November 18, 2022 • 35 mins
I was delighted to be joined by James Pearson from All We Think We Create.
He’s an author as well as emotional therapist
He spoke about helping people heal and connect more fully with their emotions.
James spoke to me about why he was inspired by a book that he read by Carl Jung, how a lot of his ideas resonated with him and how it prompted him to go into the field he wanted to go into.
James also spoke to me about emotional guidance and how people don’t have to experience hard times alone.
James spoke about the book he wrote to help others find themselves and self discovery.
James spoke about the training he received as a counsellor and how it helped him have empathy to explore the spiritual side of emotions and an open approach to emotional healing, acceptance and self awareness
Great to do this episode for sure :)
He’s an author as well as emotional therapist
He spoke about helping people heal and connect more fully with their emotions.
James spoke to me about why he was inspired by a book that he read by Carl Jung, how a lot of his ideas resonated with him and how it prompted him to go into the field he wanted to go into.
James also spoke to me about emotional guidance and how people don’t have to experience hard times alone.
James spoke about the book he wrote to help others find themselves and self discovery.
James spoke about the training he received as a counsellor and how it helped him have empathy to explore the spiritual side of emotions and an open approach to emotional healing, acceptance and self awareness
Great to do this episode for sure :)
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:03):
Hello, everyone, Welcome to a brand new episode of the
podcast Stay. I have the pleasure of introducing James Pearson.
He's basically a life coach. I'm not sure if that's correct,
but he's gonna be speaking all things mental health and
(00:23):
just in general how he got into the practice. So, James,
welcome to the show. Thank you so much for having me,
Connin It's an honor to be here.
Speaker 2 (00:33):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (00:33):
So, James, to listeners out there, could you tell could
you tell them a bit about yourself?
Speaker 3 (00:41):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (00:42):
Sure.
Speaker 3 (00:42):
So I'm currently a student counselor studying an FDA in
intricative counseling and psychotherapy. But I got into this field
really quite by accident as a happy marriage between let's say,
existential crisis and art, and I found myself on a
(01:05):
path that really led me to become very, very fascinated
with the work of Carl Jung. And if nobody's familiar
with him, he is a psychologist who was really at
the beginning, the forefront of a sort of human evolution
into looking at mental health and psychology as a science.
(01:30):
So he's sort of kind of like was there with
Freud right at the beginning birth in this whole industry,
and I just felt that really the stuff that is
his level is a sort of on our awareness level
that we can access out there at the moment. The
stuff that is shared is quite clinical, really and doesn't
(01:50):
tap into or sometimes often doesn't tap into the more
sort of spiritual or really emotional content of our lives.
And so this is something that's fascinated me and has
kind of spurred me on to do my own research
and to discover are their mechanisms, are the ways of
(02:12):
kind of creating human connection that kind of are in
the realm of mental health, but also maybe also existing
in the realm of kind of just humanity health, Yeah,
for sure. And you mentioned as well you were inspired
by the work of Carl Jung and that was one
of the reasons you got.
Speaker 1 (02:32):
Into the mental health field. What was it about his
work that really inspired you?
Speaker 3 (02:40):
Right, Okay, so there's a little bit of a story
about this.
Speaker 1 (02:42):
I was.
Speaker 3 (02:45):
Experiencing, as everybody was, the basically the crash of lockdown.
Everything was grinding to a hole. Things weren't happening, and
I spent a lot of time just by myself just
thinking about my age, where I'd been, what I'd done,
what was next all these kind of big questions, and
I guess up to that point, I really hadn't had
the time to stop, pause and think about these things.
(03:07):
And so when I began to kind of really assimilate
all of this information about about where I'd been and
where I wanted to go, I began to feel that
something was missing, and I wanted to educate myself to
better understand myself. And that led to kind of like
the mental health sciences, and I ended up choosing to
(03:29):
study as a counselor, and I went and did what's
called a level two over in Blackburn, which was an
incredible drive for me. It was a very long way
in the midst of lockdown. It was terrifying leaving the
house and trying to deal with all of that stuff,
But really it awakened me to something that I think
I had been repressing for years, and that's a sense
(03:51):
of just separating out the sort of the limitations of
thinking that we have placed on us over decades of
kind of programming and experience, and opening yourself up to
being more accepting and aware of others and yourself within
the context of others. And one day we were doing
(04:14):
a task we were drawing some masks really to share
with the other group aspects of our personalities which we
don't normally share with others on a day to day basis.
And I'd finished drawing my mask and I held it
up and my tutor, who had actually stepped into UH
to take over from another tutor, had to leave, so
he was new. He looked at me, and our eyes
(04:36):
met across the room, and he just said, you need
to read The Red Book by Carl Jung. And at
this point I hadn't really heard of Carl Jung. I
was kind of maybe vaguely aware of him. I thought, Okay,
that's cool, something's just happened here like this is significant.
So I went home, downloaded the ebook because it's a
very very hard book to get in print and it's
very expensive, and started reading it. And from the moment
(05:00):
I kind of turned onto it must have been about
page three or four. Immediately these alarm bells were going off,
and I was thinking so much of my thought process
and my kind of self experience of myself as an
individual within the greater kind of scope of humanity really
(05:23):
was resonating with what Carl Jung was writing. And these ideas,
and I just thought, I really want to. I have
been wanting to, is more accurate. I have been wanting
to express myself in this way. And if I could
challenge some of his thinking and put that out into
the world, I could begin this sort of journey, this
path of self understanding for myself and for others.
Speaker 1 (05:47):
Oh yeah, for sure. And you, he said, He said
as well. What I found really interesting was that was
the reason you got inspired by his work and his
way of thinking. You kind of assimilated how fascinating it was.
(06:07):
I never really heard of the guy until probably a
couple of days ago while I was while I went
on your website and I was like, oh, who's this
Carl young individual?
Speaker 2 (06:17):
He seems like he seems like an interesting guy. And
he yeah.
Speaker 1 (06:23):
And the fact as well, with mental health, you can turn.
Speaker 2 (06:28):
You can look at the science behind.
Speaker 1 (06:30):
It, the psychology, like you said earlier, you can look
at this, you can look at the science, you can
look at everything around it. With mental health, it's not
necessarily just a mental thing, but also a scientific thing
in a way.
Speaker 2 (06:43):
Right.
Speaker 1 (06:44):
Yeah, Ah, so I guess as well.
Speaker 2 (06:49):
I'll ask you as well.
Speaker 1 (06:50):
So you mentioned lockdown and the experience, and that experience
of you know, sort of being alone with your thoughts
and just being lonely in general.
Speaker 2 (07:01):
What was that like for you?
