Understanding The Stories That Shape Our Lives

Sprout Sweater Episode 16 : The Big Sweat With Dr Ron Lawson

Join Dave Algeo aboard "Sprout 1" and take another journey into your inner world where mind, meaning and metaphor collide.

Episode 16 is a Big Sweat which means Dave is joined by a guest. This time, Dr Ron Lawson joins Dave and shares his expertise in shifting the stories we tell ourselves - about ourselves, others and the world around us - to stories that can help us achieve more of our goals rather than undermine them.

Ron is a creative lecturer and executive coach with a passionate enthusiasm for inspiring and motivating organisations and individuals to achieve their best. Specialising in Leadership development through transformative learning, coaching and narrative reflexive practice, Ron brings creativity to the learning and development process using alternative and arts-based research and teaching. This approach has been proven to enhance adult work-based education, particularly when student’s learning may be limited by traumatic experiences. Ron’s academic research builds upon a varied career as an engineer, police officer, environmental and fisheries inspector and senior operation manager within a global organisation. He believes everyone, regardless of background has the ability to reach their highest potential and positively influence the world through the fulfilment of their purpose, which can be aided by effective coaching and mentoring. Teaching coaching and mentoring to master’s degree level and practising as a master coach Ron is passionate about the moral, ethical and professional development of coaching and mentoring research and practice. You can connect with Ron at ron@ronlawsoninternational.com or via his website ronlawsoninternational.com

Dave Algeo is a writer, coach, trainer and speaker empowering others to live big, by identifying the small but significant things that can transform the life we are living. Join Dave on the good ship 'Sprout1' as we explore the inner galaxy of the human mind, and find the sprouts that make the biggest difference. These are the sprouts you are looking for.

Search for 'Sprout Sweater' in your favourite podcast feed. To find out more about the podcast, and episode show notes at Podcast — Stress(ed) Guru and more about his in-person and online events at www.stressedguru.com. Drop Dave a line at dave@sproutsweater.com to ask questions, offer feedback or suggestions for future podcast content.

Episode 16 Show Notes

The following is a rough draft of the content (not a full transcript - more notes forming the basis of the podcast recording

Hi folks welcome to the sprout sweater the big sweat episodes. As you know from the first one with Geoff Nicholson this is where we spend a bit more time in the episode to dive into particular aspects of wellbeing, resilience and the stories we tell ourselves. With me today is Dr Ron Lawson. 

Dave: Hi Ron how you are doing?

Ron: I’m great Dave, how you doing?

Dave: Cool. I’m good, I’m good. We’ve known each other for a good few years and you were my tormentor or mentor, coach, tutor, wasn’t it on my master the last couple of years in coaching and mentoring. Tormentor is probably a good…

Ron: De-mentor

Dave: Joking aside you played a big part in the last couple of years in particular in relation to the kind of helping me tune in my understanding of the stories we tell ourselves and how that can influence the world which is one of the reasons I wanted to do a deep dive with yourself on that. Do you just want to tell the listeners something about yourself and your background etc.

Ron: Yeah absolutely Dave. Good morning or good afternoon or good evening wherever you are in the world. I’m Ron Lawson. I’m a senior lecturer part-time at the University of Cumbria where I teach coaching and mentoring to master’s degree level. I do have my own coaching practice and covers executive coaching, management coaching, NLP and master practitioner, NLP Timeline Therapy and master hypnosis which is somewhere I never expected to go but I really enjoy that practice. But fundamentally I guess my story is fundamentally I’m an artist and musician that does other stuff. I’m just really lucky that the other stuff is really interesting as well. But I’ve carried that story, Dave, since I’ve been a kid, you know wanting to be a rock star and an artist and here I am many, many years later living the dream. This is how important stories are believe me.

Dave: Yeah now we have had many a conversation about this. Now I know there is a lot in between because you haven’t always been a musician and an artist, or maybe you have that core level but you’ve done other things. What kind of journey have you had that’s led you to almost come back to that.

Ron: Ok well, how long have we got? In a nutshell, the major sort of career changes were when I was at school I really wanted to be an artist and rock star. My dad was an amateur artist Dave, God rest his soul. My elder brother, our David, he’s a drummer in a band. I just wanted to be a drummer like my brother and an artist like my dad. I was so lucky at school I had an opportunity; I was really good at Tech drawing for some strange reason and my Tech drawing teachers father-in-law ran a silversmithing school in Sheffield. I got the opportunity to actually go and do an apprenticeship in silversmithing in Sheffield and I was so excited. I ran home to tell my mam and dad who, I was born really late in the family so it was like living with grandparents really bless them, Ok I’m going to be a silversmith and what does that mean. I’ve got to stop on at school and do A level chemistry for some strange reason to be a silversmith. I was absolutely shocked; it was my first disoriented dilemma Dave. My mum said, ‘Well you’re not, your 16, you’re going to leave school, you’re going to get a job’ and dad agreed with her ‘yes that’s right, you’re going to be a sheet metal worker and you start on Monday’. Wow. Well, that was a big change so you know I had my dreams scuppered and so I became a sheet metal worker and my dad bless him because he was a frustrated artist as well I guess because his dad wouldn’t let him be an artist;  it was sort of history repeating itself to a certain degree. It was really good for me because he said ‘serve your time son then you can do what you want’. I was lucky enough to serve my time in a really, really old traditional sheet metal shop where all my old skills, my first job was making brass, sorry copper lamps for the side of ships. You see them in antique shops now and just gives you an indication of how old I am. Well, here I am x number of years later as an artist I use my sheet metal skills to create big art sculptures, so there you go. It’s funny how even the stories we find ourselves in, real-life stories it was here and now and real when I was 16 can playout for the rest of your life you know. So, I did exactly that. I served my time and then left and joined Northumberland Police and became a police officer and in the ‘life on mars’ and ashes to ashes. Dave, you’ve been there, you know the story. It was fun. It was like living in a film.

Dave: I was just working out because I joined in ’92 so it was on kind of the back end of a lot of that, you know. You would have seen PACE the Police and Criminal Evidence Act come in and things like that or was that just coming in.

