Friday Q&A on Having a Positive Mindset with Jon Prince

0:02Jon Prince: Zoe and Georgia will be here in just a moment with Made by Mummers. Once you've finished this episode, dive in to some of the other parenting podcasts from the team behind the show you're about to hear. Over on Secret Mum Club, Safina is not holding back from oversharing on the ups and downs of motherhood. And on You Don't Know You're Born, Danny Miller, Brooke Vincent and Wingman are putting their acting skills to the test as they tackle their latest parenting dilemma. Just search for Secret Mum Club and You Don't Know You're Born on your podcast app and hit follow so new episodes land straight in your feed.

0:36Jon Prince: Hello and welcome to Made by Mamas the podcast. I'm Zoe Hardman. And I'm Georgia Dayton. And this is your parenting safe space where no conversation is off limits. With five kids between G and I, we have seen a lot.

0:49Georgia Dayton: We really have. Each week we'll be joined by some famous faces and experts and we'll chat about the brands and products that have saved us along the way. In short, we're the parenting podcast for you.

1:00Jon Prince: Before we get started, hit subscribe or follow so you're the first to know when each episode lands. And they're on Tuesdays and Fridays. And it really helps if you leave a rating and a review. You can also find us on Instagram. We're on at Made by Mummers. But for now, George, should we get into it? Hello and welcome to Friday's episode of the podcast. It's going to be a really great chat today. both Georgia and I can feel it, author of Start Before You're Ready, Life and Mindset Coach, please welcome John Prince.

1:27Georgia Dayton: Yay! With the best hair in the business.

1:30Jon Prince: Thank you very much. Very good.

1:32Georgia Dayton: It is good hair. Yeah. Not windy outside today. John, just before we get into all the questions, do you want to just give us a little insight into your background and how you became and why you became a Life and Mindset Coach?

1:44Zoe Hardman: Yeah, absolutely. I've had a very different kind of career. I've jumped around from one thing to the other but before I was a life and mindset coach I was actually a professional poker player for nine years. So I was at university I first went to study sport and exercise science. I was obsessed with kind of health, nutrition and well-being and while we were there we just started playing poker in the evenings when we had spare time and I got into it and I absolutely loved it and we used to watch it on TV and we'd sit there playing with just for pennies it wasn't anything crazy and we'd see the guys playing on tv with the shades on and it was all in Las Vegas and it's really exciting and it was just seemed like an amazing dream and then after I finished university and I went traveling I played poker while I was in Australia in the evening so I worked a job to fund my traveling I'd like gone traveling run out of money and then worked a job for the government during the day and then in the evenings I played poker and I ended up being able to turn$400 into a nine-year career essentially without having to deposit any other money again after that so I'd come back from traveling and fell into poker and it was amazing I got to travel the world I got to go to Las Vegas and play in the World Series of Poker main event which is it's like a$10 ,000 buy-in where you have amateurs playing against the best in the world and it's just phenomenal so exciting so amazing but with my poker career there was a lot of time where I was just sat at home behind a computer on my own and it was tough and I was left with my own thoughts and myself which can be a battle at times and the uncertainty of poker of not knowing if you're going to win or if you're going to lose it led me down the path of personal development so I really got into meditation and mindfulness I read all the books and I started practicing everything and I experienced some some shifts in my own life and then it led me to go down a different path I just kind of thought well if if I keep playing poker and I win money what's that kind of going to give me and that's really interesting you know it's like you're just going to live you're going to do that and then you're going to die and I thought there's got to be something more to this and then when I'd experienced some some shifts in my own life and actually start to find happiness and purpose I really wanted to share that with other people so I went back to university and studied psychology I did a master's in psychology I didn't know what kind of direction I was going to go in and then um eventually ended up moving into coaching and then helping people with their mindset so just just

4:25Jon Prince: sort of rewind slightly and let's talk about that topic of earning money and happiness or fulfillment that lots of people and I feel like it's a conversation that we're having quite a lot around you know the treadmill and how much money we have to earn to sustain our lifestyles and actually is that impacting our overall happiness or taking away from it or because it looks shiny doesn't it and it looks great and I'm sure you felt that with the poker every time you won you've got that buzz and you're like well look at all the money I've got but actually was it doing the

