How to Stop Cynicism from Stalling Your Career Growth

0:00Hi, I'm Helen. And I'm Sarah. And this is the Squiggly Careers podcast, a weekly show where we borrow some brilliance from something that we have been reading, watching, listening to or attending, which links to today's topic. And we connect that to your Squiggly career and give you some insights and ideas that you can easily put into action. And if you are listening to the first time, welcome. We've got lots of episodes that you can search through to find what you might need to know right now. Just go to amazingif.com to find all of our episodes and free tools. And every episode that we put out in the world comes with a pod sheet, which is a simple one page summary that you can download just to make it a bit easier for you to reflect, take action and learn more.

0:46So, Sarah, what are we going to talk about today? So this week I went to an event that was hosted by a university called LIS, which stands for the London Interdisciplinary School. and this is the university that I wish had existed when I was 18. Well, no, because you wouldn't have gone to university with me. Yeah, I was going to say that. I was going to come on to that. Sliding doors moment if you didn't. It is a sliding doors moment. So let's be grateful for the fact that it exists now, but it didn't maybe then. And the reason that I love it, and I have spent some time there and I've met some of their students, is rather than sort of choosing a discipline, their argument is things are interconnected, like problems are interconnected specializing too soon is maybe limiting and they talk about bringing together experts and knowledge from across art science and humanities so when i've talked to people there in terms of some of the things that they're studying they might be at the same time looking at systems thinking but also some things around code also organizational behavior so you know they'll be combining different like topics and disciplines around a problem and very naturally very kind of purposeful in their in their approach someone from someone from our team has actually done a course there as well it's very collect the dots and connect the dots i think um they do use connect the dots as like as a phrase but if i was like summarizing it to someone else that's why i think it's really interesting and they were putting on an event last night i think actually as part of their mba program but you other people could come um with someone called Lord Michael Hastings CBE um who he's like really really interesting so in lots of ways quite a ladder-like career obviously I didn't call him on it in front of everyone um he worked at KPMG for I think for like 30 years um but doing a really interesting job around sort of global citizenship I think he described it as but he now like since leaving over the last like eight or nine years has a very squiggly career he didn't use those words yet but his time will come um and he was very curious so I actually think I might even send him a copy um and he now does things like things with UNICEF with One Young World a lot of charity things he does a lot of prison work um and yeah spends his time in with lots of different people and places and sort of the headline was around leading responsibly in an uncertain world but I felt like the focus of the conversation was all about combating cynicism and so that got me thinking about well what does cynicism look and feel like in the context of a squiggly career like how could it get in our way and what could we do instead so I would say just in case anyone did go to that event I actually do know one person who listens to the podcast who did go oh did you see them well no they messaged me on LinkedIn afterwards and said they had to leave um a little bit early but she was like oh I spotted you and I would have loved to have said hi and she's red squiggly and lobster um and I met somebody who works who's an intern who like the person I sat next to I was very very brave I actually think because I know what else you were doing that day that it was very impressive you would have very easy to go home that night so yeah I was so you know like the right versus left decision as in I could have kept walking across a bridge to go home and I didn't but I loved the um girl I sat next to who I will keep anonymous obviously I haven't asked her permission to say her name um but she is an intern and so it was really interesting listening to her like she she is already squiggly obviously I showed her the podcast um but she was like she's Italian and she thought maybe she was going to do law but then actually she's now interning at um a very big very well-known charity um and then works with somebody who has actually been on the podcast before I was like what are the chances you know we're probably quite high maybe because of who ends up in the room yeah yeah but what was really interesting I talked to her at the end and she was like oh I'd really like a how-to guide she I think that's what she was sort of maybe hoping for from the evening and actually the evening was very zoomed out really big picture lots of inspiring stories but quite hard to figure out maybe what does this mean for me you know like all of us in are normal everyday jobs like how can I make sure that I don't become cynical and that doesn't get in my way because really what he was talking about was kind of big world kind of big examples and I thought oh that's reassuring that actually what she is looking for is that level of the kind of the what does this mean to me um because then I so then I promised her we'd do a podcast on it so if only one person listens to this podcast it's going to be useful for her so the let me just can I play my thinking back with you so what we're saying is that cynicism will get in the way of your squiggly career success yep okay um and that what we want to do is spot when we are most likely to be cynical like I got other like triggers for cynicism situations maybe like squiggly situations where cynicism can creep in.