Ron: It came in in 1986. I had 2 years and went straight to CID. I had the opportunity to be in a squad before they met with probation I was working with detectives. This is pre-PACE so less restricted shall we say. It was fun. I really enjoyed that and circumstances, I did that for a number of years and left in a fit of temper one day and went back to industry for a short time. The best job in the world on salmon and migratory fish protection that became a WAC bill; watchers which was good fun adding to the richness of my career development story. I really enjoyed that but the money was terrible; the family was getting bigger so I decided I went back to policing. Swallowed my pride and went back and had another good few years again working with detectives, I think there’s a song in there somewhere. In a different station this time in a different area but still within Northumbria police. Again, really enjoyed it. Ended up in an armed siege, only for a short time. I was a hostage in an armed siege which had a back story itself that had a massive impact on my family that I decided enough is enough and I left the police. I went back to the industry again and then realised the one good thing about the police Dave as you know, you deal with everybody. You become skilled in being able to deal with all levels of society. You become skilled in how to speak to people, how to interview people, how to question people. I didn’t realise the benefits of that until I decided to get myself educated. It started off at a local college doing a mock management degree. I found myself in a management position I should mention and I couldn’t speak the language. Speaking all this management jargon and I felt a little bit self-conscious about that so I decided to get myself educated. Got the bug. Became fascinated by organizational development particularly leadership, coaching and leadership and then that set me off on a journey. Just like I used my sheet metal skills in my artwork, in my coaching and mentoring practise I’m still using the interview techniques that I developed all those years ago. So, in nutshell basically, that’s where I’m at. But I think the flavour of what I do and where my learnings taken me, Dave, is to be explored; transform the learning what does that mean. Autoethnography is a methodology to understand who we are and help our clients to understand who they are and who they want to be. Help all that, all of it is tied up in the stories we tell ourselves. Sometimes the stories we tell ourselves aren’t the best stories and we need a better one. I see my role in life apart from playing in a band and my artwork is to help people achieve their highest potential. Basically, helping them to achieve their stories. 

Dave: Brilliant. Thanks for the overview because it’s interesting isn’t it that the stories sometimes get put away when we are kids but they are potentially always there and life gets in the way we do things to make a living, have a family, take on responsibilities, we find ourselves you know buffered the winds of life buffered us in different directions. But this is one of the things I want to explore with you actually because over the last few episodes what I’ve, just in these early episodes particularly the podcasts, we try to sow this idea of the stories we tell ourselves. But also, the fact that we can find ourselves in places in life where we kind of almost turn round and go ‘is this it?’ ‘Is this where I’m at?’ ‘I’m working hard for what?, ‘is this actually what I wanted, is this true to me?’ and its not there are bad elements in our life,  we have all probably had experiences where we’ve got a wonderful life in so many ways and yet there is something not quite right in terms that the fulfilment or something nurturing your soul or however you want to describe it and I know I certainly experience that. That’s been my journey which sounds like yours, is how do rediscover that. I try to sow those seeds. I guess one of the things I was kind of encouraging listeners to think about is have you ever been there? Have you had that ‘is this it’? question. Are there any itches that remain unscratched and how do you work that out and how do you discover that? I remember one of the exercises you talked about early on, is to think about the TV programs or the films or the music or something that you liked as a kid and what could they tell you. I don’t know whether that’s worth picking up I think because for me it’s how do we get - I threw my life. I always describe it as my life was a Lego building and I **explosive noise** and smashed it all up and then had to rebuild it and I’m convinced it’s not the best way to do it. It took me years to rebuild and there was a lot of emotional baggage that came along but if we can just look at our life and think ‘there’s something that I just need to amend or change or just make those small but significant changes, the sprout sized changes’ then we can start to change those things, test and work with them. Part of that is to look back at those early life stories or interests or fascinations. So, I don’t know whether that’s worth picking up on from that exercise because that’s always stuck with me. 