4:54Zoe Hardman: reverse it was it just becomes like a chase so you know you win some money or you win a tournament and you think this is amazing I'm going to be really happy but there's life in between so you have those peak moments that are fantastic and they are really high but then you've got the day in day out are you actually enjoying what you're doing and when I first started playing poker I really loved it it's really exciting but then the love kind of fell out of it for me and then I found myself really loving you know personal development mindset understanding what drives us and our behaviors and that was the thing I was passionate about but with money it was just there's a certain amount that you have and then beyond that it doesn't really bring you happiness you know yeah it was a famous quote I'm not I'm going to probably butcher it but Jim Kerry said I wish everybody could experience the fame and the fortune that they desire because it's not going to bring them the happiness that they want and for me it's like you obviously need to have bringing money to survive and to actually feel safe and secure it's a it's an important need but the question to ask is if you didn't if money wasn't a thing and you didn't have to have it what would you really be doing and then it starts to open up possibilities that you might not have

6:07Georgia Dayton: seen laying in a spa that would be where george and i that's where we're at today um just before we get into the questions i just wanted to chat to you about the coaching like what sort of people do you coach and also like what are they coming to you with

6:25Zoe Hardman: like what sort of things are they looking for yeah so I coach people from a completely all different backgrounds I'll have business owners I'll have poker players I'll have athletes I'll have teachers and coaches all sorts of different people and they come to me because they're wanting to know which direction to go in or they're wanting to start something new it might be they want to set up their own podcast or they want to set up their own business or they're in a relationship and they're not sure if it's the right thing for them and they want to figure out what is true for me and they want some support in uncovering that so my role as a coach is so quite a lot of people think you go to a coach and they tell you what to do it's not really how it works with me it's more like I shine a flashlight so that they can see what's in front of them it's just been dark and then we shine a flashlight and they can see oh that's what I'm

7:14Jon Prince: really thinking or that's what I really want and and are they not seeing it because they're stuck

7:20Zoe Hardman: they're not seeing it because something's in the way so i'll give you a tangible example of this there was um a client i was working with a little while ago and they wanted to know whether they should go to a wedding that they were thinking about going to and it was going to involve a lot of travel and um they were just really stuck should i go should i not go and i just said well if you take away should you go what how does it look to you and then they sat with that and they start to actually see yeah when I feel like it's like I have to go when I take that away I actually do want to go but we feel trapped behind this is the life I should do or this is what I should do or this is what other people expected me and it kind of blurs what you really want what's true for

8:01Jon Prince: you it's really really interesting point that isn't it because as parents there are certain things that we have to do as a parent so weekends before we had kids you know they were like chosen moments that we would really want to do now we have these things that we 100 % the non-negotiables then when it comes down to our time it's less about what we want to do and it's for me it's more about what are my needs in that moment so I may want to go out and see my friends and go out and you know sit and have a couple of drinks and whatever go but actually that will I know that that won't serve me that actually what I need to do is to sit down and be quiet and have a couple of hours on the sofa if I can take that moment so I think it's it's it's very confusing isn't it because there's lots of things that come at us and sometimes it can get so foggy we actually can't make any decisions just sort of you're floating and stuck aren't you yeah I think getting clear

8:49Zoe Hardman: on what your wants are and what your needs are knowing what they are and knowing if you're meeting them or not is really important and one of the things is how we meet our needs so we might have a need for recognition or a need for connection and we meet those in ways that sometimes don't serve us and then there are different ways we can meet them but when we're not meeting our needs it's really difficult and I'm a dad myself I've got a four-year-old and a six-year-old and life does change dramatically I went from playing poker with no responsibilities and nothing now I've got a business a wife a family and it's very very different and time is very different as well and you have your needs and when you meet your needs and and you feel like connected with that then you've got a different energy to bring to the family when they're not being met you know for me it might be I just want to go out and play golf and I've gone and played and then the rest of the weekend I'm just can't wait to be with a family because I had that need met but if I feel like that's on the back burner and I don't have it then I'm there and I'm

9:47Jon Prince: wondering when it's gonna get met that's also such and that's and that um that can lead to frustration and resentment in a marriage or in a partnership yeah yeah if our needs aren't being

9:59Georgia Dayton: met how pissed off do we get yeah so I was gonna say if you listen to the beginning of the podcast like seven eight years ago we were very much like they're so selfish you know they go off and play golf and we don't get to do anything and then actually like as we've had these conversations we're so much more like understanding of we both need our time and that's all right that's fine