Speaker 1 (07:03):
Did that impact your well being in a way that
you know, I guess you could really understand because this
was one of my unprecedented things that we'd ever experienced.
Speaker 3 (07:15):
Yeah, sure, let me kind of frame some of that
experience then. So in the run up to Lockdown, I
think my head was very business focused. Like my entire life,
I've felt that I've been on this path is trajectory,
with this internal voice saying do something significant, be successful,
(07:35):
and that had a very very specific definition of the
meaning Now two my brain. Two and a bit years
before Lockdown, my son was born. And when that happened,
my life was the rules of my life I think
were completely rewritten, and I feel like my emotional structure
(07:58):
was completely changed, and I spent two years falling over
my own feet really trying to become a dad, which
I quickly realized was the thing I wanted most in
the world. This was the most important thing in my life.
And when Lockdown hit, we were quite lucky really in
(08:19):
the sense that we live out in the countryside, so
we were able to get out for those country walks.
Speaker 2 (08:24):
That we were allowed.
Speaker 3 (08:27):
We didn't really see many people when we went out.
It's quite a quiet village and we just spent a
lot of time together as a family. And I think
that had a massive influence on my thinking at the
time and made me realize that there were parts of
me that had been repressed or buried. And I think
(08:47):
there's a lot of emotional stuff down there that, over
the years had just kind of been, like I said, repressed,
perhaps by peer pressure, paps, perhaps by society, perhaps by
my own kind of limited consideration of these kinds of things.
And when all that stuff started to come out, it
(09:07):
knocked me over. And I've just written a piece about
this actually, And psychologists have a term which is regulation,
which is where you have an experience, you're able to regulate.
You're able to self regulate if you can contain the
experience and understand the meaning of it. But there comes
a point where that experience becomes overwhelming and you need
to coregulate, which means you need to bring somebody else
(09:29):
in to share that experience with. And I began to
feel that I had so much repressed content inside that
I needed to get out into the world, and I
needed to share all of this kind of feeling, all
of this emotion, all of this stuff that was just
(09:49):
desperately needing to be expressed. And I think the introduction
on the counseling course, I think gave me the foundation,
like the understanding of how this actually works today. And
then all the work on Instagram, which began during lockdown,
was really my vehicle for getting all of that stuff
(10:10):
out and into the world and connecting with people and
really kind of proving some of these concepts I'd read
about in Young.
Speaker 1 (10:19):
Yeah, and as well, with with that period of just
unpredictability and uncertainty in that time, people's mental health or
at an all time low, like especially if you're someone
that was living alone and you didn't really have much
(10:40):
interaction maybe beyond I don't know, the odd person you
might see on a walk or absolutely or if you're
lucky to have that, Yeah, if you if you're lucky
to have that at the time, you know, it's it
could be a very lonely experience. And I find as well,
particularly in US men like you say, we repress what
(11:01):
we're truly feeling. We we repress it because we want
to be strong and we want to you know. And
it's it's always been that term in society that it's
weak for a man to show emotion, and if a
man shows emotion, then he's a weak man, which is
a term that we should be slowly putting on the shelf.
(11:24):
I think in my experience, certainly, Connor, I think the
opposite is true. The more you are able to express
your emotions, the stronger you've become. That's the irony of it.
Mm yeah, and he hit the nail on the head.
It's I found as well over the last year or so,
I was a guy that.
Speaker 2 (11:42):
Would repressed his emotions.
Speaker 1 (11:44):
I wasn't really open about them to not even my
family and even like it took me a lot to
even be open about my experiences to the online world
because I've I've opened up about weight issues and the
experience is previously when I've been on podcasts myself and
(12:04):
I found that to be a release for me. And
I found that to be a release because it got
people knowing a bit more than what they already know
about me at the time, and it was, like I say,
just a huge, huge release for me.
Speaker 3 (12:22):
Mm hm.
Speaker 1 (12:25):
So I guess this goes on to my next question,
what do you think men could do more of to
show that opening up about their mental health is okay?
Speaker 3 (12:42):
Right, Wow, that's a big question. I think first of all,
we've got to understand that across all the cultures of
the world, there are different accepted norms, and certainly within
within those cultures, within those societies, people have different expectations
(13:04):
of themselves and of others. So I think it's a
tricky one. But here in the UK, I think we're
kind of straddling with somewhere between the two extremes. I
think we're getting to a place where generally it is
more accepted for men to talk about their feelings and things.
(13:24):
But I think largely from everything I've read, from everything
that I've seen, from everything that I've experienced, and everyone
I've spoken to, I think certainly it comes with that
moment of realization when you become fully accepted by somebody
else and then suddenly you feel safe and you feel
(13:47):
like you can trust, whereas before there might be a
feeling that there is no trust, Like if I tell
people that I'm an emotional guy, I'm going to get
laughed at, or you know, but once you've ad somebody
put that trust in you, then I think you gain confidence.
And once you gain confidence, you're able to more openly
share that. And I think and I hope that by
(14:09):
being able to share that and being very open about it,
it can inspire other people to go and try and
find that trust in somebody to reach out and say
I need to I just need to talk. I need
to share some emotions. And once you've had that experience,
I think it's it's kind of addictive. Actually, it feels
so good to be able to have an open dialogue. Yeah,
(14:31):
and trust is a key word in all of this.
When it comes to anything in life. Trust is paramount
to what we do and how we perceive things and
mental health, especially because having that person you can talk
to and just saying, look, I'm having a bad day.
(14:52):
I just I just need to vent about it, basically,
so and we will have them days, we ak them
days where I'm just like Joe, I just need to
event about it. And I don't want people to come
up with a solution. I just need I just need
someone to actually.
Speaker 2 (15:06):
Listen to me.
Speaker 1 (15:08):
I need someone to actually listen to me and hear me.
And because I get. I get as well. Trying to
come up a solution. I guess comes from a good
place of trying to solve the problem, trying to fix it.
But sometimes that is not always the best thing. I think,
And just like I say, listening to someone is.
Speaker 2 (15:29):
It's the best thing.
Speaker 3 (15:32):
It's a it's a fascinating thing. You brought up there, actually,
because I'm reading a Way of Being by Carl Rogers,
and he's the creator of person centered counseling, which I
won't go into because too big, too big a topic
to explain, but you could look it up. But he
said essentially, he proposed that there are six conditions necessary
(15:52):
for positive psychological change, and once those conditions are met,
then someone can move into a place of positive psychological readjustment,
they heal, they can start to heal. And he said
that a lot of, if not all, of these conditions
are actually present in our day to day interactions with
friends and family, not necessarily therapists. But the problem exists
(16:15):
that people don't realize what conditions they're offering to somebody else,
and so these conditions kind of vaporize within seconds, as
somebody might be listening to someone talk, but then quickly
remembers that they've left the kettle on, or they didn't
feed the cat, and they come out of that frame
of reference and they're instantly distracted. And so he was
saying that really it is that understanding and that training
(16:37):
and that discipline that separates a person from say the
idea of a professional counselor or a professional therapist therapist.