Ron: It’s a great exercise, Dave. It’s not mine. it was shared with me by a coach. It’s really struck me as well because I was asked the question ‘what did you want to be when you were a kid?’ and ‘what was your favourite book or tv program?’ Instantly without giving it any thought Dave, the music came into my head, it will definitely give away my age now but it was the theme song from an old black and white television program about Robinson Crusoe. That was just there this powerful thing. Wow, and I said this to my coach and he said, ‘what does that mean?’ ‘What’s the metaphor there?’ ‘What’s the story?’ ‘How’s that helped to drive or has it helped to drive who you are?’ and I thought, oh my goodness yes it has because I’ve got this innate sense of adventure, terrifying life sometimes. Not that I do anything dangerous just I’m always looking for an adventure and to the point where I’ve always loved being outdoors. Always loved making the most of what you’ve got and the resources around you. The more I looked at it I thought ‘oh my goodness’, Now we weren’t going to have a family business, Dave, I have known you’ve experienced and been down the woods with us. We teach bush practice and survival skills. Oh my goodness unconsciously that passion I had, as soon as I had watched an episode of Robinson Crusoe I was out in the back garden. I was there making dens; I was living my little dream. That story has stayed with me and that sense of adventure just like the story about being a rock star and an artist. These are what drive us. Sometimes we forget, sometimes like the coach did with me bringing it to the fore, I was able to unpick it and understand not just you know I like the idea of being of a hunter but when I unpack that what elements of it did turn me. What parts of my DNA was switched when I think about managing resources, having an adventure you know those types of things. When you do that you think ok then if I take a strengths-based perspective you know, is it good to be adventurous. Well, I think it is. If it’s measured with management of the risk, taking calculated risk rather than just jumping in feet first. That’s helped me to understand that, given me some sort of guidance moving forwards as my story has developed and grown but it’s developing into those small steps as you mentioned. The continuous improvement, small incremental steps that get this done. So our story evolves rather than a big step change. It might seem like big step changes at the time but the reality is the small incremental ones make a sustainable change. Big step changes usually collapse as they do and you get bungeed back to your comfort zone. Whereas if changes are made in small bite sized bits then it sticks with our narrative, our core narrative of who we are then we tend to accept the changing and move with it. I always, that great coaching question that was asked of me, as I did with you and the rest of the guys on your cohort Dave, in all our skitest share what was your favourite TV program as a child.  Yours was Star Trek, you’re testing my memory, this is not a fantastic thing to them; I know we have had these coaching conversations before and when I talk to you I would use as many Star Trek references as I can. When I do you go ‘oh yeah’ you can hear me. But we need to do the same for ourselves don’t we, for our own sort of self-coaching. We need to speak our own language. Let’s be authentic. We don’t have to be what we think social media thinks we should be or what we think social media thinks we should be and doesn’t it’s just a thing. We worry so much about what people think of us when they’re not. They are worrying about what people think of them. So why not just cut through all of those layers and be as authentic as we can think ‘who do I want to be’ ‘ what is my truth’. Let me explain that a little bit because it’s a big statement isn’t it. I absolutely, deeply, passionately believe that everyone is capable of achieving their highest potential whatever that may be. The highest potential now a degree of, everyone can do it all you need to do is create belief. To accept and tell the truth. When I say tell the truth I mean tell the truth that is your story of success. Not your old story. Not that story that’s on a loop ‘oh I can’t do this and I can’t do that’ or I’m a procrastinator or ‘am I this or am I that’, that’s your old stories. Think about the story of who you want to become. You’ll know when it’s the right story because when you tell yourself that story it will resonate through your body like a vibration. If only, and then we start to create that new better alternative story. The more we tell our story because it becomes a belief and that will never happen if we don’t believe it. I want to be a millionaire Dave but if I don’t really believe it in my heart of hearts then won’t happen but if I do believe it… But what is a belief but a story that we have taught ourselves so many times that it becomes our truth. So why not create a better story and tell ourselves it so many times in so many different ways to everyone who’s listening and we start to believe it. There’re things that if our goal is perhaps a little bit too big for us as in it might not be physically able to do to win the Olympics in a particular sport because of our size, gender or whatever, then it would never be believable. We need to tell ourselves a story that is believable but push the boundaries a little bit with some reference that we can believe in. You find, or I’ve found over the years of researching personal and professional development there is a period particularly in sort of the ‘90s I think where it was all about the upsurge of life coaches telling us to live the dream. Imagine and visualize yourself. Create a vision board. Be there in the future. They would wind you up, I’m not going to mention names but he used to be on the telly a lot. Really imagine yourself be yourself fit and like happy, the right size and the right dress size. Look in the mirror and see yourself looking fantastic, feeling fantastic, living your dream driving that particular car or steering that particular yacht, or flying that particular aeroplane or whatever it is then just take a moment, turn round and look how you got there. Then all you have to do is follow those sequences to get where you want to be. It’s very prescriptive but its too restrictive and a bit potentially unbelievable because your ego, that little voice in your head goes ‘wait for me though’ you’re saying to yourself now ‘wait a minute Ron I haven’t got a little voice in my head’, or that’s your little voice right it becomes too prescriptive. To get that I had to get this fantastic executive job. So, what happens if you don’t get that executive job. Your ego says ‘see told you so’ and it just shatters like a dropped glass. Doesn’t get anywhere. A much better way of doing it Dave rather than just saying ‘be strong he’s over there I know when to go get it’ is to create a smaller transition story that I have to get to where you want to be in those smaller, impactive, sequential steps that is less prescriptive. So rather than see it like ‘I’ve got to do this that or the other’ say ‘wouldn’t it be nice if this happened or something like it’ or ‘and wouldn’t it be fantastic if ..’  and it works like that and you get frenzy. Again I’m getting into a really good emotional state about your desired outcomes but it’s not too prescriptive. It’s not all or nothing so you don’t get the executive job it doesn’t shatter your direction just means what else can I sit. So, what becomes immediately apparent is that you allow yourself to start to see opportunities that you wouldn’t normally have seen before. See an opportunity then we can focus on it and when we can focus on it we can go for it. When I first started doing a lot of my research and the use of storytelling in coaching and mentoring I really threw myself into it. I was giving talks around the world at different conferences it was fantastic. I probably disappeared neo neural a little bit and because when you are at a conference you have to prove yourself. You got to support what you’re saying with rigour and fight. So I tended to talk a lot about this in academic terms. I remember approaching a guy who was a manufacturing manager in the Midlands and using all the academic words, I’m not even going to repeat them now because I want to lose them from my vocabulary completely because I sounded really clever. I really did sound really clever and he said ‘wait a minute Ron you’re telling me I’ve got to get over myself’ I don’t mean get over yourself pull yourself together it’s getting over your limiting beliefs. Getting over that old story that doesn’t serve you anymore. ‘You’re telling me to get over myself, to get focused on what I really want’, excuse the accent ‘and then get on with it’. And I said ‘that’s exactly it’. He said ‘Well fooking say so then’. From that point, I try to keep it as simple as I possibly can and those 3 phases that achieving the lifestyle and the life that we want is we have got to get over ourselves. It will be a challenge and it will be a bit scary but it is about knowledge. It’s about self-awareness and understanding who we are and why we do what we do. What is our identity, our personal and our professional identity. When we can absolutely recognize who we are and get over those beliefs then we can start to see things those opportunities. Because up until that point our limiting police won’t even allow us to go there let alone imagine what the potential could be. If we want to reach our highest potential we’ve got to first imagine it and believe it. Then think about what does it like, what does it feel like, what does it taste like. Then we can start to create a story that’s pulling us in that direction. 

Dave: There’s loads. We could be on for hours here. Couple of things I wanted to pick up on and kind of develop because there are loads I want to explore. You mention about the development of the story and if you, I can’t remember the exact words, but you said something like if it’s too big a leap you can crash about you and you end up like a bungee coming back I think was the phrase. What sprang to mind there was a bit like a novelist. The books I love are where they bring in threads and develop them and then there’s an event but it’s the development on the way. I think we are talking stories so we are going to totally immerse ourselves in this, this conversation but the idea is that we can have these big dreams. Like a kid, I wanna be a brain surgeon all that kind of stuff you know. We have all sorts of different dreams but what does it say about, what is that actually saying about what you want. One of the underlying drivers and those developing the plot and the stories as we start to shift are us working that out. If we are doing it as you say aware, aware of what we are doing rather than being guided by the pressures of just having to make a living and all that. I’m not minimizing that because that took me a long time, years to unpick some of the previous decisions around financial you know getting myself committed to mortgages, loans etc. Stuck in the job I didn’t want to do because of the commitments, all of that. Once we start unpicking, the fun, the adventure is in letting that development unfold and I had a tendency, I know in the past of being all or nothing and having like ‘oh I would love to have that four-hour workweek that Tim Ferris wrote about’ and I love that book. But there’s a massive leap isn’t there from where you are which is where I was working full-time shifts after taking a career break to run my business, falling on my backside, coming back full-time shifts and running a business and trying to think how am I going to get there what am I going to do. As I’ve developed I’ve realized the adventure is happening now not when I get to that four-hour workweek or whatever. And actually, the four-hour workweek is, it’s a statement or a metaphor for trying to just build in more of what I enjoy in life and shape life and do less of what I don’t. There’s always stuff that you kind of have to do in order to but that to me is kind of I guess one of the essences of how do you develop the story so that you’re not always looking at the end. You don’t read a book to get to the end. You read, yes you want to find out what happens. It’s like a piece of music is it Allan Watts that says ‘you don’t listen to a piece of music to get to the end you want to enjoy it as you go’. So incrementally developing that by firstly recognizing the stories that you have that are limiting, that are undermining and keep coming back and a gnarly stories that keep coming back ‘who am I to think that I’m a born warrior’ you those kinds of things. Get over that. I use the 3 phrases of get your head back which is get your head back from all the stresses and the pressures and the stuff do to ourselves. Get your shit together which is just get organized and clearer about what you want to do and where you want to be and productive and focus and then get life back on your terms which is where you start that shift. So, I get what you’re saying about the academic language. It’s really good when you’re writing a masters dissertation or studying but you want to bring it down to plain English. Actually for me in my own head to understand. Not sure where I’m going with the point but I think it’s kind of that idea of the stories, the adventures and the unfolding as you start to discover and explore and when you are holding something likely now those transitional stories are actually that’s where the fun is. Where the enjoyment is, the discovery.

