Suzana Kalcic

#007 Writing, Wellbeing And Environmentalism With Ben Starling Transcript

#007 writing, wellbeing and environmentalism with ben starling transcript

 

Please note the following transcript will contain errors as it is automated and is not always accurate but you will get the gist!

 

hi I’m Suzana Kalcic and you’re listening to life in practice podcast I’m curious about the big questions in life and how we can experience more meaning and fulfillment every day join me as my guests share their challenges successes and what it means to put our purpose our bodies and our lives in practice hello and welcome to the life and practice podcast this is your host Suzana and today I have Ben Starling with me Ben is a writer artist environmentalist with a special interest in the oceans so Ben without where did this interest with the with the oceans on water begin with I think I was born with this I remember from a very very early age with my mother put me on her knee and Reds the old man and the sea by having when it must’ve been quite soon after the book actually came out and if you don’t know the book it’s about an old man in Cuba who goes out and the little canoe all on his own and he’s been real the ostracized by his society but he has huge wisdom which is accumulated for decades and he hooks the largest mall in which is a bit like a sword fish the fish for the spirit coming out from his head and it turns a mole round the ocean from several hours days even and I just remember that fought something in me which I have always had I’ve always been fascinated by the ocean by Warren general lakes rivers and I finished a loss until a while ago dives snorkels slow the water what your star sign yes I well you either a pie sees our accounts are places your pies yeah yeah %HESITATION I’m I’m I’m a prices as well yeah we may be twins yeah exactly yeah that is funny I do believe in star signs a random question okay hi %HESITATION and I do find it interesting that I’m a water sign and yeah yeah I make sense yes there was a bit of a round of diversion %HESITATION so even though you are so interested in the oceans and water but you’ve chosen the path of becoming a writer and %HESITATION and artist so how did that come about I’ve done many things in my life I went to university I went to business school one side of my family have been in finance so they were bankers and stockbrokers and I decided to try that’s ours and so I spent a few years in venture capital and and banking which I really wasn’t for me I found it very interesting and a number of ways but it wasn’t what I wants to with my life and about twenty years ago I had a change of direction and I started doing some product design which is creative because I love creative things and I started writing and I’ve always been interested in office right from the earliest age back to when my mother read me the amount of the sea I was drawing pictures of giant squids fighting with sperm whales in the depths of the ocean and what actually happened was about fifteen years ago Irish book tell my agent said to me at the time it be really interesting to get this illustrated so we still saw the work of a number of illustrators and I didn’t really like it not because it wasn’t good but because what an illustrated does is they read the book and then they draw all the scenes of the book and they sort of give the story away and I in one of them rashes remarks my live sets my agent why didn’t I give this a go having not not picked up a pencil or a bit of patience since I was about fifteen and it took two years but I kept going and I developed a huge love for office and is the sole loss I do a lot of it is themed around the ocean old old environments and interesting creatures sometimes I invent things sometimes they’re real but some %HESITATION it’s one of my love my love this is us and where do you think there’s some inspiration comes from or this %HESITATION this desire to be creative in this way did it did it something that started in your childhood that what was that like or %HESITATION this empathy that you have for the invite wealth can have empathy for the environment but for %HESITATION animals and %HESITATION for sea creatures all right I suppose you’ll probably born with this I mean we we’re all born with DNA which points us towards certain ways of behaving lace from license and things which interest awesome we made we made all the best travel was out and I just seem to been pre programmed from the earliest Asian I remember whenever I was given the choice you want to go to the beach or walk up the hill I would always go to the beach do you want to go to war by referral do something else I’d go to the river so the ice has felt drool and very strongly bias and I think one of the things about being a rice were noticed as you want to try and capture something about that wells and photographers to it with the camera I would do it either by writing about sids cool bye during the altercation a painting that moment I troll because I sort of feel if I recreated I’ve captured it’s maybe it’s sort of egotistical to want to capture something but I feel closer to it by having reproduced it on a piece of paper yeah that makes sense and %HESITATION where do you think %HESITATION art and creativity comes from %HESITATION because you talked about your born or you have a certain day and I do think it’s a skill that can be learned %HESITATION that can be taught or do you think creativity because I mean I’ve heard I’m from some people when they talk about creativity they say it’s you have to get into the zone and it’s about connecting to whether you want to call it called the universe the collective consciousness but you you downloads this inspiration so when you’re truly creating so actually it’s not actually you that’s creating it this is something that you yeah download is a very modern exercise term but something I understand as a vessel yeah I understand exactly what you’re saying and I think it’s a combination of things because sometimes I do a picture and the creative juices are not flowing and it’s an incredible struggle and I may have to go back to square one several times before I complete the picture sometimes these pictures all turned out well and I’m happy with them but occasionally you just sit down in an idea is already waiting and you you get going and it’ll run this incredibly smoothly but are they can be a successful picture I think all right I have friends who I talk to about this who’s to say they don’t have one creative cell in their bodies and they are absolutely amazed I didn’t really on some of the same but then I called Jones a new report no one could teach me it starts I have absolutely no sense of rhythm and I look like a complete idiots on the dance floor so I could say to them and they all said natural talents %HESITATION like my ex wife and I just I just don’t get why you how you do this it makes no sense so I can understand that quandary for me creativity comes quite naturally and I remember once I did a so it wasn’t a job interview but it was sort of aptitude tests to see what sort of job you should gas and I was very average on a lot of things like sort of %HESITATION leadership in mad men and this is not an action on the creativity thing us in the salute zero point two five percent in the quarter hour because rice at the top of the scale and %HESITATION I’ve always remembered that and I I do like crazy thing I’ve created products hiker I’ve been thinking created by I think out different ways of doing things or I do pictures but I’m always looking the way things are and questioning whether they have to be done that way could they be done a different way and do you have any %HESITATION practices that you do to help you to get into that creates a flow not really if I’m very stressed and tired I went feeling creative so in order to be creative I do have to slow down and have a little bit of time off you know not days but maybe hours all right I keep my brain active in a number of different ways which may or may not be part of the same thing that I find because my boss is very complicated I’m I have to think very very hard while I’m doing it undefined Todd I come to it so %HESITATION I think there are a number of things going on if I’m feeling under pressure all stress why I’m just not in the mood I called forces that’s otherwise I’d I don’t talk in terms of the muse that some people think talk about but I sit down and I just let everything go very still and very quiet and I look at the large blank piece of paper and I might look at it so maybe not ours but probably many many minutes before I put the