Brian Pennie

Episode: Brian Pennie, Specialist in resilience, keynote speaker, neuroscientist and author
Brian chats with Hogai about his personal journey and what it has taught him about personal awareness of your hopes and motivations. They discuss the importance of education along with emotional regulation and communication to navigate the stresses in life, as well as how technology can be both a challenge and an opportunity.
Visit Brian’s website for more information and follow him on Instagram and LinkedIn

Open Mic is a new podcast presented by the Open Doors Initiative which explores the challenges and opportunities of the working world from the perspectives of marginalised communities. The podcast takes the form of short interview segments with individuals who will share their lived experiences and insights.

Guest Host
Introducing Hogai asefi Wardak. Born in Kabul Afghanistan in 2001, the youngest of her family, with 4 sisters and 2 brothers. A family where she could see her older sisters not getting what they wanted in their lives, not reaching their wishes and goals, because her father had never allowed or permitted, and never had an open mind for women to engage, work and participate in community, at that time in their country. 

In 2016, she graduated from high school and was enrolled in Kabul University. She started working with Zan TV, which is a specialized tv network for women. She started to host programmes dealing with Women’s empowerment, Women and sports and various social programmes. 

She also established an educational community for children, to help women and youngsters to get jobs, by joining POOHA NGO and worked with NATO. She’s still working with Zan TV on screen.

Open Doors Initiative

• ODI’s key mission is to enable equitable access to employment for marginalised people
• We create pathways to work through training, education, employment and entrepreneurship.
• Collaborative network of over 125 partner organisations
• Together we carry out training, work experience, mentoring, research and reduce barriers for people who are marginalised
• We helped nearly 74,000 people on pathways to work in five years

Visit https://opendoorsinitiative.ie for more information and follow us on social media including Instagram, LinkedIn and YouTube

