The Champion Within
This is a series with fascinating and inspiring people, and what it takes to be the best you can at whatever your endeavours may be.
We will learn from others as to how they have handled themselves in their own pursuits, and so that we can apply to ourselves.
We’ll talk about the necessary support and how important it is, to have the best and appropriate systems around us, so that we can be the best possible. We’ll discuss aspects of ourselves that we can all develop.
This is a show with inspiring people, including musicians, artists, athletes, medical specialists, business entrepreneurs and more…in the pursuit of excellence.
I’m Jason Agosta, a health professional and former athlete, and I'm fascinated in people’s stories, my own involves developing certain attributes over time, but also things that were not done well or were significantly missing.
Join me on The Champion Within in discovering that everybody has a story, and everybody has a message.
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The Champion Within
Ep.16 Alix Bradfield: Energy for Life...Optimism, Balance, and Personal Growth
Prepare to transform the way you approach your health and well-being. We're delighted to have Alex Bradfield, author of "Energy for Life," with us for a discussion that promises to leave you brimming with vitality and a new perspective on life. Alix has a wealth of wisdom to share, from the benefits of exercise and resilience, to the role of optimism and the power of a balanced lifestyle in our overall health.
Are you seeking a more fulfilling and active life? Join us as we explore how optimism, a trait that can be nurtured and how it influences our health and longevity. Drawing upon the experiences of Ironman champion Trevor Hendy, we highlight the transformative journey to self-discovery and contentment. We also delve into the importance of gratitude, positive language, and spending time in nature - simple yet powerful tools for personal growth.
But life isn't only about pushing forward; it's also about taking a pause. We shed light on the pressures of societal expectations and the pitfalls of over-scheduling. Listen closely as we discuss the importance of pacing ourselves, taking breaks, and realigning with our true values. We wind up with valuable insights from Alix on the importance of personal balance and the critical role rest and reflection play in our physical and mental health. So tune in, get inspired, and start investing in your energy for life.
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Welcome back to the Champion Within show. I'm Jason Agosta, speaking with fascinating people with inspiring stories and we've had a few lately and thank you for your kind feedback, particularly after the last session with Mark Batullos. Today I am speaking with the author of a book titled the Energy for Life. I am speaking with Alex Bradfield. This is a book of advice from a diverse group of practitioners about various aspects of well-being.
Speaker 1:Alex, who is late into her 70s, leads an active and fulfilling life. She is a former relationship counsellor, parent educator and career strategy consultant. She notes that we are born with genetic makeup, but we have choices that give our body and mind the best chance to thrive. Her parents were once the oldest couple in Australia, with a combined total of 206 years. Her parents were curious and adapted to how they took care of themselves. Alex says they never lost energy and let that left a lasting impression. Alex has been a vegetarian for nearly 30 years and has been labelled disciplined, but she prefers to think that it is just leading a healthy life that leads to more fun and choices and also a time to reach out to others. Joining me now is the lovely Alex Bradfield, so you have obviously led and are leading a very active lifestyle and have been helping others for most of your life, so it's really easy to see where your inspiration has come from in writing this book.
Speaker 2:Well, I think my inspiration comes from different angles, jason, and I think the number one thing is I don't think I'm terribly unusual. I love waking up in the morning feeling like I'm really ready to have a good day, I've got energy, nothing's hurting, I'm ready to rip, and basically all the people who I interviewed for this book, they've all helped me to do that and I sort of wanted to pass it on. I thought maybe people might be interested if it helped me, it might help some other people as well. I hope that's the case.
Speaker 1:Well, it's really diverse too, isn't it? You've brought in the audiologist, the psychologist, the massage therapist. You know someone who wrote about optimism and health.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 1:You know we're talking about resilience through exercise, which sort of resonated with me after the last episode I did.
Speaker 2:I heard that one. Yeah, very interesting.
Speaker 1:So it's like, obviously this book is indicative of how you run your life.