fast line on it in pencil which saw my set he removed asses the second third and fourth and then slowly build something up and it normally ends up I don’t know what I’m what it’s gonna look like when I start %HESITATION and when we get to the end I’m often astonished if I ever get him sometimes I can never decide when they’re finished mmhm so it sounds like to me a bit %HESITATION that you have a very %HESITATION intuitive approach to it so you kind of wait for the feeling I think that is very sad but occasionally I see something which inspires me so I might say that five for example wants to a picture of dolphins I will go on to Google and I will I will give you a whole lot of pictures of dolphins and I’ll look at thousands and then one will spark an idea and then also the large size in the back of my mind and then I might be looking at coral reefs and I’ll look at Dawson’s and then I can suddenly picture again resulting which I put the dolphins ahead of the coral reef there and the waves with the sunlight coming through them this angle that’s often the way the process actually comes through and I come up with something which is unique but I have I have quite often borrowed the basic shape of something from another source and is there a creative process for writing %HESITATION the same for your due to have a different %HESITATION talked to I think rising is about fifty eight thousand times more difficult because the thing about all this is you do as you finish as people either like it or they don’t like yes and that’s the end of the story in writing you have to have an editor and you probably have several that distance and then you have a publisher as well with their opinion and early on I didn’t use additives and I write my own stuff and I got mixed reviews people occasionally out C. heated Ross I rose which is very depressing of course and then the next person comes along and says oh my god this is the most unbelievable thing I’ve ever read so I have no feel for whether my earlier work was any good it’s cool weather is complete nonsense but later on this I started using additives which can be obsolete absolutely soul destroying and the last editor who I worked with his brilliance and dragged everything out of me kicking and screaming and we had long disagreements and arguments box at the end of the day for all the pain which was colossal I think the end product was it was worth it yeah %HESITATION I want to just comment on the the pain off %HESITATION right saying I mean I haven’t written anything like hunter kind of level but if I’m writing like a blog or and or a speech sign for Toastmasters like for me I get all these random ideas and as I write how can I make this coherent so that it makes sense yes and I can I mean announcer something is quite short but how on earth do you start to piece together your ideas when you’re writing a %HESITATION and novel I think one of the greatest disciplines is to use something like the hero’s journey which is a well recognized structure for any story you cannot go wrong so once one is working within the framework of the hero’s journey you’ve got a very very solid base and then within it you can have fun playing around but if you’re going to stray a huge distance away from something like the hero’s journey what will happen is your reader will will be confused %HESITATION feel they’ve been let down or cheated even because this story is so much a part of all of us now and it’s been going on for thousands of years that we will a pre programmed to anticipate a certain type of story whether we read a book or we go to the cinema and if key elements of that a notice in place you probably will not enjoy it and you feel uncomfortable in the end you would come away feeling terribly happy about this and so my starting point now it wasn’t always this intuitively my first works tended to quite closely follow the hero’s journey but the last book I read full is it very closely and I think it’s better for us yeah which brings me nice I show %HESITATION want to talk about %HESITATION your book which I read switch of got here %HESITATION something in the water %HESITATION tell me Ben what is in the water I think there’s a great deal in the Warsaw I think it depends on the on the nature of the question but in terms of the water I was writing about that which is the oceans the message Richard which I’ve put in the book is that everything is interconnected and if we kill the oceans we old diet but S. many years ago I was on hold in the South Pacific and I was talking to an island %HESITATION that and he was describing to me his vision of life and death and the soul how this all works and I always remember that vision and I was left is and it was about that west souls go when people die and how they accumulate together into a ball of energy so I’ve incorporated outside yeah in this book we are visits seventy eighty percent water human beings on it’s a huge amounts %HESITATION I think this water is very important I was at school with a chop who was a lunatic and by lunatic he actually whenever there was a full moon he went mad and he had to be sedated and this February their names at the station but I suspect someone years ago let’s Rogers said that probably what was happening is being a full moon when you get bigger tides in the ocean because the moon’s gravitational effects is magnified was probably pulling the water in his body and then this is brain toward it which made him behave differently now I have no idea whether that was a plausible explanation but I think yes water is very very important and with us it we die very quickly some some of the planet’s is is water absolutely I think what I really %HESITATION really enjoyed in the book %HESITATION so when you talk about how everything is connected on what I am and what I thought was really well done is your %HESITATION writing style and how you planted seeds very early on in the story and how they %HESITATION inter twined they’re just like you know you got little clues here and there and then eventually towards the end you are all if that’s what that was all that makes sense %HESITATION yeah %HESITATION not was tied together with this so to me it’s like that whole concept was so well %HESITATION %HESITATION trade was how you told that story it just felt like yeah that everything is connected we are connected to each other in so many small ways and ways in which we which we can’t even we can’t even imagine absolutely and I must say I did give myself an talk credit for seeding interesting things which came out later because although I love doing that’s it’s I find is a lot of fun and very interesting I have to thank Bill Gates for the US Microsoft Word because I cannot imagine how you could actually think that far ahead and be so sophisticated in it a hundred years ago when you’re writing a manuscript some trying to plan ahead because every single thing which is seated in that novel probably moved around a couple of times and it but more was added to it well this was taken out so %HESITATION with the beauty of the world prices so you can keep changing and finding things and going back how they did it with the old quill pen and a bit of parchment is completely beyond that yeah well %HESITATION yeah I also wanna ask you about you chose the that leads like what was the inspiration behind the lead character X. is a very strong %HESITATION female lead which is not as as calm really so I’ve always been aware of the fact that the Hollywood is always led by men and I always found out really well the Sicilian rather tedious and the women you know the the big fight scene all the baddies chasing them with a gun and this was the woman who falls over and the man runs runs back and picks her up and they go on and then that it’s the man who beats up about it I found that find that incredibly irritating so the story I refuse I’m I wish I had read a book with the by another male with a female lead fairly recently and I thought well if I do write another book I want to write a book with a very strong woman she has to be a human being she called be a super woman so she she has full she has her character develops throughout the story but she is her own boss she determines her destiny on the men around to the north’s superior or inferior there will at the same level and one of the ideas of story writing in there is just a news is called %HESITATION assembling all collecting allies and the roles of the other people some of some of whom are men some of whom are women in the book also in a pot shop there is she’s less good at but that’s life none of us are good is everything and so do I put together