Random Dialogues

What’s the Topic, Issue, or Subject that you’re Passionate About and Want to Share?

Random Dialogue events create connections, build community, and boost resilience. Most of all it’s a bonding experience and would you agree, most of us can certainly do with more of that right now.

Speaker’s stories are added to this ongoing e-book, a jpeg of the speakers is created for the event, and a video recording is made available.

Register to view or get in contact to speak HERE

Random Dialogues is hosted by Jane Tyson and was co-founded in 2016 with  Arthur Partridge, RIP.

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Speakers & talks randomly transcribed from 2020 below (many still need editing, on my to-do list, unless it's your kind of thing…)

There’s also some videos over on my Youtube Channel

Random Dialogues 10

SEPTEMBER 2020  SPEAKERS

Link to the Live Facebook Video

Link  for Youtube recording  

September speakers

Esme Finch Environmental Poetry

Tony McMurray National Long Jumper to International Exec!

James Banfield Our Challenges Become Our Greatest Teachers

Marcus Hamilton Loneliness and Friendship - Breaking The Taboos

Niall Jones Around The Campfire

Julia Hayden The Rising of The Condor

With LOVE & appreciation to the Random Dialogues creative collective who joined us last night and supported the event:  Paul Lange producer  Ian Montcrieff Macmillan virtual summit and event consultant, Herve GWery play specialist & Colin Horner chief doodler

Speaker Notes

Marcus Hamilton - Loneliness & Friendship, Breaking The Taboos

Loneliness is a natural human emotion as we all know. But not only is it natural, it’s also necessary. If we don’t eat, we get hungry. Ignore that hunger and it becomes more acute, and if nothing is done, it becomes life-threatening.

Hunger is a necessary warning signal that tells us that we need to feed ourselves.

Throughout human history, people have relied on each other by working in collaboration to ensure shelter, safety and a good supply of food. We are a social animal. That’s not to say we can’t enjoy our own company, but at some level, we all need to connect, whether that be with a partner, as part of a family-unit or with friends. When these connections break down or are non-existent, a warning signal kicks in in the form of loneliness. Just like with the hunger-pains, we need to act on that warning.

We all know that if our bodies are not nourished, we'll die.  But what’s the worst that can happen if we’re lonely? Is it a big deal?

Studies have shown that chronic loneliness is as bad for you as smoking 15 cigarettes a day. It increases your risk of coronary heart disease, stroke and high blood pressure.

One study suggests that loneliness can increase the risk of premature death by around 30%. Google “Loneliness premature death NHS” if you don’t believe me All this is before what loneliness can do to your mental health with depression and sadly, even suicide.

Loneliness can quite literally kill you, and so like with hunger pains, it should not be ignored, nor should it be something that we are ashamed of.

My view  is that loneliness is a deep manifestation of our humanity. That sounds a little fluffy so let me explain.

Loneliness and some of these serious mental and physical health issues that can be associated with it,  can come about because we are deprived of meaningful social interactions with others. So in other words, as humans, not having strong bonds with others makes us feel sick. As I said, a deep manifestation of our humanity and therefore absolutely nothing to be ashamed of.

Loneliness can affect the rich and the poor, the young and the old. You can be surrounded by people all of the time and still feel lonely. A stay-at-home parent, a university student; a successful busy professional or a celebrity are all as vulnerable as someone living on their own or is very old.

The remedy for hunger is food. But what do you do when you feel lonely?  You connect with family and friends. You make an effort to keep those bonds strong because as a singer-songwriter once said “we’re only the ones we love”.

But what if you don’t have a close connection with your family?   Maybe they live in a different country, or you don't have any family anymore? What if you haven’t got any friends? It happens - you, or they may have moved to a new location; or work and/or family life may have been so demanding that neither of you found the time to hang out like you used to and that strong connection atrophied over time.

As well as trying to resurrect old friendships if you can, being open to making new friends is also important..

Friendship is very important to our wellbeing. Being able to laugh, cry, and generally connect with someone who is not necessarily our romantic partner is hugely underrated. Most of us feel compelled to find a romantic partner. That deep desire to engage emotionally and physically with someone is readily admitted to in the form of thousands of dating sites and the likes of Love Island. But what about mates, good chums?

Having a romantic partner who we deeply connect with is great, but having no friends outside of that is less great which can lead to loneliness even inside of a happy relationship.

How to make friends as adults is not something that I’ll have time to cover now, but some tips can be found on my blog at frindow.com.

To conclude then, loneliness is a natural human state of being, which, like hunger, must be acted upon for good mental and physical health.

There is nothing be ashamed of in feeling lonely - it’s a manifestation of your humanity

Invest more time in cultivating your connections with others. If you have few or no friends at all, be proactive in making new ones as this will contribute to your overall wellbeing.

Julia Hayden - The Rising of The Condor

https://medium.com/@princessgaia/the-rising-of-the-condor-4a1437125474

Random Dialogues 11
OCTOBER 2020  SPEAKERS

Link for the live Facebook recording

Link for the live Youtube recording

Speakers

Phil Shepherd  "𝐒𝐮𝐛𝐜𝐨𝐧𝐜𝐢𝐨𝐮𝐬𝐨𝐥𝐨𝐠𝐲, 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗣𝗼𝘄𝗲𝗿 & 𝗩𝘂𝗹𝗻𝗲𝗿𝗮𝗯𝗶𝗹𝗶𝘁𝘆 𝗼𝗳 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗦𝘂𝗯𝗰𝗼𝗻𝗰𝗶𝗼𝘂𝘀 𝗠𝗶𝗻𝗱"

Katrina Sargeant The Power of Community

Ian Montcrieff Macmillan How Are We Gathering Now?

Jason Arbiter Why I Can’t Bake Bread

Catherine Whittaker Gratitude

Jane Tyson Volunteering

Phil Shepherd “Subconciousology”

The power and vulnerability of the subconscious mind.

Now, this subject is complex and I am simplifying it for the purposes of this particular very short talk so, those of you with deep knowledge of the subject, please bear with me.

I’m just going to say a few words about the differences between our conscious minds and our subconscious minds.

Then I’ll give you my observations about the power of the unconscious and a warning about the dangers that lurk in its vulnerability.

Then I’ll finish by giving you a tip or two on how you can avoid those dangers and begin to repair the parts of your subconscious mind that may have been damaged in the past.

The Cambridge dictionary defines the subconscious  as "the part of your mind that notices and remembers information when you are not actively trying to do so, and influences your behaviour even though you do not realize it."

When you first learned to drive, you had to be consciously aware of so many aspects of driving - knowing when to press your foot down on the clutch and which gear to push the gear lever into - all that and steer it at the same time! Remember how difficult that was?

Yet, a short time later, you somehow managed to drive across town without being conscious of ANY of the details of the intricate processes it took to get you there.

Now, that subconscious mind of yours is extremely clever and extraordinarily competent. It manages so much of your life for you without your conscious self knowing about it.

The power in it is immense!

BUT

As clever and powerful as it is...it can't and doesn't assess and make judgements.

It's your conscious mind that does that.

What happens is that your subconscious mind constantly listens and absorbs, listens and absorbs, and IT BELIEVES EVERYTHING IT IS TOLD (because it doesn't make judgements).

After repeatedly hearing a particular message, it begins to act on it - without your conscious mind being aware.

This is why advertisers spend so much money on repeatedly getting their message into your head. Through repetition. Through repetition. Through short repeated mantras.

This means that all the things you've repeatedly said to yourself  about yourself over many years becomes your reality. If the messages you've given yourself are positive - that's great - however....  it's not so great if those messages have been self limiting and negative.

The good news is that because of something called neuroplasticity, you can change the embedded self-talk results by retraining your subconscious with new life enhancing messages that you repeat in order to create new neural pathways.

The first key to making a change in your subconscious mind is to BE AWARE that all this is going on without your conscious mind knowing about it. Become an OBSERVER of your own thoughts.

Next time you are watching TV see if you can identify the repeated messages of advertisers and politicians and observe these things as being separate from you.

The second key is to recognise when you’re self talk is being negative. Again - Be an OBSERVER of your own thoughts.

Now, how do you effectively change those neural pathways ?

People have successfully done this for many years, indeed for centuries, using meditation and hypnosis.

I use hypnosis, which goes straight to the subconscious to effect change. It’s one of the most worthwhile endeavors you could ever take for yourself, but it can take a good degree of time and patience.

However, in the last twenty years or so Brainwave entrainment has proved to be profoundly effective as a powerful method to make changes to that subconscious self talk..

____________

So, simply being aware of how much of your life is led by your subconscious is a first step. Recognising what your self-talk is doing to your way of being is the second step.

The third step is to take action to change those messages embedded in that subconscious mind of yours.

http://bit.ly/DispenzaMotivation

http://bit.ly/RadicalRelaxation

Jason Arbiter “Why I Can’t Bake Bread” transcribed via Otter.AI to be edited

Katrina

Hi, everybody. And so thank you, first of all, to Jane for inviting me today. And I don't really know how I'm gonna follow Jason.

 But certainly, you know, this is unusual for me to be live on a Facebook. I've never done this before.

And that's really what I want to talk about. So my,  talk was entitled to the power of virtual communities.

But really, I'm going to share a fear with you. And Phil's probably going to kill me for saying this. But I hate video. And I shouldn't say that, because every time I say it, my unconscious mind just reconfirms it so I do apologize, Phil, but, and yeah, I have a massive fear on video. And for those of you who don't know, me, I run a networking events company. And if you've stuck me in a room full of 100 people, I would chat for England, and I would be in my element. I'm a very social animal.

And but when this pandemic kit, and there was obviously no way to meet up with people, apart from virtually and that scared the living daylights out of me, and so I, I was obviously forced to go online, otherwise our business cease to exist. And, you know, actually, I found that facing my fear and doing it anyway has really opened up some brilliant opportunities for not just for me, but for my network as well. And I've loved the way that everybody has embraced video. And I'm I know I don't look old, but I am quite old. And the only time we used to get cameras out was on special occasions or, you know, taking pictures on holidays. So when people stick a camera in my face, I feel very anxious about it. And you know, the whole thought of going online or doing any kind of Video scared me witless even doing Skype videos I choose not to I prefer to meet face to face. And but obviously through these times and being forced to stay at home and not being able to go out, my craving to stay connected, overpowered my fear of, you know, video conferencing. And I've met some amazing people along the way. And, you know, these guys that are here with me today, I've not the only person I haven't met in this room is Caf, and I've already connected with her, and on like, an emotional level through what she shared today, and I'm so grateful for that. Because, you know, if I hadn't have put myself out there and, and sort of faced my fear, then I would have missed out on a massive opportunity. And that's really what my message is today that there is so much power, and in, you know, staying connected online. And I think that we're really lucky to have this amazing technology at our fingertips. And, you know, the benefits of, you know, going online, actually does outweigh the fear of it. So, you know, to sort of steal some of the content that other people have already shared. And, you know, it is about challenging yourself and believing in yourself and, and just going for it. And actually when you start doing something, and it's you discover that, you know, it's not as bad as you thought. So I'm really conscious that I've only done three minutes and 32 second

I don't think he was my family. Were that happy about it. I was trying to home school at the same time, not for me for my son. I've done schooling, you know, I know everything. So that was okay. So it was just so difficult. Thankfully, painting was there for me every moment. And I was doing that. And as you can quite get there. I'm not playing this at all. But what I do, from my experience of painting, and also painting is learning how to be in the moment a bit more. It was it allowed me to not think about the world outside. Was that a distraction? Was that a good idea? But it was the best one I was going to use. Because I can't do what everybody else is doing. I can't do my I can't rebuild my house or garden or the garden or anything like that. So I always do that and I got through it. Hopefully I can get through the next one. If there is a next one, and maybe not I just would like to say thank you very much for that. And if anybody wants to buy any more paintings, they're more than welcome to do that. I think about another minute. So the big question is why I can't bake, quit. I haven't got absolute clue why I can't bake bread. Because I didn't even try to bake bread. I was given some flour, and I managed to find some yeast. But that was about as far as I got with it. I left it in the cupboard. I watched them via I must admit, I didn't watch some videos about bacon, but boy oh boy, did it look very well. I'm sorry to all the bakers out there, but it's just not for me. So if there is another lockdown, I'm just going to buy a loaf of bread.

Ian Moncrieff MacMillan (copied over from Otter.AI to be edited)

I was going to talk about today about a murder story that I wrote a long time ago. But I decided not to. And my two in house lawyers, my wife and my son said, it's not smart thing to do. It was all based on some stuff that I did when I was a treasure hunter a long while back. And it was only later that I actually found out that one of the people that I something went on a few years after I finished this, and actually, the bloke i wrote about actually wandered in dead, floated into Dover harbour dead as a doornail. So I've decided I'm not gonna talk about that. And I was going to talk about stories and structure stories and how important they are. But I decided that actually that's too boring for tonight. And, and inspired by Jane's Talk, I'm gonna talk about my most successful business. And my most successful business was actually when I was 10. And my aunt, my auntie came over from the States, the single the creepy, crawly sets, creepy crawlies that they have a little oven. small little oven was powered by teaching little light bulbs that you plug into the major this transformer, and And you put these dishes of these trays inside which you put this stuff called bloop. And you had moles of things like creepy, creepy crawlies sort of bugs and worms and beetles and spiders and this or that, and with this sort of blueprint, turn it into into little rubber things you could take peel them off, and I tried to sell them to the kids at school. And it could have been a pocket money. But quite frankly, nobody wanted them. They weren't really very interesting. So when she came back from the States, later on, she found this mold, which is over electrical, there's a good present. So you can right now she gave me this mold, and it had a lizard on it. And the lizard had in this mold had a head and a tail. And he had two body parts and two different types of bodies. And they fitted together like a jigsaw. And you could either have a body part that had just body, we can have a body parts that had legs, two legs either side. So I gave everybody in my class, a head and a tail. And they could buy the body parts for either one p or two p. And depending on, you know where they had legs on. And it just went nuts. And they started wanting to buy more and better longer ones and whatever. And then other kids and other classes wanted them and it started become quite competitive. And most of the kids in parents of the kids in high school there were sort of bankers, doctors, lawyers, TV style is a weird school, interesting school. So they had quite generous pocket money. So I did quite well. In fact, we were actually had some international trade going on. Because we had the Russian school next door, we're actually doing international trade over the balcony and had people in each in each form, taking orders and at home making stuff. And then my dad called me in to sit down, have a quick talk with him. He said infrared it's got to stop. headmaster said right, you're taking all the money from all the kids in the school. So you have to stop. So what I'll do is I'll buy you out to buy your business and so I had to go sit down and work out because I've got orders I've got blue coming in from the States I need to put money into money orders.us dollar money orders sent over to have this stuff coming over. He said well work out your profit margin. And all you know all the orders you've got you can fulfill that's fine. But any clip that you've bought, I will actually buy you out at whatever the profit margin is I'll give you a profit. And I'll double your profit. But that's it. No more orders. So I just sit there and work out what my my profit was and double it and I know do that. But that was my most successful business. I had a complete monopoly of the whole school. Literally people couldn't get any more because they'd I'd literally empty all of their pocket money into into my business but yes, the only business most successful business and it was closed down by the authorities. As in my dad. But anyway, that's my that's my crazy little story.