But we all to some degree have these abilities inside.
They're inherent. And if we could just find a way,
as you know, as a race, as human beings, to
just actually have time for other people, I think the
(17:02):
entire world could shift on its access, the access, if
we could just get to that point.
Speaker 1 (17:07):
Yeah, and like you said as well, when someone might
zone out when someone's venting or talking about something because
like you say, they've forgot to feed the dog or
the cow, or left the kettalong, or they left something
important at home, and they tend to zone out, I
(17:28):
think as well, there is such a thing as being
there too much for other people. Absolutely in the sense
of in the sense of actually, if you constantly make
yourself available for other people and then that causes deterioration
(17:50):
in your own mental health, then you're going to feel
drained and some and you'll basically canbust like inside inside
and on.
Speaker 2 (18:00):
Outside your canbust.
Speaker 1 (18:01):
And and I always, I always really emphasize that self
care is important because so self care is paramount to
one's well being. It's paramount to their physical, psychological and
mental well being because the bottom the bottom line is
self care is the best is the best thing that
(18:24):
you can do, especially when you're having a bad day,
and sometimes you don't need someone else's I guess probably
not problems, but you know what I'm trying to say,
someone else trying to you know, say that thing to you,
and you're just like Joe, I can't be bothered today.
I need me time, I need time by myself. And
(18:47):
and for me, it took quite a long time for
me to actually realize that sometimes I need to put
myself first. I'm not being selfish for it, it's just
simply put in my own care and care needs first. Yeah,
there's a fantastic analogy that is, when you're on an airplane,
(19:09):
they tell you to put your gas mask, your mask,
your oxygen mask on first before you help anybody else.
And that's because if you pass out helping somebody else,
then you can no longer.
Speaker 3 (19:20):
Help that person. So you've got to care for yourself
first and then for others. So you're absolutely right spot on.
Speaker 2 (19:25):
I like that analogy. I have to study. It's not
very often. I think there's another gas mask. It's the
wrong onegen mask.
Speaker 1 (19:32):
Yeah, oxygen mask for sure. And I think there's another
analogy as well that I really liked. It's like if
you've got if you've got a battery and you know
your your phone is fully charged, and bit by bit
it goes down the percentage and you constantly give a
bar of your battery to other people, then your own
(19:54):
battery is going to be drained. And you wouldn't let
your and you wouldn't let your phone die, you'd go
and charge it. So why continuously let yourself be drained
and not prioritize also your own mental health?
Speaker 3 (20:12):
Yeah, I think another way of look at looking at
that is I suppose a lot of it is concept
and context, and I think a lot of the way
I feel about it is if we could just make
some more seconds available to other people, Like when we're
passing someone in the street, if we can just pass
them a kind remark or lift our heads up and
(20:32):
say hello, instead of being buried in our own sort
of self whatever it is that we are in that moment.
So I just think, and certainly artists as well, the
more that they can share stuff that influences and inspires people.
There are so many ways of giving to others. And
if we could just find more time in our lives
(20:54):
and perhaps you know, bearing in mind the idea of
self care, can we carve out time that is for others?
Can we say that this half an hour is for others,
so to contain that and have boundaries? Certainly, Yeah, yeah,
and yeah, I think, like you say, we're so buried
(21:16):
in our own.
Speaker 2 (21:18):
Things.
Speaker 1 (21:18):
Sometimes, like like you say, just simply passing someone on
the street and saying hello, how are you, how's your
day been? You know, if some some people respond, some
people don't. That's part of life. I mean, especially London.
If you if you go there and I don't say
hello to someone, they they literally look at you very weirdly.
Speaker 3 (21:39):
But yeah, the exception to the norm.
Speaker 1 (21:42):
But but yeah, sometimes it's just nice to do that.
And when I went to Ireland recently, I was you know, I.
Speaker 2 (21:52):
Was almost kind of.
Speaker 1 (21:54):
Not shocked, but like, wow, these you know people that
strangers actually interact with each other on the street say
simple hello and how are you kind of thing, And
I was like, oh wow, this is you know, this
is amazing. I know in small villages and stuff that
happens as well, which is great because everyone happens more,
just not all the time. Yeah, yeah, everyone could help
(22:16):
one another out. So this brings me, This brings me
onto my next question. So you've got you've got a
website as well, and you've about training to become therapist,
You've got tips and strategies, So what do you intend
(22:39):
to do with that going forward? What is your ambition?
Speaker 3 (22:45):
Right, it's a very interesting field is let's look at
counseling specifically, because, as many people are aware, counseling is
currently unregulated in the UK, which makes it a bit
of a wild west. And there are some associations like
the BACP out there who put forward basically codes of ethics.
(23:10):
So if you're a member of the BACP, you operate
by their code of ethics, which helps people to kind
of identify perhaps who's been through a certain level of
training or who is abiding by certain ethical standards. But
it isn't a hard and fast rule, and so it's
very very difficult for people to, let's say, find a
(23:32):
good therapist. It's not impossible. It's just hard work, and
especially finding somebody that's going to work and resonate with you.
So part of my mission, I'm very interested in the
research side of things, and I'm very very interested in
the social media side of things. I keep seeing a phrase,
(23:54):
and I'm not sure where it originated, but the phrase
is Instagram is not therapy.
Speaker 2 (24:00):
Perhaps you've seen it yourself.
Speaker 1 (24:01):
I yeah, I'm familiar with that terminology. I'd say it's
I'd say it's consumption of it's I'd say social media
is constant, constant consumption because you're strolled, not strolling scrolling through.
It's scrolling through on your newsfeed or Instagram or Twitter
(24:21):
whatever continuously or even TikTok for some of us younger
people out there, like it's constant consumption. It could be negativity,
scare mongering, and we're constantly consumed by that because that's
that's the way social media companies want you to They
(24:43):
want you to stand there because they wanted to be
consumed by everything that's on it.
Speaker 2 (24:49):
It is.
Speaker 3 (24:50):
It is an absolute mindfield and it's one of the
reasons I'm so fascinated by it because not only the
way it affects human behavior, like you say, but at
the same time time, it's it's like all technologies or platforms,
all ideas, anything that's ever been created. It can be
used for good or it can be used for bad.
And I know of countless examples whereby it's actually been
(25:13):
a social media it's been a post, a real something
on social media has encouraged someone to take the first
steps towards therapy, and then that person is on the
path to becoming whole. And I just think Instagram is
not therapy. No, So that's I'm not saying it is.
