E049: Reflections on Mental Health

now on to this episode.

Hello. This is James and this is Jane, and here we are with another episode of a world of work podcast. So today we are carrying on with our series, which is looking at inclusion and diversity, and we're going to have a conversation today that's looking mainly at mental health. We're going to speak to somebody you know, Jane. Do you want to say a few words about it?

Yeah, so we thought it'd be really interesting to talk about how mental health relates to inclusion specifically, and how it can feel quite isolating, and how organizations can include people. And I thought, Oh, I know someone. So I met Ian when he came to talk to my organization when I was still working down in England, maybe, oh, I don't know, a couple of months before I settled up here in Scotland, and Ian came to talk to us about his life experience of working, initially he worked in the financial sector, but he'll explain, but we came across paths where he worked in sport and had both experience of his own mental health challenges, but also about how he supported athletes and coaches. So he works from a self set up organization called dokia Sport, which stands for, I think, duty of care and action in sport. And he's a really interesting guy, and I'm a big fan, and he's also, I think, quite gives quite class, good clarity sometimes, to things. So I thought it'd be really useful for us to talk to

Yeah, well, we'll get on to that in a minute. We'll share that with you in a minute, just before we get going about though, should have a little check in what's been going on with you. What's on your mind? Thoughts from James, well,

we are recording this on World Mental Health. Say yes, very appropriate. And seven o'clock, well, 730 this morning, I was up a big hill, and I wasn't, I won't lie, James, I wasn't feeling my best. I was feeling a little bit glum, as sometimes life is when it comes around to winter and you know, you've got things on. And I just thought, cool, life could get worse than this. And I just it really made me think how crucial it is to keep doing the things you know you enjoy and love, even if right at that moment you don't feel like it like I really did not feel like going out for a walk this morning and taking the dog, and I thought, I'll just do a quickie. But I thought, I know, I know rationally, if I do this, I'll feel a bit better. Yeah, so for me, and what do you know? Surprise, surprise. I felt less worse when I came down. I'm not gonna say I felt joyful, but I definitely felt better about the day. Yeah, that's good. And I think you have to sometimes have faith in that, and faith in the things you know can help, yeah,

you kind of know, your own sort of balancing techniques and tools that help you as an individual. So that's good, yeah. What about you? What you've been doing, what you up to? Gosh,

well, I've been doing, you know, usual type of stuff. I'm kind of excited. We're doing a meet up group. We're starting next week, a meet up group, which will be fun. All about, I guess, the future of work and reinventing work. So we'll see what happened to that, doing a bit of work on that, which is fun. And I've still been enjoying being out and about on my bike. I mean, I found it really great to just do all my meetings on my bike for, you know, for the first time in my life, to really use that as my main mode of transport, and probably like you were walking. It's just great, right? I do feel a bit smug. I used to feel about that when

I used to turn up to meetings in London on my bike, there was a little, oh, how'd you get you know, and even if they didn't ask I came on my bike. Little bit

of smoke nose, yeah, a little bit of irritability with these insensitive car drivers when I'm not in the car. So, yeah, that's pretty good. Life's good. Well, that's good, excellent, all right, and a big shout

out. I got myself some new winter gloves for my bike, so that's made all the difference. So there we go. Wrap up warm. It's the small things in life, people and they're really exciting. So anyway, all right, well, let's get into our conversation with Ian, and we'll check back to you with you guys in a little while. So Hello everyone. Welcome to our conversation with Ian braid from dokia sport. We've got Ian here. We're going to be speaking today as part of our series on inclusion and diversity about a range of things, but one of the focuses we're going to be looking at today is around mental health. It's actually World Mental Health Day today. It's the 10th of October, so it feels like a great day to be doing this. It

is. And I'd like to just point out that when I texted Ian about arranging our date for this, he was like, well, let's do that day, because it's World Mental Health Day, and this was like, three months in advance, so clearly, the man knows his stuff, knows his stuff.

Why don't we start off and Ian, would you like to introduce yourself and say a few words about your background and your interest in this area and things like that, and we'll just go from there?

