Synergy IQ: 0:01

Welcome to Creating synergy where we explore what it takes to transform. We are powered by Synergy IQ. Our mission is to help leaders create world class businesses where people are safe, valued, inspired and fulfilled. We can only do this with our amazing community. So thank you for listening.

Daniel Franco: 0:19

Hi there synergisers and welcome back to another episode of The creating synergy podcast. My name is Daniel Franco and today we have the remarkable Rebekah Smith on the show. Bek is a former fitness industry professional, a former physio therapist, a current professional public speaker, psychology educator, and a well being advisor and coach. Beck enables transformation by teaching a layered psychological skill set we need to perform at our best. She's a former researcher, physio therapist and sponsored athlete who now uses applied neuroscience and psychology to build high functioning individuals, teams and organizations. Bek loves working with out of the box thinkers and guiding them to build the confidence they need to challenge the status quo and make a real difference in the world. Bek's purpose is to expand awareness and elevate consciousness so we can love ourselves, each other and the planet. The vehicle she uses is mental fitness, where she teaches practical bite sized psychological exercises, which helps shift the mindsets and behaviors. We talked about a feeling of not belonging into a community or group and feeling as though she was just a fringe dweller. We talked about the idea of being normal and what is considered normal and who actually decides what is normal. We then talked about the realism of burnout and the negative mental health effects that working from home has, and how we can fill up our own cup by designing circuit breakers into our lives. Bek and I get vulnerable in this conversation and the chat gets real. We explored and we tried to understand each other's own identities and mental models of self worth. We then rounded off the podcast with Bek working through a nine enablers to mental fitness, where we discuss her models on trust, compassion, creativity, authenticity, awareness, character values, stillness and emotional mastery. It was an absolute pleasure talking with Bek and I know you're absolutely going to love this chat. If you'd like to check out her profile, you can find that at Rebekah Smith on LinkedIn. That's Rebekah spelled REBEKAH Smith, feel free to connect with me also, where you can find me at Daniel Franco on LinkedIn. If you'd like to learn more about some of the amazing leaders that we've had on the creating synergy podcast and be sure to jump on our website at Synergy iq.com.au. Or check us out at the creating synergy podcast on all the podcasts. So welcome back to the creating synergy podcast. My name is Daniel Franco, your host and today we have the wonderful Bek Smith on the show. Welcome.

Rebekah Smith: 3:05

Thanks for having me. Thanks for inviting me.

Daniel Franco: 3:07

Then looking forward to this one mental fitness and well being is very, very topical at the moment in the world. And something that I'm sure you're very, very busy with. Can you give us a little bit of background about yourself and where you've come from to where you find yourself today working with, you know, large corporates and businesses in that mental health space?

Rebekah Smith: 3:28

Yeah, sure. I actually started off my career as a psychology researcher, and was delving into cross cultural communication. So it sparked my interest in how do we engage with each other for our own well being as well as other people's well being. But ironically, in that process, I found that my well being was taking a plummet because most of the work in that arena was sitting at a desk, it was doing a lot of data entry report writing, and I kind of felt like those reports would end up on somebody's desk and not really go anywhere and be used from that. I was really disconnected from the end user and what benefit that my research was going to bring. So I felt like it was really important for me to get a little bit more hands on. And I literally did that and became a physiotherapist already. Yeah, yeah. And so I went back and did some more training, went into a physiotherapy career for 10 years, and absolutely loved it. But in that period, I hit professional burnout three times I just hit this wall not being able to function properly having to take sick leave from work for an extended period. And looking back, a lot of that was due to empathy, fatigue. And a lot of the time when people were coming into me with their pain stories, I could see a lot of my own pain reflected back in them. And I went, there's something here that I need to do a bigger piece of work around for myself and healing my own pain stories. But also, I think I need to get away from this kind of work for a while so I can do that and help people in a different way. So I was really fueled by one of my values around making a difference to pull away from physiotherapy and went back to psychology but in a different way. So in 2016, I did a diploma in positive psychology and wellbeing. And since 2017, I've been working full time in the space of psychology education. So that's the quick nutshell trip.

Daniel Franco: 5:21

Well, now what what was it about? The your time we burn out three times? I mean, we often hear the saying, keep banging your head against the wall and expecting different results and to hit burnout three times? Was there a lack of self awareness there that you didn't say at that point? And then now you've learned like, through those experiences you've learned now and you know, you obviously manage it very, very well? Can you explain what happened to you in those three experiences?

Rebekah Smith: 5:50

Yeah, thank you for asking. Because I think that there's two big pieces there that I've recognized. One was a lack of the depth of self awareness. While I would have considered myself to have been relatively self aware, there were also things happening at a subconscious level that I wasn't aware of where when people would share certain things with me, I would get triggered, but not really recognize why. And so the other piece to that was that there was a whole bunch of healing that I had to do from old stuff that wasn't happening at that time. And to get out of that line of work. And to go a little bit more broad for a while, was really healthy for me, because it gave me that perspective to step back and really ask myself less what the other people need for me, and more what I need, so I can be better for other people.

Daniel Franco: 6:43

Yeah, I love that I actually really resonate with that. Michelle, who is my business partner with Synergy IQ, she often says to me, then you have an overactive empathy gland. That's gonna whining, you gotta just chill the eff out. Really. But the, I think, for me that if you talked about it, you burnt out from giving too much, I think is one thing that we we see quite a fair bit, you know, people saying yes to almost everything can then pushing themselves to the limit. Yeah. How do you? How do you manage that? How do you change your psychology to the point where others are no longer the priority, and your own self is the priority.

Rebekah Smith: 7:30

I think, first of all, you have to recognize that filling your cup is important. Because if you don't have that awareness that oh, I need to and I deserve to take a break here to refuel, then you will keep running your tank dry. And I think secondly, it's then about practicing new ways of being like boundary setting, for instance, being able to say no, be uncomfortable to say no, in a world where you're often expected to just say yes, and keep going and do more. Part of that is around going I need to honor less doing and more being and set boundaries around what I'm okay with and what I'm not okay with. And as a physical therapist, I was not doing that. I was keeping in mind that all the business needs me to keep working and bringing clients in and working with clients, my clients need me. So I was really focused on what my clients wanted or needed, what the business wanted or needed from me, and just forgot about setting my own boundaries about stating this is what I want. And this is what I need. I'd fit clients in after hours, I'd fit them into my lunch break. And there was also a bit of an ego trip to that, right. You know, I'm so important that people want to see me yeah, I'm so in demand. And so there was this boost of self esteem that comes with that, that becomes a bit addictive. So in recognizing that, that was what my ego needed, but not what I as being needed, was really essential.

Daniel Franco: 8:55

Yeah, that's hitting home very, very hard. The management, really, I can only use my own personal examples here, which I hope, majority Well, a lot of people can resonate with. It's the management of the two worlds, right? And when I say two worlds being work and life, life being family and friends. You know, in a work sense, I'll generally say yes to most things in the exact same scenario of what you said is like, Oh, I'm in demand, and it feels good and all the above and seems to be doing well. And I'll, I want to be everything to everyone so to speak. But then when you get home, you're exhausted. And you then I have an extroverted wife, for example that wants to go out and do all these other things. And then I think that's the point in which I reach burnout is that there is never a time in which I can rest because my two worlds just collide is that and often what happens is that the family and life side of things suffers because I just say no to everything in that base? Is it just a matter of managing those two different and as a same priority? Or how do you sort of intertwine those two worlds?

Rebekah Smith: 10:10

Yeah, great question. I feel like I don't compartmentalize my worlds as well as you might like, I think that there's probably a lot more bleeding over in my world, because as a consultant, I do a lot of collaboration with other consultants. And we might do projects together. And they might also be friends of mine. So my friends are woven into my work life. And so there's probably a bit of crossover there, but it's really making me think about and I was smiling when you were talking about going home to an extroverted partner, because that was my life using yours as well. And I had an extroverted stepdaughter, and an extroverted partner. And I would just get home after my physio work, or even my speaking, work and just be so exhausted, need that timeout. And it circled back again to asking myself and then being able to express what do I want? And what do I need here? So sometimes just getting home and having a five minute gap to myself to recharge, to refuel, and then go, Okay, how is everybody else? Yeah, but sometimes just getting home and saying, I'm really keen to hear about your day. I'm going to circle back to you once I've had a shower. Yeah, and just kind of locked myself in the bathroom for a little while. Absolutely. Those little, I love to talk about when we're talking about stillness, or breaks or filling up your cup, not just where can you get your big macro doses of time for yourself and energy for yourself. But where can you get your micro doses as well? Because often that's more realistic.

Daniel Franco: 11:39

It's very relevant to me right now what you're saying, you know, you said the shower, but I actually use the circuit breaker between coming home from work to inter family life, I go for a run. Yeah. It's a form of exercise. And that's almost become an expectation now, like, my family know, the moment I walk through the door, don't expect that to do anything for the next hour, because he's probably going to be out for a run. Yep. And then then once I've finished that run, but lately I've had a knee injury, and that I've not been able to get out and run. And we'll talk about it. I'll ask you a question a bit further down the track when we're talking about the stillness part, which is something I'm interested in. Yeah, I've been really suffering, really suffering just from the removal of that circuit breaker, because it's been in place for about 12 months now. Oh, yep. So not doing it for a week has completely thrown me Wow, you

Rebekah Smith: 12:34

haven't been able to substitute with something else?

Daniel Franco: 12:37

Well, I could have possibly, but I it was, it was the element of absolute, you know your physio, right, I'm just gonna stay off my leg for I say, I could have gone for a walk or done something. But I went now I'm just gonna stay off my leg for the next week. And it's probably the worst decision that I've made to last night. I actually said that bugger. I'm running through the pain. And just because it's more of a mental health financing. Yes. So the circuit breaker, I think is, is a really important point.

