Quiet The Inner Critic: Managing That Little Voice In Our Heads

🎧 Introducing the first episode of our brand-new Agency Insights podcast! It took us a little longer than we expected to launch the show, as it turns out there is a lot more to do than we thought there would be, but we got there in the end and we're excited to finally share it with you. 

👋 Meet our first guest: Clair Heaviside, the co-founder of the multi-award-winning strategy and marketing agency, Serotonin. With over a decade of experience in the digital sector, Clair is a true veteran in the field. She was even named agency marketer of the year by Prolific North in 2022.

🤔 The theme of this episode is all about that little voice in our heads, and how to manage it to achieve our goals and stay mentally focused and healthy. 

Here are some of the key talking points:

00:38 - Introduction

02:10 - Balancing Self-Criticism & Self-Reflection

06:33 - Being Outside of Your Comfort Zone

10:44 - Understanding & Accepting Imposter Syndrome

13:00 - Nurturing Your Team & Paying Attention

18:10 - Having A Business Partner & Great Peers

22:07 - ​​Being Mature About Hustle & Wellness Culture

28:30 - Reframing Stress & Recognising Distress

32:41 - Getting Older & Knowing Yourself Better

41:24 - Self-Discipline & Exercise

45:45 - Closing Out The Show

🚀 Join us in this episode as we explore these topics in depth and share our personal experiences and insights. We hope this episode will inspire and motivate you to take action towards your goals while staying consistent and balanced. 

🎧 Don't forget to subscribe to our podcast to get notified of new episodes and leave us a review if you enjoyed this one!

Thank you for joining us today, hopefully, you’ve found some value in this episode.

If you would like to be kept up to date with future episodes, don't forget to subscribe or follow us:

Website: www.agencyinsights.co.uk
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Chapters

• 0:38 Introduction
• 2:10 Balancing Self-Criticism & Self-Reflection
• 6:33 Being Outside of Your Comfort Zone
• 10:44 Understanding & Accepting Imposter Syndrome
• 13:00 Nurturing Your Team & Paying Attention
• 18:10 Having A Business Partner & Great Peers
• 22:07 Being Mature About Hustle & Wellness Culture
• 28:30 Reframing Stress & Recognising Distress
• 32:41 Getting Older & Knowing Yourself Better
• 41:24 Self-Discipline & Exercise
• 45:45 Closing Out The Show

Transcript

TOGETHER IN DIGITAL – EPISODE 1 - QUIET THE INNER CRITIC

Welcome to the Together in Digital podcast where we explore the exciting and ever changing world of the digital and tech sectors. 

In each episode we'll be talking with agency leaders, industry experts, and innovative thinkers to bring you valuable insights, tips and strategies, which will hopefully help you better navigate the fast paced world of digital. 

Now, whether you're a seasoned veteran, or just starting out in the industry, our goal is to provide you with not only information, but inspiration. So sit back, relax and join us on the journey while we dig into the latest trends, technology, culture and even issues from the digital agency world. 

Welcome to the first, and hopefully the first of many episodes of the Together in Digital podcast. Today, I am very, very grateful to say that I'm joined by Clair Heaviside as my as first guest. Clair is the co-founder of a fast growing, and multi award winning highly creative strategy and marketing agency, based in Manchester called Serotonin. 

Clair is what I would refer to as a digital sector veteran. She's been on the frontlines of marketing for over a decade now, and actually, in 2022, she was named ‘Agency Marketer of the Year – Prolific North.’ 

I want to say thanks, Clair. You’ve been very, very patient. This is the third time we've tried to do this now. The first couple of times we tried it at your office, and it wasn't the best acoustic environment. Just heard my feet squeaking on the  boardroom floor, which is not ideal! But thank you, I really appreciate you taking the time to do this and actually being patient with because, yeah, I know it's been a bit of a pain in the ass.

CH: I'm really honoured to be your first guest, and I'm just still reeling from being a digital industry veteran. I'm really, really happy with that. I'm changing my LinkedIn bio as we speak!

At what point do you get to call yourself a veteran though? Is it after a decade? I think anything under a decade, you don’t really deserve.

CH: Yeah, let’s just make that boundary. 

That's it. 

CH: Yeah. 

So today's episode – there’s been a few tweaks and changes along the way.  I’m going to try and make sure I speak into the mics. I've been doing a lot of research on podcasts, and apparently that's really important. 

Today's subject is essentially around that little voice that we all get in our heads when we're doing something new, when we're generally running our businesses, doing new jobs, whatever it might be. So it's that balance between self-criticism and self-reflection, and I actually think it's probably the best topic that I could have picked for the first episode because obviously in the lead up to this - I don't know if I'm allowed to swear - but I'd be shitting myself, to be quite honest. Doing something new, especially something that puts an entire focus on you as a person, and puts your head on the chopping block, it’s a bit scary. So I think it’s an interesting subject to dig into.

CH: I feel there's kind of two ways of responding to that self-criticism versus self- reflection perspective. One of them being to ask yourself the purpose of what you're doing. So are you purposefully sitting out there to critique yourself, or are you trying to be productive and learn from what you're doing? 

