Befriending Chaos: Embracing Creativity and Connection with Nila Matthews from Awakening Flow

In this podcast episode, host Yiuwin Tsang and guest Nila Matthews from Awakening Flow dive deep into the topic of embracing chaos and how it relates to creativity, impostor syndrome, and building authentic connections.

They share personal experiences and practical strategies for managing stress, fostering vulnerability, and navigating challenging situations.

This insightful conversation provides valuable insights for leaders, managers, and individuals looking to unlock their creative potential and develop meaningful relationships in both their personal and professional lives.

About Nila Matthews

Nila Matthews is a seasoned professional with over 20 years of award-winning product experience, having worked with renowned companies such as Yahoo! and Sky. Her expertise lies in helping businesses understand the intricacies of customer decision-making processes to enhance user experiences and prioritise customer solutions effectively.

Nila's approach extends beyond traditional methods, as she strives to tap into the intuition and divergent thinking of staff members, fostering disruptive innovation and creativity. She employs a unique blend of both new and ancient techniques, designed to engage the mind and promote flow. Her methods aim to unlock the individuality, intrinsic motivation, and confidence of team members.

Nila has a commitment to demystifying complex scientific and ancient wisdom, making it accessible and applicable to businesses and corporates. Her focus is on uncovering the underlying drivers of behaviour and energy systems, allowing for communication with the unconscious brain and heart, which often guides decisions before the conscious mind even registers them.

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Transcript

Disclaimer: The following transcript is the output of an audio recording. Although the transcription is largely accurate, in some cases it is incomplete or inaccurate due to inaudible passages or transcription errors.   Every possible effort has been made to transcribe accurately. However, neither Beautiful Business nor The Wow Company shall be liable for any inaccuracies, errors, or omissions.

Yiuwin Tsang  
Hello and welcome to the Beautiful Business Podcast. Beautiful Business is a community for leaders who believe there's a better way of doing business. We believe beautiful businesses are led with purpose by people who care, guided by a clear strategy, and soulfully grown. Hello, and welcome to this week's episode of the Beautiful Business Podcast. My name is Yiuwin Tsang, part of the Beautiful Business team. And this week, I was joined by Nila Matthews, author and founder of Awakening Flow, she's an expert in human unconscious processing. For the last 20 years, she's worked for companies like Yahoo and SKY as a digital behavioural product expert, and worked on award winning products. Neela specialises in an unconscious processes, behavioural sciences, neuroscience, intuitive intelligence and energy to understand the gap between what we say and want, but do and get.  Let's talk about befriending chaos. I feel like I connect with this on so many levels. I love the idea of preventing chaos, I guess because it sounds like a way for me to not have to deal with chaos. But assume that's not exactly what you mean. So what do you mean when you say befriending chaos?

