if you chose. Most people that I work with either are running their own business or in their position of responsibility, and they're putting everybody else first. And so, to bring it straight back to them, and that's why I say it's a dedicated hour for them, but it's not just the hour. So, at The Southerly Way, we have a 24-7 policy where, because when the shit hits the fan, it's not going to be nine to five. So, if they need somebody, an external, independent person that they trust to sound check something, to knock an idea around, they message me. And that's great because that means you can handle it right there in the moment. I think a lot of life's deviating off your chosen path is because you don't handle it right there and then. MARK Interesting. Yeah. And thinking about, because again, the A to Z, again, as you kind of show in the book, the book kind of, it's not in two halves, I'm greatly and clumsily kind of generalising, but you've got the kind of A to now, so everything that you've been through to where you are, and then now to Z, so where you're going. That A to now, as you say, is compounded by lots of other people's agendas and expectations, which is potentially huge. And as you say, we all suffer from that pull of, or suffer is the wrong word, we endure that pull of expectation. How does that moment manifest typically when someone almost opens their eyes for the first time to the fact that they're not living the life that they could be, that they deserve? SARA How does it manifest? Generally speaking, I mean, it's really hard to say because we're all individuals, and how life works is very individual. So, we will experience it through our own filters. I would say most of the time, it's a moment in people's lives where they go, shit, I did not sign up for this. And then that starts the process. And it can come from so many different things, from trauma, from a relative that gets ill, or a job that your boss is bullying you, or whatever that is. It is the pain point, and I hesitate to use the word pain point, but everybody experiences pain. And to move forwards, it seems to be that you have to have that pain point to start making the steps towards where you want to go. When I started The Subway, it really upset me that for anybody to take responsibility for themselves physically, they had to be in pain. Like go for a medical and get told that your blood pressure's up, go, you know, whatever it is, they had to have a pain thing. And all the marketing thing says, you've got to be in, push their pain points. And I'm like, I'm not about causing pain to anyone. And I spent a year trying to find a way to help people go along their journey and without causing any pain, without using the pain point. But it does seem to be that everybody that makes a change in their life is coming from a point of pain, whatever that is for them. It's different. You know, mine was losing my identity when I had kids. That was when I realised, but I'd been hugely depressed and anxious for a while before then, but I didn't realise I thought I was just coping, right? You know, just keep on carrying on, just a little bit weak, a little bit emotional, a little bit this, a little bit that. And it wasn't until we moved back from America, we lived in America for five years. I had the two kids out there. I'd given up my career, my corporate career to move out to America with my husband for a year. We were there five years, came back with two kids. And it was a very different culture, and it was a very different experience. And I came back feeling like I was failing at life. Clearly depressed, clearly postnatal depression, all sorts of things going on. But as far as I was concerned, I just thought I was crap at life. You know, the kids were all right, but I was not doing enough. I was not doing any things. And that was when I started looking for somebody to help me go on this, you know, support me, not tell me what to do, because I don't know whether you've gathered this or not, quite feisty, quite like, I'm going to do it my way is the reason why the company's called The Southey Way, because I do it my way. And I help other people do it their way, right? So, I couldn't find anybody to help me do it my way. There was lots of people telling me how I should be doing it at life. I mean, I did it on my own and it was really hard work. It was really hard work. And it was about eight years of really hard work and really lonely work. And then there was a point where I got to the stage where I was like, I'm good now. I'm on the right track now. And one of my business coaches literally said, well, why aren't you doing this? And I was a garden designer at the time, randomly, because plants don't talk back. And within 24 hours of this business coach saying, well, why aren't you doing this? I'd parked, well, I'd given my garden design business to a lovely friend of mine and set up The Southey Way. And that was 10 years ago. We just celebrated our 10th birthday. MARK Happy birthday. Congratulations. SARA It was brilliant. We had a kid's party. MARK