Episode 219: Finding your Personal Health Formula (even when you think you’re too busy) – with Brian Von Ancken of Wellness Growth Mastermind

Episode 219: Finding your Personal Health Formula (even when you think you’re too busy) - with Brian Von Ancken of Wellness Growth Mastermind

Jeremy Cline [00:00:00]:
What goes into your total health formula? Sure, there's things like the food you eat, the exercise you do, the amount of sleep you get. But what else? What about the social aspects? What about the emotional aspects? What about making it fun? If you're looking for some ideas about how you could improve your total overall health, then this is the episode for you. I'm Jeremy Cline, and this is Change Work Life. Hello, and welcome to Change Work Life, the show where we're all about beating the Sunday evening blues and enjoying Mondays again. I'm a career coach, and in each episode, my guests and I bring you tips, strategies, and stories to help you enjoy a more satisfying and fulfilling working life. It was my birthday a few weeks ago, and I feel like there's almost some urgency around looking after my health. I'm not that far off 50, and to my mind, decisions and activity I take now, or maybe the activity I don't take, could materially impact my future health. But I'm busy. I'm trying to build a business, I've got a family, I've got personal commitments. None of this is unusual, but it feels like I rarely have the headspace to think about my health and fitness, and in particular, whether I should start doing things differently. Where do I start? How do I build something that works for me, not just in terms of results, but also something that fits? To help unpack this, I'm joined by Brian Von Ancken, founder of Wellness Growth Mastermind. A former lawyer, Brian is certified in emotional wellness, breathwork, and group fitness, and his own personal mantra is know yourself and have fun. Brian, welcome to the podcast.

Brian Von Ancken [00:01:56]:
Thank you for having me. Excited to chat.

Jeremy Cline [00:01:59]:
So, when we first spoke, you introduced me to this concept of personal total health. Can you give me an outline as to what that actually means?

Brian Von Ancken [00:02:09]:
Sure. To me, every single human on this planet has something unique in them that I call a total health formula, which is a minimum number of inputs, healthy inputs, that they can do each week in order to feel like they are taking care of themselves and living an intentional and healthy life. And what I think is missing from a lot of people's perception of wellness is that it is not one size fits all, and it is not something that will work for everybody, certain things will work for everybody. And what it actually is, is a journey towards finding your own personal total health formula. I like to think of total health as four pillars. There's a physical pillar, there's a mental pillar, there's an emotional pillar, and a social pillar. And in an ideal world, you're checking the boxes of each of them in some way each week. And to your point in the intro, I think a lot of us feel like, well, I don't have the time for that. I could barely make sure my kids are fed and getting off to school. And that's very understandable. But what I'm asking people to take ownership of and figure out for themselves is what are the micro actions and things that you can do that resonate with you as a person, that can at least start to put you in a place where you can take intentional steps towards being a healthier version of yourself. I'll stop there. I'm sure there'll be more questions.

Jeremy Cline [00:03:37]:
And so, just running through those four pillars, you said physical, social, emotional, and what was the fourth one?

Brian Von Ancken [00:03:44]:
Physical, mental, emotional, and social.

Jeremy Cline [00:03:47]:
And when you talk about inputs, presumably each one of those four pillars has different types of potential inputs. So, perhaps you could talk to what some of those inputs might be and perhaps talk to some of the less obvious ones. I mean, people are going to know about food, sleep, exercise, that kind of thing.