Nila Matthews  
I mean it  in a couple of different ways. So I've been writing a lot about creative flow. And you know the book that's coming. It's called Flow Genius Breakthroughs without Burnout. Now 'befriending chaos' actually means allowing yourself to meet chaos as an energy and a friend. Because creativity and chaos in my mind actually are like partners, you can't do one without the other because creativity is actually what we need from human civilization, whether you're surviving or thriving, you need creativity. And it's like, and to quote Elizabeth Gilbert, who wrote Big Magic and Eat, Pray, Love, I think she always calls creativity is a hallmark of our species. So we've got creativity which wants you to create and there's death and renewal within that. Chaos in the old Greek world with chaos was out at the start of time, when everything was just being built. Chaos was there to make sure things could die. So knew could happen. It's interesting, because I remember, you know, when I just came out of my sixth operation, I went back to work and I had this real intuitive nudge to go, you need to go and explore this, go back to uni. And I was like, no, not not not not listening, not listening, not listening, everything to ignore it. And then chaos just came and kicked me in the ass and just said, You know what, here's your life being turned upside down. Because you need to make this next step. So that's chaos in its most destructive form. But chaos can come in those sort of small things. Have you ever lost your work when you've just written like loads of stuff? I have to kind of go okay, chaos, maybe that's just rubbish. I'll start again. But I've eased my nervous system calm write down. And actually what I normally write is much better. But when I look at creativity and chaos, I'm actually seeing it as there's a storm that's happening around the country stand in the middle of this, what do I need to know right now. And if I'm in that kind of, I see it very much as it it's there. It's pushing me and it's involving me. So in my book, I talk about chaos as our revolution. But it's dressed up as the antagonist. What is it trying to make us do because we don't like change, we, you know, creativity is hard and risky for the brain. So what does it mean to push us into to evolve? So fear and chaos, in some ways is the same thing. And we need to be friend both. In the Hindu pantheon. There's a god called Ganesh or Gumby think that that is an elephant headed God. And he is known and we pray to him to remove obstacles out of our way. But the irony is, he puts them in front of you. So you evolve. And so it's like, alright, I get it. What do I need to learn? How do I need to evolve? What do I need to do right now? And so when we see life as an experiment, and growth and a revolution, we see these things not as, oh my god, it's over. And yet we do and you can, again, nervous system can shake to get that out of the nervous system. It's a really good tool that somatic teachers will tell you, shake it out, change the energy signature thing, get on with it, Taylor Swift as well would tell you to say, Oh my God, I've danced to that song so often when I got caught in it. When I needed a creative breakthrough, I felt heavy, or I felt like I couldn't do it. my to do list was too big. I felt overwhelmed. I mean, my sympathetic overload and with dorsal vagal was collapsing. Taylor Swift and me go back. She was about Sagittarius and stories, but point being chaos there is we can see it as the evolution and not the antagonist. There is a mind mental shift there. And then we start using the tools that we talked about the tapping tools, the shaping tools, visual, I have a this is really silly, but either space hopper. It's not silly. It's a behavioural cue. Let's name it. Space hopper. on my desk, if I know I'm going into a bit of a challenging meeting, especially now works at Sky, and it would remind me to take a breath, jump back, because if I was on the space opera, you remember the 1970 word, which would add the sense of lightness. And then I could respond like a human and not a crazy child, who's about to attack that. So all of these things are about, okay, I get this. But think about chaos as well that I've got this little diagram that I've got in my book, in the writings that I do, but where chaos really comes, we can counter it with creative expression. So I was talking to someone recently about the fact that they'd had absolute burnouts, they couldn't get out, we couldn't do that art. But then what they did was just started finger drawing, drawing us that creative expression, the dancing, the movement, the art, to help them ease chaos, and ease their nervous system. So we can use creative expression, in whichever way feels right you can cut the grass, you can finger paint, you can draw, you can read poetry, you know, if you must play the PS five, but it's a creative expression, because you're allowing your brain just to switch into that, but do it wholeheartedly. So again, you've got that symbiotic relationship with chaos is come then use creative expression to ease myself down. And when you're in creativity and chaos, is there know that it's going to evolve you so we're seeing that infinity?

Yiuwin Tsang  
I love it. Yeah, lovely. Look at that. So just listening to you speak Nila. There's two things that kind of came to mind, then as when we speak about chaos and all the things that kind of happened to your example of your work going missing, or I suppose in in my world, it could be something like deadlines change, or client asset doesn't get sent over all these sorts of things. So the kind of unpredictable, unplanned things that can happen represent the kind of chaos and I suppose the my initial kind of thought was, how do we fix it? What do we need to do? What kind of actions do we need to take from listening to you speak again, that kind of response is almost kind of like the pre conditioned response to that I've got lots of people will have that problem solve? What's the solution, action this and do that, from what you're saying? It sounds like, what we need to be able to embrace is it comes back to that kind of energy piece again, in that how are we best able to resolve a case or the challenges or the problems and the challenges that are put in front of us, if we are better at embracing our creative side, or if we you know, as you say, kind of use these processes, I'm trying to think I've got my decks my record plays behind me. Sometimes, if I got a piece of work done to do a project, I've had a bit of a wall on it, I'll take 20 minutes or half an hour and just make some records. And then when I come and sit back down again, to do my work, it's just brought me up a level, I'm able to kind of look at things in a slightly different way. I'm able to look at, you know, some of the challenges in a bit of a shift of perspective, which often unblocks that kind of blockage? Is that what you mean?