I'm not saying it isn't. All I'm saying is it
(25:34):
pays to question that and to look into what is
happening here, because it's fascinating. It's some like you say,
some content is good, some content is bad, some content
is just disposable. Some content is super deep and it's
for us to filter it through. But yeah, yeah, it's
why I'm emphasizing the word consumption because there was I
(25:59):
think there was a person I saw on the Jordan Pearson,
who's well known within like everywhere all throughout the world,
he said. He said the same thing about constant consumption
of what we're reading and what we've seen on social media.
And like you say, it can be used for good
and it could be used for bad. And there was
someone I saw on there that was the pope that
(26:22):
done a post a pill thing on Instagram, and that
really that really resonated with me because he had it
was on a reality TV show Love Island.
Speaker 1 (26:34):
I don't watch any of that, but it resonated with
me because people do feel ashamed to feel like they
have to take medication to stay sane for their own
mental health. And I reckon it got more people to
do a post a pill because that that was something
that I did on my own Instagram. And I was like, Joe, what,
(26:57):
I don't have to feel ashamed. I don't have to
feel shame that I have to you know, take you know,
wants tubbler a day just to you know, stay well
within myself.
Speaker 2 (27:10):
You know.
Speaker 1 (27:11):
So like like like like we say it can be
used for good, it used for bad. Ye strength and community, right, yeah,
it's strength and community. You meet you meet good people
in there. There's bad people in there. And and that's
the way it goes in everyday life. Mm hmm. So
as well, when I looked into your website, you had
(27:34):
a book as well, the have Out. Would you like
to tell me a bit more about the book and
its content?
Speaker 2 (27:43):
Sure?
Speaker 3 (27:43):
Think so. The Book of Unfinished Feelings is the title,
and right from the outset, I decided to embrace the
concept of letting go. That was that was really the
theme of everything that I was trying to do. I
was trying to reduce the sense of ego. Like everything
(28:06):
in life, we have an intention for or we're trying
to progress ourselves, and I thought, well, what would it
feel like to not be in that state? So I
tried This is very influenced by Carl Jung. I decided
to try to tap into something which he describes as
the collective unconscious. This idea that there is a force
(28:29):
or an energy created in the universe by all the
thoughts and feelings that we have that we're not expressing.
So these are things that are buried in the back
of our minds that we don't have access to. They
inform who we are, but they never cross into our consciousness.
So I decided that if I were to write a book,
(28:51):
which I was quite interested in doing to get some
of these ideas out, I would like the book to
be influenced by other people. I would like the book
to not be influence by me. So as part of
that process, I decided that I would contact total strangers
on Instagram and really just ask them to share a
single feeling word like the most basic thing I could
(29:12):
think of with me to kind of get a or
present a sense of where that person was in time
right now. It's a stamp and fast approaching over seven
hundred of those right now, and for every ten, I
(29:33):
put them together and created what I've called a meditation,
which is a description of the process that I take
to take these feelings and make meaning of them. I mean,
most people's idea of meditation is probably sitting down and
sort of going into a detrance state or repeating a phrase.
This is elements of that, because I sit with these
(29:54):
words and I allow the words to kind of form
their own meaning. Again, I try I take myself out
of that equation, and so phrases come together like some
words interconnect really really really really nicely. Other words are
polar opposites, and when you start to construct sentences. From
these feelings, you get explanations about humanity and explanations about life,
(30:21):
and they're things that I certainly didn't have inside me.
I could not have shared these things from my own
experience or my own understanding. So outcome these massively prophetic,
profound human statements about understanding ourselves and our mental states
and our place in the world, all these kinds of
(30:42):
high concepts. And then I have literally tried to write
about my interpretation, my experience of having that meditation, what
it meant to me. And I've had the most alarming
of experiences where I'll be working on a concept something
(31:03):
and I'll go out into the world and I will
literally manifest that experience for myself, obviously manifesting it, but
quite clearly not consciously aware of the fact that I'm
doing it. So it's a book about transformation. It's a
book about detaching from your own process and getting into
(31:25):
the unconscious process, but the unconscious process of really humanity
as a whole, not individuals. It's just being proofread at
the moment, so it's finished, it's just being proof read,
and I hope to have it out by the.
Speaker 2 (31:39):
End of the year.
Speaker 3 (31:41):
I'm not sure there's another book like it. I certainly
haven't come across one, But I hope that people enjoy
it and get something from it. And if somebody reads
it and has one light bulb moment, then it's done
its job.
Speaker 2 (31:53):
Yeah, for sure.
Speaker 1 (31:54):
And I'll keep a lookout for that book when it
comes out and be sure to share it with everyone.
I'm sure you've done a really good job of that.
How long did it take you to not only get
like other people's like thoughts and feelings and you put
them into the book, but how did it take you
to actually write the book?
Speaker 2 (32:17):
Right?
Speaker 3 (32:17):
So it was one of those things, Connel, where I
set out to do it and I didn't even stop
to think whether it would work, whether it would happen,
how long it was going to be. I literally allowed
it to form itself, if you like. And I'm very
pleased to say that the first person I reached out
to responded so so literally literally from concepts to execution.
(32:43):
It was so effortless to get that done. I think
I was. I was incredibly surprised people were so willing
to be a part of this, and that really surprised
me because I think that's contrary to much of my experience,
but clearly it was an indicator that something was happening,
(33:06):
that there was a connection in this just in the idea,
in the essence of the idea. So that happened very quickly.
I share one meditational week. I'm I'm still within the process,
very much so, and I hope to continue to do
it forever. To be honest, I see no end in sight.
So I share a meditation every week. I don't go
any faster than that. And the writing process really was
(33:31):
very easy, again because I'm not writing with an agenda,
So the writing is very much stream of consciousness and
certainly very kind of representative of the content from my
own meditation with these words and my own understanding what
could that possibly mean? And I think because it's so
(33:53):
inspirational rather than scientific, I think it's very easy to
kind of create that content because it's almost coming alive
and just bursting out from within, if that makes sense.
I'm sure other people will have their own takes, and
I think that is brilliant and I welcome it, and
(34:13):
I think that's part of the part of the whole process.
Speaker 1 (34:15):
I love it, yeah for sure, And yeah, I just
want to say, James, it's been an absolute pleasure chatting
with you. You've been brilliant throughout so any final words, James, Wow,
final words.
Speaker 3 (34:33):
I think I think we've raised quite a few important
points here, Connell, and especially around social media and mental health.
I think we have to be careful with these technologies,
but we also have to be careful not to condemn them.