woman with the help of a female editor who I’m I’m very happy with that merry on the home page Hey Alex is gonna say some of the parts which I read I was like wow I can really understand hi this is this is good a well there are a couple Senate in which my edits a female artist of the century wow how did you move it hello you know two women having a private conversation together in this situation about up would torchlight not listed because we’re all human beings actually meant another difference they they may have more barriers they may be more guarded but it seems perfectly natural to me that they would bid on other occasions she sent me a woman would never do that in that situation and then I would you know listen to her and think about it and and usually change it %HESITATION what would be your dream for the book well I would love the book to be made into a film because when I when we raised sets with that my education I worked on it we tried to make it very cinematographic so every scene would look in our opinion fantastic so the book opens in an enormous %HESITATION ballroom in a famous hotel in New York so that’s a huge big exciting scene but a lot of it is filmed in the beautiful South Pacific in their %HESITATION ocean scenes and sunsets and tropical paradise and the whole thing is very visual at the next level it’s it has three plots which inter twined and they seem to be going off in different directions and I think this is back to what you’re saying %HESITATION there about seating they seem to be independent of each other but they will a critical and they will come together at the ends and everything makes sense when you get to the end of the book that’s I I would love to see it as a as a film the problem is films they chop out single full loss of the novel and I I’ve written the screenplay for us and it was really soul destroying it up it’s going to go to that but it’s going to go I recall just keep this on the straight and narrow yeah because I mean quite a lot of people say that they prefer the brick to the Falmouth times because I think when you read a book you can use your own your own imagination like what the characters look like are you a you see it through your own lens rather than through the lens of a %HESITATION director or producer sought but at the same time it is also really nice to just watch a movie and get lost in that world I would hope that people watch the film and really really enjoy it and then go and buy the book and then see that there’s a whole New World because at the end of the day the film will I never be maybe Assad over the book it will be one main plot line with a couple of tiny little elements whereas the book is three big plot lines but that would be a seven hour film so that the fortunate is unlikely to happen yeah and so obviously a foam is a mass %HESITATION medium which can have an impact on on a lot of people and what kind of impact would you want to add this story to have on viewers well before we come to the store I would like the film well to be making more films with strong women as leads so that that was one object object to the book with the second one is I want people to start thinking about the oceans differently about the planet differently about how everything is interconnected I wrote the book I I think I published it about four years ago and then no one was talking about the plastic in the oceans I touch on that in the book is on the main theme that’s since then the wellness has increased incredibly which is a very good thing and I think one of the ways in which you get people to think different and maybe change the way they behave is benignly by sending them to a nice film not bashing them over the head with a demonstration or environmentalists on television shouting about this %HESITATION shouting about up I know the film have a tongue was considered good and a very powerful environmental film X. is very enjoyable film and then people go when they start thinking how to sell the plight to this planet how does it apply to their lives so I would love people to read this and really enjoy it as a story because it’s not a preachy book tool that’s not what I am hi I was trying to wrap an adventure around the love story with an environmental message and when they thought about the love story and they’ve enjoyed the adventure I hope that some seeds have been sown which will make them think can maybe act differently down the road yeah that is actually a really good point because when we learn about these %HESITATION topics through a story it I think it come be much easier to inflate someone because they can put themselves in that story they can they can %HESITATION relate to the characters they can connect it’s more of a and %HESITATION you you you appeal to the readers or the viewers emotions a lot more ways yeah I do understand that with so much just preaching to you a con peace some people can really %HESITATION just shut down on the obsidian clothes off however on on one side as well some people do you need a cold slap in the face to wake them up %HESITATION so yeah I think I think it’s dead fish yeah I think both things are really important I think this the power of storytelling is it is still a very useful vehicle for getting messages across and back to storytelling in culture it always has been and or tradition it was the way in which we convey critical information Apostol knowledge through generations said that society could survive and I don’t think it’s ever lost that role I think when you slap people in the face with the truth they tend to should fight back in more barriers go up but I’m very conscious of how things do change decades ago drinking and driving was totally unacceptable the study acceptable people did it now I don’t very few people do it just says cigarette smoking for example and I think now put the use of plastic has come through in the same way so it seems to be you does this pressure cooker which builds up and up and up and then a series of events or maybe one of and pushes us over than the average and then suddenly awareness changes and people start changing their behavior not everyone of course there will be people who refused to change forever but it’s it’s about numbers merit and getting enough people to actually make a difference yeah and I think what we %HESITATION spoke about %HESITATION before it’s sometimes it’s not about %HESITATION like having to convince people to your way of seeing things or but it’s more about %HESITATION connecting with people who already the believe what you believe on the way it’s much easier to spread that message I think Ryan how’re as well S. and when and when I was marketing the book one of the media mediums I use was Facebook and so I joined all the ocean related charities the whales and dolphins the pollution and then marketed the book through them because you are preaching to the converted on one hopes they will then spread the word to their friends in your drawer and more people there will always be people who are resistant and there are probably the end of the day there’s nothing we can do about that but I I one of the ways I express my love all of the oceans or war so was by being us Fishman a spool Fishman not a commercial fisherman and I fished all over the world and I’ve called most species of fish and some very big fish but about twenty years ago I just stopped completely and because it finally there will these voices in the back of my head and people single fish bill to feel pain no they dine and they don’t mind if I catch them you know they feel pain and for me although it was one of my great joys and it was again a source of wicks of expressing my love all of the oceans was by holding a fish from the oceans are shot core which normally went back because sometimes I ate them I don’t do that anymore and I doubt tried well I mean and it’s conceivable I might desperately need food on some occasions that I did I didn’t do it for fun anymore so even with me I can see that one can change yeah well we all %HESITATION I guess when we see the %HESITATION Harrell for a ways %HESITATION well one hopes that one will have the %HESITATION the inclination to change not not not many people do I think %HESITATION some people have the attitude while we’re all gonna die anyway so what’s the point like you might as well enjoy life but %HESITATION I really love I think is that tired line from the film %HESITATION good %HESITATION gladiator and it says what we do now echoes in eternity I think that’s so powerful and it goes to your point about how everything is connected is like what you do because it was a call the %HESITATION butterfly