Transcript auto-generated by descript (link at jeremywest.net)
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Welcome to Converstations with Catalysts. I am your host, Jeremy West. 
Today I have with me Fiona Spence and for full disclosure Fiona and I actually did our coaching certification and a hypnosis certification together. Welcome Fiona.
Hey, thank you for having me. 
Thank you very much for coming on. Who is Fiona Spence and how did you come to the world of cooking? Gosh, that's a bit deep. We haven't got that long, have we?
 Gosh, Fiona Spence is many things. Actually interesting. The first word that comes to my head when you say that is martial artist. Which is an interesting word, isn't it? And I think that's relevant because a lot of the coaching that I do, I bring my martial arts experience into it.
So not the physical stuff. I don't, kick people into action literally, but a lot of the mindset. So martial arts for me is all about mindset, especially the older you get you're bringing your [00:01:00] mindset more and more. So how did I get into coaching? Apparently, According to my sister, by the age of 14, I was coaching her, so it was the most natural thing in the world.
But when it came to formalizing it, doing the qualification that we did so many years ago now. I actually thought that a lot. I think I'm not very keen on labels sometimes, and I think I thought that label, but it was what I was doing anyway. So in the end, it's oh why not put a label on it?
And and I think it's, it's helpful sometimes because people get an idea then of what you do. Yeah, and see, this actually is very interesting to me. You have a background in martial arts, and actually, because that is an athletics sort of thing as well as obviously much more, I guess coach is something you're doing in that anyway, but yeah, it's actually very interesting to me how from martial arts, you became, a mindset person.
So [00:02:00] walk me through that just a little bit, and then we'll move on to things more interesting to you, Fiona. Oh no, I can talk martial arts all day. How did you go from martial arts to mindset? Yeah, look, if anyone's done martial arts they'll probably understand. But if people haven't, it's probably a difficult leap because when you think martial arts, if you haven't done them, you just imagine maybe people kicking and punching or fighting or throwing people around.
I'm sure, that's a great fun element of it. Really the martial arts that I did generally have all come from the Samurai. So again, from what? Oh, the Samurai, they were like, Oh, If you think of them, they're like the knights of Japan, it's slightly different, very different really, but think of them like that.
In fact, very similar to our knights, they had a sort of a code of conduct the way of behaving. And a lot of that really was not just about how you behave but how your attitude, I suppose you could say. And so there were seven different kind of [00:03:00] main ways. of behaving, of carrying yourself through life that they followed.
And what I realized was that they weren't just relevant to samurai, they could be relevant to anyone, not just to people fighting and so on. So I took them and created an acronym because, acronyms make them easy to remember. So I created this acronym CHARGED. And each letter of the acronym stands for an element of that samurai code.
And I try, I don't like the word try, let's say I endeavor to, to live by that code. And I'm the first person to put my hand up to say there's one in particular. Oh, I struggle with it. Jeremy, I do. We all have that thing, don't we? And oh, you really want to know? It's okay. So I'm charged. It's the G. It's the G.
And G stands for grace. And there are times when I have a lot of grace. I have great manners, I'm very [00:04:00] polite. I use my pleases and my thank yous. I'm very courteous. I acknowledge people. But then there's those moments. I think we all have them, right? Where grace just goes completely out the window.
And you don't behave as your best self. And you really hope there's no one with a camera about to put it onto, Instagram or something. That moment where you know your best, and I think that's the one for me that I noticed the most out of everything. The first one is a serious for courage.
I'm actually a very courageous person, I'm very comfortable getting uncomfortable. I don't mind stepping out of my comfort zone and doing new things. My shots have taught me a lot of resilience. If I get knocked down, I get back up always get back up. The first courage, not such very naked ladies.
The naked ladies, what? The band. I get knocked down, but I get up again. Oh, but I get up again. Exactly. I thought that was Tubson Pink. Maybe they're martial artists. Probably. Or just very resilient people, right? No, that's very interesting. First of all, when you first said grace, I, probably [00:05:00] from my religious background I thought forgiveness, but that doesn't seem to be how you're Using the word grace?
I think more I, I think of it more like in the traditional sense. It's, it comes from, I think the word comes from Greek mythology, I think. And you had the three graces. And they, they showed different things. They acted in certain ways. They were also musical. They could dance.