Speaker 2:Well, I hope so. I mean, it doesn't make sense to talk to people about something if you've never tried it yourself. Does it. I'm not saying I'm any expert, but I've just learned a lot and I want to continue to learn everything I can. It's sort of a passion of mine now as I get older, because my next birthday is 80 years old, so that's not, you know, that's not a young chicken anymore, and so the older I get, the more I want to keep doing the things I love doing.
Speaker 2:And it was interesting because one person said to me about the book oh, but isn't there sort of self-absorbed to be thinking about your health all the time, which knocked me, absolutely knocked me back, and then I thought about it oh no, no, I don't think so at all, because if we want to do, if we want to reach out to other people, if we want to continue being curious and learning, if we want to do anything, we can't do that if we're not. Well, it's the foundation of everything, I think.
Speaker 1:And if you're not invested in it.
Speaker 2:Well, if you're not invested in it, your body. You know we've got these very precious machines. We live in cold our bodies, and it's very easy to forget it. It was interesting, another interesting thing about this book I had called it staying well and I thought it would be for all age groups, but the publisher got hold of it and they thought that it would be better to market it to sort of 50 and beyond. The reason for that was probably ingenious, really, because they said and I sort of agree, but up to a certain age, first of all, your body bounces, doesn't it? It doesn't really matter what you do, it sort of pops back into shape and then suddenly, around the late 40s or something like that, you begin to oh, something hurts, or you're a little more tired, or I need to see the podiatrist. My foot isn't what it used to be. So they were probably right. It says on the cover something midlife and beyond. Who knows what midlife means?
Speaker 1:Well, it's an interesting point to bring up, though, because, as we do go through the ages, we do like. The first chapter with Francis Coffer was brilliant as far as building resilience through exercise, and he talks about, you know, trying to maintain or increase muscle mass, and we know that after the ages of 30 and 40, you start to decline in your muscle mass, but you lose 1% per year after about the age of 50. So to try and maintain that is a full-time job, and I think that's what you're saying is it's not totally self-indulgent and you're not looking at yourself the whole time. It literally you're absorbed by it, because it is like a full week to pursue the activities and do all the things you have to do to stay in good shape.
Speaker 2:And I think sometimes you need to do more to stay at the same level, Although I think I'm probably more fit now than I have been for four years and that allows me. You know, I was skiing this year in Whistler and I was swimming in Croatia.
Speaker 1:Yes, that's great.
Speaker 2:I'm just thrilled to be able to do what I love doing.
Speaker 1:So tell me, what do you do day to day or week to week as far as activities?
Speaker 2:Well, I like to do different things. I sort of feel the body's made to do a lot of different movements and I don't want to get into anything repetitive. I used to jog and. I must say you'd know a bit about this, but I could see joggers around me having issues.
Speaker 2:Issues with their knees their knees, their spines, their ankles and I thought no, I better get out of this. I think I'll try swimming. Well, I knew how to swim, everybody knows how to swim but I got in a sort of I forget whether it was 25 meter or 50 meter pool and I couldn't get. I mean, really, I could just get to the other end and then I was a puffing mess, whereas I was fit. I was a fit runner, but not, this was a whole new ball game. So now I love swimming, I swim in pools and I swim in the sea, and so that takes up a certain amount of time and I'm still doing the peer to pub and the point. Along the way I'll swim and all those sorts of things. The week is also there's at least one Pilates, one yoga and one dance. Perfect, the dance is just so much fun. I mean, it's just. I have a big smile on my face.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Popping around to the music.
Speaker 1:Well, that's important, but from a strength point of view, it's crucial, isn't it?
Speaker 2:Is that having that agility yeah, well, balance becomes increasingly important as you get older.
Speaker 1:I'm gonna ask you is there a chapter or someone you've spoken to in energy for life that really sort of resonated with you?
