S3/E3 How Education Impacts Behaviour Change

Join us in this conversation as we explore how education influences our capacity to change and why Serena and I are both learning addicts (not always a good thing!).   We chat about Serena's change model (Acquirer, Performer and Evolver) and how each of these profiles might influence the way we change.  Our conversation takes a small de-tour into 'the passion hypothesis', as we talk about if 'following your bliss' really is a good idea and then we come back round to talking about understanding nuance and how education promotes personal growth.  

We can't wait to have you join us! 

Serena’s Links
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/serenapsychologist/
Website: https://thepsychologyschool.co/

Sally’s Links
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sallygarozzomindmentor/
Website: https://www.sallygarozzo.com

Transcript

So hi everyone, welcome to episode three of season three of What the Bleep Is Behaviour Change. And today we're talking about a very subtle, as you've just said, Serena, before I pressed record, subtle subject of education and how education influences our capacity to change. So you, I mean, you're an educator.

Serena (00:22)

Thank you.

Sally (00:35)

You're a lecturer, senior lecturer nonetheless, which is amazing. So you must love education. And I think actually a lot of people who are in this industry love a bit of the old CPD, don't we? We just love a course.

Serena (00:54)

you're writing at the deep end. Yeah, I ended up in education, really. I think education chose me. But yeah, I do really, really love teaching. What I love is seeing, and this is almost answering the question straight away, because obviously we're focused on behavior change. I feel so deeply privileged to be a part of someone else's transformation.

Sally (01:01)

Hmm.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Serena (01:21)

So by educating ourselves, we are changing on a really deep level. We're learning not just about maybe a topic that we've chosen to look at. So obviously I teach psychology at Nottingham Trent University and I have been a lecturer there for 18 years, a really long time. I've seen literally, quite literally, thousands of students and taught thousands of students. And you can see the transformation taking place.

Sally (01:27)

Yeah.

Wow.

Serena (01:50)

It's more than just the topic that people are learning because as you learn, you are learning more about who you are in response to what you're learning. I think it's not just because it's psychology. I think if you're learning anything, whether it be architecture or fashion or business, you're at the centre of that learning process. So inevitably as you're growing and your brain is, you know,

creating new neural pathways and you're learning new things and you are self -reflecting in terms of that knowledge that you've taken on board, you're self -reflecting in terms of now who you are in the world as a result of that new information, you grow and change as well. Yeah.

Sally (02:33)

It's made me wonder, it's made me pose a question. I wonder if there's a direct correlation between people who love to learn and people who find behaviour change a bit easier than people who don't love to learn or don't particularly value education but who want to change it but who find it really hard.

Serena (02:57)

It's interesting, I mean, from a purely, from a brain function perspective, you could go right to the other end of the spectrum and just kind of look at the very fact that your brain, like any other organ in your body, needs to constantly be challenged and adapt. So like you would do the same with your muscles and your physical self, people often forget that you need to be doing the same for your brain and that goes beyond

just doing Sudoku, which doesn't really do a great deal. Because all you're doing is you're riding along those same neural pathways that you've now created. So when you start to do something new like that, it is doing what it says on the tin, it's neuroplasticity in action, you're doing something new, something different. But if you do it over a long time, there's no new, necessarily new adaptation that actually happens.

Sally (03:30)

I'll tell my husband that. Thank you.

Yeah.

Serena (03:53)

So education, if you're educating, you're learning, and I really strongly encourage people in this episode, especially if you're trying, if you're interested in what education looks like, what can you do in your life to keep learning as you age, as we go into senescence? And how do you constantly educate yourself in a way that you are constantly having to adapt and therefore challenge your brain? Because your brain needs the same challenge that every other muscle in your body needs.

because we need to keep doing that to keep it active, vital. We can create new neural pathways right up until the day we die and we know that from research. So to not do that is in my mind, and I won't go so fast and say it's negligent because most people don't know that they need to do that. So I think this in itself is very meta. It's educating you around what education will do for your brain and what it will do for you into old age.

Sally (04:33)

Yeah. Yeah.

Mm -hmm.

Yeah.