6:00And then we want to swap cynicism for something that is actually much more helpful in that situation. It might be less about anticipating situations. When I've started thinking about this, I think it might be about recognising what it sounds like for you. Because initially, when I started to look at like cynicism, which is, you know, we believe that people are maybe not doing things in a great way and people are maybe being selfish or dishonest you think well I'm I'm never cynical that's that's never me um but I think when you start to think about it in a more sort of day-to-day way and you and I were talking about this before you do start to recognize what this sounds like for all of us because of course I think we are all cynical some of the time cynical about the people that we work for the people that we work with the organizations that we're in the industry that we are part of and i think that is normal you know to have to have like a dose of cynicism along the way i think is normal i think it is noticing whether you know if that cynicism becomes a bit more pervasive yeah it's kind of driving your thinking then i think actually it can become really it can become really limiting so do you want some of the sounds like statements i came up with i hope these aren't my sounds like statements we'll see oh no no just general maybe i'll say each one and you can we'll perhaps reflect on whether like we would have ever you know we would ever have thought this as part of our squeaky career so my manager won't let me move to another team um actually i have definitely had that one because i remember being in sales and wanting to work in marketing and being very cynical about whether the organization it wasn't my manager actually i was like okay the organization yeah as this human thing in my head um would would make that move possible i was like oh people they don't move people from one to another yeah okay that's one great my organization just doesn't invest in learning maybe i've had that a bit i remember thinking with my mba like oh it was more i remember my mba and be like i wasn't at the right level for it i mean i've kind of fought against it but the the the slight cynicism at the start was that i'm not senior enough for them to make that investment in me it's probably what i sounded like sometimes i think it's not always lovely to admit but i reckon we all think this some of the time it's not worth helping other people because i don't i don't get any support i'm not getting any help um i've heard it i had it i don't think i've said that i don't i've heard it like from people but i think that's mine uh the promotion process isn't fair it's rigged to work for certain people have i said that have you said that um i whether i've said it out loud in quite that way but i um but i think i've i definitely because i think you know sometimes it's like sounds like in your head i think i've definitely i've definitely thought that in companies you know where you're like you're cynical about i think my cynicism would be whether the promotion process is a fair process for everyone like it's not it's not fair for everyone i think i probably you know less about promotion i think i probably said to myself and maybe out loud to other people there's no point applying for that job because they've already got someone in mind for the role yes yeah yeah that's what i would have thought yeah yeah i think i think i've thought that and then have been made to apply for anyway and been like well there's literally no point because i'm never going to get it um and then my last one was my organization are going to use ai as a way to justify like cost savings and redundancies um which i do hear from people.