Nila Matthews  
Yes. So you know, I talked initially about getting stuck in second gear where your brains in that high beta. From there, it's very difficult to come up with a creative solution to anything. And this is why I keep talking about creativity. NASA when Apollo 13 went down, didn't just need engineers, they needed creative engineers, but they also needed calm ones. So let's just take this back calm pilots in World War Two was why psychology or creativity and psychology study became real because everyone was making amazing breakthroughs and Einstein was around, but they noticed that these calm creative pilots not only survived, but they save lives in a chaotic situation. What they were able to do with attend to them nervous system, can they get their brain and their body, their neurophysiology into the right states, let's call it flow just for argument's sake, and then we can get creative. What's gonna happen when you can't is your go check it, you take a hammer to everything, even when it's not a nail. It's just not conducive. It's not optimal. And so if we can allow ourselves a moment to go let me just get myself here shaking me address get the fear out. I do this in a quick level. Now I call in a flow method that I have but I can quite quickly go from Okay, not always and I'm I'm still human. Yeah, holy, human, holy, divine. But to give you a perfect example, I was at a roadside accident. I was on my bike. It was really horrible. Number two, what happened, but myself and another person came on scene, we were calm as hell. We were so calm. I redirect the traffic, the police came everything that the policeman actually came up to me afterwards and I'm shaking like this. And he was like, What are you doing? And he said two things he said first is is a really calm instance, or whatever you guys did well done. And then he was like, Well, why are you shaking? And I was like, I'm just this is your somatic tone shaking because I've got to get this traumatic experience out of my body. So me and the police Samina shaking and he was like, Oh, but I learned that from my friend who introduced me to all this work and she's a police officer she did detective. And she was stuck with this trauma. So we've been on this trauma healing, and this is all trauma based exercises. But like I said, your stress doesn't know whether it's a proper trauma or whether it's work trauma or whether it's, it's just reading the signals. And myself, what do I need to do your job, and your only job is to get out of that state, to the next level of the brainwave state that you need to get creative. meet that deadline, be calm and meet your client, meet your staff, blah, blah, blah, you know, so our only job is to put our brain in the right gear as far as I can. But we start with our nervous system, because that's the autonomic part of this. So you're

Yiuwin Tsang  
100% Does it and it's understanding, it's this level of self awareness. It's not self control, it's a self awareness. And the control element comes into knowing what you need to do in order to move you through these different states. And, you know, we spoke before about recognising the state that you're in. And I guess the extension of befriending chaos and understanding is almost first and foremost is to understand what your response is going to be when these things happen. So that you can then most efficient most effectively, the quick, you know, be talking about speed. But you can move from being in like a distressed state where you're suboptimal where you might make bad decisions, you might come across with stress II or it might be disruptive energy, that you kind of vibrate to the rest of the team into a state where that positivity, if that's what you need, but the energy in the state that you need to move beyond the chaos to take advantage of it, as you say, in kind of many ways. 

Yiuwin Tsang  
I just want to take a quick minute to say thanks to our trusted partners, Krystal hosting. Krystal is a B Corp, powered by 100% renewable energy, and has a goal of planting 1 billion trees by 2030. Krystal services super fast and super reliable. And they're genuinely really nice people. We're super picky over who we work with as partners at Beautiful Business. And we're delighted to count Krystal as one of them. Back to the podcast... 

Yiuwin Tsang  
I wanted to move on to the next question, if I may, because this one I think says a lot. And perhaps this again, kind of comes back to the friending chaos. But we all know that running a business can be really tough, particularly in recent times, kind of post COVID, you know, different recessions, your war in Ukraine, all these elements of chaos that come along and kind of smack you in the face. One of the key things that kind of come through from that, and I guess this is, as I say, one of those kind of symptoms of chaos kind of coming into our lives is the element of self doubt. You know, when these things happen, you think can I do this? Am I right person for this? Can we get through this? The concept of impostor syndrome is so kind of real, it's so common. Yeah, at the same time, what we see on things like LinkedIn is, you know, people making a bid with someone that has a bit of humblebrag, I think, as best way of putting it. And that can often be pretty depressing. Particularly if you know you if you're in one of these kind of low spots, what would your advice be for founders and leaders who find themselves in this kind of headspace?

