Motivation & Energy Throughout Lockdown

Fabienne Sandoval joins Jerry East on the 'Covid-19 Lockdown' podcast to talk about her motivation and energy throughout Lockdown. Jerry is on a mission to document 100 different people's real-life stories of lockdown conditions. Their ups, their downs, and small wins that they can share to help others.

Transcript

Hello ladies and gentlemen and thank you so much for tuning into the Covid-19 lockdown account.

Now today I've got a special guest for me and that is Fabian.

Fabian is a self-worth coach for women and she's currently in solo isolation back here in the old UK.

So how are we doing at the moment Fabian?

Yeah I'm doing really good actually.

Obviously there's a lot going on with lockdown and all of that kind of stuff but I've been doing my best to keep the vibes high and feel that I'm operating from a place of love more so than fear which I think is something that arises a lot when we're in a situation like this.

Oh totally,

Totally and making sure that you're following.

Now we've got time to follow our passion as it were right?

We don't have to really be doing too much unless you are a key worker and we now have the time to actually follow a passion which we're never going to get again right?

Yeah I mean one of the things that I have noticed is so many people have now been able to like pour the time into the things that they actually care about like going out for a walk every single day.

These are things that people probably never did at all while they were stuck inside of an office or like working on their business or doing things like that and now people are prioritising like these self-care things where they're getting out for their walk,

They're seeing like hope the sun when it comes out in the UK you know they're like actually like taking care of themselves and focusing more on like maybe personal development or the things that actually make them feel good and like the time is here for people to like actually slow down and take stock of where they are.

Yeah yeah and well I suppose that leads me into my next my next question for you of taking stock of where you are now you haven't been in solo isolation for this whole process and for those of you that are listening I think we are what week nine or about week nine are we?

Something like that yeah.

So tell me about your your kind of lockdown experience from start to finish because it sounded quite hectic in the brief.

Oh my goodness so I think that I've been on both ends of the fence so I feel like I can relate to a lot of people because the beginning part of my lockdown was really interesting so I had decided you know I'm a I'm a coach and so I'm always you know helping other people to turn their dreams into realities and one of the things that's really important for me is that I turn my own dreams into realities.

So right at the beginning of March just before lockdown I had actually moved out of my house so seventh of March I moved out of my place to follow my dream to go live on the beach basically and literally within about seven days of that or so everything got cancelled we went into lockdown which meant I was effectively homeless with nowhere to go and obviously like Airbnb's aren't working like you can't move into anything you just can't do anything so I was very grateful that I have a really great family that were able to put me up and like have me come and like stay in their place but it was not ideal by any means and for those people that are kind of in lockdown and surrounded by tons of people I really can resonate with that because it can be really difficult like if you're trying to work from home you've got people kind of running around you've got people like stressing out because of the situation that's happening like emotional tension is just super high during that time and so for me that was definitely like a challenge during that point I'm used to spending a lot of time by myself so it was quite hard being surrounded with people constantly and not necessarily being able to carve the time out to do the things that make me feel grounded you know like even just like a 10 minute yoga practice or 15 minute yoga practice could be a challenge if you're sharing a home with lots of people and people walking around and in and out of rooms and stuff like that and then after about two months of that I then got like was able to move into some temporary accommodation as things started to kind of calm down a little bit and then have been in some temporary accommodation for about the last month and so that's been really refreshing in a sense of like gaining I guess sense of independence again and you know having that time by myself and having an abundance of time to literally be with myself and feel all the feelings and see what's like happening in my life and you know take that kind of time out for me but also on the other hand I now don't I don't have people I'm like not necessarily interacting with people aside from like clients and things like that that I'm dealing with on zoom and friends you know phone calls and stuff like that so both sides of the fence are really intense I would say and it can be really challenging like when you're not used to you're not used to either being in like a full isolation or you're not used to being surrounded by people constantly all day every day.

Yeah when we first went into isolation there was quite a few of us here we had my wife's brother and his children staying with us and we don't have a very big house and they were actually using my home office to stay in just for the time being and it got very kind of claustrophobic very quickly and you know I was probably one of the main people that struggled the most because I was so used to having my space where I could work which I used to just use the gym obviously and I used to use my own facilities which I could just go to either one of those facilities and I've got spaces there that I can work from but obviously since that got taken away and then I had no environment to actually work from I felt that I couldn't steer my ship or guide my staff in the way that I needed to because I wasn't headstrong and you know he was great about it but we kind of said look we're going to need that space back and ever since that we've got the space back we've been rocking and rolling you know I found a different level and I totally get what you mean by that because without that without this space the concept that we came up with to kind of save our business as it were which has absolutely taken off would never have happened and we would be in a real bad place right now so yeah I completely resonate with that.