Brian Von Ancken [00:04:10]:
Yeah. So, I think that there's a perception that the only way to cheque a box for physical health is to lift heavy things or to go for a run. And I would encourage people to get creative about the ways in which they might be able to cheque that box. And so, it can take the form of micro movement in the morning, it can take the form of a walking desk that you're doing, it can take the form of just taking one call per day on a walk, as opposed to at your desk. If you really wanted to double click on it, I think you could also argue that playing with your kids, if you put a little bit more intention and a little bit more effort behind it, can cheque some of those boxes. The big thing that I have with all of these is that, if we can make sure that we have a relationship to this, where there isn't a pressure, an expectation, a should, but more of a curiosity and an openness to find the things that actually resonate with us and that are actually doable within our schedule, so that we have a real chance of sticking with them and not having it be something that we do for a week and then, Thanksgiving, Christmas, whatever happens, and I'm off the train, I'm not able to do it. So, from the physical side of things, I think those are some examples. Obviously, on the mental side of things, there's things therapy, there's meditation, there's breath work. But for me, I also just feel like taking five minutes in between calls to not scroll on your phone and pace back and forth. I call it a professor pace, some people call it walking meditation, but I like to think of a professor who just wanders back and forth of his or her office contemplating. And to me, those are a really powerful way to add punctuation marks to our day. So, a lot of the mental side of things, how I think about it, modern world, we all know, is just so blended when we're working and when we're not working. And some of the mental punctuation marks we can put in our day can really matter. So, for me, I don't have time anymore to do a 30-minute meditation in the morning or even 10 minutes, but I have a two-minute mantra slash meditation that I listen to every morning, that primes my brain to get ready for work. And that's something that really allows me to get ready and get in the headspace. And then, I try to do a little bit of a disconnect at the end of the day too. And then, at the end of the week, I do a little bit of a yoga session, 30 minutes to just signal to myself this is the end of the week, and now I'm on to the weekend. So, I could keep going with other examples, but I'll stop there if you have any more questions.

Jeremy Cline [00:06:48]:
I'm curious as to how you landed on this two-minute meditation, so what you tried and how you identified that as being something that worked for you. Because I'm guessing there was lots of trial and error. And I think one of the blockers is that people don't necessarily know what to try and then how to evolve with the trial and error.

Brian Von Ancken [00:07:12]:
I mean, absolutely. I'm somebody who didn't consider myself a meditator, but I took a chance at a point in my life where I had some free space, and I did a meditation retreat, and I did a full week of silence where I meditated. And I think that was a powerful exercise for me. Not that that is in any way a prerequisite for any of this, but it just gave me a mindset that showed that, yeah, I can figure out what works for me, and I have the ability to sit and figure that out. And so, I'm definitely not recommending that for everybody, but I'm just giving some context that I have tried a lot, I have done a lot. I think that, for me, I've landed on what I'm doing right now for a couple reasons. First of all, just passively sitting and meditating can be very challenging, especially if you don't have enough time to really get into it, or if you don't have the muscle of being able to drop deep very quickly. A lot of my experience of meditation is clearing out those racing thoughts, those loops, and that takes time. And I don't necessarily have that. And so, what my mantra meditation ends up being is a lot of phrases repeated that I want to live my life by. Things like, be an inspiration to others, be kind, make healthy choices, think before you speak. Things like, the difference between faith and fear both demand you to believe in something you cannot see, so you might as well choose faith. So, it's just two minutes of very nice music, people repeating things that I like, and to me, that does it for me. I listen to that on something called Insight Timer, which is a free meditation app. And I'd encourage people, you can filter by time, you can just type in a feeling you want, maybe it's energising, whatever it might be, but kiss a few frogs, try something, maybe it resonates, maybe it doesn't. I'm sure in the show notes, I'll share what I do. But the biggest thing is, yes, I completely agree that it is very challenging to find the time to make the plan. And the most important thing is not perfect action, but just action. And just little bit of time, set a timer for five minutes, okay, found it, boom. Let's try this for a week, see how it goes.

Jeremy Cline [00:09:29]:
You mentioned letting go of the shoulds, and this is something which I always find is difficult. Just today, I was reading an article about the connection between body muscle and cognitive decline. So, in other words, if you have more muscle, then you're less likely to lose your faculties. So, instantly, that makes me think I should be doing more resistance work, more weights. And that may be true, but how can I get it out of a should-filled anxiety into something that might actually get me to do it?

