Become The Hero Of Your Own Story with Simon Alexander Ong

2:28PM Jun 6, 2023

Speakers:

Angela Foster

Simon Alexander Ong

Keywords:

work

people

energy

book

simon

habits

moment

year

business

journey

love

focus

angela

important

reality

sauna

daily

outcome

create

journaling

So many of us, we are playing the supporting role, or the extra role in our own story. And so we are scared to show up what we're scared to put ourselves out there in the face of criticism, fear or self doubt. And so I think what a lot of us need is what I call main character energy.

My friends, today's episode is all about how to live an extraordinary life and how to become the hero of your own story. My guest is Simon Alexandre Ong, who is the best selling author of energise and he talks about how to transform your energy to transform your life and awaken your imagination to what is truly possible, so that you can step into and live a better story. This is an upbeat episode, we cover a range of topics from goal setting, to your daily net, non negotiables, and the systems for living that you need to put in place to ensure your success. So without further delay, let me introduce you now to Simon Alexander.

So I'm absolutely thrilled today to be joined by Simon Alexander, who is the author of energise and make the most of every moment, which is definitely something that I try and apply in my own life every single day. Simon is so great to have you here.

Angela, thank you so much for having me on.

It's wonderful, I can't wait to dive deep into your book. I've just enjoyed it so much. I guess let's start with a bit of background on you what brought you to writing this book, and your kind of career as a as a life and business coach.

So I, I actually started my career in the financial services sector in the middle of 2007. What was probably the worst possible time, it was a year before the global financial crisis. And the company I began with was Lehman Brothers, which collapsed into administration 14 months after I joined, so talk about a volatile start to occur. This was very much philon In terms of volatility. But even though it was painful in the moment, you had to experience with dependency to experience uncertainty as to what lay ahead for my, for my future. In hindsight, Angela, it was, it was a beautiful blessing in disguise, because it kick started the journey to where where I am today, you know, I started to reflect on what I really wanted to do with my life was I living a life true to myself or live true to others. And I, I began to take full responsibility for where I was and where I wanted to be. And that led me to explore the world of business, I got involved in a couple of projects at the beginning, which opened my eyes to what was possible. And that eventually led me to being a coach, I started coaching, anybody and everyone who wanted to experience the power of coaching at the start. And then things just organically grew. From there, I moved into the speaking world, I found enjoy going onto stage, whether it was conferences, festivals, or within companies to share my insights and thoughts. And then that led me to doing work with Sky News and the BBC. And more recently, which you kindly mentioned, just now Angela, writing my first book and the joys.

Yeah, and it's a brilliant book. I mean, it's interesting when you say that how it all began, because you say in the book that we must turn obstacles into opportunities. And that's exactly what you've done there. I remember it so well, because my husband is a financial trader. And I remember, I was a corporate lawyer at the time and the city pregnant with my first child when that whole kind of crash happened. And it was just epic, and, you know, friends losing their jobs, and you know, the city was a crazy time. But for you, you really have turned it into something that ultimately I think is way more rewarding and more exciting for you as a career.

I think it's, it's testament to the to the saying that goes, life is never about what happens to you. But it's about how you choose to respond to what happens to you. And I think that whatever path we take, we are always going to face setbacks and challenges. And I think the real measure of how successful we become is how we choose to respond to them.

I couldn't agree more. I think the difficult bit for people listening and maybe they're going through a change at the moment, right? Is what Robin Sharma calls the messy middle. Right. He says everything is hard at first, it's messy in the middle, and then I think it's something like it's beautiful at the end. And that messy middle is really tricky, isn't it? Because we all get, you know, started with best laid plans and in positive intentions. But along the way, there are obstacles and I think having that burning desire to guide you is so important. What would you say to someone listening who has a goal in their mind that they're trying to achieve at the moment, they feel like they're in that messy middle, it feels really challenging, and it feels like they're maybe not making progress as quickly as they would want to