Rebekah Smith: 13:07

Yeah, I used to have driving as a circuit breaker. But this might be something that some listeners can relate to, as well. And particularly when we not all having as much of a commute. You know, with a lot of people working from home now. I used to live about half an hour away from work. And that drive and having half an hour in the car to myself was so valuable as somebody who identifies as an introvert. Yeah. And sometimes I would listen to music, sometimes I would just turn everything off no radio or anything and just have silence. And then I moved two minutes away from my clinic, I could walk there in 10 minutes or drive there in a minute. And that commute time was taken away. And I found that my stress levels went up. And it wasn't about the commute so much. It was about the space that the commute brought. So with your running, it's a little bit like well, I was doing this because I wanted to run and it's physical activity, but then that fringe benefit of this is what it's doing for my mental health. You know, then you have to go, oh, man, I need to weigh this up. And what can I put in place? You know, as my mental health break a Plan B, Plan B, totally,

Daniel Franco: 14:11

yeah. Just having good strategies in places and it shouldn't things fall out. Now I want to go back to your now we're going to touch more on this topic, but I'll raise a question that I was really interested in to sort of key coffee then maybe dive into this for an element. On your website. There's a video in which you talk about being a fringe dweller? Yeah, yeah. Can you explain what you mean by being a fringe dweller? Because I think it's something really empowering in what you do. I know what it means. But can you explain to the listeners, your take on being a fringe dweller?

Rebekah Smith: 14:46

Yeah, absolutely. So there's what it means to me and probably what it means to other people, and there's probably some crossover in that but there might be some distinctions as well. For me, it's been born of living a life where I didn't feel like I fit in belonged in many places, anywhere, really. And I was born of parents, German on one side and Aboriginal on the other. And I'm not an Aboriginal appearance. I'm very light skinned. But I grew up in our springs around culture and language where that was born into me. Moving here to Adelaide. Unlike being in Alice Springs, where everybody knew that I was Smithies daughter. Yeah. Oh, yeah, we know. Yeah. She's Topsy. He's great granddaughter, we know who she is. Coming here to Adelaide, I've been living here since I was 15. There isn't that recognition within the Aboriginal community, that that's where I belong. Yeah. And so I kind of feel like I'm in this weird Limbo land where I don't quite fit into Aboriginal culture, I don't quite fit into white culture. It's kind of like this, oh, my gosh, you know, in my formative teenage years, I don't fit anywhere. And I was always one of those kids at school that was a bit different was really nerdy, really academic would often prefer the company of books over people. And later in life, I started to make decisions for myself that other people disagreed with, for instance, just a small way that I wanted to work. When I graduated as a physiotherapist. I said to my boss, who offered me a full time job, I said, I'm really keen to work here, would you consider taking me on at point five, and he went, Ah, he, I'm sure we can find somebody else to take that, you know, the rest of that role on. So my whole time as a physio only ever worked part time, half time. And one of my friends got angry at me for that. And he said, why would you bother going back and retraining as a physio investing all this time and money and upskilling yourself just to wasted away on working half time I went because I went back for my quality of life. I want better quality of life, I don't just want to do the nine to five thing that people told me that I should do that you're telling me I should do? Because I want to keep doing other stuff on the side. And all through university, I've been teaching group fitness classes. And I said, I want to keep teaching my classes at the gym. Yeah, a 20 hour role as a physio is going to give me the flexibility to still maintain those classes, those connections, good quality life totally. And putting my well being and putting my connections with other people and putting the things that gives me joy. above those things that were told that we should do has been really uncomfortable at times, because people told me that I'm wrong for doing that. What are you doing? What's not normal? is not normal. Normal? Yeah. Yes. I mean, there's so many more examples of like, the ways that I'm not normal. But you know, those are some kind of more the foundational things to me that have gone ah, I found it really hard to belong. And over time, I had a great discussion with a book group that I'm part of last night, actually, we had this great discussion about belonging, and first and foremost, being able to belong to ourselves, before we can find belonging out there. And what I'm really grateful for in this experience of being, you know, what I call a fringe dweller. And having been a black sheep in my family was always very different to other people in my family. I have learned to belong to myself in a way that I might not have had I not felt pushed out of the norm

Daniel Franco: 18:28

formed to what society? Yeah, it's set up for you. Yeah.

Rebekah Smith: 18:33

And so what I guess what other people are experiencing, a lot of the people that I work with in the space that I'm moving, there are leaders that I work with, who are very people focused in businesses that are very task focused, you know, and when I get drawn into work with a business, it's often those people leaders who are saying we need to invest more in our people. But they've often had to fight against a lot of pushback to say, you know, no, we just need to focus on our procedures and our processes. And we need to focus on this stuff over here that's more task oriented. So I find a lot of empathy when I'm going into those conversations with those people who are wanting to do things differently in their workplace. But I've had to really fight for that as well. And like, I feel

Daniel Franco: 19:17

it's the challenge the status quo stuff, right? That's, yep. Challenge the way things have always been that there's a famous Steve Jobs quote, and it's not a podcast without throwing in a quote, right. It's a long quote, but I'm gonna read it because I want to ask what it means to you. Great. So the quote is, and we've all heard it, and we've all seen it plastic, but I'm gonna read it because it's so powerful. Here's to the crazy ones, the misfits, the rebels, the troublemakers, The round pegs in the square holes, the ones who sees things differently. They're not fond of rules, and they have no respect for the status quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them, but the only thing you can't do is ignore them because they change things They push the human race forward. And while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius, because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones that do. love it so much. It's amazing, isn't it? And I think when I hear you talk about being fringed, whether and, and being on the side of being different, it's almost like that quote, I don't know hits me home really hard, okay. It means a lot to me. What does that quote mean for you in what you're trying to do in the world and the impact that you're trying to you're trying to have,

Rebekah Smith: 20:32

that's that, quote, speaks to me of affirmation, it really gives me a boost of energy, going to hear those words out of somebody's mouth is a bit of a virtual, just a pat on the shoulder to go, you're on the right track, don't deviate away, don't go back into, you know, moving with the crowd, keep doing it your way, keep doing your thing, because what's right for you is right for you.

Daniel Franco: 20:58

So why does society conform, then why is their normal? What is normal? And who decides what's normal? Right?

Rebekah Smith: 21:08

Right. Yeah, I think that that need for social belonging is such a driver. And so we conform, because when we think that our this is what I should be doing, that I'll find acceptance there, I will find that unliked, I will find love and support and connection there. It's the social safety factor that we want to move towards, you know, as, as social tribal beings. We don't want to be rejected from the tribe. Because from if we look at evolutionary biology, and the way that you know, we think about our past, if we were rejected from the tribe of people that we were supposed to belong to back in the day, it meant that our chances of survival were lower. And I think that there is still that deep, ingrained need for us to be part of the pack, be part of the herd, don't rock the boat, because if you get pushed out and shoved down, your chances of survival is lower. Whereas because our world now is so much more complex than it used to be, every direction, you turn, you can change your head five degrees, and everywhere that you look, there's a different norm. Right? If you walk into a workplace across the road, their culture is going to be different to the one that's right here, and different to the one over there. So everywhere we're moving, there's this kind of like, how do I fit in here? But how do I fit in here? But how do I fit in here? And it's scary. Yeah, like for the brain to go, what do I need to do to belong and to be accepted? Or oh,

Daniel Franco: 22:34

I remember, I remember when JB Hi, Fi first opened? Yeah. And you walked in there, and everyone was wearing, I had the tattoos and they're like, the big ear earrings. And you kind of know what's going on here. This is completely different to what we're used to. It was very refreshing. And now it's almost like, and I think, you know, I was having coffee, you know, I can't remember where exactly it was the other day, but it was all op shop, sort of tables and chairs and recycled table is almost cool. Now, when has is turned on its head? Can I want to ask you the for those who do fall within what is perceived as normal and conform to society in the way that is expected? Not expected, but probably expected. And then when we do see someone or someone in that world sees something that is a bit different, or someone that is a bit different? How do we remove that unconscious bias of almost then and create that level of acceptance with it with those people who are different or not even just and no longer view them as different? I think he's probably where I'm trying to get to. It's just that just is we are just all human? And we're all unique in our own? Right.

Rebekah Smith: 23:51

Yeah, I think that first of all, we have to be aware that there is a bias. Yeah, you know, the whole term unconscious bias, you know, leads us to understand that we're not aware of it when it's happening. And, you know, 90% or more of our processing is happening at a subconscious level. We don't know what's playing out. And there's so many cognitive traps that we can get stuck in. But if we can actually start to learn about those cognitive traps, one of the things I love to do in my work is to share some of the language around cognitive bias in workplaces. So that then there can actually be conversations across the table of Oh, I think I'm falling into catastrophizing here. Like I'm really stressed, but I think maybe I'm blowing this out of proportion, or being able to kindly and courageously call each other out on that. Now, I hear a bit of always a never in your language. Are you slipping into black and white thinking here? And being able to have that common language is so important, I think, to starting to bring what's happening at that subconscious level into our conscious awareness because only when we do that, can we challenge it and go, Oh, what do I let in as what I'm embracing? What do I filter out? We just have to be aware of it. First of all, that's the heartbeat so hard. And this is what I think when I walked in today, you said to me, how are you? I said, I'm a bit existentially tired. You know, we've gone through so much change, and we're continuing to go through so much change at the moment. And one of the things that I'm finding is quite draining of my energy is how black and white and all or nothing people are in their thinking, and the lack of curiosity, the lack of open dialogue, and rather people jumping straight into judgment and divisiveness and meanness with one another. I think that if we had that capacity to have more dialogue, challenge ourselves and each other, more kindly, be more open minded, that what first of all, I wouldn't be so existentially tired. But I think that our world would just be a lot more of an enjoyable place to be, but also a lot more productive. You know, I think that this isn't just about us being nicer to ourselves and to each other, but it's actually about how do we progress forward as a as a race, you know, on multiple levels, you know, we can look at that humanistically, we can talk about that, organizationally, we can talk about that in terms of the arts, the sciences, if we're going to progress forward as a race, I think that there is an imperative for us to evolve beyond our unconscious patterned levels of thinking, and to get more aware around what we're doing, why we're doing it, and how we can be different with each other. Yes,

Daniel Franco: 26:39

here. And in my head, there was some things that I drew out of that, where you're saying we need to improve almost that conversation right, and calling each other out and, and the skill set is being able to accept that criticism isn't an all that constructive criticism. Yeah. Because time and time again, we get so wrapped up wrapped up in our own thoughts and processes and the way we see things that when someone does challenge us, it can be seen as an attack. Is that just a level of self awareness? You know, you talk about mastery and emotional Mastering your emotions and a lot of your stuff. Is that that element?