So no cool go on.

No I was going to say no it's just interesting like I think a lot of people are experiencing challenges during this time but it's like how we rise from those challenges and how we learn things so you know one of the things that I like to think about I guess more so from like a spiritual perspective is like we're always being offered a certain curriculum and you know like this is really the school of life and so actually like whatever you're being dealt with like those set of cards whatever you've got like you're going to learn something from that and so as much as we want to like push it away I know when I was like in my thing thinking I just need five minutes by myself you know it was like stressful but now I realise that that is that is the thing that made me because not only did it reaffirm what my needs were as a human and what I need to feel grounded and safe and strong it also made me realise that we can do hard things.

Especially when we put to it you know we adapt very quickly which you know was going to be my next question is what areas have you found that that you've needed to adapt to?

I definitely think other people's schedules and routines because like I say I was very much before I moved out my place I was sharing it with my sister but she had very much her own schedule I had very much my own schedule she spent a lot of the time out the house I work from home primarily and so you know I would be at home I'd have like plenty of space and quiet time and you know even just like working with clients and running my business and creating things right on my book this kind of stuff I had the space and the quiet time to do that moving into a place where I was surrounded by people all the time I didn't have a home office I wasn't staying in places where like I had a space to myself I created like makeshift spots for myself in order to be able to you know create the things that I needed to create and work with clients and do that kind of stuff but it can be really it can definitely be really tricky so I think it's about learning like those kind of workarounds like what kind of workarounds so maybe you don't have what it is that you necessarily would normally have what could be like a little work around that can make you feel more comfortable.

Yeah and again you know as I said earlier I massively resonate with that and making sure that not only do you have your own space you have your own time you know and I'm a massive believer that we need time to be mindful or even you know for those of you that that can meditate and I'm learning I'm pretty terrible at it but I really do try it's so important to make sure you block out that time and and give yourself that focus and it's all well and good having that space like your home office but if like myself in the beginning when you had just this whirl of kind of thoughts and this washing machines of kind of ideas and and doubt and despair in your mind you just go and sit in that space and you'd achieve nothing because you just stare at the wall so having having that space and being mindful for the first probably five minutes of even getting into your office or getting into that that zone or into that time zone that you set out for yourself you need to have that clear-cut direction because especially if you've got a family like I do at home you know they're banging on the door they want your attention and you kind of need to just free your mind get as much done in a small period of time that you can in your office and then let yourself be free outside right yeah definitely you know and that's the thing like there's a really amazing like quote or phrase and I can't actually remember who says it but it basically goes something along the lines of you know all throughout the day people are going to knock and say we need your attention here we need your attention there we need your attention here we need your attention there and it's up to you to actually just stop and like put your hand on your heart and then say no I need attention here and so often like we don't do that we don't actually like we don't treat ourselves first we treat everybody else's needs first and put that before ourselves but like that's at the kind of that comes from a place where it's like if we're just serving everybody else before we serve ourselves we're not really going to serve them very well and it might not necessarily come from like a really pure place it may come from a place of like actually just feeling like forced into or you know ultimately like leading to resentment of like serving those other people's needs but yeah especially during this time like everybody needs attention everybody needs like love and things like that right now because it has been like a more difficult time you know we've not really experienced anything like this during our lifetimes and potentially even like our parents lifetime so it's a new it's something completely new and it's not it's not something that we were prepared for I think.