Speaker 2:Well, I think the one who got me going was Elise Di Giovanni. I worked with her over a few different sessions on joint mobility and it blew my mind. I remember after one of her classes I went on a really long hike up a what wasn't a mountain, but it was. It was pretty, pretty steep climbing. And the next day I woke up and everything hurt. My legs really hurt, and I thought, well, that'll be that I'm not gonna do anything today. Then I remembered what she told me about the joint mobility and I did those exercises. I was ready to go again.
Speaker 1:All right, so it blew my mind.
Speaker 2:I just thought this is magic and it was so easy. It's really about the rotation of the joints rotating your ankles, rotating your elbows, rotating your knees and your hips. So I do that. I do that regularly, every day. She's now moved away from that, although she's still a strong believer. She's doing a lot of brain work now exercises for the brain and that's been very popular, I think.
Speaker 1:I was just gonna say her chapter is exactly what you describe lube recating our joints.
Speaker 2:Yes, so that really had a big impact on me, just from my own experience of it. Oh, there's so many things. I mean Victor Pyrton and his optimism was so interesting because he quotes all kinds of research on the benefits to health and longevity and from optimism and people tend to think, oh, you're either born optimistic or not. He maintains from research that it's 25% heritable, which means that any of us can build our optimism if we so choose.
Speaker 1:Right. Well, just to say a couple of things from his chapter he has written. An optimistic view can give you better cardiovascular health, better sleep and better resilience and stronger relationships. But the one that really got me was optimism has the highest relation to life satisfaction scores.
Speaker 2:Aha. Well, you're a doctor Jason, so is that your experience?
Speaker 1:For sure, there's no doubt about it. Yeah, gratitude, positive language, sharing exercise, and the one thing he does is spending time in beautiful places.
Speaker 2:Yes, yes, and you know nature, Nature is a bomb and a sigh. I mean I don't know how I could. I could. I never want to be without exercise and I never want to be without nature. So, you know, the swimming in the sea early in the morning and watching the sun come up is, you know, a magic experience. And people say, oh, I wouldn't want to be in that cold water. Well, it's sort of, at that time sometimes, with the full moon and the rising sun, we're swimming in the middle of both.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:I'm a bilateral breather, so I'm looking at the full moon, the rising sun, the full moon Beautiful. How incredible is that?
Speaker 1:We have done an episode on this show about cold water swimming myself and Mike Blackwood and we're talking about the experience of it and how positive it is physically, but just so grounding Is that what you get out of it?
Speaker 2:Well, I do. I listened to part of that. I must say I'm probably not quite as brave as he is, because in the winter actually this winter particularly there was a point in July I was going for a 2K swim. I had a wetsuit on, mind you.
Speaker 2:I was going for a 2K swim. I got to about 750, 800 meters and I could not get warm. I couldn't get warm, so I bailed and went back to the beach and then jogged all the way back along the beach thinking I might warm myself up, and I didn't. So I've all I've done in the last few months is dash into the sea, go under the waves, scream and shout, have fun with my friends and come out.
Speaker 1:That's brilliant. So you just mentioned you're almost 80 years of age, You're skiing, you're swimming, you're dancing, you're doing your strength work. Have you paced yourself through your life? Do you think had that balance of family, work, exercise?
Speaker 2:Well, I think so. There was a period, probably 30 or 40 years ago, when children were at home and I was working and I was probably flying all the time then. But I do think rest is a very important part of fitness. I remember hearing you say, jason, that at some point in your life you took months off and you surfed, and I did.
Speaker 1:Was that?
Speaker 2:after you'd done your study.
Speaker 1:I had a study break and that was definitely rejuvenating from a work point of view. It also just a workout what you really want to do in the future. Just have time out and remove yourself from all the expectations and the things you've created, I suppose the expectations from other people as well. Actually, that's well written in your book as well, I think. Trevor Hendy, I think, is five or six times Ironman champion, who I've had several conversations with in the past.