or think it's a it's a case of reminding ourselves of some of some basic facts that we tend to forget when we're on that journey. As you said, Angela, rightly so is very messy in the middle. But when we begin any journey, we tend to mistakenly believe that that journey is going to be a straight line, that if we plan everything, we've got everything written down, we know what outcomes we're targeting, then if I take the right steps, everything's going to work out. But reality is far from that. The reality is that even the best laid plans can often deviate. You know, if you were looking to open a, a restaurant business in the middle of 2020, I don't think anybody would have had the COVID pandemic in their plans. And suddenly, you've got this big obstacle thrown your way. How are you going to adapt, no plan would have had that in their projections. And so I think when we consider the messy middle, first, we got to realise that any plan we put together is always going to not go 100% of plan. And it's not because you are to blame. It's just the fact that this is reality. As you take small steps forward, what's going to happen is you're going to learn that some things will work and some things don't work. But the thing is, we can never predict that ahead of time. And so really, what we've got to remind ourselves is to first of all, fall in love with the journey, and to detach ourselves from the outcome. Because actually, where things get really messed up, if we're not careful, is if we attach our emotional well being to an outcome that may or may not happen. So we might say, when this happens, then I can do ABC. And then when that happens, then I can do the next step. But we've got to be open to adapting our methods and our processes depending on what works and what doesn't. And that's why when we detach ourselves from the outcome, and instead focus on the process and the journey, for me, that's the most beautiful part of any path is actually focused on the journey and the rewards will come. And second is there will always be things outside of your control, always. And when unexpected things occur is to not focus on the things you can't control because that will paralyse you with overthinking. But instead focus on the things that you can control however small and there's always something that you can control however small when you take a step back and evaluate the best path forward. So those would be the two things I would suggest really is a reminder, that actually there is no perfect straight line in any part of

detoxification is so important now more than ever, with the number of toxins we are exposed to daily in our food, water, personal care products and environment. No matter how careful we are, it's impossible to totally get away from the chemicals. And we also have to think about detoxifying the toxins we produced through cellular respiration and clearing excess hormones like oestrogen. Our skin is one of the key ways we detoxify. And that's why I love to include sauna as part of my weekly routine. But going to a facility with a sauna can be time consuming and investing in one yourself has been expensive in the past. That's why I love bond charges sauna blanket. It has so many benefits from raising your heart rate to that a physical exercise, so you burn calories whilst you relax, you can burn up to 600 calories in just one session. The sweating helps flush out heavy metals and other toxins and the infrared light which heats the body directly rather than the air around you mean you get the same benefits at a lower heat. On charges sauna blanket is easy to set up taking less than a minute. It heats up rapidly and you can enjoy a session for 30 to 40 minutes whilst relaxing, reading watching TV or even meditating so you can truly stack your hacks on charges sauna blanket is also low EMF compared to other brands on the market. And it's the quickest on the market to heat up. So it's an easy thing to fit in. When I'm not working out in the morning you'll find me meditating in my been charged sauna blanket with their red light therapy mask on my face boosting collagen while I relax and bond charger giving listeners of this podcast 20% off their sauna blankets, red light therapy devices and other wellness products. Bond charge ship worldwide in rapid time with free shipping on every sonar blanket and 12 months warranty. Simply go to bond charge.com forward slash Angela and enter code Angela 20 at checkout that's B oncharg.com forward slash a n g e l a and use code Angela 20 to save yourself 20% You have a great a couple of diagrams. I was just thinking of them like visualising them in my mind In the book as you were saying it because I think you lay out, you know, it's not linear. It's not a staircase as people success, not staircase as people imagine. But I think you give the example of a maze. And then also like areas you can control and, and it feels like that, doesn't it attire, I think with any goal and you look at any kind of Olympic athlete who's got all the way to gold medal, it wasn't easy. There were obstacles, and it's almost like I think the universe will send us tests that we need to overcome along the way.

The way I like to think about it, and I think I refer to it in this particular chapter that you're talking about there, Angela, is that we all go through different seasons of our life, just like we go through different seasons of the year. And in some seasons, it requires you to move slower. Some seasons, you'll be faced with lots of challenges to learn and to grow. Some seasons, you'll be making FFLs progress forwards, and in some seasons, you'll be going sideways. But that is there to serve a purpose. You may not always see it in the moment. But when you look back, you'll realise that actually, that season gave me exactly what I needed at that moment.