Cath Whittaker - Gratitude For Happiness

When I was first asked to speak this evening I wanted to talk about children or parenting or of course baking, but then earlier today something caught me off piste and Ive been drawn to another subject matter and so I scrapped all my initial notes and sat down this afternoon to write this brief random dialogue on Happiness.

I like to think of myself as a happy person. I experience occasional stress and worry but general I am aware that I have a lovely life and day to day I wake up happy.

And why wouldn’t I? I have 2 healthy kids, a roof over my head, a job that I enjoy going to and a supportive and considerate husband. Life is indeed good. However I do also have negatives in my life, our house is slowly but surely falling apart, I often feel overwhelmed at the amount of tasks I have to complete and at times over the years, I have experienced poor health, bereavement and like many families with young children, sometimes the outgoings and incomings don’t marry up as well as we’d like. But I generally don’t feel bogged down by these things

A few years ago I was going through a period of enhanced stress. For numerous reasons I was  getting increasingly irritable, overthinking everything and finding it difficult to switch off at night which is not like me. There was a weight on my shoulders and I found myself starting to feel more than standard levels of anxiety.

In true millennial fashion I downloaded a meditation app in order to help me process my stress and practice mindfulness. It certainly helped but via this app I downloaded a seminar on Happiness psychology and nothing has stuck with me more than the speakers view on Gratitude. In short-

Happy people are grateful. He gave some great practical tips to increase your own happiness levels but there is only one that I still follow to this day which I will come onto shortly.

There’s a host of psychological research in google about what experts believe it means to be happy and how to be happy. Most will agree that happiness is a reflection of your personal circumstances at the time however I somewhat disagree with this. I have found to be the most effective measure of happiness is gratitude.

Every happy person I have met is also extremely grateful for what they have. Likewise those I have encountered who are not quite so happy are those who feel life has dealt them a poorer hand and have a ‘Woe is Me’ outlook on life.

We all have times where we take what we have for granted and it would be unrealistic to be super grateful for everything all of the time however I truly believe that every day we have plenty to be grateful for.

As I mentioned earlier in the seminar of the psychology of happiness the speaker gave numerous practical tips on increasing happiness, including focusing on your breathing and practising mindfulness however the one thing I have continued to do for over 2 years is practice gratitude.

I truly believe one of the best ways to boost your happiness levels is to find things every day that you are grateful for.

Now this isn’t just agreeing that we have good health, food in the cupboard and a secure job. It's great if you do have those things however in order to practise gratitude and to promote your own feelings of happiness try to dedicate a minute or so a the end of each day to think of 3 things that your are really grateful for.

For example last night before going to sleep I recounted my day and thought;

1. I am so grateful that my sisters bought me some beautiful flowers

2. I am so grateful that my kids went to sleep before 8.30 so my husband and I could watch some telly

3. I am so grateful that my boss in work is understanding about a form I didn’t complete last week

These three may strike you as strange things to feel grateful for but if we really think each day there could be hundreds of things that we have seemingly taken for granted

- You could be grateful that the rain stopped in time for you to take the bins out or that the brunch you ordered had drinks included or that your favourite yoghurts were half price in Tesco

- it can literally be anything.

They don’t need to be massive things that have completely made your week (again great if they are) but a collection of little things that have enhanced your day somewhat. Just spending a few minutes at the end of each day to reflect on the past 12 hours and pick out the positives is such a brilliant process for your mental health and of course levels of happiness. Please give it a try, and let me know if your happier for it ��

Jane Tyson - Volunteering -bit.ly/JIEP2V

Random Dialogues 12

NOVEMBER 2020  SPEAKERS

Link for the live Facebook recording

Link for the live Youtube recording

Ian Moncrieff MacMillan  Let’s Gather

Cath Whittaker - Reveal Yourself Pudsy

Niall Jones Come to Bulgaria

Simon George Entrepreneurship Minds

Jane Tyson Why Monks Mess Up Their Mandalas

Phil Shepherd My Life in 5 Minutes

Full version of the evening transcribed here

Ian Moncrieff MacMillan

I was going to talk about a conversation that I was having a couple weeks ago. And we're talking about the difference between risk management and managing uncertainty and coping with uncertainty. And it's particular lady, very smart, Pippa Malmgren was talking about the difference between "surfing" rather than "hiking", and you've got to pick a sport, right?

I think there are a lot of issues around managing risk. And risk is a very specific thing that we can actually imagine, potentially could happen. And uncertainty is really all the things that we were not sure of, but we have to sort of get a feel for, when we are in such a chaotic times as now.

If we actually try and just manage risks, manage things that we can think of, we actually going to miss most of the problems. But I think it's actually a bit dull, because, you know, surfing through uncertainty is what we're all coping with. And I don't want to really talk about too much about it. I'm not gonna talk about PIGS, and some of this probability impact grids and all the problems that they cause, but essentially to dull.

And what I'm gonna talk about instead is just that, again, with all this chaotic and uncertain times, there's soo much opportunity out there. But we just never know where it's going to come from. And some of the conversations that I've had in the last couple of weeks. I'm just going to mull over what I'm going to be doing next, and what I'm going to be doing about it. And I found something very interesting around news, creating newsletters for people. Some interesting tools. Interesting ways of combining curated newsletters that actually answer the questions that your audience is looking for.

So this is not newsletters that you're passionate about...and you want to write your, you know ,your thoughts....but more of the sort of the slightly more commercial ones where you need to keep on talking to your audience, about things that matter to them....but it's a pain in the backside to curate. So, I've got a few things that will actually help curate those, and actually produce it. So I want to actually get onto that.

That's one opportunity that just sprang out of nowhere. Another one is about building a building community, and building community for somebody. And another one is just a whole lot of weird opportunities to distribute other people's products and help them get their ideas to market. And I'm quite looking forward to it.

So although the world is full of uncertainty and chaos. That also actually brings opportunity. And we just have to be in the right moments to actually take it. So yeah, I'm not gonna tell the boring stuff, but lots of exciting things happening. And I have no idea what, what the future will bring, but I just know it's gonna be exciting.

And if anybody knows anybody that would like to actually buy at least 10,000 pounds in weight....maybe 100,000 pounds in weight, of the freshest, best lobster just pulled out of the sea off Nova Scotia. I'd also like to talk to them as well. Somebody who's actually asked me if I know anybody, to especially buy that because there's a huge amount of supply, and it's not being sold in the restaurants that are in the States, and Canada. So a new market needed, right anyway. I'm gonna shut up.... because that's it.

It's quite good when everybody's muted, because you can't....It's good. Yeah, you can't hear the clapping.

Cath Whittaker

Yeah, so it's that time of year again, but a strange figure infiltrates every aspect of society. He finds his way into children's schools and hearts, takes all the money and gives you no credit.

And it's not even some tech because this guy doesn't even wear clothes. Yes, it's Pudsey Bear. Slightly creepy on so many levels. Pudsey's back for the week. I've got many questions as to why the BBC chose a naked bear with a mysterious eye injury to be the mascot of this particular fundraiser. Obviously the first is were are Pudsey's clothes. Even Mr. Blobby had a bow tie.

And secondly, why does he not speak. Did he witness some terrible deed by Terry Wogan in the 80s, and was forced to take a vow of silence. And don't get me started on the eye thing. Is it bandana? Is it a patch? We need to know? I think the thinking behind Pudsey is ultimately... although some (me) find him slightly creepy...he's seen by most as completely adorable. So we give him all our money. My kids school got the Children In Need thing down. I thought I had it sussed, until last November. Years before that it would've been easy to navigate Children In Need. The school would set the text out to all the parents to say "kids can come in Friday, pay a pound, and wear pajamas". Brilliant. And then it asked all the parents to give all the loose coppers and they'd make a giant Pudsey head out of coppers in the School Hall. Pretty painless.

But last year they pulled the rug out from under me. We had an actual letter...a proper letter...went a bit like this. I imagine to just speak to parents...

"This year, we're asking the children to pay a pound AND wear Pudsey clothes. We're also selling Pudsey biscuits for 50 pence. If your children would like to purchase these, please ensure they bring change. We're also asking you to donate any loose silver coins for the giant Pudsey."

Firstly, there's any one supermarket that sells Pudsey clothes, ASDA. And if you're the sort of parent who normally would pick up some Pudsey ears, in Greggs on your way to lunch break, which I am, you wouldn't have realized that unless you get the cheap £6 t-shirts at the start of November you're reduced to buying a £20 Pudsey "onesie" they'll quite possibly never wear again.

Secondly, there are no children in the country who doesn't want to purchase a Pundsey biscuit. Of course you are going to have to give up 50p per child for the bickie.

And thirdly.... I'm not tight. I'm all up for giving in spare coppers. But spare silver coins? That's just normal money, not spare change. How else can I get my lunch break Greggs? So one good thing to come out of the pandemic is this year the School has chilled right out on shaking us down for Pudsey. And instead, they're putting a donation box at the top of the drive (yess!), so now I can just donate my standard £1 per child and keep my pennies for pasties

Niall Jones

Hi, everyone. So I'm Niall and I'm a Spaceman. As I said before, I'm not Bulgarian but I live in Bulgaria. And I'm going to talk about seven striking things about Bulgaria.

And the first one is the weather. And it basically, it's sunny. It's quite sunny most of the time. And I'll be honest, when I first lived here for a few years, I kind of missed the British weather. I kind of missed the temperate weather, you know. But when I when I moved back to England for five years, I was more than happy to move back to Bulgaria for a second time. And now I really would enjoy the sunshine as if it's cloudy, the clouds are high. And so is one of the wonderful things.

Second great thing is the nature. It's beautiful. It's like the first time I came I thought was like Middle Earth. And there's these amazing mountains, forests, and much the country and I was expecting it to be like, kind of some reason, that this idea of like these massive Russian planes and very boring and gray. But it's not all that at all. It's spectacular. It's like the New Zealand of Europe. I'll go that far.

And third thing is it's good for winter sports. But not only winter sports. It's good in the winter. Because all the nature is all the more beautiful. You can go and stay in amazing cottages, with nice little fires very affordably, in the middle of nowhere. And it's like super peaceful, like something from another time. And yet....absolutely, there's skiing everywhere as well. So lots of options for that.

Fourth thing is the beaches. beaches. Yes, it's a few hours drive. But it is getting better and better. That's the Bulgarian coast. In two hours you can be in Greece. So within, if you leave at eight in the morning, by lunchtime you can be either on a North Greek beach, or Bulgarian beach. And it's obviously that ability to get to Greece is always really special, like an amazing thing.

The fifth thing is the wine. There's lots of it. I believe that Bulgarian wine is great value. And I think there's more people that feel that. And you can do pretty cool wine tastings in the main cities, but also, a lot of the wineries have really good wine tasting tours out of the city. Often they're very quiet, you can meet the owner himself. They'll take you around in person and this will just the most amazing kind of wine tours.

Six, Sofia and Plovdiv. Sofia, the capital where I live, is basically pretty good for work. There's a lot of work here, I would say at the moment. That's over the 15 years I've known it, it's kind of got better and better for nightlife and all that stuff. And Plovdiv is a really cool tourist city, about two hour drive and lovely, lovely place to go for weekends. Old... it's an old city. A lot of cool old ruins and things, and festivals, and like a nice old town.

Seventh is that it's surprisingly calm and safe. Feeling almost, but almost...and that's a wonderful thing...I never ever feel in any danger. There's never any trouble with scenes on the streets, in general, when you're out in the city. And so it just feels really like everything's just like nothing bad's gonna happen. But sometimes it can feel almost too calm.

And of all those things I thought... the one that strikes me the most is the second one... the nature. So the big thing as a final point that strikes... the most striking thing about being, living, and spending a lot of time Bulgaria is that it's spectacularly beautiful nature. Yeah, Middle Earth.... the Middle Earth slash New Zealand of Europe. And I highly recommend it, obviously. And that's the end of my talk.

Simon George

Ernie the Fastest Milkman In the West

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ef6edDwphhk

Fantastic. All right. Thanks for inviting me, Jane, really appreciate that. So I just want to share a few things about one of my passions, which is entrepreneurship. And, you know, I've got this belief that entrepreneurs should be involved in every aspect of life. And I think entrepreneurs have the ability to think differently, to solve problems. I think entrepreneurs get a bit of a bad name sometimes. They're looked at as sort of greedy business owners or whatever. But I think the way they think, and I know we're amongst some entrepreneurial thinkers in this room, you know, can help solve some of the issues in today's world.

And I've got a particular passion for social entrepreneurship. So I just wanted to share a couple of companies, I've come across, people I know, that have started social enterprises - which are enterprises. They're not charities, they're proper businesses. But they're also solving some issues in the world. So first one I want to talk about was by a good friend of mine who's started at company called Mama Buci. They sell honey and harvest honey in Zambia. And it's quite extraordinary, really, what they do...as Ian was talking about his lobsters and the quantity of lobsters,  Mama Buci produce something like, I can't remember, it's like over 100 tons of honey a year. They're one of the biggest producers of honey, I believe, in the world.