Yeah, so important. You've really raised some important points there about newness and variety. And I feel it too myself when I've become quite stagnant, repeating the same routines over and over again. There's a, there's almost a sense of death, a sense of like, there's a part of me that feels like it's dying, like there's, God, like you're dragging yourself through the day. Like the energy is really low. It's really lackluster. And then

Serena (04:54)

Thank you.

Sally (05:23)

Now, oftentimes I've thought to myself, you know what, I cannot bear this same stuff over and over again. So I'm just going to go to bed at a different time. I'm going to go to a different type of coffee shop. I'm not going to go into Brighton this weekend. I'm going to go somewhere else, just to change of scenery. Any kind of change is actually helping us to rewire those neural pathways to sort of almost like, I almost feel like

those neural pathways that have not been activated have got loads of muck around the synapses and we have to sort of go in and kind of spring clean like you would get all the hairs out of your plugs. Sorry, this is a gross analogy, I know. But it feels, once they're out, you know, and the water's flowing nicely, we've both got very thick hair, we know what it's like to have hair down the plug hole.

But once the water's flowing really nice, it feels good, doesn't it? It feels like there's a flow to it and everything feels like, ooh, go on.

Serena (06:23)

Yeah

Definitely. I think they're like you. So we both quite obviously love learning. I love learning. I just love I love the idea of learning new things. I love the process of learning new things. Every day is a school day is something I live by. I love not knowing everything nor do I ever want to. I couldn't know everything. I'm really, really, really happy with that.

Sally (06:33)

Yeah.

Serena (06:51)

And I want to keep learning until the day I die. And even in the arena that I work in terms of human psychology, I don't know everything. Like, I'm learning every day. I have to adapt my own education. So I educate others on psychology, but I hope that people also afford me my own growth. So I will grow and I will learn and I will learn new things. I'll be able to bring that to the table as well. So yeah.

Sally (07:14)

care.

Serena (07:17)

We're both speaking from a place of loving learning, I think, which does make a really big difference.

Sally (07:23)

Yeah, I've always said I'm a lifelong learner. It's something that I really value. It's at the heart of everything that I do. And I'm never happier than when I'm embarking on a new course. And I just think, I just get extremely excited about the prospect of synergizing information. So for me, I take a piece of information from over here, another piece of information over here and put the two together.

Serena (07:28)

you

Sally (07:49)

And I get these like, you know, my brain lights up like a Christmas tree and it just feels, and I can feel it running through my body. I get that. I don't know what, what the chemical is. Maybe it's dopamine, maybe it's an endorphin, something like that is flooding my system. And you get this kind of ding, ding, ding feeling in your body and you kind of want more of it. You know, you get hungry for more and more and more. But I did have a question for you. Is

Serena (08:13)

Yeah.

Okay, because I was just going to say something there, but go on. Go on.

Sally (08:21)

okay. My question is, is education, as in just reading books, just learning, but not doing anything with the information, is that having the same impact? Is that creating a behaviour change than if we're actually physically learning a new skill?

Serena (08:39)

So, I mean, yes and no. So there'll be some aspects of just learning something new. Certainly if you look at someone maybe who hasn't done anything, any learning for years, and then they go and have to be in a situation where they're forced to learn something. So it makes me think of, remember when kind of computers were on the rise and maybe some older generations struggled to get on board with that. And maybe lots of those people hadn't been in school or had to learn anything in such a long time. And so,

this massive kind of up level in learning was really, really challenging for people. So that would have absolutely had that impact on someone's change and their brain structure and everything that would have definitely impacted that. However, learning in and of itself is just a component that might add to someone's ability to make a change. That's kind of where education sits from a behaviour change point of view.

So for example, I often use healthcare as an example. And a really good example in healthcare is I work with a lot of physios and osteopaths, for example, and they work with a lot of people with things like pain and chronic pain. Now what you'll find with those people is because we don't really understand pain and people don't understand pain from a research perspective, pain causes fear.

So for example, and I've worked with populations who've had a really sore knee, and I've been working with populations in the NHS who are waiting for a knee replacement. And what we found was, obviously everyone was experiencing pain, but pain caused fear because it was like, well, my knee's really, really hurting. It means I need to do everything I can to avoid it being in pain so I won't move.