effect yes like what you do to yourself or to or if you do something to someone else it will eventually come back to you in some form %HESITATION some things probably do fizzle out before they go any further but we don’t matter and often one of one of the subjects I explored in that book consists some not huge depth was the idea of the synchronicity that things are connected your own huge who’s there it was talks about in a cool soul connecting principle something which isn’t logical saying causality if I push the book it will move that out causality bit synchronicity is things which are connected in ways which science concepts plane and if you look out for them hi I see them quite often and I go through phases in my life and I’m bombarded with them about twice a year for about two week periods I always think something amazing is going to happen in the middle of these pairs but they don’t they just come and they go and they come in they go but they do demonstrate things and even the conversation we had earlier before this interview that was an example of something which came up with that and so I think if you look for them the the that’s interesting yeah I just it just makes us realize how much we actually know really but yeah gathered outside as I showed him how much we how much we don’t know but then on one hand I feel we also we do kind of know all these things kind of in a deep way we can build them but we don’t know how to express it in in words maybe or we don’t have a scientific language yet to explain and so on science may never explain this of course I don’t know I mean I I just think for things that people say oh this is a %HESITATION a miracle or this is like something you know really really special for me I just see it as okay %HESITATION we just don’t have a scientific language to explain that so that’s why it seems really mysterious to us yes hi I think there are so many ways were softly connected and when you look for them %HESITATION you you do find them not always but you do find them and %HESITATION I’ve had experiences in my life which all literally unbelievable I have a not a twin brother and we are identical twins and we’ve had we’ve shed psychic experiences which are really very spooky and very strange and where that comes from who knows you have an example that you can share or well very very briefly because it is a long story but it involves a dinner party I went to and I was living a hundred miles away from him at which the hosts through a shrunken scroll shrunken head into my lap is a joke Sir it was I knew about this size because this call it been removed and I rang my brother who knew something about these subjects he is in so spirituality and occasionally the all called and she said when it landed in your lap did you feel anything and I said well I sort of felt a feeling of sort of help and he said well it’s a woman %HESITATION and she’s going to communicate with you in your dreams and to cut a long story short she did over a period of time through symbolism extraordinarily powerful symbols log I’ll give you one for a quick example one one one one of one of these rooms on the first one I was walking down a pulse in the country and there was a field on the left of the hedge and was all muddy and those of coffee oak a flock of partridges in at about twenty punches and they all flew away when they saw me but one was left behind and it was bright silver and it was stuck in the mud because its feet was stock and silver is the color of the astral world represents the spirit and the interpretation of the dream was that the others were normal pop shoes which were able to fly away this bird was stock because it is so you know we have been monitoring this and was still attached to the shrunken head and I had a series of powerful dreams like that and eventually the situation was resolved I’m glad to say while I am so what is like or how does that have an impact on your idea off %HESITATION thank what do you do you call it god you call it the universe the source energy %HESITATION what it what would you say are your spiritual I believe cycle what would you identify us I believe there is a lot going on that we are not aware of and the conventional wisdom is our best attempt to explain this and it only got so you fall I think Arnold Florida things which cannot be explained by science I I remember Attenborough did an interview the other day and she was awesome whether he believed in god or whether he was your evolutionist and his also which I thought was brilliant as he said he could sit next to a a young boy in Africa who is blind and he can explain the science of how that child drank some water which had a certain way %HESITATION and it’s in the world migrated from his cot into his eyes and blinded many and he understands that but at the same time and so that’s the scientific explanation at the same time he could then walk to a termite mounds and he could cut the top off that termite mound and you could see thousands of termites going about their everyday work and he could look down at them and understand what they were trying to achieve and they would have no idea he was watching them and they would have no idea what she was and in that sort of analogy he is sort of like gold and and now like us so I see no reason why that wouldn’t be an intelligence for a series of intelligence is way above us and there are certainly many ways in which people have access what appears to be other intelligences so I didn’t worship in the conventional way bots I’m aware and I’m respectful and I’m where I’m always digging I’m always trying to find out more and I’m always comparing different religions and spiritualities I I find shamanism one of the more interesting ones but I don’t believe we have the tools or the mental capacity to actually understand what’s going on just like the time I cannot understand what David Attenborough’s yeah I definitely I agree with you hi I also I mean I don’t %HESITATION subscribe to any of any religion are but I would consider myself a spiritual person in the sense that %HESITATION I’m very curious and I’m very aware that there is something that we yes that we don’t quite know exactly what it is but we can all feel it and that there’s an awful lot going on you can’t can’t have experiences yeah which really make you think differently about life and death and if you start questioning whether they come from you muscle question reality and everything else as well but I have had experiences which are so real and so powerful that one out of respect for them sort of feels well there is more going on than we we realize absolutely and so then do you feel that %HESITATION as humans %HESITATION we have a Jew to see %HESITATION got to take care of the %HESITATION so we’re on %HESITATION I guess so Sir where I’m coming from this question is because wastes %HESITATION %HESITATION religion it’s %HESITATION tries to teach us %HESITATION or to try to give us some kind of moral compass %HESITATION like with an anti Christianity with the ten commandments and all that kind of thing and where do you think that comes from and then because we are connected and we are part of this world but we’re also as stewards of the world as well of like off this planet %HESITATION but yet we seem to be making a complete mess it’s reduced thanks I’m like what the hell is going on we’re like the only species whose like on a suicide mission like whenever people to %HESITATION we need to save the planet suck well not really the plan is going to be just fine is that humans are going to die off so which may be a good thing I yeah hi I am incredibly concerned about the future I have children in their twenties and I am very very worried about the world because I think when things go wrong they go wrong quickly and catastrophically auditing is going to be a case of things getting one percent once a year for a hundred years I think I’ll be a tipping point when everything will collapse whether we can turn that around I don’t know but I think what humans have done to the planet is off the scale of polling and I think their resistance to change is the same in the it’s such a complicated argument there’s so much going on if we were someone’s idea of an experiment I think they probably said we might do that one again yeah Charles we ended up as we all that was very fortunate that’s I’ve a hundred years from now I think there will be that will still be humans unless some appalling bog wipes a sold out to white said everything that I think probably it’s it’s we’re going to find things changing very very dramatically but it’s just so strange like why are why are humans like