Brian Von Ancken [00:10:10]:
Yeah, I mean, we need to just acknowledge, first of all, behaviour change is hard, right? If it was easy, everybody would do it. So, let's just start there. I think the concept of should is interesting. A lot of languages throughout the world don't even have the concept of should. It's either do or do not. There isn't this conditional should. And so, when we accept that it's not necessary to have a should, it allows us to be more honest about what's actually going on. Because my experience of should is this anxiety, beat yourself up dynamic. It's not action oriented. It's not saying I need to do something, or I don't need to do something. It's a kind of in-between state, where either it's someone else's expectation that's put on yourself, or it's something that you say you want to do, but you don't really want to do. And either one is not necessarily serving you. So, actually, what I recommend to people to do is to go on a should diet. Try to go a week without saying the word should. It'll be very interesting, because I think it's a great exercise to highlight that parts of your personality, the parts of the way you speak that have some of that conditional logic, maybe you're telling other people, 'Oh, you should do this, you should do that', well, if you couldn't use the word should, what would you really say? Would you say, 'You need to do this'? Is that justified to tell someone else, 'You need to do this'? Or are you talking about your own experience? I'm not saying the word should is without use and value, but I think it's a good exercise to try not to use it to illustrate to yourself how much you use it and maybe get clearer on the needs versus the shoulds.

Jeremy Cline [00:12:03]:
Okay, so this isn't about ignoring all the things that you might have felt like you should do, but it's actually about avoiding the word should and reframing that in some way.

Brian Von Ancken [00:12:16]:
Right. So, I'd be curious for yourself, if you had to list five things you feel like you should do when it comes to your health, what are the five things that come up for you?

Jeremy Cline [00:12:29]:
The first one touches on what we've already talked about. It's probably more aerobic and definitely more strength-based exercise. Because at the moment, I don't feel like... Well, I was going to say I don't feel like I do enough, I feel like I should do more, I should probably reframe that and say it's something that I could do more, and if I did it more, then there probably would be both short- and long-term benefits.

Brian Von Ancken [00:12:55]:
Yeah, I mean, and I think that when you start listing your shoulds, and then you say to yourself, 'Well, I have a family, I've got a job, I've got all this stuff', and you realistically try to say, 'Well, what can I actually do? What do I need to do?', I think it gets clearer on what's actually possible, and it gets clearer on what's priority. Because I always find that motivation to do things that are healthy for ourselves, if they're coming from an external source of, I read an article, and it's true that strength training is going to help with cognitive decline, is that going to be enough to push you to wake that hour earlier if that's what you truly want to do? Whereas if you can find ways to link it to, well, not saying, but in my family, there's been instances of cognitive decline, that's something that's really top of mind for me, especially as I look in my kids' eyes, and I know that I want to be there for them in the next 20, 30 years, and so I'm going to find a way to get more strength training in for myself, because I know that that's what I want. And it's funny, you're saying the same thing, but it's completely different when it comes to internal motivation and finding what you need to get it done.

Jeremy Cline [00:14:14]:
I'd just like to go back to your four pillars and possibly approach it a different way, with a different metaphor that I heard a while ago. And this was actually a work colleague of mine who was telling me about when he started working in a bank. And he was told that he and his colleagues could think of their life as having four burners. So, there's your work burner, your family burner, your friendship burner, and your health burner. And you wouldn't be able to have more than three burners going simultaneously. Oh, and by the way, one of those would always be work, because that was what was expected of them in this place. I like to think if I'd heard that, I would have probably been on the point of thinking about walking out. But I'm curious as to how you think about that. I mean, is it really just the case that you can't do everything simultaneously? And so, there is this letting things drop at some point and maybe picking them up at other point, but at the expense of something else.