Yes. Thank you very much, and thank you very much for the no pressure. This guy knows his business. Good morning to you all. I'm. My name is Ian braid, as James said, I the founder and MD of a company called docusport dokia. When I set it up, was an acronym that stands for duty of care in action. I subsequently learned it comes from the ancient Greek as well, which means good reputation. So no, they and the work I do comes from my previous role, where I was the chief executive of the Players Association for Olympic and Paralympic athletes. 1500 members, 40 sports, and I inherited an organization that was in special measures in 2012 and had to turn all that round. They during that period, I had the privilege of working with Baroness Tanni gray Thompson on her review of duty of care for sport and that, and what I learned in my five years at the BAC set me up to do what I do now.

Great. That sounds like a really interesting role and a really interesting sort of transition into it, and some great people to work to what as you've gone through and been in this role. What's your connection to mental health? Been through that duty of care role, or perhaps earlier in your career as well? Well,

they it's, it's integral to everything. It was when I was representing the athletes and they came to the BAC for advice, support and guidance. Once you got below the surface of I have a grievance because I haven't been picked or I've had my funding cut, you've learned about the implications this had on the athletes, on their mental health, and I, as I say, I did that for five years, and what eventually happened to me was that it cost me my mental health. My psychotherapist said to me, in 2017 Ian, you have had five years of the caries trauma. So that also led me to then think about, because of my own lived experience, who looks after the people looking after the people my in a sporting context, the coaches, the PDS, the chief execs of the national governing bodies. So it's, it's all over, James, they it's so so in integrated into everything,

and in terms of some of the sort of impacts that you saw on individuals in the sporting world when maybe they had their funding cut or weren't selected. What sort of outcomes Did you see on them, and how did it affect them and those around them?

Well, I mean, some of it went deeper than I haven't had my funding cut. I've had my funding cut or not been picked because there were which you may remember, after the Rio, after the Rio games, there were any number of investigations into the culture in performance sports, and to varying degrees, I was involved in in most of those. And okay, so then you went from you went from depression through eating disorder, through self harm, through athletes attempting to take their own life,

right? Okay? And obviously the sporting world is, is, you know, it's fairly unique in some ways, or it's a subset of the world of work. Do you think that the experiences that the athletes have had there are applicable or translatable to other industries as well? Or do you think it's specific to the sport?

No, I think it works in different ways for different people in whatever system they're in. They it's potentially intensified

for athletes, because they're very young people, so they haven't got scars and been around the block. They they work in a in a bubble, in a high performance system where the emphasis is on is on excellence, and where, therefore, I think it get is getting better. But the stigma of mental health is always there. If you're an athlete that's done your ACL and you're limping about, people get that. So if you break your if you break your mind, nobody can see that and you don't. It, yeah, and you don't want to share that necessarily with a sports psych, because, you know, you might think, well, his or her next appointment is with the other center forward in the team, and therefore they may have a competitive advantage over me. So and what's important to me, James, to emphasize in this as well, is that very much that my work at that time was, by definition, athlete focused. I have just as much concern for coaches officials, and by that I mean referees. There's a lot of people in in that help deliver sport who are very vulnerable to poor mental health. It's

interesting you say that because one of the reasons we first started talking Ian, way back when was, I think you were talking about officials, and I was a tennis tennis referee for, oh, I don't know, 25 years, and I don't think I have ever felt more vulnerable, I think probably on balance, or more at the mercy of swings of other people's moods that would affect my own than when I was an official. And I think, I think it's a really, I think using athletes as a model for learning how we can build better support, and then replicating that with coaches and officials, I think would be incredibly valuable. I remember standing I was, I was 19, I think when a parent cornered me in a changing room and accused me of being biased against their child and using all sorts of swear words against me. And I just, I just, you know, I closed down. I was just like, right? I got to get through this. This is my job. And of course, it shouldn't be my job. And if I was in a structured workplace, you'd go to your manager. But when you're a volunteer taking on responsibilities on your own, you just, it doesn't occur to you, and everyone just accepts it. It's like, oh, that's like, oh, that's that goes with being an official.

And you know that story that I'm not involved in the sports world, but it's a story that's made its way into mainstream culture. When you look at refereeing for children's sports games, you know, children's football games and stuff like that, the level of abuse that people seem to get there is phenomenal, isn't it?

Yeah, it's everything they it. Well, let's cover off officials. And this is where I think leaders that deliver sport have a duty of care to the system, right? It is accepted, on the one hand, that the abuse of match officials is on the increase, be it in tennis, to your point. Jane, football, clearly, rugby union, rugby league, none of these sports are exempt. So it's accepted that that's on the increase. It's also accepted that the number of official, the number of people volunteering to be officials, is an aging and declining population. Well, we need to join the dots together, because if we don't address that, then there'll be no officials, and in many cases, therefore no sport and activity. And you know that is addressing the well being and applying duty of care to match officials. It said, you know, you see what I mean, mental health and good mental health and well being is everywhere.