Rebekah Smith: 27:24

Yeah, yeah, it is. It's both internal and external. So there's an internal responsibility, I think that we all have to improve our self awareness to improve our skills, to be able to recognize when we're falling into defensiveness, rather than getting curious about what somebody else means about the feedback that they're offering us. You know, if somebody is saying something to us that we take as being critical, we can personalize it and feel like we're being attacked. But actually exploring that and unpacking it and being able to have that sense of, oh, let's get curious about what this means. For us in the situation moving forward, is a really important skill set to learn. And you can only do it in places that you feel safe. So this is where the external party comes in, you know, we can take a lot of emotional and internal responsibility for how we're dealing with things. And at the same time, if we're not in an environment that is safe for us to do that processing, that's not safe for us to be heard, to be seen to nurture us through that change, then we're going to fall short, we're going to fall flat. You know, I, I've had experiences being in groups where I have done my damnedest to self regulate, to change my thinking to reframe what was going on for me, okay, and it kept trying to change myself, and then recognize I just kept doing all this stuff to change my perspective, because I'm trying to find this place where I belong. But I'm not just changing myself to fit in. Like, it's actually not an authentic expression of myself, because I'm not with the people that I'm safe with. They're not curious about my experience. They're not even curious about their own experience. The people around me are staying in judgment. So I can get as curious as I want. But if everybody else is staying in defensiveness, and they've got a wall up, I can't change that. Dynamic.

Daniel Franco: 29:22

Yeah. That's so interesting. I want to touch on my what someone asked me what Then what's your spirit animal, right. And I say chameleon is my and I believe that adaptability is probably one of my greatest strengths. So when I talk about fitting in, you talk about fitting in and finding your your group and the crowd that you want hang around the ones that you feel comfortable with. Can Can it be more than one?

Rebekah Smith: 29:49

Definitely. Yeah. Yep. Definitely. And I think that there's different layers to that. Different levels to that.

Daniel Franco: 29:56

Yeah. Can you elaborate on those levels and lines

Rebekah Smith: 30:00

I can because I actually did an exercise for myself earlier this year where I thought about my concentric social circles. And I thought, who's in my closest, closest inner circle? Who do I trust the most? Who would I reach out to for help when I'm really struggling, and who would trust me to reach out to help for when they're really struggling, and narrowed it down to these people in my life that I went this this is this is my inner circle, this is my inner sanctum, who's the concentric circle outside of that the people who I love to be around who are fun, who are nourishing, I love their company, but not might not feel quite as safe, reaching out in those times of struggle. And then zooming out from there, who are the people in that third circle, who I like interacting with, but they're not going to be my go to on a Saturday to catch up for coffee, right? And then you can go as broad with that as you want to. And that was a really great exercise for me in thinking, yes, there are multiple groups that I belong with. And I can cluster those people in those circles as well and go like, here are the work people, here are the personal connections, here's the family connections. And in that it gave me insight into for myself, Yes, I can belong to these different groups. And there'll be a level of filtering that I do of myself in each of those spaces, those people in my tightest inner sanctum will get the rest most unfiltered version of me, right? The people who are a little bit further out, they'll still get an authentic version of me, but not as raw. And I talk a lot about authentic leadership, because it's a term that gets thrown around quite a lot, you know, what does it mean to be authentic? What does it mean to be an authentic leader, and some people misinterpret authentic as being completely open, completely raw, completely vulnerable, you know, baring all of your deep, dark secrets. But that's not what it's about. It's about appropriate levels of filtering. And so I think you can still belong, but still be filtered, as well. But it's all about scales and the continuum of filtering and the scale and the continuum of belonging as well. It's not all or nothing. No,

Daniel Franco: 32:18

no, I think, I think the filtering is a very important element that doesn't get discussed too much. There's people who I've seen where they would come into a work environment and talk to everyone as if they're talking to their best mates group. Yeah. And you, you sit there and, and some would argue all that he or she aren't being true to themselves. They're not being true to themselves. But I don't know there's an element of me is like, you know, think before you speak, right? There's some things that you say, in front of your mates at the footy, compared to something that you say in front of your team at work, they're two completely different things, and you have to be able to disassociate the two,

Rebekah Smith: 33:05

yeah, can I share two images that come to mind? Absolutely. When you talk about that, I want to circle back to your image of the chameleon. As a chameleon, if you get to choose which colors you want to show, and you go, right, this is my color palette, I've got green, purple, blue, and red. These are the ones that I love. And I'm going to turn them on or I'm going to turn them off at different times. And you can be red or you can be blue. But that's still authentic to you. Because that's what you've chosen. That's what feels right to you. But if you then come up with somebody who says, Hey, you should be orange. Oh, okay. I'll turn on orange. Now. That's that's the dirty fitting in stuff, right? That's changing yourself to a piece somebody else. And that's not authenticity.

Daniel Franco: 33:48

So authenticity doesn't need to be one or the other. It can be both or if not more, yeah,

Rebekah Smith: 33:53

yeah. It's a lot more nuanced than I think people think it is. Because the other image that comes to mind, which I wish I could remember, who shared this with me, this isn't didn't come from my brain. But somebody talked about people as being gemstones. Yep. And said, what if we were a gemstone, which has many faces? Yeah. And whichever way you turn the gemstone, it's still the gemstone, but you can see many faces of that gemstone. It doesn't detract from what the gemstone is, the light still shines through it. It's not fake to look at one side of the gemstone than the other. But we all do have multiple faces. We have multiple facets to us, because human beings are complex. You know, we're not simple creatures. Yeah. And so I think being able to honor that complexity in ourselves means that we can show up authentically in many different ways.

Daniel Franco: 34:47

Yes, well, that's a really good visual, the gemstone, I like that was gone. I've always gone with communion colors. That's the thing I've run well on a gemstone. Am I still that guy? While we're on This, we're talking about workplace versus outside. I know you've done a lot of work with psychological safety within a workspace, can you can you describe that, and what that actually is in its absolute most basic format?

Rebekah Smith: 35:16

Yeah. psychological safety is creating an environment where people feel safe to, to speak, and to show up as their authentic self, without the fear of being humiliated, shut down, and repressed. In a nutshell, that's what it is, for me.

Daniel Franco: 35:36

It's synergy IQ is the business that I run and operate. Where our vision is to create a world where people feel safe, inspired and fulfilled, right, and that it's an out their vision, but something that and so we then elevate our consulting firm to do and help in part of that. So, in essence, what we're doing is helping businesses create psychological safety within their in their world.

Rebekah Smith: 36:05

Absolutely.

Daniel Franco: 36:09

I'm gonna say it right. So something that's we all know that happens, and this is, I am going to attribute this to the psychological safety thing, so bear with me. But we all know that they're right out there in the world. Now there is a lot of people who are getting promoted. And they're getting promoted, because they are technically great at what they're doing. Yeah. And then you might be the smartest engineer, the smartest second, then make whatever it might be. They're brilliant. But they're brilliant at what they add the outcomes that they're trying to deliver, from a process point of view, or whatever it might be, they have no idea how to manage

Rebekah Smith: 36:46

human beings. Yep. And they're all doing the best that they can.

Daniel Franco: 36:49

And they are. And so we are as organizations effectively setting up these people to fail as people leaders, I see it all the time. Agreed. So do we, what is the role in the organization, first and foremost, to create this place of psychological safety for all? And then how do they then work with the leaders? Who might have that big gap? And yeah, because in my head, it's like, well, you almost have to right? You have someone that is looking after the people and someone who is looking after the outcomes, and then the two can work together. Yep. Can you share your thoughts on what is the role of the organization in that space?

Rebekah Smith: 37:34

Yeah, I'm going to talk to both the role of the organization and how I see people doing it, as well. I think the role of the organization is very important. And if we look historically, we used to gather as human beings, and talk about personal growth in communities, when we gathered around campfires, when we shared stories that had morals and ethics attached to them, when we gathered in churches, and listen to sermons around the right way to live. And these were places where Historically and traditionally, we came together to have thought provoking conversations. And we created space to challenge each other about our thinking. The only common institution in the western world that we have now that the majority of people engage in is the workplace. So I think that the role of organizations is so vital in being able to create spaces for discussions to happen, that do challenge us to think differently, that do encourage personal growth. And when it's treated as a nice to have, rather than an essential part of business. That's where you see businesses failing, because they're not investing in the people side of their business, they assume that the person is a machine that will just keep rolling along and ticking on the output. And if they just try to dial up the electricity a bit more into that machine and put more pressure on that person that the output will be greater, completely forgetting that what we're dealing with are these beautiful, glorious, sensitive, complex humans. But how I see it shifting, you know, with these organizations that have recognized art, like the industrial revolution has been in gone, we need to change our model. Now we need to get up to speed with looking at who are the humans here? What's important to them, what motivates them, what keeps them ticking over? Those businesses are doing it in a number of ways. So how we can start to engage people and businesses into a new model of working. I see it happening through psychological skills training, which I'm fortunate to be a part of frequently in my work. I see it happening at the level of leadership coaching where you can do more of a deep dive with those leaders to empower and enable them to think differently for themselves. but also communicate differently with their teams. And I see it happening also, on a more kind of broad level where I've seen a work team that just said to their crew, take four hours a week for your well being. Take some time out. Yeah. And has been, I've been really interested in reading some of the research that's happening on the day Brendan's thing that is Brendan. Yep. Yeah. I've been very fortunate to work closely with Brendan and his team. And,

Daniel Franco: 40:28

yes, he speaks very, very highly of you, Brent. Brendan Rinaldi, for those who are listening is who we're talking about. He's, we've had a podcast with him before. Yeah, previously,

Rebekah Smith: 40:36

so he wasn't here too long ago, was it? Yeah, champion from answered. And the work that he's done with his team in both bringing in explicit psychological skills training, but also implicitly trusting them to look after their well being as well, the business case for the shift that it made for his unit, his business unit was amazing. And it correlates really highly with what we're seeing in other places around the world with the four day workweek, with exhaustion becoming so commonplace. And when we actually think about scaling back the mental activity and the mental load that we're putting on people, and looking at some of the research that's coming forth around how we can function at our best, some of it's counterintuitive, yeah, some of it goes against the models that we're currently working to. But if we have curiosity to explore what the research is showing what these case studies are telling us, it's just going to open us up to these amazing possibilities for working more efficiently, getting better output, but also enjoying it more employees who are going to feel more fulfilled at work. Safe. Yeah,

Daniel Franco: 41:45

yeah. One of the businesses that say like a company like a and Zed, large corporate, you know, and there's, there's the business not going to fall over. If people are having four days or four hours off a week, right? It's setting the sign, almost smaller business is a bit different, where there's the constant hustle, and having there's not enough hours in the day as there is and then all of a sudden, the request of taking four hours off or a four day workweek. It's almost impossible in the eyes of some business owners in that space.