Brian Von Ancken [00:15:24]:
Yeah, so I mean, to give people context, I've got two young kids, and I'm building a business. So, the reality of the spare time that I have to do the things, do the experiences, take care of, I'm basically saying I'm not somebody who's just waking up and doing cold plunges and journalling for four hours in the morning. Okay? So, what I do for myself is, I have a system where once a quarter, I take a little bit of stock on what I want the priority to be for my health for the next quarter, and something that I really want to add to the experience and change. And so, it can be something like trying to get my heart rate up for two hours per week, or it can be something as small as finding the space to journal every other week or whatever it might be. And so, I've got that system of quarterly review, and I focus on one thing, because if I try to cram everything in at once, the odds of this getting done... And so, yeah, basically, the answer is there's not a quick fix, in my opinion. I think that it's a long-term investment, it's a long-term commitment. But if you create a system for yourself where you're setting an experiment, trying it out, having a little bit of time at the end of the quarter to reflect, do I want to change that, do I want to do something different, and literally, I just set reminders in my calendar so I'm not thinking about it too much, and then I find those spaces, and that just allows me, I have a little notion document with them all, and to me, that just allows me to move things forward over time, and something that I can revisit to get inspiration or to feel like I'm learning about myself. Because the main headline here I hope to most people is, I have the ability to take ownership of how I feel and my health. And if I feel like that is something that is on my plate, that I can do, that I have the power over, then I have a much better chance of actually getting it done and not succumbing to all the things in our modern world that are going to make us live an unintentional and unhealthy life, whether it's the screens or the food or the negativity or whatever it might be. I feel like there's a lot of ways in which we feel like we can be victims and succumb to our environments. And if we have the ability to trust and prove that we can take some ownership, that ends up being a really important prerequisite for all the other things.

Jeremy Cline [00:17:59]:
You mentioned the screens, the food, whatever, which I'm going to put them down as the indulgences that aren't always necessarily going to be that great for you. But then, there's also the idea of, I don't know whether it's being nice to yourself or being kind to yourself. So, it's giving yourself a bit of grace to have that bar of chocolate or that ice cream or doom scrolling. I'm curious as to how you think about the be nice to yourself, be kind to yourself. Are they the same thing? What's a way of thinking about it, so people don't beat themselves up, allow themselves to have things that they like, but don't use the be nice to yourself just as an excuse to fall off the wagon?

Brian Von Ancken [00:18:54]:
Yeah, it's really important to just be clear that I am not perfect. I'm not somebody who is a machine and does nothing but healthy things. Quick side story, I live in the States, as you could probably tell from my accent, and we had Halloween, and wow, there's a lot of candy on Halloween. And we had a couple extra, and that was an interesting month, last month, of that extra Halloween candy, that just couldn't seem to be taken out from the house, and that every now and again needed to be consumed when the little ones were giving us a hard time at night or whatever it might be. So, I resonate with all that, and my relationship with it, what I hope that people can have, is first of all, the difference between nice and kind, in my perspective, is nice is not necessarily an honest take. If you're being nice, you're just saying what other people want to hear, or it's not necessarily honest. There's a great book called No More Mr Nice Guy, which I think is a great read on the difference between being kind and being nice. So, if you're truly being kind to yourself, and you're not skipping out on honesty, because I think honesty is really important, because we know the difference, we don't need an aura ring, we don't need any wearable to tell us that, when we know we've done too much doom scrolling, or we know that we've really indulged a little too much on the food or whatever it might be. And so, my whole relationship to this has always been moderation and finding my little spaces to do the things that I love to do, especially if it's with people. I find that when I'm eating really well with other people or showing people a video or watching whatever, I think that's something that almost cheques the social box, and then it negates some of the negativity that might come from those decisions. But as I said before, I just hope that everybody can find a dynamic where you have a scientist's mindset as opposed to a judge's mindset. So, you live your life, you're like, 'Oh well, the holidays came, and I did that. Interesting. Isn't that interesting?' There's a really great question of, 'Isn't that interesting?', versus, 'Oh my God, I hate myself because I did this, this and that.' If you have the scientist mindset, anything is interesting. And so, I try to maintain that and get curious about, wow, hey, I have a six-week-old, and isn't it interesting that these Snickers bars really became a crutch for me right before I went to bed because it was such a long day, and I knew the was going to be long too. And it's not judgement, it's just interesting, and it gives me context around maybe where it came from, so that I know that it's not this intractable sense of who I am, and it will always be this way, but more as a reflection of life, which is always dynamic and moving, and people have reasons, and this goes back to the emotional side of things, which I didn't really touch on yet. But I'll pause there before I get into it, because I think there was a lot there.

Jeremy Cline [00:22:01]:
One thing I would just like to circle back to, you mentioned there the scientist, and you talked earlier about experimenting. One of the things that maybe I've never quite yet got my head around is how you assess what the results are of the experiment. So, do you, I don't know, set out what your null hypothesis is and your alternative hypothesis, and you do something for three months and then see what's actually happened? Or yeah, it's the trying something and then the steps to figure out whether it's working, it's not working, or it could work better, if that makes sense.