that it’s I feel like %HESITATION you know with what we’ve achieved as a human race I always feel like the main question for humans is being how can I have my cake and and eats it so it’s there it affect humans almost want to find out how they can cheat %HESITATION no make sure it’s like how can I help all of the good things and take away the bad things without realizing what actually everything needs to function and %HESITATION balance and harmony so just as an example like the Yusof of pesticides a psych okay we want to keep all of the crops but yet we want to kill all of the bad bugs but there is okay but when you use all these pesticides are actually killing good bugs you are %HESITATION you are destroying the soil as well I think %HESITATION I can’t remember where I read somewhere but the the fact that like bees are in such a serious decline and I think they were classified as that one of the most important as species on the planet correct us and it’s like you know I think of one of the huge problems is short term term commercial gain straight capitalism and the power of large corporations is so colossal that really allowed to do that now have been that’s exactly what they want in search of profits and even when pressure groups begin to say you’ll killing off the bees are about the bees we right now have food today yeah it it takes time people turned a blind eye and just carry on doing what they’ve been doing a lot of people it’s just ignorance most of us had no idea of how dangerous plastic would be say ten years ago there were probably a few scientists out there who are aware of it I became aware of it probably seven or eight years ago and most people tell us so busy with their lives paying that mortgage or not forgetting Fadhel keeping their marriage gang or whatever it is they don’t have time to think about any of this and they surround themselves that tried to like minded people who didn’t if you don’t raise the same questions either and this is one of the problems with humanity and society and several just back barreling along as we have done for hundreds or even thousands of years but this will gonna come home to roost and and very soon and then can we turn it around in time who knows yeah but %HESITATION you have some ideas or you have a %HESITATION with a you have a vision off what could potentially help humanity or %HESITATION yeah let I’ll let you talk about that well this idea started about twenty years ago I just got divorced and moved back to London and I joined a gym because I want to get fit lose weight and I noticed that this Jim I had %HESITATION some complementary therapy rooms which people could hire us and that was sort of %HESITATION acupuncture and homeopathy and also helps fix central and I liked from that point the idea of the sorts of holistic approach to the well being of the people who use this channel so they could take exercise have a sauna and then again see a therapist and from the outside there I began to develop the concept of what would happen if not just individuals but large numbers of people addressed and improved that well being and I came at it from the guy about forty seven for the mind body and spirit perspective I said okay what comprised the mind body and spirit some of us look off to one of the three some people that look after any of the Serie occasionally someone looks off to two out of three and you might even meet someone who looks after three out of three but it struck me that as people improve their well being and there is a little bit of research out that now along these lines I’m still happier they sink and they behave differently and I think this really came home to me a number of years ago when I went outside to put my rubbish away and that was the business of the %HESITATION recyclable stuff and the other bidding for the non recyclable and I had something it was the top of a plastic bottle and I didn’t know which been it went in and I got into real Hoff why doesn’t the council have class size why doesn’t someone tell me I’m gonna times what this out and then I’d come in what I did with it but I went inside and I was under a lot of stress at the time and pull little precious me was far too self important to have the time to worry about the environment and where this plastic bottle Cup wins a few months later things are going much better for me and I went out there in this dilemma Rijeka when I try to do the same that time I quite happily went home did some research and may have made a phone call to and I found out on the point I’m making is when we are happier more relaxed self sense well being is elevated with more tolerant more reasonable we have more time to sort things out so it’s my belief that when people’s well being is improved it affects a huge range of their attitudes and behavior from things like racism xenophobia religious intolerance how they treat it say misogyny homophobia how they treat the environment all these things are interconnected and when people stole some proving how they think and behave in all those areas you’ll then see a very great effect over time on politics on society and on economics and when I was working fairly full time in this area hi I talk about what I call the political social economic model and the way that this country and in every developed country operates is the politicians look at the amount of money they need to run the economy so they say we need this amount of money for a healthier this amounts for transport this amount for education eccentric Satcher then look at the economy and they say how much is the economy GDP going to grow this year they then say how much to the death tax people so that they’re not going to so they’ll vote for us again and then they throw the money at all these areas and then they run out of money and then they go on the international money markets and borrow more and then they have to get reelected and and this cycle goes on and on and on and on and the pyramid is that you have money the economy at the top of this pyramid this is what everyone focuses on my idea which is being picked up more more these days is that if you actually put well being up there with Monday %HESITATION the time people’s well being would mean if you need less money to run the system if ten percent of the population in the first five years of this idea actually got hold of the health and really improve their physical health that would have a great impact on the health service but it was all also if it’s a well being improvement is also going to affect things like productivity how people treat each other in the society they’ll be spin off of facts with the police the judiciary the prisons service they’ll be less fraud less crime more morality and more societal cohesion so I think if you could actually put in place mechanisms which from top down which encourage and incentivize people to improve their well being I’m bottom up people were doing it anyway because they want to they understand the sense of social responsibility which you mentioned earlier I think over time you could actually begin to get large numbers of people making a difference and eventually people will realize its sectional about money happiness well being it isn’t how rich I am there are other things in life which matter and when you actually realize you can be happy and satisfied with what you have and it doesn’t matter that this person has more than a year you’re almost certainly be happier than that person what is interesting %HESITATION however %HESITATION one slight challenge to the idea is that %HESITATION would you not say that certainly in the developed world %HESITATION our well being has considerably improved certainly from a physical standpoint %HESITATION in the sense of the the advancement off %HESITATION Hedison the access to it with a very comfortable lives like just when I think about my grandfather when he used to tell me about his life when he was younger like he actually knew what it meant to feel hungry like I can’t ever say that the I know what it’s like to be actually hungry because you know food is so easily available to me so in a way as a collective %HESITATION things have improved a lot in terms of our lives being very comfortable we have all these time saving devices as well like my grandparents didn’t have %HESITATION washing machines for example they had to wash everything by hand but yeah when my grandfather spoke about those hard times there was a certain content meant and not as well because there were there were all in that same situation they they exit group together they they helped each other %HESITATION so yeah I’m just wondering I think it