Awesome. Awesome. Healthy jelly and ice cream or just full on cake? SARA Oh, full on beige food, cake, pineapple and cheese, you know, on sticks. Three-legged races, apple bobbing, you name it, we did it. It was superb. Because one of our core values is adulting is completely overrated and you should only do it when you have to. So why would we throw a business party? We just threw a kid's party. It was so much fun. MARK Fabulous. And just a couple of things, just listening to your story and also thinking about the work you do and where you meet these people now. And I think this is one of the things certainly interests me as a sort of coach when one of the challenges we have, as you say, is you're often meeting people at the point at which something is broken. You know, they've had that kind of crack and it's they're looking for support almost. I'll be careful how I say this, but it's meant with good intent that they're looking for support as a reaction to something going wrong. Whereas as coaches, we're sort of trying to more proactively encourage people to make better choices and dial down some of that noise that they're sort of enduring from the world around them. And how do you, how do you meet that balance in terms of obviously you've got the person in front of you and you're helping them in that moment where they are, but also just from, you know, I suppose it's kind of how you talk about this other way, how you talk about who you are and what you do. How do you make it known to people that they don't have to wait? Does that make sense? SARA Yeah, it's a tricky one, isn't it? I mean, we've got… For a start, I don't ever believe a person is broken. I think things can happen in your life. Like life is lifing. It's always going to life. You can't be happy 100% of the time. What you can do is embrace what's happening, move through it and out the other side and choose. And I do 100% believe that that is the way forwards to living a healthy, happy, thriving life is accepting the crap that happens, doing what you can about it, moving through it and out the other side. I also think that so much of life is about judgement and about being told what to do. And it is so important for us to put out there that we provide a place where no judgement happens. If, you know, for example, if it's a health journey that you are going on and you're currently McDonald's three times a day, every single day, like we'll meet you there. We're not going to say, oh, that's bad because it's your life choices. It's things that you're choosing to do. Who am I to say that's good or bad? It's not. It's what you're doing now. Do you want to do different? How is that going to look? Because guilt, I know we get like therapy, all that kind of stuff. I'm not a therapist. I'm not a counsellor. And quite frankly, I'm not bound by any of the rules. I am just who I am. And I do believe guilt is one of the most, in fact, the biggest waste of time to feel. And as soon as somebody says they feel guilty about something, there's something else there because that's conditioning. That's something that, you know, other people have taught them is not acceptable in life. So if you meet people exactly where they are, you don't judge I mean, I've been told things that, I mean, obviously what goes on in the shed stays in the shed and that goes for the virtual shed as well. People tell us things in the shed that they wouldn't tell anybody else. They probably wouldn't even tell their therapist, to be fair. But because I am who I am and Jenny is who she is, we work on an ethos that it's just you're just doing this right now. Whatever is going to move forwards is what's going to happen. You choose. And that's what makes the difference is having somebody go, yeah, well, it is what it is, right? Very scientific. MARK I guess my sort of follow up to all of that, which, I mean, again, like you say, the judgement or the zero judgement piece is just essential. It's so, so important. And again, I think what you're talking about there in terms of guilt and shame being other people's stories reflected on you and making you feel those emotions and be more harsh on yourself that you absolutely need or deserve to be. Again, it's that other people's version. So, when you're meeting somebody where they are and you're, I'm not gonna put words into your mouth. So, you're meeting them where they are, acknowledging who they are, what's going on… And then you're sort of, are you offering them a choice? Are you saying this or are you just literally following? They've come to you and they've said, you know, just as an example, I want to get in shape. And that's a really clumsy crap example, but we'll just start with some real simple, I want to get in shape. Most people start there. Yeah, exactly. How do you come back to the ethos of the book, help them from now to Z? What would that conversation look like? SARA The conversation kind of looks like we explore where now is. That's really important because most people don't want to uproot their whole life. In fact, I would never