10:21Zoe Hardman: and that that key word understanding is so important i think it's the thing that people miss because we need to understand each other to know where we're at and in a relationship you both have different needs and also different values so my wife and I have completely different needs and we have a lot of the same shared values which allow us to work together but she values different things to me so if I know what her values are and I can help her meet them then she's going to be happy but if I if I have different values and I think well that's not important to me so I'm not gonna I'm not gonna focus on that then I can't support her so just understanding and having those conversations like what do you need or what's important to you that's how you really uncover a value as you ask what is important to me what's a priority for me and then you get clear on it so like needs are those fundamental you need emotional support you need to feel safe you need money coming in you need to look after your health and then values are those areas of life where you know it can be in health i value health and then going to the gym and i value being appreciated or I value being respected and then how do you do that with each other you can find little things just to help each other with that and it can make a big difference yeah do you know what all of this

11:36Georgia Dayton: sounds like when you say it sounds simple to you know like know what your what your needs and values are but actually until you take a step back and actually think about it you could probably go years and years and years without even really knowing 100 and we don't have that time typically

11:51Zoe Hardman: and especially as a parent you're going from thing to thing to thing like life before being a parent you have you know you just have an evening yeah you wake up in the morning and you think what am I going to do before my day and then as a parent you wake up and it's mummy or daddy like straight away you're in so creating those moments of space to take some time out and just even reflect whether it's journaling or sitting with a friend or a coach or somebody else to actually explore let's just talk about what's important to me and that changes throughout time you know as your circumstances changes and what's important to you changes you know I it was important for me to go out partying every weekend when I was playing poker now I haven't I quit drinking last January because what is in six eight months ago nine months ago a year and nine months ago wow yeah because I didn't want the hangovers and my career is important to me now and and being more present and more conscious is more important so I had to make I had to sacrifice that to to have other things in life so it's but that changes as you go so checking in with yourself but having time to ask yourself those those questions what's important to me what's a priority for me and even the most simple question but probably one of the most important is what do I want so we've started

13:02Jon Prince: bringing in this news it's only been recent but we're having this conversation about what we need at the end of the day when our work day finishes and then our parenting day begins again. And there was a lot of stuff that was coming up to me and my husband and we were sort of butting heads and he was at complete capacity and I felt like I was having to do everything in the house. And so I've started now when I come in and we've got our lovely nanny Taylor who just couldn't do it without her. Normally I'd rush in to see the kids and I text her and I say, I'm coming home, I need 20 minutes, I go upstairs and have a shower.

13:30Jon Prince: And I just completely, and I know it sounds probably selfish and I should probably want to, and I do want to run in and give them the biggest cuddle. But I actually don't think I can then do the next three, three and a half hours of the day on like, because I'm so right there with what I can manage. But I need those 20 minutes to go, right, I can do this. Have a shower, wash the day off and then come down. And I feel like I'm so much of a better mother because of that choice. Yeah, 100%. I'm here for it, guys.

13:56Georgia Dayton: Yeah, no, no, no. My husband used to do that and we used to roll our eyes at him. Do you remember? Oh my God, I'm him. Yeah, you're him. Oh, we used to roll our eyes at him. We did. We used to say that was really selfish. We did. During the COVID times, I'd be at home all day with the kids. Oh, yeah, sorry, George. And he used to play football. And so he was still going to training and stuff. And he'd come home and walk straight up the stairs. Oh, my God. It still annoys me now. Don't you have more of an understanding about that now? No, I do. No, no, no, I do. I totally get it now. And I get as well, like, with the whole commute thing.

14:28Georgia Dayton: Like, I used to go to work in the office and then have an hour commute, listen to a podcast switch off get a drink at the station all of that I don't have that anymore and I realized how much of a big difference that makes not having that time that like a little bit

