The Lost Art of Human Connection (And How to Get It Back) with Simone Heng

Waddup legend!

You know when a conversation stirs something deep in your chest and you don’t even realise you needed to hear it until the words are already in your bloodstream?

This is one of those.

I just dropped a brand new episode of The Mind School Podcast with the magnetic Simone Heng, global keynote speaker, author of Let’s Talk About Loneliness, and one of the most real, warm, and whip-smart women I’ve ever had the privilege of interviewing.

We spoke about:

 ✨ The subtle ache of feeling guilty when you're here but your heart is there

 ✨ Why most people don’t realise they’re lonely (and how it’s showing up in your life + work)

 ✨ The REAL art of connection, from rapport-building to mirroring without losing yourself

 ✨ The uncomfortable truth about vulnerability online and why the “authenticity era” might be ending

 ✨ The beauty industry, pretty privilege and the quiet grief of letting go of being the hot one

 ✨ Rewriting success and scaling down instead of up

Honestly, this one isn’t just thought-provoking, it’s soul-provoking.

 It’s the kind of conversation that makes you question how you’ve been connecting, and who you’ve been trying to be in the process.

Simone’s blend of research, storytelling and truth-bombs will have you nodding one minute and tearing up the next.

if the topic of connection + loneliness has your heart beating faster, go grab Simone’s book Let’s Talk About Loneliness. It’s a research-backed, beautifully written must-read that will change the way you see yourself and others. Just Google “Simone Heng book” and it’ll pop up at your local retailer (or head to Dymocks if you’re in Aus!).

🎧 Tap below to listen:

Listen to the episode now

And if it lands, forward this to a friend who needs to hear it. Or share it on your stories and tag me @iambreannamay so I can love on you for being part of this 

movement.

Big love and big feels,

 B x

P.S. If you’ve ever questioned whether you're "too much", "not enough", or secretly wonder if your wins make people uncomfortable this conversation will hit different. Go listen.