Ron: I totally agree with you, Dave. It is a balance, a balancing act. It’s about identifying a direction you want to go in more than anything else. If you’ve got a direction you’ve got a destination. There’s only one destination but we want to do it on our terms as you’ve said. So, I think once we can establish where you want to go and think does that fit with who I am and resonate with you and that becomes your identity who you are. Not necessarily your old identity but perhaps the new identity that you want to become. Then whilst you’ve established that then let go of it. There will need to be a moment, you will absolutely be in the moment and be guided. So, know I wanna be but all our little guidance system. If the metaphor, if the direction is our true North then you know we need to be checking our compass all the time to keep that. Know that that’s life but enjoy the little variations in the work ‘Oh, that’s interesting and your right your back on track now’ and that is the process but it is all about living in the now. In the present moment in time. That’s where the absolute joy is because if we were worrying about the future is just causing anxiety. Worrying about the past again causes anxiety because we don’t want that to happen again. It’s either we are away from or moving towards. It’s relatively moving towards something that we want to go for more than where we are at because we have started that journey.

Dave: I guess I’m kind of thinking along the lines of anybody who might be listening who is thinking what does this mean to me. I’ve experienced that feeling of that there is something else that I want to be doing or experiencing or there’s a fulfilment gap if you like. Where do we start? Where do they start in that journey? How do they kind of start to allow themselves to explore. Any suggestions on that? The reason I ask that is because being authentic to yourself it’s a bit of a buzzword that’s now getting overused but I think it’s very true but it’s also being true to yourself. I didn’t know who I was. I spent so much of my life being somebody else that I thought I had to be but I never really got to know who I was. So, I think many of us are coming to a point where they think ‘what does that actually mean and how do I find that out?’

Ron: Let’s look back to how our ancestors did it. When I started my research around that particular point, how does this work, how can our identities change, how can our stories dictate who we are and who has control over that story. Are we living our own authentic story or are we living someone else’s stories to satisfy their expectations? I didn’t expect my research to take me down a logical route but it did and part of the turn of the last century there was a guy called Arnold Van Gennep who did a lot of research around rights of passage with so-called primitive cultures. So-called because I don’t think they were that primitive, to be honest. What he identified when he was looking at Native Americans or Innuits or Aborigines in Australia was these rights of passage had three phases to them. No surprise that the current literature around change management usually has a three-phase change program. My little one there get over yourself, get focused on what you want but yours has got three. It’s inbuilt into our DNA. What happened in, what was common shall we say to all of the cultures that Van Gennep studied was these three phases. The first phases he described as divestiture. What that means is you step away from the normality of what you’re currently, you need to step out of the current story. Then the next phase is what he called, lets use an example to illustrate that. If we take one of those cultures say native Americans most people are familiar with the American culture from what we have seen on the television, in films and stuff. Just imagine a young Indian boy to become a brave. Completely different identity. It’s a typical rite of passage no matter what your gender or what your culture is. You go from being an adolescent to an adult. What Van Gennep identified with all these cultures was that there was a change in normality when it was coming up to the time for that change. Like the elders of the tribe would stop speaking to that child in a certain way. There was preparations starting. There was going to be a big party in a weeks’ time. There was something in the air, there was going to be a change and there was a suspension of normality. A suspension of the normal life around that particular individual. The second phase is where that individual would go off into the wilderness, I’m not suggesting that everybody goes off into the wilderness, or 4-5 days on a vision quest because it’s called a vision quest in Native American culture. They would go off alone to meditate, to reflect with not much to eat. Maybe a bit of beef jerky and some strange mushrooms perhaps or strange tobacco even. But they would starve themselves and get into a deep meditative state because of that and they would have dreams. They would meet their medicine animal and they would dream about who they wanted to become. So they‘ve got autonomy over their new story. I’m going to call this the liminal stage. A stage between two identities. This can be a scary place to be if you don’t know who you are and you let go of your own stories before the new story begins because you’re in a period of creativity where you’re creating that new story. The final stage I’m going to call it re-investiture was where you would come back the now greyer would come back into the tribe. Sit around the campfire with everyone else and he would collect, perhaps if the medicine animal had been a bear, an eagle, a wolf, he would have collected or created an artefact; a tooth, a claw and that becomes his medicine. He’ll come back and share his medicine, share the story and literally tell everybody who he now is. Everyone respectfully accepted that story. Remember what is a belief but the story believe in we’ve told so many times and then that’s its transition, a rite of passage. That’s something I think we have lost in our western world. I think there are some rites of passage from being an apprentice to becoming a tradesman but we have lost that now. How many times have we changed what jobs and roles. One time there used to be a transition from school into a job. Then you were in a job for life and then you’d transition from your job, well in between your transition into being married. Your transition into having a family but then you’d transition into retirement.  Now we can have God knows how many jobs even within the same organization but then each one do we actually say ‘excuse me whilst I’m just going off for 5 days’.

Dave: You can imagine how that would go down wouldn’t you.