Yeah, and I think it's funny you say that because, although somewhere subconsciously, I'm conscious that I gave up refereeing because it wasn't, quote, worth the hassle, I think it's probably only when you frame it like that makes me realize that it's a if I think to my friends who also do the same sorts of roles, it's just, it's literally, it's not worth it. So you get this enormous amount of joy from doing something, and it's like someone robs you of all of the pleasure and instead puts you in a place where you're constantly thinking, Am I good enough? Am I doing this right? Am I biased? Am I? And it's all of this stuff, and I think about the training, and I had some great training from the LTA and tennis, and some of it actually helped with that. But it was, it was still, ultimately, it makes you realize how I equate it quite often. Now I think back and I equate it look quite a lot to being self employed being a referee, because I feel the same absence of a really complex close support system.

Well, you know, if you're absolutely on the numbers, Jane, they, they it was a privilege due to circumstance, but it was genuinely a privilege for me to be asked by Jess varnish, the Olympic track cyclist, for help. Yeah, and that. A lot of that is well documented now about her treatment. But what. What people may not know is that Subsequently, she went on to test in the courts, whether as a funded world class athlete, she had employee rights or not, and and the courts found that she had, well, quotes and quotes, no case to answer, but, and she had,

you know, the last time I knew she was considering going to appeal. So you think, right, that you're a young, talented athlete with no life experience in a high performance bubble and in an environment in which you are not recognized as being employed and therefore no rights. How vulnerable does that make these people?

It's very isolating, isn't it, when you think about it that way, and that goes back to your point of lack of support as well they

you can be so lonely in a in a performance squad, you don't have to, you know, it's interesting, sorry, change, yeah. You can be surrounded. You can be surrounded by loads of people and still be lonely.

Yeah, it's interesting. You say that because I, I always remember the thing that stuck me around. Around loneliness and mental health is something really similar to something I experienced in the event management sector. So I was chatting to a para athlete. And I think para athletes are quite unique when they're successful in the sense that really they're quite often they've had quite a limited not quite often, but sometimes they've had a limited ability to access such an exciting, energetic, fast paced world as elite sport, and they're sort of plucked from these performance programs. And I was chatting to one of them, and they said, You know, I said, Oh, do you want to come and do a visit with some kids after they had competed at the World Championships, and they were like, yeah, that'd be amazing. And I was like, Are you not busy? Because, you know, did pretty well. And they were like, No, I'm sitting in my living room in some days because, like, it's a physical disability that they have, and it's quite hard work for them to get themselves out in the morning. That person was like, Well, I've been sitting in front of my Telly for two days because it's easier than like and I have no one around me because it's after, it's out of competition time. And it struck me that it was quite similar to some people working in the events industry, where you're so you live on site, you're so excited you're delivering the Olympics, or whatever it is, or other non sporting events, like music festivals, and then suddenly you go home to your living room and your entire support network, and your social network has disappeared, and you're just left sort of staring at four walls going right. What do I do with my life? How do I pick that life back up when you have been effectively absent from it and absent from the people around you for a long period of time? Absolutely

bang on the the you know. So it looks glamorous and glitzy if you're an athlete and you're picked to go to Tokyo. But, you know, you know Jane as well as I do, there's an entourage coach as well. And you know, it's, there's a lot of people that live out of, you know, live out of suitcases for long periods of time that. And you know, just the high of being involved in a successful tournament, and then you come back to a low they I tell you what you made me think about as well. And this is the power of sport and mental health and disability. I, I spoke at a conference for goalball UK, and Goalball is the sport for visually impaired people. And I was introduced to this guy and understood, got to understand his backstory. He was born sighted, so he had a genetic disorder. The genetic disorder kicked in, and he went through and you can imagine the why me and went through poor mental health, reacted as well, committed crime, served a sentence, and the sport of gold ball is his redemption, and it's given him a sense of purpose and an identity and surrounded himself with similar people and and that's why I think having good mental health inside the sector is so important, so that it can provide the role it can and should do for society more broadly.