As always, please don't forget to hit Subscribe! xxx

Transcript

Unknown: 0:02

Simon Simone, you have said that vulnerability is the only way we turn a superficial connection into a deep one. So I would love to start there today. And I'd love to ask you, if you were to share something with the listeners today that is real honest, something that's just on your heart. How would you start this podcast? I would say that I have low level, consistent guilt that I'm not with my mum in a nursing home in Perth every single day, and when I fly off for all these gigs around the world, like she's always at the back of my mind, like it's like a throbbing, low level Asian filial guilt. Thank you so much for sharing that. I think so many people, whether it's mothers, friends daughters, resonate with that feeling of your heart being in two places and having to make a really tough choice. I actually resonate with that so much with my family not being where I am. So thank you. Welcome. I would love to know you're obviously, you're the human connection expert. Your book about loneliness is one that you just cannot put down. I feel like it's so relevant, I want to go backwards before we sort of jump into that book and loneliness and human connection to know what was really the thing or the events that inspired your interest in loneliness and human connection? Yeah. So it was threefold. Firstly, my mum, as I just mentioned, she has a really rare degenerative disease. So around 2017 2018 she stopped remembering that my dad had passed away. So she'd be like, Where's where's your father, is he on holiday? So basically her connection with herself started to fracture, so she was losing some core memories, and therefore the way she connected with me was devastating, because then I had to break to her again. Daddy passed away in 2004 mama like so that was one of the pillows that came up. One of the things that was happening, I was working at a super toxic I was a broadcaster for 20 years, and I'd always loved what I did, but this radio station in Singapore really broke my heart and completely burnt me out for wanting to be in media. And there was such a toxic relationship between the different levels of the hierarchy and the other DJs as well, that it was affecting our creativity. So we were doing the poorest kind of content, be it on social, speed on air of any media organization I had worked in. I had worked in the UAE and also in Australia before as well in radio. And so I was like, there is a correlation here within workforces, where a lack of human connection the culture is affecting product or output, right? So if we're a tiny radio station dealing with this, I'm sure I need to investigate. And then one night, when I was on air, I had a contest to give away tickets to a superhero movie, and I asked people to WhatsApp Voice Note in if you could have any superpower in the world. What would it be, and why? And this young girl called Mei Xuan, definitely Gen Z. She voiced in and said she would really like the ability to connect with people one on one. And she says people seem so cold to each other these days. I really yearn for that. And so I started digging and basically doing a lot of research and discovering that, you know this generation, they watch connection movies. They've heard about it from their parents, but it's like they're a they're an amputee without a limb, but they still feel that phantom limb. They know I am missing something that I have heard and seen about, and I don't know what it is, but I know it's missing that just gave me full body goose bumps, and it made me almost want to cry, to think that this young girl, yeah, and had the awareness to say, this is something I'm lacking. I wish I knew how, but I don't yet have the skill in the research that you've done. Would you say it relevant or accurate? Would you say it's accurate to say that we are in a crisis of connection. Yes, this is a new thing. Yes. Why do you think that? Look, our lack of participation in social life started in the 70s, actually, and there's an incredible gentleman. I met him when I was at Harvard, Dr Robert Putnam, and he wrote a book called Bowling Alone, and it was about the dissolution of participation in civic life that was happening in America. So people no longer joined bowling clubs. They stopped going to their local RSL. They stopped being in community. And then when we saw the internet in the late 90s, and then when we saw social media in the 2000s the diminishment of us living in community just kept happening and happening. So this is really a condition of modernity. We can look at this from like 1970 till now, just it's a downward slope. And what are the signs and symptoms that you know? It's easy to say, Okay, we're in a loneliness epidemic. There's a. Crisis of connection, but to the regular person just going about their life. How would we spot someone who was part of these statistics of, you know, being a lonely person? How would we spot that? Sure, so a lot of people who are lonely don't know they're lonely. So you've raised a really good point. It's about the community being aware that somebody is being left behind. So how do you spot a lonely person? Right? Lonely people don't sleep as well. They socially isolate. This is people experience chronic loneliness, not incidental loneliness. So chronic loneliness means they feel lonely often over long periods of time, and so you don't sleep as well. You self isolate. You're more spiky. You have outbursts of people you love, holding them to a higher standard than is reasonable. So say you're you cancel your girlfriend