9:40Now, sometimes I think there is an interesting balance here with these statements of sometimes I think like we think them because they are based on like facts or evidence or experiences. And so, you know, sort of I was like interested in, I was like, well, where does our cynicism come from? And I suspect it often starts with that, right? You know, we've been part of maybe a promotion process that we didn't feel was fair. And then you become cynical because of it. and I think it's it's almost recognizing that that that might be true that might have happened but then if you sort of stay cynical then it can hold you back and it's sort of only you that it's holding back you're often you're often cynical about things outside of yourself but it's actually you that it's affecting I don't know if it's only you that holds you back because I was thinking about I totally get your point about experiences that can inform it but I also think if you are spending time with cynics you know if you've got like cynical cultures and then it becomes like received wisdom like they're like oh there's no point and because this is always the way it works around here and then you kind of find yourself believing that it's like like sort of contagious in a way of as a way of being so i think maybe it doesn't just if you are being overtly cynical and you're saying these statements out loud yeah i wonder whether it does start to make other people they start to maybe adopt some of this thinking well if we were being super honest yeah sometimes sometimes you and i might be cynical about some things with each other with each other but i think we are quite mindful of not letting it go on for too long we i think we are sometimes cynical for almost like we have 30 seconds like i think i can spot we are we're like we almost give ourselves permission to be like 30 seconds of being cynical and then i think we both go but we get that it's actually not helpful and but actually i think if we if one of us like kept going with it a bit i think i would i think i would definitely like start to believe you and i'd be like oh yeah maybe those people are yeah it's like yeah yeah against us or yeah or whatever whatever those examples whatever those examples might be or they might might be um so what we've done is we've taken in some specific situations where we might be like we might be all be tempted to be a bit more cynical I'm going to describe what Lord Hastings sort of suggested and this is very much my summary because he told lots of stories and I've I've distilled it into an action and he did give some really interesting examples very much from the outside world so I am going to mention them briefly because you know when we talk about borrowing brilliance and being really curious he told me stories and talked about places and examples that were so far away from my reality that I was I think it's really good for you you know like I've watched different videos because of that conversation and then we are going to talk about like well what does this mean in the context of your squiggly career like how do you make sure the kind of squiggly career mindset wins versus the cynical mindset so the first challenge is problems are so big that I feel powerless so this might be you know I feel powerless to change the structure of an organization I feel powerless because I'm not a senior as people who are making decisions and Lord Hastings would argue small actions add up and they can be the smallest of actions but if you take them consistently it adds up to to giving to giving you power and there is this brilliant video I've been on the National Geographic website this morning um about a guy where he lives on this island and there was loads of deforestation and he said he didn't sort of know that he was going to do it for this long but he just decided to plant a tree every day and he did it for 37 years and then they show like what has happened to this island it is so like lush with greenery and also the seeds all started spreading and he was like oh yeah it got easier because i could just like basically take cuttings and grow and grow things there are elephants in this video tigers tigers and you're just like and I know that's um you know it's one example it's one story but still it is a good sort of distillation of what he is he was trying to get to here he you know like the just because you are small in a big system like in a big organization it doesn't mean that you haven't got any power.

14:05And that power comes from you doing something. So Sarah and I were chatting about what this would mean. And clearly, it's not about planting trees in your company. It's got to be about something else. And we were thinking, okay, so if you're being cynical, it would sound a bit like in the context of your career, I'm never going to have any time to learn. I'm too busy and got too much doing this company. So what's the point in trying? And it is actually quite interesting because we do hear a version of that when we start talking to people about learning like a lobster like you will often say what gets in the way of your learning and people like oh I've not got enough time too much to do overwhelmed by my work um but if we were taking Lord Hastings approach then and we were trying to think more about small actions add up then you might think more about okay well what if I just did five minutes of learning a day um I'm not trying to dramatically redesign my work.

14:59I'm just going to do five minutes of learning a day. And a bit like the trees, this adds up over time. If you plant the seed of five minutes of learning a day, you get to 25 minutes a week, 100 minutes a month, 1 ,200 minutes a year. And in total, that gets you to over two days of learning. And the five minutes might not seem like a lot, But two days of learning that you just would have missed if you didn't do that small action could actually be really significant. And I also think, you know, you talked about it's not just about the minutes a day or the tree that got planted every day. It is about suddenly those trees started doing something else, like, you know, the unintended beneficial consequences.