14:44Zoe Hardman: of downtime yeah I think that's something we really miss having gone from working in an office and having that separation having that travel time to you know since COVID and working from home and I do 90 plus percent of my work on zoom online working with people you know around the world which is great but then you're at home and everything else is at home so having some separation in some forms but knowing you play different roles and it's am I bringing this role with me into the next role so it's because we don't see it because it's happening in our head we can just go from one task to the next yeah and then we're still thinking about it yes and you're with one person but you're thinking about somebody else or something else and so having a way of even a ritual to just say I'm going to close this off and finish it off here and then move into this role you can just show up and then you're just there with that person and you're excited to see them and I think it's just it's looking at it as if you're like you're in one role or one character and then you go home and then you're into that next character and something I've found useful is to think about like open and close loops so you know when you you might finish up in in the work area for example or one particular area and then there's a task you just it still hasn't been completed or it's still on your mind and then you go straight into the next thing it's in the back of your brain and you our brain wants to close loops so it wants to finish tasks and when you leave it unfinished it's still thinking about it on some level that's why i'll leave a text message unread if i know i want to come back to it later yes but when it's still open and you're still processing it it's there so finding ways to close the loops even if you say right I'm going to call that client back tomorrow at 2 p.m and I'm going to do this tomorrow morning at 9 a.m and then you close it off mentally before you walk into the next place yeah it can be really helpful we'll be right back after this short break welcome back to this episode of made by

16:44Jon Prince: mamas now where were we john let's jump into these questions um it's a big one to start us off it's from eve how to let yourself be truly happy wow that's a that's a big question we're going i love

16:55Zoe Hardman: that yeah i love that question how to let yourself so it's really finding out what makes you happy and this isn't like something you have to know straight away it's really a journey of discovery it's like finding out who you are you know everyone wants to know that i know who i am and i know what i'm about but again it changes and evolves as you get to know yourself so it's really asking yourself the question what does make me happy and there'll be certain things you love doing and certain things you don't love doing and also asking yourself the question of who am I when I'm happy and you can think about times in your life when you've been the happiest and start to connect the dots of what were you doing who were you with who were you surrounding yourself with because when we're around people that we don't feel like we can be ourselves or we don't feel like we can be as open it's harder to be happy and unfortunately many people have that experience in families and relationships where they don't feel like they can be themselves or open up but getting around people that do appreciate you and give you that space to open up can help you discover what makes you happy kosamui circa 2001 happiest days of my life full moon parties i have yeah i've been to a couple of full moons myself it's amazing yeah i don't know how much it's changed now but yeah it was very

18:07Georgia Dayton: worth the revisit do you know that's really interesting though and and it's interesting that you say about notice the people that you feel comfortable around yes like because i think there's there's this thing isn't there like you because of social media you probably look you know look at various different people's lives and you think oh that's making them happy so that will make me happy and then you forget about actually what makes you happy and that not everybody is the same that's such an important yeah yeah um okay so how to shake anxiety around kids health Oh, God.

18:41Jon Prince: Wow. Yeah. It's like health anxiety, isn't it, about your children constantly worrying that something's going to happen to them. So worrying that they're going to get sick or get poorly.

18:50Zoe Hardman: Yeah. So the place I like to start with anxiety is to realise anxiety itself is a symptom. So because we can look at anxiety and say, right, that's making me anxious and I'm anxious about it. But it's just a symptom of something that's going on. And typically our thoughts are what lead to us feeling anxious. so we're thinking that something bad might happen or maybe something in the past happened with a relative or with yourself and so you're expecting that to happen again in the future so just starting to look at what am I thinking about my child or about what might happen that's causing to be me to be anxious just getting present to that it starts to take a lot of the the weight out of the anxiety because when something does make me anxious then it really is something that almost can't be changed or something you've got to live with but when you start questioning questioning your thoughts about it you say what am I thinking here that might be contributing to that what experiences have I had that might lead me to be thinking that way you start to unpick it a little bit and you start to see it in a different light and the other part of that is just being accepting with yourself and compassionate with yourself as you're feeling that way that it's okay to to feel that way but it doesn't have to stay that way you can start to shift things can you change your mindset because i think i don't know i feel like

20:08Georgia Dayton: i've always been quite a positive person you are yeah and sometimes like i don't know someone will be like how or like how do you think like that and i think i don't know that that's the way my brain thinks okay whereas my son for instance i'm trying to help him so he'll say i don't know he's got cross country and he'll be like oh my god but what if i come last and i'm like every time you think like that don't like if you you're having a negative thought just think of a positive one and then hopefully your brain will start to change that but does that actually does that work i don't know georgia you should become a coach absolutely just change just change your mindset that's it

20:48Zoe Hardman: that's my answer 100 you can change your mindset it's what i'm about it's what i'm so passionate about that's why i do what i do because our mindset determines our life it's our attitude It's the way we see things and how we see things can change. So the simplest way to look at it is a couple of ways you can change your mindset is one is what you focus on. So if I focus on what's missing from my life, if I focus on the past, if I focus on what I don't have, I'm not going to feel great. I'm going to feel stressed. I'm going to feel worried. But if I start to focus on what I do have and what is working, then I'm going to feel different.