because your child is sick, and your girlfriend writes back, I knew you were not a really good friend anyway. And like blocks, you classic sign of loneliness, being invited out. So you might extend the invitation and the person's really excited about it, but either cancels that last minute or shows up and is completely awkward, does not know how to operate in that environment. That's also are there certain sectors or sections within society of people who you've found are more at risk or more falling into this category. I know in the research I've done, obviously we see boys and men fall into the high risk in terms of suicide. Is there any other sections within society that you've noted? Yep, so the really elderly, like my mum's generation, in the nursing home, which most people associate with loneliness. They are the most lonely generation, followed by Gen Z, and we're going to talk about that a second. But if you also look at women at risk in Australia of dying early because of loneliness, we're looking at middle aged women. So women who were divorced husbands moved on, married somebody else. Children have moved out empty nest syndrome, menopause and also the sandwich generation that me as an older millennial up to women in their 50s are dealing with where you are taking care of younger children and at the same time supporting your aging parents. That is incredibly psychologically lonely place to be. You have very little bandwidth for the kind of deep, social and relaxed connection that helps to satiate loneliness. Now, looking back to Gen Z, we've seen this with adolescents, the show that came out, the way of communicating now is so digital, right? Like an emoji is no longer emoji. It has all this meaning, and it's something that Jonathan hype in his incredible book that I strongly recommend everyone reads who is a mother. It's called the anxious generation, and it's all about how our change in communication to what is called asynchronous. So that means I message you Breanna, and it's a difficult conversation we're having. I'm angry about something, and Breanna can then take 72 hours to a week to formulate the perfect response, use chat, GPT and then reply. Now this means when we're in person and trying to connect, and we're communicating online like this all the time, we don't do difficult conversations well. Doing difficult conversations well is absolutely vital to mending and maintaining friendships. So if you're a Gen Z and you can't have a difficult conversation with your friend, you probably lose that friend. You cut them off, you don't talk. You ghost them. Whatever it is that generation does. Let's also layer onto that that asynchronous communication means you're a bit slower versus analog childhood people who you do, the banter, you do, the charm, you build rapport, but if you've always had 72 hours to mediate the perfect response. You're not as socially agile, and I suppose also, why? Way more sensitive to embarrassment, way more sensitive to because you haven't had the practice of getting the banter wrong or saying something in a social situation that didn't quite land field, right? Yeah, it's like, and that's such a skill. I remember. I love watching when I was a teacher. I loved watching kids learn to banter, and there was always times they'd get it wrong, and you'd go, mate, that was actually just a bit mean, you know, but it's a skill that you have to learn. And like you said, when it's all online now, not only are you losing that rapport, building muscle, but kids, I noticed, were so sensitive to embarrassment, or like, Oh no, couldn't do that. That's cringe so and that's like, to me, that's how we I don't know about you, that's how I spent my teens. I had braces and purple eyeshadow and brutal and we were embarrassed all the time, and now it's like, everything's perfect. Everything's filtered, and there's no resilience there. You know, we, I guess, had emotional intelligence. They have digital intelligence. So they I just heard the BBC this morning, things like putting a full stop at the end of text. Now is perceived by younger generations as passive aggression. Vision, and they use the ellipses a lot more they have. You know, we watched in adolescence the heart colors of the emoji hearts have a different meaning, so they also are forming a whole different level of communication skills that we don't have. So I don't want to dog them down, but those digital communication skills do not satiate loneliness, so to the point of our discussion, they're not going to help you be less lonely knowing the different colors of a heart emoji and loneliness affects not just our mental health but our physical health, right? So just to explain why this is really important that your children or the young people in your life that you love have good connection skills and can make friends, people who are chronically lonely are literally having fight or flight states all the time, and this is because we grew up as social creatures and tribes. So if we were separated from the tribe, our body would be hit with a threat response. Now if you perceive you're lonely and you're without that tribe where you could be killed by a saber tooth tiger, so you're unsupported, with less resources walking around this very lonely world. For chronically lonely people, the fight or flight response is daily, and that means it leads to life shortening diseases like cardiovascular disease affects your cognitive quickness. When you're chronically lonely, your brain's contingency and problem solving parts reduce So Julian Holt lunstad, who was the call that I had before