Yeah, it's a really good point, and I guess so we're getting, in a good way, quite into some of the sort of the heart of some of the issues. Imagine that there's a CEO. Or a senior manager out there in an organization sitting there listening and thinking this. This rings true with me. And I look around my staff, and I do worry, what would you like to see them do more

well? Because you and I go back you know about my strap line of take and give care, by which I mean that as an individual or a team or a company or a sector, if you take care of yourself, you're in a position to give better care to others. So to bring that back to your to your point, if you look at the CEOs in sport, then they are,

more often than not, what are known as accountable officers, ie they're the people that sign the funding agreements from the sports councils that then commit the organization to say that in the next four years, I will get 30,000 more people playing tiddlywinks, and I'll come back with 12 medals from a major games. And they have to do that in four year funding cycles. Now, if you look at that in the relation to other businesses. They can write, you know, a 10 years, have a 10 year vision, or whatever national COVID embodies,

can only look as far as four years. So as soon as they sign that that agreement, because it's like there's a digital clock that's continuing to count down in their head. And so firstly, what I'd like to see, and you know when I know, because I when I when I was poorly, and I went back to work in order to, you know, make have a, you know, you know, I had went back to work to get out effectively, you know, and we had to tidy all that up. But, yeah, despite the fact that men from the north of England of a certain age aren't supposed to talk about poor mental health, I did, and I, and I talked to a number of senior people, CEOs, PDS, etc, and they said to me, I know three people like him, Ian, I'm on six pints a night. It's the only way I can cope with this. I'm on 350 milligrams of x is the only way I can cope. So I think, I think there's we need to create an environment where the leaders are supported, because as a CEO, in between a board and staff, they are too potentially lonely and isolated, and they have this responsibility on them. So I I'm concerned for them and their their own well being first and foremost, and I think a realization and acceptance of their own vulnerability will then help them to support others better.

Yeah, and I think I don't want to name I don't want to name them, but you and I both know a CEO who's very open about his where he is in his head with his staff, and is always very encouraging of speaking about it. And it's amazing that the disclosure that took place after he started talking more openly about what he found difficult or stressful, or when he was, you know, when he was feeling really good about himself, or when he was struggling himself a little bit. And it was, it was just astonishing listening, particularly to coaches who were much more open afterwards. I just want to come back to something because I think it's really interesting, and I think it's really interesting, and I think it relates, probably for everyone you mentioned the cycle of sport and the funding. And we've written, we've written, we haven't written anything. We've recorded a couple of episodes about goal setting and motivation in the past. And it got, it's been, it's got me thinking a lot about the way targets are set, and about the way that, particularly our sector, Ian sport, think about targets. And I wondered if you, and you know, I appreciate it, it's a politically sensitive subject, but I wonder if you have any thoughts on this kind of question mark that's been placed over medals at all costs, kind of attitude, and whether you think that's kind of a necessary evil, or whether you think there's something that could be done to maybe recognize that well being matters more, and people matter. It is

a very politically sensitive subject. And do I have any thoughts on that? The answer is yes. I tell you what I do. Think the I always saw tanny's review as being a continuation of the high performance system in this country, but I think how it got interpreted was there is the

COVID continuation of, we ripped up trees in, you know, the medal winning performance has been exceptional. Let's get that right from, you know, from Athens, Beijing, London, Rio, right in summer sports, they, they, but I think, you know what I'd really like to have seen happen is that after Rio, rather than people saying, right, and we're going to go again and do even better in Tokyo, people said, people said, You know what? Let's all have, let's have a time out here. Let's take two Olympic cycles, two funding cycles. Let's take two funding cycles out, and let's look properly at the duty of care report and its recommendations, perhaps indeed look at it more broadly, because of you know, the role I had to play. It it became a very athlete centered report. But let's look more broadly at coaches and officials and referees and sport science support, etc, and let's take two cycles out and come back having refined and reviewed our model properly, and we'll be back to rip up trees in Paris in 2024 but it became, it became very binary. It's either our system or the duty of care review. And I never saw it as that. I just saw it as a logical continuation, where you treat people as individuals, you give you change a system into a society where you treat everybody on merit and give them a voice. And that's what I think we should have done. But