would be him %HESITATION pretentious of me to say this so I will say this yeah I wouldn’t be surprised if your grandparents weren’t happy I had a better sense of well being than people do today okay they’re a better procedures for certain illnesses you can have operations and people are living longer although in some developed countries now we peaked and people not living any longer good yes you can keep people going longer and as you say things like feeling hungry for your eye has never perhaps happened but they’re all sorts of other ways in which we’re all suffering I think it’s almost off the scale which may be %HESITATION grandparents didn’t experience for example stress this world we live in there is so much stress because it’s coming at us from so many different angles and I wonder whether they experienced that sort of stress more recently we’ve seen the upsurge Ince’s in gnosticism fueled mainly by social media which is another way which people have been dripped become more insular and that then its name longer about society and helping others it’s me me me look at me look at me and %HESITATION I prefer the older world I I would prefer not to live to the age of seventy and feel and then I’m doing my part an integrated part of society I don’t need a new car every year I like I have huge enjoyment out of keeping things going for as long as possible rather than live to ninety because the doctors can keep me going out long if there isn’t some quality to that life I remember that with the advances of met some of course fueling the problem because there are more more people surviving normal people on planet earth creating pollution needing feeding whatever it is you’re using up their resources which are depleting at Assen alarming rates so I think a lot of what we think is well being isn’t and some of that is what you referred to the washing machine a lot of commerce has been directed at the labor saving device things to make our life easier so we have enough in the washing machine and fridge hello my own eccentric Satcher and they will conveniences but it’s apart from the energy they would use which is another subject I I question whether costs are well being is really better than it was maybe preindustrial times although of course though that once you suffering it was just different different suffering that would that was more in control untreatable disease %HESITATION so I think there there is a combination of things going on here but I’m certainly not happy where we are at the moment yeah I think %HESITATION maybe the well being something or what what is actually well being because it is such a %HESITATION comin up bus was working right now and I think it’s being commoditized as well I think a lot of %HESITATION companies jump on that bind why again because it is such a trend now and it’s okay if you were these trials are you were this like crystal or if you go to this retreat like you’re looking after a while bidding on %HESITATION I think what you touched upon I think not not not during the interview but %HESITATION before like some people can go to all these retreats read all the personal development books you know going to all sorts of %HESITATION yoga poses but they’re still on us home you know %HESITATION they made themselves feel that well being is elevated and then maybe they will behave differently I do I don’t know because I haven’t interviewed people in that position but their financial all of them and the problem is is being commercialized yeah people think his way to make a Buck yeah and so they will become the new age or well being glorious whatever it is that a lot of Sony’s out there I’ve even in in my gym I I used to box and so I still had a punch bag to keep fit and I see people coming in and and brand used a hundred and fifty pound boxing boots and satin boxing shorts they spend five minutes putting on that wraps and they put on these amazing you boxing gloves and I think a wow look this guy looks like he knows what he’s doing and then they haven’t got a clue but they’re getting something out of the the universe there in that moment it’s making them feel good the fact that they look ridiculous and have no idea how to books is neither here nor there but yes the commercialism you know the spin off of capitalism it is very unfortunate and I think I hope that over time people will see that for what it is but if it helps make more people in the US M. there may be some good that comes from it yeah because I think it %HESITATION west so our conversation off well being %HESITATION there’s also %HESITATION when I hear quite a lot about is self care and self love and %HESITATION while I understand it’s important but I think sometimes there is a very gray line between self care and selfishness absolutely and %HESITATION are they so I see it was with some of their personal development %HESITATION community is he a I mean I see I was in a lot already yeah I I approached for quite a few years ago a woman who was considered to be the number one life coach in the country in the family holidays of life coaching and she was described in glowing terms on the back of her book our membership describes as the queen bee of life coaching so I once told her about well being because I’ve been in this era of about twenty is is in the early days and I rang her and she said I’d love to talk to you about your well being and how it can sits in with one time doing yes but I’m very busy for the next year so I compost receive free yeah so I said well it’s very nice of you to explain that and I’m sorry but I can’t wait to see %HESITATION they’re all the people I will go and talk to you in this field you know that you may want to get on board with this and she said if you don’t have anyone else about this I will never speak to again you speak to your to wait take care for me I’m not I was service to honest by herself and took this in the sense of importance it’s %HESITATION I declined her kind invitation to wait two years before I spoke to her about his head yes there is a well that is a good point and we we have this growth and looking off draw cells and and is tipping further and further in the unhealthy direction of too much self love the narcissism the psychologists will tell us why it’s healthy to have a degree of self love announces an otherwise we went because after all cells we when present ourselves well and get the best out of life but I do think more more people are getting a little fall and as I mentioned briefly before you just have to look at say you go on Facebook and look at people who do yoga and every day they change that profile picture to show in the world they’ve learned to new pose and and I find that extremely hard work %HESITATION yeah but I think %HESITATION so when you said about %HESITATION it’s it %HESITATION it’s normal that we all have a certain degree of self love or certain traits but I think that’s just healthy self esteem I think a and I think up a part of healthy self esteem is not just how you treat yourself on how you treat other people certainly should be absolutely should be and what one of the lessons I’ve learned in life is I I used to live most people be interested in things to shoo them and gets enjoyment from them I have found over the years I get probably more enjoyment from helping other people than I do from all these other hobbies and things which I used to post here now does that was a I think his Belgium social anthropologist called mouse MA you double last November U. S. C. and he writes a definitive book %HESITATION on the gifts and I route I remember you said in this book that there is no such thing as a gift which is freely given you always actually want what he calls a reciprocity something back in return so even when I helped out this little lady with her laundry or whatever it is I’m actually doing it because I won’t what comes back to me is the feeling good for having done that plus I can live with us that way I think it’s cool I think %HESITATION %HESITATION reciprocity is completely and in normal and I think all I think that relationships and connections should be balanced in that way otherwise it’s just very one sided and I think people who believe in flows of energy will describe how you help this person that person contact you help you but then this person over here will help you in that and so it’s it’s just we we can never anticipate how this energy flows between us but if you will close you you wouldn’t receive anything if you’re giving all the time things to come back here yeah but in some %HESITATION well I’ve learned the hard way though is yeah it’s important to give but it’s important to have