And how they do that is they they give families in Zambia a beehive. They're building 150 beehives a day and onboarding new families. They give the family a beehive. They look after it for the year, twice a year, their team comes and harvests the honey from that beehive, they pay their and then whatever that weight is in honey. And that gives these families, and they're supporting over 7000 families at the moment...that gives them an income that's much more than they would get traditionally in that country. They take that honey. They bring it into the UK and other places, and they sell quite a lot bulk. But they also put it into jars and then sell it as a brand. And it's in lots of shops in the UK, as well as around the world. So that's a business that operates purely as a business, but it's helping families in the process. And it also runs two schools, which is the sort of charitable element of it. But I think it's fantastic. The way it can support 7,000 families and support itself without having to go out and raise money, in like a traditional charity.

Here's another business I came across. I went to talk by the CEO of this business called Belu. It's a new water company. I'm sure you've seen their bottles of water in restaurants. They're very smart. They decided not to go down a supermarket route, but they supply a lot of bottled water to restaurants and the restaurant trade. So often you'll see that bottled water in restaurants, and again, they use all the profits in that business to give to Water Aid. So that they've given something like £5 million to date from that. But it's a commercial business, and it does support Water Aid. And so again, a great example of an entrepreneurial idea and supporting good.

Here's the other one I found. I don't have a personal connection. But I've heard this story before of the Stanford Sox.... which is where you buy a pair of socks, and then they give another pair of socks to homeless people. So there again, it runs like a business but it does support homeless people as well. And you get a great pair of socks in the process. So I think the social enterprise in particular, it's a win win, win win win because as a consumer, you're buying a product typically that's great. The business is sustainable, because it doesn't have to rely on grants and charitable donations. And I think society benefits so I'm I'm just really passionate about entrepreneurship helping society in general. So that's my little thought for today.

Jane Tyson  

And Simon, and when you're gonna write your book?

Simon George  

Never....

Ian Moncrieff MacMillan  

That's what you think this week... today.

Simon George  

What I love is going round (you can't do it the moment of course), but you go to some random place in the UK and you find some independent shop that sells something very niche and peculiar.... anything... what I didn't even know that a shop exists. So I'd love to write, I'd quite like to write a book on what random shops sell.

Jane Tyson

Why Monks Mess Up Their Mandala

https://bit.ly/MandalaMedium

Phil Shepherd

This is a list of places I've lived jobs. I've done. Live gigs I've been to. People I've met in person. Places I've visited. And a couple of notable random random snippets.

Right.... Start with a list of places I've lived. I've lived in Sheffield, Leeds Huddersfield, Halifax, Keith Lee, your Newcastle on Tyne, Manchester, Torquay, Letchworth, Bristol, Earls Court, Shepherds Bush, Islington, Wolverhampton, Leicester, Sydney, Blackpool and Ashtead in Surrey.

Jobs I've done. I trained as a silversmith with David Mellor. I've managed a chain of jewelry shops and the chain of fashion shops. Owned a multi-level marketing company. I've worked as a business consultant. I've trained in hypnotherapy and psychotherapy. I've owned a health food manufacturing business. Invented the "diet burger". Built an advertising marketing and PR agency. Introduced sports nutrition to the UK from America in the 1980s. And currently I'm a director of ThortSpace, the 3D mind-mapping software company, and own Radical Relaxation , an mp3 audio download business.

Live gigs, I've been at live gigs.... I've seen Pavarotti, Bob Dylan, The Beatles, Dusty Springfield, The Kinks, Guns and Roses, Sonny Boy Williamson, Lightning Slim, Screaming Lord Sutch, Jerry Lee Lewis, the Count Basie Oorchestra, Dave Allen, Victoria Wood. Peter Ustinov,and Marcus Brigstocke.

People I've met in person. Kenny Ball of Kenny Ball and his jazz men, Roger Moore, Frank Boff. Remember him? Tony Blackburn, Steve Redgrave Matthew Pinsent, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Lou Ferrigno. Do you know who that is? And Randall Keens, Randall Keens, Charles Darwin's great, great grandson.

Places I've been. I've been to Istanbul, Marrakech, San Francisco, San Diego, Sausalito, Tiawana, Los Angeles, Santa Barbara Las Vegas, New Orleans, Tampa, Miami, Atlanta, Phoenix, Boston, Chicago, Beijing, Chengdu, Shonzai where the Terracotta Army is,  Pingyao, Singapore, Bangkok, Tiamen islands, Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Barcelona, Zurich, St Tropez, Nice, Monte Carlo, Cologne, Bruges, Bolognia, Dubrovnik. Ljubljana, Amsterdam, Copenhagen, Valletta, and Parma de Majorca.

Random snippet. I was once locked in the back of a Securicor van was Miss England, Miss Scotland and Miss Wales. I worked at Number 1, Old Bond Street, selling jewelry, watches and object d'art. I sold a diamond bracelet for £2,500 across the counter in a Woolworths store, and appeared live on the BBC Nationwide program. I managed to walk out of the casino in Monte Carlo after winning at roulette. The things I'm most proud of though are that I once met Nancy Cartwright, and I've one thing in common with the late great Sean Connery. He and I were both once milkmen. And that's my life. i don't know it that took five minutes, or less.

Jane Tyson  38:43

You haven't met Pudsey...

Simon George  38:53

All those place on it. All those places you've lived in. My question is.... Are you still on the run?

Ian Moncrieff MacMillan  39:03

Yeah, but I think after being locked in a van with all those Miss missing persons...

Simon George  39:14

How you've chosen to be punished is another story.

Niall Jones  39:19

You get to tell a story combining one of the people you met with the one place you lived or is that...oops. He's gone.

Phil Shepard  39:29

Right. I'm back.

Random Dialogues 13

December 2020 Speakers

Watch 👉https://fb.watch/2i5MNn6Ftz/

Chapter have been added

Colin Horner - Visual Communication Artist "A Talk About Not Talking"

Niall Jones "All Things Space"

Catherine Mary Whittaker "The Little Joys From The Mundane"

Ian Moncrieff MacMillan "Finding Your Why"

Jane Tyson "What Box"

Phil Shepherd "Investigating Facebook Groups"

Jason Arbiter thank you for the laughs and for joining us. That wasn't the title of Jason's talk. Jason spoke about why he can't bake bread at September's "Stand UP & Speak For Yourself", which you'll discover in the doc in the comments with the link for Decembers too.

Random Dialogues 14

13 January 2021 Speakers

01:57 Niall Jones "How To Use The Spaces Between Us To Find & Fulfill Our Missions"

07:30 Colin Horner - Visual Communication Artist “The Value of Simple Communcation”

12:45 Phil Shepherd "How To Change The Way You Look At Everything By Changing Your Perspectives"

23:05 Ian Moncrieff MacMillan "Seeing The Way"

29:00 Jonathan MacDonald “Motivation and Happiness”

37:00 Jane Tyson "Speaking From The Heart"

Watch 👉https://www.facebook.com/192816001122901/posts/917840241953803/

https://www.youtube.com/live/z2RP6UJyRT4

Random Dialogues 15

February 2021 Speakers

00:00 Start

02:39 Jim Taylor "Experimenting In Times of Uncertainty and Rapid Change"

11:53 Zhe Levels Scott "Being A Single Mom and How I Balance That With Music and Marketing"

22:24 Bob Davies "Guitars & Guns - Playing Rock music in Saudi Arabia"

31:58 Robin Smith "What Not To Say"

42:43 Fraser Hay "Resilience & Entrepreneurship in a Post Covid Environment"

53:40 Jane Tyson "The Secret Of Doing So Much Whilst Staying Focused and ENERGISED"

Watch 👉 https://fb.watch/3ABp9_JrGx/

https://www.youtube.com/live/QjRj8DoG0_s

Bob “Guitars & Guns” - Playing Rock Music in Saudi Arabia

I lived, & worked in KSA, for 17 years & lived in all three of the major cities during this time

Public performance of music was banned at that time.

Westerners mainly lived on Housing Compounds where musical events could happen.  Events could also take place in the various Embassies & Consulates that were in most major cities

After the terror attacks, of 2004, Western Compounds were heavily guarded by the National Guard.  Hence Guitars & Guns!

Compound & Embassy access was strictly controlled.

A list of the band & guests, along with copy ID’s, was always needed upfront for events – the US Embassy vetted the names with Homeland Security & required a list of equipment in advance.

Vehicles & people were searched at the gates, Guitars and equipment were some times even x rayed before entry.

On one occasion the US Embassy, Riyadh, collected our gear using a diplomatic vehicle, they returned the gear with a crate of real beer as a Thank You!

In Jeddah the US Consulate security included a bomb-proof room where they scanned vehicles entering the site, armed guards patrolled the roof – at one show there, our sound & light guy beamed RED LED’s around like gun sights!! Not amusing at the time!

One show was cancelled at 11th hour because of a terrorist threat after we spent the afternoon setting up.

British Aerospace (BAE) had a big presence in Riyadh & Dammam with many private Housing Compounds.  Most had bars & function rooms. We played these regularly.

My first live show was in 2003 – The Riyadh Live Music Festival

It was held in the most amazing setting on an up market Housing Compound – an outdoor amphitheatre.

We played two huge shows at the American International School (Jeddah) – The second year the organizers let too many people in and the National Guard came to turn people away.  There was almost a riot outside!  It was surreal to see thousands in front of the stage, many in Western dress, some in traditional dress.

After one show, on Lotus Compound, there was a raid by the Religious police (Muttawa) – a Saudi got into the show & was refused alcohol so he called the authorities!  

I was leaving as they arrived and so “escaped”! The rest of my band were still there & hid in private villas!

One of the organizers (a French guy) lost his job over it and had to leave SA (supposedly the event organizers didn’t get permission for the event, from the Compound.   The management & had to satisfy the authorities by taking the action).

The King Abdul Aziz University of Science & Technology hosted an annual Food Festival: Huge event, 6,000 + people, massive stage & screens.  We were booked to headline, one year.

It took hours to get in (Security), resulting in no Sound Check.  They raffled two new cars just before we played (headliners) and most of the crowd left!!

If we were playing outdoors and the music could be heard outside the Compound we often had to plan our “sets” around Prayer times.

There was a vibrant Underground music scene where the locals could play:

Some private villas had huge rooms where they hosted live music.  I attended a few.

For a time, we had a Saudi Girl singer.  She couldn’t appear anywhere she would be known and no photos on any social media.

Jim Taylor "Experimenting In Times of Uncertainty and Rapid Change"

Today I'm going to talk about experimenting in situations where there's uncertainty. And there's a piece of changes very, very fast. Because I think that in this situation, it could be a catalyst for change for the good of society. But unfortunately, at the moment, you don't know. So you have to experiment.

And I think we if you experiment on a low cost basis, or a small thing and see what happens, then you never know it might be successful. Now I'm going to share a story from my soft drinks background. Because when I was in Schweppes and Pepsi Cola for many, many years, it was a very, very stable environment. And brands were very, very strong. And there was hardly any change, you couldn't break the monopoly.

But then suddenly, there was a big change, because Coca Cola decided to change the formula, they changed it to new coke with a new formula. And that made a lot of noise and made people focus on the taste. It was a complete failure. And what they did was they went back to the old formula and call it coke classic. So that was one big change. And that was aerobics, going back to coke classic.

And the second thing was in the early 1990s, there was the Gulf War. And that made a big change of people staying at home and watching televisions, and they weren't going out to clubs, pubs, and nightclubs, and they were going to supermarkets a lot. And unfortunately, for all the soft drinks companies, it meant that there was a big drop in their profits because people were spending more time at home not going out.

Now, because of that, my particular role and all of our team were made redundant. So that was a change as well. A few of us started to join a small startup with the idea to have a high quality premium cola 25% or more less than Coca Cola and we want to experiment to see what would happen if we launched that and we did it on a very, very small scale with Sainsbury's.

The name of the product for this 25% of high quality quota was called with say the corded Sainsbury's classic Kohler. Now using that, that name classic, really was quite sensitive. Coca Cola responded by putting an advert and all the national papers. They said, if you see this product, it's not real Coke, so don't buy it. And as a result of that, everybody saw it, and then all the national newspapers and they went out, and they bought it. And consequently, in Sainsbury's, the share of coke went down from 44% to 9%. And from Pepsi Cola from 21%, down to almost half. So that was a big surprise in all the newspapers. And then the other multiples in the UK said, Well, if, say the Brits have got a high quality, cheaper Coca Cola will help one. So all the multiples, then suddenly lost their high quality cola.

And then that was a success. And the consumers benefited. And they said, Well, if we're doing it for Cola, why don't we do it for other product categories, like coffee, and chocolate, and other foods. So they launched their own premium different types of foods. And that became standard.

If  go shopping now in the UK, you'll see there's so many premium brands like Tesco finest and lots of other premium products. So it just goes to show as a summary. I think if you experiment, you just never know what human behaviour is, how the company is going to react, you never know what the reaction is going to be. You may benefit society benefits society by having lower prices. So that's my story.

Zhe Levels Scott "Being A Single Mom and How I Balance That With Music and Marketing"

Hello, everyone. My name is Dee Scott. I am. Erin from Long Beach, California in the United States. And the title of my talk is being a single mom and how I balanced that with music and marketing. So when I found out that I was going to have my bundle of joy of my son, I was really excited. I was really looking forward to how bonding was my son, I was looking forward to spending time with my son. I'm really a nurturer. One of the things that a lot of my clients can tell you is that I'm very hands on. They're more than just my clients, they're my friends. And so when it comes to my son, I am especially concerned about all aspects of his well being. So when he was a baby, um, I was in the process of formulating my brand, the SEO queen. And at that time, he slept a lot. He slept a lot. And that gave me a lot of flexibility to you know, brainstorm and collaborate with Fraser Hay, and to just get my ideas and concepts together. So when he was born in 2014, I started doing the soft launch of SEO Queen around 2015. So when two years have passed from my son's birth, I began to, you know, he was more active and but my business at the same time required more of my attention. And so one thing that I can say that has been a blessing throughout this COVID time is, I've learned how to switch gears with my son and really be intentional about spending time with him and making sure he squared away, and just creating more boundaries, I have continued to tweak my business model to accommodate the changes in the demands as a mother.

One of the things that brings me a lot of joy is seeing my son grow. He's studying both English and Spanish. And I love to use this app called Duolingo with him so we can go over Spanish together. And sometimes I even talk to him in Spanish and, and it's a good thing. I think one thing that I'm learning is to, you know, really, you know, look at my needs as a mother and my sons needs as my child to, you know, tweak, to not be afraid to tweak my, my business model  in order to, you know, make sure that we have that that family time.