Wow, that's very true. Very true. I'm just moving on because I think this museum Eisley in actually something you talk about in the book, and I read this out, so reality is nothing more than perception. And your perception is determined by your energetic state, and that we can bend reality. But actually, you talk about it. Obviously, it's a book around energising them all the way through the book is this theme around energy and managing our energy, not our time using our energy to bend reality. When you make that statement, really our perception is what determines the world around us. Can you elaborate on that a bit more peaceful lessons?

Sure. So very often, we like to think that there is one reality. So when we see something as bad or good, we expect others to agree with us. The reality is that we all live in customised realities. So when an event or an experience occurs in your life, the way that you interpret, it will be very different to the way your partner does or your child does, or your colleague or friend. Now, what this tells us is that we are living in the feeling of our thinking moment to moment to moment. And whatever we bring into our thinking we bring into our reality. And this is the idea of perception, how you perceive and experience creates your very own reality. So if you interpret an event to be bad, then the actions and behaviours and choices you make will be connected to that interpretation. So if we understand that concept, what we also can gain from this understanding is that at any given moment, we can choose a new foot, we can choose one foot over another, and thereby re engineer the choices that we make. And this is what I mean by bending our reality. Because if I, if I choose to view life through the lens of paranoia, ie, the universe is out to sabotage me, my colleagues don't want me to get that promotion, then what happens is that is not going to be a very positive experience. But if I choose to view life through the lens of paranoia, which means the opposite to paranoia, ie that the universe is conspiring in my favour, and the life is working for me and not against me, notice how different my response and interpretation will be when unexpected things occur. Now, the way I move forward will be far more productive. So for me, it's really understanding that we live in the feeling of our thinking moment to moment to moment, and the energy that we bring into our thoughts and literally creates the fabric of our reality.

That's very true. Yeah, I love that assignment. And so I guess in terms of like a practical example, let's say someone is struggling with something that they're doing at the moment, it could be a fitness goal that they're working on, they feel like just not making the progress as quickly. It could be an entrepreneur, for example, who doesn't feel that they've yet hit sustainable, predictable cash flow? So they have this overarching anxiety that's kind of coming in and feeling that they're, how would they then you know, they could look at their results on the scales, and they could look at their bank balance and see, that's not reflecting back at me at the moment where I want to go with this. How would you get them to sort of reshape their thoughts and how might that actually expedite the process of them achieving a goal?

Sure. So for me in the examples you gave, whether it's money or its physical health, what we've got to first understand is that these things do not happen overnight. You know, a lot of people when they start a new year, they begin with a very well heard New Year's Resolution which is I want to get fitter, I want to get healthy, I want to earn more money, I want to finally start that business. Now what happens is that someone might sign up to the gym and then three months later, they just don't go as often. as they did, and they repeat that same resolution year in and year out. Now, what they're lacking in this instance, is patience. Because when you go to the gym, you might feel good inside, and then you look in the mirror, and you'll be like, there's no change, I don't see anything changing with my body. And you do that day in and day out, even after three months, you might be looking in a mirror and saying, I still don't see any change, but I'm feeling better, I guess. And then there comes a day, when somebody looks at you and says, Hey, I haven't caught up with you for a while, you're looking really good in shape, you're looking healthy and fit. But we cannot predict when that day will come. And that is why what is more important is consistency over intensity. So usually, when we think about a goal, whether it is to get fitter, or build a successful business, was so focused on short term, quick wins, that we forget the real success is in finding over the long term. And so actually, what we want to focus on is, firstly, the habits, the foundation, that is going to help us get there. Because if we have the foundation in place, what happens is that that system sets us up to win again and again and again. Now, if you only focus on the goal, you might get the goal, but then what happens afterwards. So if one of your goals may be to finish a marathon, so you train, you eat better, you change your lifestyle, and then you finish the marathon, what happens next. In most cases, if you look at studies done on people who run marathons, what happens is that they go back to their lifestyle before they train for the marathon. And so, goals are great as a way of creating milestones towards a vision. But what's far more important is actually designing a system and a foundation in place that allows us to naturally make the money we want for our business, and live a healthy lifestyle. And so for me is to shift the focus away from the goal and the outcome, and much more to the daily habits, choices and rituals that you have in place.