Rebekah Smith: 42:25

It's impossible, depending on the goals that they're setting and the expectations that they're holding. Yes,

Daniel Franco: 42:29

well, yes. And so outside of taking some time off, or setting up a well being room or whatever it might be. What, what is an option that some of these smaller businesses can take to help their teams? Yep.

Rebekah Smith: 42:48

Again, it can be about empowering and enabling the individual giving the individual skills to think about things differently, or do things differently in the flow of their workday, rather than stepping away from work incorporating it into their work. And it can also be I know, a lot of the work that you do is at that cultural level as well, you know, how do you then provide the environment that supports people to put that into practice? As a simple example, this morning, I had a coaching session right before I came here, actually, and we were talking about the topic of stillness you mentioned, we're going to talk to you, this might be a nice segue to that topic. And the misconception that people have around when I talk about stillness, because when I speak about this topic, it covers rest. It covers meditation and mindfulness, and it covers breaks. And sleep included. Which can be for instance, the way that I would do things a little bit differently in my office and I have done for, I don't know, the last 12 years is having naps at work. During the day, you know, I am being you know, very upfront about you know, I'll be sleeping on the floor in the staff room for 20 minutes. If you know, if anybody comes in and finds me I haven't passed out. And that's that's a pretty common practice for me. I know you do that. Some people can say, so jealous. That would be a kind of like a medium dose of stillness, right? For some people, they can't sleep during the day, or they might not have time to do that and take time out. So this coaching session that I had this morning, really focused on where are the opportunities for micro dosing, stillness, and we talked about stillness of body, stillness of mind, and stillness in our social interactions as well. And so stillness might mean that between you walking from here, back into your office later on, that you allow yourself that 22nd transition to just clear your mind and focus on your breathing. Rather than thinking about what's the task that I need to do next. It can be in between meetings rather than ruminating. about what was just talked about, and what's going to happen next, just going, there's just look up, let's lift my eyes be really present where I am. And that micro dose of stillness, the evidence shows that that can make just as much of a difference if you do it frequently enough in your day, as setting aside half an hour to meditate.

Daniel Franco: 45:20

Yeah, wow. That might answer some of the questions that I'm about to us. So I'm gonna start with this on the stillness base. While we're here, we might as well dive right let's. So I'm going to tell the story of probably my inner workings. And everyone knows that I kind of work this way, although I don't admit it too much. So getting vulnerable here. So I went home the other day with a migraine rocked up, dropped the kids off at school, they go to school in the city, I was on the way into work. And my head was thumping, and I just went now I cannot go in, I'm gonna and I suffer from migraines every now and again. So I know the feeling. And I knew that I was just going to be useless. So got back in the car and drove home. And I thought to myself, What did you do when you have a migraine, you create a dark room, you try to get some sleep. And I'm laying there looking at the ceiling going, thinking about every single thing that I needed to do and how much this day if I have this day off, what that is going to mean and how much I'm going to have to do outside of that right? Common thought process. I remember getting up going into the bathroom looking in the mirror and saying, like looking at myself, and I could see like the color drained from my face. And, and I remember the anxiety building up, and I'm looking at myself in the mirror and I'm saying, then just need to stop, like you need to stop. But then I kept going. Right? I picked up my phone, I started replying to some emails, and then like, I'm yelling at myself in my head gone, then like you need to relax. It's all okay. And then I kept going. And I went back on my computer and started writing more emails head still thumping. And so I think what I'm no know that I'm self aware, I know that I am. At a point where I can control my emotions, I'm at a point where I can control my actions and but there is an element of being so ingrained and so habitual in my work that moving away or stepping to the side actually affects me deeply. Like I just want to keep things moving. I've always been that way. But stopping is so against where I've will how I've become relatively successful or become who I am, right? Yep. So I think that's the element and I practice meditation, I, you know, I've got the headspace app. And the Sam Harris apps, and I use all those sorts of things. And I do it at night time and whatnot, or in the morning, but having those micro moments I'm so Further to that, and the meditation part, and the well being part. I'm one of those people who has to do that in private. I don't want anyone knowing that I'm doing. I don't want people seeing me why it's nice. To be To be frank, I cannot meditate if my wife is around. Yep, I cannot meditate. If my kids are around. I just won't do it. I don't know why that is. And it's I think that's why I'm asking you this is almost turning into a bloody succession. But this stillness element is one is probably out of your nine. And we'll go through the nine but is probably one of my biggest weak weaknesses is I don't know how to stop. Yep. What is your suggestion to those? Because you would have seen this many times. I'm not an I'm not an outlier. And this is something that is quite common. Yep, definitely. So the first question is, what is something that I can do as a low hanging fruit? And the second question is, what happens if I don't? Yep.

Rebekah Smith: 49:03

The first question, what can you do? I'm going to repeat something that I suggested for my coaching client this morning, actually, try to microdose stillness when you're transitioning. Okay. So if it's transitioning from one task to another, if it's transitioning between meetings, if it's transitioning from home into work, or if it's transitioning from work back to home, you know, you've got that hour of running that you're hoping to get back to, if you can't do that, what is the micro dose of stillness you can give yourself as a as a transition, because it's a bit like having to change gears. When we're switching tasks, switching focus during the day. And the micro pause that you give yourself can be like putting the clutch in before you're changing the gear, right. If you don't put the clutch in, you're just gonna grind that gearbox. So what happens if you don't To put that in is that your gearbox grinds down, you know, mechanically, mentally and physically Yeah, we start to break down,

Daniel Franco: 50:10

you're riding the clutches at the

Rebekah Smith: 50:13

store, you go, it starts to smell a bit smoky in here, and then you hit professional burnout like I did, you know, so then you end up on the staff room floor in tears rocking yourself in the fetal position, I just can't see another client today. So that's that's the outcome of not having the stop. So the analogy that I was talking about this morning was, if we want to be high performing, we have to think of ourselves a little bit like and I don't always love trying to make metaphors of humans as machines. I tried to get away from this. But what a lot of people don't understand is if we think about a high performance sports car, you can't safely refuel a sports car, or while it's in motion, you need to stop and get into the pits, in order to do the refueling. We can't keep going without sleep indefinitely. And our brain can't keep going without pausing, you actually need to have that timeout for your body to repair and you need to have mental timeout for your mind to repair to boost your energy levels to keep going again. So I would say, to start with challenging yourself to be still for whatever feels just mildly uncomfortable. Is that 15 seconds is that 30 seconds, I challenged my client this morning, I said right. As part of our session, we're just gonna sit in silence with each other for 30 seconds. And all I want you to do is to notice how it feels. So we did that. He was like, You know what that was? Okay. Great. All right. That half an hour into the session, I said, I'm going to try you have 60 seconds, shall we? So then I set a timer for 60 seconds, and we just sat in stillness for 60 seconds together. And I went, how was that? He went, it was better. Okay. So that's what I suggest. Maybe you can try as well start with the lowest dose that you feel you can tolerate. And then when you get comfortable with that, try turning it up a little bit. Try doing it more frequently. Try then going oh, actually it feels okay. The reason is because in our brain, we have super highways of patterns that are ingrained into our synapses. Yeah. If we talk about neuroplasticity, when we've got a habit, and a lot of us have a habit of being busy. It's a really tricky, messy one, because being busy is usually enforced by people around us. How are you busy keeping busy? Oh, yeah, yeah, I'm busy. Oh, that's good. Yeah, that's good. Yeah, you want to be busy, you know. And so there's this conditioning and forcement around us. So you have to actually be a little bit like swimming against the current to stop. Yeah. And it can be so entrenched in our identity, you know, you've talked about this, you know, seeing yourself as this busy, productive person, it can be so linked to our self worth, we can get so caught up in thinking that being more productive makes us more valuable. When I read Brene Brown's book, daring greatly, and she talks about productivity as self worth and exhaustion as a status symbol. It hit me to the core. It just splits something open in me where I went, Oh, my God, you've seen into my soul. And I went, That's me. That's why I hit burnout three times, yes. Because I was like, okay, yep, I'm recovered. Now, let's get back on the treadmill and keep going. But actually, what I needed to do was to start to build a new pathway in my brain. If your superhighway has been crafted in the busyness direction, you have got all of these pathways in your brain that reinforce that. And it's it's like, the concrete is laid down, the superhighway is there. Now you've got another pathway that you're trying to create. And this is for any habit that you might try to integrate. Now you're trying to integrate a habit of stillness, and go, Oh, God, I've got to cut my own path here. It's like kind of, you know, getting out the knife and trying to hack through the bamboo. It's harder work like comfortable. Yeah, so much easier just to get on the highway. So over time, you just need to keep practicing more and more and more and more until you build a new pathway that's solid, then you can pave it, then you can concrete it and over time, it actually takes about 18 months for proper neuroplastic change to occur. You've built a new highway, and then you can start using the other one. And over time, the highway that you're not using will start to crumble, it will start to fall apart, it will start to degrade. But until that happens, you're going to have these competing things and you've got to make a choice between which pathway do I check? Do I take?