I think that's, I think that's extraordinary advice. And I think there's, there's stuff in there for all of our listeners about what sector I think there's, for me, there's three things that you've said in that that anyone could take away. One is treating people as individual and understanding that what might be comfortable and manageable level of stress or pressure for one person is different for another, and that doesn't make them any weaker. It's just different, and it changes every time, and it totally it changes every time, and it totally changes over time. I think the second is about giving everyone a voice. And I would go further than that and saying ensuring people have feel safe to use. Oh, yeah, usually, yeah. I'm currently, I'm currently obsessed with the composite concept of something called psychological safety and prohibitive voice. And it's about, it's all about, how do we make people feel comfortable and safe and not to be ridiculed or questioned if they have an opinion about something and they want to raise something that's a concern? And I think, I think any manager and organization can do a little bit to demonstrate to their staff and their employees that it's okay to be critical, and that doesn't mean there's a big difference in being critical and moaning and showing them that there's a really good way to be critical and hang that up there and it not, not always to be answered straight away. I think, you know, CEOs and senior leaders often get criticism from their team, and they're like, Oh, we must respond straight away, and it's okay to say, right, you've got a point, and we need to think about that, and we understand it's an issue, but, but we're not quite sure how to fix that right now, but we're thinking about

it. Something that stood out for me, and what you said there, and it's about the sort of the translatableness of a sports world to the business world, is the fact that you said, you know, you complete a good cycle. You do your four years things are good, and there's an immediate pressure to do even better next time. And your point there about, well, why don't we just stay where we are, you know, regroup, retrench, solidify our bases, and then go and push further in the future. Feels like great advice for a lot of individuals in the business world as well. It's extraordinary. You've

praised it like that, James, because now I'm sitting here thinking about all the conversations we have on here about the very high level nature of how, or how societies measure success, their success by GDP, and constant growth, and this constant idea that everything has to improve. And this, you know, for a lot of things, for a lot of the time, I was delivering events. Yes, we wanted to improve, but actually it was as much a badge of honor that we could deliver the same high quality the following year with a new team as it was getting any better. And I think I do worry that this insatiable desire, it's funny, you mentioned the tickers and CEOs having like a clock ticking down in their head. I. I've worked in organizations that remain nameless, lovely organizations full of brilliant people that have had physical tickers on the wall of target numbers that have changed every day so that the whole organization can see it. And I always thought that was brilliant. And now I think about it, and I think my word, if it was your department and you were stressed and you were already struggling every single day you were being confronted by your failure on the wall in front of all of your peers. Which

culture to be had here and this and this is where leadership's got a role to play, right? They? I find that when I stand up and I do, you know, as well as do like workshops, which I've done with you, Jane, you know, I stand up and I do what other people kindly call keynote speeches and presentations and lectures. And I find that if I am prepared to show my own vulnerability, that one it gives, at worst people an opportunity to personally reflect, but better to share and and as a consequence of doing that with the people that that I have around me that are my sort of confidants. Then in any walk of life, in any situation, I have richer and deeper conversations. And they say, you know, in a sporting context, the number of people because mostly athletes, I helped, I never met, because it was always at crisis time, we've got 24 hours, 24 hours to serve notice to appeal or whatever, right? But, yeah, the number of people who said to me, Ian, you're the first person that's listened to me properly and and you know, you translate that and take that on. And this is in a now in the sporting world, as we've discussed, is measured in the bottom line is medals. In business, it's profit. But you know what? We're very successful. We win lots of medals. And I usually say yes, but at what cost? And I didn't mean financially,

absolutely. Yeah, yeah. When, when you were speaking there? About the fact that when you present in a vulnerable way, it gives potentially, other people the opportunity to speak when it's at their best, reminds me of a phrase that I've heard and I use sometimes, which is about holding the space. So certainly in coaching and things like that, people talk about holding the space for a conversation, creating that sort of safe, emotional environment that lets people express things in a safe and inclusive way. And it feels like that's a very powerful thing, and yes, hugely space as well. Hugely so I

was going to jump back. I had a couple things that popped into my mind as we were chatting earlier. One of them was, you know, when, when Jane was speaking a little bit earlier about her experience? Officiating, and then saying that, you know, she left, and she perhaps, at the time, didn't maybe realize that she was under stress and pressure. That reminded me of the fact that, you know, when I left, left my last job, I hadn't realized how stressed and pressured I was. And it took me, you know, nine months to transition to transition to a stage where I felt that was myself again, given that it's not always easy to recognize science within yourself when you're in that environment. Have you got thoughts on what people could look out for and what might be indicators to them of sort of stress?