Brian Von Ancken [00:22:48]:
Yeah. And so, I skipped a very important part of my process, which is Sunday nights, I used to do a bath before I had kids, where I would do a Sunday night bath, and I would reflect, and I literally had created a little quiz for myself. It's three questions, it's very quick, but it is checking in on some of those inputs and hypotheses of what I'm trying to do, right? So, did I get the three workouts in? How do I feel? I mean, those questions are going to change, but I think it's important, I don't think it needs to be every week, but I think, to your point, even if you're just looking at your screen time, or even if you're finding some metric that's automatically logged that you can look back on, to just give yourself that little bit of positive impact or positive feedback, to say, okay, yeah, look, I'm making a little bit of progress here, this gives me motivation to keep going. It's sad that a lot of these wellness techniques don't just allow you, like when it comes to physical health, you could lift more weights, and you see yourself, I've lifted more weights, and therefore I have this positive feedback loop of like, okay, I'd like to keep going. A lot of times on the mental side of things, in the social side of things, it becomes more ephemeral. It's a little harder to measure objectively. But if we create these moments of check-ins, and if we create these moments of these barometers, whether it's, like I said, screen time or how many times you're able to do this, or maybe even ask your partner, or you ask someone else to check-in on how does it seem like this is affecting me or not affecting me. You know, I want to revise my statement. You don't have to be a perfect scientist. You don't need to do the double blind, and there might be bad science that's out there, but that's okay. I mean, I think just even putting a little bit of intention behind it is what matters. I think we as humans are just bad scientists in so many ways. I mean, think to yourself, how many times in your life do you feel like when something doesn't go the way you want to, that it's such a catastrophe, and how are we ever going to get through? But if you looked at a printout of your life and the number of times that things didn't go your way, you probably were able to work through them, if you were the scientist, you'd be like, 'Well, okay, we got some good data here that, odds are I'll probably find a way to get through this.' But we're just humans. And humans have emotions, and our bodies don't necessarily have that scientific mind. It's all to say that I think it's all okay, but I encourage people still to have a scientific mind as best they can, so that we can remind ourselves that we can get through the hard times, or we can remind ourselves that the inputs that we're trying to do from a healthy side have led to good results or different results. Because, yeah, it can get messy. And I think the biggest thing, as I said before, is simplicity. Let's not reinvent the wheel, let's not create something very, very complex. It's finding the thing for you that works. Right? Literally, people do this all the time where there's a calendar, and you do an X on the day that you do your thing, or you do a red X if you did a thing, and a green X if you did the other thing, and you look back, and you say, 'Whoa, okay, I did the thing, I didn't do the thing.' So, it doesn't have to always be something so difficult and hard to implement. I think it can be really simple.

Jeremy Cline [00:26:11]:
You wanted to touch on the emotional side, which I'd be very interested to hear more about.

Brian Von Ancken [00:26:16]:
Yeah, I mean, so I'm somebody who has the perspective that we're all more dumb animal than we think. We're obviously very cerebral, very smart, very impressive creatures. But there's quite a lot of our DNA, there's quite a lot of our biology that is driven by the non-cognitive. And our bodies, despite being non-brains, they're smart. And I think they have intelligence to them. You think about somebody, you say, 'Hey, what does your gut say?' You know, that is a visceral experience that is very different than your logical mind. And so, what I find is that emotions, and these are things like anger, sadness, joy, they are things that our body experiences, and I like to think of them more as, let's see, we're not going to cuss here, flatulence, they're like farts than anything. Emotions are just things that your body needs to feel. Right? Or maybe a sneeze is a better example. But it's like if you have to sneeze, and you hold it in, your body can get all twisted. But if you just let it happen, then your body can restore to homeostasis. And I think that's just true with emotions. We have two different sets of nervous systems as humans. We've got our rest-and-digest, and our fight-or-flight. And a lot of times we get activated in our fight-or-flight via things that happen in our day, and we don't even realise that we're still holding on to the emotion that comes with that experience. And so, what the emotional side of it is for me is at least finding space or finding people to talk to or finding opportunities to fully feel emotions that come up. And so, that can mean crying, if you've got to cry, and knowing what it feels like to let that go. Or anger, like finding the pillow, or being in the car and screaming, and finding some way to just let go of that anger, and restabilise yourself. Something that they've studied many times in nature is, if you've ever seen a deer get very scared, it tightens up, and it becomes extremely stiff. But if you were to look at that same deer after the danger subsides, the deer actually shakes off, physically shakes off that feeling of fear, in order to regulate itself back to going about its business. And so, I think to some degree, we as humans, I'm not saying we need to shake, but I think the emotional side, the emotional cleansing, the emotional feeling is something that, at least me, I was never taught growing up, and something that I think we could all benefit a lot from if we found the opportunity to do it.