Nila Matthews  
It's a great question. I'm starting out now. And we all have to recognise that we all do need to be in that out of our comfort zone, pushing our edges, and life happens and life happens and outs are we gonna allow some of this to hit our hot button. And for us to react like those, remember those days where you hit the button, and you just that like a crazy, like a toy. But the thing is, as well, we do have to find ourself mastery within ourselves. And we don't have to do it all alone. And here's the thing that I want to just be really clear about is that if we had signals, red and green, and green is understanding, we understand that we might be burnout, or getting towards burnout. And we've been in that out of comfort zone for too long, we can use some of the tools I'm talking about to allow ourselves to shift out of that freeze, attack, combat collapse, use some of those tools to ease our nervous system and even put our brains into flow. But then we get to Amber, and then we get to red. And there are times where we just fall off, you know, we need help. Because like I said, we need to be in connection with social animals. And I think this is where I really pause and say, I use a mental and mental mental and there's teaching in a train the teacher, we all mentor each other because there are days where we have blind spots, and someone else needs to or can help our consciousness be guided, and help shift that energy. And so there is nothing wrong with that. And so I use that. And I think we have to remember what state are you in? Do you know whether or not you can get yourself out of this state and to someone else needs to help you. We need to do that in connection, even your team and being really honest about where you are. I think again, we'd seem to think that we need to be superheroes and Superman or Superwoman. And we can't be fallible. I actually had a director who I learned a lot from him But boy did he set people's nervous system on edge and When I went back to Sky everyone would use the words my nervous systems fried because of it and they would things would be said, and you can see them like tensing up. Because it's like, they don't know what's been said. But unconsciously Your body knows. They actually were in a state of PTSD and trauma, but we don't like to think we are but your nervous system probably is in those states, get help but to if you're feeling overwhelmed actually say You know what I could do with your help today. Remember, we're social animals, people you know, will willingly help you. And they'll also be more likely to empathise, be compassionate with where you are. And always be careful about using the word empathy versus compassion, because empathy is feeling for them and then falling into the empathy hole with them. Your compassion, standing on the side of the ditch and saying, Here's a step, let me help you help. But I also recognise that we are whole. And we just have to remind people we are whole imposter syndrome is a heavy energy, where we actually get in our own way. Why do we get in our way? Now these things? Again, they're probably rooted in our belief systems, I call it feelings, actions and beliefs. But your core beliefs are usually rooted quite deeply within you. And that's where I really help people unconsciously understand what are those implements? Why do you feel we can be Foster? What is it about that situation? And it's very rarely the situation they're in? It's because it's something else that's trips them up along the line? How do we change that? How do we unlock that note, but imposter syndromes? You know, there are tools again, we can use in the moment. But how, if you had a traffic light, which level are you? Are you at Red really overwhelmed? Amber, I don't get really shaky, and I'm feeling really stressed and green, I'm okay, I just need to get myself back into the right talk. Because you probably know this. But there's lots of psychology about refrains. We're going into a challenging situation, we can use stress as the fuel or friction. So we use language like this is a great challenge. I've got this, versus I can't do this. Oh, my God, and then your brain will happily do confirmation bias. Oh, you can't do it. Okay, well, let's not do it, then you can't do it. Let me confirm everything about that statement. So their mental reframes. Adding in the physiological, this somatic expertise is backing what our brain can tell us. But it's got a great BS detector and the Bs detectors in your nervous system. So that's why I say, you know, when we say things like they severe and do it anyway. Yeah, maybe if you've done the work, then yeah, great. But you can't just use a mental frame from my perspective. And I've turned myself into a lab in more ways than one but and suffered impostor syndrome. 

Yiuwin Tsang  
I think it happens to the best of us and to all of us. And yeah, I wouldn't trust somebody who said I never get impostor syndrome. I think they probably just, you know, not being honest with themselves, impostor. Yeah. So it's interesting. You mentioned there about getting a like a mentor involved, I guess a lot of our listeners will will manage people, although, you know, look, after people, I came across a really lovely social media post. And it was somebody saying that the best thing that they did when the helping people I'm just thinking from a mentor mentee kind of context, was that they would ask the question, do you need me to get involved? Do you want some advice? Or do you just want me to listen? And it was almost kind of framing that conversation just so again, about that safety? I think you mentioned a lot about safety. And there's something that I'm always paranoid about is, you know, am I being too kind of pushy here from a leadership perspective? Or from a management perspective? Am I overstepping? You know, is this am I being too prescriptive, or, you know, too restrictive, or whatever it might be. But I think that fear for me is that I'm not providing them with the safety that they need in order for them to kind of express themselves fully and for them to feel safe. And I guess from a mentors perspective, surely is one of the skills and must be one of the key things you need to be able to bring out is framing that interaction in such a way that, you know, the mentee feels safe. They feel like you know, they can talk that they can express themselves, otherwise, it becomes a bit of pointless as the wrong word. But it doesn't become as efficient or as effective as it could be as an opportunity to move things forward.