Speaker 1:He writes about breaking free and changing things, and learning who you are at a deeper level is crucial for your well-being. I think that those six months I had off was really important for me and it taught me to pace myself with everything. It wasn't until recently. Someone else in there he said to me what you're doing is creating longevity, the work, keeping the passion with activities, everything around you. It's so true. It just really hit home that comment. It sounds like that's you.
Speaker 2:Yeah Well, I don't know about me, but I thought Trevor Hendy's story was very interesting. At one point the editor at the publishing house said I'm not sure this chapter fits in this book. Well, could we do without this chapter? I fought for it because what he was saying he was talking about his own value system and who he really was. He was this well-known, as you mentioned, the Ironman. People fell at his feet. He was a hero. Everywhere he went, people worshiped the ground, he walked on, but he was empty inside. He wasn't true to himself. He had an epiphany and now he does this thing called boot camp for the soul. It also reminds me of what the psychologist said. She touched on values and how important it is to know what our own values are and to be working and living within our values. Otherwise, you're not going to be a healthy soul.
Speaker 1:That's it. Yeah, that's where it starts from, isn't it? Sls, the whole thing.
Speaker 2:It is.
Speaker 1:Like we said, being optimistic, looking at things in a better light. But he has written here. There's one comment Basically we're talking about. He discusses being really intuitive and listening within, discovering a deeper self to take care of yourself Instead of running around frantically. Just stop and learn who you are, and he said. He said here's something about life in its grandest form is always available to us. In fact, it comes from us in the form of our spirit, our sense of who we are and who we want to be. It was quite simple, but it obviously took him and it does take many athletes a long time to be content post competitive life. It's quite a common story.
Speaker 2:Well, I imagine you've seen that over and over again people who are very competitive and their whole training is about winning and being on top and pushing themselves to reach those heights, and yet it might be counter to the body's needs at times, or to who the person really is.
Speaker 1:But we've spoken about this on the show a few times about the importance of maintaining balance and when you're going through those years of being competitive and pushing it and seeing how far you can take yourself, it is so one dimensional. You are completely oblivious to all the other things that come into leading a balanced life, and it's not until later on that you really need to to maintain being healthy and vibrant. You sound like you wake up in the morning and you have created this energetic vibe over many, many years of practicing this.
Speaker 2:Yeah Well, you know. The other reason I wrote the book, Jason, was because of my parents. My parents were the oldest couple in Australia, so they were 206 years together, which is sort of mind boggling. And of course everyone says about me oh well, it's her genes. You know, they see what I do and they think it's her gene, but I.
Speaker 2:The one of the reasons I wrote the book and started to explore this area is, I think genes do have a part to play, but they're not the whole story. What we choose to do in our lifestyle. That makes the most difference.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you make the right decisions and choices, don't you too? So you can thrive with what you have.
Speaker 2:With what you have and you know, at my age, so many of our contemporaries have chronic diseases and are really suffering. And maybe I'm a wimp. I don't really want to suffer. It's not in, it's not in my, it's not, it's not what I want to do.
Speaker 1:But if you think about us now, like I'm 56, you're a little older than me Imagine if we stopped doing what we're doing eating well, sleeping well, exercising well. Imagine that the impact that would have on us, bringing you back to the level of so many people around us. It's like really hard to comprehend.
Speaker 2:Well, I think so many people are sleep deprived now. The person who I interviewed for the sleep chapter is the CEO of the Sleep Health Foundation and it really is becoming critical. I mean, I think a lot of people are seeing it in the media all the time now how to sleep better. It's diabolical. I mean, if I haven't had a good night's sleep, I'm cactus.
Speaker 1:That's one night Let alone becomes a bit more fragile over time, doesn't it?
Speaker 2:Exactly, but of course you know it's different. You've got a baby that's up all night or someone who's ill that you're concerned about. There are a lot of situations where there's no way you can sleep peacefully.