Jeremy Cline [00:28:57]:
Yeah, there's definitely, it seems like, a culture of repressing emotions. It feels like even more so here in the UK than perhaps over in the States. But I'll sometimes talk to people, I sometimes talk to coaching clients who will say things like, 'Oh, I just wish I didn't care, or I just wish I didn't get stressed', or that kind of thing. And I think what you're saying is that that stuff is going to come up, and you're better off finding a way of voicing it or experiencing it or letting go of it, not just trying to bury it and suppress it. And obviously, there's going to be circumstances where you can't necessarily do that. So, if your boss is making you really angry, you probably can't then shout at them, but maybe you can walk out of their office and have a quick brisk walk or something like that. But yeah, just keeping it bottled up doesn't sound to me like a recipe for success.

Brian Von Ancken [00:29:56]:
It does not. But it's also very understandable that people do that. And especially when you grow up in a society, like you said, where it can be okay to repress. And listen, I'm not asking, and I'm not telling everybody that they need to be emotional masters, but I think that giving yourself permission to feel is a really, really great way to have a different relationship to the world and to all this other health stuff. That's why I include it as a pillar in my perspective, because if you do some of that emotional work, I think all the rest of this stuff actually gets a little bit easier.

Jeremy Cline [00:30:39]:
Where do you start? Say you are someone, and even if you're approaching it from a curiosity, I wonder what would happen if I tried doing something different, rather than I should do something different, yeah, just where do you even start?

Brian Von Ancken [00:31:00]:
Yeah, so I believe James Clear has a book called Atomic Habits, which is a great starting point on how behaviour change works in the mind and in the body. And so, it could be a really interesting place to start to think about how behaviour change might actually take shape. I also think one of the things he talks about in that book, which is an important thing, is identity work of telling yourself, 'I am a swimmer, I am a meditator', whatever the thing might be that you're curious about, starting at the values space or the identity space, and seeing how that works to give yourself the potential to actually stick with something. But I mean, honestly, if I was somebody, I would just like, you're curious, you use ChatGPT, you create a list, 'Hey, what's 10 things I could do? And here's things I really love doing.' And then, ask ChatGPT, 'What's a realistic three-minute thing I can do every other day to do that?' Or whatever, use ChatGPT, it could give you some really good ideas, I think. And you can also use ChatGPT as a coach and an accountability buddy, I think. Yeah, just using your curiosity, trying some stuff out, coming up with a little plan, and then, we are a mimic species, in the sense that the people that we surround ourselves with are typically the people that we end up acting like or being similar to. And so, finding, even if it's one other person who maybe wants to do this with you or thinks in a healthy way, and spending some time with them or finding ways to connect with them, because I think you'll naturally start to feel like, okay, yeah, I maybe want to start making these healthier decisions, doing something better. Yeah, to me, I would just start small and get curious, give yourself some wins, and then see where it goes from there.

Jeremy Cline [00:33:08]:
I love your ChatGPT idea. In fact, I just love the idea of maybe feeding it a bit of information and saying, 'I feel like I could improve something. Give me some suggestions.' And then, even just say, 'Suggest one to start with.' Because it probably doesn't really matter, but ChatGPT can say, 'Yeah, sure, start with this one.' And you can go, 'Okay, fair enough. I'll start with that one.' It doesn't really matter, but it just gives you that point where you can make a start.