One thing that I have done is I have a tech support dashboard, and I encourage my clients to submit everything through there. So we can reduce the amount of phone calls. And also, you know, try to, you know, respect those boundaries. One of the tougher things about being an entrepreneur and a single mom is I'm a little bit of a workaholic too. So I tend to like to work and work and work through projects. But I can say that my son has a lot of my same personality traits he will not be tonight. So if I get too absorbed, he knows how to get my attention. So I think, you know, being a single mom and entrepreneur is definitely a challenge. But I'm really blessed. I would be remiss if I did not acknowledge and thank my parents who have been very supportive, and also acknowledge my boyfriend as well. He's been very supportive, and my siblings as well. So I think, you know, family has been a blessing. Just, you know, when there's problems just being flexible, and being able to resolve them. And sometimes, you know, deadlines need to be revisited and retooled because you only have one family, one life. And so that's, that's pretty much how I balanced it all.

There is more, but you don't have time for all the things that that's like a high level view.

Thank you.

Robin Smith "What Not To Say"

Well, the first thing I want to say is it's quite extraordinary. How many of us who are talking are actually musicians, there's guitars in the background and speakers and whatever. Anyway. So I'm, I'm going to talk to you a little bit about what to say and what not to say.

But hearing Jim's chats about code, curry just sort of reminded me how counterintuitive some things can be and how the populace can go in a way that is completely unexpected. So whilst my talk will be about things that should be said, and behavioural institutions, obviously, the human being and the human race is something completely different and can never be 100% relied upon. Anyway. So what I was going to talk about was was, I have a number of books online, and I've never really checked how well they're selling.

But I did eventually the other day, and I was much surprised to discover that my best seller was a book called power words. And basically it's a book examine, examine 50 or so of the most powerful words and phrases to use in everyday life, but particularly in negotiating because I lecture on negotiating. And I was reminded how that already started.

Many years ago, I was at a business, meeting the BSI. And I was looking for someone to help me with some social media. And there was a guy there who I thought would be the man. And he stood up and his pitch was something like this.

We've been in business for many years, and specialise in trying to get more visitors to your website. And we work out of offices that are very attractive and overlooks the River Thames.

None of those things I needed to know. And the word that really put me off was a course, trying.

What I wanted to hear was someone who would say something like, you want more visitors to your site, we will make that happen. more visitors means more sales, and this means more money.

So you can easily see the attraction of going with someone that said that which is what I wanted to hear, and maybe might be a British thing. We tend to be a bit self deprecating, but just how important it is to get the right words.

It's sort of reflected in the government, the government's nudge unit rather. Now, I don't know if you know about this, but it's now been renamed the behavioural insight team.

And basically, they check on what documents are going out to the general public to courage us to do things, pay our taxes or whatever. And they have been so successful, they sell their services around the world now.

There's no longer called the nudge unit, it's, as I say, the Behavioural Insights Team. And one of the examples they

did was some

A few years ago, we were all told that we no longer needed to put a paper road tax in our cars to prove that we paid our own tax.

And all it meant was that the amount of tax revenue they collected, plummeted, because people didn't bother because they thought they would get away with with it.

And the behavioural team was put on the case. And they added just a line to the demand. And the line was, pay your own tax or lose your vehicle. And apparently, this had the most phenomenal success in getting people to pay their tax they paid or 40% more revenue came in, after that was put onto the tax demands.

And it's not necessarily or it's important to make sure that what you're saying is clear. And sorry, I'm rambling a bit. And I'm certainly saying you should be talking about how I usually talk in clear, but anyway, so you've obviously all been to hotels, and you'll have come across the little cards that say something like help the environment, please reuse your towel.

And most people will probably tell you that up and use that out a couple of times. But if they add the words 90% of our visitors do. The uptake of this is huge. This sort of social compliance, that is expected of people. So it's very important to get your words, right  pretty clear. But anyway, so just to sort of round off.

The title was what was not to use, and it's pretty obvious, but still people will say maybe possibly perhaps trying might I'm sure.

These aren't good words to use in a negotiating situation or a person situation, or just a daily situation.

The words you want to be using can will may definitely sure positive. Yes, of course. Anything that's positive, not on the negative side. And finally, I just want to talk to you about what I call a magic s, which is still on topic, but slightly off topic if you like. And some words can change their meaning completely.

Or meaning in one's mind completely by adding an s.

If you take a situation like an advert, “Betty Crocker's Recipes Make a Better Cake.”

Now if you just add an s in there, to the make and make it mix,

it will be something like  Betty Crocker's Recipes Makes a Better Cake seems in the mind that the cake is made for you.

Or let's think about  cleaning your house faster with Joe's mops.

You still want to do the work yourself. But if you say Joe's mops cleans your house faster. Then overtly you're told the mop will do the cleaning for you.

So little magic gifts.

Whenever your folks that's what I'm here to rant about.

We don't say if anyone wanted a copy of the power words, I'll put it up free.

Fraser Hay "Resilience & Entrepreneurship in a Post Covid Environment"

Resilience is what we're going to talk about tonight. And when you think of the word resilience, not wave cookie law, law, not academia, resilience. One definition could be how to withstand or recover from a situation in life or business. Well, tonight, I'm not going to talk about when I was short. No, I'll save that for another night. I'm not going to talk about COVID. But last year, I was walking along a beach with my wife Saturday morning out for a walk didn't feel too well. On when do you want to walk along the beach and up the cliffs artist wasn't right. Before I knew I started shaking. And I was rushed to the hospital. It was all wired up. And it was an IV for 10 days. It was a sepsis infection, and then nearly died.

Now, the word COVID never came into my vocabulary last year. Because when you're self employed, you work from home. I've been a business coach and marketing consultant for 20 years of poop for girls through university doing what I do, and helping other people to start and grow their business. But quite often, I get approached people want to know how to how to and that is a process when it comes to marketing and it's three steps, but most people get it the wrong way around and many people want to do how to generate leads, backlinks traffic signups registrations, improve the cash flow, generate sales and revenue and even referrals or multiple streams of revenue. That's good, but that's step three. That's the whole, the whole do the tactics. Step three. And many people a when a business isn't going well they may watch a video they may download a Kindle book or they might buy a book and they go to a seminar or, or hire someone to come in and do the how to the tactical bit or over not getting leads, let's do Facebook advertising. But unfortunately, many of these tactics on their own fail. And they fail because the person who's been asked to do the job to solve the problem and do all the hotu is doing it in isolation and hasn't been in Included in the previous two steps are just a third party and the person who's got the problem and the issue is not taking ownership. They're delegating it to that third person, that external individual who's coming in to try and come up with a tactic to solve the problem. So prior to that stage is step two, the plan. And as some of the speakers have spoken about earlier this evening, for me, you take the plan into four parts.

Number one is the message as Robin was saying, You can't go generating leads if your message is wrong. But more importantly, people communicate one of three ways.

Visually, as Jim was speaking about how branding can change, and images can change. But we communicate visually auditorily. Many of us are listening to this podcast watching this webinar video, and many of us are reading the chart.

So 33% of your audience prefer to receive a message visually, they like to look at it, some like to hear it. And podcasts as an industry have grown up phenomenally in the last couple of years. And people still like to meet people, even if they're masked up under six feet apart, two metres apart, people still like to meet.

So if your message is wrong, and you're choosing the wrong communication style, if somebody likes to hear a message, you want them to read a long email, you've lost them. Conversely, if you want them to hear the message, and you may want to read it, and vice versa, you could be losing up to 33%, visually 33%, auditory and 33% kinesthetic way. And you don't know, out of 100% of the audience coming to your website, who likes a message? In what way? Do they prefer bullet points, long text testimonials, prefer graphs? Do they prefer to see awards? What do they want.

So you need to make sure that your plan covers the message, you need to be able to generate leads, once you get a lead, you need to be able to convert the entire sale. And you need to create a system that's going to manage and systemize and automate all of that. But who's your audience? Do you know who you're targeting right now write down who you want to target. Right? Then what the problems are, you're going to solve what human technical financial resources if you got right to resource, this one that you need to find the right people and technology to generate the leads that you want using, the tactics you're going to be using. But even if you get all of that, right, you've written plan your strategy, and you've got it documented. And a bit You're right, no, less than 15% of those watching or listening to this webinar, actually have a written plan of action to get the most out of the current situation. But prior to step two, the plan and before Step three, the fly and the tactics before we get to the strategy and the plan. Number one, your mindset, why is it not working? At the moment? You're probably anxious, you're probably frustrated, you're probably stressed in the current climate, how you're going to be improving your cash flow, how are you going to be getting out your current, a current debt, how you can reduce your mortgage? What are you trying to do to cover your overheads without getting a government loan or more grants from the government? It's simple, you need to reprogram your mindset. Three things you need to be interactive, proactive and responsive with your target audience. And resilience remembers being able to withstand keep going or recover from a situation. So what do we need to do? We need to identify very simply what's holding us back and preventing us from achieving the results we want. So how do we do that?

Well, in a second, I'm gonna tell you, we need to do a marketing audit, we need to identify where we're at. So we can decide what it is we want and how we're going to do it. We need to identify what is the real things and the issues and the breakthroughs we need to get us to generate those backlinks, traffic signups registrations, you're all good at what you do. Even those watching this on replay probably have a product service or solution that they know is good. They're just not getting it. And the reason why they're not getting it is the focusing on the wrong end. Stop thinking about the tactics, and the How to before, get your plan and your strategy written very, very simply.

But before that mindset, we just need to make sure that we've planned out why our current marketing isn't working. And then we prioritise just three things that you want to fix or address. come up with a plan of action keep it simple, stupid, keep it practical. I'm a Scotsman. I hate spending money. You hate spending money. I hate spending other people's money.

So we need to make sure that every penny counts. And as Jim pointed out earlier on, you don't need to spend millions or 10s of 1000s on your marketing, you need to test it small, keep it for free. And as founder of grew your business club, I decided a set up my group on Facebook, and in the last 18 months, of which our last six months because I nearly died from a sepsis infection. And because I do get an ear cause books, I was gonna lose my leg, I've been able to get through that by staying focused.

I've got a message, I can generate leads, I can convert them into sales, and I've got a system that's replicable. And you guys need that as well. So as a thank you for inviting me on tonight. I'll finish with two little things as a thank you to thank yous.

Number one, if you haven't got the main set in place to help you stay focused.

And if you haven't planned, documented or executed a current marketing plan for 21. And if you just do not know how to raise your profile, get awareness and get your message out there, then yes, by all means, look at one of the 21 books, I've got an Amazon but please do sign up to grow your business club, because I want to offer my help guidance and support where I can and request a free copy of my Happeneur book that are of becoming a hop earner, so  I can help you programme your mindset and come up with this strategy and tactics you need to help you sell your products, services and solutions. This year.

We're all passionate, we're all passionate in our own way we communicate in different ways. And that's how live streaming and video connects 66% of your audience because they can hear your unseen.

Yeah, I apologise for being a Scotsman fully Fraser

Jane Tyson "The Secret Of Doing So Much Whilst Staying Focused and ENERGISED"

Okay, so February 2021, we're into random dialogue 15 Stand UP & Speak Yourself and what to talk about tonight.

“Share your secret of being able to do so much and stay focused and energised escaping to the trees.  Most folks don't know where to start, how to get started in the morning. And you're always bursting with energy on line suggested off razor. So I'm not sure what the secret is. I didn't leave my parents feeling so good. When I was a kid with my early morning wake ups and restless energy. I've always been, I guess quite excited about about waking up and about life. Last month I spoke about how speaking from the heart can help us solve world problems. And I'll share that when I go back into the stream. And I wrote it as a blog. And I think you know, I feel that we've all spoken from our heart this evening about something we wanted to speak about. And we might have been feeling a bit nervous some of us but we've all kind of connected and inventory and honest with what we've been saying.

So mine was about how can waking up with lots of creative energy benefit others so how can my energy help? And then what do I do to so that I can share with you too. So here's eight things I do in case it does creatively nudge you. I'm asleep usually by 10 and I usually wake up at about five. The day begins with translating my dreams into a into a book I might just write down what I've what I've dreamt about. And that might mean going downstairs in the morning to do that. If myhusband's not going to work because he has to go to work early as a journalist. Sometimes I meditate in the morning and have some quiet time. Most days I practice yoga, I've been practising yoga for at least 30 years. And it's something that I weave into my work that I do with people and particularly with children.

I squeeze a bit of lemon into hot water in the morning to have a morning luminizer. And I guess that's quite an energizer, followed by a high protein breakfast of scrambled egg with toast and I generally over the day will have quite, you know, balance of protein to keep your blood sugar stable. And then a rest in the day. I don't know how many of you take a rest in the day and I think it's really quite important to have that downtime at some point where you just stop especially busy mums, you know, you've got that bedtime looming that Tea Time looming, and you just need to have that pause before you kind of need to re re energise for that part of the day and times can get tough and our energy gets gets slower to have that rest. Tree hugging is optional. wandering around the woods is definitely a great way to for me to energise and a great source of inspiration. So I spent a lot of plates, and I work a lot of I work a lot of product projects simultaneously.

And to somehow appear maybe I'm focused yet it's my way of doing and being I means I get a lot of stuff done. And I'm always, you know, doing that, but I'm not always the most detailed person. I'm mostly I follow what I love to do. In 2012, I set up a group called love what we do, and random dialogues was the speaking on that, and connecting people to what they love to do most through conversation, connections and community. Steve Jobs wrote, you've got to find what you love. And that is a truth as true for your work as it is for your lovers, your work is going to fill a large part of your life. And the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do.

And I guess for many, you know young people, maybe if they watch this or work with you know, we're gonna have is that nine to five anymore is that work? I think we're going to have very portfolio careers. And I think it is important to follow what we love to do and importantly, to have, you know, connections and community around us. So yeah, so how do we find what we love to do?

I think most of us would agree that it's good to find places where we belong, where we can express ourselves and test ideas and try things out, as we've alluded to tonight, not to be afraid to give things a go.

I guess that's where my energy comes from the Association of good people, community belonging, the randomness that it creates, and manifests from those associations.

I've got a bit kit, it's Napoleon Hill's book, Think and Grow Rich. My father had an original for 1937 copy next to his bed, even at the end. And

he bought us girls, my sister and I he bought us up and a lot of the wisdom from this were the buy ins for it or not, but I feel it was a very early part, you know, very pioneering personal development book.