Sally (10:22)

Mm.

Mm -hmm.

Serena (10:33)

The first process to helping them change was to educate them around what pain actually is. So just helping them understand that pain isn't always bad and actually some pain is normal when you're moving and actually it's just really important for you to start moving and that there's a certain level of pain that's actually maybe tolerable for you but still important that you kind of push through it a little bit enables people to start moving.

Sally (10:59)

Yeah.

Serena (11:02)

enables people to start exercising. So that's a fundamental change for people who've maybe never moved or exercised in years. And the first building block to them making that change was educating them first.

Sally (11:10)

Hmm.

Yeah, it's understanding the why, why should I do this? Why do I need to put myself in pain? Why do I need to create a routine? Because why is so fundamental to any kind of behaviour change? You've got to have a reason why. And if you know what the body is doing when you do this.

Serena (11:21)

No!

Yeah.

Yeah, and I think, sorry, I think it's a little bit different to just knowing why. It is just, so in that case, it's just educating someone. This is what pain is. So you don't know what you don't know. You just don't know something. So if you don't know something, if we can provide education around it first, so you understand something, it's like, I see, now that's why. So.

You know, like when you have a health issue, for example, what do we all do? We Google it. We want to understand the big sense of our symptoms. So sometimes, and this is where it's then a bit of a kind of a black or white or kind of a gray area potentially in the middle, obviously in the middle, but education can promote behavior change, but I believe it can also hinder. So there's a point at which, so,

Sally (12:05)

Yeah.

We do.

Serena (12:27)

We need education, I believe, because we need knowledge in order to make the change. We need the information to be able to start our process of change. So I would always start with once you've done the kind of the psychological work around why someone wants to engage in their personal, lovely stuff, helping them just have the building blocks they need to start making the change is really vital. But going back to what you said and tying that lovely example you gave of

the ding, ding, ding, the dopamine hit you get when you're learning. That's the danger zone for me is when all you're doing is learning and all you're doing is in my model, I look at acquisition. So how education can hinder you is if you stay stuck in that mode.

Sally (13:04)

Yeah.

Yeah.

and don't actually take action on anything.

Serena (13:17)

and you don't take actions. It's kind of going back to answering that second part of your question. So if all you're doing is learning, it's the start of a change, potentially, because you need information. But if you're, that's all you're doing. So if you're the person that does another course and does another course and goes to another coach and learns another modality.

and still thinks you're missing on qualifications to do the next thing, you are potentially stuck in acquisition, which means you're not really changing.

Sally (13:47)

Yeah, and usually there's a fear that's stopping them from actually launching the service or going out into the world or, I don't know, putting that boundary in place or whatever it is that they need to actually physically do to move the needle on their life. Yeah, we can get stuck.

Serena (14:06)

Yeah. Or like with the person with the bad knee, we can educate you on pain and we can tell you actually some pain is okay. And actually you can push through that a little bit. We want you to maybe be, you know, a five or six on the pain scale, but not a 10 if it's a 10 stop. So we can educate someone around what pain is. But if all they do is listen to that and go, okay, but they don't actually do the exercise. They're not really changing anything. So

Sally (14:31)

Bien.

I see.

Serena (14:35)

Cutation is an important component, it's one of the foundations of change. And yet you have to start putting, if it's behavioural change, the key's in the title, your behaviour is changing.

Sally (14:47)

Yeah, it's a behaviour change, it's a physical, it's something physical that you actually have to do to make something shift in your life. Yeah, it's an action orientated response that's required.

Serena (14:56)

Yeah.

Yeah, this is tight.

Yeah, and it's not that your thought processes and your feelings are not a vital part of that. They're the start. That's where it all begins. But eventually you're going to have to get to action. Otherwise you're not changing anything. You have to put yourself in action. And so, yeah, when I work with people, so outside of healthcare really, and I've worked with people say one -on -one, I work with a lot of acquirers, a lot of people. So like I said, in my model, we've got

Sally (15:18)

Yeah.