Sometimes when that voice starts being overly critical, or really trying to cut yourself down, it's about stepping back and thinking, ‘Is this really a productive conversation that I'm having with myself, or can I more positively think about what I would do differently?’ 

I think the other thing is - and I think you doing this podcast is a great example of it - is that fear of doing something new, and worrying about the end result, can sometimes feel really, really overwhelming. So you're sat there thinking, “Oh, God, is this going to land? Is anyone going to listen? Is anyone going to show up? Is the kit going to work? Where am I going to do this?’

Well, considering it’s the third time we've tried the kit now, there’s been a few tests.

CH: We’ve been on a journey, but really what you should be hugely proud of is that instead of letting that final output overwhelm you, you just kept taking small actions. 

Powered through.

CH: Yeah, small steps forward to the first step; the research. The second, buying the kit, the third, buying a totally different set of kit, because you realised the first kit wasn't the right kit. Finding the right people, starting to talk about it. And instead of being scared by the end goal, you just broke it down into those steps, and suddenly, it wasn't so scary anymore. And here we are! You've done it!

Well, we've got to make it through the show yet. I think actually what you said at the beginning there is quite on point, which is when does that voice stop being productive and start being quite negative and starts essentially going the opposite direction; stops pushing you to do the thing you want to do and actually starts to make you doubt yourself, start getting a bit insecure about stuff and sometimes it pushes you to bail? How often do people quit because that little voice has taken over – “Oh, no, it’s just not worth doing.”

CH: Yeah. I think the biggest thing is when you start taking those little steps, it's just about little by little proving that voice wrong. Every time you prove that voice wrong - even just by doing something small – “Oh, I can talk about doing a podcast, I can get a list of people together, I can find the right kit” - you've just proved it wrong again. You’ve built your own confidence up. 

So the more that you take those steps, suddenly by the end of it you look back, and you're a different person to the one that you were when you were scared at the very beginning. I think that's just hugely powerful.

Oh, massively, yeah. I totally, totally get what you're saying. We've all been doing this for quite a while now, and there are scenarios where you jump into something a bit scary. At the beginning of it, the little voice is there. I call mine Steve. I was joking about the other day. I was like, “You’ve got to give it a label.” Steve’s a bit of an ass, but basically that voice kicks in at the beginning, and does build up those doubts, but actually when you power through, there is a real sense of achievement in getting through doubts - even more so than when you're cocky, and you're just going into it with all the confidence. I feel like you really get a real sense of achievement by  working through that.

CH: Absolutely. I mean, if you had told me just over three years ago when Dom and I first started talking about starting an agency together - and if you'd said, “In just over three years’ time this is where you're going to be, with this size of team and this size of clients…”

You guys have grown so fast.

CH: And in many ways, yeah, it does feel like we've grown really fast, but I think the way that we've done it - by knowing where we wanted to get to - that wasn't just an arbitrary thing in the future. We knew that there was a goal to get there, to be able to grow a team, to be able to work with great clients, to do great work, but then it's just been about all the small steps that we took along the way. 

I spend every single day outside of my comfort zone. This is outside my comfort zone. When I walk into meetings, pitches, when I work with my team, when I interrogate briefs, when I present work back, when I build out a strategy, when I do speaking - everything I'm doing every day is pretty much the first time I've ever done it in that respect. And particularly within marketing,  every client’s different, every brief is different, so you're always doing something new. 

So I think it does build up this real resilience within you as an individual and as a marketeer, and as a business leader because you're constantly proving to yourself, “I can do new things every day, and my comfort zone isn't actually a good place for me.” Outside of my comfort zone is actually where I should be living all the time, and that's where I feel - like you just said - really accomplished and achieve things. 

It's a muscle, isn’t it? The more you push against that resistance, and the more you listen to that little voice, (listen to Steve), and don't do what they say, I think you get better at it. That's my own experience as well. Do you know where it gets me? This is going completely off topic of what we were originally talking about. However, this is where it really gets me. If you have a period of time where you've not done it just because you've been busy, you've had your head in client work, whatever it might be, and you just go a few weeks or a couple of months and you've not set out to  push yourself a little bit, those muscles atrophy a little. 

CH: Yeah.

And that voice gets a little bit stronger, and it gets a bit easier to listen to it. 

CH: Yeah.

So, yeah, I think that’s a factor as well, isn’t it? Actually one of the things I wanted to talk about was the strategies around how do you manage it? How do you push yourself to work through? 

From my perspective, one of the big ones is forcing yourself as often as possible to flex those muscles, to train those muscles, and to do something - like you said - that pushes you outside your comfort zone.

CH: I love that muscles analogy. I do a lot of running. I talk about that quite a lot.

Is it a marathon you’re training for?

CH: Various events that I’ve got coming up, but I'm always training for something and I’m always trying to push myself that little bit harder. And that makes sense to me, because you want to see progress, and it's really visible that progress. You can feel it in your body. You can feel it when you go for a slightly longer run or you go up slightly bigger hills, and there’s a real surge of energy that you get from that. And I think translating that over into the working environment and the way that you run a business it's really important. 