And it's important to realize that, you know, the gun
(34:54):
is not inherently bad, it's the person holding it. Yeah,
something can be created with with the right intention and
then be misused, and something can be the worst thing
ever and then find an intention. So it's really important
to keep an open mind, and I think within the
context of that to really just be kind to one
(35:15):
another and to have time to make time and yeah,
to be.
Speaker 2 (35:20):
Kind, Yeah for sure.
Speaker 1 (35:22):
And I just want to say, James, thank you for
coming on the show. It's been an absolute pleasure, pleasure.
Speaker 3 (35:28):
Thank you so much for having me.
Speaker 1 (35:30):
Okay, in the meantime, everyone, thank you for listening. Goodbye.
Hello, everyone, Welcome to a brand new episode of the
podcast Stay. I have the pleasure of introducing James Pearson.
He's basically a life coach. I'm not sure if that's correct,
but he's gonna be speaking all things mental health and
(00:23):
just in general how he got into the practice. So, James,
welcome to the show. Thank you so much for having me,
Connin It's an honor to be here.
Speaker 2 (00:33):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (00:33):
So, James, to listeners out there, could you tell could
you tell them a bit about yourself?
Speaker 3 (00:41):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (00:42):
Sure.
Speaker 3 (00:42):
So I'm currently a student counselor studying an FDA in
intricative counseling and psychotherapy. But I got into this field
really quite by accident as a happy marriage between let's say,
existential crisis and art, and I found myself on a
(01:05):
path that really led me to become very, very fascinated
with the work of Carl Jung. And if nobody's familiar
with him, he is a psychologist who was really at
the beginning, the forefront of a sort of human evolution
into looking at mental health and psychology as a science.
(01:30):
So he's sort of kind of like was there with
Freud right at the beginning birth in this whole industry,
and I just felt that really the stuff that is
his level is a sort of on our awareness level
that we can access out there at the moment. The
stuff that is shared is quite clinical, really and doesn't
(01:50):
tap into or sometimes often doesn't tap into the more
sort of spiritual or really emotional content of our lives.
And so this is something that's fascinated me and has
kind of spurred me on to do my own research
and to discover are their mechanisms, are the ways of
(02:12):
kind of creating human connection that kind of are in
the realm of mental health, but also maybe also existing
in the realm of kind of just humanity health, Yeah,
for sure. And you mentioned as well you were inspired
by the work of Carl Jung and that was one
of the reasons you got.
Speaker 1 (02:32):
Into the mental health field. What was it about his
work that really inspired you?
Speaker 3 (02:40):
Right, Okay, so there's a little bit of a story
about this.
Speaker 1 (02:42):
I was.
Speaker 3 (02:45):
Experiencing, as everybody was, the basically the crash of lockdown.
Everything was grinding to a hole. Things weren't happening, and
I spent a lot of time just by myself just
thinking about my age, where I'd been, what I'd done,
what was next all these kind of big questions, and
I guess up to that point, I really hadn't had
the time to stop, pause and think about these things.
(03:07):
And so when I began to kind of really assimilate
all of this information about about where I'd been and
where I wanted to go, I began to feel that
something was missing, and I wanted to educate myself to
better understand myself. And that led to kind of like
the mental health sciences, and I ended up choosing to
(03:29):
study as a counselor, and I went and did what's
called a level two over in Blackburn, which was an
incredible drive for me. It was a very long way
in the midst of lockdown. It was terrifying leaving the
house and trying to deal with all of that stuff,
But really it awakened me to something that I think
I had been repressing for years, and that's a sense
(03:51):
of just separating out the sort of the limitations of
thinking that we have placed on us over decades of
kind of programming and experience, and opening yourself up to
being more accepting and aware of others and yourself within
the context of others. And one day we were doing
(04:14):
a task we were drawing some masks really to share
with the other group aspects of our personalities which we
don't normally share with others on a day to day basis.
And I'd finished drawing my mask and I held it
up and my tutor, who had actually stepped into UH
to take over from another tutor, had to leave, so
he was new. He looked at me, and our eyes
(04:36):
met across the room, and he just said, you need
to read The Red Book by Carl Jung. And at
this point I hadn't really heard of Carl Jung. I
was kind of maybe vaguely aware of him. I thought, Okay,
that's cool, something's just happened here like this is significant.
So I went home, downloaded the ebook because it's a
very very hard book to get in print and it's
very expensive, and started reading it. And from the moment
(05:00):
I kind of turned onto it must have been about
page three or four. Immediately these alarm bells were going off,
and I was thinking so much of my thought process
and my kind of self experience of myself as an
individual within the greater kind of scope of humanity really
(05:23):
was resonating with what Carl Jung was writing. And these ideas,
and I just thought, I really want to. I have
been wanting to, is more accurate. I have been wanting
to express myself in this way. And if I could
challenge some of his thinking and put that out into
the world, I could begin this sort of journey, this
path of self understanding for myself and for others.
Speaker 1 (05:47):
Oh yeah, for sure. And you, he said, He said
as well. What I found really interesting was that was
the reason you got inspired by his work and his
way of thinking. You kind of assimilated how fascinating it was.
(06:07):
I never really heard of the guy until probably a
couple of days ago while I was while I went
on your website and I was like, oh, who's this
Carl young individual?
Speaker 2 (06:17):
He seems like he seems like an interesting guy. And
he yeah.
Speaker 1 (06:23):
And the fact as well, with mental health, you can turn.
Speaker 2 (06:28):
You can look at the science behind.
Speaker 1 (06:30):
It, the psychology, like you said earlier, you can look
at this, you can look at the science, you can
look at everything around it. With mental health, it's not
necessarily just a mental thing, but also a scientific thing
in a way.
Speaker 2 (06:43):
Right.
Speaker 1 (06:44):
Yeah, Ah, so I guess as well.
Speaker 2 (06:49):
I'll ask you as well.
Speaker 1 (06:50):
So you mentioned lockdown and the experience, and that experience
of you know, sort of being alone with your thoughts
and just being lonely in general.
Speaker 2 (07:01):
What was that like for you?
Speaker 1 (07:03):
Did that impact your well being in a way that
you know, I guess you could really understand because this
was one of my unprecedented things that we'd ever experienced.
Speaker 3 (07:15):
Yeah, sure, let me kind of frame some of that
experience then. So in the run up to Lockdown, I
think my head was very business focused. Like my entire life,
I've felt that I've been on this path is trajectory,
with this internal voice saying do something significant, be successful,
(07:35):
and that had a very very specific definition of the
meaning Now two my brain. Two and a bit years
before Lockdown, my son was born. And when that happened,
my life was the rules of my life I think
were completely rewritten, and I feel like my emotional structure
(07:58):
was completely changed, and I spent two years falling over
my own feet really trying to become a dad, which
I quickly realized was the thing I wanted most in
the world. This was the most important thing in my life.