Serena (15:34)

the choir as performers evolve as performers are just doing the stuff, they're just doing it, doing it, doing it. You can't really get them to sit still. But if you ask them why they're doing it, they don't know. An acquirer knows why, but they spend all their time pondering, all their time doing the courses, talking the talk, but not really walking the walk, because acquiring is their comfort zone. I mean,

Sally (15:44)

Hmm.

Mm -hmm.

Serena (15:59)

I'm not being so harsh on acquirers because I am one. Like I realize that when I'm stuck, if I'm stuck, it's usually because I'm stuck in the acquisition. I'm stuck because I'm doing another thing. I'm reading another book. I just want to read that book. I'm just going to talk to that person. I'm just going to plan this behind the scenes and get it all in place before I execute. So that's, I know I'm stuck when I'm in an acquisition and I need to start getting an action.

Sally (16:10)

Hmm.

Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah, and performer presumably is action mode.

Serena (16:31)

total action mode, so they're kinetic, they can't sit still, they're always doing something. But what they're not often doing, they're the people that kind of get stuck on a conveyor belt, so they're the kind of people that kind of wake up one day in their job and go, I never want to do this, don't know why I'm doing it, I just started this job, they may have just done it because it's what their dad told them to do or their mum told them to do it or they just fell into their first job outside of uni.

Sally (16:36)

Yeah.

Serena (16:57)

and it's not really their passion but if you say what is your passion they say I don't know because they're constantly doing something to not feel the feelings. Yeah, feeling all the feelings all the time and that's partly why they're stuck is they're waiting to feel like it's the right time to execute.

Sally (17:02)

I don't know.

Yeah, yeah, I've recognised that.

Yeah, and it's never going to be the right time. Yeah. Yeah, I do recognize those, those tendencies in, in my clients that I see sometimes and one needs jolting into action and the other one needs to be a little bit slower and a bit more thoughtful and a bit more considered. What about the Evolver then? So what's an Evolver?

Serena (17:35)

Yeah.

So the Evolvers are, I think I may have said this before, they're the people that on the outside maybe look a little bit like, with all respect, the losers, but they're not. Because they're the people, they're not at all, it's a horrible term to use, I shouldn't have said that. They look like they're just not taking life seriously. So they're the ones that are evolving because they're embracing failure, they keep failing at stuff, they don't really have a plan.

OOF

Sally (17:53)

Okay.

Okay, okay.

Serena (18:08)

They're playing, they're breaking their routine. If you ask them why they're doing it, they'll say things like, "'Cause it's cool, man, because the opportunity came my way." It's like they're going with the universe's flow, completely just going with the flow. Things come their way, they just embrace it. Things come their way, they embrace it. It doesn't work out, that's fine. Do they have a plan? No. Are they always in performance? No.

Sally (18:35)

Okay, so that's how they differ from the performer.

Serena (18:38)

Yeah, so they might fluctuate between, they're kind of just kind of following a passion thread. The whole point of the model is not one of those profiles is bad or wrong. But what I'm saying is from a behavior change perspective is we need all three. We need to acquire what we need to perform to evolve the process and then keep going.

Sally (18:50)

Mmm.

Yeah.

Serena (19:02)

So it's interesting to use as a model and thank you for inviting me to speak about it a little bit more. It's a really powerful unlock for people just to recognise where you sit mostly and it's powerful if you feel that you're stuck somewhere so you can look at the kind of the other ways of being that can pull you out of that feeling of stuckness and that's where it happens. Power, yeah.

Sally (19:05)

Yeah, of course.

darkness. Yeah, it's really powerful. It's such a good model and I often do sort of relate back to it actually. But something interesting that you said there about following your passion. I don't know if you've come across the book, be that good they can't ignore you.

Serena (19:40)

I feel like I can see the title cover, but I haven't read it.

Sally (19:44)

So that was a Steve Martin quote and the author is Kel somebody or the other. But what he's trying to do is debunk the passion hypothesis.

Serena (19:55)

okay.

Sally (19:57)

So he's basically saying, if you want a successful career, don't follow your passion. And I'm like, whoa, hang on a minute. He's basically saying, and I believe this, I actually do believe this to be true because for many, many, many years, I tried to follow my passion, which was singing and music and I was never successful. And it was my dad who,

Serena (19:59)

yes.