Yeah, and creating those systems, as you say, because then it can become repeatable. That's the thing, isn't it? Even in the case of the marathon or the fitness venture, if you ever want to go back to that again, and you did kind of fall off the waggon? A little bit, you've actually got the same plan. I think Tim Ferriss talks about when I want to get back in shape I've got in my however many notebooks he has, exactly what was there to do it. And it's interesting, and you tend to maintain that. Along the way. I think business is another good example. Because, you know, I think it might be Brian Tracy human who said that a business really, really gets going at seven years, most people don't think that they literally assume that there's this overnight success, because that's what they see, right? Suddenly, they see this explosion of this individual, they're suddenly like, got loads of PR on them, they've got a great social media following. They're bringing in loads of income. And they see that end result. And it's like, I want to get there without appreciating that there was so much work of planting that seed and growing it along the way,

definitely that there is so much that we are blind to and when we look at social media, we read magazines, we hear stories about entrepreneurs or successful businesses, we only focus on the result. And that is very misleading, because the result is often achieved over a number of years, sometimes decades. And what we really need to be looking at is what were the habits that they had in place, what were the systems that they had in place that they were applying on a daily basis for years, sometimes decades, that made these results inevitable. So you know, to give an example, when I'm often asked about habits, I share some business habits as well, because we often default to only focusing on lifestyle habits, you know, sleep more, eat better, read more books, these are great habits. But when it comes to business, they're also important habits, and we need to embrace. So one of them for me is building relationships. Now, if we're not building relationships and expanding our network, then then what happens is the business will start to waver because a business of violence by how many people know about your work and the value that you can bring. And so when you're out there building relationships and adding value, what happens is people get to experience what you can provide and share it with their audience. So that's a habit I've been doing since I made the transition from being a full time employee to a full time entrepreneur. And the other habit is shifting the focus away from money and selling and to service and value. And there's a there's a great quote by a mentor of mine, Bob Berg, who co wrote the book, The Go Giver, and he said that money is simply an echo of value. So if you can find enough ways to serve people, by sharing value, no matter how small and often, we might think we have to share value the big way it can be a very small way that we can give value to other people. But if we can do that as part of who we are, and that is how we show up every day. The money will take curve itself.

Yeah, I totally agree with that. Absolutely. I think that's a thing, value and service all the way. And also, as you say, if you enjoy the journey, because you want to, if you you know, for anyone that's an entrepreneur listening to this, you started because you want it to make a difference in the world. And if you focus about how you can and are making a difference, it's just way more fun I find, and that in turn impacts your energy. That's the thing.

Definitely, I mean, if you really love seeing others succeed through the products or the services that you provide, and that's where you get your energy from, you will over time succeed as well. Because what's happening is that you are putting yourself in the position as a guide for your clients to discover the hero potential. You want to make your clients the hero, so they see you as the guide that they need to achieve whatever it is they're working on.

Yeah, absolutely. That's something actually, I noted down in your book, you want to become the hero of your story. How would you enlighten people on how to do that?

Well, first of all, I think so many of us, we are playing the supporting role, or the extra role in our own story. And so we are scared to show up what we're scared to put ourselves out there in the face of criticism, fear or self doubt. And so I think what a lot of us need is what I call main character energy. How can you put yourself at the forefront of your story, where you literally become the hero of the story that you are writing? Now, the reason why I think it's important to think about this is because so often, we give up control of that pen to someone else, we let other people write that story for us. But actually, when we take back control of that pen and write our own story, that's when we take ownership of our destiny, our path and our legacy. And when we become the hero of our own journey, it doesn't just help us, it actually helps other people, because by showing others what is possible, we allow others to be inspired by our journey, and so they can step into the hero of their own journey themselves.