21:24Zoe Hardman: I'm going to see different possibilities. So when I was playing poker, this was one of the things I had. like I didn't I wasn't very confident and I struggled I was very negative and the voice inside my head drove a lot of what I did and one day I was having a conversation with a mentor we're saying clap him in his in his kitchen and I said look at this hammer I got unlucky and look at this and look at this and I said why am I getting unlucky and he said how do you feel when you focus on all that and I said I feel pretty negative pretty down he said do you think I lose as much as you and I said no because you you're doing really well you've got a really nice car and you're very successful.

21:59Zoe Hardman: He said, I do, I just don't talk about it as much and I don't focus on it. And he said, I'm going to do you a favour. I'm not going to listen to you telling me about what's not working anymore. And it felt harsh at the time because I was like, wow, no, I really am unlucky. And he said, just try and focus on the little wins. So over the next couple of weeks, I just focused on, you know, the opportunities that I was getting, the hands that I was winning. And then I started to see more of them and more of them and more of them. and things started to turn around and I felt so much better and I felt so much more positive and what I realized is you know from a poker perspective it's not the cards we're dealt it's how we play them and you can get dealt anything and people get dealt some really horrible hands but you can choose how you're going to play them and that's what the mindset really is it's really realizing you have a choice about who you are and how you show up in life first because i thought i just couldn't be confident or i couldn't like myself or feel good about myself because i thought i couldn't and the moment i said i can think about myself however i want what if i want to think positively like do you know what you're all right you're okay and you you just literally look at i can't do it it's like the walls come down and you look yeah it's like you've closed it off but i can do it opportunities start opening up negativity is

23:16Jon Prince: insidious though isn't it yeah it's so easy it's almost that you know the negative thought is always the loudest one in our heads people could send you 20 comments on instagram but yeah yeah brilliant you were someone says you were a load of shit and that's all that keeps playing in your mind and i find that that really chatty mind really hard to get under control and it's so so easy isn't it to say oh how how was the weekend oh it was a bit shit because this happened and then this happened and then the dog did a pill and then you're like well actually what about all the beautiful moments that happened and actually saying those first really promotes that way of

23:48Georgia Dayton: looking at life I think yeah 100 % yeah I feel like you see families who have that negative mindset and you can feel it instantly oh no but you know like people who always you know you say oh how was your holiday and they go yeah it was all right but you know flight was delayed and you're like oh okay like you know and you and you know it like it's almost like it's contagious and then everyone goes oh yeah oh shit as well yeah weather is rubbish that's what i mean you know like it's one of those what it's wild it's like it is contagious whereas if you have someone who's really positive and like you know you feel that from them even if you're not feeling it yeah we

24:29Zoe Hardman: have like these mirror neurons where we mirror the people around us because you know if i go like that you might find in a conversation then you start doing that as well because we want to connect and we want to socialize but sometimes when the energy is negative or it's not what you want you can fall into that and get pulled into that and it's frustrating but my wife and i we went on uh on a holiday years ago it was before our daughter was born it was like the last holiday and um there was a couple there that we had last holiday just us and um there's a couple there and uh every time we saw them we're like how are things and they're like oh yeah well this was late and that wasn't very nice and this and in the end we were like we didn't really want to go and say hello to them because it's like bringing it down but I think it's just recognizing we all have that critical voice inside our head and if it takes up too much space and too much room it can run things and just distinguishing the voice in your head from who you truly are gives you a lot of freedom so you can realize you're the observer of that that voice rather than it yeah I love this

25:30Jon Prince: one what is the best way to let go of worry what other people think about you okay yeah so i've had a lot of experience with this one myself and uh it's realizing that first off you can care about

25:45Zoe Hardman: other people without caring what they think about you so it doesn't mean that you don't care if you don't have to listen to their advice or take on what they they think but a really powerful way to get this is when somebody says something that presses a button in you or it really kind of triggers you they're pressing on something that you believe is true about yourself and it's that's why it's really questioning it so you know for me if I'm out there as a coach and then somebody says oh you're really not a great coach it would really trigger me and affect me if I believed it to be true myself but if I was really grounded in who I am and I'm like I trust that I am a great coach but I'm willing to take a look at that I wonder what's going on now it doesn't become personal it doesn't become something that takes over me so it's just really getting clear on when we do care what other people think it's just pointing us towards something inside of ourselves that we're thinking or believing about ourselves that we can let go of right yeah one of my best mates