healthy boundaries without giving no I think that’s true so so yeah there’s a very %HESITATION yeah this whole topic is is very grey there isn’t like one clear cut like %HESITATION you know like with self love self esteem helping others looking after yourself but I I believe what is truly good for you it’s for the greater good so if something is good for you but it’s not for the greater good then eventually is going to come back to you in some way it won’t be good for you it doesn’t make sense give me an example if you can think of an example right %HESITATION well maybe let’s go back to the %HESITATION pesticide example so in the short term it might be good for you okay you get these like loads of crops and you can have loads of food but then as time goes by this food is going to make you feel L. yes that’s what you’ll have the side effects so in that moment in the short term it was good for you but in the long term for the greater good it was repairable price yeah and I don’t know like we said with the %HESITATION with the dying off of bees and %HESITATION other Hey insects so that’s what I think is like almost daily %HESITATION guiding the post is whether you feel okay %HESITATION is if this is good for me how does this impact the the greater world around me and people around me I so I believe in when when when situations so I think that’s how the world works and I think for %HESITATION historically I didn’t know how much the companies hide what they actually know quite often we’ve embarked on journeys say to increase agricultural production and the company’s old didn’t actually knows the problems they were closing down the road no doubt another on other occasions they did it with his son he does come back to clobber us I I have a friend who farms in the Midlands and she L. ease comfortably off possum and he sets aside his farm so that it is any organic because he wants the lands to be passed on to his children and it doesn’t produce the yields it would do if you’re spraying it with X. Y. ends at and he says it but it doesn’t it barely breaks even I don’t mind but I what I do want to do is destroy this body of soil just for the short term gain and I have respect for him for that approach to his farming absolutely because people don’t realize that when they buy %HESITATION food that’s being produced in that way with those of pesticides and loads of %HESITATION artificial fertilizer think oh great this is cheap because like fun tastic but there is there’s no such thing as cheap because if you’re not paying for it now you’re paying for it later good point so you know like I have tried to grow some of my own things in my in my back garden and %HESITATION I’ve seen how hard it is and how much work and it takes us arrive in east oldest no they haven’t that was fine and but what I want I want the point I want to make it so when I go to a shop and I see how cheap things are like because most people like when they go to the shops they %HESITATION that they compile this is so expensive look at the price of these tomatoes or look at the price of this but when I look at it I’m like how is this how is it possible to me this is such a cheap way because when you you yourself obviously like the process of doing a home is completely different when doing it in a commercial farm but still you see that process of planting the seeds off watching that plant grow and the time and the and the care it takes for it to go from seeds to crop is just lying it’s amazing I think it’s something that we all should do and just to see that process so we can we can %HESITATION appreciate the food that we have even more I think you have C. right we actually puts in an allotment behind the block of flats I live in the other day and I’m we have about twelve I think that’ll allotments have therefore see flats in the block and it’s outside my window so I I watch constantly is this plant grows not plowing grazing then it’s harvested in the next one comes along and it is interesting to see developing your thoughts about the cost we pay one man the money we save when we go to supermarket I’m very mindful returning to the oceans all of the fish we shouldn’t be saying we we assume the fish is a cheap source of protein and it feeds X. billion people on planet earth I watched a video the last couple nights scanner in which this guy identified to fly fish in the world which we should not be eating I may not remember all five another one of them was called a king mackerel which is a member of the macro family but it grows very large any shock swordfish tuna and any farmed fish and the toxic a toxicity in these fashion now besides the fact that ninety percent ninety percent of the large ocean practices have gone we we need to avoid them that there’s a well in the %HESITATION Arctic Circle cool the beluga whale it’s a white swell in it and it’s very unique because it it’s some skull structure allows it to mimic facial expressions of human beings so it’s a very expressive looking well there is so much pollution in the arctic circle and it’s used as what school the Sentinel species they catch a beluga whale and they count the number of GMOs it has they will go to miss on it they just saying things are getting worse than that though now averaging seven to miss %HESITATION well whatever it is and it’s not just the Arctic Circle because as you can imagine the oceans are all interconnected by currents and everything is being washed around the lesions and I’m not sure what the latest figures %HESITATION but the percentage of things living in the oceans of micro plastics in them is off the scale and when there’s enough skeletons it’s high up the scale and your full of it now as well we all know we’re probably lucky that plastic may not be quite such as bad as bad for us is we assume it would be because it with full of it yeah so what can we do just as in as individuals this %HESITATION all bloom just seems so here it is %HESITATION where nurses start returning to their last breath %HESITATION he just an interview nothing is on channel four and he was also this question %HESITATION he was asked to do you are you an optimist or pessimist do you think we can turn the situation around and on the subject of global warming said nine continent around but we might be able to get it under control and reduce the rate of acceleration and it may be that we can get to a level where we can manage and survive and he said he thinks that will be enough foods be there for the foreseeable future it’s just we won’t be seeing what we want to eat and I thought that was quite an ominous statements he’s probably referring to locusts and some things wrong for the stakes and prunes yes all right I believe and I hope I mean one of the biggest problems from is the size the planet’s population that’s when the pressure comes from I think the population has to come down dramatically over a period of decades to reduce the pressure I think there needs to be a massive change in the way they come the world is rotten the the I’m talking the politics and I’m talking about economics capitalism I think that the voice of the majority needs to be heard the current model and democracy do not work if you click on one way not the anyway but one way you might begin to have an effect is through a huge number of people addressing and improving their well being and and when I say well being and I talk about mind body and spirit our body is oversee physical health spiritual rooftop spa and spirituality which could be expressed in the form of religion but for mind I talk about not just mental health education and it all comes down to education and if people’s education had told them certain fundamentals which they lack now I think we wouldn’t be in this situation and I think that if and when you have a huge body of people who all believed in this approach to life you could that makes up pressured by real pressure on corporations and own government because at the moment the Gulf that corporations control governments and we do our government says that if you had a significant number of people who could affect government by saying we’re not going to very few sorry unless you do this that and the next thing and they say to the corporations we’re not buying your products because we don’t like what you’re doing that is one way in which you might be able to start turning things around yeah well and it’s like I think it was gone do you say do you have to be the change you want to see so I do %HESITATION obviously we need to pressure %HESITATION corporations governments but if we don’t change ourselves first is going to be very difficult to inspire others to to