Ron: Absolutely. Wouldn’t it be fantastic if we

Dave: I’m not going to sort of dive into some of the reading I did around this because I would like to get a hold of some of the people like Ibra who talked about identity playing and whatever. I think it’s the idea of the shifting from the divestiture from the old identity to the new and the bit in the middle is liminos. I’ve heard it called liminal space. That kind of gap between the two. You know whether you are going through a big change at work, whether it’s promotion or redundancy, something where you’ve just found yourself by design or not, having to deal with a different set of circumstances. Retirement, I’ve worked with a couple of headteachers who were headteachers for a lot and have struggled with that retirement process of who am I.  I’ve had to work through that and at times it was a struggle because there were the old stories that were very limiting ‘who do you think you are a man you’re just a this’ and those limiting stories have wrapped up in that old identity. Now so when we talk about identity because this is the thing I think we are talking about concepts which if at first glance when your going through this is this it kind of disorientating dilemma that you mentioned earlier, where you just kind of feel like somethings missing or something not quite right. You may not be thinking about it as deeply because who I say am the stories I’m telling myself aren’t serving me anymore I haven’t quite picked up one of those early stories as a child that I really want to run with now and play with. Like you with the band. You were saying that you had just had your first performance in your new band The Bare Bones and sat there and your eyes light up about it. They may not be thinking about that but it’s kind of getting that connection between those feelings, that sense of ‘is this what I’m working hard for’ and ‘what about me who am I’. there’s the question I suppose it is an identity question ‘who am I, who am I anymore’. How do we translate that into nowadays because your right, well you could try it but you could say to your boss I’m going off for a 5-day spirit quest or whatever. It’s how do we do that how do we translate that into now, the lives that we are living now. These fast-paced ever-changing lives where so many pressures and demands on us. 

Rob: Good point Dave and we’ve got to be real. Wouldn’t it be great if we could disappear off into the woods but we can’t. So, I think the best thing to do is acknowledge what that feeling is. Sometimes it manifests in that it didn’t become dissatisfied in your current role and become dissatisfied with something you’ve got to distance within you. An incongruous, here’s another academic word - not feeling good about what you’re doing. If you recognize that could be just an internal driver, unconscious mind saying look change we need to move?. Next Stage.  This is the next chapter of your autobiography. This is the next chapter of who you want to be. If we can recognize that and think it’s ok I’m not broken, there’s nothing wrong, I’m ok it’s just I’m ready for a change but what that change is I’m not quite sure. What helped me? I’ll tell you this story. It was a while ago I was experiencing that need to change and becoming dissatisfied with everything. A bit choked by the world. That it isn’t me really but that’s the way I was feeling. I love books as you know.  I love art in Waterstones in Sunderland, the shop. I would often with the wife go in there for a cup of coffee and I would always go over to the bookshelf that was all about the art books. Bright shiny books. Colourful books on artists, painting, sculpture. Every time I would pick up this dull brown book. Don’t know why I picked that one because it wasn’t shiny and it wasn’t colourful. I’d pick it out and I’d flick through it and it was alright. No pictures. And put it back. It wasn’t just in Sunderland it was everywhere else in every other book shop I’d go into. But I finally picked it up in Waterstones in Sunderland and my wife said and I went ‘ah I’m sick of picking this bloody book up. There’s no pictures in it’. She said ‘why don’t you just bloody buy it and read it’. I think she was just a bit sick of me being bad-tempered, dissatisfied with everything. It was called the Artists Way by Julia Cameron. It was a 12-week course on how to satisfy the inner artist, your inner self. Be Creative.  One of the tools that was in there was the tool that helped me get through what helped me to create and get through my own personal living space, Dave. An activity called what Julia Cameron called, morning painters. The task was to get up first thing in the morning and before you do anything else get an exercise book and write 3- or 4-pages free writing. Put my pen down then don’t stop for 3 or 4 pages and just get everything out there. And my goodness did I resist doing that. But you’ve got to write everything down. Oh my God, I can’t believe you’re writing this down and you just don’t stop. Everything comes out. It’s like everything that your ego or your voice is telling you comes out onto the paper and you can recognize it for what it is. You can recognize the resistance, you can recognize all sorts of different weird and wonderful emotions coming out onto the pages. After a while, if you persist with it starts to become really effective. Not only are you getting what she calls ‘blurts’ which is like attacking yourself, beating yourself up but because you’ve written it down it’s out of your head it’s out the way. All of a sudden little nuggets of ideas start presenting itself. When you recognize them for what that are particularly you’ll recognize those that will resonate with who you really are. It’s not about just categorizing who you are and who you want to be, what profession you want to be, just go with the feeling. So, every time I was writing about art or writing about coaching ideas or writing about music I got a buzz so I knew that those things meant something to me. That’s the unconscious mind doesn’t communicate with you through words it communicates through your body. You get that vibration that throws you, you know something is right and yet when you write something down like you’re beating yourself up you feel crap about it. You feel like your readings on your compass, aren’t they. When you’ve got that ‘Ooo that would be great’ that means your on track so let’s think about that for a while and let’s explore that a little bit more deeply. So when the morning pages are over what I would do maybe later on in the day, work permitting or in the evening I would think ‘that was a great idea what was that again. I would thumble through and get my notes out again and then say ok let’s explore this a little bit more and do me writer ’0o wouldn’t it be nice just to pose a little story about what that might look like, feel like, smell like’. And explore that in a little bit more depth and then you start to see opportunities. It’s like a little miracle because it’s them opportunities start popping up all over the place. It’s not as if they’ve not been there before it’s just you’ve never allowed yourself to see them before. In doing those pages that enabled me to, it was a bit like going off into the world by myself I didn’t shout at anybody else. I was in my own little wilderness, in the dining room or the bedroom whatever. Just contemplating different things and letting whatever it was in my head get out onto the pages. And then from that, you can start to identify what means something to you. Your value set. It matches your values, it matches your belief, it matches who you are. So, you can’t get any more authentic than that Dave. When you’ve got that you start to become a little more dissatisfied even more because you go ‘well that’s what I want why can’t I have that’ so that’s fine. IF you want that what will it look like. Then you’d start to think ok you can do a little bit of optioneering then if you’re doing it yourself. Or if you’re working with a coach you can share it with your coach and say ok let’s do some optioneering around how can I achieve, what do I need to do to be able to make those things happen. Then tell the story, I’ll tell the story. If you want to go before I joined the band I treat myself and treat my wife. We went out and bought my wife a nice car. We needed one because ours was wrecked. I bought my wife a nice car and bought myself a van Dave. I’ve never liked Berlingo van but thought yeah this is great for my artwork, for my sculptures. Then one Friday morning, not too long ago I said to my wife ‘do you know what I’d like to be in a band again. I’ve got my drum kit, this van would be ideal for getting to gigs and stuff’. She said ‘well if you did what type of band would you be in?. She’s a great coach Margaret as you know, good coaching question that isn’t it. What would it be like? I said I guess because my cousin is a bass player in a band; a covers band you know going to the pubs and just having a good time playing their own versions of and covers of songs everybody knows. I said ‘I like our Gavin’s perhaps’.  This is not miraculous but something happened because on the Saturday morning I got a phone call off our Gavin saying ‘ Ron I need a bit of business advice. I’m not very committed, it’s holding us back a little bit what do you think we should do? We need to start looking for a new drummer’. Der. You know a few conversations later and then I’m in the band and rehearsing online because we are in covid and we had our first gig on Friday night and it was amazing. And you could say that’s law of attraction, it’s just a miracle. It’s not. It’s just these opportunities present themselves all the time but had I put that phone call on the Saturday morning and I hadn’t been thinking about who I am, what I want to do next in my next chapter then I wouldn’t have seen it as an opportunity I would have missed it completely. 