I mean I think the closest thing to this was but it didn't hit us anyway that was only in Asia was the SARS outbreak which must have been about 20 years not quite 20 about 15 years ago now I think but they again they didn't even go into full lockdown through that and you know I mean the COVID-19 is a strain of SARS anyway but that that was kind of an indicator of things to come I think and hopefully if we get this now down because I do think that we will experience something like this in our lifetime again unfortunately because of the way that things are building up if you think about the body's resilience to antibiotics the way that the world has been changing when it comes to diseases in such a short amount of time and new strains of stuff has evolved so quickly but I have no idea why and I couldn't tell you why but that's only from what you know from what I've observed I think we will probably see something along these lines again but we will be able to deal with it a lot better or they will have something in place as a vaccine ready to go very quickly from what we learned through this pandemic so we'll see something similar virus wise but it won't be as catastrophic you know we won't be in the kind of lockdown that we've had to go through which you know hopefully we do learn a lot from and then going back to the other things well that you were saying with the with your focus and your attention I actually did a little experiment I had some work experience guys and I did a little experiment with them to show them how dangerous these things are it comes to your phone and what we did we got them to do the we got an even mix it was one girl per group and two guys because we had six people we had two girls and four guys we split them up we go through them phone okay which just said turn on and then we gave the other guys the the computer to do a task on and they weren't allowed their phones and this task was just to write a short you know a short post to go out which is an educational post where they had to find out certain things for exercises and it was about you know it was about eight paragraphs long it's quite it was quite a good one I had to get a picture and stuff like that anyway group one on the computer got it done in 45 minutes group two took the whole day the whole day and we're talking six hours now they weren't allowed to communicate with each other they were in different areas of the facility and I remember them coming down the other group coming down to ask me so how have the other group done and the other guys were laughing you know they've been training all day they've been working out with us a lot they've been doing other stuff and they could not believe how dangerous when it comes to productivity social media is yeah I like this is something that I feel really strongly about I definitely would say I I want to say that I would lean on the side of having more alternative views in sense of like I don't necessarily follow like the opinions of what is necessarily put out there in the mainstream media and I think it's really important for us to follow like to just learn for ourselves what what and how we should be especially when it comes to things like covid and that kind of stuff but in terms of the phones I wrote about this in my in my first book which is called 28 the age of power and it's really about how you know in this day and age like we have these friends we have these things it's like if you get sucked into that which you do which like by design it's therefore because there's a million things to occupy your mind with right then yeah a simple task that might take you 40 45 minutes becomes a six hour thing and then we wonder why we didn't get anything done that day and it's because you've literally been sucked in so we have to be really really careful about how we like use our mind and how we use these technology and the tools that we have out there and we use them to benefit us and to create good in the world and not allow ourselves to just be like completely sucked in and dragged into it you know I like in my first book I talked about how like I don't have social media and I don't like to use those things now moving forward with my business I do have them for a business perspective because that's how we can reach people these days and so I utilize it from that perspective but it is very specific like and very like time driven and it's not something that I spend hours and hours and hours on every single day it's actually like for me I do it like in a chunk of time so that you can still keep that productivity because otherwise you could literally just be on there forever and then never really move forward in your in your life and I think especially for the younger generations like that's something maybe like for us we're a little older so we know we didn't always have that but for them where they're growing up with it they don't really know what life is like without it so I think it's super important for them to learn how to just put that down and to not interact with it do the task at hand or create the thing they want to create and then they can come back to that in like free time.