15:48Yeah. I think if you committed five minutes of learning a day, I think you might start sharing that learning with other people. and they're learning too, I think you might start being more curious about what other people are learning and have new points of connection. Like there are positive consequences that I don't think you can predict that can come from just this like very simple, small action. So we thought that was a way to sort of think about moving away from cynicism that could help your learning. So the next observation is that when we are cynical, we are much more tempted to spend time with people who almost agree with our cynicism so that's a sort of it's almost like a cynic echo chamber trap yeah people like you but you're almost like you say you're kind of all being kind of cynical together and that probably feels quite comfortable was his was his observation but nothing's getting any better um and he had this phrase which actually i did i kind of wrote this down because i was like oh this is a really interesting thing like do what do i always do this he said spend time with people who help us to be better people and I was like oh that's interesting and part of I think not the only way but part of spending time with people who make us better people is listening to people you disagree with so he talks he talks a lot about he makes a lot of time for relationships you could just hear in all of his examples how important he feels relationships are to your development and to his career and he was talking about like people he meets up with where he's almost intentionally meeting up with them because they have a very different worldview to him and he wants to learn he wants to kind of listen and he also gave an example of watching um a political party in the uk called reform where he said like i don't he he was like i don't personally agree it's not his political view but he was like but i'm always going to watch it because otherwise you know like it's easy to be like a cynic from a distance yeah um and he's also very anti sort of hiding behind your phone and yeah he's very he acknowledges i think he said he was like 668 or something but he was saying we're sort of almost losing that ability to connect and have those conversations where you get sort of a healthy discourse somebody like use that phrase in the room and I was like oh yeah that's kind of really really interesting like we're seeing quite a lot of work at the moment about loneliness and disconnection at work and sort of not having some of those conversations where we might feel uncomfortable but then actually it might it might kind of quell your cynicism because actually you do hear a different you hear a different point of view and I know on that point of like being able to be in a conversation with somebody whose point of view you might not be agree might not agree with I am and I know Stephen Bartler can be a bit marmite I know he's been in the news recently for some things that were said in a podcast I'm just going to skip over that but I am going to recognize some stuff that I've been hearing him saying he gets a lot of flack for having certain people on his podcast who other people don't agree with like in politics and stuff like that and he never says which political party he supports because he's like well that's not the point I'm having a curious conversation and I do I agree with everything that everyone says on my podcast no but do I want to develop the ability to listen and learn from other people's perspectives even when they're not my own yes and I actually really admire him I and I agree with Lord Hastings that we're losing this ability to hold and have a conversation with someone who sees the world very differently to you um and I'm not saying we should all have a podcast and just bring people that we disagree on with but in a work sense Sarah and I were thinking okay what's What's a way that could be useful to do this and potentially in teams as well?

19:34We think it's values. So values are the things that motivate and drive you. And the point of values is sort of recognising that we're all different and that that's OK. And it is quite easy to connect with people who have similar values to you. And it can be trickier to spend time with people who have distinct and different values to you. But it's quite helpful. It's very helpful to understand, OK, when we're working together, you're likely to see this very differently to me. So I'll give the example of, you know, one of my values is freedom, for example, which tends to mean I like a lot of space.

20:10I hate to feel like my thoughts and time is constrained or controlled by other people. But if I'm working with somebody else who has efficiency, perhaps the value or is very has like rigor and clarity, those sorts of things. I do feel a bit of tension and I could I could be at risk of just dismissing that person. Oh, you know, so so annoying and so frustrating. but actually what I want to do is be able to say and learn from okay well how is that way of working potentially better or how could we be better together like how could my need for freedom and that person's need for process actually result in a better outcome and it's more about just asking the question you might think well I'm actually not sure it does but being willing to willing to be curious about that rather than just dismiss somebody for being different I think that's the important thing.