Dave:  Yeah. I think that is a great example. You mentioned a couple of things there. A couple of things one is that we need to kind of that divestiture that you mentioned with Van Gennep work. It’s almost like the morning pages because Julia Cameron’s twelve-week course on The Artists Way isn’t it. I mean I’ve done it and done it twice now actually following your suggestion. The morning, I’ve done the program and really, really incredibly valuable and I would say especially for those that feel like there’s a creative element that you want to explore and an itch to scratch. But the morning pages I found really, really transformational in that sense. But that divestiture element that you talked about with Van Gennep is almost like that’s what the morning pages are for. Initially if not, well I would say initially because there are other things that come out of it but getting those old stories out, getting them onto paper, recognizing them and seeing how the ‘blurt’ as you call them how you’re holding yourself back and stopping and blocking seeing those things. I look back now and I know there’s times when there have been opportunities come along and I’ve only seen them when I’ve looked back and I’ve missed them because my head was in the old stories. The old limiting stories of ‘who am I to think..’, ‘I’m not ready, I’ll do that later when I’ve got my life in order’ or ‘when I’ve done this’. Because I’m a bit of a control freak, I like to be organized and that’s one of my big lessons how do I let go and go with an opportunity rather than feeling like I’ll do that when I’m organized and sorted. But recognizing that, it’s a bit of a divesture you’re getting it out of your head and into that paper and I found that really, really beneficial. The thing that strikes me is that two things with this in the practical sense if you are experiencing these feelings of ‘is this it and what’s it about’ then firstly the answer I guess is no there is a lot more. Or you could look at things and see more you know where your life is so the answer is there is more. Giving yourself permission to think differently to challenge that but there is work involved as well. There is about making some space in that because it takes discipline and time to do that one practice and I  would say that’s making a sprout sized choice. I’m going to spend 15 to 20 minutes or 15 minutes to half an hour every day. For me, it was most days. Just doing that, even the practice of the 3 or 4 pages of whatever’s there and sometimes it’s like want to write this, I don’t know what to write, its just bollocks. All that kind of stuff but letting it just keep going. That one thing done consistently led to so many different things for me and recognition. But we all have to I guess recognize that whatever change we want to do there’s going to be work. There’s going to be some commitment and that’s the challenge isn’t it when your life is so full on your heads battered anyway where do you start. I guess where I talk about to get your head back what’s the first thing you can do. It might be improving your sleep or it might be do that one practice around journaling just to start to recognize that thinking but knowing that there has to be work. You were saying there these opportunities do come along but you’ve got to be telling yourself the right story or in the right place to go ‘just go with that man’ or ‘have a go’ and learn as you go. I think there is something very powerful in that recognizing that we need to let go of those old stories. Then there’s the bit in the middle that isn’t there before we start to take on the new identity, that kind of liminal space. One of the things that always struck me when you talk about it it can be very disorientating, distressing if it’s thrust upon you for the first time. There’s all sorts of feelings of angstness and you want to go back to the safe zone. I know that I’ve had that experience when I’ve made my big rash decisions. I’ve wanted to crawl back to what I was doing before because it was known and comfortable. It wasn’t necessarily ideal but as you start to see that process is natural you are not broken as you said, you can start to sense there is opportunity and excitement in there. And you’ve said, it’s always stuck with me, that you get excited when that feeling comes because that disorientating feeling is bringing some potentially some new ways of looking at things. New stories challenging the old to then take on some new things. That for me is a work in progress because I’m still working on it myself but isn’t that a great way to look at it. 

Ron: You can only look at it in the now Dave when you’re like that. Bang on. When I’ve having a disorientating dilemma or that dissatisfaction, that internal drive to do some even if I’m resisting it and I know I’m having to do something and I don’t want to do it. Its I think I’ve been through the cycle so many times now and it is a sickly process.  I get excited because I don’t know what’s coming but you’ve got to be able to embrace that ambiguity and not run. But knowing that if I’m fair and good about it I know it’s going to be something good. It might be challenging and might need a little more work and I might need to upskill in this area or upskill in that area, or I might not have to not spend so much time with that person or might leave employment even but if it’s for the right reason and it moves you towards the destination that you want to go in then we’ve got to embrace it. Not being rash but there’s an ecology to change Dave. What I mean by that is when we change, we move aside the ethics and systems because you make a small change in a system and the rest of the system has to adapt to achieve that equilibrium again. The workplace is a system but so is your family; a system of friends and colleagues and peers. So when we change that might not go down very well with some other people. ‘Come on Dave your being a bit selfish there aren’t you wanting to change, you know that’s impacting on me now you wanting to change’. All of a sudden it’s not just about you it’s about other people as well. You make choice then are you going to go with the change or are we going to comprise. There is ways around things or do we need to convince somebody why we are changing or do we just let them know.

Dave: Yeah I think in one of the episodes I’ve recorded is I’m talking about midlife crisis mismanagement. Now I take to task the phrase midlife crisis but I think part of it is that if we are doing this consciously and in small ways examining and looking at areas of our life, we are more likely to make a constructive decision that’s ethically based. We consider all of our options, our relationships and the ecology as opposed to denying that there’s some dissatisfaction there. There’s some stories starting. There’s some small voice that’s saying ‘this is not the way it is’ and letting it build letting the pressure build. It’s a bit like a volcano. It erupts rather than kind of the small changes and what have you. For me, the midlife crisis mismanagement idea is that if we don’t pay attention to these smaller stories or these smaller signals, these feelings honestly and openly earlier they tend to get stronger and you get greater feelings of dissatisfaction, more anxiety and you can end up being like the elastic band, stretched too far it snaps. It can create a catastrophic in crisis can’t it at that end. It’s like how do we bring it back from that and the first thing is to recognize those feelings. You talk about the deep subconscious talks in feelings. The trouble with feelings is we are kind of conditioned to not value them are we and push them down ‘just wind your neck in’, ‘sort it out’, ‘just get on with life and sort it out’. But they are not going to go away unless we actually recognize them. And the feeling might just be because you’ve had a bad day but if we are open and honest and confront it right we’ve got a chance; a bit like a pressure cooker we have let that steam out but if we let it build there is a bigger possibility of the thing going to blow – Bang you know.