Transcript

Hello everyone welcome to Open Mic podcast presented by the Open Doors Initiative which explores the challenge and opportunities of the Working World from the perspectives of marginalised communities the podcast will take the form of short interview segments with individuals who will share their life experiences and insights my name is Hogai asefi Wardak hosting the Open Mic podcast the podcast will be available from the Open Doors website and from different podcast streaming providers it will be promoted online through social media and our member companies and supporting partners welcome back I am Hogai hosting the Open Mic podcast today we have a very very special guest like I'm so excited to have a chat with him and talk about different things in life especially how the change is possible in life so I will introduce my guest Brian Pennie specialist and resilience keynote speaker neuroscientist and former heroin addict turned doctor who’s on a mission to show people that change is possible welcome Brian thanks Hogai great to be here how are you I'm very good life is very good at the moment and something something we chatted about beforehand it's like there'll be the ups and downs of life but it's really our lens around that and life is good with the ups and downs great and you know like your smile your were power motivation wow you know it it gives me the power to be with you and it's so excited with you so I will start my first question Brian just tell me about your journey so far my journey so far and I know everyone's journey starts from the moment they were born but my child challenges started from the moment I was born so I came into the world with a condition known as intestinal mal rotation in layman's terms my guts my intestines were twisted yeah basically I ended up ultimately having an operation without a general anaesthetic that was a practice before in a medical practice pre-1985 and the trauma the bodily trauma from that experience and the complications afterwards really set the tone for my life like as a neuroscientist set for me to anxiety machine that trauma an imprint that me afraid of my hearty pulse and that was my whole childhood constantly worried constantly agitated constantly anxious and I often say I never got the anaesthetic I needed as an infant but I found my anaesthetic when I was 17 in the form of heroin wow and that brought me on a journey where um I just got deeper and deeper and deeper into addiction I got lost from for many many years and I didn't find recovery until I was 35 years of age I was very lucky that I had a shift in perspective from a near-death experience it was ultimately the most painful night of my life but that gave me a different lens to look at the world and it was a it was a a shift in presence a shift in how I see in the world it was like all of a sudden the world just glowed it's very hard to put words on that experience but something shifted in my being I had a sense of hope yeah and with that I just developed this intense curiosity with a sense of hope with a sense of hope yeah I developed that intense curiosity about the human mind and I went on to study and as you said I got PhD in Psychology and Neuroscience and I'm still learn every day like today yeah and still you're alive with a good smile yeah thank you no worries uh Brian how would you apply what you have learned from your own transformation to do are struggling to find their path I believe and there's so many tips tactics and strategies and they work they do work they don't work for everybody but I think an underlying message for people is that awareness is the catalyst for change like a lot of people know what they have to do yeah but knowledge is not where the game is played it's played in the actions that you take and through actions I think that's where awareness arises you should take action take and learn in in the process like I think that's really really important and and we touched on it again before earlier on it's like experience lots of different things and I think that brings an awareness with that as well but for me if we're talking about tactics for change like we talk about meditation we talk about looking inwardly and I think that's very important to be aware of your own emotions your own inner voice what are you telling yourself on a daily basis cause if you have a heroin or critic that's telling you you're a piece of crap you're going to feel like a piece of crap so becoming aware of your inner world I think is fundamentally the catalyst for change that's good uh Brian I'm just asking uh like most of the people in the world they are relying on the education degree for a change and they are just saying with their selves that uh as much as we can learn it means like the change is coming to our life what do you think about this yeah I don't think like you can be an expert in math you can be a brilliant coder for python coder for for computer science you can speak 10 languages but if you can't regulate your emotions or manage communication effectively none of that is really going to matter so education is fundamentally important to give you a cornerstone to do things in the world but I think you need good foundational mental and emotional Fitness emotional agility to be able to navigate the stresses of life so you can implement what you learn education wise and put it into the real world so I think though I don't like the word soft skills I think human skills is better how to be happy how to communicate how to regulate emotions get them right and then education will just stand on the shoulders of that uh like when the people are facing with lots of challenges and problems in and pains in their life they're just stopping and they stand and they say okay we cannot move anymore so where is your message for those people like they lost yourselves you know yeah it's really hard when you're in the middle of that because I was in that position for I take 25 years of me life but particularly 15 years and no matter what somebody would have come and said to me there's nothing that they could have said that would have changed me in that moment so if anyone is in that position I would just think have a bit of self-compassion for yourself like it's hard you're stuck right there so I think what they need to hear here is maybe seeds of hope that change can be for them so it can be quite challenging and what I would say is take baby steps yeah you don't have to change everything all in one fell through so maybe it's about going and talking to somebody doesn't have to be a therapist maybe therapy is down the line maybe it's not about having a regular meditation practice maybe it's about just looking inwardly a little bit and touching off the edges and I think trauma plays a huge role in that as well if people have experienced trauma that can be very soft to touch they can feel very vulnerable around that so I wouldn't say like inner child work is great for for getting to the depths of the traumas that you experience but just touch off it go there with a therapist if that's possible and just just make a start I I think that's the that's the key and the then the key was the hope that you're always mentioning yeah I think that like there's always hope there is always hope and I've seen some people that have been so stuck so lost so broken and they have just come through the other side and it's not only hope of recovery I think if you've been into dark places yeah the light looks even brighter I agree so if you're in a dark place and I don't want to give people set them up a false hope that it's going to be brilliant in one year's time but the potential is there and really sometimes it's about like the awareness that I was talking about sometimes it's like a light bulb just coming on it's that aha moment it's a switching perspective and everything can sort of change from there so just keep plugging away keep tapping away try to hold on to hope and that can give you the motivation that intrinsic motivation to keep driving forward like after every night there is a day it means like after every Darkness there is a brightness yeah there truly is the truly is just keep going just never give up just keep on going one more day one more step that's nice so Brian uh the world is the technology ology world the century is all about technology you know especially like from zero till 10 they are busy with technology what is the key points uh to improve the relationship of people with technology this is a real struggle at the moment and I would consider myself somebody with really good mental health there's not much that phases me like anxiety drove my whole addiction I enjoy anxiety today i' I've reframed my relationship with anxiety it's like my friends that teaches me so I'd say I have good mental health but the challenge of technology is a big one it really is a big one and really I found it just grabbing me in I'd be checking me phone for stupid things like I I keep myself accountable with lot of heal ups and i' be checking me health app and i' grab my phone 5 minutes later I'm checking me rest and heart rate again that hasn't changed in five minutes so it's the phones have this weird draw for everybody and young people especially and I was talking to um there's this company called unpluq so it's like unpluq with a Q for unplug and it gives you this little tile that you get with an app and it basically just locks your phone off away and I love the simplicity of this tool this technology so I reached out to the co-founders to have a chat because I was a neuroscientists and psychologist they wanted to talk to me about the challenges of phone addiction they didn't use phone addiction I use the word phone addiction and the co-founder actually said it to me they never really use the word Addiction but it truly is like if you think of alcohol and drug addiction the solution for that is absence food addiction is a little bit different because you have to eat I agree and for the young kids in today's world you can't take their phones away it's like it's like a food addiction it's going to be there so how do we navigate these smartphones that are going to be in our lives the technology is going to be there so how do we we come up with tools to stop people getting consumed by that especially for people with challenge and mental health difficulties cuz they're going to use it as a coping strategy as a false sense of connection so I don't know what the solution is but funnily enough ironically enough I think technology will be the solution for the technology and I think apps like unpluq I'd highly recommend anyone struggling my phones that I have a look at this app called unpluq with a Q and it's a really really powerful app yeah uh Brian you know like I will ask you something that it happens in my own lives maybe like it's normal when I'm thinking about something in my mind even I'm not sharing with someone but once I'm turning on my phone or I'm logging to the YouTube or Google the apps will I face it was all about what I thought then I'm just shocked oh my God I was just thinking and it came straight away the ads how it's possible Brian this is bizarre and I get it if the phone is listening to you having a conversation but it actually can predict what you're thinking and it seems like magic but they're not they haven't got implants in your head just now the challenge with that is and where this comes from it's true machine learning algorithms and AI algorithms and part of my PhD was exploring AI technology looking at predictive models to predict certain uh variables of addiction I was particularly but what they what they can do is they take a lot of predictors they have all this data of your life so they can make predictions on what you might be thinking about based on an association of maybe a conversation you had previously so it takes a lot of the variables gets this data and it can make really robust predictions on that so it's really just a very good predictive tool and it sends ads your way I got an ad the other day that I was only just thinking about and it came up like oh my God that's crazy scary unbelievable it is yeah it is sometimes you're scaring from your own phone or laptop and you're just thinking oh my God oh my God when we were in Trinity looking at machine learning algorithms there's this algorithm I think it was Amazon that had it and it tracks your mouse so if you're moving in a certain direction to hit log off it will flash something up really quick to grab your attention and keep you on the platform so it tracks the mouse it's tracking so many things it's it's quite scary it's getting better I agree yeah it is better so I will come back about the kids and children you know like the technology will it's good to have for the kids but sometimes it's so dangerous for their mental health so what is necessary to do for