And when Lockdown hit, we were quite lucky really in
(08:19):
the sense that we live out in the countryside, so
we were able to get out for those country walks.
Speaker 2 (08:24):
That we were allowed.
Speaker 3 (08:27):
We didn't really see many people when we went out.
It's quite a quiet village and we just spent a
lot of time together as a family. And I think
that had a massive influence on my thinking at the
time and made me realize that there were parts of
me that had been repressed or buried. And I think
(08:47):
there's a lot of emotional stuff down there that, over
the years had just kind of been, like I said, repressed,
perhaps by peer pressure, paps, perhaps by society, perhaps by
my own kind of limited consideration of these kinds of things.
And when all that stuff started to come out, it
(09:07):
knocked me over. And I've just written a piece about
this actually, And psychologists have a term which is regulation,
which is where you have an experience, you're able to regulate.
You're able to self regulate if you can contain the
experience and understand the meaning of it. But there comes
a point where that experience becomes overwhelming and you need
to coregulate, which means you need to bring somebody else
(09:29):
in to share that experience with. And I began to
feel that I had so much repressed content inside that
I needed to get out into the world, and I
needed to share all of this kind of feeling, all
of this emotion, all of this stuff that was just
(09:49):
desperately needing to be expressed. And I think the introduction
on the counseling course, I think gave me the foundation,
like the understanding of how this actually works today. And
then all the work on Instagram, which began during lockdown,
was really my vehicle for getting all of that stuff
(10:10):
out and into the world and connecting with people and
really kind of proving some of these concepts I'd read
about in Young.
Speaker 1 (10:19):
Yeah, and as well, with with that period of just
unpredictability and uncertainty in that time, people's mental health or
at an all time low, like especially if you're someone
that was living alone and you didn't really have much
(10:40):
interaction maybe beyond I don't know, the odd person you
might see on a walk or absolutely or if you're
lucky to have that, Yeah, if you if you're lucky
to have that at the time, you know, it's it
could be a very lonely experience. And I find as well,
particularly in US men like you say, we repress what
(11:01):
we're truly feeling. We we repress it because we want
to be strong and we want to you know. And
it's it's always been that term in society that it's
weak for a man to show emotion, and if a
man shows emotion, then he's a weak man, which is
a term that we should be slowly putting on the shelf.
(11:24):
I think in my experience, certainly, Connor, I think the
opposite is true. The more you are able to express
your emotions, the stronger you've become. That's the irony of it.
Mm yeah, and he hit the nail on the head.
It's I found as well over the last year or so,
I was a guy that.
Speaker 2 (11:42):
Would repressed his emotions.
Speaker 1 (11:44):
I wasn't really open about them to not even my
family and even like it took me a lot to
even be open about my experiences to the online world
because I've I've opened up about weight issues and the
experience is previously when I've been on podcasts myself and
(12:04):
I found that to be a release for me. And
I found that to be a release because it got
people knowing a bit more than what they already know
about me at the time, and it was, like I say,
just a huge, huge release for me.
Speaker 3 (12:22):
Mm hm.
Speaker 1 (12:25):
So I guess this goes on to my next question,
what do you think men could do more of to
show that opening up about their mental health is okay?
Speaker 3 (12:42):
Right, Wow, that's a big question. I think first of all,
we've got to understand that across all the cultures of
the world, there are different accepted norms, and certainly within
within those cultures, within those societies, people have different expectations
(13:04):
of themselves and of others. So I think it's a
tricky one. But here in the UK, I think we're
kind of straddling with somewhere between the two extremes. I
think we're getting to a place where generally it is
more accepted for men to talk about their feelings and things.
(13:24):
But I think largely from everything I've read, from everything
that I've seen, from everything that I've experienced, and everyone
I've spoken to, I think certainly it comes with that
moment of realization when you become fully accepted by somebody
else and then suddenly you feel safe and you feel
(13:47):
like you can trust, whereas before there might be a
feeling that there is no trust, Like if I tell
people that I'm an emotional guy, I'm going to get
laughed at, or you know, but once you've ad somebody
put that trust in you, then I think you gain confidence.
And once you gain confidence, you're able to more openly
share that. And I think and I hope that by
(14:09):
being able to share that and being very open about it,
it can inspire other people to go and try and
find that trust in somebody to reach out and say
I need to I just need to talk. I need
to share some emotions. And once you've had that experience,
I think it's it's kind of addictive. Actually, it feels
so good to be able to have an open dialogue. Yeah,
(14:31):
and trust is a key word in all of this.
When it comes to anything in life. Trust is paramount
to what we do and how we perceive things and
mental health, especially because having that person you can talk
to and just saying, look, I'm having a bad day.
(14:52):
I just I just need to vent about it, basically,
so and we will have them days, we ak them
days where I'm just like Joe, I just need to
event about it. And I don't want people to come
up with a solution. I just need I just need
someone to actually.
Speaker 2 (15:06):
Listen to me.
Speaker 1 (15:08):
I need someone to actually listen to me and hear me.
And because I get. I get as well. Trying to
come up a solution. I guess comes from a good
place of trying to solve the problem, trying to fix it.
But sometimes that is not always the best thing. I think,
And just like I say, listening to someone is.
Speaker 2 (15:29):
It's the best thing.
Speaker 3 (15:32):
It's a it's a fascinating thing. You brought up there, actually,
because I'm reading a Way of Being by Carl Rogers,
and he's the creator of person centered counseling, which I
won't go into because too big, too big a topic
to explain, but you could look it up. But he
said essentially, he proposed that there are six conditions necessary
(15:52):
for positive psychological change, and once those conditions are met,
then someone can move into a place of positive psychological readjustment,
they heal, they can start to heal. And he said
that a lot of, if not all, of these conditions
are actually present in our day to day interactions with
friends and family, not necessarily therapists. But the problem exists
(16:15):
that people don't realize what conditions they're offering to somebody else,
and so these conditions kind of vaporize within seconds, as
somebody might be listening to someone talk, but then quickly
remembers that they've left the kettle on, or they didn't
feed the cat, and they come out of that frame
of reference and they're instantly distracted. And so he was
saying that really it is that understanding and that training
(16:37):
and that discipline that separates a person from say the
idea of a professional counselor or a professional therapist therapist.
But we all to some degree have these abilities inside.
They're inherent. And if we could just find a way,
as you know, as a race, as human beings, to
just actually have time for other people, I think the
(17:02):
entire world could shift on its access, the access, if
we could just get to that point.