Brian Von Ancken [00:33:43]:
Yeah. And you can also input all your constraints. You can be like, 'Well, I've got kids at this time, and this is realistically the time that I have.' And then also, I don't think I've been clear enough though on how things you love doing can count. This is going to sound weird, but if you need to have pints with your friends, hopefully, the number of pints is not at a level where it's significantly impacting the next day or whatever, but that social element, I'm not ready to write that off as unhealthy. Right? Everything is a balance. And so, if connection is really what lights you up, and let's just say you don't feel like it's bad, maybe there's a way that you can make sure that you do that intentionally, or make sure you're meeting with the people who give you energy and going and being social with, or seeing a movie or whatever it might be, so I just encourage, there's an adage, who knows where it's originally attributed to, but it's follow the fun. If you find something fun, you have a higher likelihood of actually wanting to do it. And so, odds are there's something healthy out there, something that's good for your mental health or your social health, your emotional health, that feels fun to you. And maybe you just don't know it yet, or maybe you forgot that you did it when you were younger. And it's following the fun. And then, the fun, I think, will lead to the other stuff.

Jeremy Cline [00:35:06]:
I really like that. The thing that's coming up for me is music. I'm an amateur flautist, and it's always been a constant throughout my working life. When I started working, I found adult amateur wind bands. It's always been something that, as best I can, I will make time for. And it would almost get to the stage where, if I could choose which day of the week or which days of the week to, say, work late, then it would be, right, okay, well, I'm going to do it on this night, because then it means I will be able to go to band and not have to work late on that night. So, that's, I guess, a good indicator for me of something that's important and fun and should play a part. Again, should. But it's an important part of my life.

Brian Von Ancken [00:36:03]:
Well, and starting to think of that as a really healthy decision that you make for yourself every week. Because to go, to be social, to use your breath, to be in community, to make music, I mean, that is some of the healthiest things that we can do. I wish we knew enough about lifting weights alone in a room versus doing that. I would argue there's probably more value in doing that, especially if it really speaks to you. And so, making sure that we are giving ourselves credit for the things that we're currently doing, that we might not even think about as healthy, so that we don't feel like, 'Oh, I don't do anything.' You know, it's like, no, actually, I do a lot, and there's opportunity for me to do more. And it's very much following that fun. I mean, for me, I love to sing, and I don't right now, but I'd love to find a choir of some kind, an adult, to be in concert, sing. And there's nothing better. I mean, think about the feeling you have after you're done with a great session of creating music. It's very, very hard to replicate, and there's no doubt in my mind that that is a mental plus in our life if we do stuff like that.

Jeremy Cline [00:37:17]:
What are some of the things that you can do to find that thing which is genuinely restorative? Because an interesting thing about music for me is, I love doing it, and it's fun, and I quite often will feel exhilarated by it, but still a little bit exhausted, and I just want to sit down in a quiet place somewhere and do something by myself. So, yeah, curious as to how you think about restoration and finding out the thing which replenishes your energy.

Brian Von Ancken [00:37:56]:
Yeah, well, there's been a lot of studies around Yoga Nidra, which is just basically like awake rest, which there's so many benefits that come from that. It's where the brain, I think, truly gets some of its recovery, replenishment, whatever you want to call it. And sadly, in a lot of our modern cultures, there's not really a lot of space for that true relaxation. Because even if you were to get an extra couple hours of sleep, there's actually a difference between really being still, being awake but resting. And so, there's actually a couple, I'll put it in the show notes, but there's this very interesting new app out there called Olo, which is not meditation, it's not breathwork, but it's this award-winning composer who's gone around the world and recorded nature sounds, from the jungle to the ocean, and put them together in these amazing pieces ranging from five to 20 minutes. And what his whole thing is, it's giving people the opportunity to find spaces where you focus on the nature sounds, and that's where your conscious mind focuses, but it's also a space where the unconscious mind gets to truly relax and recover. And so, I think that could be a way for people to do that, it's called Olo. But then, for other people, yeah, it is going to be Yoga Nidra, it could be going for a run, it could be truly finding that, I find personally that sweating, and I play basketball once every couple weeks, and the way that I feel after that is tired, but also a different sort of recovered, like whatever mindset, everything I've had is a bit shed, and I'm able to feel recovered in that way. But I think, yeah, again, it's going to have to be creativity, trial and error. Thinking back to the other thing that's just true about our society right now is, you're never bored. There's never really space to just wander and daydream. And I think it's been proven that there is real validity and value to that. So, allowing yourself to do that on your car ride or commute or between calls or whatever it might be, if you can. I think that a lot of that creativity will come from those moments of boredom too, and maybe inspiration might come as well.