Nila Matthews  
Yeah, you're probably only getting 40% of them as their real voice and their authentic voice and how do you know that you've got and it's not just safety, it's, I'm gonna add the word play. And this is where I take it back to creativity because we get the best out of people when we can play. And we can find ways to do that. And it's got to be an authentic lightness. It's got to be and that really allows us to awaken that enlightenment cell that allowed that breakthrough. But how do we know that we're getting more out of the person? They are challenging you? They are questioning you, they come up with their own suggestions. You know, is your team doing that? Are you micromanaging them? I was talking to someone this week who is a great innovator. I'm sure you won't mind me saying Mark Preston, who run street drone and E formula and he was saying that sometimes when you're in a big situation when there's lots going on, take it back down to a process to go his one step, let's do one step at a time. But even if you took that to the process, we've got a human behind the process, who needs to feel that they can be heard and needs to feel safe? And what can you do within that process where you're not telling them the answer, because you're paying them to come up with their best ideas, Otherwise, they wouldn't be on your team. Otherwise, you know, you're not just going, you're a mini version of me, that needs to be their authentic self and be divergently thinking, and that's what creativity is about. And then we bring that convergent thinking, and we bring it all together. So bringing a small process step, tell them what you expect. Are you adding play? Are you putting their nervous system it needs, wanting your energy, and in the way that you say things, is actually demonstrating that you're allowing them to do that I was talking to my husband won't listen to this. And this is great. But he was saying something to my daughter, and me. And I was like, so you're just telling us what to do? And you're No, I'm not angry. And I started laughing. And it just lighted the environment. But it's that, no, I'm not telling you what to do. But you know, it's that check in, give yourself a moment, slow down, and then speak. And if you need to, I was on a course recently. And I got you know, when someone put you in a hot seat and asked you a question and answer, and actually had to just say just give me a moment, I just went out system slightly underneath here. I took a moment. And then I answered, but initially I went wolf blank couldn't say. And if I try to answer in that moment, can shape.

Yiuwin Tsang  
So is that a little bit like is it transactional analysis, you know, where you take that moment? And it's not like your immediate response, it comes back to that. But it's perhaps a more expansive version of that, in my mind in that before you fire off your natural kind of involuntary response, if somebody you know, ask you a question, it's applying that level of consideration, and just thinking about it. And I guess part of that will be controlling your nervous system and understanding that energy of the state that you're in before you give that response back over.

Nila Matthews  
Yeah, and I was talking to I mentioned earlier, Sonia, who's a leadership expert in the work that we've been doing, and we both bring the intuitive side to us. And I'm amazed at how I've done this work, I'd slow down. If you'd met me, like 15 years ago, I used to talk too fast and move too fast. And my more my boss was like Lulu, we just walked out of the room slowly. Because that was my nature. I was running at 100 miles per hour, I felt I needed to be seen that way. I responded with knee jerk cognitive, habitual responses, did I give myself time to kind of channelling what I really knew? Or was that a decent response? Is that what I really wanted to say? No. And you maybe that was the younger version of me. But I still meet people who run around like 100 miles per hour, thinking they're effective when they're not. And they're not actually responding to what's been said, because not actively listening either. So allowing your whole system to slow down actually means that you're going to bring the best of you. And I'm not going to talk to you about non local intuition. But there's times where I'm just like, let me just flow with this. And actually, I think, you know, especially when I've worked my clients, it's a lot more slow down. I absolutely know what to say. And it's not just me, it's my highest self, that's knowing what to say. And that's where I really work with my clients to reach their highest self wanting to be heard, and not the self protecting egoic child that has to speak, first be heard talk quickly move fast.

Yiuwin Tsang  
Again, it's that I keep saying it, but just kind of like mature subculture that kind of permeated through society actually said it before, I feel like we're getting to the other side of it, there's still too much of it. But again, it's so plain to see when you kind of like, look at it for what it is. Now, when you think Well, why would you be over that? Why would you kind of like go at such a speed say things in that in the moment that then you end up regretting further down the line or that don't kind of aren't conducive to getting the result or the outcome that you want for the situation that you're in, but we still kind of, you know, we kind of glorify these, you know, outliers, these controversial rules, and you know, things it doesn't take us the places we want to get to, I think is what I'm trying to say it without this level of consideration without this level of awareness that we need to have, and being able to take that moment to listen to what our bodies are saying to us and responding in the right kind of way, kind of from there. What would you say I want to kind of bring this back to teams and certainly back to looking after your teams and getting the best from your teams. And I'd absolutely adore that phrase of you know, having this kind of positive energy vibe and your energy vibrating and that kind of passing to your colleagues and to your team, when better for that to happen than when you're facing challenges and facing chaos. So what would your advice be Neela when it comes to getting the best from your team, giving confidence with the work that you've done?