And I think we might even see a bit of a shift with that as well with young people now if you think that obviously like Facebook what is how old is Facebook now it must be again 15 16 years old or something like that maybe I think about 2005 maybe or maybe even probably earlier it always is earlier but if you think the generation that's got Facebook which is kind of I would say upwards of mid-20s now to the younger younger generation the TikTokers for instance like from the age of six up to about the age of about 12 Facebook is a bit naff to them they're not interested they're now very quick short shot bits of interaction you've got your snapchats you've got your stories you've got your tiktok and it's about quick bang quick bang quick bang and they don't like the news feed thing they don't like the there's no attention span there and I think we may even have a regression when it comes to social media which I hope we do with the next generation beyond that because I think it's almost going to seem naff you know because if your parents have got it you don't want it right it's the way we've always been and I think we may even we may even experience where social media like Facebook for instance is kind of no you're okay not interested you know I'm gonna chop some wood yeah exactly and I think that there is I personally would say that there is a lot of people that are kind of realizing that this doesn't serve me like I don't know what I get from it like I don't know why I have it and I was reading a really amazing book recently by Glennon Doyle and it's called untamed and one of the things that she had talked about is like you know within her family structure or I think the story might have even been of her friend's family structure and was saying how the family was becoming so disconnected because the children had phones and they weren't actually being present like with the family anymore so that family time that quality family time where they're going to get connection and love and understanding and they're going to feel heard wasn't happening anymore so they started to implement something you know where they have like just like a kind of a basket and when everybody comes home from school and stuff like that the phones everything goes in the basket and while they're having their you know their like after school time while they're having their dinner their meals all this stuff up to a certain point the phones you're not allowed them you get them back later on once family time is done once we've you've had the time to reconnect and stuff like that and I think that's really important and I think the more parents you know that kind of implement these kinds of tactics children are going to be less addicted to it and they're going to be less interested in it and like you say yeah seeing things that your parents have probably is a bit naff to you like you don't really usually want to do as a younger child like what your parents do so hopefully there will be a revelation and children be like yeah that's actually boring like it's cooler to just be like running around outside and and and actually see the world and experience the world instead of seeing it on a phone it really really hit home yesterday with me what you've just said because one of the great things that this lockdown has given me is the ability to teach my daughter how to ride a bike and she's only five she's about to turn six but she could ride with stabilizers before but now she's just gone and yesterday I was really I remember I was absolutely exhausted because I'd just taken a load of training sessions and I have to take part in them I was really like really tired and and I'd forgotten I promised her to go for a bike ride and I run alongside her right and she's now found her legs like properly found her legs I thought you know what I'm not going to say no so we went for this run and I remember being exhausted as we started but then I kind of I was watching her and I was sitting there thinking in my own mind like we would have been sitting on the sofa probably watching some form of YouTube nonsense while I was probably talking to people in the group on on my phone or on the laptop and I thought you know I was about to trade this in for that and I was watching the world through my daughter's eyes on this bike I was watching I was literally behind her watching I just thought you know I'm never I'm never never swapping those two things again if I can get out I will you know and it's so important yeah it's so important like and that's the thing like isn't it like you know like children they learn they watch and learn from whatever it is that we're doing so if we are you know giving them that connection and that attention like that's what they want like I think most children are the same where it's like actually you know yeah cool they might get addicted to the phone or to the to the iPad or whatever it is that they have actually they're probably trade they would probably trade any day just hanging out with their mum or dad doing something like a bike ride because that's way more fun to them and it's amazing how like sometimes it's it's we want to take the easier route you want to take the easier option out but actually like giving that to them then you get the joy from it so it's just it's just really interesting like how when we stop and take stock we can really see like oh this is the choice that I would rather be making 100% so talk to me a little bit about what you do with with women right now so talking about the self-worth and you know as a father of two young girls myself and this this subject has already been touched on a few times with some of the very inspirational women that I've I've interviewed as well obviously one being a mutual connection of ours I think it's it is so important it's so important so to talk to me about some of the things that you you do and how you help people yeah sure so um I I initially started off as a as a life coach you know and I wasn't focused on this specific of self-worth and it was only after working with clients primarily I work with women and after a period of time a couple of years I started to really notice like the themes that were coming through so the external things that people wanted would always be different maybe they wanted a new job and a promotion and a pay rise or maybe they wanted to get their business off the ground or maybe they wanted to move countries or maybe they wanted to meet the love of their life right these things were always kind of like interchangeable right like we always want different like external things but the thing that I started to notice was like on the inside they all had the exact same like issue basically which was believing that they weren't worthy of those things that they wanted and all of them like desired those things so so much but they just couldn't seem to make it happen in their life and it was only when then we would you know work together and I would set them assignments and I would like we would dig in and we would figure out like the excuses that were coming up and the limiting beliefs that were there and the things that were really holding them back from what it is that they want to do and a lot of the time like that looks like things like you know I need to be perfect and maybe it's not something you say out loud to other people but it's that feeling inside like I need to be perfect I need to perfect I need to I need to feel like I'm good enough to do that or you know like oh actually I can't oh I can't make mistakes oh I can't do things wrong like I can't be a failure and all these things would kind of come up and then that would hold them back from actually going after the thing that they really want I do a lot of work primarily around love as well and helping women to find love and all of this stuff really starts with the inside so what I started to recognize is that actually every single person that was coming with me it was coming to me it was about us resetting that internal script that they had and so that could have showed up for a number of reasons you know maybe a parent wasn't present in their childhood maybe all parents were present but they weren't actually there to give them the time and attention and emotional support that they needed maybe they'd been through some kind of trauma in their life that had impacted them in a certain way and