When I speak to some agency owners, or I have done in the past, you often find that one of the biggest problems that they find in terms of growing their business is that they've moved back into where they feel comfortable. Client services, for example. So they're managing accounts, and they're talking to clients and they're doing the work. 

I’ve been guilty of that 100 per cent, and you have to check yourself. You’ve got to check yourself. 

CH: Yeah, and that's the moment when you look around the business and you think, “Right, the structure of this business needs to be in such a way that I can go and do what I need to do. Therefore, I need to surround myself with a great operational team that I can lean on, that I can trust, and they will pick those things up.” Fortunately, we've really, really got that at Serotonin, but yeah, I think it's a problem for a lot of agency owners and creative industries in particular. 

Yeah, massively. I think one of the big things with digital as well is because it's constantly changing. There's no, “Oh, this is how it’s been done for 40 years.” That doesn't exist in our industry. It’s changing constantly, and it's all about innovation. So I think it always presents essentially an opportunity for a kind of impostor syndrome to start creeping in because you're trying something new all the time. There's new strategies, there’s new channels. I mean, God, the introduction of Tik Tok as a marketing channel! It’s just flipped things on its head. People have now obviously got a whole new channel which is just swallowing attention from Facebook and Instagram. And actually, that's a channel where people become experts in, so it's like, how many people aren't experts, just saying they are just because they want to  crack on with it?

CH: Yeah. I always have a bit of a thing about the phrase ‘imposter syndrome.’ Historically, the phrase in itself, I find it a little bit problematic. I always think that it puts onus on the individual that there's something wrong with them, and their inability to do something. Whereas actually sometimes there are structural things that are going on that mean that person isn't able to fulfil their role, or feel confident in doing their role. 

So I always step away from that. I know there's been a lot of narrative, particularly online where people talk about impostor syndrome, and I always make a point of not saying it, particularly to my team, particularly to the women in my team, for example, because I don't want to adopt that mentality where doing things out of your comfort zone, or doing things that you find difficult, or feeling nervous about something, is a bad thing. I'm nervous about things a lot of the time, and sometimes it's just okay that you feel a bit anxious because you're doing something new. That doesn't mean that you've got a syndrome or something wrong with you. It just means that you're human, and that you're pushing yourself. 

I want to ride that wave with my team and push myself as well. So yeah, sometimes we’ve just got to embrace all that innovation and that change, haven't we, Warren, and just roll with it?

Well, I mean, you've got a choice. This is the point. Our industry, you have no choice. You move with things or you get left behind, and it happens so bloody fast. 

You touched on something that was quite interesting then. You were talking about the team and how you nurture the team. I think - it's going to sound a little bit narcissistic - and I really don't want it to, but I think when you do have that kind of entrepreneurial spirit, I think naturally as people, I think a lot of entrepreneurs are more willing to push themselves beyond their comfort zone because they have to, because just by the very nature of being an entrepreneur or setting up a business, you’re thrown tons and tons of challenges constantly.

However, that's not to say that the team around you have that same kind of resilience, or that same sort of attitude towards it. So I'm always interested because obviously I have my own team, and this is something I'm always on the lookout for. I have a particular team member in mind. Obviously, we're doing quite a bit of work, they’re in a new role essentially, and it’s not something they've done before. However, they're doing such a good job. You’ll know exactly who I'm talking about. They’re doing such a good job.

CH: They’re amazing!

I know, and this is it – they’re doing such a good job, but it's so difficult for them to hear that they're doing such a good job because, again - I don't want to say ‘imposter syndrome’ - because it’s so new to them and they're worried about messing things up, or whatever it might be. Are there any strategies you have in place for looking out for it?

CH: I see it quite a lot within the team. I think the key thing is to try and identify it early on that’s somebody is feeling that way, and recognise the fact that it's probably difficult for them to come to you and say that they're scared about doing the thing that you've asked them to do, because they don't want you to think that they're not capable of doing it. 

So the way that I do that is to try and spot changes in behaviour. So suddenly they've become maybe defensive about some feedback that they would normally just take on board, or they're quieter, or they're not interacting with the rest of the team as much. It can be these really small nuance changes in behaviour. 

The thing that I always think, is that it's never about what it's about. So when you see those changes in behaviour, it can be really easy to react to the change. So you give someone some feedback, they react negatively to that feedback, or defensively to that feedback. It puts your back up. But actually they're not reacting to the feedback. They're scared about something else, or they're feeling intimidated, or they're feeling nervous about the new role. That’s the time that you dig in to what's really going on, and see if you can find out what's really going on that's prompting that change in behaviour, or that slightly negative reaction to something else. More often than not, it's not about what it's about and I always try and tell myself that.

That means being hyper aware of what's going on within the team and the individuals within the team, which gets harder and harder as the team grows.  But knowing each of them as individuals and what their behaviour looks like when they are at their best…

The baseline?