One of the many benefits of being part of my membership, the female bio hacker collective is that you get to ask my special podcast guests your questions, and my members have the wonderful opportunity of asking Dr. Mindy pals their questions in relation to fasting, optimising around the menstrual cycle, and perimenopause and a whole lot more. If you'd like to be part of an amazing community of women and get your questions answered alongside monthly live masterclasses, biohacking toolkits and live challenges with me and my team, then head over to www dot female bio hacker.com. To learn more, at WWW dot female bio hacker.com. To learn more. I guess what I guess, kind of a real life example, I suppose then that I can share in my own life that maybe it's helpful listeners, in the end, you can see what you think, is in my journey, I as a as a mother, so I was a corporate lawyer, as I've seen earlier in the city. And then I gave that up and completely retrained started this podcast in my business. And I guess the challenge for me is always finding that time and my energy really managing my energy as a mother, and then enough for my business. And I think lots of women in particular listening to this will feel that thing where then they always feel guilty when there's sort of a work that they're not spending enough time with their children. And then when they're with their children, they have this sort of pressure that they should be working. How would you? How would you help women kind of handle that dichotomy if you like?

Yeah, I think that is, that is something that I've noticed amongst many people, actually, that we feel guilty. When we're not spending enough time with our family or children. We feel guilty when we're not working enough. And I think some of that is an extension of what we've been led to believe, you know, over so many years, we've been led to believe that if you're not doing something, then you're not productive. I, if you are slowing down, if you're enjoying life, and you're not doing work, then you're not productive. And so we can feel very guilty. If we're not doing work, we can feel very guilty of not spending time with children because always told you got to do this, you got to do that. You got to spend more time with us. But you got to work the same time. But how can we do everything and once and I think on the one side, it's like something my wife and I had to had to find peace with as well, is that when we put our daughter into nursery for the first time, we felt, should we have her home? Or should we be spending more time with her rather than sending her to nursery this early? And the way we found peace with the setup we had is that actually, with this arrangement, we can show up better as a parent because when she comes home, we've as parents have had some rest, we've been able to move forward and the things that are meaningful for us, so by the time our child comes home, we can be completely present with her. And so it's really kind of looking at things, not just from one angle, but actually reflecting on the different ways of that situation, often, we just go straight to the negative, and we go, Okay, I'm going to send my child to school, I'm not spending enough time with them. But actually, if I look at the setup as a whole, what am I doing with that time now, if I'm using that time productively, then when I do get to spend time with my family, I can actually enjoy it, rather than feel guilty that I should be somewhere else. And same thing goes with work. Yes, it's good to work. But we've also got to be careful not to overwork. Because often, what happens is that when we procrastinate, or we we have lots of time on our hands, many of us fall into the trap of just working, we work to 40 hours that we have. But actually what happens is that if you create some boundaries in your life, you were working around that, you know, I get asked often the question from other parents, who are entrepreneurs saying, Simon, do you feel more productive? Now you are a parent? Or were you more productive before you were a parent? And I say, actually, I feel more productive. Now I am a parent. And that is because I know that once I dropped my daughter at nursery, I've got a set number of hours to get things done. If I want to spend quality time with her, once I fetch her from nursery and bring her home. So if I want to spend quality time with my family in the evening, what must I do in the hours that I have during the day to make me feel that I've had a productive day. And so what that does, is it forces me to not only prioritise, but it gives me the focus, I need to get things done.

I'm not let time expand to the task at hand, right? Yeah, and I've definitely found that I'm sorry,

because that's what many of us do, we just fill up all the time we have with work, when actually we could use that time more more productively.

Definitely. And I think also, like many of us who've worked have backgrounds in the city have been conditioned, as you say, to work very long hours. I know as a lawyer, you know, we were judged on our chargeable hours, that was the thing. When I left law, for the first few years, I used up these nightmares that I like, hours or something, even though I was working so ridiculously hard, I was always over the hours. But it was just that conditioning. And I think it's difficult because as you say, like particularly not in the entrepreneurial world, really, you're stepping into a world of creativity. And if you're kind of really, really tired, really burnt out, or you're kind of plagued by anxiety that you can't create from that space. So managing your energy, as you say, in the book, I found has been probably the most critical thing to my success.