Nila Matthews  
Before I actually give you some advice, I just want to tell you an analogy that I remember seeing a neuroscientist, and then my trainer for the intuitive intelligence 70 similar example. But what would happen if you put and this is kind of talking to the energy part, it's like if you put 12, different clocks, pendulum clocks into a room, and they're all slightly out of sync, and you walked out, and you walked back in two weeks later, what happens? They're all synced together. And they all sync together to that highest energy or the clock. So the pendulum the grandfather clock, because everything has an energy signature, we are all magnetic beings. So the point of that little story is is called energy entrainment. If you can bring your energy to the highest level, you will allow everyone else to meet you at that higher level and not the lowest level. And there's another thing called energy resonance, where if you plug to guitar, so you know you're a music guy, we plucked a G string on one guitar, it would hit the other G string and make it vibrate on the other side of the room. And that's called resonance. So they will either be resonant to you or you will recall their up or down. Or you could train your energy to be that highest energy vibration in the room. For me, where I have had the most impact is I go in and map what energy do I want to give off today? What is it I want to feel? What do I want other people to feel? That's part of the equation of my creation, whether it's a physical thing or the interactions I have in the room. And it also means that if there is that heavy, toxic, I want to say masculine, but I don't put people off, it isn't skilling dominant. You know, listen to me, I'm like, I can allow myself to sit in my heart and raise above that. So doing that for yourself allows all your people to be entrained to you. But also, if you have got staffers, are you allowing that emotion safety to come up, I was talking to a friend of mine, he was saying that there's a boss of his ruining his friends work because she's playful. She has a team working really well. But he's like, Do this, do this do the checkbox checkbox checkbox micromanaging her and she's shielding her team brilliantly, but she's feeling the pressure. So again, have you created that sense of safety within your team, and I'm going to share a term that my friend always uses, can you be shoulder to shoulder and not nose to nose? This is a relationship management term that she uses with her clients. But when we're shoulder to shoulder, we're holding ourselves up together, the nose to nose, you're in confrontation, you're not finding things? So, again, interoception it's about awareness. Do you know what you're doing? Take a look. What are your blind spots? understand all of those. And you know, these are things that I know, I've been in situation within a retreat in Costa Rica, you know, all the things and things are coming up. But when people are telling you, how well do you take feedback, because it took me a while to be able to take on the feedback without going into combat will collapse. And that's why I resigned, just give me a moment I just need to take to process this. And sometimes it can take a couple of weeks to process and you have to be sat in the same stuck, you're broke. But you're the demonstration, you know. So allowing that to really take time to understand what you're doing there. So then you can bring that to your creative output. Because that energy that you have, and I'm not going to tell you the science again around this, but the energy you bring to any creative endeavour, any project, there's a signature that gets stuck in that output, whether it's a song, whether it's a meeting, whether it's, you know, we know that unconsciously we know that we are energy first, which is what Einstein talks about, you know, equals MC squared, energy equals matter. We are matter just slowly, like vibrating energy. So the beauty of our energies, we could be anything we want. So we can vibrate at that as long as we never have to change that signature. So yeah, so again, another last thing is create conditions. We performance markers, you know, they're all things that people know where they are. And I think one of the again, talking to that manager director before I really liked him, but he was so unpredictable, was he going to be in a good mood to deal with not, as any child will tell you, a child doesn't feel safe, because their parent is inconsistent with the rules they set with the energy that they have. What's going to happen today, when you're unsure about what you're going to find in your manager in your pattern in your friend. You're going to avoid it or you're going to go in there tense, you're going to be tense. So yeah, checking with your energy. Yeah.