CH: Yeah. And then you can see what those changes are. And when that behaviour changes, that's the time to not to tell somebody off for not behaving in the right way, because that's not how this works. It's about sitting them down and saying, ‘It’s probably not about what it's about, so what is it about?”

Yeah. You’re absolutely spot on when you said it's about knowing your team, and by knowing them as individuals. I think the – let’s call it almost like ‘the trick’ to this – and it’s so difficult to do, but I think the trick to this would probably be having a clear understanding of who they are as people generally, on a day to day, how they work, like you said, as the baseline when they're doing a good job, and things are going well, so that actually instead of waiting for the change in behaviour, what you're actually trying to do is - and I try and do this with a couple of my team - which is knowing that they might be sensitive to certain things, or certain things might impact them a certain way. What I try and do is pre-empt certain scenarios so that actually we don't find ourselves in the situation where I'm having to dig about what the real problem actually is. 

But it's so hard to do. You've got so many moving parts, because basically our businesses are service businesses, its people. So it's all ours, it's all people and what they’re doing with their time. So it's not like you've just got a machine and you just go looking for the thing that’s rattling.

CH: People are so complex, and I think that's probably something that you learn over time when you're growing a business, how critically important it is to invest - not just training or money into people, but your time. 

I know that my team really need that time, that face time, that chance to have their voice heard beyond the work that they're producing. It's so important, and I think when you first start out in business, it's not something that you realise how much time it requires. 

Yeah, absolutely. 

CH: But it’s also a part of my job that I really love. That's why I'm doing marketing. That's why I'm growing a business because I am fascinated by people and human behaviour, and it really informs the work that I do, the creative work that I do, and it informs the way that we run the business and it informs the type of people that we hire and how we hire them and all of that. 

It's very hard on you as an individual, and I think that's why it's really important to have co-founders or other agency owners that you are connected with that you can share that with.

I can imagine it being very lonely not having a business partner. I did it for quite a while before my business partner re-joined me. We had a thing years and years ago, and you go off and do your own thing. There was never a fall out. It was one of my best friends. But yeah, it made a difference. It’s a few years now going on, and actually it's nice to have that soundboard.

CH: Oh, absolutely. I don't know how solo founders… I mean, I take my hat off to every single one of them. 

I'm very fortunate. I’ve got a fantastic co-founder, and very good friend in Dom. We absolutely trust each other, understand each other, and that is a foundation for everything. But we are very different. 

I think it has to be. It absolutely has to be.

CH: I love the fact we bring this to the table because it means that there's such a variety of leadership styles and different priorities. We're never just ‘yes’ people to each other. There's always a challenge and a ‘what about this,’ and a ‘what about that?’ I think that is very, very powerful. 

I've been very, very fortunate to find that partnership, and I think that that's exactly why we've been able to grow at the pace we have and in the way we have and deliver the work we've got because of that very solid partnership. But yeah, I take my hat off to you if you're a solo founder. Oh my God! I don’t know how you do it! 

Well, I think that feeds into one of the things I wanted to talk about. We were saying about how do you know when you're being too hard on yourself? So when that little voice kicks in, how do you learn to give yourself a bit of a break? I know personally, me, a lot of people around me say that I am incredibly hard on myself. But I see that as I’m driven. I'm not a perfectionist, but if I don't give myself a kick up the ass, I won't do the things that I need to do. 

So although I accept the fact that you might consider it to be hard on yourself, actually I think it’s just me pushing myself to do things. However, what I will say when we're talking about having a business partner, is that if I didn't have a business partner, I don't know who I would talk to about it. I don't know who I would soundboard that off to. The things that are going through my head, and if I'm struggling with something, or I'm at a bit of a blocking point, if I didn't have that, how do you know when you are being hard on yourself?

CH: Yeah. I think one of the secrets to it – well, not a secret, but ways to manage it – is, again it’s like I said at the very beginning – make sure there's a purpose, make sure there's a goal. If you're pushing yourself, just mindlessly pushing yourself and grinding yourself down because you just think that if I just keep working hard, and hard, and hard, and hard, and hard forever, then that's the right way to do things, that is a mindless and pointless path to insanity and burnout. 

So the important thing is to have these goals, and then when you reach a goal you don't just have this feeling of  ‘Oh, I’ve worked really hard, and now I'm going to keep working hard again tomorrow.’ You are able to take a moment of accomplishment, that breath of ‘Oh, okay, we got there.’ Right, and now you ready yourself. What’s next? That's all part of that very structured planning process, and being able to talk about those and agree them with someone else is so, so helpful. 

But I think that's the way out of - swirling the plug hole basically, which is just what pointless hustle culture advocates. It's much more about setting goals, working towards them, feeling the accomplishment, and then moving on to the next one.

Do you know, you’ve absolutely just beautifully segued into another thing I wanted to talk about. I love the words you said – ‘pointless hustle culture.’ Now don't get me wrong, I throw some hours at this business. I really, really do. Sometimes not the most productive hours, but often as productive as I can be. 