ultimately like they just didn't see themselves as valuable and they just didn't see themselves as deserving of having the thing that they desired the most and so the work that I really do like I say is about getting into the nitty-gritty of okay you want X but what are you doing what are the barriers that you're putting in the way of you being able to have that thing that you really really desire and then we work back from that so okay you want this is your dream this thing you want and then we do the work back from that what are all the limiting beliefs that you have what are the excuses that you're putting in the way of that and then we basically work with them to rewire that part of the brain that is creating those excuses and those things to stop them having what it is that they want amazing you know we do a lot of stuff very we work a lot when it comes to mindset with what we do as well and you know a lot of the time we find that people put on these fronts and they have these ideas that that's what they want when it goes a lot deeper so people that walk into our gym for instance or any of our facilities they'll say well you know I'm here because normally they'll say I want to get fitting you know no one has joined the gym to get fitter ever ever okay but that's something that takes any kind of visualization of themselves away or anything away so when we normally get them in and say if they're inquiring about something a bit deeper like they want I don't know they want a personal trainer or something we'll sit down and say well what is it you really want and when it all comes down to normally is a form of relationship either with themselves or a developer relationship with someone else and the insecurities around that and the fact that they feel like either they're in a relationship and that's going by the wayside because of their insecurities you know when it comes to intimacy issues they can't meet anyone for the same reason or they don't want to meet anyone because they don't feel confident as you say when it comes to their they feel worthy enough or they feel like they're attractive enough right and I think that there's so much pressure as well especially for women when it comes to things like social media again you know it's been going around for years with the likes of Vogue and and all these funny magazines and stuff but it is damaging you know it does happen with men as well but you know it's so much more with women so much more this airbrushing world where you know there's a lot of these pioneer women that are on Instagram and Facebook and now that kind of will take two photos you know and they'll be like look this is the photo that you guys will see this is me and these are the women that that need to be celebrated there's there's some fantastic hilarious women out there that make fun of it as well you know like they try and do the poses and they've you know that they show the cellulite they show the stretch marks and that's that's just the real world that's the real world and and I think that's yeah no no just think I think that these are the people that need celebrating I 100% agree with you and like that's the thing you know like a lot of the stuff that we see out there like you say I think it I think it works the same for men and I'll come to that in a second but like for women we've been so conditioned to believe that certain things are beautiful but it's only what we've been told it's not what is the actual belief you know like what actually is beautiful versus what we think should be beautiful are two totally different things and looking at magazines like I mean if you look through a magazine like I would even just like urge you to go out and buy one like if you're listening to this go through it and look how many of those women do you actually ever see on the street like how many of those women in that magazine look like that have that kind of shape have that kind of figure and how many of them are out there very very few people actually look like that and are on the street I would say like it's just so minimal amount of people that really do look like that and when you look at it the majority of the time it's advertising so most of those magazines I did this as an exercise once when I was teaching some workshops and we went through and like the amount of advertising that was actually in there was more than what the content of the magazine was so the whole point is you're just being sold an idea this is all just marketing this is all just to advertise for you to buy something because ultimately coming back to that worthy piece when you have that thing when you have that handbag when you have that pair of sunglasses when you have that pair of shoes when you have that outfit you're going to feel like her but do you know what her probably doesn't feel good because she is probably potentially in the modeling industry where she feels like crap because she's thinking oh my god I'm not sure if I'm skinny enough because the other girl that I just saw before I went into this is way skinnier than I am and it's like there is so much in this and it's like it's just a case of like we just need to rework these conditioning these conditioned beliefs that we've been taught and practice the art of self-acceptance and accepting yourself like exactly as you are because I really truly believe like we are all perfect exactly as we are we all had a certain kind of body shape that we were meant to develop into and that's going to look different for each person but the best thing that you can do to all of those like brands and advertising and all that kind of stuff is actually say you know what I'm going to accept myself that will be the best gift that you can ever give yourself because it will free you from all of the drama of the social media the advertisements the magazines and all this kind of stuff and that will actually give you the worth that you really desire instead of spending it on money on things like you know a new handbag or a new pair of shoes or whatever it is to make you feel good enough you can just do that work on the inside and that's all just to impress other people right yeah exactly and leaves you feeling empty afterwards anyway I mean the crazy thing is I you know I you know I have some nice stuff in my wardrobe I do you know I've got some things in there that were bought for me I've got some things I bought myself and you know I have been caught up into the materialistic world before lockdown but you know what during lockdown I've just worn just my plane these are my staff tops it's got you know it's got my brand on the back of it just pair of joggers pair of shorts I haven't worn anything of any worth really just stuff that's comfy stuff that makes me feel ready for work for instance I've been wearing my staff uniform so the same as my staff do every work day since lockdown and so have the team because it gives them a sense that they're they're putting their their work uniform on right and I've got x amount of clothes in my wardrobe and I haven't I wouldn't say I've worn anything really of a designer label except for one or two things which are swimming shorts that I've worn out in the garden because that's the ones I own and you realize that it doesn't matter like if I had normal non-designer ones I would have worn those anyway so you know it doesn't make any sense to go and have this stuff yeah and I think you know what like it's okay to allow ourselves to like have the things that we want but for me it always comes down to like the intention with which you do stuff you know for me like I might want to purchase something maybe it might cost a little bit more but I would be more thinking like you know what I'm gonna buy this as an investment it might be something that it's gonna last me like three years instead of three weeks or three months if I buy a cheaper version of it and so actually I would rather get this because I know it's a better quality or it's been better made or something like that right so I totally recognize like there's you know these things are there for a reason but it's just make sure that like you're choosing it because it's your reason because you really want it because you've thought about it and it's not because you have the pressure from anybody else to think that that is what you need in order to be worthy and I think that's really the important point.