They moved with grace, which interestingly in martial arts particularly one's idea there's a lot of talk about the way you move. And a good martial artist actually, if you watch them, flows with grace, right? So you've got your movement, but then you've got your attitude as well, the way that you respond and behave to others.
And some people seem to, they walk in a room, they glide through it. If you think traditional kind of oh, I think Princess Grace and Monica was it? Was she called Princess Grace? No, that's convenient if she wasn't it? But anyway, there was a Princess Monica and when she walked through a room, everyone.
Noticed her, but in a calm, amazing way where they just like, wow, who is this person? [00:06:00] And she made them feel important. Yeah, I hear about that. Yeah. I hear about people like that. They walk into a room of hundreds of people, but they make each person feel like they're just there with just them.
Yeah, it's true isn't it? Exactly. When they look you in the eye, that they're looking at you, they're not thinking about, what they're going to get from the shops afterwards. And interestingly, I've got to get on to the next person. Exactly. Yeah. Who else can I network with?
Who can help me here in this networking event? Oh, isn't that the worst? People dash around networking event desperately trying to find new clients. You're not actually really. Listening and paying true attention to the person in front of them, so I'll give a little. I don't remember where I heard this hint, but I heard it's far better at a networking event to get to know one person really well than to go give your business card to every person.
That's right. Yeah, because that one person will remember you, and you'll form a connection with them, a bond, effectively, you'll be able to help them, they'll be able to help you, who [00:07:00] knows, right? You never know which direction it's going to go. You might go to a networking event and find out actually you're just helping a whole load of people.
But as that all comes back in the end, right? That brings up something interesting when you said that when you look at the acronym the one that you struggle with the most is grace. I've heard of a guru somewhere or a sign or something that said I teach what I most need to learn.
Do you find that the clients you attract are, grace is the thing they're most needing to learn as well? That is a fabulous question, Jeremy. No, it's probably the thing I have most of which is courage. Oh, okay. Yeah. Yeah. Good word. That makes sense. . Yeah. And and courage. You and I had to stay, define courage for me. . Define courage. Courage. Oh, what a good one. Oh, your questions are fabulous. Jeremy, you're good at this, aren't you?
Courage. What is courage? Courage is, the reason I ask that is because I think a lot of people think that it's not being afraid. But would you say that's the case? I was [00:08:00] literally going to say, I was literally going to say, and I, okay, I think I read this book when I was younger. All I can remember with is the title.
And it may be, I just read the title and that was enough. And the book was feel the fear and do it anyway. No, I found that in self help books in general usually the title is all you need to know in most self help books, 300 pages of saying it in a different way. But sometimes what you need is to have it beat into you in a different way over and over again through 300 pages.
Yeah, exactly. Some people like examples and they need the message, I'm learning some different languages at the moment. And yeah look, I found with language learning, I have to hear the same word over and over again before it goes in. So sometimes, yeah, we like the story as your context.
Yeah, absolutely. And courage, is all about allowing yourself to make mistakes, to get things wrong. And a lot of people that come to me, they really struggle with failure. That's another big one. Many people fear failure, and it's [00:09:00] very deeply ingrained. It's not some surface thing.
There's an absolute fear of failure often perfectionism everything has to be perfect. They have to get everything right. Sometimes they they feel they won't be accepted if they fail. So that's a huge one. And so for them, courage is learning that, it's okay to fail.
You can feel that, that fear that you may fail, but you'll still go ahead and give it a go.
I read a book about this too. Think I might have been an adult by the time I read the book But I saw the movie when I was quite young and most people have seen the movie. It's called the wizard of oz But it's made much more clear in the book that the things that The Tin Man and the Scarecrow and the Lion were searching for, were actually their greatest strengths that they had all along.
So the Cowardly Lion kept feeling afraid but kept doing it anyway. And so he finds out in the end that he actually had courage because he thought that courage was not being afraid. It's actually being afraid and doing it [00:10:00] anyway. Yeah. Yeah. And I found this, it's very interesting when people present problems to me, they'll come with a problem and to them that is the problem.