We talked about this a little bit earlier, about it’s all for the gram. Our industry especially is very social media led. All the people in the industry - it's not like if you got an engineering company. It doesn’t matter if you’re posting on LinkedIn regularly. It doesn’t matter if you produce a piece of content. Does your company do the thing that it needs to do? And actually, you can get these huge businesses that have very little online activity that are doing hundreds of millions. 

So it's a different industry. Ours is very surface level, it's all showing, and I really do think that there's something in our industry which is pushing this, ‘if you’re not grinding, if you’re not pushing forward, if you're not hustling, you’re dying.’ I think  actually, really in the theme of the conversation we're having around that little voice in your head, it plays havoc with it because you're constantly thinking, ‘Well, if I'm not working 100 hours a week, I'm not getting anywhere,’ and I don't think it's right.

CH: No. I do think that there is a real pressure across a lot of industries, but like you say, particularly within agency land, to present a certain type of success, or measures of success. One of those things is how hard you're working. 

I also think that there is a rise now of a more rationalised and mature fight back to that, and I don't think that that fight back should be wellness. You know, ‘Just sit back, it will happen. Just go for a walk and everything will be fine,’ because I actually think that is almost equally problematic and dangerous for people. Not least because a walk won't fix things, it’s something deeper, but also if you don't work hard - unless you're very, very lucky, you might not achieve those goals that you've set for yourself. 

So I think that there needs to be louder voices in that middle space that are advocating a sense of balance, and hopefully that's one of the things that I tried to do, and I know you try to do. The conversation we're having right now is doing that because, yeah, like you, I work very hard, and have done since the beginning of Serotonin. We've really pushed forward, but I also talk a lot about the balance that I have in my life. I don't pressure my team to work hard or outside of ours. We don't communicate with them outside of ours. We push back at clients who push for that, and we protect them from that.

Like you said at the beginning, we can't expect everybody to work the way we do, but at the same time we try and set a really good example of what good productive working hard looks like. Let's just forget the brand of hustle cultures.  Forget it, it's gone. 

Similarly, wellness is a brand. That’s like, Clinton Cards just needs to start making a ‘Hustle Culture’ Day and everyone will buy into it. Let the rational, mature voices in the middle of that, who are experienced and can say, “Look, there's undoubtedly going to be periods in your life where you work really, really hard, and there's going to be periods in your life where you're focusing on other areas of your life.” 

I think the danger of this as well - this whole narrative - is that it tends to be people who don't have families, for example, or don't have other dependents, or, have the ability within their lives to work in that way. Well, fine, good for you. But it's not a brand. You’re not brand Hustle Culture. You're just telling us that that's the way that you're working right now in your life. And I think the big thing is in these instances, I would say to everybody, “Zoom out. Okay, just zoom out. Stop looking at one person’s story, and thinking that that needs to be your story. Look at the bigger picture. There are multiple voices, there are multiple people out there talking about their experiences. Pick and choose who you want to learn from and who you want to be like.” 

Normally I would recommend, listen to people who have trodden the path before, because taking advice from people who haven't been there, or done that can sometimes be where your head gets turned into a spin. 

Yeah, massively. Well, I think a big part of the problem is that the ones who seem to be advocating - not even so much advocating, but showcasing that that's the lifestyle, are these huge, huge personalities. The ones with hundreds of millions of turnover in businesses – your Elon Musk's. “I sleep on the floor of the factories.” Great! You’re a lunatic. You're an actual lunatic! That's not how the world works for the majority of businesses out there. Gary Vaynerchuk, all these people who have got these personalities, but the fact of the matter is, truth be told, biologically it's actually very, very, very few people who can function on such small amounts of sleep, ad actually the majority of the world - the normal people - have to balance it a little more, like you said. 

CH: Do you know what it is? I was listening to Grace Beverly’s podcast the other day, which is a fantastic podcast, and much like yours. 

Thanks. Time will tell. Apparently there's a there's a seven podcast hurdle. That’s the hump.

CH: Seven podcasts in?

That’s it, yeah. 

CH: We’ve nearly done number one! There was a really interesting guest, and unfortunately I can't remember the guest, but they were talking - and this is playing back to what you were saying earlier about flexing your muscles. A lot of people now talk about the fact that they are very stressed. And actually, we need to reframe ‘stress,’ because as humans we actually need to stress. We need to push ourselves out of our comfort zone to keep moving forward as a population and as a species. Through the dawns of time that’s always what we've had to do, and so we push ourselves out of our comfort zone and we feel a certain amount of stress or pressure upon ourselves. 

But the actual growing isn't done in the stress bit. It’s in the recovery. Like when you’re going for a run, you're not actually getting stronger as you run. You're getting stronger on the rest day.

You’re putting yourself under stress, yes.

CH: So it is about that balance between being okay with being stressed, being okay with being out of your comfort zone, but also recognising that the real growth comes when you balance that with your rest. And that for me was a real… It was the first time that I'd really heard a real concrete way of understanding balance. 

An analogy that works.