you, she is the world renowned researcher who found out that being lonely is more dangerous for your physical health than smoking a pack of cigarettes a day in alcohol use disorder or obesity. So this is because we're social creatures, so it's baked into our DNA. If you have kids listening, please make sure they know how to go out, make friends and when they are out, that you are also not on your phone in their presence, because you're modeling to them that friendship should be mediated by phone, and then they will do the same. So you want them to be really present, so they can do the banter and exercise all those skills by modeling that to them. I love this so much. It's so good. And you mentioned, you know, if they're lonely, the antidote is to practice a skill set. There's a skill that needs to be built, which is a skill set of connection. So if we were to think of the skill set of connection as a recipe, what are the parts that we need? Yeah, so I want to focus today, because it's my latest research thing, and I'm going to be in my bonnet about it. I want us to focus on that initial rapport building when you meet another human. And that initial rapport building literally is the gateway to friendship for a young person, for any of us, actually. And so how do you build rapport without creeping the other person out, embarrassing yourself, or coming across sleazy? So the rules of rapport, firstly, rapport is when other people perceive us to be more like them. So for example, Breanna, you and I both grew up in Perth. I'm obviously of a different ethnicity to you. I'm probably in person, you're probably twice my height. You know, we're phenotypically different, but I am emphasizing to the parts that we have in common. So rapport is where you're augmenting the commonalities you have with another person. Because when we were in tribes, we looked like the people in our tribe. We spoke like them. We moved our bodies like them. So that's why it's baked in that way. So firstly, rapport is when other people perceive us to be more like them, maybe than we really are. Firstly, use speak to people like they speak to you. So when I get in a taxi in Singapore, I don't say to the taxi driver, Oh, Uncle, take me over to the airport, right? I don't I neutralize my Australian accent, and sometimes I throw in words of Singlish, so he will see the Singaporean part of me, and that allows him to see that, that part of us. We're from the same tribe, yeah, speak to people like they speak to you. And a lot of the times when I fly around the world, I have very multilingual audiences, and I always say, if you speak the same language as someone, you're trying to connect with, and they are struggling in English, you know, flip you can match people in pitch, pace, tone. If someone is having a depressed day, you're not going to go up to them and be like, I'm so excited to see you. Really great, emotionally intelligent and seasoned human connectors subconsciously sync to that vocal vibration or that tone of the person they're connecting with. So step number two is talk to people when you're first trying to make a friend and build rapport about the things they like to speak about. So we live in a world of narcissism. You know, I think the first thing I did in this call, before we started recording, was Breanna Tell me your story. So in that story, I'm learning what is Breanna 's value system, what she cares about. And maybe if you've got a hard nut to crack who doesn't like to connect, maybe they're wearing their favorite Fremantle Dockers t shirt. They're letting you know this is something. I'm interested in and my dad was a shopkeeper in Riverton in WA and he was an immigrant, and I watched him do this over and over again. You know, someone's got an Eagles beanie, he'll start a conversation like It was like watching a master. I'm tearing up to see about it. School holidays were like watching a master conductor, because for my dad, connection was still about survival. He needed customers to return in order to pay for our school fees, right? And so he became wonderful at observing for points of connection and diving in, even though he never even got time off from that shop to attend a footy game, when he would read the paper and he would learn it, and then he would use that. So I think we're in a presence deficit where we're not present with people because we're doing this. We're not scanning for commonality. We're not listening for commonality. So the first thing I would love people to do is listen and pick out what other people like to talk about, that you also like to talk about. Maybe you don't like anything they that they like, but you have to work with the person. So learn a little bit about what they like and use that at the beginning, and as that friendship grows, of course, we have something called the Rule of Reciprocity in social behavior, and they will eventually learn to ask you about what you like, and that's how we build friendship. The third rule of rapport is using your body to mirror and match. So you see, throughout this podcast, I am putting my hands in the frame of the of the mirror. This is because we know from the work of a lady called Vanessa Van Edwards that when we first meet other human beings, the first thing we glance at is not their eyes, not their face, not their mouth. We glance at their hands, because in our distant past, in tribes, we met a stranger, their hand could yield a weapon that could destroy us. So if you're on virtual and you are connecting with people via the frame of zoom or whatever, release your hands. Open hands. Build trust, and trust