encourage people to uproot their whole life because, you know, our old brains are super complex. And as soon as different happens, red flags happen all over our heads, right? And then you've got a lot of walls to get through. So long as you meet people where their life is right now, and that includes physically, as in what's happening in their body, mentally, what is affecting their mental health, their family, their friends, their work, their life, their community, their world environment. Where do they stand with that? And then emotionally, who's pulling on it? Who do they feel matters? And from that, we go, right, well, if you were to choose the one, two or three things that you want to move forward with, which would they be? And that's where we start to formulate the plan. Some people have a driver in life, a real purpose. They want to make a change. They want to write a book. They want to run a marathon. They want to not cry when their mother-in-law is horrible to them, whatever it is. That's where we start building the plan from. And we go, okay, so what do they think the change is? And then we break it down even smaller. Because whatever people think the changes that they have to make is always, you know, it's probably letter S, shall we say. Well, actually, we need to strip it right back and go, what's the next letter? Make it as small as possible so that the brain doesn't get freaked out that the whole of life is changing. You're not going to die because you've decided to eat broccoli instead of eight beans, whatever it is. You know, it's just enough out of the comfort zone to move you forwards. And then once you're moving forwards, the momentum starts, right? But the key thing when you're looking at people's lives, is to create change they control, they have decided, and that they can sustain. If they don't feel in control, it ain't going to happen. They could have three weeks of being absolutely smashing it out of the park, fall off the waggon for a day and go, well, sod it, it's not worth doing anymore. Or I failed and beat themselves up a bit. But the smaller the step, the easier it is to keep that going. MARK I'd also, again, I wonder if you find this, but certainly something I've kind of noticed in my work, the more gentle the step, the easier it is for that individual to then spot the step that follows. You mentioned the word momentum, but also as they start to sort of grow in confidence and lean into the belief that the life they deserve is possible. So, their bravery kind of increases and therefore, wherever they started on that journey, that very first thing that they ask you for help with suddenly grows over time. But as you rightly say, it grows consciously from them owning those decisions and making those choices on the way. Is that fair? SARA Yeah. And I don't think it's really fascinating that whenever we make a change in our life, when it becomes consistent and sustainable, we forget about the miraculous nature of that change and how it has changed our lives. So, one of the things that I am a big fan of is reviewing where you've come from so that you can see the change because the brain will go, oh, this is, you know, this is just what we do now and take it as read. And then it gets common old garden and like it's not a big deal. But I'm a huge fan of celebrating and making a big deal about every single change and being able to look back about where you started. So, one of the things that we do is we have a personal private WhatsApp group for each and every one of our superstars. That is their start point. At any point, we can scroll back to where they started and go, you know, when they're beating themselves up, because we do, you know, you could have 10 really great reviews and one crap one and which one do we fixate on, right? So, when you're having a bad day and you're beating yourself up because you don't get anything right and you failed again, I can scroll them back and go, look how far you've come. See, that's factual. That's your life. You're amazing. MARK That body of evidence, I mean, it's priceless, isn't it? SARA It absolutely is, absolutely is. And then you go, look, let's celebrate this and what's the next bit? And it's exciting then, like, where's the next journey going to go? What path are we going to go on? The motorway? Are we going to go on the side roads? Are we going to take a little detour and go see a castle, you know, whatever it is. That turns life then into an adventure, into a journey, into something that you can explore, and the brain gets less freaked out about that than all the things you shouldn't do. MARK Yeah. Yeah. And again, you're completely right, particularly from a scientific point of view, the brain is terrified of sudden change. If you're kind of making these incremental steps that it's getting used to, that's how the habits stick, isn't it? Because the brain hasn't noticed that there's a new pattern, it's just, that's just become the norm. SARA Well, it hasn't noticed, it notices, but it's not so threatening that it has to put a stop to