26:45Jon Prince: said to me at the weekend you are a dopamine hunter and I was like no I'm not and she was like you are you're a classic dopamine hunter and I was like is that a positive thing in your mind she was like of course like you're out there to find joy you're always finding joy but then I've spent the last week thinking about how much of a dopamine hunter I am and it's funny how much it's in for positive as well as thinking is that a nice quality to have like am I able to sit in the choir or am I always chasing the joy like what's that doing to my body what's that doing to my cortisol like I've really started to pick it apart so I do I do find it interesting when people say that stuff because actually I think it's it's a form of like self-investigation as well which nobody like only your bestest and nearest people could probably say to you

27:32Zoe Hardman: yeah and that's the thing it does feel good though you know when we're accepted or approved of by other people it feels good and you have that connection as well but it's being okay with that tension or that discomfort when you do something that other people don't like yeah um and you know drinking's one like if you go out and there's a social expectation that you're going to drink and you're there and you say look i'm not drinking tonight like oh come on you have a drink and you feel like you're the odd one out or that you're different or people are going to disapprove and it's just being okay with yourself and i think letting go of what people think about you the first step is just to acknowledge that you do like i care what people think about me and i can acknowledge that so i'm not trying to pretend like i don't and then i can get present with that and say, all right, I do care, but I'm still going to do things that are authentic to me that, again, are in line with my values, what's important to me, rather than going along with what other people's values are just to make them happy.

28:27Georgia Dayton: Right. Yeah, interesting. We'll be right back after this short break.

28:35Jon Prince: Welcome back to this episode of Made by Mamas. Now, where were we?

28:38Georgia Dayton: Oh, here we go. How do I deal with friends who are draining? We touched on that.

28:43Zoe Hardman: Get rid of them. well because there's lots of different ways to approach it there's there's a lot of people that will say just cut them all off but there is this is the nuance of it and of advice because there is a time where you might have friends where you do genuinely need to cut them off because the environment you're in isn't going to serve you and it's not going to allow you to grow but then there's also times where you can just slowly distance yourself from them and take time out you know rather than make an effort to keep contacting them all the time just take a step back and if they want to meet up you can occasionally so it's really about kind of finding out what stage of your journey are you at how much how grounded are you in yourself are you feeling good about yourself and if you're not then maybe a new environment can be a really good option for

29:26Georgia Dayton: that yeah it's funny my husband always says we've got you know I think as you get older you pick up some friends that you might not necessarily like be lifelong friends with but you know for that yeah like people at the school gates or like i don't know someone at the ballet class or someone in the gym class or whatever and they're you know they're your friend for that moment but it doesn't necessarily mean like you'll be lifelong friends and he says like he was like do you know what this year i'm not spending any any time with energy zappers i love him and he listed the people who he says drain his energy and I was like whoa like who is left but he has been ruthless right he's been he's changed his life like he's got a different life now he works longer hours you know has to spend years in the city like it's different he used to have more time so he would spend a lot of time with like the people who boost his energy and the energy zappers and now he's like not doing it anymore like i am literally only spending time with the people that boost my energy and he like he's really it's really changed him as well i think like yeah i mean good for james yeah it's great for him but it does show you how much of an impact it can have on your life 100 i love that

30:45Zoe Hardman: he's asking like who energizes me and who drains me and it's a great question to ask because certain things do and we're all different for an introvert you get energized spending time on your own so you might want to socialize but you need way more time on your own an extrovert they get their energy from being around other people so you know and they've got a spare minute you know they'll be busy all day and they're like oh my god i've got the evening nothing on let me fill it with meeting more people but for an introvert you just need to go away and hide away and recharge yeah so it's really with this as well is we each have an intuition we have a knowing one around who you do connect with you know instantly you can feel it you can feel the energy the connection and we're not meant to connect with everybody and that's okay so it's just finding your people and just trusting that you know what that is so rather than doubting should I like this person or should