CH: Yeah, that balance between stress, which is not something to be afraid of, and rest. The bit that we should be afraid of is it distress, because distress is when you're too far pushed out of that comfort zone. I think the examples that he gave in the podcast were people who go to war, or new mums – where you literally can’t get out. 

You have no way of changing it.

CH: You’ve got no rest. You’ve got no time to recover or process what's going on. And when you start thinking about it like that, in the way that this is part of our physiology, this isn't just me deciding that I'm going to wake up at four and go to bed at two in the morning - this is actually something that as a human I need to give myself in the same way that I need to drink water, and give myself food, and fuel my body to be able to get through the day. This is something else that I need as well, I need rest, and I also need to be comfortable with the idea of stress sometimes. 

That really spoke to me. I think that's a message that a lot of people need to be hearing now.

I agree. It’s interesting you saying that about the whole the rest period. Incidentally, I've been trying some new strategies myself because I've got a lot of plates spinning, and sometimes it's very, very easy, especially when you're very accessible, and a lot of decisions have to come through me. I mean, I asked for them not to be, but a lot of decisions naturally just get run by me. I get Cc’d on God knows how many emails that I don’t need to be CC’d in on them. 

I think one of the things I wanted to work on was taking control of my own thoughts. So two things actually. Two things. The first thing is listening to yourself a little bit more. I'm exactly the same. Actually weirdly, I think I'm a glutton for punishment. I seek stress out. I do!  It’s the whole idle hands scenario. If I’ve not got things to do, if I’ve not got a project, if I’ve not got a new thing to do, I get a bit antsy, and I want to do something and I can feel it. So I always find that naturally whether I mean to or not, I find myself putting myself into new projects just because I want that. I kind of like that feeling.

However, there's the other side to that, which is when you're doing it for too long and you're not getting what you want, you're a bit overwhelmed, there’s a bit too much coming in. So what I've tried to do is start managing my time a little bit better. Start focusing on being a bit more controlled with the time, and then cutting myself off from other disruptions when I'm doing certain things.

Now that's obviously how I'm managing the exercise side of it, but actually one of the big ones is listening to myself when I've had enough. You know, when you reach a point in the day where you've done something for four or five hours, and you've been on it and your head’s a little bit scrambled, listen to yourself. Take a break, move away from it instead of just ploughing through because you need to get it done.

CH: I love getting older, because I know myself so much more. 

Yes, the same!

CH: This is what you can say when you're an industry veteran. I've loved it. I turned 40 this year, and it was the best birthday ever. It was almost like I woke up on my 40th birthday and thought, ‘God, I really know myself really well, and I don't give a shit about anyone else and what they think anymore because I know myself really well.’

There's been so many lessons that I've acknowledged this year, and one of those is about recognising my energy levels, and when I'm experiencing a sensory overload. And when I have done enough, and I've had enough and what I'm doing from that point on would not be productive. I don't have to feel that I need to prove myself to anybody. I just need to know myself and I know what to do. I've got the coping mechanism. It's all about just learning yourself. I've got those coping mechanisms, so I know that doing exercise is a non- negotiable for me. It has to be done. It makes me feel strong, it makes me feel empowered, it takes my mind off things. 

Massively, yeah.

CH: All the way down to tiny little techniques that I use sometimes when I really do feel overloaded, and mentally like your brain is pushing against the inside of your skull. That's how it feels to me sometimes. When I really do feel quite overloaded, I go right back to basics. I find different things to look at, and I just say the words to me.  I would be the camera, the microphone, earphones, blue wall.

Slow it down.

CH: And I just slow everything back down to where I am right now, and I recognise those, and I do it for as long as I need to. Quite often I find that really helpful when I'm on a walk and I just look for different colours. I might go ‘blue’ in the sky, or ‘green’ in the grass or ‘brown’ on the tree, and I just keep doing that until I've brought myself back, stop the noise. 

I guess it's a form of meditation in a way, but I've never done any meditation. This is just something that I do for myself and I find it really helpful. I know that people find breathing techniques really helpful, and I've done that before as well when I’ve felt that anxious feeling, or you feel like there's almost a panic attack’s going to come on. You just need to pull yourself back to basics, and I find that really restorative. 

I guess what you're doing in that moment is - going back to what we were saying about stress and recovery - is that you're allowing yourself to have that moment of recovery because you're bringing yourself back to basics. So I really highly recommend, first of all getting older. It’s great! 

I highly recommend getting older!

CH: Yeah, I recommend that. Have another birthday! It's good fun! Use the time with yourself to get to know yourself, and what does that baseline look like for you? And then don't be afraid to go back to it rather than let the environment that you're in, or everything else that's going around you, provide that sensory overload. You can control it. You control what you look at, you control what you think. You’re controlling how you're breathing.

Incidentally again, feeding on what I was saying is, in those downtimes for me, one of the things that I've found that's really helping me these days - really, really helping me, just keep myself level and not hitting those peak overwhelm points. You do get them. When I have a bit of downtime, when I'm in a bit of a quiet moment, is be more deliberate about what I want to think about. 

CH: Oh, yeah.