it. MARK Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Nice. Nice. And also, that body of evidence backs up any kind of, again, moment of sort of hesitation and fear and the wobble, it kind of reasserts that the journey you've been on to get where you currently are has a huge positive impact. SARA Yeah. And it's, it's really interesting if you look at the impact of exercise on the mental health. So, when you physically move, you mentally move. And it can be something as basic as like, literally, you know, some of us are not gym bunnies. Some of us do not want to eat broccoli and rice for the rest of our lives. Some of us have a life that we want to live that involves other things, but we all get stuck physically, mentally, emotionally, we all get stuck. I don't know if you've experienced the kitchen counter debate that, you know, the more cluttered your kitchen counter is, the more cluttered your brain will be. As soon as you clean your kitchen counter, you've created space in your brain. All of a sudden, you can do something. MARK Yeah. SARA Yeah. Right. That happens in the gym as well. That happens in workout environments. When you move your body, you move your brain. And when something is challenging in the gym, for instance, you say, I cannot do five minutes. And then you do five minutes on a bike, and yes, it's really hard, but you did it. And that pushes, opens you up to like, if I could do that, what else could I do? If I could do this workout, which was really hard, it was like a nine out of 10 workout, I felt physically horrible and I ached and I fell on the floor and I was, you know, exhausted. And it took me 10 minutes to recover from it. And I had to battle my brain telling me I couldn't do it all the way through. And then I did it. What does that tell your brain? It tells you that no matter how hard you try and do something, if you want it enough, you can push through and out the other side and you get to celebrate that. And then how else can that manifest in your life? Exactly what happened to me in my fitness journey is through my mental health changes, the more I trained physically, the more my brain went, well, I mean, if you can do that, if you can do 50 burpees, run a kilometre and then do another 50 burpees, which is by the way, absolutely revolting to do. And I would, you know, I'm not, I'm not racing to do it again, quite frankly. If you could do that and push through, what else, what else is possible? MARK Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I completely, completely got my own sort of story and something I haven't really shared before, actually. But the biggest pivot for me or the biggest kind of element that helped me decide to step away from a corporate career was a fitness journey. And I was, you know, I'd set myself this goal of getting in the best shape I possibly could by the time I turned 50. And within the, and I told my actual personal trainer, this is his fault that I went out and set up my own business. Because as you said, there's little incremental gains of suddenly increasing the weight of the dumbbell two kilos this week from last week or doing that extra rep. All those little things, as you've just beautifully shared, make you start to think what else is possible. SARA Yeah. MARK And you've got that, you've got that record, particularly if you're noting down your kind of, your fitness routine and your, all that kind of stuff. You've got, again, that body of evidence that says, well, this is what you did today. Look at that. No one can take that away from you. It's right there. And the power of being able to see that, and again, you know, in your WhatsApp groups and things, the power to be able to reflect back on that and say, well, look, okay, today's a bit of a wobbly day. We all have them. Don't forget, now, you know, now to Z. SARA Do you remember when? Do you remember when this is what you said that you couldn't do, and now you're doing it without even thinking about it? That is magic right there. But I also think that, and I do have to say this bit, the personal training thing, the looking after yourself physically has got such a reputation, and there are people out there that love going to the gym, love doing like four workouts a week, you know, push pull day, you know, whatever. And then there's the rest of us who are just like, I don't want to die early. I'd like to be able to chase the dog, the kids, whatever. I'd like to be able to run up a flight of steps and be able to breathe at the top of it. I'd like to be able to do my hobby better. Yeah. And using the physical side of things, the physical health can then supplement your life because you are better able to live it. You know, if you're running a business, if you're feeling knackered all the time, that's a health thing. That's a physical thing that you can actually do something about. Not because you love going to the gym or running or whatever it is for you. It's because it'll enable you to live your life better. So, I think it's really important when you're talking about fitness is