31:35Jon Prince: I not no trust that feeling that you've got inside you and also I think perhaps realizing that you can't give the same energy to all of your friends like like a similar situation you know you're just saying with James there I think sometimes there's the danger and you know if you're such a great friend you want to give everybody all of that all the time and actually some people firstly they just they don't need they don't like then you know they might not be as great a friend as your best mate for example so you've got to be able to to work to be aware of the levels I think of friendship because sometimes I find myself plying all this and it's like somebody that I've met like you said at the gym yeah exactly what am I doing yeah I've

32:12Zoe Hardman: got 20 other mates who really need me yeah do you know what I mean yeah and I think your close friends and the friends you're connected with will understand when you need that space or when you're just not going to reply because you've got so much on and you just don't have the capacity and then you do you know and you then they're the people you connect back with and it's like

32:28Jon Prince: there's no time there's no time fast yeah yeah the life topper uppers uh someone's put here i'm a sensitive mum and i need time to wake up before my child jumps on our bed any tips for how to handle with that how to handle calmer mornings yeah so i mean it sounds

32:46Zoe Hardman: like the answer is there in the question of trying to create opportunities for you to just get up that little bit earlier to have time and space on your own and just honoring that and being really present with that that that's something that's important because again it can be one of those needs if you wake up and you go straight into it then you're going to feel like you're missing something but even if it's just getting up half an hour earlier, if that's possible and either having a cup of tea or meditating, just sitting there, being on your own and just seeing the importance of it. Again, it comes back to values.

33:18Zoe Hardman: When we acknowledge that is actually important to me. So I want to make sure that that happens. And when you meet your values, when you're doing what's important to you, you're the energy in you, the way you feel about yourself. You get to give that to your kids. You get to give it to everybody else. but when that's missing it's like you don't quite have that fullness of yourself to give

33:38Georgia Dayton: and the thing is some people thrive in chaos don't they some people love that like up straight out busy morning and some people need the like little like calm bit into it like i'm i'm that like i can't wake up and have a chaos and then go to work and function i can't so like this morning normally if we were coming into the studio i'd be getting up getting the kids ready like taking them to to school, rushing, getting the train. This morning I was like, do you know what? Gonna get up at 5.45, I'm gonna have my half an hour sitting downstairs by myself, having a cup of tea before I get in the shower.

34:12Georgia Dayton: It's just so, it makes you feel completely different.

34:16Jon Prince: 5.45, so early. Like if I got up at 5.45 today, I mean I get up at 6.15, but I love how you always present in that calm space. I don't think I've ever seen you. She's completely unflappable. she's very much no you do you do it so well george i just know though do you know what i mean i just

34:34Georgia Dayton: kind of know that i need that if i don't have that i'm not like i am like i am flapping and i am stressed and my husband knows he's like i cause the only child syndrome he's like oh you need a bit of your own time it's hard not to you know especially with busy

34:51Jon Prince: busy parent life it's hard not to open your eyes and feel instantly anxious yeah so yeah

34:56Georgia Dayton: tips for a friend but it takes ages to work that out that's the thing like my kids are now nine and six and i'd know that now but i haven't known that always and again like so much of this comes back

35:07Zoe Hardman: to your knowing like trusting yourself there's a feeling you'll just feel off if it's not working and you need to change something and part of this as a parent especially is it's not always going to be like that so you might plan to wake up and then all of a sudden your kid wakes up half an hour early than normal the morning you plan to have that happen so it's not about like getting rid of the whole plan it's like it didn't work this morning let me try again tomorrow yeah because that's the mindset we can get into is like it has to be like this every day and i have to have that half an hour some days you're just not going to get it and it's frustrating sometimes you don't want to get out of bed yeah because you're so tired and that's your body just saying you need more sleep but the other thing i'll say with that is it does start the night before so thinking about if you do need that time in the morning, the night before, can I get to bed a little bit earlier?

35:53Zoe Hardman: Can I not go on my phone for the last hour before bed and just read a book and give myself the best chance to get off to sleep? Because then I'm going to feel way more likely to wake up earlier the next day.

36:05Jon Prince: Yeah, definitely don't watch The Good American Family right before you go to sleep. Do you know what I'm talking about? The last thing I saw last night was a little girl with a knife walking into her parents' room. I spent the whole night going,

36:19Georgia Dayton: Does what you, like, can what you watch affect your mindset? Because I, like, this is really ignorant, but this is the way I have to be. I cannot watch anything scary. I can't. Even if my best friend was in a film and it was a horror film, I wouldn't watch it. Like, I couldn't. I can't. It would affect me too. But I don't watch the news because I just think about it all day. Like, can it actually, like, is there a direct correlation? 100%. I know what you're going to say.