Daniel Franco: 54:46

Yeah, I love that. Thank you for sharing. I do Is there a particular type of person that you see this more often than not with though is it someone who's had

Rebekah Smith: 54:59

high achievers Yeah.

Daniel Franco: 55:01

So I, and I'm going to really generalize here. I see this a lot in sports people like I've played elite Junior sport never senior, but I played elite Junior sport. And it's, I've always had that sort of, it's self self motivated. It's this, this idea of, you know what I'm thinking of, as you're speaking here. I'm thinking of a glass. If you think about a big glass or bucket, right, a bucket filled with big rocks, and then you add the small rocks, and then you add the little tiny gravel, and then you add the sand, and then you add the water. Like, you can always just keep adding more and more in there, right. And I think that's really I've always taken life is, yeah, throw it at me. Pretty sure I'll take it on. But then you get you get to the point where it's like, actually, I can't, I can't do this anymore. Yeah. And it always comes down to the fact it always comes around in circles back to the point of I keep saying, Yes, I keep saying, Yes, I'll do that. Or I'll take that on, or I'll try that or, you know, leave it with me, or, you know, and I think that's the element is renewal of our language, as well being part of it, changing your language and setting boundaries. I think that the whole piece comes into it. Yeah, well, yeah, I don't know. It's an ever evolving thing.

Rebekah Smith: 56:26

I like that analogy of the bucket, because it inspires us to think about how full how heavy and how dense do I want my bucket to be? Do I want it to be full of stones and gravel and sand and water? Or do I just want to place a few rocks in here and have a bit of spaciousness? Yeah, yeah. What do I want? Well, that's

Daniel Franco: 56:44

the seven habits thing, right? The big rocks? Hmm. You know, it's where it's concentrated on the big rocks and stuff that is the most meaningful? Yep. All the other little bits and pieces. It's not that, you know, so?

Rebekah Smith: 56:54

And are you saying yes, to those little bits and pieces? So I think

Daniel Franco: 56:57

I think that as a business owner, and you know, everyone says to me, Daddy, I do a podcast a week right? Now, how do you throw on a podcast as well as run a business? And do the above? Just managed to do it? And if I think but what happens is, if I stop, then that or do I, you know, kind of just falls away? No, but it won't I not worrying, but in my head, it will. Yep. You know, I don't think anyone's actually sitting around relying on me, it's just I have these such high expectations of myself to deliver. Whereas I can almost guarantee you Gabs in folder and then Michelle on the team, oh, looking at me young, you know, then you need like, slow down, you can slow down. And I know for a fact that I'm not the only one going through that same thought process there is it is happening to many, many people out there.

Rebekah Smith: 57:42

And there's some real value in getting conscious and intentional about exploring what are your expectations for yourself, compared to other people's expectations of you? What mismatch is there between them? And why is that mismatch there? And this is where sometimes when I'm talking about the topic around authenticity, we talk a lot about people pleasing, and proving and performing. You know, so what's the armor that you're putting up to go? This is who I am? And this is what I've got to be and and how much of that armor Have you built for yourself because of your own expectation? Whereas everybody else is probably like, can you just take that down? Please? Can you just be you? Because that's a lot more fun. Yeah. And that's something that I've had to really wrestle with know, what was I building up as my own expectations? And how could I start to let that drop?

Daniel Franco: 58:31

Beautiful. Alright, enough about me, I want to ask your obviously a lot of work with leaders and businesses. What are some of those trends that you've seen in the past 12 months, you would have seen a lot of people like me who go go go, but you would have also seen some some many other types of personalities and, and different ways that people might have handled their health and well being in the past 12 months?

Rebekah Smith: 59:02

Yeah, sure. The biggest trend that I've seen is that the conversation about psychological well being has been much more open and out on the table than it was prior to 2020, which I think has been fantastic and healthy. Within that change. There's been a lot of different ways that people have navigated the changes, the transitions, the opportunities, the difficulties, and that has been really context dependent. So I've seen trends for a lot, a lot of loneliness, and a lot of suffering for people who particularly have had to work from home alone. And the context in which a lot of my work that I was doing during the 2020 period and into last year as well was providing video conferencing calls for kind of what can we do to top up our well being here, and just seeing how different contexts impacting people differently. There were people who were at home trying to work from their kitchen table with their family around them and trying to manage chaos feeling completely suffocated. Other people who were living on their own had not seen another human being for weeks apart from the Uber guy who was dropping food off at their door, feeling completely disconnected. The interesting thing was that in those contexts, the trend was that whether people were surrounded by others, and suffocated by others, or whether they were alone, there was still a huge amount of disconnection and a huge amount of loneliness. And I think as somebody who really struggled to fit in, and to find a sense of belonging for a lot of my life, that loneliness was something that I went, Oh, this, this, this is the pandemic, this is an epidemic of loneliness, what we're seeing at the moment, and because of the stress, even if we were surrounded by people in our home, or we were still able to go to our workplace, we were so lucky here in South Australia, right, we've been able to still be around people quite a lot. But the stress has been so disconnecting for people. And they're not actually able to access some of the parts of their brain, the prefrontal cortex is kind of like got all, you know, cut off, because all of the stress going on for people in the last 12 months, has meant that they're not able to communicate effectively. They're not self regulating, like they used to, they're kind of walking through and not really making eye contact, people are stopping to engage in meaningful conversation, or they don't have that opportunity to do so. So I think regardless of whether we've been in contact with people or not loneliness has been a huge trend.

Daniel Franco: 1:01:42

Yeah, yeah. I I actually felt that myself being someone who gets energy from other people. Being at home does does play its toll. You know, we talked about the the industrial revolution before and how we need to change but the the hybrid workplace is that the answer moving forward? I mean, because this whole working from home has so many benefits. Yeah. But then we also want that connection. Right. But then, you know, What day do we have that connection? Yeah, what does that look like? And so we have to start getting a little bit more strategic around planning, when we're all in the office and all the above? Is that is that the answer the harbored version? Or do you feel that we should go back to the five day a week in the office and where people can continually get and get that constant routine in place? Or is it about creation of new now?

Rebekah Smith: 1:02:39

I think it's about the creation and the emergence of an organic, new now, I think that there's a really great opportunity for us to think innovatively now, and to use this as an opportunity to recreate what we want our world to look like. I don't think that the five day working week from the office is the most useful, not the most enjoyable, not even the most productive way for people to work. I know for me, I was completely taken aback by having to work from home and then finding I was more productive, I did not anticipate that at all. I was the person who when I'm going to the office, I'm going to have this nice delineation now between work and home. And I would diligently take myself off even when I started working for myself. And when I had to work from home, like this is going to be a disaster. I'm going to be distracted by my partner and my dogs and my stepdaughter all the time. And I actually got much more done. So I wouldn't have found that out had I not been forced to. But it was a great exploration and an invitation to think differently about how I work. I'm a big fan of the hybrid model. I think that moving forward that I think that there is a lot of potential in using that to better effect. And like you said, also looking at one of those times where we can all cross over as well, you know, making sure that we're not siloing our teams and that we are cross pollinating teams. I know that a team that I work collaboratively with have said, Let's all make an effort to be in the office on Mondays and Wednesdays at other times, you know, feel free to come and go. But we're going to have our staff meetings on Mondays and Wednesdays as a touch point. If the majority of us can be there, the majority of the time, that would be great. And I do like hearing a lot of organizations where they've got a few different options. They might have customer facing roles where people have to be going to their worksite every day, they might have Office roles where they're going, Yeah, let's do a three and two split. And then they've got others who go actually because of your extenuating circumstances or because of your role. It's probably better for you to work at home full time. Yeah. And I think being able to explore all those options is a really healthy thing.

Daniel Franco: 1:04:47

Yes. I don't like being in meetings with people who if three people are on the call and five people are in the meeting like I just feel like that doesn't work though. So we need to get really strategic around. Because it because it gives more power to the people in the room to have a voice, especially when. So I know oz minerals, for example, they won't have if, if you're all not in the room, then it's all online. So they just refuse to have that mixed meeting scenario. So I really liked that model. But it's difficult to have, especially when you're time poor, and you've got everyone's time booked in and all this and someone decided to work from home today. So there's all those little nuances, I think that we keep keep on facing. But but these are all part of your nine steps which I want to tie into, and how do we become mentally fit and manage these situations? Right? So you have the nine barriers to mental fitness. And we're not going to dive into them today because I want to talk more positively. And what are the nine enablers to being mentally fit in handling all these situations? And sure, and so you break him down really, really well, in the sense of you can think of what would you call it a pie chart? Yeah, pie chart. So flexibility. And under that sort of heading. You've got trust, compassion and creativity. And then under the heading of strength, you've got authenticity, awareness and character. And under the embrace, you've got values stillness, which is what we've been talking about. And emotional mastery.

Rebekah Smith: 1:06:26

Yeah, that's about mental endurance and energy.

Daniel Franco: 1:06:29

Absolutely. Oh, is it? What did I say? I read that wrong. Can can you talk to us about that model? Because I feel like you're right, you. If you go through every single one of those and any bit of that, or I'm lacking a bit there, and then all of a sudden, you can see the gaps? I think it's a really great model. Yeah, sure.