it's not just about how it looks. I think that is where we come from. It's about how you feel and how it best enables you to live your life. So that's where we come when we're looking personal training, we create workouts that that work for that individual. I mean, it drives Jenny to distraction, but I will call exercises by a name that that particular client understands. Yeah. So, there's an exercise called fire hydrants. It's a hip opener. But they couldn't remember it. I couldn't remember it. So, we ended up calling them dog cockers. Because that's what the exercise is. It's like on your hands and knees, cocking one leg like you were peeing on a fire hydrant. So why is it called a fire hydrant? When actually you can remember what the exercise is that you're meant to be doing by calling it something that your brain actually gets. MARK Yeah. SARA Right. Because most people don't need to know that it's a single leg RDL. Right. They just need to know you stand on one leg, and you hinge over. So, we call them tippies. So we meet people at whatever level. I've got clients who like running marathons. I've got clients who are climbing mountains. I've got clients who are horse riders, pole dancers. I've got one that does civil reenactments that we create workouts for. So they're doing their hobby. They're living their life and doing the physical thing to enable them to live their life better. And that's how we like combine the mental, physical and emotional to make a one that is your life, that you're living your way. MARK And I sense that, I mean, that is the power of sort of the trilogy, isn't it? That combination. Because you are every single one of those three ingredients, you are combining in a way and introducing in a way that is right for that person in front of you. So, you say you're reducing the friction, reducing the resilience, you're making it about, you're making each one of those three about what they need in that moment to help them move forward, as opposed to keeping them separate and be like, oh, yeah, this is one path, this is another path. And they do, they all overlap and they align and they support each other. And as I said, from my story, I had a very clear, no, this is just a fitness thing. It wasn't at all. I didn't realise that. I didn't go into that thinking that, but all those other elements that kind of played into my story revealed themselves, possibly would have revealed themselves more quickly had I come to you, because you would have. SARA You just don't know, do you? You don't know. You can't push anything. You can't, you can't force any kind of change on anyone. And the biggest problem that we have in The Circular Way, quite frankly, is showing how this is different. So I really thank you for being able to have me on, to have the time to explain it, because it's not a one size fit all. It's not a downloader programme. It's not a, you know, because we're not those people. Nothing in our business, in fact, we drew a line, nothing in our business is AI. So that you know that what you see with Jenny and I is what you get. The old WYSIWYG. What you see is what you get. And you can know 100% good, bad and ugly is us. And that is the way we run our business. MARK I love it. I love it. SARA Our arsons. MARK But, but again, you know, it, I mean, it's a, I can use the word powerful, which just again feels clumsy, but it, and it's not unique, but it's, it's a really important acknowledgement that these three things, the physical, the emotional, the mental, they are so intertwined. They do not exist in isolation of each other. And it's, I think it's very rare that somebody holds their hand up and says, look, let's play with all three together in a way that's right for you. Gently we'll leave. I guess you lean more into one than the other at times. SARA Um, again, it's, it's all about how they approach us. Yeah. So, um, you know, I do have clients that literally like Sarah, don't bother with all the other shit. Just give me the training programme. Right. Okay. We'll give you the training programme. Then we get chatting. Then they start like, just because there's only so many times you can count to 10. So, we chat about all sorts of stuff. We have a right old laugh, quite frankly. Um, and you just start talking about life and it, it comes out, it happens. And even the, the coaching clients that I have, the one-to-one like life, life skills coaching that will then manifest in, well, you know, we need to, I need to get out more. I'm like, okay, so how's that going to look? Um, so the journey, oh my God, the journey, um, that word literally evolves and it changes and as we evolve and change. And I think, you know, that is a beautiful gift to each and every one of us when we embrace that and, and get excited about where it's going to go. MARK And again, that is the beauty and the power of tiny little steps. So, you know, you're not projecting. Yeah. The journey unfolds. SARA You can have kind of like a vague, you know, like I want to climb this mountain. I want to, you know, live till I'm 60 or 