21:03And I think you don't always have to know each other's values for this to be able to do this. Like if you do, brilliant. And use our values and teams resources and podcasts that we've got. But it could just be thinking about and spotting what you think motivates and drives someone and seeing that it's very different to you. Like I think I have missed opportunities in my career to like learn and grow because I did spot that what they were motivated by was very different and so I backed away I was like oh well no they we're not going to get on no they think differently to me they approach things differently to me um and so sort of almost like I'm out because and and probably actually as I've got probably a bit older now now I can definitely approach that with curiosity you sort of you can kind of go I'm just going to get curious or you can go I'm going to sort of just pick it get out of here and I think when I was probably also like I think it's probably linked to confidence and I was less confident I almost wouldn't even know how to navigate those conversations I think sometimes what can really help you here is if you can see someone else do it really well and so I did remember I do remember like working for one leader where like they would you know like they would have kind of quite not a confrontation or just challenging conversations with quite a lot of different people and she would be quite challenging and people be quite challenging back and it was all fine and like you know almost like I think I needed to see that it was all fine and that afterwards they'd still come out of those rooms like laughing and joking or going oh I don't know just talk like it you know they could they could just walk out and and almost like we need to have that conversation and we are really different and we've listened to each other it's been productive and we still know necessarily we're not necessarily still agreeing yeah it doesn't you don't have to always get to the pace where like you're suddenly you look like the same so if you can see it do see someone do it well I think like watch what they do and I think what they do is they ask really good questions they genuinely listen and they almost manage to and I still think I find this quite hard you almost like enjoy the process and actually listening to Lord Hastings you could just tell he almost relished the conversations he was like I want to hear someone who's very different to me tell me why isn't it like actually think actually i'm going to enjoy i want to enjoy learning because we not i'm not not because i want to argue but i'm going to enjoy learning i i think as well you know you said like watch someone else i i think as well like listen to the statements steal the statements that they say because um like i've definitely heard people say oh actually i see that differently or i've got a different perspective on this and it's a way i think you can still own your point of view you don't you don't have to like hide it but I think just having a way to bring it in that maybe doesn't feel too confrontational is a useful way to make sure you stay sort of in conversation mode so the next one is that when you are more cynical you keep things for yourself because you think well that's how I win so essentially you I suppose you have a view of the world that's quite win win loss you know almost like well I'm not going to share things I'm not going to give things I'm going to take and then make the most of it for myself so it's like it's selfish right it's very eye focused um which I always think when you first describe it it sounds sounds awful but then equally we could probably like all think of moments where you just think well crikey I have to put myself first because if I don't who else will and yeah that's that's that's understandable and his point of view is that we all need to like practice giving things up and giving things away and how important that is and he told a really good story about when he so he grew up in Jamaica and I think they'd had I think it was maybe like a natural disaster or certainly something had happened in the country and he was younger and people were sending like supplies to the to the country and so his family got this like box of um onions apples and soap and he was like it was a really weird combination but that's just what I think he got sent from this like family in Canada and what his mum did was they could have kept right all of the apples all the onions all the site and she divided it all up into a bag so every bag had one of each and then she like gave it out to the local community so you know back to like seeing things role modeled so I think he just sort of has in his DNA that thing of like well if you share everybody is better because of it um and actually my sister told me about these really nice cafes in the UK which are called repair cafes which is the idea that you give your skills and technical expertise um you know if you've got like practical skills i don't have any of these so it's it's very hard for me to understand but let's imagine you are a retired engineer i don't know you could mend a coffee maker you could mend a toaster millions of things i don't know how to do and what you do is you go to these cafes and people volunteer their time and their skills to mend your kid's bike like for free and people are just doing those things and part of it is because they don't want things to go to waste you know don't throw the toaster away we can we can mend the toaster it's just like i can't mend the toaster so i would probably throw it away so the whole it's like waste but also then you go and sit and have like a chat and a conversation with somebody and you're also connecting with someone who probably is retired probably quite enjoys a conversation and my sister came away from that experience so i learned a lot about the guy who she was chatting to and he'd mended things she was like it was amazing you know people people have got all of these skills and they're really really happy to share and i was like oh that's like a that is a perfect example of a community of sharers lovely i know like you get you get sustainability you counteract the loneliness thing that's going on and you get potentially some intergenerational relationships like this is this is also just practical help you know like yeah your toaster has been mended and i was like so this happened to me yesterday and actually you do know this um my shirt broke so two because we were together two buttons on my shirt broke and i don't know how to sew i can do that for you but i was like oh maybe i could go to a repair cafe bring me your shirt i'm not gonna bring you my shirt we don't even live that close that close to each other but i was i was like oh i wouldn't mind going to like one of those and i bet i bet you someone there would be really good at sewing actually you'd much rather go to a repair cafe than just give your shirt to me i was like oh that'd be that's but then i was like is that too embarrassing because i can't maybe i should maybe i should try it for myself but i was like but i don't trust my abilities also it's like my most expensive shirt like i don't have very many expensive clothes and i was like this is actually something i want to look after because i really love it so maybe i'll go to a pair cafe oh i'll message you afterwards about ways in which you can sort that problem okay so our idea here and it's one that we've talked about before but i think you know in the spirit of generosity i think what you also have to recognize that this doesn't have to take a lot of time and we've talked before about the five minute favor and it's just about thinking about what what could a five minute favor look like um and that could be making an introduction which i think is a very generous thing to do uh because you're connecting some people that you know and you're not expecting anything in return giving without keeping score is what we've said before and i think that's very very much this and i think it is um i don't think this always happens unless you have it as an intention you know like I'm going to do a five minute favor this Friday um I think if you can create a bit of a rhythm it becomes easier to remember otherwise it's a nice idea that you just might not remember to do but I do think like five minute favor on a Friday can then just become a nice kind of giving intention in your week and I think then it becomes nice and you don't have to keep this stuff to yourself and it could be your strengths it could be your time it could be your connections but I think you can get quite creative with what giving could look like for you.