And there's a great example, I have shown a book as we talk about this topic, because I show a case study of a client, who, when she had children, she did not want to spend too much time away from she wants to actually spend time at home to see them grow to see them develop. And so what she did is she created a boundary of work, you I guess in some ways, the Keep in mind, she was fairly senior. So in some way she could do this. I know not everyone can. But what she did is she said she wanted to be out of the office of five, dead on five, she wanted to be out of the office on the way back home. And what was interesting is that as soon as she set that boundary, not only did she spend more time with her family, but her performance improved. So she was a she was a fund manager. And she's overseeing billions of dollars of assets. And what happened is the performance of her fund that she was overseeing markedly improved. And I remember asking her, what do you think contributed to this pivot in performance? I mean, before it was performing, okay, but nothing to write home about. And suddenly, once you created this boundary, the performance of a fund drastically improved. And she said to me, Simon, I think one of the major contributors is the fact that I had this boundary because once I had the boundary in place, I did not have time to overthink, I went with my gut more. I went with my intuition more. And I didn't have time to question my thinking. Because if I had to get out of five, there was a time limit. Whereas before children, I could stay in the office for a little longer to think back and forth in my mind to question my my gut or my intuition, but now I didn't have that luxury of time. And so in a way it's helped both me having more time with the family, and also the performance of the fund I'm overseeing.

It's interesting, there's boundaries I've definitely found them to oh, how interesting and it obviously made her a lot more on the organisation a lot. got more money? What are some of the things that you do? Because I know you're like very high energy. I heard you speak really, really impactful loved your talk, when we met at the event a few months back, what are the things that you do on a daily basis to really maximise your energy and also that positivity?

Sure, so I like to look at it on the, on a weekly basis, because I think of my schedule and days, how I allocate my energy. So when I think about energy, I see it in four dimensions, so physical energy, mental energy, emotional energy, and spiritual energy. So at any given point, I'm touching base with myself, doing an energy audit, if you will, just to see how I'm feeling in each of those areas. And if an area is particularly low in scoring, I will address that. And some of the foundational habits I have to address those areas are exercising daily. So that has been a habit of mine ever since I got married, is that every day I do some form of exercise, something as simple as walking or swimming to something more extreme as a bootcamp class, or a strength workout in the gym. I do daily reading now, I'm a lot more flexible these days as to how the daily reading gets done being a parent. Whereas before I would just read a book. Now I combined the use of physical books, digital books, and audio books, given the schedule I now have, and when it comes to mental and emotional energy journaling has been a very powerful activity that I've embraced in the last few years. Because for me, it's been so helpful to just download what's in my mind onto paper, especially when there can be a lot of noise going on here sometimes. So just to be able to clear what is on your mind. And to discover the best way forward, it can be very powerful, spiritual energy, it just comes back to reminding myself of my values, and what is most important, and just how I can serve more in the world. And I think what allows me to get energy from that is by seeing this, this process is a game. I think that when we gamify any journey, it does bring an element of energy to it. You know, if someone said to you, here's a problem that we need to address that has a feeling of negative energy. But if we reframe that, and go actually, here's the challenge, we have to overcome that somehow energises us, it's the same way, as when we play a video game you have when you play a video game, and you're presented with a challenge to get to the next level, you're energised to find the solution. And so for me, it's understanding what what are the things that give me energy that gives me meaning and purpose in life through work and through my personal activities? And how can I find ways to access that more often? And do them in more creative ways? So those are some of the things that I'm considering each week, and some of the daily habits that are that are important to me?

And do you have a regular practice in terms of spiritual practice, like meditation or breath work that you do.

So I meditate in different ways. So sometimes I might use calm, so I'm a big fan of the outcome. So sometimes I will use those guided meditations, I have Spotify playlists that I've put together over the years, where if I just want to have music in the background, and I can just focus on my breathing, I'll have that as well. And then there's some days I'll just be in silence, listening to the sounds outside and around me. And, and then there's other days where I visualise I just spend time in my head visualising potential futures. Based on choices I may I may make or not make just a sport of water possibilities that are out there. And each of those serve different purposes, but they will have the focus of bringing me into the present moment.

I love that. And journaling, I have to say I totally agree with you has been really, really powerful in my own life just somehow helps you get in touch more with what's going on inside. Right when you bring it onto paper.