Rebekah Smith: 1:06:51

I'll talk about mental strength first, you know, ways that we can build our mental fortitude. One of them is to look at character, and many people who are listening might have heard about character strengths, and many may not have, I'm always surprised by how rarely, it's it's used out there. But rather than talking about deficits in yourself, or deficits in your team and focusing on weaknesses, if we can look at strengths of character, and what are those great things that you have that are intrinsic to you as a person? And how can we highlight those? How can we get you to use more of those in work, it's an amazing enabler of performance and enjoyment at work, it can make a real difference to performance conversations as well, when you start to talk about strengths. Agreed? Yeah. The next one is around building that awareness. So that can be we can talk about awareness in lots of ways spatial awareness, social awareness, emotional awareness, sloth, a lot of the work that I do dives into self awareness, and being aware of your thoughts and how they're leading to a response. And being able to be metacognitive in your thinking, which is developing the skill of thinking about thinking, because when you're more clear about your thought processes, you're more able to then communicate it to others, rather than just going oh, I'm just really frustrated and mad right now and not being able to articulate what that's about. That's a skill set you can develop. And then authenticity, like I alluded to before, is about how do we shift from the people pleasing and the performing and trying to prove ourselves and, and sharpen our own true essence. So they all link into each other, you know, you can start practicing your character strengths to build your authenticity, and through doing so find that you've got a clear thought pattern. And so then the layer of the model, if you see in the visual of the pie chart, it's not just that these are the kind of three chance but you kind of go from the internal layer of character is all about how we see ourselves in our identity. That second layer is about how we're processing information. And the third layer is how we express it to other people in the world. So it's got that level of kind of going from internal to external, and outward, as well. If we dive into flexibility, this is the counterbalance. Because just like with our physical fitness, you can work on strength all you want. But if you end up being so strong, that you're just rigid, right things break, things break. If we don't have the flexibility and the adaptability, there's something really lacking in our fitness. So creativity, which is also linked to building innovative problem solving, thinking about novelty and your opportunities for thinking outside the box. There's lots of practices that we can get into to help people with that, rather than I love that stuff, because it's about challenging the status quo, right? Compassion, which is about being kinder to ourselves, if we're talking about self compassion, but also being kinder to others. And sometimes in a work scenario, that can just mean instead of flying off the handle or getting really judgy about somebody and what they've done just going huh, I wonder if something's going on for them that I don't know about yet. So it can help us to build that skill around getting more curious which I talked About a bit earlier. And then trust. I know you are fans of Brene Browns work here at Synergy IQ. And I use her model around breathing when I talk about trust. So it's about boundary setting, it's about being reliable. It's about developing accountability. It's about keeping things in the vault, not sharing confidential information that you shouldn't, acting from integrity, being non judgmental, and being as generous in our assumptions about other people and ourselves as we can be. So leading people through that process about building trust is multifactorial, as all of this is. And that last big component around mental fitness is around endurance. How do we top up our energy to keep going when things are tough, right, it's great to be a strength athlete and be able to lift a max rep of you know, however many kilos. But sometimes we need to be able to keep lifting a mental load repeatedly, things keep changing. If the crap keeps hitting the fan, we need to keep going. There are different strategies that we need, which aren't just strength and flexibility. So they are about tapping into our values, getting really clear on what's important for us, and being able to prioritize those things effectively and appropriately. Being able to embrace stillness, so that we keep topping up our fuel to keep going and not getting sucked into that busyness as productivity as self worth trap. And then the emotional mastery piece, which can link back into a lot of these strategies, but emotional mastery is recognizing particularly when is fear stopping you from doing something? And how can you lean into that fear in order to challenge yourself to grow and to expand yourself and your opportunities? So that's a quick tour of the framework.

Daniel Franco: 1:11:41

Yeah, it is amazing. Is it? How do you work on to? Do you say right today on my if we're using it in a sport sense, or going to the gym? Today, I'm going to work on my strength or Today I'm working on flexibility or injures to compartmentalize it that way, or is it? I don't know. Yeah. How would you

Rebekah Smith: 1:12:06

personally for myself, I use it as a quick diagnostic. So I look and I go if I'm feeling out of sorts, if I don't feel like my mental fitness is where I'd like it to be. I can go back to this and look at it and go Oh, yep, got it. I'm not doing enough of that. Okay. I had a dinner party, for instance, a few weeks ago, where I woke up the next morning feeling really like, oh, just drained and antsy and like really annoyed the day after, and I went, What's this about? I looked at the model. And I went, Ah, I wasn't practicing authenticity last night, because my dinner guests stayed over their welcome. And I didn't kick them out. And if I was being authentic to myself, I would have just said, Hey, guys, I'm really tired. It's been great seeing you. And you know, I'm sorry to kick you out. But that's what I'm doing. But I didn't lean into authenticity. So I know that I would have felt better about the day, myself had I went into that. So I did a quick diagnose.

Daniel Franco: 1:13:03

I went down the track of and I've said this before, in the podcast, I really look at myself, I don't know if you've played in PlayStation game where you can create an avatar, right? And you can create literally exactly what you've got there. So strength, awesome authenticity, awareness character all the above. And I've kind of got like, what's your level? Yeah, what level of like out of 100? Yep. And I'm like, I'll look at it. And I go, Oh, I needed work on the values piece a little bit more, or whatever it might be?

Rebekah Smith: 1:13:29

Absolutely. When I work with teams, I get them to do this as a bit of an audit. Yeah. So I can have that as a conversation with their leader first and go right. As a diagnostic. I do this for myself, personally, let's do this for your team. You know, what do you think your your level is, you know, on here? And where are the gaps between where you are and where you want to be. And we can also do that at a team discussion level as well and get some really amazing robust discussion about going oh, I think we need to improve there and somebody else going I think we're actually doing that really well. It's really great as a conversation

Daniel Franco: 1:14:03

as to how would you assess yourself on the character one? Like is that uh, oh, yeah. Oh, these people like me or her these people don't I mean, what's the is it because you said it's internal dialogue? I mean, what had Yeah, how do you? How do you improve character? If you're not? If I mean, you are who you are? Right,

Rebekah Smith: 1:14:23

great question. Absolutely. It's looking for more opportunities to use those things that you're good at and asking yourself, am I actually using my authentic strengths? Or am I just leaning into learned behaviors that other people have told me I should be? So I've got a diagnostic which is free, that I use. There are three different strengths surveys that are out there in the marketplace, two of them are paid and one of them is a free survey, which I use pretty regularly because I like that it's cross culturally validated for people of any background as well. And I send clients to do that free survey and it comes with back with a rank ordered listing of their top 24 strengths, depending on how they've answered the questions. And sometimes that can be really surprising. I was working with a finance team the other day, and one of the leaders in that team got his survey back. And in his top five were love and appreciation of beauty and excellence. And he was like, does this mean I'm soft? And he was going, and leadership's not up there. Alright, great, let's unpack this. But once you're aware of love in the workplace is not something that needs to be creepy. But love is about caring for people, and being able to express care and receive care back as well. So it's just that compassionate side of human connection. And that

Daniel Franco: 1:15:40

If anything it is probably the most powerful of all.

Rebekah Smith: 1:15:44

I think so

Daniel Franco: 1:15:45

Why Monsters Inc made a movie on it. Yeah. Yeah. The fear element versus the love element. I'm not going to go into the narrative narrative of the story, but I'll use Monsters Inc. in everything. Right. Yeah. And inside out, I love all these movies. Yeah. But yeah, just the sheer fact that you get more energy from love than what you do from fears. Oh, yeah. Is, is Yeah, apparently very apparent.

Rebekah Smith: 1:16:13

Absolutely. And when you can use it as a strength and recognize that it's your strength, you know, for him the awareness around that unlocked something for him. And I went, you know, you feel as though you should have leadership in your top strengths, because you're in a leadership role. But what makes you a great leader is that you care about your team. It's love as a strength that is your leadership, fuel. So how can you use that more, and we talked about all the ways that we could start to integrate that into his conversations with his teams, even if it's just when they sit down to have a one on one. He goes, hey, you've been fishing lightly, because he knows that his teammate likes fishing. And it just shows that element of I know you, I care about you, I'm going to ask about something that's important to you.

Daniel Franco: 1:16:56

Yeah. Brilliant. How do we catch ourselves in the moment when our head feels like we're in a pinball machine? Yeah, like, because you're dealing with all these emotions. And once and when you talk about your barriers and mental fitness, and they're often times we just so overwhelmed, yet the brain fog and all that, how do we catch ourselves in that moment? And then start looking at this diagram, and we will share? Are you open for us to share the diagram on the love you on the on the podcast, I will share the link to your website, actually, which will have that? Yeah, catching yourself in that moment is something that I'm really interested in hearing your thoughts on.

Rebekah Smith: 1:17:47

There's two techniques that are used one which sits in the awareness part of this framework, and one which is an enabler for compassion. The first one is from cognitive behavioral techniques. So it's a technique that I've just quickly refer to is str. So it stands for stimulus when a stimulus or a situation happens? What's the thought that arises in that? That's the T. And then what's the response that comes off of that? So being able to put the brakes on and go, Okay, wait, which stands for? What am I thinking? What am I thinking? What's my thought about this situation? That's leading to my response? Why am I feeling overwhelmed? What's the thought that's leading to it? Often, there's a thought underneath it, which is, I'm not capable of dealing with this right now. Nobody is helping me. And when you are aware of those thoughts, then you can go ah, actually, am I making assumptions here that aren't correct. So using that STR model is something that I do quite a lot of deep work in with people to go, what are the thoughts that are there? And what are some of the alternative thoughts that you can recraft that will lead to a more productive response? When it comes to the compassion side of things, there's another beautiful three step process that I use. And this comes from the work of Kristen Neff. And she talks about self compassion. And so it's based on her work. And the first step is to notice how you're feeling. If you can notice a name, what you're feeling, oh, my God, what's going on? Here you go, okay. It's overwhelmed. Okay, what's what's part of our note, there's more to it. Ah, I feel guilt as well. I feel really guilty that I haven't got all of that stuff done. I haven't gotten back to that person yet. And that I still have this stuff to do tomorrow. Okay, as soon as you label what you're feeling, your brain stops searching for it. So the pinball stops going is that this is this is this is it this and it goes, Ah, it's this. Okay? Once you've noticed and named what that is for you, then you can go okay, well, what do I need to do with it? You've got you're more empowered. So the noticing and naming first of all, then normalize it for yourself. Kristen Neff refers to this is common humanity. Remember that you're human. You're not machine. You're not perfect. And just go you know what, I'm just having a human experience. A lot of people go through this as well and it's okay. Then nurture. How do you nurture yourself in that? Do I need to take five minutes out? Do I need to book myself a holiday? Do I need to ask for help? So that nurturing part is often about coming back to some of the questions I asked before at the very start of our chat. What do I need? So notice a name, normalize the experience and nurture yourself through it, which can also be used for other people, when you're needing to be compassionate toward them, as well. Notice what's happening for them. Are you okay? normalize it? May we all go through that? Sometimes I've been there, myself and nurture. What do you need right now. So it can work for self and other. So those are three quick little steps in the awareness and the compassion bit that I train people in to get to that point where, okay, we can just let the pressure

Daniel Franco: 1:20:47

break things down. And really,

Rebekah Smith: 1:20:50

Yep, totally. I get really intentional about it.