28:55Yeah. And I think you can scale it up and scale it down. So it doesn't always have to stay the same. Like I think I've had moments where if I was scoring myself on like a generosity scale, like I did, I did loads of really good stuff that I was really proud of. And then my life changed. And so I got less time. So I was more in the five minute favor world. And now I think a lot more about how we, the work we do is squiggly careers. How can we be really generous? How can we be giving? And we've got some new work coming soon with some people who are perhaps not even into their squiggly careers yet that I'm really excited about which is kind of our version of like how can we give away from the company that we run our money our time our expertise and we're being really thoughtful and intentional about that because I think I sort of had a bit of a realization with this where I was I want to be really generous and I hope that's what people would say about you know some of the resources that we create but actually to your point if you don't create like a system or a rhythm or a way of doing this it becomes more of like a oh yeah I'm it's like a say do gap thing of course of course I of course I want to be generous and like this really matters to me and it does but then it doesn't actually come to fruition like you you know like it doesn't make it into kind of the real real world so I think anything that you can do to sort of make it a habit I remember I used to have someone in my team that's amesborough is where she used to go and have dinner once a week um i think it was through like age uk with somebody older and she just got to have dinner with them once a week but you know like that was like a she but she never missed that because every wednesday she'd go and see dotty or whoever it was um and i just think there were like loads of ways to do it but if you're hoping it's going to happen or like waiting for it to happen it's tricky and then the last one is um feeling cynical that you're just not in control of your life which sounds really bleak doesn't it but I do think people at the moment you know with what's going on in the news and I got this sense at this event I went to people being like I feel really out of control and no one no one kind of likes that feeling and he did have a really nice statement here and where Lord Hastings said you've got to do something every day that grounds you and yeah he talks about um he's religious and he reads the bible every day and actually the way that he was describing that it went way beyond reading a bit of the bible every day you could just see how this was like just an imperative as kind of part of his life it grounded him it gave him perspective um and it was sort of spiritual in his in his way and actually people in the room would talk about like it sort of doesn't matter what you believe in or who you believe in but a way of grounding you every day that sort of gives you perspective feels really important um so what's one way you're doing that at the moment Helen because I already know the answer to this I am I'm growing things I'm finding it very grounding I honestly I'm finding it something's happened to me this year um but I I think you're having a midlife squiggly crisis well I don't know really I think it is the bigger our business becomes and I sort of don't love using the word busy but there's a lot going on a variety going on in what we're doing and so the bigger and the busier we become.