Ron: I think for somebody who’s just starting out on that change in the journey I think the morning pages as they grow plain just get it out and then explore it. I would strongly recommend that technique just to consider where you are at, where you want to be to get that ambition back and achieve your highest potential. We might need a different story but recognizing that if we’ve got a new story we’ve got to step away from the old one.

Dave: I guess the bit about the morning pages is that it’s a safe place so long as you don’t share it with anybody, that’s such a golden rule that it doesn’t get shared with anybody or it’s not accessible or ever could be accessible. It’s only on paper so you know you don’t have to do anything about it. The reality is once you start you can make sense of things, a bit more coherent around some of these things. What’s the harm of putting it out there on a piece of paper or on a word document, however you want to do it. I certainly think there is some value in that for just for clearing the head. I often talk about what’s on your mind has your mind and if you’ve got a lot of these feelings bubbling away no matter how much you push them down they’ve still got you. So getting them out and getting them onto paper is a great approach. I’m conscious of time and thank you for giving us all your time. The one thing I wanted to highlight was you talked about the right to passage and I know your work on my masters we did part of this as a transformational coaching module where we did the creating an artefact process. Your work around your doctorate work was around how to leverage a reflective process through creating an artefact in helping us to identify those stories and shift across to new stories. I know from my personal experience over the masters when we did that module that was a massively impactful experience. Creating the artefact that I did and then presenting it almost like that sitting around the campfire to the rest of the group. We were in a classroom. It was a very, very powerful process wasn’t it I found personally but I know that is something you have done a lot of work on.

Ron: It’s really, really powerful Dave. Basically, what it is when we think we think in certain ways. We have predefined, defined ways of thinking and learning. We have been taught how to learn at school. We’ve been taught how to learn by our parents, our siblings, peers etc. so when we look at a problem or when something happens we see it through a particular learning lens. It’s our perception, our assumptions are based around it that’s how we look at something. When we look at something, in the same way, all the time we are just getting a one-dimensional look at it. What I encourage people to do in deep critical self-reflection when they are considering something that’s happened and reflect it, to be a little bit more reflexive at the moment by let’s look at it from an alternative perspective. But that’s easier said than done isn’t it because this is who I am I want to break it down and all of that whatever defines how you’ve got a problem whichever way you’ve been taught to learn. But from a transforming learning perspective, we need to challenge our critical self, critically self-reflect on our assumptions. Our assumptions a defining how we look at something. What I’ve found in my research because I’m an artist I went with this and created a storytelling workshop for people and students, delegates and professionals. When they’ve got this critical incident happened that they want to unpick a bit further to get some learning from it, tell it in their stories. There are three parts to this. The first is tell it, write down in no more than 500 words which is two sides of A4 hopefully if you’re typing it, it might be three or four pages of handwritten notes but right down your version of what happened. No holds barred. Nobody else is going to read it this is just your rant. It’s like ‘can’t believe what’s happened at work today….’ and you write it down. No editing. Just the story you would tell your best mate in the pub or you’d tell your partner or your wife or husband, whoever. This is your rant; this is your opportunity to get it down on paper. The next stage is ok let’s shift if there is someone else involved or a key witness, somebody else who saw what happened you write their story, the version of the story you imagine. This is a crucial part; some people get it straight away and they go ‘ah alright ok I understand why this person behaved in a certain way’ but others use it as an opportunity to reinforce their first story. And that normally is about as far as anybody would go in their heads and replaying their stories. If I asked them to replay their stories from someone else’s perspective they would just basically reframe their own story. But the key thing that seemed to work with the artefacts and what I mean by an artefact Dave is getting somebody to retell that story using an artistic medium of their choice. That could be writing a poem, making a sculpture, drawing a picture, painting a painting, making a collage whatever it is that describes that story not necessarily in purely the written work unless it’s a poem are you with me. It engages a different part of your brain and moves to the right side of your brain as opposed to your left. Your left controls your rational thought and numbers and the rest of it. Your right side in theory is more special, more intuitive, more creative. When people do that and particularly I send people off to do that Dave as you know. Basically what I’m doing is creating a liminal space for them to go off into the wilderness or home; getting their craft kit together and making whatever it is or designing a piece of interpretive dance, I don’t care what it is as long as it’s artistic and it’s telling a story in a different way. What I’ve found is when people come back as you mentioned they then share that artefact and tell the story from their big shift patterns. Because armed with all that extra deception and the shift in positioning you would never normally look at these from this perspective. It’s like looking around the corner and you go ‘ah I missed that’ and then you’ve got enough knowledge and self-awareness to really challenge your assumptions. I’ll do you a little example. I think I’ve shared this example with you Dave in class. A set of delegates, the company that shall remain nameless but you might guess what it is. A major nuclear facility in the Northwest talking about the concept of liminality, transforming reflection and seeing things from an alternative perspective. The manager who was seen as a hardnosed, in your face, an authoritarian manager. Went away came back with this artefact which was a black ball that looked like a football, those little facets, made out of cardboard, he called it the dark star. It was a powerful piece and written in silver pen on each of the facets was a word that described authority. Tell, directive, all of these things that sorted of summed up how he thought people saw him as this dark star. There were a few people who worked for him in the same course, on the same cohort as well and you could see their faces going ‘yeah, yeah that’s him’. It was really clever how he presented it because he talked about those aspects of leadership, authoritarian leadership with the vocabulary and the impression and forcefulness. Then he threw the ball this dark star at one of his employees. Dramatic. And it broke into pieces. And as it broke into pieces inside was a big chocolate ball full of sweets. Which was a big surprise to everybody. It was like an easter egg full of smarties or whatever and Haribo’s. And then he then changed his demeanour and said look I am soft inside and shared the sweets out.  But the metaphor of that there was a massive shift in his understanding but even more so was a massive shift because he then went on to explain why he thought he might be projecting this dark star personality. This Darth Vador manager to everyone when in reality that’s not who he really was. In telling that story I’ve spoken to him since and in telling that story he felt really vulnerable but it made so much sense to him that he then had to consider and work with how can he project that inner self. That authentic self rather than having to pretend to be this hardnosed manager. Just in creating an artefact and telling us how powerful was that?