Daniel Franco: 1:20:53

I love the STR stuff as well. Yes, Victor Frankel's quote of an I love my quotes with the steam in between stimulus and response is a gap in in that gap is a choice. Right? I think that

Rebekah Smith: 1:21:06

that choice lies our freedom or the well. So big. Yeah, it's that's massive.

Daniel Franco: 1:21:12

That is huge. Yeah.

Rebekah Smith: 1:21:13

Sorry, I cut you off.

Daniel Franco: 1:21:14

No, don't be ever be sorry for cutting me off. It's what everyone should probably too. I just keep going. I am conscious of time. We are.

Rebekah Smith: 1:21:25

That's good. Because I'm not we are we've been here for half an hour, two hours.

Daniel Franco: 1:21:30

20 at the moment, we're tracking well. I do want to ask one last question before sort of jump a couple of ask questions before jumping into into the quickfire, and wrapping up the conversation. The question I have is about parenting. How do we set up children for to be mentally fit?

Rebekah Smith: 1:21:57

Great question. First of all, role modeling ourselves. Second of all, being able to have age appropriate conversations with them about these concepts as they grow, you're not going to be able to necessarily talk about cognitive behavioral technique and use str with a three year old, they don't have the metacognitive ability to engage in that conversation refer

Daniel Franco: 1:22:18

to Monsters Inc. Yeah,

Rebekah Smith: 1:22:21

at least start to you know, plant some of those seeds. But the really key thing is about the role modeling piece, if we're doing that for ourselves, the better we are at self regulating ourselves, the better our children learn to self regulate as well. They learned so much implicitly from us. And that's not just in our observable behavior. But it's amazing what gets passed down subconsciously as well.

Daniel Franco: 1:22:45

Yeah, it's an interesting question for me, because like I am, if anything, my own biggest critic, right, I take everything away with me and break it down and understand it and mold it and like a big ball of player right, I really just try to understand what's what's going on. But I would love my children to have the same ability right into the self reflecting. But because it's going on in my head, how do you share that? Right? I think that's kind of my big question around is how do I build their knowledge on the software friction piece that they might not see the way I go about things?

Rebekah Smith: 1:23:26

Yeah, absolutely. Some of that can be dinnertime conversations, it can be about being vulnerable enough as a parent to go, you know what happened for me today, I was thinking this and then this happened, and I had to rethink, and I had to look at different options. So again, it can be age appropriate conversations, you know, depending on their developmental level. But sharing of ourselves can be so powerful, and we don't often do it when we're getting caught up in the action of life. You know, come on, it's time for dinner now. Now, you got to put that away, and you got to do this. And we get caught up in the doing, you know, we don't always carve out that time for just reflecting and being and sharing. Yeah. And so I think maybe carving out more time in our lives to mimic the campfire sharing Yeah, would be a great way to do that.

Daniel Franco: 1:24:13

Right. We use a number system. I have been using it lately with my children and we when breaking things down, like my daughter had a bad morning the other morning real bad. And on the way she got it was almost World War Three in the in the Franco household and she had that. And so on the car drive in. So this was she had an argument with a mother and then I got involved and whenever I get involved, things just get escalated. And then on the car driving. We sat there and we were really bright. I think I said to her how was your morning this morning? And she was not good. Nice. She tears coming down her face. And I said okay, well let's let's unpack it. All the little things that He asked you to do How did you? How did you before? She's not very well, I said, Okay, well, let's break that down even further again. When you get up in the morning, what's the first thing that we asked you to do? She says make the bed. I said on a scale of one to 10. How hard is to do that? And she said, it's about a one or two. I said, Okay, so it's not that hard. She's not no. So again, the second thing was she goes, get ready for school. I say, Okay, how hard is that? She's, it's about a one or two. Okay, so so so far, we're not asking you to do really tough things out. And she's like, No, there was a third thing to do. She said, Come downstairs and greet mum, because my wife is always done sort of getting prepared for the day. And I said, how hard is that? Because that's zero like that. I could just do that anyway, right? I'm like, yes. So number four, what's the what's the fourth thing? She's like, pack my school bag? And how hard is that? Not very hard to one or two. Okay. What about number five? Number five is prepare breakfast for herself. She's 10 years old. Put the toasting how and butter your toast? How hard is that? That's probably about three or four. Right? So five being you need help. 10 being almost impossible. One to five. So so what we're actually asking you to do, there's nothing really in that that's overly difficult isn't she's like, No, I said, Okay, so what we're trying to do is form some habits there and get you to do that right? Every single day. It's like, yes. And I said to her, so that's a scenario. But now we have conversations, she's coming home, I come home, and she can see it myself. I'm drained or whatever it might be. And so she the conversation comes around. And it's sort of like, there. Did you deal with some nines and 10s? Today, did you? Yeah, I mean, yeah, it just, I actually did it, because I can see it in you. Is there anything I can help you with? Oh, right. And it's just sort of like, Yeah, so like, I don't know, that number system really works when we're talking about from a difficult point of view. Yeah. That's something that I've felt is working with my family at the moment, if that's going to help anyone else like that.

Rebekah Smith: 1:27:09

It's great to get granular. Yes. And what really stood out for me in that share from you is the asking of questions as well. I think that sometimes we teach more by asking questions. Oh, great. Yeah. Then we do.

Daniel Franco: 1:27:22

You know what I actually I said this, too, I think one of the team members, I said, I should put my change management hat on, right. And that's what you do, just ask those open ended questions and really understand where they're at. But that that in itself, actually, and what I did say when you on the point of referring it to conversation that they're used to and I said to a because want to sing is one of our favorite movies. And I said oh, do you remember that when he said, When you hit rock bottom, the only way is up and when we can we can use that scenario today, right? Today is only gonna get better. Everything you do today. But then we go, I want to share this is a good story. She then we got to school, we open the boot to get a bag out. And she's like, I left my pencil case, on the same morning and I get to see the tears while having their inner eyes. And I said to her, well, here's an opportunity to step outside of our comfort zone and go ask some people in your class if you can borrow some stuff. And you might pick up a pen that you like, right? And something else that you might use that they have that you might issues, they she got all excited about being able to try new stuff. So I think right? Reframe Yeah. It's always always about the opportunity to learn within any situation, I think.

Rebekah Smith: 1:28:40

Absolutely. And learn about each other to you know, underlying all of that. Okay. Yep. You know, Is that too hard to do? Give that a one that there's also a question around kind of going, what else is going on for you today? Did you sleep badly? You know, like, all this stuff that comes into play? Because reminded me of a situation with my stepdaughter where I'd asked her to help me do some vacuum cleaning, and she was 19. At the time, it's not a little tacky, but at this stage and said, Alright, if I do these rooms, can you do those rooms? And she was like, Why should I do that? I barely use those rooms anyway, and stormed off to her room was so angry. I use this as an example when I talk about STI and kind of thinking about okay, what are my thoughts right now? And I went straight into judgment, right? She's lazy. She's disrespectful. Rarrrr. So okay, what's going to help me calm down here so I can have a productive response. To get curious. Ask a question. I wonder if something's going on for her that I don't know about. And so I went and asked the question, Hey, honey, is something happening for you today? Like that's not normally how you'd respond to me. She just burst into tears. Oh my god. I've just had the worst day I had to work an extra shift at Mack is and my boyfriend's broke it up with me and she was just beside herself, but because we don't always know what's underneath a response for somebody either, you know, and getting curious and being able to ask those open Questions around? What's going on for you right now?

Daniel Franco: 1:30:03

I reckon that is tough when you're in your own moment. Totally. So catching yourself totally off and see like the language and you have your or scenario before, when the way you language when we hear the always and never. And then you ask the question, are you thinking black and white at the moment? I really like that I'm going to take that offline. But the word should I feel like is one of those words that gets thrown around a lot. You should just know this, you should just do this. You should see what needs to be done. Right? And,

Rebekah Smith: 1:30:37

and when other people are giving us their shirts, we internalize them, they become our shirts as well. I reckon the biggest moment in my personal development has been when a psychologist said to me in my mid 20s, I want you to practice this week replacing should with could, yeah, oh my gosh, that just opened me up to a whole new world.

Daniel Franco: 1:30:59

Again, I have one similar that I use. replace God with get. So I've got to do this. And change it with. I get to do this, right. Yes. One that I use quite a few powerful. Absolutely. All right quickfire questions.

Rebekah Smith: 1:31:17

Bring it on? Do I need to like change posture?

Daniel Franco: 1:31:21

Right. She's so wimpy graders. I know. Obviously, you are as well here. Can you just tell us what you're reading right now?

Rebekah Smith: 1:31:29

I have just finished reading Stolen Focus by Johann Hari. And I am going back to reread his book Lost Connections. Yes, he does a lot in the tribes stuff doesn't mean he has done a bit around it. He does a lot about the social contributors to anxiety, depression. And the bookstore on focus is about the attention crisis that we're seeing people not being able to focus for long periods on anything. Currently,

Daniel Franco: 1:31:54

if you had one book that you could recommend the listeners to that will help them with their mental fitness, what would that be? Oh,

Rebekah Smith: 1:32:02

I'm going to give a more stock standard response and so lean into some Brene Brown stuff. Atlas of the Heart is something I'm exploring at the moment as well which is her newest release and it is powerful for putting language to your experiences coming back to that notice name bit before that is like your Bible for being able to go to

Daniel Franco: 1:32:25

I haven't read that one yet. Michelle's just finished that one. Yeah. [inaudible audio] jump into that

Rebekah Smith: 1:32:31

really powerful and the other more out there. One I would recommend is Eckhart Tolle A New Earth? He's more from the kind of spiritual philosophical um, but what that did for my mental fitness cannot be underestimated A New Earth. Yeah.