I can because I was absolutely appalling at it too, the I traced my decline mentally over an 18 month period because of a number of circumstances, some work related, some familial, but the decline is so incremental that you forget what normal is. So I had, I had to have two jolts to my system. One, funnily enough, which Movember are publishing a piece of work today on World Mental Health Day, about which was a conversation that my son initiated with me, which got me, which pierced my armory and made me wake up and think, What is going on here? And because it was Harry,

I listened to his question, and I answered him properly, and his question was, Dad, do you think you're working too hard? And my answer was, yeah, I don't know how to relax anymore, and that frightened me. Yeah. The following week, after a three year campaign by Diane, my wife. We had a new arrival in Chateau braid, which was a 12 week old Irish wheat and terrier name of Fred, and this house was delirious and giddy and joyous. And again, just to pick up a point we made earlier, I have never felt so lonely in my own house. I felt none of it, and that's when I decided to seek professional help. And in in unpacking, the professional help, which is not as I you know, I recognize, is not a sign of weakness, it is a sign of the fact that your jugs empty and you need help. Then I recognized, I mean, I shut all my systems down, James, I I stopped reading because I couldn't sit still, because I couldn't relax. I stopped listening to music. I lost my I lost my appetite in this, in the sense that I might as well have eaten cardboard for the amount of enjoyment I got out of the food. So, yeah, gradually I became an automaton, and my my answer to the solution was to work even harder, in a way that I thought I'd got myself isolated, right? I thought the future of high performance sport in this country rested exclusively on my shoulders, which is rubbish, but that's how I felt, because I was isolated,

right? So I think you made some really fascinating points in there, Ian and stuff that I can really relate to. So, so there's stuff in there where I, you know, I stopped listening to music, I stopped reading, I stopped being able to do things apart from just sort of, you know, for work. And I guess I had some some challenges around that myself when I've been working, which is that I not only found it difficult, but was kind of addicted to the, you know, the response I got from the work. It felt sort of promising as well. And what that meant was that when I was speaking to people about where I was, I wouldn't really necessarily hear what they were taking in, and I wouldn't really absorb and I remember one of my friends probably similarly to the conversation you had with your son, say to me basically, straight up, James, you're going into work too early. You've got to stop that. But I didn't really take any of that stuff on. Have you got any reflections on that? Yeah, I, I mean, I was

at the end. This was when I was in in deep with all of these investigations, right? And the I was having to challenge the system in various ways. I was having to protect the athletes from the media, so on and so forth, right? So I was well, I remember Diane saying to me, probably on numerous occasions, the asking me, you know, she wanted to talk to me about something, something you know in the house, can I talk to you, or are you distracted? And my answer to her was, I'm not distracted. I'm focused. Yeah, yeah, and, and, and that meant that well meaning intent from people that matter to me, like Diane just became white noise, peripheral noise. And I, in going through my psychotherapy,

I went through what you'd expect, right? I went through classic crisis management. Let's get this boy. Well, let's get let's get him reflecting on why has this happened, and what can we learn? And then, thirdly, what are we going to do about stopping you or minimizing the risk of you falling over again? And one of the things that I have done is I have this I refer to it as my personal board. And some of the people on my personal board probably don't even know they're on my personal board, but others do, and they have permission

to challenge me about, Ian, are you going into work too early? Ian, I've noticed you doing this, or, Ian, you're doing that. Is everything okay? And, and, because we sort of have a contract, informal contract, then that that means that I one minimize my sense of isolation, because, you know, effectively, I'm a. I'm, I work with other people, but I'm effectively self employed running Docu sport. So I've got other people around me that matter to me, and I think I matter to them who will check and challenge, yeah, and they, as you know, in all good governance, every board should have a senior non exec, and the senior Ned on my board is the aforementioned Fred the dog nice, because he helps me remember to live in the moment like I did this morning on Shaylee common, and he listens and doesn't give me any feedback. But you know, we Fred and I didn't get off to a standing we didn't get off to a great start. Because I you know when he arrived, when he arrived in our house, it's obviously the mention of Fred as carry on, when Fred arrived in your house. Yeah,

yes, Fred arrived in the house, and as I say that the place was just giddy and joyous, right? And this 12 week old puppy was like looking at everybody else and thinking, please tell me the big fella don't live in not only, not only, not only, does he look miserable, he smells miserable. Yeah, yeah, back in town,

and I was like, Fred, I have got chaos in my head. And every time I go through the front door, I've got chaos, yeah. And the only place I've got stability in my life just now is this house. And you doing what you do as a 12 week old puppy, have just rocked up and completely undermine that, yeah? So we, we did a bit of work together, and now I don't know where I'd ever be without Fred,

yeah, something strikes me, amongst all the things that you're talking about there, and a bit of reflection for myself, is that that there's something really important about balance. So, you know, there are all these signs of or, you know, precursors that would indicate, potentially, you know, mental health areas where you get overly absorbed in things. And one of the important things for me is around balance in that space.