32:08The more I feel grounded in simple and small things. So this year I'm growing some stuff. I've never really grown anything before. So far on the grow, oh, pun pun in there, on the grow I have chilies, I have beetroot, I have chard, I have peppers, I have many things on the grow. But I'm just finding it. I mean, I don't know whether these things will last, like literally, as in whether they'll go beyond the seed stage. But I am finding it just like it's very simple and is not fancy or anything but I'm finding it just quite grounding when we do loads of like shiny stuff and we're traveling and doing all things learn like lobster which I love it is quite nice to just do something very simple so I'm finding that quite grounding what about you mine is um so I've always liked walking and people who listen to podcasts will know that that's true but my newer one is the discovery of BBC Radio 3 Unwind which is um essentially a radio station that encourages you to like relax and kind of chill out and if you had described to me that radio station interestingly I don't think I would have listened I would have been like oh it doesn't sound right for me I do actually really like like classical relaxing music but they will also occasionally just intersperse this music with last night for example I got I got in the car and I was kind of a bit distracted and a bit annoyed by something.

33:33But then this guy with like a beautiful Irish accent just told me to imagine that I was in Iceland. And I was like, well, I've been to Iceland. So I can imagine. And then he was talking about like the rivers and how like the relaxing state that kind of water helps you, like how water helps you to relax. And he was like, just imagine like the ebbs and the flows and like water washes away. and I was just like yes great and it's what's really interesting is like I'm not really like concentrating on it because I was driving but I honestly got out of that car and I'd not had it on for the first 10 minutes I had had it on for the second 10 minutes and I felt so much better perspective more pragmatic I'd kind of calmed down because you can't help but calm down because my whatsapp messages before and after this moment were considerably different and it's so You know, it's like, it's so interesting, isn't it?

34:26Because I mean, you and I, I mean, I would never ever want anyone to read those. But if you did look at that, you can literally map it. You can be like, I was getting really quite annoyed about something. And then I sort of got out of the car. My messages got shorter, more specific. I was like, yeah, that's fine. Let's do that. And also, you know, the whole like, then my evening was a lot better. So it just really grounded me. And so you don't want to listen to it all the time. Because if you do, you'd never get anything done. You'd just be thinking about the ebbs and the flows in Iceland. oh yeah you know just chill out the whole time um but in certain moments i do find it like really helpful and i think particularly because you need grounding right when things do feel out of control i think probably i was feeling my own mini version of out of control a bit there and also i was getting frustrated with something that's not in my control and it just yeah it was it was really good so i wonder whether like nature music yeah maybe i guess the point is whether whatever it is it's finding the thing that works for you that helps you to just have a moment.

35:24I suppose it's maybe even getting into the territory of active rest. Yeah, I thought that. That sort of moment that kind of helps you disconnect from whatever else is going on in your brain and just have like a moment for you. Well, I've very much enjoyed learning from your evening at LIS. No, I like it. I feel like it's taken my brain to a new place and made me think about when might I be being cynical that I might not have labelled it as that. And what would be a better response to it? We'll summarise all of this in the pod sheet, everybody. And some of the links, if you want to watch the man growing trees on an island, we'll put all the links to that stuff in the pod sheet.

36:00So you can find the pod sheet in the show notes or go to our website, amazingif.com. There's a page with all of our podcasts on. So if you find the episode that you want and you click on that, you'll see short summaries, you'll see a downloadable thing that you can use on yourself or with a team, lots of extra things that you can learn on the website. um so we hope you're enjoying the episodes if you ever have any ideas of things that we could borrow brilliance from people places books events objects even you can always email us we're helen and sarah at squigglycareers.com but that's everything for this week thank you so much for listening and we're back with you again soon bye for now bye everyone