Bye.

No.

Sally (20:24)

always used to say, follow your passion, follow your passion, because he's from that era where following your passion was actually okay, you could do that. And he followed his passion. He wanted to be a motorcycle racer and that led him to, he didn't become a motorcycle racer, but it led him into something else. He created a motorbike shop. So he always installed that within me, but I got to a point where I was so frustrated with not being a successful songwriter.

Serena (20:49)

Hmm.

Sally (20:53)

that I just ditched it in the end and I used my rational brain. Like, what am I good at? I've always, always been good at learning. I've always been good at teaching and I've always been good, people say I've always been good at inspiring them and helping them to change. So I'm like, that looks like a therapist to me.

Serena (20:55)

Yes, ma 'am.

Sally (21:20)

So I went off and became a hypnotherapist, because I'm a rebel and I don't do normal therapy. Standard for Sally. And that's when I became really successful. I was like, really successful? Come on. Successful to a degree, to a much higher degree than I was before trying to do music. And so I was reading that book thinking, my god, I think he's got a point.

Serena (21:26)

Standard practice.

That's true. Yeah.

Sally (21:47)

I think he's got a point actually when it comes to what success actually looks like. Yeah, and I think educating myself with that theory really helped me to settle into knowing that I was following the right lines. I was on the right lines in my job.

Serena (22:12)

So much I want to say to what you've said so much

Sally (22:16)

Go ahead, settle in everyone.

Serena (22:18)

So I would say follow your passion. I would. I'd say follow your bliss, follow your passion. Life is too short. But it comes with a few provisos. So something I've always said is a really helpful unlock at the start of a process like that is to figure out for yourself what you want to do for enjoyment versus what you want to do for money.

Sally (22:22)

Hehehehe

Yes!

Serena (22:49)

big difference. So follow your passion, but it might not be that it's your job. It's just that that is why you're here. So I've helped no end of people. You know, I used to have people come to see me because they really hated their work because they wanted to leave their career. But actually what we ended up doing was creating their best, most amazing, most delicious life that existed outside of their job.

So they could suddenly compartmentalize their work and work now. There's no shame in work just being work. The world needs to turn. Sometimes you just need to bring enough money in to do the stuff that you really want to do. So you are following your passion, but you've made the decision that it doesn't have to be for money. It's not your work. And actually for a lot of people,

Sally (23:25)

Right.

Exactly.

I see.

Serena (23:43)

That means it really is beautiful and you can really enjoy it because it's now not something that you expect to be paid for and you haven't got that exchange where it's suddenly really personal. Like it might be art or something really creative where it's the fit of you needing money for that didn't fit anyway. So you get to do the thing that you love and now work is the thing that services your passion.

Sally (24:10)

Yeah, 100%.

Serena (24:12)

I think it works like that. So I think first of all, a tip would be to figure that out for yourself. The other thing is just remembering that, so I specialize obviously in behavior change and peak performance. They're the things I say I work in. And that's because one leads to the other. So for example, and I had this, this is really interesting because this week in my, I'm currently teaching, obviously people will listen to this at any time, but.

Sally (24:17)

Yeah.

Serena (24:41)

We're currently in week five of my behavior change course for a cohort that I'm teaching. I had a really beautiful question on the Q and A last week from someone and she works with a lot of creative people, a lot. And she says she typically sees this with the creative clients that she has where their dream is to do this thing and that is the dream that they hold, but they're just not getting there.

Sally (25:08)

Mm -hmm.

Serena (25:09)

Her question was around how long like do I keep trying to help them get to this place where it just doesn't seem to be working? They like they're doing all the things they know their why they know their vision. But they're not getting the jobs or they get a little job and then it kind of peters off. So like, what do I do with these people? Really beautiful question. And this is where I said,

Sally (25:31)

Right, valid question.

Serena (25:40)

You know, there was a phrase, I couldn't think of it on the night either when I was doing it. The idea being that if you keep doing the same thing and getting the same result, then that leads to madness. And I see. Yeah. Exactly. I wish you'd been there on the night. And I said this is where.