And I was looking at it tonight just popped into it to think about me, how could I? How could it influence what I was gonna say tonight by energising and community. And there is a there's a section called the power of the mastermind.

And it says no two minds ever come together without thereby creating a third invisible intangible force, which meet may be likened to a third mind.

So yeah, thank you for energising me this evening. I'm out of my comfort zone. I like to do things tastings, testings investigate things, and it does. You know, I guess kind of was keep me on that on that on that edge. And and I'm and yeah, it's great that you've all been here tonight. And I hope that you feel energised and inspired by this evening to and it's a catalyst for other stuff for you as well. So I'm going to now exit the solo layout.

Thank you.

So that brings us to two minutes to eight o'clock.

Anyone? Fraser?

muted, muted.

Finally.

Got one one. I am colorblind and I can't see that with the colours.

Right? You're read the book thinking grow rich. There was one word taken out of the original manuscript before the publishers would run with it. Can you remember what it was?

It was something about spirituality, wasn't it?

Yeah, the publisher declined to publish the book until he took out the word vibration. Because they said nobody would buy it. And now here we are. 100 years later, and everybody is doing everything energetically, whether it's their yoga, whether it's connecting on a on a stream yard video webinar using the internet more than ever, vibration is prominent in everybody's marketing and we're all connecting. So very interested in you take something from 100 years ago, and It's so relevant today and wash it with a mastermind mastermind groups, the boardroom with your business club and Facebook. So totally get it totally. Yeah, yeah. And random dialogues. For me, it's a mastermind, you know, it is about people who get random dialogues, don't necessarily want structure to they like to flow in a bit more of a random way. And from the randomness comes the creativity and the doing and the structure and the routine in its own way without, it's about following your interest, I think following your passions, following what you love to do, and then being with others to share that.

Yeah, I think the meaning of life is to discover your gift. And the purpose of life is to share it. And it's through opportunities like this, where we can meet random people for the first time and get to understand how selfless they are with the skills, talents and assets, they've got other people and if we can remember them, each of them. And so we can recommend and refer them to our connections or less. Who knows where it can lead? Who knows.

Thank you, Fraser.

So just before we leave, it's eight o'clock now at one actually we finish at eight. But then, can we just check out with one word, you know, a feeling and emotion something that we just would like to share? Just very quickly one word and if you've been watching too, thank you, he is joined us to thank you for joining us this evening. If you want to check out with a word as well. I'll quickly go around

connection.

Opportunities,

Fraser, mindset.

Bob, inspiring

Robin - friendship.

I say energy and not enough fields are committed but they might do later on. So thank you, everybody. And thank you for watching. We're back next month, second Wednesday of every month for an analysis if you like what you see and we feel like you were your tribe and you're you want to join some of our groups and hop into the random dialogues group on Facebook, obviously join the Facebook group as well. And we'll see you there and we'll see you next time. Thank you everybody and goodbye.

March 2021 Speakers  #16

This event was run as more a Random Dialogues experience!

Present - Ian, Cath, Phil, Jason and Jane

Watch 👉 https://youtu.be/av--9vKs-S0

April 2021 Speakers #17

Present - Phil Shepherd,  Ian Moncrieff MacMillan, Ella Doherty, Julie Bowen, Jane Tyson

00:00 Start

06:40 Phil Shepherd - A Bit Woo Woo but Not

19:00 Ian Moncrieff MacMillan - Skylarks and Paraquets

27:00 Ella Doherty - Now I Know What I'm Going to Talk About Tonight

40:00 Julie Bowen - Is Life Better When we Put a Filter On It?

56:00 Jane Tyson - A Lot Meant (allotment)

65:00 End

Watch https: 👉 //youtu.be/3wVVeLkthlg

May 2021 Speakers #18

Present - Gill Gayk, Ian Moncrieff MacMillan, Jane Tyson, Jason Arbiter (apologies from Cath who was going to speak about time management!)

Watch https: 👉 //youtu.be/3wVVeLkthlg

Gill - The power of positive thinking

Ian - The Naked Lift Story

Jane - Radish Poem for mental health awareness week

Jason - sponsored by coca cola

00:00 Introduction

00:15 Tonight's show is sponsored by Coca Cola announced Jason Arbiter

03:05 Did you know St Albans was the home of the hot cross bun, Ian Moncrieff MacMillan shares why

5:22 Gill Gayk shares the Magna Carta is not in St Albans its in Runnymede, near Windsor

5:28 we shared where we were "dialling in" from!

6:08 Jason shared that Normal Floyd died today

8:52 Ian's son is called Harry Potter

9:12 This week is mental health awareness week 2021. One of the five ways to wellness is connection. Random Dialogues is about connection, community and having fun. A resilience boost just by being together.

10:37 Gill Gayk's shares her talk about the  power of positive thinking and how serotonin is well, I can talk about the science of serotonin. I said the science of serotonin, but I'm not a scientist. So it would be quite a lot of blagging.

15:00 a positive clap from the audience, thank you Gill!

15:08 The protein content in peanut butter is a salt and a source of tryptophan, which increases serotonin levels. That's why we're all addicted to peanut butter. Hey. Yeah, peanut butter in my Thai curry tonight. Do you feel more relaxed now? Jane? Jason had a peanut butter sandwich. There you go. That's what made me happy this morning this afternoon.

15:34 Katrina Sargent is with us in the virtual audience, welcome Katrina!  Katrina joined us in a previous Random Dialogue

15:40 she'd been practising for about six months beforehand! ha said Jason

15:45 Katrina taught me a trick to put a pen in my mouth and smile, it also raises our serotonin. I wrote a blog about it called "Is Smiling Underated"  here  - https://randomdialogues.medium.com/is-smiling-overrated-a1e97f2f3b64

20:00 Gill shares her karaoke tale

22:18 Ian shares his naked lift tale

26:20 Ian shares what he actually came to talk about "Personal Values Assessment" - I want personal growth, professional growth. I think personal fulfilment is more interesting.

31:12 Jane's montly talk "Creative Nudges To Bolster Resilience". This month we wrote poems about radishes. See this week's newsletter too for them https://www.getrevue.co/profile/randomdialogues

38:12 Lockdown lard

39:00 Ian's shares the story of the Whistler painting and Tom Keating.

43:12 Cath was due to join us and speak about time management, but she ran out of time.

48:00 We might have a Random Dialogue on the Toucan virtual platform soon.  

52:55 The benefits of radishes for neuro diversity. There is something in to support adhd, aspergers, maybe a type of sulpher

53:54 Word of the night Radical Raddish

https://sites.google.com/view/randomdialogues/random-dialogues

July 2021 Speakers #19

July's speakers #19

https://youtu.be/mGlZVGOPy4U

00:00 Start

02:43 Colin Horner "If Music Be The Food Of Life"

10:40 Why Mick Jagger?

12:54 Anne-Lise Kadri "What Do You Want To Be When You Grow Up?"

18:39 Q&A

22:03 Jane Tyson explains about random dialogues being a space for something and nothing

23:29 Ruth Stone "How A Community Mindset Creates More For All"

30:11 Q&A

32:50 Mark Blunden "Going Down With A Case Of Eudemonia"

36:40 Q&A

41:00 Roy Allaway "Tips For Curing Insomnia"

46:35 Q&A

47:49 Jane Tyson "100 Days Of Resilient Kids With LIfeSmart Learning Labs"

54:07 Reflection Time - words for the evening

60:00 End.

#randomdialogues

July 2021 Speakers #20

Present - Mike Holdstock, Yiannis, Niall Jones, Jason Arbiter, Bob Davies, Jane Tyson  

Watch https: 👉 https://youtu.be/6vYvdlTsSlU

00:00 Welcome

04:15 Yiannis Fafalios “Thrills and Spills on My Family Roller Coaster Startup Ride”

13:30 Bob Davies “Deja Vue Or Not?”

22:00 Niall Jones “Finding Your Space”

32:00 Jason Arbiter “My Therapist Quit On Me?”

33:00 Mike Holdstock “Doing That Which Must Be Done”

45:00 Jane Tyson “Random Dialogues - Marcus Rashford”

With thanks to all the crew who tuned in to engage including Eugenia and Phil Shepherd

Perhaps you’d like to come and join in too.?

Info here https://sites.google.com/view/randomdialogues/random-dialogues

Yiannis Falafios Thrills and Spills on My Family Roller Coaster Startup Ride”

 Oh, well, just to explain some of the titles because they do look quite random. They're sort of seafarer innovator colour, what else is out there. But that's kind of where the whole journey started, for me initially is I was a seafarer. And I spent a lot of time looking at operations and looking how things happened and thinking, yeah, how can we make that easier? How can we make that better? And when we say innovation, that doesn't always mean technology may just be you know, how can we do the job slightly better or more efficient? And my brother has that same thinking more from the point of view of, you know, how could I potentially cut a corner or make him very menial job automated, and that's when he came to me one day with the idea of the app that we've launched. And he came to me and is like a friend of mine is really looking for a gift and I know exactly what they want, but it's way out. price range. And, and I would just love to have a way in which, you know, I could get people together and we could all contribute. And we can get that person what they really want as opposed to getting loads of individual gifts. And you realising the crowdfunding was was that solution. And add a little thought I was thinking, yeah, that makes sense to me as well. And so we thought, well, who better turn to for more advice, and it was our parents, we spoke to them. And you know, they said, actually, you know, landmark birthdays also makes sense, and, you know, office gifts and all that kind of stuff. So all of a sudden, you know, just between us as a family, you know, we saw that this was potentially a good idea. But as you can imagine a family of four people. We're not all experts, we don't, we aren't coders, we aren't people who understand technology too much. So, you know, I took it upon myself a bit to do a lot of reading, read the lean startup and innovators dilemma, and you know, how lean, lean startup and the other book, Sprint, how to save, solve problems, and five days, among others, and to kind of help with that, build that expertise in just starting up a company. And the peculiar thing with having a family company is you've essentially got a diverse team right off the bat. But from an age point of view, we've got my mother and my father, who are one generation and something myself and my brother from another generation. And that's helped us along our journey, one of the biggest assets we have on our app is just the ease of use, it's really easy to use. And that's because when we show the first demo to my father, he was like, I don't understand what these buttons and I don't get this page, I don't understand that page. I want it easier than that. So it's great, because now people use it. And they say, I was actually really easy to use, there's two buttons here, there's one button there. And that's all I can do. And that's all I need to do. So if it wasn't for them being there, I guarantee that my brother and myself would do it alone and make it very complicated. And we don't have that ability to say that nor anyone can use, my father can use it, everyone in this chat should be able to use it. And then, you know, you've got other benefits, like obviously, celebrating successes, you know, once you finish university, in school, apart from birthdays, and Christmas, there's a lot more you can break family. But hey, we'll company you know, when we get our first user, someone using it properly, and reaching their target and getting 100 and 1000. And now 10,000 users, it's another thing to kind of celebrate, which is, which is nice. And again, when things go wrong, which which they do go wrong, and it's nice to be able to talk to them, you know, we all live together. So the communication is there when something goes wrong. You know, someone will say, Well, how are we handling this? Where are we with this, which is nice. But then again, on the flip side, the communication can sometimes be a bit fragmented, you know, from the point of views, let's say we're all seriously talking about, you know, the app and make meet, maybe making changes, and then all of a sudden say, oh, what's for dinner, and you know, oh, we've lost the flow. But now we're talking about dinner. But likewise, maybe around the dinner table, you know, someone may come up with a great idea or a little gem and sort of say, Well, actually, I was talking to someone today, who was using it and they said, blah, blah, blah, and then all of a sudden, we have a nice conversation that comes out of that. So, you know, obviously benefits of that scenario, obviously, you know, there are a few drawbacks. But you know, it's quite, you know, it's enjoyable.

And then also, you change the dynamic, you know, as a family, you see your father as your father and your mother's your mother, your brother, your brother, but all of a sudden, when you have a small business or a startup, that changes a bit, all of a sudden, that person now becomes your colleague, and you do have to swap the house a bit. You know, sometimes you can't talk to someone as saying, you change the way you talk. But you know, sometimes conversations go a bit differently. And you've got to take everyone as seriously as everyone else where you know, maybe as a family, you know, there may be someone who's a bit more jokey and a bit more this and a bit more that, you know, you really got to appreciate that, you know, sometimes you've got to treat people as colleagues and everyone's opinion is equally valid regardless of age and understanding of subject technology, whatever it may be. So it makes you look at these people in a slightly different light in certain situations, which is taken some learning definitely taken a lot of learning especially with you know, I've got a big age difference my brother as well. So it's not even just between, you know, myself and my brother, my parents, it's, it's across everyone. And you also get to see what these people are like, you know, as a kid, you see your father go to work, you know what everyone else does, and you think they probably do a good job and that's it. But obviously when you're working together, you really see what happens what's, what's everyone's drive, you know, how do people you know deal with stress and deadlines. It's amazing to kind of see these things and where people fill in gaps. And where people have said, Don't worry, I'll handle that. And, you know, you get to see their core values. And it's really interesting to see it from a different point of view is not just, you know, oh, it's my mom, who is a great mom. It's also, you know, my mom, who's also, you know, very good at working and very, you know, understanding of this situation. So, you know, it's interesting to see these people in a different light. And that is my random dialogue.

Mute, unmute. Get some clapping. And your family are all watching, I believe. Yes. Yes, they're all watching. They're all watching. Welcome to the what we want to,

yeah, exactly. All four of us face, it's great. It's great to have the whole fan because right off the bat, you've got a team of four people, well, where, you know, many people come up with ideas and their selves, and they have no one to bounce ideas off. And they're scared of sharing ideas with people. You know, when it's with your family, that level of trust is already there. So you don't have to pay them as much. Exactly. Even if they do groan and grumble sometimes, as you said, you know, we've got to say, Oh, can you give us five, five minutes here? Or 10 minutes there? labour cheap labour. Exactly what we're better to go. Well.

There we go. Thank you. Thank you, obviously open to any questions, or we leave them to the end.

Mike - I really like which I really liked what you said about innovation is not just technology, or it's, I think you said something. Really, really, really, really important. Innovation is people.

It's thinking, you know, as you said, as you're going to talk about slightly outside the box with something new, you know, oh, let's automate it and make it or whatever. Some of the best features we have in our app, we actually do manually and manually is a lot better than doing it automatically. So yeah, hopefully, maybe that's a nice segue for you and your your talk later on.