builds rapport. So we want to build trust with our bodies, and we can mirror and match in person too. You know, someone is slumped over in a depressive mode, you enter into that with the same mode, and then you can actually magically bring them into good rapport. So being again present and noticing those cues of behavior becomes really vital. And I don't think it's a coincidence that we're in a connection deficit with a generation that's used to looking at essentially redacted body language when you are using FaceTime or Whatsapp Video, you don't see the hands, you don't see the body language half the time you're seeing up someone's chin at their turkey neck. You're not getting that full body language experience, and we need to get back to a point where we are using that as a tool, also to build connection so good. And I remember because a lot of this is very similar to, I don't know if you've trained in NLP or you've done much reach, much research into Neuro Linguistic Programming. It's very similar. It's essentially the art and the communication of we, I would say persuasion, influence all of that. And so when I've taught you know, matching and mirroring, pacing and leading all of these things in my courses, I've actually had a few people say, doesn't that feel like, isn't that sort of shape shifting? Like, at what point are you not then authentic, if you're just shaping and shifting to whoever you're in front of. So I'd love to know your response to that. Yeah, I get asked that two of my speeches. So I always say these rules of report are only for taking a stranger or a new contact, a colleague, and moving it into a friendship. So there is a crux point where trust is established. And trust is usually established when there's mutual disclosure. And you can see that very even ping pong game of reciprocity. You ask them how your their day is, they respond, etc, etc. They're vulnerable with you. You're vulnerable with them. And at that point, the deeper truth comes out of who the two of you are, but we are in a connection crisis where lonely people do not remember how to make friends, or we're not taught how to make friends. So this NLP stuff we're talking about, this, these steps that I'm sharing, they're vital at the beginning, they're life saving at the beginning. You're not shape shifting, your lead generating for friends. If you can repeat these steps to 20 people. Of that 20 people, five may want to see you again. They become acquaintances. And of that five, one might become a best friend. But if you don't go through that process where you're not present and you don't listen and you're not tweaking towards their commonalities with you, we're never going to solve a loneliness crisis. Agree, I think it also comes down to intention. You know, it's like some people can use these skills to manipulate and gain in their own ways, and some people can use these skills to connect. Impact and to, you know, there's, there's intention to everything, and there's, there's light and dark in everything. I just found it a super interesting question, when I was teaching this once that someone said, it feels inauthentic. It feels like shape shifting to just match someone else. So super interesting. And you have said a few times, you know, they're sharing something vulnerable. Vulnerable. I'm sharing something vulnerable. That seems to be a huge piece of this recipe. So vulnerability, I've noticed, is something especially in the online world. In the online space, vulnerability is a beautiful thing. And I can also see a shadow side of it where it's almost been weaponized, being used as a tactic to get hits, to get likes, and I've seen it manifest in ways where some women don't even know how to show up if they're not being vulnerable, because it won't get as many you know, it won't get as much love. So I'd love to start with what you define as vulnerable and what is not. Okay. So vulnerability is only vulnerability because trust has been established. If you're vulnerable with people, before trust is established, it's over sharing, and it repels the exact kind of connection you crave, because we're already wired to be kept to a people we don't know. So a year ago, I spoke on Al Jazeera about this, and one of the Gen Zs on there was saying, you know, our generation like they're just, we're just showing the highlight reel. And I said, but there's already an emerging trend. Now, if I watch diary, the CEO, he won't even open that podcast without that guest's sad story. So vulnerability has been commodified and used as a way to connect with people, and now we're seeing this is over a year later, people are fatigued, like it's not even you can't look at a newspaper headline in the UK for some woman getting a new job as a presenter on the BBC without the headline being my endometriosis struggle. It's like we can't have people being successful or happy without sharing their darker side. And I really, really struggle with this, because I come across as a very strong woman, but I've been through obviously really awful things. Doesn't mean that I don't feel vulnerability, but if I don't show it, I don't look likable online, and that's really terrible, because I'm actually very likable person, without having to slog a story about my dad's death or my mother being paralyzed, and I think it's really sad that, but we must also understand this is why what you see online is not reality. You're not seeing a full person, which is why each post has to show different facets, because it's not the full person showing up, right with I think the authenticity conversation is also