36:43Zoe Hardman: I think you could be moving into doing life coaching if you haven't done it before.

36:47Georgia Dayton: because don't watch anything over 12.

36:51Zoe Hardman: What you're putting in your mind it's like planting seeds so if you think of the subconscious in the mind it's like soil and what you put in it goes in there and it rolls around and it starts to shape who you are that's why if you're thinking positive thoughts more often or you're spending time with positive people you're shaping yourself and so what you watch and what you consume is part of that as well you know the best way I've experienced is I used to watch quite a lot of horror films just because I found them exciting. But my wife doesn't watch them. So since we've been together, I just don't watch them.

37:25Zoe Hardman: And I haven't watched them for the last nine, ten years. And I used to have this thing where I'd open the fridge and I'd expect when I close it for someone to be there. Maybe two, that's how I live my life. It's fucking his face. You're scared in the dark and all things like that. But because I haven't watched it, that's kind of gone away. And I don't have that. So I'm literally taking away a lot of those things that would frighten me. because of what I've been planning in my mind so it is thinking about what you consume and and before you go to bed one thing I would recommend that people do is put something into your mind that you would like to experience so one thing for me with the book right so I've written a book now I'm I'm becoming an author in this journey it's the first book and there was a point in time where I thought there's no way like book is bucket list thing to write a book and you know there was the who am I to write and if I'm going to write about something everyone else has written a book on this anyway so why should I had all of that stuff and then I create the intention though I am an author and I started to put it into into myself like I'm an author and I write and before I went to bed I would just visualize myself writing a book and and having a book and everything and that would be going in my bed in my head and it kind of marinades overnight in your mind and then you wake up next day and you go about your your business and you're planting again those seeds so if you think about before you go to bed what's something you would love to create in your life it could be a relationship or the next level of a career or something that you would really want or even a way that you'd like to have more energy or whatever and you put it into your mind and you visualize it as you drop off to sleep it's going in there for that period of time and it's kind of swimming around and then you go about your day and our minds are so powerful the subconscious We don't give it enough credit, but it's working in the background and it's looking for those opportunities for you.

39:12Zoe Hardman: And it's filling in the blanks and it popping up those creative ideas you get in the shower from what you're starting to feed it, really.

39:19Georgia Dayton: John, that's brilliant. I love that. I know. And just before we go, start before you're ready. Where did that come from? Because it's an intriguing title.

39:29Zoe Hardman: I'll let you in on a secret that that wasn't the original title. so when I first it's published by Hay House which is like a dream come true for me because all my the people that have inspired me were published by them and when I first like pitched them on the idea I had it was start badly because when we start something new the expectation that comes in our head is well I need to do it perfect I've got to be great I've got to have all the answers and it just shuts down any creativity or possibility of doing it so I'm like we'll start badly just go and mess up fail try it out see what works and because we have this like fear of like failing or making mistakes or doing things bad right we want it to be good but they were like we love the idea but you seem a bit too positive for start badly and it's not quite right and then we played around and it's start before you're ready seem to fit so much better because it's about you how can you feel ready for those next steps of your journey yeah or what you're going to do coming ahead i mean our son started school like a couple of weeks ago for the first time and um i went to the gym in the morning and i came back and uh opened the door and he was sat there in his school uniform and it just hit me like a wave of like well like my little boy is growing up i can't be ready for that yeah it doesn't matter how much you prepare yourself for what's ahead you're not ready so it's this combination of getting okay with not feeling ready but still taking the step and who needs to read it i mean anybody could get benefit from it if you're because we're always doing something new but someone who's maybe thinking about a new project or they're wanting to have more confidence or they're wanting to be able to step into the unknown or if you struggle with anxiety you procrastinate and you put things off and you just like why could i just not get into it and get into action um for that person this book will just help you remove those mental barriers that are in the way between you and doing what you want to do and also being the

41:27Jon Prince: person that you want to be and we've got a copy here so i'm taking it home tonight no more little girls with knives at the end of the day it's all start before you're ready from here on in um john thank you so much for coming on the podcast what an amazing guest thank you so good thank you so much thank you amazing