So during the lockdown itself are you still managing to reach out and kind of serve clients or is it you're in full lockdown now you're still working with people?

Still working with people I mean it's the perfect time to work with people in orphanage I've got actually quite a few new clients during this time and they've all just been coming to me saying like actually it's the perfect time to work with you because I think a lot of people think that when they're going to work with a coach that they need an abundance of time to actually do that.

You don't need an abundance of time you just need the dedication and the like the intent that you want to do it but yeah I've still been able to serve people if anything like I think my business has done really well in the sense that people need this kind of support so I've put a lot of different free resources out there I hold a session every Friday which is called a conversation about love it's all about love and we get on a zoom and we talk about what's kind of going on in people's love lives and a lot from like a self-love perspective also from relationship perspective and we talk about how we can heal different wounds that are presenting themselves how we can move forward how we can forgive and we go through a lot of that stuff so if anything I think like I've probably been quite busy during this time but I'm just lucky that the way that I set my business up from the off was how it was going to be which was all online so I do do stuff in person but a lot of what I do can be done online.

And would you say has anything been more standoutish more prevalent with your clientele during this time has anything changed?

I would say for people that I was already working with I was really really like proud of them in the sense that when this stuff hit they were able to stay really strong and really like grounded in what was happening and every time I would have sessions with them I would be like you know and how are you feeling what's going on they're like you know what I actually feel okay I feel really good like I've got all my ducks in a row and I know what I'm kind of doing and I have support and so this is all working out for me.

I think some people who maybe haven't had the support or hadn't been working with me before that were struggling in the sense of like feeling potentially a lot of fear about what was going on and so a lot of my work was to help them to recognize like the vibration of fear isn't going to serve you and it's about moving into a space of like how you bring more of the vibration of love in and how you find small ways like to bring that in so maybe you might wake up feeling like a sense of anxiety or stress about what's going on but like can you take two minutes and meditate or just be mindful and take a breath or could you start a journaling practice whereby you're just releasing all of your thoughts onto paper so that they're not staying stuck inside of your mind and so I would have said that the main I would have said that the main thing that I've seen is a lot of people especially those that are in isolation by themselves have really started to recognize now that before maybe not being in a partnership was something that they wanted but they didn't care about it too much but I've seen quite a few people come through to me where they're like you know what I don't want to be by myself anymore like I do want to find like that nourishing committed partnership in which I can be you know growing with another person and so I think I've seen quite a lot of people that have been by themselves and had that realization yeah you know I've seen that a lot with people that I've worked with as well you know having that time to be able to ground themselves is so important be able to bring yourself back into the moment right and focus on just having that time to yourself at least once a day just to get your get your mind set right and not mindset right but your mind set right as opposed to your mindset right I suppose similar thing but once you set yourself up for the rest of the day and you have the direction without all the distractions you get so much more not not just more done you're more present with it as well so you're learning from what happens as opposed to just going through the motions and you know you know what they actually put it down there's a you know a series going back to being a bit more topical and of the time there's a new documentary that just came up about Michael Jordan well it wasn't it was actually about his team and Michael Jordan was obviously the standout player and they put it down they put his whole his whole life and his his career down to being present and in the moment and he could just he could just do it some people can just do it and that was a natural thing for him but he was he was never drifted off he was always focused and you know what what a skill and ability to have but to practice that and to bring yourself into the moment and to concentrate on on what's going on I think could help us all operate at a completely different level at a level that we've never been to yeah definitely and I think you know presence and like gratitude for what you have are just really really important things because it flows into all areas of our life like if you can create the discipline to have those practices in your life to just like take a moment and stop and be present like it just and be grateful for what you have it takes you so much further you know especially during times that are challenging if we can have a moment like with our partner or with children or with family members or with friends to just stop and be like you know I know there's all this stuff going on with me but like I'm gonna just connect with you and just listen to you and be present with you and just do that and then be grateful for that connection that can actually work wonders in so many different like different elements of relationships it's something that I teach him like I have a 10-day love course and that's one of the days I really teach that and a lot of the students that have taken that course will come to me and say like I didn't realize the impact that being present and having gratitude for what I have right now could make on my life and you know some people you know they're in like a partnership they've been in one for quite a long time and they're like you know what the second that I started being present with my partner and listening to them and taking like even if it's just 10 to 15 minutes out a day to just really be there with them that made all the difference to our relationship because actually we were finally like there together as opposed to just like living our lives and doing all of our stuff.