over. Like, I think authenticity was a massive buzzword in the culture five years ago, before, even before the pandemic and thought leadership, you normally an idea runs for about seven years, and then it dies. So we're going to be seeing the end of authenticity too soon. The exact reason that the culture is going to correct for what we have become fatigued to which is this weaponization of people's personal stories. I love what you said about feeling like you have to flog a sad story to be relevant. I remember a business coach once trying to build like, you know, trying to build my brand story, my rags to riches, my overcoming, my transition. And I just remember thinking, I'm like, I'm sorry. I was I have a great family. I was raised in a beautiful had beautiful childhood. My schooling life was great. You know, everyone's got some hardship, but you almost feel like you've got to build this real sad story. And it was through this journey of building up my personally, what finding what vulnerability means to me, I found that I felt more vulnerable sharing something like a win, a celebration, something that I was proud of, standing in my power, felt so much more vulnerable to me because my past was, you know, that to me, was more scary than sharing a sad story. Yeah, so. And I think I shared that online, and lots of women actually resonated and said that's actually so true, I feel more scared, more like my head is on the chopping block when things are going well and when I share things in a positive way. So I think even that is starting to feel a little bit more edgy and a little bit more vulnerable now, which also has some knock on effects. Yeah, a friend of mine, who has the same publisher as me, was actually saying, like, can we not just be happy for our wins? Like, is that not okay anymore, and it's not okay? Like, I think I would have a much bigger following if I looked like a more sympathetic character, but maybe I'm just not that relatable, but I'm okay with that. I'm a middle aged woman. I don't live for Instagram. I live for connection with people I love in real life. And I feel we're going to see a not for the younger generations, but for us older millennials. Is I think we're also tired of of this, of being beaten over the head by. Algorithm. I'm tired of it absolutely and on that there's something that you put on your Instagram which I wanted to talk to you about, because I absolutely loved it, and it was such a interruption to the normal narrative, which is that you you shared about how, as an ambitious person, you were having an existential crisis and decided to scale down your business to reduce stress and increase your lifespan. And I found that so inspiring, this new narrative, and this woman who I admire so much, going, you know what? I'm actually not scaling up. I'm looking after my cortisol and my sleep. Can you share what what prompted that, and what was the the response to this? Now this, yeah, experience, yeah, okay. Firstly, what the what was the response? I think there's two sorts of women that follow me. There is like, Asian women working globally, who are beaten down in their workplaces. And there's a little badass that they see me, that they're like, Man, I want a bigger her confidence, and she's like small and diminutive, and she's like a badass. So they love it. They love seeing me gallivant everywhere. And then there's this other element, which in my level of drive and speed and building this business was just not very likable. I make people feel bad about their own productivity. And then I guess I found out last year that I was neurodiver or beginning of this year that I was neurodivergent. And so now I know why I can post every day and do like I just have a higher capacity for a lot of things. But I think what made me come to that realization was, firstly, what's happening globally in the culture right now I started, obviously, when your parents a parent, my dad died when I was 19, but also, my mom has been in a wheelchair since I was 29 and has a degenerative illness, as I mentioned before. And you really anyone who's that young spending as many hours as I have in a nursing home? You think anyone at nursing homes like talking about that they run, ran a seven, eight figure business, or they spoke for this client. I mean, my mom has no idea that I even wrote a book. She has, like, no idea. And everyone in that nursing home, and I talked about this in my first TED Talk, everyone in that nursing home is just pining away to be visited by a human connection that they either screwed up in their life that they wanted back, that they loved. They are just waiting for different visits from different people. And sometimes it gets so lonely they don't even care if that person is the occupational therapist that comes. And when you see it like that, you go, I want a lifestyle business. I want to see all the people I loved in all the countries that I lived, and I'm going to reverse engineer my life based on connection, and that's what I did. So I've lived in the UAE, Singapore, Australia, and also Switzerland, and I spend my year with my besties in each of those countries. Split around, and I found a way to make money very healthily, but and still living like that. And so I feel like I hacked the matrix. For me, it's my idea of success. And recently, a guy, I've met a dude, and he was saying, Oh, that's wonderful, like you'll be even more successful. And I turned around to him, I said, Well, it depends what your definition of success is, because I actually feel I'm pretty successful now I'm happy. Isn't that success? And it's weird, because