Phil - We also have another question here for Janni from Phil at what does your app do Yanni? You're muted. You're muted. Yeah,

I'm back now. Yeah, it's a, it's a crowdfunding platform that essentially fills in the gap for when the of the other platforms Don't, don't help you. So we're not really the ones for big charities, or startups, you know, when we initially came up with the idea, and Rob came up with ideas for gift giving, you know, forgiving between friends and family, and maybe even bigger groups. But we've seen that people like creators, like yourself, James,

Exactly. People who want to take whatever they do to the next level, whether it's a small business, or whether it's an individual, as well as you know, potentially even, you know, small businesses or fundraising and charity, but not from the point of view of, we give to a charity, and the money goes to, for specific reasons, you know, we want people to understand that money is going directly to buying, I don't know what it may be, you know, specialist equipment, you know, get to the person, so they know where their money's going. Because we find that a lot of these big cases, they say, oh, we're going to give money to whatever charity, by the time the money actually gets there. And we get to the actual cause, and some of the money may even go to, you know, actually paying for the rent of the shops, and for the individuals working there. You kind of lose that, you know, that feeling that Oh, actually, I've helped out with that situation. So that's kind of evolved, as we've met more people, you know, starters, mainly a gift giving platform. And now it's sort of moved on to kind of just anyone who needs an upgrade or being taken to the next level, you know, you come to what we want. And you know, your friends and family and your colleagues and your, your community, your crowd. In many cases, I'm more than happy to help you out. You know, whether it's five pounds, 100 pounds, or most recently, someone gave me 2000 pounds to do a campaign. So you know, that guy's got his his dream culture as well. So

Niall Jones “Finding Your Space”

 So I am going to talk about, yeah, I'm in England on the south coast. And I'm going to be talking about, I tried to do different, talk about different things around pair spaces and space. So I'm going to talk about finding your space that was just very relevant for me at the moment, and potentially for lots of people. And I'll do a whole spiel about that shortly. Thank you.

Thank you. So hello, everyone again. And, yes, I'm going to talk a bit about spaces again, my thing. And recently, actually, last week, I did do something on because I'm doing a lot of work around the power repair spaces. And I've been doing a lot of work around sort of space facility space facilitation over many years, including trying to develop technology and communities in that space. And last week, I did, I did something about this sort of length on the four or five pair spaces that are very powerful in my world. But this time, I wanted to talk a bit about finding your space, because it's very, it feels very relevant to me. So I thought I'd just talk about that in the context of my life and my back kind of geographically to where I grew up. And so I'll just say that in terms of my spaces, Dorset, Somerset, Devon, even, and Hampshire, all featured in my first 25 years. And what I recall about that, in a very general sense, was having a lot of physical space around me. And the ability to be able to go out on the ground and cycle and have space around me. And then I would describe a lot of my time from my mid 20s, to about my early 40s. Actually, as a kind of, like wherever I was, I was actually in London and Eastern Europe, basically. But as a sort of, it was like a family space time. And since the last five or 67568 years, I've sort of become this basis, man. And I written about the idea of being a Spaceman and the idea of how we think about our spaces. And a lot of that time, both as a family man and a space is man. I was associated with a big capital, London and a small capital in Eastern Europe, Sofia. So those urban spaces really became very important significant in my spaces. But now I'm back in Dorset. And I've got lots of bigger space around me and I'm by the sea, but I'm living by the sea almost for the first time, my life. And I'm really enjoying that. And that's very relevant to what's happening to me and my life at the moment, I'm able to go out and walk around by the sea. And I have a day job at a British based day job nine to five for the first time in about 16 years. 1516 years was also so my space in space world has gone back to a kind of nine to five UK working environment, but doing my peerspace side hustle, kind of in the evenings and weekends, whenever I can, I also feel is that there's a new phase coming in my world, but perhaps in everyone's world. Because maybe what's happened in this last year 18 months is that we've all done a lot of thinking and a lot of time to think about how we want to how we think about our spaces, but that could be whether it's my space, or your space, your physical space, what is your physical space? That is right for you, you know, and thinking about what's the geographical space that's right for you is that a static geographical space is a moving German space. I mean, I generally been quite static in my life in segments of years. But I'm coming up to 50 companies, well, I'm thinking a lot about going into a more kind of moving geographical phase of what I want to travel, I want to see the world I want to spend decent segments of my 50s sort of seeing the world if you like. The other crucial thing is who's in that space with you? Obviously, I've had, like significant numbers of people in my own childhood family unit, and there might be only in it for most of my life up until five, six years ago, but most of the last 5678 years I've been much more solitary for, you know, rightly or wrongly. The other fascinating thing about it is, what is it? What is it you're doing in that space? Is it the right thing? Is it static? Is it evolving? Is it evolving? If it's completely static? Is it good? Or is it bad? If it's evolving, is evolving in the right way or the wrong way? And or does it need to shift does it need to shift to something different. And I suppose I come to a conclusion I still I'm in half. I feel like I'm in a pretty good space. Now. I feel like I'm in the right space for this time. This kind of topic I just love talking about. This was much more of a few notes, but much more kind of made up my first time I did this either call scripts written about five spaces.

 think I'm in a good space. Now a good space for me in this time, I think I'm in the right geographical space. It's okay that I'm pretty much on my own. I'm connected into really good people in my day job working space, but also in my past base work and developing the community around around that and the team around that. And so I'm feeling well about things. And I knew this would be cathartic. So I wanted to say that because just the fact of sharing this I find helpful, because I didn't know I was going to come out. But the fact that you've all heard it now how many there is listening helps me to feel better about everything somehow. And as I can do this sort of thing every week. So that's it. Thank you very much Jane, again, for giving this opportunity to people to do this. And what I do is a similar thing where just one person gets to speak for like 45 minutes, you know, time to talk and have q&a and discussion. So this is a natural feed into that as Jane said earlier to just the past base, the base base calm. Thank you. Five Minute 55

Jane - Spaceman any questions or comments? Anyone knows the silent ones got nothing to say he's in his own space. Great, great to hear you settle down again. Sort of soak. Time in the end demo Gary was was not the easiest.

Niall ….Yeah, Mike knows about that. But also 50s I'm thinking I want to move I want to be moving like beyond the Eastern Europe slash UK channel. If you had the chance to go and live on Mars, would you? Well, when you own very unlikely very unlikely I'm not sure I really want to get space if I want that to get to get to space. I'm not sure. I don't want to do it yet. But I am bit scared of it. So I think it's gonna be scary.

Jason - Yeah, I mean, if all the technology was there, and if you I would never, I would definitely,

Jane Jason, I was just trying to find as you were talking some of your work you've been doing this week in your own little space to? Maybe not the me or my sidekick? What do you want to talk a little bit about what you've been doing in your spaces this week with your artwork and things?

Jason - I'm not gonna tell you what I've got two things to say, which really made me laugh this way. One, my therapist quit after 32 minutes talking to me. They decided they never wanted. That was it? And two, I was asked what's the hardest thing to draw? And I thought about it. And I came up with the answer an egg. Oh, try drawing an egg. It's really difficult. And that's it. But 32 minutes of having a mindset of pissed, quit on my last call be a record. Going into therapy. She couldn't get it. She couldn't get away from me quick enough. I've got one more thing to say. No. It was very funny. I've heard from him again.

Mike - I think that's very healthy. I got on on healthy for her or he was there for you. But it sounds very healthy for both parties is like Yeah, all

you you've reminded me of this lovely thing. There was a Bob Newhart thing done on Saturday Night Live in America many years ago. on YouTube. Yeah, I know. And the lady comes in and the guy knew $5 a minute and she says, Oh, it's gonna be expensive. And he said, No, nobody most easy and much more than three or four minutes. And she says Why? And he said, Well, trainee, and basically she starts talking about her OCD, obsessive compulsive disorder problem, you know, and how it's coming out. And he says, right now listen, when she says this is what you're supposed to do. And she says, yes. Okay. Stop it. Just stop it. Stop it. Yeah. And a very good friend of mine who I first met all 20 years ago, she was she was on a course, one of the very early coaching courses, really professional coaching courses is back in 99, to 2000. And she then went off and set off a very expensive, set up a very successful business in London, setting up coaching and therapy places, but body therapy and talk therapy and all the rest of it. And we kept on meeting up in when I was in London from time to time. And I remember one occasion, some five or six years ago, we met up and she was saying, you know, I'm increasingly saying to my clients, particularly the first time I meet them, and they talk about all their situations and all the problems. I'm increasingly saying, Have you tried acceptance? life? Yeah, they put labels on it. Yeah, yeah. I've started Jane already. Oh, good. Yeah, what are you gonna say is a Jason so you sounded like you were gonna say something about not putting labels on things? I can't hear you. Oh, shame.

Jason - Sorry. No, no, he's just, yeah, it was a really funny thing. I just couldn't believe they quit on me. And I totally agree. Just stop it basically. And I feel a lot better now. I don't think she does. But I'm gonna optimise but I'm gonna offer my services to her.

Mike - Now, well, not just her, but the whole of the industry. Because we know if you go along and meet enough of them and after 30 minutes, they just nod is like I quit, then you know, then they can go off and do something real, you know, rather than Paris if parasitizing themselves on people who are sitting there thinking I'm wrong, somebody made me right, then they can actually get a decent job. Now you know, this may sound extremely critical therapists which in a way it is, and I did try to do a therapy training myself many many years ago and got thrown out of it because they just too fucking mad man. Um, I hang out with with a bunch of, you know, a bunch of therapists and most of them The ones that are the ones who were really good once they were really good, they started doing it according to the model. And then they started teaching the model to the next year students. And then they started supporting them in the next year students or three, four year students in there. And then they would be supporting the Academy. And then after about 10 or 20 years, the academy wouldn't want them anymore. For the good and simple reason they were no longer doing the model. But they were being themselves they were modelling. The individual who had the label therapists, but probably decided to take the label therapist off in a moment of just sitting and listening. Jane invited me a couple of days ago, do you want to do something on Wednesday, and I just read a lovely story about a boy who goes to magician school and meets in the end the oldest, wisest and most scruffy looking magician. And on a remote island, and the old guy says to the boy is like, when I was a boy, I thought the whole point of my training as a magician was so that I would be able to do anything, I wanted anything at all. I thought that, uh, you think that, and we all think that we all think we can change the world. But the truth is, the more that I've learned, and the further I've travelled, the more the path is narrowed. And the choices have been diminished until, as an older man, I have now no choice at all, except to do that which must be done. Now some of that to do that which must be done stuff is very much what I'm doing. But I think think the choice is narrow. The problem is making priorities about the whole thing. I love what Jason was talking about love, which we'll be talking about, because they all have this element of coming out of the box of deciding to do something different. I said in my intro to Jane that I talk about something about elephants on the table and using scenarios. And one of the things I'm obsessed with about is like gross denial going on people not wanting to talk about the elephant under the table. Back in a Bob and I Bob may remember back in 1972, there was a there was an oil crisis, which many of you are too young to remember. And that because basically the Saudis decided, you know, we aren't going to let shell set the price, we want to set the price ourselves. And shell actually came out of it pretty well. Because it was said in the organisational development industry, it was said that shell had actually been working doing scenarios with their staff, which wasn't like how do we solve a specific situation, but it was training them senior and middle managers to deal with unforeseen problems and chucking around a lot of wildcards to make the people think outside the box dealing with what ever came along. Without assumptions around it. In a lot of the work I do I we have a we have a what is the word, I can't remember what it's called in English where you know, a phrase, which is assumptions are the mother of all five cups. If I stop, assuming there's somebody out there who's going to save my life, called a therapist, if I stop assuming that you use Yanis example, a member of my family is this, that or the other because I refer to them as dad, and actually start seeing them as a colleague. If I stop assuming that I can make a new space for myself and other people, as Niall is doing, then a whole new world opens up for us. The only trick is to be made sure that we let go of the assumptions before the assumptions eat us up. I wish I'd known that. I wish somebody been saying that to me. When I was around 30 or 40. I did a recently did an extremely good course by a guy called Mike, run by a guy called Michael Boyle. And if you run into him, do it. Breaking the spell. And the spell in this particular concept was the spell that we get cast on us by our mums and dads and our schools and society. Michael helped us we were five or six during the course helped find the spell that we'd been had been cast on some break breaking and to break it. And I forgotten completely what it was. Yeah, right. And it was all about for me, this question of I thought of that 20 or 30 years ago, and I've heard that many times in my business life sitting in a conference, somebody coming up explaining a new great model which they just commercialised and somebody in the room during the coffee break thing. I thought about that 20 years ago but I didn't know what to do with it. In this amazing Climate change, which we're all talking about, where's absolutely necessary to be thinking about? What is it that I want? What do I want to do with this space? What do I want to do with this world, which cannot go back to being what it was in February? Or January or February 2020? Then we all have to think about what are the chains that we have to let go off? What are the assumptions that we have to let go of? And what is the idea which I've just had, which is worth developing. And it's really lovely to hear, particularly the younger guys, I was thinking of Yanis. And now and I think the people who are sort of around the 50, they're still pretty young, actually take you picking up an idea and running with it. No, but sometimes without opposition, but running with it anyway. And they're with I am, hold my peace, or state my case, or whatever the expression is English, I'm speaking to you from Sweden. I'm I came here 50 something years ago, I live with a German. So English is no longer my first language. But anyway, what I do in my spare time is, well, I'm a grandfather, I watch horses because horses are like human beings only they can't lie. I'm a contrarian. I encourage other people to think out of the box. I ask people, why are you doing it like that? Isn't there are another way of doing it. And I tend to innovate. And if you want to find out what that's about, you can also know because we've been innovating together for three or four years, and Jamie increasingly, as well. And I look forward to innovating in the future with both of those too. And anybody else who wants to thank you,

Bob Davies Deja Vue Or Not?