Speaker 1:But there's a lot from that.
Speaker 2:We know about hormone release from the brain during sleeping and repair and regeneration, which is crucial Really important, we know, jason, but I think a lot of people think it's a waste of time. You know I've got so much to do. I don't want to waste time sleeping but, you're pointing out, is certainly not a waste of time. It's a very important part of our 24-hour cycle.
Speaker 1:Another chapter you had you have in the book is about massage. Do you have regular massage?
Speaker 2:Well, you know, I don't have regular massage, not as often as I like. The man who gave me that information is so interesting because he grew up as a kid with two therapists. I forget there were different types of therapists, but it was in his sort of DNA, almost. So he's a special individual in terms of his massage. But no, do you? I don't have regular massage. Actually, I do my feet, I massage my feet and if I have any, well, I go to Cairo. Sometimes, if I've got something that feels like it's a little bit out of whack, I don't wait until I'm in a bad way, it's just a little twinge, I think, while I deal with this, that's been very helpful.
Speaker 1:Well, the regular massage has been. I think it's just so rejuvenating, but it just releases all the tension, so it's not accumulative over weeks, instead of just doing one here, one there. I think for me it's been a crucial part of well-being and maintaining mobility. Definitely.
Speaker 2:What else do you do for stress? Because we all have stress at times. How do you?
Speaker 1:deal with it. The exercise on the bike for me is complete chilling out. I don't ride on the road anymore so I don't have to be vigilant, and that is completely chilling out and also really creative thinking time. I'm always pulling my phone out, tapping on the voice me most you know ring Alex when I get home, or something like that yes.
Speaker 2:But not on the bike.
Speaker 1:Well, I have to pull it out of my pocket and speak into it, but that's all safe. But that is my creative sort of open thinking time. I spend a lot of time in the water. I still swim every morning.
Speaker 2:So you think, then too, don't you? Don't you think in the water?
Speaker 1:Not really. That's more about breath and complete calmness, but that gives you the clarity and also I think, when you do it every day, that clarity is maintained to be creative and be really objective with the things that you're doing. Yeah, certainly much more count.
Speaker 2:We need to break the circuit, don't we constantly? Simon Davy did a great chapter two about slowing down the speed of life and he's talking about I mean, even the example we all know about you're late for a meeting, you're stuck at a red light, you're really agitated and you're stressing your body so much and some people are in that mode almost all of the day. So that is really wrecking your beautiful machine of body. We have to learn. I mean, if that happens to me, I now say to myself Alex, you did not leave early enough.
Speaker 2:It's not someone else's problem. It's not the red light I didn't leave early enough but also the breathing makes such a difference, just starting to breathe slowly and calm yourself down or turn some beautiful soft music on or something. Who cares about the red light? That's right.
Speaker 1:It goes back to what you said earlier about making choices, isn't it? Leave earlier? Yeah, just chill out a little bit on the way in, or say no to things as well.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Sometimes we feel like there's expectations around us. You've got to say yes, to take on everything you can. It's like you lose your connection to people and your sense of humour pretty quickly when you're sort of pretty full in the days and the weeks.
Speaker 2:Well, then you get irritable, You're tired, you've had enough. You're not listening to people in the same way. So you know my husband, ross, of course, and he's always told me that if someone asks you to do something, you don't have to answer them right away. You can say, gee, now let me just check that out and I'll get back to you. Then you've got time to think is this something I want to do? Is this something I've got time to do?
Speaker 1:Something you need to do. That's the thing, something I need to do. Yeah, it's really interesting talking about that, because I have changed my working week to be a lot less than what it was and the feedback from people around you was like, so what do you do in that time off? Like there's not enough time to do all the things I want to do, but the people around you are, so there's so much expectation that you just have to work, work, work and be there for other people and then you try and fill up the rest of your time with the things you want to do and that becomes anxious time, instead of like being you know over, you know doing what you want to do over a period of time.