80 or a hundred or 120, whatever it is. Um, and then how are we going to get there? What does it look like? What are you going to do when you get there? Because that's what often happens. People set a goal, set a target, um, and then they hit it. And then now what? Now what? Yeah. And then they all fall off the waggon and it's like; I've run a marathon and now I haven't run for the last six months. Okay. Why? What happens next? Where's it going to go? And I think the beauty in how we work is we're on it as well. We're evolving. We're going through it. You know, Jenny has joined the business last year. Um, Jenny is my daughter, as well as being co-director of the Southey Way. She has seen me on this journey. She has grown up with me going on this journey. She has, um, gone on this journey herself, just purely from being around me going through the journey. She lives and breathes the Southey Way principles. She lives and breathes this ethos that we have everything inside us that we need. We just need to decide where we're going to take it and what steps are going to take us forwards. And so, you know, she's 22, I'm 55. We are at two very different levels in our life. And yet we're both on the same, you know, journey in the Southey Way. Because we're both working together. And her clients that she draws towards her, um, very definitely, they like Jenny. And we did this party, this, uh, 10 year birthday party. And we had, uh, team Sarah and team Jenny. And both our clients went, but the beauty was because our core values are so aligned and so the same. Every single one of those people at that party got on. Throughout their diverse range, they all got on. Because when you live authentically you, you attract people who resonate with that. And, and we had this crazy ass party that people hadn't met. And they were tying themselves together in three legged races, for goodness sake. Who knew? MARK And doing dog cockers together and all sorts of things. Dog cockers, yes. SARA Dog cockers, yeah. MARK My final point, because let's start wrapping things up. But again, just thinking about sort of, you know, how Jenny's come into the business and that kind of unity of purpose. I mean, to be blunt, she's seen you decide, actually, that's not what I was signed up for, in your own words earlier, I want to sign up for this. And she has watched, I'm sure, with admiration as you've kind of created this. And realised that she could have that life too. And now together, you're helping more people in both your teams follow the same path. SARA It is, it is fascinating, actually. And it's one of the drivers that we've got is the, the, because Jenny didn't have to go through that moment of pain that I mentioned earlier, where people, she literally just grew up with it. And it was one of those things where the younger we can teach people that they've got it inside them, the younger we can allow them to make those decisions and allow them to make the mistakes and allow them to move through life under their own steam, that the better able they are to adapt and flow to life-lifing and still go their own way and get what they want. How amazing would that be? MARK Which, which comes back to that proactive rather than reactive, how can we make the world a better place? Know and be more aware of people like yourself who can, who can help others create that best life. So how can they do that? Let's, let's, you know, what's the best way to get in touch with yourself, with Jenny? You know, where can we find you if we want to know more? SARA We're, we're literally all over social media. So, you know, if you put in Sotheby's, you're going to get one of us. There's Sotheby's there, SOS Your Life. The book is on all reputable booksellers and those that make a lot of money out of you by you know, so you can choose your ethics, where you get the book from. But also come September, we'll be running the Shed Socials again, which is just a place to come out and hang out and just chat with no agenda. I mean, how amazing is that? How often do we do that? Yeah. And if anybody wants to run anything by me, just need to drop me a message. I love people. People are fascinating. And there's nothing that's TMI because people are fascinating. Yeah. And if it's affecting your ability to thrive, then let's sort it out. MARK Outstanding. Thank you so much, Sarah. Thank you for your time today. Thank you for, again, sharing your story and the amazing work you do. Thoroughly appreciate it. And I thoroughly appreciate being on. Thank you for having me. Pleasure. Pleasure. Thank you, everyone, for tuning in. We've had some lovely comments I've seen. We'll go through those back on LinkedIn. And again, this will be available on YouTube and Spotify, hopefully later today. And the next episode of Mind Monkeys is on a Monday. It's Monday, the 22nd of June, 2pm. We'll be streaming live on LinkedIn. And that will be with Brooke Bownes. So, thank you again, Sarah. Thank you, everyone, for tuning in. And see you very soon. Keep those mind monkeys at bay. Take care, everyone. Bye.