My little story with more than anything. I've called it deja vu or not? Because deja vu, does it exist? Does it not exist? Who knows? Maybe some of you know. And so it's a short story about something that happened to me, way back in the 70s. When I was a young man. It seemed like a deja vu event. And it troubled me for quite a number of months before I found out exactly what it was. Just to give you some background. One of my first jobs after leaving school was working for Barclays Bank. Then in my hometown of Yeovil, always going well, and then one day I saw an internal advert making effort to ask for volunteers to go to London for six months, the bank was struggling to get staff to London in those days. And it was a great opportunity for a young guy to go to London, who was fully expensed. We were going to live in a hotel. We've been working in the West End, I thought why not give it a go. So off I went, I lived in a hotel, which was on the Cromwell road. A few tube stops away from Regent streets. I was fortunate enough to work in a branch which was at two eight Regent Street. For those of you know that that know London is actually right next door to Liberty's in fact there was a hole in the wall with a key on both sides where we literally used to open this door in the wall and pass the money through those days. We also were the nearest Back to Carnaby Street in those days bearing in mind in the 70s, which also meant we had some really interesting characters come into our, into our bank into our branch. It was a great time for a young guy, six months in London for the expense, I lived a good life for six months, the bank got quite clever in the end, because it will also bring in guys over from Ireland, giving them a few weeks to their hotel, the bank actually bought their own hotel first the sense, which was okay, in the end, because it was even closer to the west end, I was living in Bayswater. And anyway, it was, as I said, it was a great time, money in my pocket sorts of phenomenal bands back there. And of course, as many of you will remember, there's no such thing as a mobile phone. So to find my parents back in Yeovil, I had to go and use the traditional red phone boxes. And the one I use the most was just off Regent Street, it was just behind Regent Street in a street called headend Street. I was in the phone, box, phoning home, I had this really peculiar feeling. I know this place. I've been here where I know it. Didn't think any more about it several times, I use the same phone box. And this. I was absolutely convinced I knew this place. Even more. So there was a sign hanging outside a building that a commercial building, and it says k West. And this troubled me for quite a number of months. And I can't remember exactly when the penny dropped, eventually. So it was really was deja vu to me at the time. And then one day, the penny dropped. And it was the phone box that David Bowie was photographed in for the iconic cover of Ziggy Stardust, that was the actual phone box. And behind it looking at window was the sign the Key West sign, which is now part of rock legend. And I believe according to legend, it was actually stolen by a fan. And apparently, it's been sold on several times, many of which apparently are actually fake copies of it. So that's the story, basically. I mean, it wasn't deja vu, obviously. And that made me wonder, is this ever real? Is there such a thing? Is it our subconscious coming to the fore. But it was fascinating. And it was a wonderful experience. I've actually got photographs still of myself in the same poses. There is Bowie, who was my idol in the 70s. That's it. Hope you enjoyed it.

Niall - The answer The answer that question, by the way is a whole whole hour at least. Whether it's whether it's real or not, and repeating many times obviously Yeah, looking mirror looking into itself.

Yes, absolutely. And to be somewhere and to be convinced you know where you are, but you don't know why. I've never been to London before I was convinced I've been there or knew the place. It was very very strange.

Mike - I love being taken back to my childhood Bob we must be roughly the same generation because I I did. He sort of university studies in the back end of the 60s, a regional street Polytechnic, which was just behind Oxford Circus, stoops road and all that area. And Soho, which was a really grubby area full of guys coming out of shop shop doors and saying, Yeah,

Niall - I'm so on. So that was nice to be brought back to that one. My dad, my dad worked for bank all his life. And as you say he was like it was difficult for the banks to get people to work in London. They had to pay them extra money. Exactly. The London premium.

Bob They offered me They asked me if I would stay and I said no, I'm not staying with the London premium and I would lose all the expenses. That hotel. I said no, this is not funny. But I enjoyed the six months incredibly.

Niall Jones

Thank you. So hello, everyone again. And, yes, I'm going to talk a bit about spaces again, my thing. And recently, actually, last week, I did do something on because I'm doing a lot of work around the power repair spaces. And I've been doing a lot of work around sort of space facility space facilitation over many years, including trying to develop technology and communities in that space. And last week, I did, I did something about this sort of length on the four or five pair spaces that are very powerful in my world. But this time, I wanted to talk a bit about finding your space, because it's very, it feels very relevant to me. So I thought I'd just talk about that in the context of my life and my back kind of geographically to where I grew up. And so I'll just say that in terms of my spaces, Dorset, Somerset, Devon, even, and Hampshire, all featured in my first 25 years. And what I recall about that, in a very general sense, was having a lot of physical space around me. And the ability to be able to go out on the ground and cycle and have space around me. And then I would describe a lot of my time from my mid 20s, to about my early 40s. Actually, as a kind of, like wherever I was, I was actually in London and Eastern Europe, basically. But as a sort of, it was like a family space time. And since the last five or 67568 years, I've sort of become this basis, man. And I written about the idea of being a Spaceman and the idea of how we think about our spaces. And a lot of that time, both as a family man and a space is man. I was associated with a big capital, London and a small capital in Eastern Europe, Sofia. So those urban spaces really became very important significant in my spaces. But now I'm back in Dorset. And I've got lots of bigger space around me and I'm by the sea, but I'm living by the sea almost for the first time, my life. And I'm really enjoying that. And that's very relevant to what's happening to me and my life at the moment, I'm able to go out and walk around by the sea. And I have a day job at a British based day job nine to five for the first time in about 16 years. 1516 years was also so my space in space world has gone back to a kind of nine to five UK working environment, but doing my peerspace side hustle, kind of in the evenings and weekends, whenever I can, I also feel is that there's a new phase coming in my world, but perhaps in everyone's world. Because maybe what's happened in this last year 18 months is that we've all done a lot of thinking and a lot of time to think about how we want to how we think about our spaces, but that could be whether it's my space, or your space, your physical space, what is your physical space? That is right for you, you know, and thinking about what's the geographical space that's right for you is that a static geographical space is a moving German space. I mean, I generally been quite static in my life in segments of years. But I'm coming up to 50 companies, well, I'm thinking a lot about going into a more kind of moving geographical phase of what I want to travel, I want to see the world I want to spend decent segments of my 50s sort of seeing the world if you like. The other crucial thing is who's in that space with you? Obviously, I've had, like significant numbers of people in my own childhood family unit, and there might be only in it for most of my life up until five, six years ago, but most of the last 5678 years I've been much more solitary for, you know, rightly or wrongly. The other fascinating thing about it is, what is it? What is it you're doing in that space? Is it the right thing? Is it static? Is it evolving? Is it evolving? If it's completely static? Is it good? Or is it bad? If it's evolving, is evolving in the right way or the wrong way? And or does it need to shift does it need to shift to something different. And I suppose I come to a conclusion I still I'm in half. I feel like I'm in a pretty good space. Now. I feel like I'm in the right space for this time. This kind of topic I just love talking about. This was much more of a few notes, but much more kind of made up my first time I did this either call scripts written about five spaces.

 think I'm in a good space. Now a good space for me in this time, I think I'm in the right geographical space. It's okay that I'm pretty much on my own. I'm connected into really good people in my day job working space, but also in my past base work and developing the community around around that and the team around that. And so I'm feeling well about things. And I knew this would be cathartic. So I wanted to say that because just the fact of sharing this I find helpful, because I didn't know I was going to come out. But the fact that you've all heard it now how many there is listening helps me to feel better about everything somehow. And as I can do this sort of thing every week. So that's it. Thank you very much Jane, again, for giving this opportunity to people to do this. And what I do is a similar thing where just one person gets to speak for like 45 minutes, you know, time to talk and have q&a and discussion. So this is a natural feed into that as Jane said earlier to just the past base, the base base calm. Thank you. Five Minute 55

Niall Yeah, Mike knows about that. But also 50s I'm thinking I want to move I want to be moving like beyond the Eastern Europe slash UK channel. If you had the chance to go and live on Mars, would you? Well, when you own very unlikely very unlikely I'm not sure I really want to get space if I want that to get to get to space. I'm not sure. I don't want to do it yet. But I am bit scared of it. So I think it's gonna be scary.

Mike - if if going through what Branson did was like taking a flight, I would definitely do it. But at the moment, I think it's still a bit like test pilot phase. One Way Ticket. I'll be there tomorrow. Oh, yeah. Not too sure. Let's show by that.

Jane to Jason - I was just trying to find as you were talking some of your work you've been doing this week in your own little space to? Maybe not the me or my sidekick? What do you want to talk a little bit about what you've been doing in your spaces this week with your artwork and things?

Jason I'm not gonna tell you what I've got two things to say, which really made me laugh this way. One, my therapist quit after 32 minutes talking to me. They decided they never wanted. That was it? And two, I was asked what's the hardest thing to draw? And I thought about it. And I came up with the answer an egg. Oh, try drawing an egg. It's really difficult. And that's it. But 32 minutes of having a mindset of pissed, quit on my last call be a record. Going into therapy. She couldn't get it. She couldn't get away from me quick enough. I've got one more thing to say. No. It was very funny. I've heard from him again.

Mike I think that's very healthy. I got on on healthy for her or he was there for you. But it sounds very healthy for both parties is like Yeah, all

you you've reminded me of this lovely thing. There was a Bob Newhart thing done on Saturday Night Live in America many years ago. on YouTube. Yeah, I know. And the lady comes in and the guy knew $5 a minute and she says, Oh, it's gonna be expensive. And he said, No, nobody most easy and much more than three or four minutes. And she says Why? And he said, Well, trainee, and basically she starts talking about her OCD, obsessive compulsive disorder problem, you know, and how it's coming out. And he says, right now listen, when she says this is what you're supposed to do. And she says, yes. Okay. Stop it. Just stop it. Stop it. Yeah. And a very good friend of mine who I first met all 20 years ago, she was she was on a course, one of the very early coaching courses, really professional coaching courses is back in 99, to 2000. And she then went off and set off a very expensive, set up a very successful business in London, setting up coaching and therapy places, but body therapy and talk therapy and all the rest of it. And we kept on meeting up in when I was in London from time to time. And I remember one occasion, some five or six years ago, we met up and she was saying, you know, I'm increasingly saying to my clients, particularly the first time I meet them, and they talk about all their situations and all the problems. I'm increasingly saying, Have you tried acceptance? life? Yeah, they put labels on it. Yeah, yeah. I've started Jane already. Oh, good. Yeah, what are you gonna say is a Jason so you sounded like you were gonna say something about not putting labels on things? I can't hear you. Oh, shame.

Jason Sorry. No, no, he's just, yeah, it was a really funny thing. I just couldn't believe they quit on me. And I totally agree. Just stop it basically. And I feel a lot better now. I don't think she does. But I'm gonna optimise but I'm gonna offer my services to her.

Mike - Now, well, not just her, but the whole of the industry. Because we know if you go along and meet enough of them and after 30 minutes, they just nod is like I quit, then you know, then they can go off and do something real, you know, rather than Paris if parasitizing themselves on people who are sitting there thinking I'm wrong, somebody made me right, then they can actually get a decent job. Now you know, this may sound extremely critical therapists which in a way it is, and I did try to do a therapy training myself many many years ago and got thrown out of it because they just too fucking mad man. Um, I hang out with with a bunch of, you know, a bunch of therapists and most of them The ones that are the ones who were really good once they were really good, they started doing it according to the model. And then they started teaching the model to the next year students. And then they started supporting them in the next year students or three, four year students in there. And then they would be supporting the Academy. And then after about 10 or 20 years, the academy wouldn't want them anymore. For the good and simple reason they were no longer doing the model. But they were being themselves they were modelling. The individual who had the label therapists, but probably decided to take the label therapist off in a moment of just sitting and listening. Jane invited me a couple of days ago, do you want to do something on Wednesday, and I just read a lovely story about a boy who goes to magician school and meets in the end the oldest, wisest and most scruffy looking magician. And on a remote island, and the old guy says to the boy is like, when I was a boy, I thought the whole point of my training as a magician was so that I would be able to do anything, I wanted anything at all. I thought that, uh, you think that, and we all think that we all think we can change the world. But the truth is, the more that I've learned, and the further I've travelled, the more the path is narrowed. And the choices have been diminished until, as an older man, I have now no choice at all, except to do that which must be done. Now some of that to do that which must be done stuff is very much what I'm doing. But I think think the choice is narrow. The problem is making priorities about the whole thing. I love what Jason was talking about love, which we'll be talking about, because they all have this element of coming out of the box of deciding to do something different. I said in my intro to Jane that I talk about something about elephants on the table and using scenarios. And one of the things I'm obsessed with about is like gross denial going on people not wanting to talk about the elephant under the table. Back in a Bob and I Bob may remember back in 1972, there was a there was an oil crisis, which many of you are too young to remember. And that because basically the Saudis decided, you know, we aren't going to let shell set the price, we want to set the price ourselves. And shell actually came out of it pretty well. Because it was said in the organisational development industry, it was said that shell had actually been working doing scenarios with their staff, which wasn't like how do we solve a specific situation, but it was training them senior and middle managers to deal with unforeseen problems and chucking around a lot of wildcards to make the people think outside the box dealing with what ever came along. Without assumptions around it. In a lot of the work I do I we have a we have a what is the word, I can't remember what it's called in English where you know, a phrase, which is assumptions are the mother of all five cups. If I stop, assuming there's somebody out there who's going to save my life, called a therapist, if I stop assuming that you use Yanis example, a member of my family is this, that or the other because I refer to them as dad, and actually start seeing them as a colleague. If I stop assuming

that I can make a new space for myself and other people, as Niall is doing, then a whole new world opens up for us. The only trick is to be made sure that we let go of the assumptions before the assumptions eat us up. I wish I'd known that. I wish somebody been saying that to me. When I was around 30 or 40. I did a recently did an extremely good course by a guy called Mike, run by a guy called Michael Boyle. And if you run into him, do it. Breaking the spell. And the spell in this particular concept was the spell that we get cast on us by our mums and dads and our schools and society. Michael helped us we were five or six during the course helped find the spell that we'd been had been cast on some break breaking and to break it. And I forgotten completely what it was. Yeah, right. And it was all about for me, this question of I thought of that 20 or 30 years ago, and I've heard that many times in my business life sitting in a conference, somebody coming up explaining a new great model which they just commercialised and somebody in the room during the coffee break thing. I thought about that 20 years ago but I didn't know what to do with it. In this amazing Climate change, which we're all talking about, where's absolutely necessary to be thinking about? What is it that I want? What do I want to do with this space? What do I want to do with this world, which cannot go back to being what it was in February? Or January or February 2020? Then we all have to think about what are the chains that we have to let go off? What are the assumptions that we have to let go of? And what is the idea which I've just had, which is worth developing. And it's really lovely to hear, particularly the younger guys, I was thinking of Yanis. And now and I think the people who are sort of around the 50, they're still pretty young, actually take you picking up an idea and running with it. No, but sometimes without opposition, but running with it anyway. And they're with I am, hold my peace, or state my case, or whatever the expression is English, I'm speaking to you from Sweden. I'm I came here 50 something years ago, I live with a German. So English is no longer my first language. But anyway, what I do in my spare time is, well, I'm a grandfather, I watch horses because horses are like human beings only they can't lie. I'm a contrarian. I encourage other people to think out of the box. I ask people, why are you doing it like that? Isn't there are another way of doing it. And I tend to innovate. And if you want to find out what that's about, you can also know because we've been innovating together for three or four years, and Jamie increasingly, as well. And I look forward to innovating in the future with both of those too. And anybody else who wants to thank you,

Jane - thank you. Thank you. Not apologies. I wasn't very innovative, I forgot to put it back in the stream. I was sick. So Mike, and Niall and myself, we have a little group don't we called facilitators anonymous, which we've which isn't so anonymous now. But we've been sort of doing some bits in that space as well over over lockdown and supporting each other in a in our own. Without maybe it's ideas that come out of that.