Speaker 1:We see it also with the young people as well, like I see with my children. Like the pressures from school and then the expectation with activities and everything is so squashed in. It's very easy to see that like, especially with the schools pushing you, this is the most important year of your life, oh, no, and it's like no, it's not, not, it's not the most important thing in your life at all, and very poor at wellbeing and balanced lifestyles to get the most out of them. It's like an over-trained athlete, that that's really common, and I think that continues on to some of the issues we see with adolescents, late teenage years, early twenties and they just fall off the perch because there's too much going on. So I think, going back to what you asked me before about having months off, that's what that created for me.
Speaker 2:Well, a realisation. You just couldn't keep going at that speed.
Speaker 1:Well, it's just pointless and unhealthy.
Speaker 2:It's a little bit like driving a car and just having the accelerator slam to the floor at all times. I mean the car would probably break down. Certainly our bodies can't take that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, there's a lot of talk about this, though, isn't there about balance and wellbeing and slowing down and doing things that calm you down, but it's really easy to talk about it.
Speaker 2:Now, do you know this is one of the biggest things that's come out of this book over the time it's been published is me realising that changing habits is very difficult. I'm wondering whether, when people come to you and you say you've noticed, for instance, they walk unevenly and that's going to cause some problems, and you suggest what they could do, do they actually go away and are they able to change that habit? Maybe they are because they're hurting and that's a good motivation, but tell me, that's it.
Speaker 1:Well, some people are motivated because of pain and some people are just motivated, but there's certainly, I would say, a third of the group will only do one or two things that you advise, if any, there's no doubt. So I think if you break it up into thirds, two thirds are generally pretty good, yeah, and you can tell. If you review these people, you can tell what's going on almost every time. But you've got to impart that positiveness that you can do this and promote really easy things that we can do in a day, like we just did on my other show. We just did a couple of episodes on foot and lower limb strengthening and how important that is for your general well-being and especially as we get older, with balance and that strengthening and the regime you can pass on to people can be so easy to implement in your day and repeatedly through the day. You don't have to lay on the floor for an hour.
Speaker 2:Well, it's doing those little things, see. I really hope that this book would be the sort of thing you could keep on your bedside table, open it up, read a bit and think oh no, I wouldn't do that. I could do this.
Speaker 2:This is something I could do and it'd be a little change in your life but it would make a big difference. And then you'd feel good about that and go on to something else. But I'm realizing that it's one thing, as you say, to know something and a totally different thing to actually make it part of your new life.
Speaker 1:If we talk about pillars of health, things like sleep, diet, exercise what other philosophies or things do you put into practice?
Speaker 2:Well, I like to think that I have a sense of what matters and what doesn't matter so much. You can easily get your knickers in a twist about stuff all day. You know. Fortunately I've never had this terrible drama in my life. But I was listening to the story recently of a woman who had breast cancer quite serious breast cancer a young woman. She was saying it totally changed her life and she was on a sort of a treadmill type life and it totally changed her life and she thought about everything in her life and how much people meant and how she needed to rest more and she wanted to get off alcohol. So I mean it's a shame that we have to get to a time in our life of drama and pain to switch our thinking. I hope maybe, well, maybe. You know, I was a marriage counselor for 20 years and I am a career strategy consultant for a long time and I think working with a lot of people and hearing their stories and absorbing their stories probably helped me a lot.
Speaker 1:It seems unfortunate, as you said, that people have some sort of trauma or some sort of massive health issue that becomes so central to their life, 24-7, before they realise that. Yeah, but do you think that, in discussing all the attributes of health and wellness that we're talking about today, do you think that almost staves off the chances of unsettling you and can sort of prevent or stop you from going down that pathway of being so tense and anxious and which almost creates disease or ill health?
Speaker 2:I think it would. I think the first step is realising that you are a tense person, or that you're suffering too much anxiety and too much you're feeling under pressure all the time. It's a warning sign, isn't it?