Speaker 1 (17:07):
Yeah, and like you said as well, when someone might
zone out when someone's venting or talking about something because
like you say, they've forgot to feed the dog or
the cow, or left the kettalong, or they left something
important at home, and they tend to zone out, I
(17:28):
think as well, there is such a thing as being
there too much for other people. Absolutely in the sense
of in the sense of actually, if you constantly make
yourself available for other people and then that causes deterioration
(17:50):
in your own mental health, then you're going to feel
drained and some and you'll basically canbust like inside inside
and on.
Speaker 2 (18:00):
Outside your canbust.
Speaker 1 (18:01):
And and I always, I always really emphasize that self
care is important because so self care is paramount to
one's well being. It's paramount to their physical, psychological and
mental well being because the bottom the bottom line is
self care is the best is the best thing that
(18:24):
you can do, especially when you're having a bad day,
and sometimes you don't need someone else's I guess probably
not problems, but you know what I'm trying to say,
someone else trying to you know, say that thing to you,
and you're just like Joe, I can't be bothered today.
I need me time, I need time by myself. And
(18:47):
and for me, it took quite a long time for
me to actually realize that sometimes I need to put
myself first. I'm not being selfish for it, it's just
simply put in my own care and care needs first. Yeah,
there's a fantastic analogy that is, when you're on an airplane,
(19:09):
they tell you to put your gas mask, your mask,
your oxygen mask on first before you help anybody else.
And that's because if you pass out helping somebody else,
then you can no longer.
Speaker 3 (19:20):
Help that person. So you've got to care for yourself
first and then for others. So you're absolutely right spot on.
Speaker 2 (19:25):
I like that analogy. I have to study. It's not
very often. I think there's another gas mask. It's the
wrong onegen mask.
Speaker 1 (19:32):
Yeah, oxygen mask for sure. And I think there's another
analogy as well that I really liked. It's like if
you've got if you've got a battery and you know
your your phone is fully charged, and bit by bit
it goes down the percentage and you constantly give a
bar of your battery to other people, then your own
(19:54):
battery is going to be drained. And you wouldn't let
your and you wouldn't let your phone die, you'd go
and charge it. So why continuously let yourself be drained
and not prioritize also your own mental health?
Speaker 3 (20:12):
Yeah, I think another way of look at looking at
that is I suppose a lot of it is concept
and context, and I think a lot of the way
I feel about it is if we could just make
some more seconds available to other people, Like when we're
passing someone in the street, if we can just pass
them a kind remark or lift our heads up and
(20:32):
say hello, instead of being buried in our own sort
of self whatever it is that we are in that moment.
So I just think, and certainly artists as well, the
more that they can share stuff that influences and inspires people.
There are so many ways of giving to others. And
if we could just find more time in our lives
(20:54):
and perhaps you know, bearing in mind the idea of
self care, can we carve out time that is for others?
Can we say that this half an hour is for others,
so to contain that and have boundaries? Certainly, Yeah, yeah,
and yeah, I think, like you say, we're so buried
(21:16):
in our own.
Speaker 2 (21:18):
Things.
Speaker 1 (21:18):
Sometimes, like like you say, just simply passing someone on
the street and saying hello, how are you, how's your
day been? You know, if some some people respond, some
people don't. That's part of life. I mean, especially London.
If you if you go there and I don't say
hello to someone, they they literally look at you very weirdly.
Speaker 3 (21:39):
But yeah, the exception to the norm.
Speaker 1 (21:42):
But but yeah, sometimes it's just nice to do that.
And when I went to Ireland recently, I was you know, I.
Speaker 2 (21:52):
Was almost kind of.
Speaker 1 (21:54):
Not shocked, but like, wow, these you know people that
strangers actually interact with each other on the street say
simple hello and how are you kind of thing, And
I was like, oh wow, this is you know, this
is amazing. I know in small villages and stuff that
happens as well, which is great because everyone happens more,
just not all the time. Yeah, yeah, everyone could help
(22:16):
one another out. So this brings me, This brings me
onto my next question. So you've got you've got a
website as well, and you've about training to become therapist,
You've got tips and strategies, So what do you intend
(22:39):
to do with that going forward? What is your ambition?
Speaker 3 (22:45):
Right, it's a very interesting field is let's look at
counseling specifically, because, as many people are aware, counseling is
currently unregulated in the UK, which makes it a bit
of a wild west. And there are some associations like
the BACP out there who put forward basically codes of ethics.
(23:10):
So if you're a member of the BACP, you operate
by their code of ethics, which helps people to kind
of identify perhaps who's been through a certain level of
training or who is abiding by certain ethical standards. But
it isn't a hard and fast rule, and so it's
very very difficult for people to, let's say, find a
(23:32):
good therapist. It's not impossible. It's just hard work, and
especially finding somebody that's going to work and resonate with you.
So part of my mission, I'm very interested in the
research side of things, and I'm very very interested in
the social media side of things. I keep seeing a phrase,
(23:54):
and I'm not sure where it originated, but the phrase
is Instagram is not therapy.
Speaker 2 (24:00):
Perhaps you've seen it yourself.
Speaker 1 (24:01):
I yeah, I'm familiar with that terminology. I'd say it's
I'd say it's consumption of it's I'd say social media
is constant, constant consumption because you're strolled, not strolling scrolling through.
It's scrolling through on your newsfeed or Instagram or Twitter
(24:21):
whatever continuously or even TikTok for some of us younger
people out there, like it's constant consumption. It could be negativity,
scare mongering, and we're constantly consumed by that because that's
that's the way social media companies want you to They
(24:43):
want you to stand there because they wanted to be
consumed by everything that's on it.
Speaker 2 (24:49):
It is.
Speaker 3 (24:50):
It is an absolute mindfield and it's one of the
reasons I'm so fascinated by it because not only the
way it affects human behavior, like you say, but at
the same time time, it's it's like all technologies or platforms,
all ideas, anything that's ever been created. It can be
used for good or it can be used for bad.
And I know of countless examples whereby it's actually been
(25:13):
a social media it's been a post, a real something
on social media has encouraged someone to take the first
steps towards therapy, and then that person is on the
path to becoming whole. And I just think Instagram is
not therapy. No, So that's I'm not saying it is.
I'm not saying it isn't. All I'm saying is it
(25:34):
pays to question that and to look into what is
happening here, because it's fascinating. It's some like you say,
some content is good, some content is bad, some content
is just disposable. Some content is super deep and it's
for us to filter it through. But yeah, yeah, it's
why I'm emphasizing the word consumption because there was I
(25:59):
think there was a person I saw on the Jordan Pearson,
who's well known within like everywhere all throughout the world,
he said. He said the same thing about constant consumption
of what we're reading and what we've seen on social media.