Niall -  But I think it's interesting, because we've made it a box into which we can chuck things which we might perhaps not always I've made it a box into which I might want to check something which I might not in be feeling totally happy with sharing with my partner or even some of my colleagues. Because it's you know, it's a it's a bit off the wall. I think, I think I mean, I've worked longer together with with with now than I have with Jane, but I got the feeling that that's what it's that that it has had that purpose for night as well. And I think that spaces are very important. Yeah,

Mike - I gotta say, I realised we hadn't been in so much contact recently. But in really going back into it recently, I realised how much it meant to me the sort of the feeling of sort of safety of having the peers, because we're all doing similar kinds of things in the world if you like, and I why obviously I believe in that stuff.

Mike Yeah, well, we weren't, we were talking in in February, March about, you know, something that we want to do in the future. And then we sort of all sort of floated off, I got frightened. Jane started making me be public. And I was like, I don't like in public, I live on the farm and it's quiet, I chop down trees, and then went off and did some other things. Now I've been off doing other things and Jane's been off doing other things, but there's still a rude idea there. Which I think that certainly we wouldn't we would I would like to come back to which was like, what happens? What's the potential of setting a group of map managers directors innovators in a laboratory situation which gives them the ideal it's almost like a nursery a nursery? It's almost like so bad ideally. English can't do it. No. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. What can be the an incubator mainly an incubator on the form of of the maybe the spiritual but certainly the emotional and and the human the innovative

Jane Now on Friday, in school, I was teaching at a school with a colleague and it's a really nice, I like going into that that workplace because it's with a friend and we get each other and we work in a similar way. And on Friday, we were doing some research skills, and I decided to spend the whole day on this on this project. And I gave other things and said, you know, here's some ideas and otherwise, just make something up myself for the day, but in between, we're gonna use the iPad to do some research skills. And the topic was Marcus Rushford. Now in my ignorance, I didn't even know who he was. And I had been watching the football but it it wasn't, you know, hadn't really got to know the players names, I think was my kind of spectrummy head I don't remember names very well. And I hadn't really got to know the players but we researching for the day. And we were feeding back and presenting our findings. And I felt by the end of the day, we felt really quite connected to him. And I was like quite excited about what I know someone who's playing in English in English court. So in its own way, that day for me was was facilitating a resilient kids session, it was giving them a voice and helping them feel good about themselves. And, and also vision, you know, it's three V's that I work with vision, vitality voice, did they have a voice? Were they feeling good? And you know, is there a vision here we create a bit more possibility hopefully through spending the day do some research skills. Yes, because kids are so often given content and PowerPoints now and I think are going to schools and there's all this these slideshows going on and we've lost this interactivity, we've lost this connection with kids, I think through just sort of death by death by PowerPoint. So actually, you know what I want to teach so what I want to be there, and I want to I want them to teach and later on, I think it was a Monday after the match and all that sort of like the disappointment and the further disappointment with the with the racist comments and all that, you know, the backlash for the guys. Eugenia messaged me and said, Oh, she messaged me a couple of posts. She said, Well, how about this was for Wednesday's talk. So I've already done my talk really, but that what she showed me was a post from a lady called Claire Wilson. She's on LinkedIn. I've never met her before, but she had been She was having a lot of interaction what she wrote it says, one, one kick does not define you as a person. And then she'd written some of the points about Marcus Rushford that we'd investigate on Friday and I was just going to read them out and there's a few more than I had. He founded a charity and raised over 20 million to supply over 3 million meals to hungry children. He was part of a player initiative to raise money and support the NHS through the worst of the pandemic. He set up a campaign to support the frontline Services, helping young people experiencing homelessness. He started a book club with the intention of donating 390,000 books to underprivileged children in the UK. He learned sign language to judge a competition a school for children with hearing loss. And he talked the Sunday Times giving list of his charitable contributions. One kick does not define you as a person. That's my talk. That's my boundary. Thank you, Gina. And thank you to the team in the back office. So it's seven minutes or eight o'clock.

Niall That's why I was touched by that. I was definitely touched. At the end, I was definitely starting to go

Jane eah, there's been so much this week hasn't there. And I feel like there's been absolutely an outpouring of support, there's more support and is more good in the world. And there's more kind people out there than than what's some of the crap people are posting. So yeah, we need spaces like this, we need to come together we need connection. We need friendships, you know, that's part of resilience, isn't it? It's part of you know, it's a big thing for me is connection and and random dialogues were set up as a way to bring people together together and share with

Niall - john jump in, because it's come up a lot with Mike and I having been experts and the kind of running away from the UK, obviously, the kind of the really dark side of what are some aspects of British culture. And for me, Brexit for example, like I'm just sticking my neck out and say, didn't, didn't think that was a very good thing. And some of these things that happened this last week, just really, really make you very ashamed. But at the same time, I'm very sort of patriotic and want to you'd like supporting London, everything hanging. It's just desperately desperately sad that you get these idiots that as much the yobbish nurse as well around Wembley is is what you talked about. And like, it's just me, it's really sad, because I feel like is different somehow in most parts of Europe, a lot of Europe not doesn't have those things in that way. It seems to me anyway, maybe I'm too close to it. So I'm happy to be back here in my country, if you like but yeah, those things are just desperately sad. Just want to say that.

Yiannis - I was gonna add that. I find it. On the Monday I was speaking to some colleagues of mine in Belgium. And you see these little jokey images online to the saying everyone's supporting Italy, apart from the Britain, the UK was supporting, obviously, England to win hope. Well, I mean, just supporting Wales or Scotland or against that as well. And I've asked why why why why do you not like England teams? I've got nothing wrong with the team. I love your players. They're great players. You know, one of the guys sports, United's obviously rash bird and I'll say James sandshrew, next season, probably more than likely. But your fans is it's the attitude that your country has, every time a national anthem is bled out, you're booing it. You know, the hooliganism? You know, the guy was, he said, I remember when Liverpool came here a couple of years ago, you know, eight guys went to hospital, like, it's nothing against your team or your manager, or you know, all the teams that come here. It's the people who come along with it, and the people who ruin that is the reason why we don't like and, you know, the people at times have said, Look, we have we have the issue as well here here in Belgium and not in other countries. That hooliganism, he feels that, you know, England is the place where it all began. That's where, you know, it's become popularly known with a film like Green Street that almost popularises as opposed to kind of condense it. And I find it weird to think that, you know, is that point of view that they don't like, you know, I'm a Chelsea fan, you know, I don't like Manny because I don't like Manny, I want Chelsea to win. They don't like England, not because they don't like England, it's because they don't like the people that support them and all that baggage that comes around it. Yeah.

Random Dialogues September 8th 2021 #21

00:00 Start

02:00 Valerie Gaiger MBE - Planting Trees and Intergenerational Learning

12:00 Phil Shepherd - Why Play Golf

27:55 Dr Nick Heap - Is Education Upside Down?

42:00 Jane Tyson - Wildlife Gardening

50:00 Q&A Time

Random Dialogues March 2022 #22

Feedback from February's Random Dialogues gathering

- time well spent

- It was fun. Like being in a pub, without a drink...or a pub.

- I enjoyed it tonight. It was so amusing

Bit more info here 👉 https://lu.ma/RDMarch22

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1-Qd9s-JJgk

Random Dialogues March 9th 2023 #23

00:00 Introduction 

03:38 Nial Jone "Peer Power" 

10:33 Sally Sidani "Why Menopause Affects Everyone" 

17:00 Emma Saccomani "A Toolkit for Messy Reality"

23:20 Q&A 

29:45 Julia Hayden "Shape Shifting" 

36:23 Yvette Masure " Sound Frequency Healing Through Tuning Forks & Tibetan Singing Bowls" 

44:37 Jane Tyson "Seredipitree" 

55:00 END

https://www.youtube.com/live/iDzq_0-vflE?feature=share

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iDzq_0-vflE&t=2169s

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

Julia  Hayden - Shape Shifting

I was about seven years old. It was summer and we spent the holidays in the Netherlands at the North Sea. And I decided that I was ready to die today. I remember that I was in a kind of empty state, I was not upset or anything, just empty. So I went towards the edge of the water and as I stood there, I was looking at the ocean. I adored it with its colors, movements of the waves, sounds, … and perceiving it as I did, I went in and asked it, if it can carry me away, far away. Then it happened as if by magic. I became the ocean. I completely felt as if I was the ocean, sensing my streams, my temperature, my depth, knowing that I could easily take this little child with me and have it drown. I felt powerful that day. So powerful. Because I really was the ocean, and I was it fully. I could feel my mineral content, tiny things were tickling me now and then… this dolphin came swimming along in me (yes. I WAS the ocean) and as the ocean I watched the dolphin swimming, I could feel it touching my layers softly as it moved through me, the ocean … Now I decided, as the ocean, to become the dolphin, how would it feel to swim in this super clear and rich ocean water together with all these algea and other living and non-living things. And with the same ease as I transformed into the ocean before, I now became this dolphin and then I looked at the little girl, which was me, standing in very deep water getting ready to die today. I, as the dolphin, who was looking at me, became very empathetic and as it could not carry me out of the water, it decided to become me. And as me, it, or rather I, turned around that day. Walking back to the beach, where my father was building a sandcastle with my brothers and my mother was reading a story to my sister. And I was happy that day. So happy. Because I realized that this, my world, is the world I have chosen and any other world I could chose as well…. Let me tell you about what happened that day. Which was shapeshifting. The term itself comes from shamanism. And among shamans, the ability to channel - that is, to communicate with nature - is called the art of shapeshifting. Ancient tales say that shamans are able to shapeshift into the form of the particular spirit animal they are connecting with. This, of course, comes from tales. In reality, shapeshifting happens more on an energy level. That means, a Shapeshifter can perceive the radiated energy field of another being, adapt to it and merge with it. The Shapeshifter does not actively enter into the other being, rather it is the spirit of the other being that enters into the Shapeshifter. The Shapeshifter is simply there, and as such is connected to something higher that gives them the ability to access the natural pure inherent essence and use the deep inner power, magic or wisdom. In our world today, shapeshifting is the gift of transforming our energies to adapt to whatever this crazy and confused life around us brings next. Shapeshifting is a survival mechanism and a natural and instinctive ability that we all have in common with each other. We all can do it. There are several easily accessible techniques and methods of Shapeshifting and I would like to share one now. Just find an object on your desk and look at it. Notice it. Maybe you can touch it, hold it, turn it over, look at it from different angles, smell it, or perceive it in some other way.... Maybe you find something on the object that you didn't notice before. Be curious. Look at the object. Look at it closely. Give it your full attention. It takes at least twenty seconds of full attention, no more than a minute. And in those twenty to sixty seconds, the point is to be fully engaged. Fully attentive. And now I invite you to become the object, to be it. Embody it. What is it like to be in this object, or to be THE object itself. How does it feel to be that thing. Are you able to really embody it and go into it? Are you able to look around as this object? So first we are completely attentive from the outside and then we also completely put ourselves inside. And then look - still as the object - at yourself. You observe yourself from the position of the object. ... So this is my invitation for you to keep on rediscovering this magical gift that is innate to all of us. And as we cultivate it, it can support us in understanding those people around us as well as our surrounding world easier. Because it allows us to truly feel the others and lets us put ourselves in the shoes of the others. My message to you today is clear. Go ahead and take that gift, practice it and use it to claim ownership over the life you lead. Understand that the world you live in is the world you create. Because with every feeling, thought, word and with every action something changes in you and around you. Embrace the world that surrounds you with anyone and anything you encounter. No matter who or what this might be."

Random Dialogues May 11th 2023 #24

Speakers:

02:20 Dr Nick Heap - "Ego to Eco: A Joyous and Uplifting Journey"

09:20 Jen Gale - “Feminism”

15:55 Wyndham James - “The 6 Essential Elements For A Fulfilling Life”

27:05 Peter Smith - “The Ashley-Pitt Guide to Pollinator Friendly Planting”

32:05 Daksha Foat - "Five Ways to Thrive”

40:05 Jane Tyson -  Business Networking : Beyond Small Talk | How to Transform Your Life, Career and Business with Random Dialogues  

46:45 Q&Q Chat

LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/video/event/urn:li:ugcPost:7061951732875964417/

Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/events/251354554132952

Youtube -  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5mDhtbrzzps

Dr Nick Heap  - "Ego to Eco: A Joyous and Uplifting Journey"

Daksha Foat- "Five Ways to Thrive”

Wyndham James - “The 6 Essential Elements For A Fulfilling Life”

Jen Gale - “Feminism”

Peter J. Smith - “The Ashley-Pitt Guide to Pollinator Friendly Planting”

Jane Tyson - “Beyond Small Talk"

00:00

03:30Clare Millington - Unraveling the Mystery of Tree Bogs

10:32 Carol Brown - Secret Guildford: Locations and secret agents of the Special Operations Executive in World War Two

21:07 Sarah Winterflood - Exploring the Power of Mind Over Mirror

33:20 Gerda Skrickiene - Relaxation Unleashed: Saunature Spa in Addlestone

45:00Banner and Dreamer - Reflecting on Life's Doors: How Many Have You Opened?