I think yeah I think everyone is guilty of letting that slip here and there and you know I try and be as mindful and as present as I can be in my relationships as well and you know it definitely does help definitely does help as I said earlier with my daughter as well being present at that moment you know I've decided I've never I've never traded in that time ever again which has meant a lot.

So we're going to come towards a bit of a bit of a close now with I'm very mindful of your time and I know that you're a busy person and you've got stuff to do today so I did kind of warn you with a couple of questions that I will be asking and it's almost time for those so the first thing is have you have you taken stock of any advice or is someone given you any advice that has really has really helped you through this time?

Yeah so there's a mantra that I have right now it comes from the book that I mentioned earlier in this like in this session it's called Untamed and it's by Glennon Doyle and one of the things that she says in her book and she talks about her story is we can do hard things and she has this concept of we can do hard things and for a lot a long time she didn't like express her emotions she didn't express her she wasn't she wasn't living out her life to the fullest expression of what it could be and if you get into the book you kind of learn more about her but this concept of like we can do hard things I think a lot of the time we want to take the easy route out I know for me sometimes like it's easier to take the easy route right it's so much easier sometimes emotionally physically mentally but if we can just be brave and have courage then we can do hard things and those hard things actually make us so that would be my that would be my advice.

I love that I love that and I suppose I mean you're it's probably going to be the same answer then but if you could go back to the beginning of lockdown and you could kind of whisper in your own ear some advice or something to do it could be topical it could be like a biting opener which I wish I'd done it could be anything but what would you what would you give yourself a heads up about?

I think I would say everything will be okay in the end if it's not okay it's not the end.

I like that I like that so keep on going right keep on going no I love that okay well you know yeah I've got a lot of time for that and keep persevering and pushing towards the end will show itself right.

Oh 100% 100% and all that all that we can do is really like and this might sound like Howard's advice but like if you can live from your heart space and if you can live from a perspective of like not worrying about the fear and the anxiety that surrounds and if you can really get focused and tune into yourself and like practice just offering love out to everybody that you meet and love to yourself that's going to be like the best thing that you can do that will walk you through this experience.

Yeah I love that I think yeah now's the time to practice being kind as well isn't it you know that projection of kindness and understanding is the most important thing to do right now yeah it's not going to yeah coming from a point of positivity is never going to breed negativity is it?

No it's all about getting that mindset right isn't it?

Indeed well look Fabian you know I'm going to Fabian I'm sorry I'm going to wind us down now I'm going to say a little bit of a goodbye for this lot you stay on okay because I'd like to talk to you afterwards when we when we press the stop recall button I'm going to quickly say thank you to you for everything you've done today and thank you so much for coming on to the show.

Thanks so much for having me.

No it's my pleasure and now I'm going to say a few things to the audience so you guys thank you so much for listening today now if this episode has resonated with you and you've taken something from it please do give us a cheeky comment keep it kind keep it clean and also try and use social media for the positive thing that it's made for and give us a cheeky share so other people in your network can enjoy the podcast just as you have right now.

Also if you do feel like you've got a voice and you'd like to help me on my gargantuan task of interviewing 100 people during the 2020 Covid-19 lockdown please do give me a message either via ABC Jim on Facebook or you can just put a cheeky little comment in the comments bar below and I'll get back in contact with you within a couple of days but thanks again for watching guys thanks again for listening guys and most important Fabian thank you so much for coming on the show all the best.

Thank you.