Yiuwin Tsang  
What particularly resonates with me is the concept of resonance. There are times I'm sure when you've gone into meetings, and you think oh, you know, this could be a bad one or it's going to be tough or whatever it might be you almost kind of you say yourself up for it in that sense, you know, you might go in really defensive, I've been in meetings where I didn't read it properly, it was just a simple kind of review for one of my team for previous company I work with, and they came in, ready for a fight, you know, they came in ready to battle to save their skin, almost, you know, and it was really tough, it was really, really tough. And it was a really interesting piece of advice I took from one of my mentors at the time around trying to reset that kind of relationship reset that energy now that I reflect on it of what we did. And what we did at the time, the tool that he gave me was, he just had a lovely phrase, it was catch people doing things, right. He said, as manager, we spend all our time trying to catch people doing things wrong, we need to catch people doing things, right, just, you know, find something that this person had done really well in the week or in the month and open with that. But he said that, you know, what you need to do in order for things to kind of progress and to move things forward, is you also need to stop the negative behaviour. So you take that positive thing, and you kind of you praise him for so I think my thing was like, Oh, you've done a really good collaboration on a project with these people. I know, there's been a bit of a challenge in the past, what's changed. So you will immediately get acknowledged that there has been a change in the whole conversation switch the energy signature in the room changed dramatically? Because it was almost a circuit breaker, as you say, and it's kind of oh, wait, oh, okay. Yeah, I did do that was really good. Actually, yeah, I'm proud of myself for doing that. And he acknowledged the change, which meant that we could find a positive way forward. And as he said, kind of set those kind of markers, what we need to do there on end, and I talked about that meeting. And whenever I catch up with him, we have that conversation, that meeting because it was profound by the dynamic change so dramatically. And I think coming back to what you say, about energy, and without wanting to sound too hippie about it, it's what you take away from that experience, isn't it? It's that feeling that emotion, it's harder to quantify. But of the countless meetings I've had with different people, that one stands out, because we both left in such a positive way. And we felt like it was a turning point in our relationship. Basically, in our business. We had struggled previously to that point, from there on, and it was kind of like, you know, this is what you said, we were shoulder to shoulder, we weren't nose to nose, we approach things differently. We looked at problems and challenges as a team, as opposed to oh my god, what do I need to do to kind of, you know, wrap this in cotton wool sort of such and such doesn't get upset by or whatever might be. And it changed the dynamic of that relationship.

Nila Matthews  
It's really interesting, because what you actually did was eased his nervous system to go, I don't need to be in a tap mode. He took his armour off, and he became vulnerable. Because life isn't experiment. Everything is creatively we approach it that way. Sometimes we get it right. Sometimes we get it wrong, you know, in life. So long journey, right. And I love that screen, you know, wear sunscreen. But what you essentially did was, and I've had meetings like that, where I've gone in, and I couldn't have the meeting for a week, because I was rounder, I was in attack mode. And then I had to look at it from every perspective, every angle. But quite honestly, I said, I want to give voice to this, but you gave voice to what was great about you. And so it's self protective ego, dropped the armour and went, Yeah, I know, I could have done better. And isn't that what we're really trying to say I want to be vulnerable, but I feel if I'm winnable, you're going to cut me down. So we don't take the armour off. So I love that example. I know I've been in exactly the same, and then change the dynamic, or I've just said, when someone else doesn't realise that they've hurt you, but you're holding on to it. I've actually just also said, I just want to give voice to the fact that you said this. It made me feel this and I felt unworthy. And I don't think that's what you meant. And they were able to go Oh, no, that's not what I meant. But it was going to change my relationship with that person. So sometimes as well, to flip that conversation, where we feel like our boundaries have been stepped over when we've not got healthy boundaries, we need to state that too. Because otherwise we fall into this I don't want to rock the boat is called Falling, where it's the forest, fight flight freeze and forming sort of physiological response, but it's what we do. We don't want to rock the boat, we just agree. But we get into that design flow. So that guy you could have had that carried on working with him. And you either would have been in that combat zone, or he would have just been resigned, you know, low energy. So it's a beautiful example. But I think being honest on both parts and being allowing ourselves to be vulnerable and helping each other go How can I get better at this? That's the key otherwise, who wants to be stuck working with people? You know, you can't you need divergent people around you need different energy and a different types of people to do stuff. But there's an authentic natural Honesty and trust, I think it comes down to trust.

Yiuwin Tsang  
Thank you so much for joining us for this week's episode of the Beautiful Business Podcast. I really hope you enjoyed listening to it. And a big thank you to Nila Matthews for sharing her advice her stories and experience. Thank you for joining us for this week's Beautiful Business Podcast. Beautiful Business is a community for leaders who believe there's a better way to do business. Join us now next time for more interesting discussion on how businesses can bring about change helping communities building a fairer society and safeguarding the planet you can also join in the discussion at www.beautifulbusiness.uk