It sounds so bloody whoo. It really does, but the whole gratefulness thing I try to think about. I don’t want to sit there and say like, “I'm really grateful for the fact that I’ve…” I’m not saying it like that, but…

CH: You don't do your affirmations every morning?

Oh, God, no, but what I do – and I’ve started doing this quite recently, and I'll tell you it's made a world of difference, is I have a little think about yesterday. I think about what was good. What did I actually do? Some days you get to the end of the day, you’ve done 12 hours - and it's not every day. Again, I don't want to advocate for the fact that I work 12 hours every day. Some days I won't, but you’ve got a lot of stuff to get through and if you’ve done a big day and it's just been a bit of a whirlwind, it's very easy to just move on from it. Actually, what did you do with those 12 hours? What did you do with that working day?” 

I've been doing it lately and sitting down just giving myself a bit of headspace. One of the big changes - and it's helped me a lot is – I don’t touch my emails first thing in the morning anymore. I got into the habit, and I think a lot of people do, it’s the first thing you wake up, start flicking through your emails, and it just sets your mind off. What I’ve been doing now is just taking that half an hour, just sitting down - because I'm up before everybody else. I say, ‘everybody else,’ it’s me and my wife and the dogs! They stay in bed, so it’s great! 

I’m downstairs, have a coffee, and just take half an hour. And honestly, the world of difference it’s made because it's just meant that I'm being more deliberate with where my head's taking me. So sort of checking myself when you start worrying about something, calm down. 

Going back to what we were saying about the little voice, I think if you leave it unchecked, you’re not being aware of what it's actually saying to you, it can spiral a little bit, and it just has a tendency to go to worry because ‘Oh, I’ve got things to do, things that didn't get finished.’

CH: Yeah. I think people can be scared of being kind to themselves. I love the fact that you do that, and you think back to yesterday and think, ‘Oh, I was really quite good in that meeting.’

I nailed that. I was bloody good, yeah.

CH: Yeah, I’m really proud of myself for that. Yeah, I think I do the same thing. I try and give myself the time to say, “well, proud of you, Clair.’ So equally that Steve that you've got in your head who sounds like a total asshole.

He is an asshole!

CH: There’s got to be another voice as well that sits alongside that, that just sometimes says, “Shut up, Steve.”

We’re going to create some caricatures now, aren’t we!

CH: Sorry! He’s going to say, “Shut up, Steve. This is not about you today. Look at what he did yesterday. He absolutely killed it in that podcast. It was amazing, and he got there. If you'd told him six weeks ago that he’s got all this kit together and actually found a room that's got good acoustics, he would have been surprised.”

I don't know why, but I thought it was carpet on the walls in here. There's definitely not.

CH: There’s not, no. It takes it right back to the beginning of what you were saying. Just that how do you manage the voice in your head? Well, just get another voice in there that’s a kind one as well, and really work on that.

You’re spot on. Work on it. I think the point is naturally that little voice, essentially it's a checklist. It remembers all the things that I’ve not done, all the things that need to get done. It's your constant libre. ‘You’ve not worked for this. You missed that yesterday. You need to get back to this person,’ and it's always there remembering. I’m hoping that’s not just me! 

CH: No, it’s not just you. I think that's a danger, isn't it, of us living in either the past or the future? 

Yeah. 

CH: So if we're living in the past we’re chastising ourselves for things that we haven't done, or we didn't do good enough, or we didn't get ticked off our list. And then you live in the future, which is if this happens, and what if that happens? And what if that client does this, and what if, what if?

The more that you're living in the past and in the future, the more imbalanced that you are. I think that, of course, we have to check ourselves and look back at things we've done and could have done better. And of course we need to plan and look forward to the future and think about your multiple scenarios, but you can find yourself just being overwhelmed with worry about those two things. And rather, thinking positively about the past or thinking positively or productively about the future, it can be really detrimental. 

The key thing is, I guess, that recovery period we keep coming back to is all about the present. So just recognising where you are now, and bringing yourself back to ground zero. 

I think that's where that second voice you were talking about, I think that’s where that exists. It doesn't exist in the future necessarily. It doesn't exist in the past. 

CH: You’ve got Steve running around. He’s everywhere. He's in a time machine. He's popping up in three weeks’ time. He’s there a year ago going, “Do you remember when you did that stupid thing?”

“Remember when you tried to start a podcast!”

CH: Yeah, exactly. ”Shut up, Steve. We’re here now and we're doing it.” I think that's it, isn't it? And, yeah, a great way to have control over those voices, for sure. 

Yeah. Just being a bit more present, taking control over it. You touched on exercise earlier on. Have you always run? 

CH: Running has always been a big part of my life, right back when I was at school and doing cross country and long distance running. I don't know why or how I got into it. I think probably because nobody else wanted to do cross country because it's just muddy and cold and long distances. And then in my f late 20s, and early 30s I really got back into running again, and then moved off road running and into the trails and into the hills.

I’ve seen some of the pictures.