I just want to pick follow on from that. Because my experience were you when you talk Ian about isolation, my experience was that I started avoiding people that I thought might ask those questions. I started like, like, I'd see all my friends, but in big groups, because I knew it was too difficult to have a conversation about it, and I was conscious something wasn't quite right, but I couldn't quite bring myself to deal with it. And I just I was good at work, so I threw myself into work because I was good at that, and that was something to manage. And I think it's a costume. Jane, right, you're playing a role. Well, it is. It's and

also it's the one place where I didn't feel like a bit of a failure, and it just, you know, you it gets worse, because the less you invest in your emotional relationships with your family and friends, then the less that they're healthy. But what I think is really interesting that James said about balance is the way I got myself out of it was I looked at my diary, and I remember thinking, there's just nothing except work in there for six months, and I felt very disconnected from my family, which I was conscious for me, that was the signal, like, if I'm not excited about seeing my niece and my nephew, that's probably a bad sign. So I started putting stuff in my diary, even though I probably didn't want to, and I started jamming my I like my nephew, who's an absolute legend, I started seeing him every week, whereas I'd previously maybe seen him once a month, and I just put it in the diary, and I was like, I can't let him down, so I have to show up, even if I'm not feeling it, I'm gonna go. And what was surprising to me was that that balance of time eventually started to have an impact, and I started to almost thaw, I guess would be the word I would use, and I sawed into that time with my family that I'd carved out and started, how was your

nephew and all this? Did he need help? Is it? No, he's a legend. Oh

God, Auntie Jane. Auntie Jane's coming around again. Glad he helped. James doesn't know that he

needed help. Mostly, he was just delighted I was buying him food. Okay, so it was always, it was always taking him out for lunch. So he was mostly just excited. He was getting a steak lunch. Yeah, that's good. Um, but yeah, it was, it was, for me, there was a real by, by, by sort of deliberately adjusting the balance in my life. It started to help me talk about stuff with other people, yeah, yeah, there's that thawing process, I think is really important. Well,

you see that's a bit, you know, at its very simplest, that is the one of the beauties of having a dog, right? Because you can't work for six hours flat out without a break. Because Fred needs empty, yeah, they, they, and if you kind of empty Fred, then you go outside. And we all know about the benefits of being outside for, well, being right? Yeah, absolutely. So you know, he works on any level. So he's, he's a very good man.

Yeah, it's funny. We should probably just let the listeners know that the reason the pushing the tipping point of me getting a dog was Ian doing a workshop with my last organization and showing me pictures of his dog. Oh, nice. And so we occasionally, so like this morning, we were exchanging photos of us on our respective hills with my my Ripley, the NED, and his friend the Ned. So it's I owe you big time for that, because there is no doubt, whilst my life is infinitely more complicated with her, I wouldn't swap it for the world. Yeah, well, good,

right guys. Well, I'm going to drive a conversation, because I think we could talk about a lot more, but I think we've pulled out some really interesting things in there. I think the fact that mental health affects everyone everywhere, is important? Oh, that's our that's our ending alarm, which is very helpful. The fact that there is stigma around mental health, and it's important to break that down by being open and trying to address it, the fact that you can get overly absorbed into work and what need for balance are all important things that have come out for me from that conversation. So I'd just like to end by saying, you know, a huge thanks to you, Ian. I think that really was very helpful, and potentially we'll speak to you again about more of this area and other areas as well, because it was excellent.

We didn't even get to that. We didn't get to the bit that we talked about before. So we're going to put a pin in it and hope that we can come back to you on that one.

Yeah, the one thing maybe I could just conclude with, which is, you know, in some ways obvious, but maintaining good mental health is is not easy. They and mental health is not binary, right? It's not you're either good or you're bad. It is dynamic and it's fluid, and I think people need to be aware of I describe it as just being like the weather, right? And I've had a few days up in Cumbria with my elderly parents, and so the weather in my head has been very cloudy with occasionally sunny intervals, because my parents are mad, right? And it just so you can it's pressurized, but it's good, right? I have a podcast to speak to you. I've been out with Fred the NED this morning. So the weather in my head is sunny with cloudy intervals, because I know I've got some shit to do later on. They and people should recognize that, you know that self awareness of of checking in with themselves and having the support of others to do it with them, I think, is so important. And particularly World Mental Health Day as I say, yeah, it's probably worth leaving it on that thought, taking great energy, taking excellent Well, great. Thank you very much for that. Yeah, excellent.