So that's what they want to have resolved. But when I work with them, what they realize is actually that it's just a symptom of something much deeper. That is not the actual problem at all. Yeah. It makes me think of a few episodes ago. I was talking to a recovery coach, which, she works with people who are coming out of drug addiction, and people think drug addiction is the problem, but.
That's just self medicating for the real problems. 100%. Yeah. And so if you're treating, if you're treating the, if you're treating the drug addiction, then you're not actually treating the real problem. And it's just going to keep popping up over and over again in different ways. Yeah, that's a very, my health too, because that's a very specialist area.
Oh, yeah, 100 percent today. [00:11:00] You know what I mean? There's a lot at play there. And sometimes, of course, there are physiological aspects. Oh, yes, generally there are, I think it's a multi pronged approach, oh, yeah, 100%. This is a question that a coworker one day, just a sales job many years ago asked me, and it has always stuck with me as a way to help.
Your. The meaning of your life, the purpose of your life. So the question is, if you could bring more of any one thing into the world, what would it be? Martial arts. More martial arts. Everything comes down to martial arts. The whole world would be a better place. By the way, do you do mixed martial arts?
Do you do mixed martial arts? Or is there one in particular or a couple that you prefer? I mixed them up, but no. Okay, so I have one sensei, so sensei is teacher one, one, one teacher, really. I was one. I was an English teacher. There you go. Yeah, I used to be, I used to be a martial arts instructor, believe it or not, but And the students called me sensei, you're not allowed to call yourself [00:12:00] sensei.
Oh, there you go. Yes, that's true, isn't it? Yes. You don't say, hi, I'm sensei Jeremy, how rude, that lacks grace, in fact. It's Jeremy sensei, not sensei Jeremy. There you go, Jeremy Sensei. Yeah, there you go. But I have a Sensei. I have a Sensei. And to keep things easy, we just call him Sensei.
So that keeps it very simple. And he teaches me across a range of Koryo or traditional arts. So we do Karate, we do Kenjutsu, which is the sword. We do Jojutsu, which is your broom handle. It's the staff. And then there's a few other little kind of weapons as well in there. And then. We also do Tai Chi.
And the beauty of having one instructor across all of them is that he takes underlying themes across them all. And he can, if I'm not getting something in one, he can say, Oh how in sword you just la. And I'll go, ah. Yeah, I'll get my little epiphany moment and I'll understand how to do it.
So it's [00:13:00] fabulous and really he's a very traditional sensei in that it's not just this is how you kick or punch or make or cut but constantly he's explaining the real underlying principles and many of them are really deep, incredibly deep, and those are the principles that you can apply to life. So when you started with him like when you started karate with him, did he have you watch his car and paint his fence and wax on wax off sort of stuff, the amazing thing is he has so much grace that he'll post something on instagram.
He will have cleaned the whole dojo the whole training hall He will have what are you doing? We should be doing it. He's only just started getting us to do it Like, he's just he's the first person to get his hands Dirty, but yes I've ironically catch flies with chopsticks.
Oh, we joke about that. We do because we get lots of mozzies in the dojo. So we joke about that a lot. And [00:14:00] you know what? He is so dedicated. That if that was important, he would spend as many hours as it took to be able to do it. That's his level of dedication, which I love. I love when somebody just very simply wants to be the best.
Yes. Okay. That probably, no, go ahead. No, I was going to say, I think. That's a principle that we should apply to more things in our life. Cause it doesn't matter if it's actually possible to be the best or not after all, what is best really, but if you aim to be the best, you're going to achieve amazing things, you're going to be so proud of yourself.
Cause you'll know that in aiming to be the best, you put in your best effort. Whereas if you just aim to be, okay, quite good. Second best, the bronze medalist, you're not going to get the same results. Yeah, the best. Yeah, it's a quarter cliche. You can aim for the stars and reach the moon, or you can just hang around on the earth and I don't know, [00:15:00] be okay.
I like that, although it does remind me of Oscar Wilde. He was like, I may be lying in the gutter, but I'm looking at the stars. Which is completely different has a completely different meaning to it but that's the thing, right? Is you may, to make an analogy with that, you may not be the best, you may be low down, but it doesn't mean that you can't look at the stars and emulate them and take the best bits of them and try and somehow attain what they have attained.