change as well you walk your talk and %HESITATION %HESITATION yeah what was I gonna say %HESITATION the bios about well paying %HESITATION when you talked about the mind and education and I think with spirituality and what %HESITATION the consistent theme is here about everything being connected I think when you have a spiritual practice and you become aware off actually %HESITATION that everything is connected and you truly understand that that will have an impact on how you behave because you know that %HESITATION how you treat someone else or how you treat the planet will come back to you and I think that is a spirituality that sound is the word respect may summit top up signs I am not we’re all the old person who sees a spider and I’ll spend an hour catching it to the gloss and releasing it out the window even when I found a rather horrible and scary one the other day I still didn’t kill it I’m not quite as a client kind with musky tones but that’s another story yeah %HESITATION so yeah just coming to %HESITATION wrap this up now and %HESITATION I wanted to ask you what have been the most important %HESITATION practices for you that have helped you to overcome challenges or how are you %HESITATION how do you go through your creative process %HESITATION and how you have a chief %HESITATION any successes well I think what’s alive to him while I forced myself there is to set myself goals periodically hello I’m quite good at actually sticking to the normal ways but for example when we first met for nearly five years ago the goal I set myself then was public speaking because I couldn’t public speak and I force it it’s a huge gap in my very limited skill set which I need to fill and about two years off to the house I decided I needed to get fit together I used to be fit when I was young and I put on about staying in the halls and I joined a gym so every year or two something else comes along rising fulfilled that need at one point also has full fill that need at the moment I play chess tune them reasonably high standards normal everyday not everyday but several times a week just keep the brain ticking over and I’m always questioning things I’m always looking at things and seeing if the way that don is the best way for them to be done I’ve had success in life in areas in which I’ve been very deeply involved in something in which I’m certain but what if you borrowed from it under ten a lot of different discipline and could apply a technique to that would it work and when it work to give you a huge advantage and so I’m always looking at the way things are done and questioning if that’s any way they can be done and I’ve done I’ve been involved in areas like product design which is very very much doing that so I I always question things and my whole approaches as I said earlier to this well being thing sort of came by chance when I visited that Jim but it triggered a series of souls some of the moments I would say the way I live my life is I eat healthfully I take a lot of exercise I’m spiritually very respectful of what’s going on around me and how I treat others and animals as well thousands I keep my mind busy because as you get older they’ll mind tends to fizzle out so I I keep watching it as much as I can what one thing I’ll I’ll quickly add which we haven’t mentioned is what is our role here on planet earth I have a theory which may be original to me %HESITATION doing that which is that one of all roles is to allow animals to experience love because in the harsh world that ninety nine point nine percent of animals live in it’s kill or be killed it’s being haunted by a line it starving to death eccentric Satcher when we domesticated animals and bring them into our lives dogs and cats being able to see example you suddenly see these animals experiencing love when you see them in the outside world and then in the rulemaking environment they hardly experience asshole so I think human beings actually have the potential and the opportunity to allow the animal kingdom in many many examples to experience love and you can see scuba divers feeding moray eels whole sharks and stroking them now we don’t know who watches going through the mind of that shock will heal at that particular moment and it’s very %HESITATION throughput more facts to suggest that they are feeling now but they sent you behave the same way I do they lie on their backs and they roll around and they look extremely contented so I’ve always felt with privileged in that we could increase the amount of love that the animal kingdom experiences and what to do the exact opposite yeah absolutely yeah and I haven’t heard the idea before that’s really interesting but as you say we’re doing the complete opposite and in most cases %HESITATION so just with my final question then %HESITATION if you can tell me what do you value most and how do you put it into practice I think over the years I’ve come to value the idea that you’ll notice out impress anyone else you have to be comfortable in your own skin and when you realize that it does make life much easier how do I put it into practice I am I try and stay away I try to be very non judgmental I’m not puffy type I make mistakes but I I need to walk through life doing as little damage as I can and helping others as much as I can and I think that is basically what guides me and and I haven’t always been this person one learns overtime but I think that’s where I am now and I hope to be in the future a lot just actually leads me to you because you said you weren’t always this person what was the catalyst for change I would just think the set backs which most people go through in life %HESITATION a it didn’t all happen at once but %HESITATION my parents divorced when I was three so I had very little fall the influence and then my father died when I was very small violent stepfather followed you beat me up real quickly setbacks in life such as divorce not seeing as much my children as I would like to realizing that most people in business allies and cheats and you can’t trust anyone I think just things over a period of time bill top and made me question why things are as they are and is there a different way of doing it and most of the things I prefer I just described all to do with the well being I mean that she my father was a chain smoker so that you could argue is what why he died he had a heart attack and that is linked to smoking %HESITATION alcohol violent stepfather divorce maybe not but it’s all of these things I I think if there’s more well being around people would probably approach life very different and from a much other Asian and %HESITATION I believe well being in the components of it and back to my political social economic model the way the world works should all be towards and considered and thought about by young people at school they shouldn’t just be taught history geography and maths and thrown out into the world and expected to make sense of it they need to understand how everything fits together and that parts in this world I’m sorry I couldn’t agree more and I’ll just add a little sneaky %HESITATION extra question at the end and that’s %HESITATION which value do you think that we all need to practice more %HESITATION I limit to twenty one okay you can you can choose a few but yeah well I. Rodriguez there are many there are many I mean as honesty as loyalty as commitments does love that selflessness I think but I think all of these things flow from a sense of improved well being so what I would how I would out so that is maybe I would say the value is improve our well being because of all the things flow from S. fantastic thank you very much bye thank you and %HESITATION if someone would like to find out a bit more about you %HESITATION work can they find you I think they would find the way my mind works if they wanted to read the book yeah you can always send me a friend request on Facebook I am rebuilding my website save okay white soon but it will be a public speaking focus website but all I I am out there I can be tracks down through social media on where can we find your book it’s available on Amazon would you like just hold it up again so they can see if they are yes it is very go bands pick something in the water on I’ll provide a link as well so and who’s gonna %HESITATION great thank you very much man thank you so that was a lot of fun thanks so if you enjoyed this episode please subscribe so %HESITATION you can you can stay up you can stay up to date %HESITATION with any new episodes released and if you enjoyed this into anything someone else will to %HESITATION please share it %HESITATION until next time thank you very much