Sally (25:44)

haha

Yeah, insanity, yeah, yeah. If you always do what you've always done, you'll always get the same results. Yeah, which is the definition of madness, yeah, yeah.

Serena (26:07)

This is where we need to look at peak performance. So someone who is peak performing has agility. They know when to change. So sometimes the vision has to change or something about the path that you're taking has to change. So if you look at that from the analogy of say a master mountaineer, they don't say, this is the route I'm taking and that is the only route I'm taking. I want to get to the top of the mountain going this route.

Sally (26:14)

okay.

Serena (26:35)

A peak performer knows that due to conditions, a change on the rock face, they may have to change their path. And maybe they don't get to the top, but maybe they survive and they get to change and do something else. Maybe they change their pathway and they come out on a different crop and it's even more beautiful than the top was. I don't know, but the point is, is that peak performers have agility and the ability to pivot.

Sally (26:42)

Hmm.

Right.

Wow, so.

Serena (27:04)

So to keep doing the same thing is madness.

Sally (27:08)

Yeah, absolutely. So many light bulb moments. And it's actually really, go on, sorry.

Serena (27:11)

So I mean, just to say, you know, the thing I want to just relate back to you in terms of that, by the way, is I would say you have done the same thing. It just doesn't look like what you think. You're still a performer. But the qualities of that are still you are resonating the qualities of the performer that you wanted to be in the work that you do. It's the same thing. It just looks

Sally (27:26)

Yeah.

Yeah, still the same thing. Because you take the essence of you wherever you go, right? So that essence, that kind of, I don't know, the fizziness within you, whatever you do, you're gonna be putting that into whether you're working for someone or whether you're working for yourself. And I really love that analogy of what you said about, you know, when you were working with clients who didn't want...

Serena (27:43)

Yes.

Yeah.

100%.

Sally (28:05)

who you discovered actually it was best for them not to change their job but to find their passion outside of their job rather than have their job become their passion. And I recognized that, you know, within me and Graham. So Graham has a lot of passions outside of his job. And sometimes I look at him and I get a bit jealous. I'm like, wow, you've got all these hobbies, man. Like, what? How have you got time for all these hobbies? And I realized that my job is my hobby.

Serena (28:21)

Bye.

Yeah.

Sally (28:34)

It's become it. And that has got pluses and minuses. Like, you know, like his position has got pluses and minuses. So has mine. So don't jump from the frying pan into the fire, I suppose, is what I'm trying to say. Because there will always be, you take you with you or everywhere you go. So if you think you're going to find this wonderful life, this is your panacea by being self -employed or by following your passion.

Serena (28:37)

Okay. Let's go.

Yeah

Sally (29:01)

or thinking that your passion has to come in terms of a job, then you might be, it might be a bit of a wake -up call for you, because it's bloody hard actually. And I don't have time for other hobbies. I can't, I do you know, because every, it's morning, noon and night really.

Serena (29:10)

I'll be in the next video.

You mean working for yourself is a self -importance.

Sally (29:20)

Working for yourself. Yeah. Yeah

Serena (29:22)

Yeah, so it's an intense way to live. Let's put it that way.

Sally (29:28)

Yeah, it is. It's all encompassing, shall we say.

Serena (29:32)

It is, it is. And like you, I'm deeply passionate about my work as well. And I've had to compartmentalise things that I like to do and do those things outside of the work that I do as well. But I've no doubt at all that the qualities that I exhibit in those areas come into the work. They just do. Because like you said, you take you with you. You're that person wherever you go. But it's helpful psychologically to have

Sally (29:38)

Hmm.

Yeah.

Serena (30:02)

that be clear for you in your head in terms of kind of what you're doing and where you put your energy and what that looks like, I think.

Sally (30:10)

Yeah, absolutely. I feel like we veered off a little bit from education, but...

Serena (30:13)

Yeah, I would too, but it's where we went and I think it's all valid. But, I mean, coming back round to education then, so what have you done in terms of your own education, in terms of getting you to where you want to be?