My pleasure. Right?

So welcome back. That was our conversation with Ian. I thought it was really interesting. I thought we got into some really interesting discussion points there, and it was quite reflective. I thought, so, yeah, so I enjoyed it. Did you have any specific takeaways that you want to touch on or

Yeah, I always enjoy talking to Ian, whether it's being recorded or not actually. And I guess the thing that always comes I always come away from every time I speak to him, is the importance of sharing your own truth around mental health, whatever it is, and using that as a doorway. So whether you're a senior leader, giving voice to the fact that not every day is straightforward and simple for keeping yourself motivated and happy and healthy and feeling secure and the risks and the concerns you have, or whether you're just a colleague, you know, sharing that there are days that are better than others, I think sharing your own personal perspective of your mental health and the state of it is useful and helpful. And I just, you know, I understand that awareness isn't enough, and we need to do more than that, but I do think it's a good start to being able to have open conversations. Yeah,

that openness is really important, isn't it? It gives space for other people to join the conversation. If you're open, I think that's hugely

powerful, yeah. And I do think there's a little bit of, you know, people can talk about it for six months or a year or more about their own issues, and someone might choose not to disclose, but you have no idea what groundwork you might be laying for them to disclose elsewhere to their friends or their family by being honest and open. And you know, I understand that some people have significant challenges, but I also think that even sharing the things that were in the past challenge. Images for you, maybe they weren't significant, I think is helpful.

Yeah, couldn't agree more. What about you?

I had a couple things, I guess two things. Then one was just the analogy of, sort of your mental state with weather. I thought that was really powerful. I liked the imagery of a cloudy day a sunny day, and I liked the imagery of a sort of shifting nature of the framing of your sort of worldview and your mind every time. I think that's powerful. And I think, you know, these things happen to all of us. Sometimes the clouds roll in, sometimes the clouds roll out, sometimes the sun's there, sometimes for rain there, sometimes we see a little rainbow. I could name as much weather as I'd like, maybe anyway. So I thought that was a powerful, powerful set of images. And I think it's really helpful. And I think there's something about the observational nature of the weather analogy that's helpful. It sort of becomes something that you can observe, and you can get that sort of meta view of your emotional state, which I think is powerful in itself. The other thing that I liked, that Ian talked about was the importance, I guess maybe, in my words, paraphrasing, a bit of balance, and of a balance that comes from maybe having a pet or maybe having other things in your life other than your primary focus, if that's work, and the importance of creating space to do these other things. And I know that's something that, but I really value trying to do myself. I'm not very good at it, but I really value when I create an opportunity for myself to spend a time in a new way, or to do something new and different. And I think that's great for my health as well. I don't always appreciate it at the time, but I can certainly look back and say, Well, that was a really both pleasant and helpful way for me to spend my time.

Yeah, I don't always appreciate it at the time, either. But I tell you the other thing, even if I'm not enjoying it, it don't have sent off warning warning bells in my head if I'm not. So there's something that I know normally I enjoy and I'm not enjoying it. It is the single quickest way for me to notice that something's probably not quite right.

Yeah, cool. Well, I thought that was a great episode. Just before we finish up, I think it's worth saying we didn't give Ian a chance to tell us how we could get in touch with him, but I know that he's open for people to get in touch and to learn more about the stuff that he does. So we'll just grab his email and we'll be able to get that

Well, firstly, I know that he is he loves a bit Twitter, so you can find both him at Ian braid, and also you can find Doc docusport on Twitter. So look, from there, he's got website, which is, I think, www, dot, D, O, C, I, A, S, P, O, R t.co.uk, I know he's done some qualifications around mental health instruction and stuff like that, so he's definitely worth, yeah, he's a mental aid first Stater, isn't is that right? Oh,

I never know which qualification, but definitely is worth talking to anyway. So if people want to find him or look at him, then that is the best way to do it. And like I say, he's on sport. I think the Twitter handle is for his organization, is at dokia, underscore, sport,