CH: Into the Peak District and into the Lake District and even over in Scotland. That’s where this real sense of escapism, and freedom, and adventure comes into it as well. You also have this real sense of yourself and your body getting more and more strong, which is really exhilarating. And you can go further and explore more and see more, and those things really, really add to my life and it’s just part of who I am now. And I love it, and I'm so grateful. We talk about things to be grateful for, but I actually am so, so grateful that I am able to go and do those things. So however much I may be worried or stressed about something when I get back from work on a Friday, I'll get up early on a Saturday, and I'm in the hills and here I am!. Wow, I'm so happy about that, and that I've got the strength to be able to do it. 

So yeah, it's definitely a big part of my life and hopefully will remain so as long as I can still get up in those hills.

Obviously, everybody knows that exercise is good for you. Everybody knows it. But actually it's very easy to sacrifice it when things get a bit hectic. 

CH: Yeah.

It is one of the first things that starts to go. You start to eat a bit, because it’s easy, it’s convenient, and exercise - because again, sacrificing the time, but actually having that discipline. I think having the discipline does two things really: One, the discipline, the act of the discipline, and being self-disciplined, actually spills over into some of the other areas. 

CH: Absolutely.

And then obviously you've got the aspect of the fact that you are physically in a better shape, which obviously helps with your mind, and so on. So it does help you. I find that when I'm exercising, which obviously, I've not been able to exercise for quite some time - Story for another day, dislocated shoulder, long, long, long thing. I've not been able to exercise as well as I want to. I've started running  myself again now just because it doesn't involve my arm, but it takes a bit of time when you've not done it for a while.

CH: Yeah, it’s hard. If you let it slip and come back to it, it’s awful coming back to it. You think, ‘Oh, I’ve lost it, and it’s not fair.’ 

But yeah, I just think it is about having discipline up to a point where you don't feel – something switches in your mind where it no longer feels like it’s something you need to be disciplined about. 

My co- founder, Dom, is very similar to this. We form habits, and now these things are just habits that happen in my life. Likewise, with his training and what he does, and we both understand that for each other. So we wouldn't let it slip because like I referred to it before, it’s non-negotiable really. Other things come in and you have to work around it, but now it's very much a behaviour and a habit that I have, and actually what I love about that is that I don't have to think about it anymore. I don't have to think, “When shall I go to the gym this week, or when am I going to do my running this week?” because it is just there. It’s part of my week, blocked in. That's what's happening every single week consistently, and I love not having to think about it. I love that it's going to happen. It's non-negotiable. I don’t worry about it. 

It's just engrained.

CH: Yeah, and that consistency. I really thrive off the fact that there's that consistency and that habit there. That might sound boring to some people, but to me that's really a good and positive part of my life. So that's why it’s right at the very heart of who I am, how I behave, the example I want to set to the team, the way that I work, the things I talk about in podcasts!

We’ll wrap it up there actually because I was about to start rambling off on something else. I was a little bit late getting the kit set up, so actually Clair’s running out of time.

CH: I’m actually, like, “Warren, I’ve got to go to a meeting.” The thing is I could just sit here and have this conversation forever. We could literally sit here, I think, for three hours and go off on tangents. Can we have Episode 2 because I do think that there's so much more to say about this? And actually some of the things that we've talked about, they’re expansive on their own topics to look into, but it's been a really interesting conversation just where we’ve got to. It’s really making me think that some of these things need to be talked about more in this way and we definitely could dig into them more. So, in your second or third series, invite me back.

I’ll get you on Episode 8, when I’m over the whole seven.

CH: Yeah, get me on Episode 8. That will be great, then I know I’ve made it!

Okay. Well, look, in terms of the sign off on this one then, again I wanted to make sure that I thank you for this again, because you've stuck with me. It was a slog, but we got there in the end.

In terms of in terms of the podcast itself, I'm aiming for one a week if I can. I'm not going to put too much pressure on myself, because we get busy. But I'm aiming for one a week if I can. I’ve got a few really, really exciting subjects coming up. I’ve got a few people. Some of the people that you'll know. 

In terms of what our objective with this content is, what I actually want to do is - I don't just want it to be rolled out as just a podcast. There's so many little tidbits that we've touched on that I think are – let’s be honest. Nobody has 25, 30, 40 minutes to just sit down and watch something these days. So my goal is to take all of this content, break it down into the key points of value and try and share that really so that we can use it ourselves, and hopefully add a bit of a bit of value. 

So if anybody is listening or watching, you can check out our website where everything is going to be held. It's www.togetherindigital.co.uk  It’s a work in progress, so be kind! 

CH: Thank you so much for having me and trusting me to be your first guest. We’ve worked together a lot, and it's always so good to chat with you. There's always so many interesting conversations that we end up having, so I am really excited to listen to your future episodes, because I just think you're going to bring so much value by doing this podcast and talking about these things in the way that you do. 

So I’ve no doubt it's going to be a massive success. So yeah, congratulations for getting Episode 1 done though.

Thank you. I’m over the hurdle.

CH: Yeah, make sure you feel that sense of accomplishment and pride later that you've done it.

Brilliant. Let’s wrap it up. Thanks.