Sally (30:32)

Yeah, absolutely. I think educating myself in many different areas, particularly around mindset, particularly around trauma, around somatics, polyvagal theory. I mean, learning about polyvagal theory has really, really helped me to understand my own somatic responses, understanding the fight, flight, freeze, fawn response. Because I've had issues with fainting.

my whole life. I don't know if I've mentioned this on other episodes and they don't come often, but I had a surprise fainting episode in 2022 after a big concert. And when I looked back, I knew about polyvagal theory before this, but knowing about it really helped me to make sense of all of those fainting episodes and what was going on in my system.

this idea of overwhelm, how overwhelm makes sure, if you're a particularly sensitive person, and I think I am probably quite highly sensitive, and I think I am on the autistic spectrum as well. In fact, I've been having some psychotherapy recently with a really wonderful therapist. We've got such a great relationship. She's got an interest in autism, and she keeps saying to me, you do realize that's an autistic trait, don't you? So she's kind of...

diagnosed me really. She said it's mild but I can see how it's probably always been there and that's why you get easily overwhelmed. And of course the psychotherapeutic process is education as well. Not only am I feeling very supported by her and validated by her, I'm being educated by her and it just helps me to understand myself, feel better about myself, relax into

Serena (32:10)

Yes it is.

Sally (32:26)

feeling confident and comfortable within myself and my own choices. It's really helped me to be a lot more easy in my relationship, especially my significant main primary relationship with Graham. It's helped me to understand, you know, I don't get road rage hardly ever anymore. And that I used to get quite triggered. I used to go into that fight response quite a bit, you know, with, especially with drivers.

Serena (32:54)

Nothing, because that was sweet yesterday.

Sally (32:57)

I really... And of course...

Serena (33:00)

I'm glad no one can hit me in the car.

Sally (33:02)

And never say never, I mean, it's all contextual, isn't it? Like if something, if I was already pissed off and someone was tailgating me, then, you know, maybe. But I think because I've learned so much about human behavior and I have learned also to be much more compassionate and lead from the heart. You know, I did that space holding certificate as well and really practicing that coming from the heart. Do you find myself being a lot more accepting?

of situations and circumstances, especially if it's random, if it's somebody I don't know or if somebody's really rushing on the motorway next to me, I'm like, well, I don't really understand their circumstance. And I can tell, look, there's an example of fight mode. There's someone in fight mode or flight mode, you know? It's like, I really sort of rationalize everything rather than it feeling like it's personal to me.

might be tailgating me but it's not personal it's like they're just in their own world or they've got to get somewhere or whatever. No.

Serena (34:06)

Usually it's because I haven't got a scoop to know who you are. But yeah. Yeah.

Sally (34:11)

No, exactly. So it's just, yeah, I mean that's just one example. The other example is around intermittent fasting and hormones and nutrition and what happens when you give your body a rest from food and just things like that. It's all really helped me to understand my relationship to food, my relationship to exercise, my relationship to other people, where I isolate, why I isolate and how I can come out of that if I get

too isolated. It's everything really. It really informs every decision, every choice. And it also, what it has done, I think this is the crux of it, is to help me understand that there's so much nuance in other people's behaviors, in my behaviors, in choices, in everything that you read and see that

And I used to be so black and white, you know. And education has helped me not to be so black and white. I think that is the fundamental aspect that education's given me really. Yeah.

Serena (35:26)

I think that's just what I'm really reflecting on how, and it's probably a bit late to bring this up, so maybe this is something that we look at in another podcast, but something that we haven't touched upon is, because you've mentioned lots of different things that you've learned there and how that's helped you change essentially. And I think what we've not touched upon, which I think we will say because it would be along the conversation, is just honouring how people learn differently.

Sally (35:43)

Yeah.

Yeah.

Serena (35:56)

So we learn in different ways. And I think one of the challenges when you're working with someone else trying to help them and facilitate their change is adapting information so that it's easy to take on board and really easily understood, which is why it's really important to think about the different modalities of learning. But also remembering, so when we're looking at this, obviously we're interested in behaviour change.

Sally (36:17)

Yes.

Yeah.

Serena (36:24)

that just to remind and I kind of really want to end on that note really just to remind people that education is a key piece of someone's like start to change. So I don't mean, you know, looking at the work we've looked at previously in other episodes when we're looking at a process for change. So I'm not bypassing and jumping over having individual conversations with people knowing why they want to make a change and knowing what their vision is for the future. That all has to happen.