Speaker 1:That's it.
Speaker 2:And then what can you do about it? What suits you as an individual to do about that constant stress? I mean, people tend to think stress is something out there that's being done. To me, a lot of stress is internal. Now, the naturopath in this book, who's a bit of a guru also, he talks about things like indigestion, which a lot of people suffer from, and sometimes it's organic with foods you're eating. But sometimes it's just stress, and sometimes he says it's growing up, which so many people feel not good enough, I'm not good enough, and so that's a kind of a stress all the time I sort of have to overcome this.
Speaker 2:I've got to be good enough.
Speaker 1:It's an internal tension.
Speaker 2:Yeah, constantly. So the stresses are often within us and it's a challenge to learn how to deal with those in your own way that works for you.
Speaker 1:And it's actually for young people too, isn't it? Because we've got an experience in life, we can see the pros and cons and positives and negatives. We can sort of look back a little bit. Yes, respectively.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 1:Yeah, which makes a big difference. The book is fantastic in that it's written in a way that is so easy to read. I love it and I've had it sitting around and people just walk in, they grab it for 10 minutes and they read one chapter oh my God, that was so interesting and grab it from me. But was that purposefully done in that way that it's very easy to read?
Speaker 2:Well, the easy. I wanted it to be very accessible. There were a few places when people were talking to me and it got very sort of not academic but medical or whatever, and I thought, no, I wanted something that was easy to pick up and read. The only thing is once again going back to changing habits. Because it's easy to read, you can read the whole book quite quickly, yes, but reading the book is not the point. Reading the book is seeing something that maybe that you want to do, that will make a little bit of a difference in your life. So that's another step.
Speaker 1:That's true, yes, but I love that. I mean, look, it's so inspiring and you have been inspiring and I love the fact that what you said in a minute ago. But don't sweat the small stuff and worry about the next ski trip, which is when.
Speaker 2:Worry about it. But the thing is you've got to get fit for the next ski trip. You've got to have strong quads.
Speaker 1:Tell me your passions, Alex, your passions with your exercises, the skiing, the swimming, what really takes you on?
Speaker 2:Well, all of those things. I love being physical and I do think sometimes what would happen if something befalls me, a terrible accident or something, and I'm in a wheelchair and I can't be physical. That would be a major challenge. I'd say I'm part of a book group. I enjoy the reading reading a book and discussing it, having different views about it. I, like you, enjoy being with people and you know I spent so many years trying to figure people out. When I started as a marriage counsel, I knew so much, jason. When I finished as a marriage counselor, I knew practically nothing, except that each one of us is a very complex set of variables and then you put two complex set of variables together. It's really, it's really an interesting story. So I learned so much that I knew I knew nothing.
Speaker 1:So what you've done here is fantastic and I'll put all the details up on the show notes so people can look it up. But both you and your husband, ross, have been inspirational. Ross and his golf, you and your skiing. It's been really, really interesting to know you both and I really appreciate your time.
Speaker 2:Thanks, jason, I really love it. Hey, Alex, I've been talking to you.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, always. We haven't had enough. Enough of these chats.
Speaker 2:Oh well, I'm happy to do it again.
Speaker 1:Thank you so much for your time and, as I said, your books are inspirational and, as you are yourself, and appreciate you coming on, the champion within, because that's exactly who you are, oh well that's a big statement. But I'll take it.
Speaker 2:Thanks so much. Alex, thanks for your time.
Speaker 1:Thank you. Thanks for listening. That was Alex Bradfield, the author of Energy for Life and a person still on the move. An inspiring person and a great book that brings together different aspects of health and well-being Another great example of learning from others and being open to new things, but also learning from those who have tread the path a little more than some of us. Check the show notes for more details and links with regards to Alex and her book Energy for Life. You can also follow and support the show. I'm Jason Agosta and we'll be with you again soon.