So if you boiled your coaching. Down to a sentence or a paragraph, what would you say is the core philosophy behind your coaching?
I am infinitely curious in people.
So the core philosophy behind your coaching is curiosity. Because Tell me more. Yeah, what I found with most people actually is that pretty much everyone that I work with actually is that they are, they come to me because they're [00:16:00] stuck. And when you get stuck, you look at something the same way. I did it with my car keys once, I lost my car keys and I was looking the same two places.
I always put them, the bowl where they belong or the table where I throw them when I'm lazy. And and I kept going from one of those places to the other. And I just, They weren't showing up, Jeremy. It didn't matter how many times I looked in the bowl or on the table, don't know if it would have been there, right?
But they just weren't showing up. And I took a phone call from a friend who asked a simple question to make me think, Ah, and I found them in another place. And when you're curious in people, you ask them questions. And my friend was just curious, like why I was why, I phoned up, I'm busy right now, what's going on?
The question, the answer is that place I found, if I get curious in people, they start to look at things in a different way. And when they look at things in a different way, they find their answers. And sometimes that means going really deep. And when you're on your own, it's really hard to go to that [00:17:00] place you need to go to because you don't quite, it's like you don't have the key, you just don't know, because you're used to asking yourself the same questions and you spin in circles, you go round and round, you can't find the answer.
And it's very simply, it's just not the right question that you're asking. So somebody who's really curious will just ask questions in a different way and you'll get there. So that's why for me, I think it's just All you need to be a coach is really curious in people because they have the answers My job as a coach is not to give them the answers.
I don't tell people what to do Oh my god, if people tell me what to do, jeremy, then I lack grace, right? Then i'm like don't tell me what to do So so I don't tell people what to do.
Yeah, it's because when people come to us they Are in a position usually where they've got blinders on a horse and you can only see what's right in front of you and maybe the answer is just a little bit to the left or just a little bit to the right, but you can't see it [00:18:00] until someone asks you the right questions.
Absolutely. Yeah, it's very much like that, isn't it? It's then the blinkers come off and it's Oh, my God. Oh, wow. I can see clearly now. And that's it, isn't it? When people come for coaching, they're stuck. The biggest two things I hear is I have no clarity and I have no direction, and it's really hard to have direction if you haven't got clarity, right?
So the big overlying, overarching theme is this just lack of clarity and they may have clarity in lots of areas of life, but there's just one area. That they're not clear and I hear so many phrases that imply that, I'm spinning in circles, I'm going round and round, I'm on a wheel, or I'm, everything's foggy, or I can't see through the mist, or I can't see the width of the trees.
There's numerous phrases that people tell me when they come to me. That, yeah, just imply that they're looking in the wrong places, or they just don't know where to look. So my job's to help lift the mist so they can see the wood and the trees. So speaking of that, could you please [00:19:00] share with us a success story, without using any real names share with us a success story.
of a client who came to you and where they were at the beginning and where they ended up. God, there are so many. Random one. I'll take Michael cause he's on the website. Basically stuck with setting up a business and just, which one? Which one to do? Too many ideas, right? How on earth do you decide which one's right for you?
And I get this quite a lot. People come and they're either stuck in their career, and they don't know what direction to take, or they want to set up a business, but they don't know which one. So in one session, it only took one session, and I'll explain what that is in a second, but he got absolute clarity in what he wanted to do.
It was really clear. I didn't tell him just remind you, right? I don't tell people what to do. I enabled him, I facilitated him to get the clarity, facilitated him to work out what he needed to do. We had a follow up chat, a month or so afterwards, amazing things were happening, had a business partner, all these things were in place to set him up for [00:20:00] amazing success to make huge amounts of money.
Wow, how fabulous is that? And that's just one example. So how did you help him whittle it down from all of his ideas to one? Just through asking the right questions and being curious. It really comes down to something as simple as that. I don't use many techniques in my coaching. I found when people start coaching you've seen this, they get taught techniques and that's great for when you're beginning.
to coach because it gives you confidence, your little toolkit, and you go out with your toolkit and you can use your toolkit and you can take people through, their problems over, however many weeks it takes with your toolkit. But what I found is as you get more confident, you don't need that toolkit anymore.