But I would just really encourage people to think about that education piece that has to happen either before someone even gets to you to get them into the work, to even have them buy in before they start working with you so they understand what's going to happen as well as what you can do to educate someone throughout the process of the work that you're doing with them as well. So, essentially education is vital. We can see it's vital for our own growth and change.

Sally (37:15)

Yeah.

Yeah.

Serena (37:21)

and if you're in a position, which we both are, you as hypnotherapists, me as a teacher to healthcare professionals, just to encourage people to think about what they need to do for their patients and clients to help them understand enough to want to then make the change or be able to make the changes that they want. So what can you do for people? What do you think they need to know, understand?

Sally (37:41)

Yeah.

Serena (37:47)

have access to before they will buy into the process of change.

Sally (37:51)

This is so key, this is so important. And actually, when I was a newbie RTT therapist, I thought I could just help everyone and I would get these people come to me and they weren't primed. They weren't primed because I hadn't primed them during the onboarding process to actually understand what was required of them. There was a certain level of self -participation in this. You have to listen to a recording every day for 30 days.

Serena (38:16)

Yeah.

Sally (38:19)

You have to come to your coaching sessions afterwards. You have to actively participate. You have to take action on those things that are in the recording. It's no good listening to the recording and then ignoring everything that's in the recording. You know, so it's like understanding where someone's at. Maybe RTT is not right for you right now. Maybe you actually need counseling. Maybe you need someone to listen to you. Maybe that's where you're at. Because...

It's a certain type of person that I work with, like you said, who has to be ready to take action to do the challenging thing. And RTT and hypnotherapy can help to make that slightly easier because it helps to reframe the perspective as to what discomfort is. But yeah, in all of my conversations on social media, I'm quite active on Reddit at the moment and I love going in. I love going in and doing that.

pre -priming, that educating workers is a... Yeah? Up front, there's a lot of misconceptions about hypnotherapy and you see a lot of comments like, if you want to waste your money, have hypnotherapy, like, if you want to throw your money away. And I like having those conversations, like, come on then, let's talk about it. Because it's so nuanced. And yeah, maybe if the client's not right for hypno or coaching or whatever.

Serena (39:19)

Yes, you're doing education upfront.

Sally (39:46)

then they would be throwing the money away. So yeah, you do have to educate yourself and have those conversations with your clients upfront, actually.

Serena (39:50)

You did.

Yeah, really big. I've just been asked to so I've recently been invited onto an advisory board for a health company. So I'm the psychologist on the board and our job is more my job is to help the company educate the public on what this will do. So it's about

Sally (40:17)

Wow.

Serena (40:19)

educating particularly young women around what osteoporosis is and how they can do certain things to prevent things in their future. So it's a really, it's a new company. The ambassador for it is Anthea Turner, which lots of people have heard about and on the advisory board. Yeah, Anthea, because she was very public about her own osteoporosis and diagnosis.

Sally (40:26)

Amazing.

Good old Anthea.

Serena (40:48)

So she's ambassador and then there was lots of other people kind of on the panel, including Dr. Zoe Williams from this morning. So she's a doctor on board and there was a load of us kind of sat behind, but the job that we've got and my job as the psychologist is to help craft a lot of the education that has to go out. So we have to educate people first, get them to take this seriously and to then want to have the desire to look at this for themselves.

That's change, but it starts with the education piece.

Sally (41:19)

Yeah. And that's what we're hoping to do with this podcast as well, isn't it? To educate people around what behavior change is and what it, as we say, what it really takes to make changes.

Serena (41:29)

Yeah. that's a lovely place to end it, Sally. It's like leaving on a slogan. Let's leave it there. It really takes to make changes. Lots of fences out here. Love it.

Sally (41:39)

Yeah, it's like the, it's like the, this is food, not just food. brilliant. Well, it's always a pleasure talking to you and yeah, thank you so much, Serena, for your words of wisdom and thank you so much for listening.

Serena (41:53)

Ever so?

Thank you Sally. Thank you Sally. See you later everyone. See you in the next episode.

Sally (42:04)

Bye!