Journaling is I think it's very underestimated. A lot of people say I don't have time for journaling. But I think that once you do it a few times, it can become addictive because what you realise is that if you want better answers, you've got to ask yourself better questions. And that is always a great place to start when it comes to journaling. Just find great questions online on the internet or that you've heard from other people and use them as a basis for for your journaling. And once you do that a few times it will follow up more questions, and you'll find more ideas or things that you want to put on paper. Before you know it it. It will feel like therapy for free.

Yeah, yeah, it's amazing. Before you go and we link to where people can find you. I'm going to ask you just a couple of questions. What would Do you say is that your number one book that you've either read this year, or maybe just in entirety that you think that's my favourite book for manager?

I mean, I would say the two books that have had probably the biggest impact on me is firstly, the Go Giver by Bob Berg and John David Mann. It transformed the way I conduct business and how I show up in the way I do. The second one is the magic of thinking big by David Schwartz, which is, for me a classic. I've reread it a number of times. In terms of books I've read this year. Again, I'm going to pick two because these two really stand out to me. It's the Almanack of naval Raava Khan, is one of them. And then the second one would be the culture code by Daniel Coyle. So those would be some of my recommendations. Ah, haven't

actually read the Almanack book yet that was on my list, actually, because he had a previous book Love Yourself, which I thought was brilliant, really, really short, simple book. Yeah, amazing. We will be able to link to those. And what's your last question is what's your daily non negotiable that helps you stay aligned and high energy?

Daily, daily non negotiable. I mentioned I've already mentioned exercise. I think that is such an important non negotiable because I think it has a huge domino effect on other areas of life in terms of your the way you eat, the way you approach setbacks and challenges and the energy you bring into a situation. But I would say another, another daily, non negotiable. From a business perspective, because I've mentioned a lifestyle perspective already, from business perspective that has really helped me is dropping voice notes to people. I mean, I'm not, I'm not sure how many people talk about this. But I always connect with people on LinkedIn, and Facebook, especially when they're new in my network with voice notes. And I think it is such a powerful way to communicate with people and also as a way to nurture your network and expand your network. Because when you send a message, you know, people can see a preview on the on the phone or their laptop, and they can swipe and say I'll come back to that later. But when you send the voice note, number one, we are curious creatures. And so we want to listen to the voice notes to see what's in it. And second voice carries energy. And so people get a feel for who you are for your voice. And so I think that's been a daily non negotiable ever since I started in business. And so whenever I get a request on LinkedIn, or someone's accepted my request for connection, I've dropped my short voice note, just to say, Hey, I'm Simon, looking forward to learning more about your work. And that has done wonders in terms of landing opportunities, referrals, or just meeting some incredible mentors and friends.

Amazing. I love that. I'm a big Bitcoin smoke fan as well. Where can people find you what's coming up for you? Will you be speaking live anywhere people can catch you this year? Where can they connect with you, Simon?

Sure. So best way to connect I'm on all the major social media platforms, but the two that I use most often is LinkedIn. So you can search Simon Alexander on and click on the person there. Or if you're on Instagram, my handle is at Simon Alexander. Oh, in terms of places I'm speaking out, I'm speaking of lots of different conferences and events this year. But the two that are happening this summer, which is open to the public, I'm speaking at ideas Fest in July, which will be held I believe in Colchester. And then at the end of the summer. Towards the end of August, I will be speaking at car Fest in one of the areas called spar fest alongside the likes of Dr. Rangan. Chatterjee.

Oh, amazing. That's exciting. We will we will link to that in the in the show notes and where people can find you and also your incredible book. Thank you so much for coming on the show. It's been lovely to speak to you today.

Angela, thank you so much again for having me on.

Thank you for listening to today's show and for your interest in health optimization for high performance. If you're new to my podcast, you may be interested to know that you can get a free health score and report complete with personalised recommendations on how to optimise your sleep, nutrition, fitness and resilience in the top link in the show notes below. I hope you enjoyed this episode. Links to everything we talked about are also in the show notes and if you enjoyed today's show, please subscribe for more