The tools are there if you need them as a fallback, but you get this place where you just say, yeah, you need You just don't need them. And when that happens, you can get results much faster, of course. So you don't need to take, 10 sessions to get somewhere. You can do [00:21:00] it all in one. But I do work slightly differently from most coaches, because I think most coaches put like a time limit oh, we'll do an hour or we'll do 40 minutes or whatever.
Whereas I don't put a time limit on my sessions. We just spend as long as we need to get the result you need. So I'd rather we just got the result in one go. And I send you on your merry way. You can get on with life and do all those amazing things you want to do. And not have to keep talking to Fiona, as great as she is.
I'd rather that than somebody have to come back to me, week in, week out. Yeah, getting their solution, very slowly and yeah. You mean you don't try to keep them along, keep them as long as possible so they can keep giving you more and more money? No, I know. It's bizarre, isn't it?
Absolutely bizarre. My aim is to get rid of them as quickly. It's not when you go to a chiropractor or something like that, and they go, Oh yeah. Oh yeah. You're going to have to come. Oh, it's probably got 10 sessions. I think. Yeah. Oh no.
And you wouldn't mind if that fixed you for life, but. With what I do, you probably get [00:22:00] another entry and you get back. Oh, yes. Oh, that'll be 12 sessions, man. I've got the time. Actually, I had a psychologist who his, the way he worked felt like more like a coach to me than any other psychologist.
Yeah, he definitely felt like a coach the way that He was using positive psychology and looking forward instead of digging in the past and although a little bit of what he did was seeing Where some of my stuff came from my childhood and my dad, but anyway, he when I started with him, he said I asked if he's going to send a report to my doctor.
And he says, Oh, no, that's after six sessions. I don't usually need that many sessions with anybody. And I thought, what a cocky, whatever. But seriously, it took him one session to, help me fix things that have been a problem for months. It's so amazing when you there you go, right? When you do what needs to be done, instead of just what I find most psychologists that I've ever talked to [00:23:00] just end up, it just ends up being a chat session.
They don't even do the, the I have a psychology degree. There's all this evidence-based stuff that works when you do it, but they end up just. Chatting . Yeah, it's true. That's what I love about coaching the really, it's been there, I've been, it's let's get this done. Yeah.
Yeah. Definitely. I've been there. I had, so I got it for years, and in the lovely, yeah. Fabulous. Yeah. But. Years like why? Yeah, it's crazy Yeah, if I said, give me twenty five thousand dollars or so, yeah, you know in one session I would go sure because I spent way more than that Exactly, and that's what thousand dollars for one session no, but it's amazing because people think Price should be based on how many hours and how many sessions or how long and it's really Do you want the result?
How much is the result worth to you? Okay, aren't you happier if the result, you get the result quicker? It's a real red flag. It's a real red flag, isn't it? When somebody says, oh yeah, you're going to have to, have 20 sessions with me. Ah, now [00:24:00] it's different if you're learning.
If I want to learn a language, I want a lot of sessions. If I'm learning a martial art, I go to the dojo five times a week. It's different. It's yeah, true. However, with languages, there are a lot of things that can be done to learn it a lot quicker. Such as actually going into the things that people actually say, instead of just learning.
I don't know, all the animals, all the random animals that you never talk about in some way. It's so funny you say that. I'm on an app at the moment, I won't mention the app, but I'm on an app to help you. I'm not saying a word, Jeremy.
And when you give them phrases like, the big pig is here or, That is a pretty goat. You do start, like I am off to, I'm learning Czech cause I'm going off to Czech Republic in July. And but seriously, I just can't, unless there's a lot of pigs and goats running around. Prague and everywhere. I don't know how I'm ever going to use it.
So I think you're right. It's much quicker. And that's why when you go [00:25:00] and live in a country, of course, and you're learning practical things like, I'd like a loaf of bread, please. Or excuse me, or can I get past or you pick it up so much faster. I wouldn't be surprised. I haven't tried it yet, but I wouldn't be surprised if.
The quickest way to learn a language right now is to just get on chat GPT and say, teach me this language and let's chat. But yeah, definitely over the next year or two, there's going to be apps that come out that actually Yeah, use AI to know what you need to know and when you need to know it and how fast and, based on what you're learning, but whatever, let's get back to you and your coaching.