Daniel Franco: 1:32:46

But you can second person to have recommended that on the show. It's

Rebekah Smith: 1:32:51

his first book Power of Now, a lot of people struggle with reading it because it's quite dry. It's

Daniel Franco: 1:32:55

a disaster. I read it. I got a lot from it. Yeah. Like, there's a lot you can get from just the title. Exactly. But yeah, it's I struggled through that book.

Rebekah Smith: 1:33:11

Yeah. And a lot of people won't want to go into New Earth because they tried Power of Now, but a new Earth is written completely. Is it really, it's much more narrative.

Daniel Franco: 1:33:18

I think that's the reason why I haven't given the go till it. Because I did like, I like the concepts of the power of now. Yep. So I appreciate the book for what it is. But yeah, I did absolutely struggle through it. And I struggled through it because I stopped. I stopped you made me stop and think every two seconds. I can I was like, I'm never actually getting through these books. I'm just thinking all the time. Yeah. Which is probably a good thing. Do I do audio book or do you read? I do both. Yeah,

Rebekah Smith: 1:33:49

I do. But I've actually usually got the hardcopy and the audiobook version. And I'll be like, alright, read the first five chapters. Now getting in the car. Listen to chapter six. I do the same. Yeah. So funny. And sometimes at once, because I find I've absorbed things that are quite dense. reading and listening at the same time.

Daniel Franco: 1:34:05

I do the brain and the audio. Yeah. And then I write notes while they're talking. We could geek out on this,

Rebekah Smith: 1:34:14

especially with nonfiction. I like to just read the manual version, like the hole in my hands for fiction. Yeah, but nonfiction I loved

Daniel Franco: 1:34:22

Yeah, no, agreed. Let's think I've started listening to some nonfiction on audio. It's really great. I'm can't believe I haven't done this earlier. I literally started. I'm a big sci fi geek. So I'm listening to the Martian at the moment to listen

Rebekah Smith: 1:34:37

to more story based stuff. Yeah.

Daniel Franco: 1:34:39

And I just don't know. It's like, it's like, I feel like I mean, in school again, someone's reading me a book. It's really more. What's one lesson so this is a Brene Brown question. What's one lesson that's taking you the longest to learn?

Rebekah Smith: 1:34:56

To ask for what I need? Yes. It comes up a lot in my conversation, because it's the lesson that I'm still learning learning.

Daniel Franco: 1:35:06

Yeah, we'll just leave that one there. Yeah. Three people that you could invite to dinner, who would they be?

Rebekah Smith: 1:35:14

Being an introvert, I wouldn't want to have too many new people at the table. So I would actually squander my opportunities to have new people at the table for preference of having people that I know there. But I would really love to meet pink, Alicia. I love her songwriting. I love her advocacy. And I would love to pick her brain on life and philosophy. So if I could have her at the dinner table with a couple of my best friends, that'd be nice.

Daniel Franco: 1:35:39

She's pretty good. I love it. Like, I don't know if anybody, like my wife is a big Pink fan. And I never really I never really appreciated the lyric that she writes. I mean, like, it's poetry, really. Some of some of her lyrics. So yeah, really is. What is some of the best advice that you've ever received?

Rebekah Smith: 1:36:05

My physiotherapy mentor told me when I was probably only a couple of years into my career, that you are not the thing that changes people, you are just there to facilitate their change. And it just helped me to take responsibility off my shoulders for being the change for them. But enabling the change with them.

Daniel Franco: 1:36:26

Dorgan is a few people going through that.

Rebekah Smith: 1:36:30

Yeah, it took me it took me a while to really integrate that it's a control thing, isn't it? Yeah. And it came back to that ego stuff. And I wanted to be important, you know, like, one of my deepest values is making a difference in the world, and to be able to make a difference for others. What an ego trip. So

Daniel Franco: 1:36:51

parenting is a big thing in life, as well. Absolutely. That same morning. But going back to the pencil case, scenario, yeah. My wife emailed the teacher telling the teacher that either left her pencil case, Oh, yeah. And that frustrated me, because it's like, well, you didn't allow either to have the will go into the opportunity to tell the teacher herself. Yep. She walked in. And the teacher said, Oh, you have to put stress on.

Rebekah Smith: 1:37:23

And it was like, well, there was an opportunity was

Daniel Franco: 1:37:26

it? Is it opportunity there? Yep. So yeah. Anyway, I'm gonna go into why life annoys me.

Rebekah Smith: 1:37:35

dangerous territory, right, dangerous

Daniel Franco: 1:37:37

We could edit this podcast. If you had access to a time machine with only one return trip available, where would you go?

Rebekah Smith: 1:37:48

Probably 20 to 30 years into the future, to see what the world is like, and whether we've completely destroyed it yet, and come back and then make a more informed decision about how to move forward from there.

Daniel Franco: 1:38:00

Brilliant. You're one of the future tribe. I'm going to the future, we get more people going back. Actually, we kept Gabs, we should do split on who's got who said future who's going back. That'll be because you've joined the tribe of going if you want to know what's happening, I want to know what's happening. Is that a control thing coming in again?

Rebekah Smith: 1:38:20

I'd like to say it's curiosity.

Daniel Franco: 1:38:23

I think you're right. We're being the Sci Fi, I am a massive sci fi geek and not knowing that we're going to be interplanetary. Really, I feel like we are going to be but not seeing it. Yeah, really annoys me.

Rebekah Smith: 1:38:37

Have you seen the documentary? 2040? No, I can't remember the gentleman's name who's made it. I think it's Daymond. Somebody. And it's it's about the climate crisis, basically. And if we made these six simple changes now, which are in our power already, this is what the world can look like in 2014. But if we keep going on our current trajectory, this is what looks a bit worse. So I think I'd like to go to 2040 and see, what have we done, what and what do we still need to do?

Daniel Franco: 1:39:07

And then come back and take a few photos and come back?

Rebekah Smith: 1:39:10

Yeah, I don't know whether that would empower me or disempower me though. I'd be a bit worried about it

Daniel Franco: 1:39:15

it'd be disheartening. Yeah. If you have one superhero power, what would it be

Rebekah Smith: 1:39:22

to freeze all the people around me in time, so that if I was in a supermarket and it's really busy as an introvert, I can just do my shopping and not get interrupted by all the people there. Sometimes we just want the world to stop. Okay, everybody just needs to stop to stop so I can get my stuff

Daniel Franco: 1:39:43

come up with a superpower.

Rebekah Smith: 1:39:44

I'm a control freak. Why don't we could just make them all disappear

Daniel Franco: 1:39:50

at lightning speed and everyone else is suffering.

Rebekah Smith: 1:39:56

What is click my fingers get all the groceries delivered to me. Absolutely. I still like the experience of doing it though. Sometimes I just get overwhelmed by all the humans.

Daniel Franco: 1:40:04

Yeah. Yes, humans have that effect.

Rebekah Smith: 1:40:11

but sometimes they're difficult. I like a good

Daniel Franco: 1:40:13

dad man joke like a really bad joke. Have you got a bad joke for us?

Rebekah Smith: 1:40:17

A really bad one? Yeah, horrible. Can I give you like a doubleheader bad one?

Daniel Franco: 1:40:20

Oh, this Yes. I'm smiling and really?

Rebekah Smith: 1:40:25

Look to give you context. It's cracked me up when I was 10. So it's like probably pretty bad. How do you catch a unique animal? How do you catch a unique animal unique up on it?

Daniel Franco: 1:40:36

Oh, sorry.

Rebekah Smith: 1:40:37

How do you catch a time one though? How time away? Yes. Well done. still makes me laugh. I guess I'm still 10 inside

Daniel Franco: 1:40:47

you make up on it. Well done. Well, thank you very much for joining us today. It's been really amazing. And deep dive to podcast, we've gone down a few rabbit holes, which has been amazing. Thank you so much for all that you're doing. I know you do although keynotes and speaking events, and you get up and I know for a fact people walk away, really having learned something through those little punchy keynotes that you give and all the work that you're doing with with people and businesses and corporations, I guess we're very aligned in our values and, and what we're trying to achieve. So yeah, what's next for you? Where do you what's the next couple of years look like for you

Rebekah Smith: 1:41:28

going more deep with my work. So I spent the last two years with a very broad approach, trying to get messaging out to as many people as possible, but not going really deep with it. And so this year, I started to include much more coaching, and much more deep dive and longer programs to do more of that exploration, you know, longitudinal kind of way. So that's what's next go? Broad, as well as

Daniel Franco: 1:41:51

deep, fabulous, fabulous. And we'll be watching with a keen eye, where can we find you?

Rebekah Smith: 1:41:56

So Smith and wellness.com is the home where a lot of resources lie. I am also somewhat active on socials, Smith and wellness and Instagram. I am quite active on LinkedIn, and Rebecca B EK, back Smith. And I do have a YouTube channel, which I need to start adding a little bit more as well. So you can find me there. At least some historical stuff before I stopped reading it again.

Daniel Franco: 1:42:24

Absolutely. Check her out on those socials and Smith and wellness.com. You won't be disappointed. Thank you very much again for your time.

Rebekah Smith: 1:42:34

Can I say a huge thank you for your generosity, for your presence and for your vulnerability in sharing of yourself today as well. It's actually been really inspiring. So I'm going to walk away with taking a lot from this myself.

Daniel Franco: 1:42:45

Really. Thank you. Thanks, man. I try my best. Take care guys. We'll catch you next time. Thanks for listening to the podcast. Or you can check out the show notes if there was anything of interest to you and find out more about us at Synergy iq.com.au I am going to ask though, if you did like the podcast, it would absolutely mean the world to me if you could subscribe, rate and review. And if you didn't like it, that's alright too. There's no need to do anything. Take care guys. All the best.

Synergy IQ: 1:43:15

Thank you once again for joining us here at creating synergy. It's been great spending this time with you. Please jump onto the synergy IQ Facebook and LinkedIn page where the discussion continues after the show. Join our mailing list so you'll know what's happening next at Synergy iq.com.au. And of course don't forget to subscribe to this podcast. And if you really enjoyed it, please share it with your friends.