I think a lot of people think if you're driven, you must have this insatiable thing, which in my 20s I did until my mother got sick, and I did therapy and I had my awakening, and I spent all my time reading these sorts of books, and what's correlative everywhere is that really the notion of success that Gen X and late Millennials were taught about being famous and earning a lot of money is we now know, because of your Weinsteins, because of your ditties, because of all of these people being exposed that that was all like a facade, that was all a complete farce, and that being that level of successful, but being an awful human being and wreaking negative effects on everyone around you, it's no definition of Success to be happy and go to sleep about I feel we were sold a lie, our generation. Yeah, I think you're right, and I think a lot of women are starting to really get on board with this, which I just loved that post. I thought it was so special. And I know lots of women myself included, made that similar decision of, actually, I'm going to have a family soon I need to scale back or find a different way to make the business suit the new values and the ego death and the Oh, are you going backwards? Are you now failing like all of the beliefs and identities and stories that I had to battle with were. Pretty strong. Have you had that experience like, what were the beliefs and identities that you've had to break? And do you find old programming come up where it's like, no, do more go more scale, bigger, go harder? Do you still sort of grapple with these two identities or beliefs? I think when I turned 40 it stopped. So last year, so I'm 41 now, last year it stopped. But prior to that, yes, and I think when I left the radio, I had a lot of people who were like, oh, you know, make sure you at least keep a weekend shift so that you can still be known when they didn't realize, like, I had done enough courses, meditations, readings to know that fame is most certainly not the answer for any of your wounds. I was so anti entertainment, anti showbiz, anti profile. So I was like, I want Singapore as a safe base, and I want to be known across the world for my niche, but I don't care to be famous. And so that was really weird when other people, you know, everyone's on their own journey, but they haven't unlocked from that narrative of success yet. So for them, just like what you were telling me before about being a lawyer and being a teacher, they couldn't understand. So it's more like their paradigm coming up, gets my paradigm, and it not matching. And then in terms of the the biggest ego death for me, I'm going to be so vulnerable, and it's something I've written about. Written about in my second book coming out next year, and it was really difficult to write about for me, it's the thought that I'm losing my pretty privilege. You know, I started out life as a model, and like when you reach middle age, you don't get the male gaze anymore. You know, your waist thickens. Their biological brain doesn't go off and go, Hey, that's someone who's going to be healthy for breeding anymore. That has been the hardest thing is like losing the sexiness, losing that sort of attention, and worrying about, if you've always had something, what will I be when I don't have it anymore? With media, it was different. I was so fed up. I felt we were just such dwarf minds. There was no new thought coming in. We weren't inspiring anyone like for me creatively, I was out. But this part that is still ingrained in me is still the glamor, the pretty privilege, ease of which that gives you access to the world. And that is that ego death is still difficult for me to let go of, and I'm still in the process of letting go of that that's still triggering for me. Sometimes when I see photos or videos of myself, when I'm like, oh my god, like I am 40 now, like I'm middle aged. Now, it's happening and but as far as the rest of it, like, it's different Singapore, we have very low tax, and my lifestyle is largely paid for by my corporate clients. So on socials, if you see me fly business class everywhere, it's the client has paid for that. When I travel socially, and I don't have to be in good rested state for speech, I'll fly premium economy, economy. So I think maybe because I'm a shopkeepers daughter from Perth, I'm very sensible with my money, and I don't have any dependents to pay for Singapore is extremely expensive. Don't get me wrong, I love to work hard, but I'm not in a squeezed of a position as I would be if I was a single mom, or if I, you know, had dependents. I'm very aware of that. But everything that I do post online, everything is self made, and I have found out recently that quite a few people that I follow, you know their Sugar Babies or someone else has paid for this stuff that I'm seeing online. And I just it's very important for me that all the young women and the women my age that follow me know that I have the receipts for my whole life, and that is an integrity value piece for me, but in terms of the ego death, that's the biggest one. Is like losing the beauty is like a big thing. Thank you for sharing that. I think it's a tough thing when we are definitely in an age of beauty, really is, you know, the filters. I remember my 15 year old client going back years ago, I think I said to you, I was mindset coaching for teenage girls, and I had a 15 year old client that wanted Botox. And I thought, Okay. I said, why? What? Where would you like Botox? She said, Oh, my smile lines. I don't want my smile lines because she was so used to seeing herself in a filter that it's this