So what are some common challenges that your clients face? Everybody's different, but what do you find keeps coming up over and over again? It's a great question actually. So overall they feel stuck. The reasons they feel stuck or what they present with will be around career or around life.
So when it's career, many people are not happy in their role. [00:26:00] Some people are not sure if they're happy because it was put upon them. So maybe I had the lady and she was encouraged to go into a certain profession by her mum. So she was just all, after 40 years of profession, she was always questioning, is this actually what I really want to do, or am I just doing it because my mum made me so she can never really settle in and be happy.
in her role. So sometimes people are unhappy and then we have to look at, okay what, why is that? Why are you looking at career change? So I worked with a young lass recently and I had to be very careful, for confidentiality. I can't really give too many details, but there are a lot of testimonials on my website.
So often my examples come from somebody giving testimonial because it's a bit safer, but yeah, she wanted to change jobs again. And when we really looked into it, it really came down to a confidence issue and an issue of communication as well and not knowing how to or really questioning whether or not she was being accepted.
And this is, I find happens quite often actually when people don't have English as their first language and they're working in an English speaking company for, in Australia [00:27:00] or America or whatever, or England UK, so there were a lot of self doubt going on and so the easiest option was to just jump ship each time.
So in her session she, she learned a lot about herself, she came up with a lot of what I call resources, a lot of ways that she could deal with a new situation, a lot of positive thoughts about herself and a lot of realizations. about the stories that she was making up. Oh, the story. And when I next spoke to her, she was doing really well.
I think she got promoted within the same company. Things were going great. Didn't need the career change, didn't need to change company. So that was a problem. People's stories are often their problem. They don't realize it when they come, but I, they tell me stories. And I see them as stories and I hear them as stories and I think very soon they realize they are just stories as well.
But a great story would be, I am a procrastinator. I have anxiety. These label [00:28:00] stories, I am not confident. I don't know how to communicate. I don't know how to talk to women. I don't know how to talk to men, whatever it is. So this There's a lot of kind of stories where they label themselves as being a certain sort of person or having a certain sort of ability and particularly that anxiety label.
When I hear that one, I have anxiety. The first, do you remember the first thing I tell them when people tell me I have anxiety? Yes, I do. Okay. I say to them, no, you don't. Yeah. And then I'll explain to them because you have a symptoms of anxiety. There will be times in your day where there are no symptoms.
So it's a little bit like, if you have a cold You know, you have a cold because you're coughing and sneezing and you're very aware of it at the time, right? All you can think about half the time is how you have a cold Particularly post covid, right? Where you're so aware of, I'm coughing near people and things, but once it's gone and often with a cold, it goes, and you don't notice for a couple of days.
You're saying, Oh my God, that cold's gone. I forgot I had it or the headache. I forgot I had a headache. [00:29:00] I had it three days. I just forgot about it. It's just gone. You don't walk around saying to people, I have a cold or I have a headache. When those symptoms have gone. Yep. You don't own the cold.
The cold isn't part of you. You don't carry it your whole life. And sometimes it's, Oh, there it is. It's back again. Yeah. And I think this is the thing with anxiety is people own it like it's their pet dog and they start to become it. They start to live as someone who has anxiety. My anxiety will do And so once you let go of it, And you realize, actually, these are just symptoms.
Oh, there's another symptom. It allows you to step back, to disassociate yourself in some ways, to cut yourself off from it, to look at it more objectively. It's okay, this is a symptom, right? What's, what's behind that symptom? What's triggering that? What's the real problem?
What's the real issue here? So yeah, I found there's a lot of stories people come with. And through having a conversation, of course, they can find their stories, work out what they are, where they've come from, [00:30:00] and more importantly, actually, than where something comes from better, more healthy, positive stories that they can replace those unhelpful stories with.
Because some of your stories are great. People have good stories. There you go, Fiona. I'm going to keep those. It sounds like you. Sounds like you're doing cognitive behavioral therapy. So obviously there's that comes into it, doesn't it? You can't, but you can't help yourself. So tell me this we're about to wrap up soon, but what is one piece of wisdom?