Dave:  I’m conscious of obviously time here but just to kind of wrap up my experience because I know I bought into, I buy into this idea that we tell ourselves stories and that we need to shape our stories so that we don’t hold ourselves back and we move that. But it wasn’t until we did that exercise that I really believed it in the sense of deeper down. I was very because I operate in a very cognitive rational level and not really much in touch with feelings and feelings for me were, they are things that are still a work in progress to connect with. It wasn’t until I stood up and presented my video that something happened and I saw the artefact as a different aspect of me. I can’t describe it because all the while I enjoyed creating it; it was a video to music Creep, Radiohead’s Creep. Just a few images that were representing my life, relationship with dad and all that kind of stuff. I enjoyed the creative process. It was very cathartic, it was very reflective. But you mentioned something like he saw something after presenting it about himself which he couldn’t then unsee. It was like when I presented that I saw something about myself in that that I wouldn’t have done if I hadn’t presented the video. If I would have stopped at just creating the video I would have had one journey but it was presenting it and telling it that it had some shift and for me, the learning was to connect more with emotional side because you spend too long shoving it down. That’s still a work in progress. But it’s very difficult to describe until you experience it because I’m very much in my head, this is how I’ve lived my life and my journey now is to tap into the other side the feelings and emotions and what they are telling me and learning to let go of control. Control was always a way to do rational, to do this A, B, C. Letting go of those things is scary. But that was a turning point where I realized there is more to this. It’s not just knowing that there’s more. As in I’ve read it in a book or I’ve read about this, actually experiencing it. That’s where the shift is in an exercise like that. Now there is still work to be done after that. It’s not sort of a magical solution but it’s a big powerful tool or process that I think we can use. I was listening to a podcast the other day where they were talking about culture, practices and rituals that are handed down and people forget hundred of years why they are doing something. They just know there’s wisdom in it; whether it’s processing food or just a ritual process they know there’s something powerful in it but they’ve lost the reason why. We’ve lost the processes and the rituals now so we haven’t got the why. So kind of rediscovering it we are kind of working our way right back aren’t we with that.

Ron: Sometimes we can trigger it. Getting back to my Robinson Crusoe days and what we are doing now in bush practice survival skills. Last week we had a lot of Nissan managers down to us doing some leadership development and reflective practice. Just being in that environment triggers some innate, some parts of our DNA switched on and go ‘ok I am now my primitive self’ you know that DNA that’s been switched back on. When we start talking about stories around the campfire it really is a story around the campfire. It just flows out of people. And the opportunity to be reflective and consider who we are in their case consider who we are as managers and in their development processes. We’re creating that traditional liminal space of being out in the wilderness. Even if that’s just going out for a walk after you’ve done your morning pages. Go out into the open air and listen to the birds. Feel the warmth of the sun or the rain on your back whatever it is but just experience be in it.  We can only do that deep, deep reflection in the moment Dave, unfettered unedited. Some of the best stories in the world, I know you like your literature but they started out as drafts in someone’s head. Yes, they’ve been polished and been refined and that will come later. Think about ourselves as a draft. Do that go through that creative process first. Just play with the identity. Play with ourselves as a character. If we have a character, been a character in our story so far we want to be a character in our own story moving forward in the next chapter of our autobiography how we want our character to be. If we want to be that character what plot would serve us well in the development of that character. Yes, there is going to be challenges ahead but the hero stories are how we get over those challenges. That’s our American Hollywood happy ending for God’s sake. You don’t have to wait till then, living your dream isn’t waiting for it to happen. Living your dream is making it happen and this is all part of the process. The challenges are part of the process. So if you think to yourself ‘who am I?’, ‘what am I doing?’, ‘ I’m not happy with what I’m doing I need to change’ that’s part of the dream if you recognize it as such. It’s just part of it and that should be the trigger of a drive or a push to make the next, to do the next activities. Start doing your morning pages. Start writing it down. Create an artefact. Get a coach. Get somebody to like in these primitive cultures you know the Shamon or the witch doctors and take the next steps.

Dave: I think that’s a good place to kind of wrap it up as well Ron. It’s about not ignoring those feelings. Not dismissing them as there’s something wrong with you or your being selfish. It’s about just recognizing that and reflecting on those feelings and just allowing yourself to start that journey. The whole point of seeing it as the stories is because stories for some reason are just so powerful throughout culture, throughout human history but seeing them stories can almost give us permission to hold them in hand and look at them like that artefact and then see what we can change about it. I love the power of that. I think there are some great tips in there but there is also some real fruit for thought for people to go forward with. We may have blown a few minds and may have turned a few people off who knows but I think the point is to recognize that if you are in a place where you feeling something is not quite right or that disorientating dilemma that’s not you broken and there is something that you could explore in there. There’s some excitement or call to adventure. 

Ron: I like that, call to adventure. To stretch your metaphor a little bit more, unpick it and take it back a while, we do want to do it in small sprout sized bits but we’ve got to sow the seeds for the sprouts in the first place. 

Dave: I often think look for the seeds. Look for those little signs because there almost like the seeds. There’s something and if you just let it grow rather than stifle it down, let it grow naturally then it could be something really amazing or exciting or whatever who knows. We’re talking plants now. That’s a wrap. So, Ron thank you for your time its been brilliant and we’ve gone over the time I was expecting but from my point of view got so much out of it and hopefully, listeners have as well. Picking up and things to think about if they want to get in touch with you I will put some links and information in the show notes but where can they get a hold of you or learn more about you or work and what you do etc. 

Ron: On my website, ronlawsoninternational.com  but my email for some strange reason isn’t working on there so I do have an alternative email of ronlawsonfineart@gmail.com which is my sort of backup, by all means, drop me a line or come through you, Dave.

Dave: Yeah, dave@stressedguru.com but you’ll find all the information and show notes at sproutsweater.com and check that out and let us know if there’s is any questions or thoughts that have arisen from this because obviously, we can pick those up in future episodes. I’m hoping I might get Ron back on at some point maybe field some of those but also just to explore some more because there is so much we didn’t get to talk about but thank you very much, Ron. It’s been a real pleasure and a great episode, so thank you.

Ron: You’re more than welcome Dave. Good luck everyone.

I hope you’ve enjoyed your flight aboard Sprout 1. For show notes and information on how to get the podcast feed direct to your Apple podcast, Spotify or other favourite podcast feed visit sproutsweater.com and touchdown!

Links

Ron Lawson

Website: http://www.ronlawsoninternational.com/

Email: ronlawsonfineart@gmail.com

Episode 17 Teaser:

In episode 17 Dave encourages you to think about the bigger picture and develop focused action by working on your life not just in it.