And like you say, it can be used for good
and it could be used for bad. And there was
someone I saw on there that was the pope that
(26:22):
done a post a pill thing on Instagram, and that
really that really resonated with me because he had it
was on a reality TV show Love Island.
Speaker 1 (26:34):
I don't watch any of that, but it resonated with
me because people do feel ashamed to feel like they
have to take medication to stay sane for their own
mental health. And I reckon it got more people to
do a post a pill because that that was something
that I did on my own Instagram. And I was like, Joe, what,
(26:57):
I don't have to feel ashamed. I don't have to
feel shame that I have to you know, take you know,
wants tubbler a day just to you know, stay well
within myself.
Speaker 2 (27:10):
You know.
Speaker 1 (27:11):
So like like like like we say it can be
used for good, it used for bad. Ye strength and community, right, yeah,
it's strength and community. You meet you meet good people
in there. There's bad people in there. And and that's
the way it goes in everyday life. Mm hmm. So
as well, when I looked into your website, you had
(27:34):
a book as well, the have Out. Would you like
to tell me a bit more about the book and
its content?
Speaker 2 (27:43):
Sure?
Speaker 3 (27:43):
Think so. The Book of Unfinished Feelings is the title,
and right from the outset, I decided to embrace the
concept of letting go. That was that was really the
theme of everything that I was trying to do. I
was trying to reduce the sense of ego. Like everything
(28:06):
in life, we have an intention for or we're trying
to progress ourselves, and I thought, well, what would it
feel like to not be in that state? So I
tried This is very influenced by Carl Jung. I decided
to try to tap into something which he describes as
the collective unconscious. This idea that there is a force
(28:29):
or an energy created in the universe by all the
thoughts and feelings that we have that we're not expressing.
So these are things that are buried in the back
of our minds that we don't have access to. They
inform who we are, but they never cross into our consciousness.
So I decided that if I were to write a book,
(28:51):
which I was quite interested in doing to get some
of these ideas out, I would like the book to
be influenced by other people. I would like the book
to not be influence by me. So as part of
that process, I decided that I would contact total strangers
on Instagram and really just ask them to share a
single feeling word like the most basic thing I could
(29:12):
think of with me to kind of get a or
present a sense of where that person was in time
right now. It's a stamp and fast approaching over seven
hundred of those right now, and for every ten, I
(29:33):
put them together and created what I've called a meditation,
which is a description of the process that I take
to take these feelings and make meaning of them. I mean,
most people's idea of meditation is probably sitting down and
sort of going into a detrance state or repeating a phrase.
This is elements of that, because I sit with these
(29:54):
words and I allow the words to kind of form
their own meaning. Again, I try I take myself out
of that equation, and so phrases come together like some
words interconnect really really really really nicely. Other words are
polar opposites, and when you start to construct sentences. From
these feelings, you get explanations about humanity and explanations about life,
(30:21):
and they're things that I certainly didn't have inside me.
I could not have shared these things from my own
experience or my own understanding. So outcome these massively prophetic,
profound human statements about understanding ourselves and our mental states
and our place in the world, all these kinds of
(30:42):
high concepts. And then I have literally tried to write
about my interpretation, my experience of having that meditation, what
it meant to me. And I've had the most alarming
of experiences where I'll be working on a concept something
(31:03):
and I'll go out into the world and I will
literally manifest that experience for myself, obviously manifesting it, but
quite clearly not consciously aware of the fact that I'm
doing it. So it's a book about transformation. It's a
book about detaching from your own process and getting into
(31:25):
the unconscious process, but the unconscious process of really humanity
as a whole, not individuals. It's just being proofread at
the moment, so it's finished, it's just being proof read,
and I hope to have it out by the.
Speaker 2 (31:39):
End of the year.
Speaker 3 (31:41):
I'm not sure there's another book like it. I certainly
haven't come across one, But I hope that people enjoy
it and get something from it. And if somebody reads
it and has one light bulb moment, then it's done
its job.
Speaker 2 (31:53):
Yeah, for sure.
Speaker 1 (31:54):
And I'll keep a lookout for that book when it
comes out and be sure to share it with everyone.
I'm sure you've done a really good job of that.
How long did it take you to not only get
like other people's like thoughts and feelings and you put
them into the book, but how did it take you
to actually write the book?
Speaker 2 (32:17):
Right?
Speaker 3 (32:17):
So it was one of those things, Connel, where I
set out to do it and I didn't even stop
to think whether it would work, whether it would happen,
how long it was going to be. I literally allowed
it to form itself, if you like. And I'm very
pleased to say that the first person I reached out
to responded so so literally literally from concepts to execution.
(32:43):
It was so effortless to get that done. I think
I was. I was incredibly surprised people were so willing
to be a part of this, and that really surprised
me because I think that's contrary to much of my experience,
but clearly it was an indicator that something was happening,
(33:06):
that there was a connection in this just in the idea,
in the essence of the idea. So that happened very quickly.
I share one meditational week. I'm I'm still within the process,
very much so, and I hope to continue to do
it forever. To be honest, I see no end in sight.
So I share a meditation every week. I don't go
any faster than that. And the writing process really was
(33:31):
very easy, again because I'm not writing with an agenda,
So the writing is very much stream of consciousness and
certainly very kind of representative of the content from my
own meditation with these words and my own understanding what
could that possibly mean? And I think because it's so
(33:53):
inspirational rather than scientific, I think it's very easy to
kind of create that content because it's almost coming alive
and just bursting out from within, if that makes sense.
I'm sure other people will have their own takes, and
I think that is brilliant and I welcome it, and
(34:13):
I think that's part of the part of the whole process.
Speaker 1 (34:15):
I love it, yeah for sure, And yeah, I just
want to say, James, it's been an absolute pleasure chatting
with you. You've been brilliant throughout so any final words, James, Wow,
final words.
Speaker 3 (34:33):
I think I think we've raised quite a few important
points here, Connell, and especially around social media and mental health.
I think we have to be careful with these technologies,
but we also have to be careful not to condemn them.
And it's important to realize that, you know, the gun
(34:54):
is not inherently bad, it's the person holding it. Yeah,
something can be created with with the right intention and
then be misused, and something can be the worst thing
ever and then find an intention. So it's really important
to keep an open mind, and I think within the
context of that to really just be kind to one
(35:15):
another and to have time to make time and yeah,
to be.
Speaker 2 (35:20):
Kind, Yeah for sure.
Speaker 1 (35:22):
And I just want to say, James, thank you for
coming on the show. It's been an absolute pleasure, pleasure.
Speaker 3 (35:28):
Thank you so much for having me.
Speaker 1 (35:30):
Okay, in the meantime, everyone, thank you for listening. Goodbye.
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