That you find yourself consistently giving to clients or anyone else who will listen. Oh, I try not to, I do try not to. I know, we all try not to, but what comes out. Telling people what to live, right? Yeah I think let's talk non clients. I do try not to actually tell my clients what to do and how to think, but I think a great, piece of wisdom is around the story.
And it's just recognizing. What am I making up right now? What is this? [00:31:00] Is this, what's the story I'm telling myself? Is this a story that's serving me? Do I want to hold onto this? Is this helping me in any way? Yeah. So I had a lady recently and actually many people who just are very negative.
They just, they got into a habit. They didn't used to be. They fall into a habit of negativity and negativity is all around the stories. They're all negative stories. So you can start to recognize them. I think step one recognizes step to own it and step three, you can change it. Have you read sapiens by any chance?
No, it's a very interesting book. It basically looks at that. It's, that's the defining characteristic of humans compared to other animals. As far as we know is that we are full of stories. We love to tell stories and yeah, it A story that there might be a tiger out there, saved our ancestors lives, but when we tell too many stories these days, when there's no real danger, we're just causing those symptoms of anxiety.
[00:32:00] Exactly. Yeah, so it's recognizing the stories, step one, just recognize them. There's another one, step two, own it and then you can deal with it. So before I give you a chance to plug how people can find you, I'm just going to finish off with two questions. I, and I'm going to give, I don't always give credit on every episode, but I should do it every once in a while.
I stole these two questions from Mike Kaplan, my favorite comedian, When he interviews comedians, he asks these two questions at the end of his podcast of broccoli and ice cream and I think that's okay because he's like he's going to be a guest in a cup next week on this podcast So I think he's okay with it So is there anything that you didn't get to say as much as you wanted to say?
because we went off on a tangent and or Is there anything that I didn't even know to bring up that would be? a glaring omission when it comes to a survey of the life and work of Fiona Spence.
I'm sure there are many things, but I think you've done such an amazing [00:33:00] job that I'm not going to try and change anything that you've done. You've done brilliantly. Thank you very much. And I will just finish off the point of the podcast is for anyone who wants to listen and glean Anything that they can from all the different kinds of coaches all different, philosophies of coaching, whatever anything that they can in self development and for people who are ready for a coach, who actually hear the person that they needed in their life to be able to contact them and get started.
So for those listeners who today are saying, Fiona Spence, that's my coach. I need. To get in contact with her. How do they find you? A lot of different ways. First of all, the website, which for a community is Fiona Spence. com. au. I do coach worldwide. Spell that even though it's just what I would consider the common spelling.
Let's spell it anyway. F I O N A. Yeah. F I O N A Fiona Spence. S [00:34:00] P E N C E. com. au. Yes, I'm on LinkedIn because I work mostly with busy professionals actually, so they're either business owners or career focused people. Very active on LinkedIn. So you can find me Fiona Spence on LinkedIn. So that's a nice easy one.
And I do post to most social media daily. So there's Instagram, Facebook, TikTok even YouTube. You can find me on Instagram, Fiona Spence, no excuses. And we're both middle aged, but I've been following you on TikTok. So for those younger people or crazy older people like us who are on TikTok, it's fun.
Thank you Fiona. And you can always find all of my links at Jeremy West. Dot net. And I'm currently doing free online introduction to mindfulness workshops. So find those@thetopofthepageonjeremywest.net.
I was just gonna say one thing I didn't mention actually is I do have a lot of free quizzes. [00:35:00] As well on my website. Ooh, free quizzes. I love quizzes. Yeah, free quizzes. What sort of decision maker are you if you're feeling stuck in your career?
There's even one if you're over 50 and considering a career change, I have two bachelor's degrees, two thirds of a master's degree I don't know what else. I was a crazy person who saw the exam day as it was like my Super Bowl is oh, I'm going to prove everything that I memorized or whatever.
By the way, so I love tests and do well at tests and whatever. I have not figured out how to get paid for being good at tests. School didn't, that's all school taught me was how to be good at tests. Maybe I'll be a game show contestant. Oh, cool.
Maybe I'll just continue asking questions because that's also fun. Thank you very much, Fiona. And we will see you again very soon. Brilliant. Thank you for having me.
Bye.