prevent it's a big challenge for the young kids I think this is where education is a really key piece and again we're back to those human skills like we teach geography we teach history we get these kids to remember so many facts to recall in a book that they could get get this information on Google anyway it's a test of their memory recall which isn't going to really serve them in life so imagine if we replaced some of those geography and history classes where a class how to use your smartphone in a healthy way how to regulate your emotions so you're not using a smartphone as a coping mechanism and getting lost in Instagram for three hours yeah so it's about education it's about an awareness again that awareness of their inner world because if you're aware of your inner world you are not going to react in that manner because most people it's really just a habit loop yeah and if you have a habit that is forged in that a repetitive habit it's going to be a que yeah which could be stress boredom lack of connection so you're going to want to do something to to avoid the the lack of something in your life and the the behavior is picking up the phone and the reward then is what you get from that phone so we need to break that habit Loop some way and that can be challenging because sometimes it's an internal challenge that's driving that an emotional challenge that's driving that so that's what makes it so difficult but I don't think we've even gotten close to trying to figure out this problem I think it's going to be huge I think it's going to be an epidemic and we're really going to have to uh lean into it heavily in the next few years but what do you think like the awareness for the people like awareness programs and also like having seminars and conferences for the families in the schools like it will help I think it will help I think one of the challenges with soft skills or human skills like awareness is how do you measure it it's very hard to measure because there's no metric for re your ability to be self-aware or aware as such but I think education is a key tool for awareness and it's just bringing it out into the open more I think that's just really important but one of the biggest challenges with young kids with phones is that they their parents like we learn many things through vicarious learn it's looking at other people in their lives they're looking at their parents sitting looking at their phones all day so what chance have they got so I think we have to set the the right standards and show people how to use a phone so it's up to the adults to be able to show people how to do it I agree uh Brian you know where like I don't want to finish this episode cause it's so interesting to have you in this uh episode but I will ask you as a last question that what is your message to the people to get happiness to get success in your life and how to struggle against the challenge problem pain so I have a big toolbox of strategies tools and techniques that I've collected over the years based on my own lived experience based on I suppose my academic expertise as well but there's one core tool that I come back to again and again and again and it's aligning yourself with your values and your values are simply the things that are important to you they're your true n your guid and light of where you want to go in the world as an example three of my core values my energy my health and my relationships yeah so am I taking actions and making decisions that aligns with that because success for me is good relationships good health and good energy but those are external factors like the business and stuff like that and financial factors we could call that success as well but first and foremost most what's important to me but what's pulling you off course it's our feelings it's our emotions it's it resentment anger fear anxiety so imagine you value your mental health but your stress from my heart diet work so you feel like having a bottle of wine or two so your feelings pull you away from what's important to you imagine you value your relationships and you value integrity and honesty so you value those things but you're having a challenge with your partner or family member and you feel like avoiding that difficult conversation so it's this dichotomy between feelings pulling us off course and our values allowing us where we need to be so again back to awareness we need to think what do we value what's important was what success to us and then keep that in the forefront of your mind so you can make decisions that align with that what success is for you and that's something that sort of keeps me on the right path because the world will you off course so it's really important to have the awareness around that to stay stay on the path I agree how you got successful man right so success for me in life I would bring it down to inner peace and if I have stillness of mind the opposite of who I was when I was in the depth of addiction that's success for me and I do think that sends a ripple effect out if I have peace of mind I'm regulating my own emotions challenges aren't going to phase me as much I'll be intrinsically aware of what lights the far in my belly and that's going to help me to take external direction for those other more external successes in me life as well I think it all comes together but first and foremost it's that sense of inner peace that sense of calm and stillness for me that that success yeah thanks a million Brian to coming here it was a nice chat and interview to you thanks a million thanks for having me thank you thanks to everyone to listening our podcast uh the guest was Brian Finnie specialist and resilience keynote speaker it was a nice job thanks a million thank you thank you we hope you found the series helpful please follow us online at open doors work on Instagram LinkedIn and Twitter thanks a million