Jeremy Cline [00:40:38]:
Yeah, I like that. It's something I tried at lunch today. So, usually, when I eat my lunch, I've got a book or a magazine in front of me. But I thought as an experiment, I'm going to try just eating my lunch without any other kind of input. And I'm home alone today, so there's no one to chat to. I got about halfway through before it was like, now I'm going to get my phone out and start scrolling on that. But I got halfway. So, that was something.

Brian Von Ancken [00:41:09]:
That's great. I mean, that's a really creative way to try something out. And the halfway through is a great start. And maybe next time, you get three quarters, and next time it'll be the full. And it's amazing what happens when we try something on our own and take ownership, and yeah, I'm assuming you have a completely different relationship to that than if somebody told you, you have to not read during lunch. You're trying it yourself, and it's cool. You're seeing what happens.

Jeremy Cline [00:41:45]:
This is one of those topics where we could talk about it for hours and hours and hours. But I love the fact that you've given us some really practical tips, especially using ChatGPT for inspiration. I think that's an awesome tip. If people want to find you, where would you like them to go?

Brian Von Ancken [00:42:06]:
Yeah, I'm on LinkedIn. It's probably the best way. You can type my name into LinkedIn. I also run a community for founders and growth leaders in the health and wellness space called Wellness Growth Mastermind. So, if you are a founder or a leader in the space, and you want to get together and talk about growth, my website is joinwgm.com, and feel free to either message me on there or message me on LinkedIn.

Jeremy Cline [00:42:40]:
Awesome. I will put links to those in the show notes. Brian, I always like it when I get practical takeaways from an interview, so thank you so much for sharing.

Brian Von Ancken [00:42:52]:
Thank you so much, and yeah, this was a great time.

Jeremy Cline [00:42:56]:
Okay. Hope you enjoyed that interview with Brian Von Ancken. I know it can feel like a bit of a cliche to talk about health improvements right at the start of the new year, but I really liked the way that Brian approaches things a little bit differently. One difference is focusing on some of the inputs which you might not ordinarily think of. So, going beyond the diet, the exercise, looking at things like what do you do socially, what do you do emotionally, what are the things which fill you up, what are the things that you enjoy doing that are fun. The other thing was replacing shoulds with curiosity, which I know is really hard, because everyone is telling you, 'You should do this, you should do that', in terms of things like especially diet and exercise. Finding the brain power just to try out new things, to approach it as an experiment, it is quite hard work. For me, I'm someone who doesn't like to make the same decisions once I've already made them, and also someone who prefers, if possible, to make quick decisions just so that then you don't have the overbearing mental load of having a decision hanging over you. Maybe one thing I can do is just take the pressure off about making the decision and maybe make it a small decision. So, the decision is, I'm going to try out something new and then figure out what that could be. I realise, as I say that, figure out, maybe I should spend less time figuring it out and just go, 'Okay, well, here's something I could do. What's one thing I can do to start to look to see whether that's something which could work for me?' From a psychological perspective, I understand that new year is a great time to try new things, so why not give something new a go? See where it takes you. Show notes with links to all the resources mentioned by Brian are on the website, as usual. And now we're at the start of January, and I'm planning the year ahead. I'd love to know what you want to hear. What are the topics which are going to be most useful for you in 2026? What are the specific challenges that you're facing at the moment where a bit of advice or guidance would be useful? You can go to changeworklife.com/contact, that's changeworklife.com/contact, and let me know. In the meantime, subscribe to the show so you never miss an episode, and I can't wait to see you next time. Cheers, bye, and have an amazing 2026.