huge conversation, and I'm sure it comes into loneliness and rapport building and and and people's ability to walk up to people because that they're scared they don't look like how they looked on their on social media. And it's a huge, big thing. And I think for any age, whether it's us, whether it's the whichever generation, the idea of losing beauty is very scary because it has created a lot of benefits in society. And Breanna, we are so visual, right? We are so visual. And I also live in Singapore, where the average 45 year old looks like a 30 year old, and the. Idea of what your skin should look like is it's like Korea, you know, like, no pause, like, it's just a different and how skinny you have to be, you know. And I'm mixed race, which means that I'm curvier than and so all of these things. But the truth is, the scariest thing is, at in my 40s, no one else cares about me. I am now considered a states woman, like, I'm an elder statesman, like, right? So I considered like, like, I'm old, like, no one is looking to think I'm hot. Like, it's the game is over, but the fact that I still care scares me, and that's an ego, yeah, that I have to come to terms with. I'm very comfortable with everything else in in my work and everything like that, provided, you know, the gigs stick, still keep coming in, provided I do my marketing right, like all of that, I'm pretty comfortable with, yeah, but that is something. And I got a couple of girlfriends who used to in entertainment too, and they're transitioning to becoming coaches or psychologists, and they're really great role models for me, because they have let it go, like as if not physically, but the psychology, yeah, they drink what they want, eat what they want, and they're in loving relationships, where the husbands love them exactly. Is that, like, it's beautiful, and I, that's my that's the next I'm shooting my shot for that next. Oh, I just can't wait to read your second and third and probably 10th book, probably 20th book. I'm sure it's coming. I'd love to wrap this up with a couple rapid fire questions, if you're okay, if you've got two minutes, yeah, for sure, beautiful. What is your this might actually be a very obvious question, but I'm intrigued. What is your biggest concern for society at the moment? So our number one existential threat is climate change, our number two existential threat is loneliness. So these two things keep me up at night, and the polarization in the world is contributing to both of these problems. So we need to really investigate and get a hold on our global political systems. And I could go on and on about this, but I'm going to stop there, because this is rapid fire, not 60 Minutes fire. Okay, thank you. What are you most excited about for society right now? I'm so excited about how incredible the innovation is. Like, yes, we have a lot of things that tech look. I'm I am scared about, but I also see how transformative and how, you know, I'm a really quick person. I like to see quick change. It's probably why I was dying to get out of Perth as a kid. And I love living in this global city where travel is really enabled, and we work across markets, and we work across cultures, and just seeing how technology is enabling the world to become smaller in that way when used correctly. And it excites me. Yeah, that just excites me. I love as a mixed person who's lived everywhere, I just love seeing that the world is is culturally a lot closer than it was in my childhood. I love that. What is the message you would give to a younger version of you on her darkest day, start writing earlier, and all of your neuros would have been solved like if I had just I was listening to a podcast with Zoe foster blade the other day, and she started writing at 22 and I think I spent so much time trying to be skinny, worried about how I look, trying to get a TV presenting job. If I just taken that energy, that big, intense energy that I have, and started writing then, and how healing writing books is for me, I would be living a better life now, I think. And on that note, if people want to read your book, the one that's out right now. Where can people go to connect with you? Find you? Where's the best place for people to connect Absolutely. So if you're interested in the book, you can just Google Simone, hang book into Google, and it'll come up with your local retailer. It's all over Australia. It's in Perth, in the dimmicks. You can find me on Instagram, at Simone Heng, and I'm also, if you're interested in kind of the work of speaking and and authoring, my LinkedIn is also really active Simone Henk speaker, and it's more corporate content than on Insta. Simone. Thank you so much for this conversation. You really do embody the art of charisma and charm and human connection. You are the person who walks the walk, talks the talk, and I could talk to you for hours. So thank you. I really appreciate your time. Thank you for finding me babe, and you have a great one, and keep doing what you're doing. Thank you. Thank you for tuning in to the mind school podcast. It is a massive intention of mine to continue to grow this show, because the more the show grows, the better the guests get, and I know that is going to be so powerful for you listening. So if I could ask this massive favor, it would mean the world if you could please leave a review, hit the Follow button, or leave a rating on Spotify so that we can continue to grow this show and bring you the. Juiciest, most thought provoking and expansive conversations through incredible guests. Thank you so much for tuning in. I'll see you next week. You.