PodCast ⇣
Video ⇣
Transcription ⇣
Simon: Cool. Okay so, here I am with Adele. Say hi.
Adele: Hello.
Simon: Okay, so again we’re doing our Ask Me Anything. And as the title suggests, these are just questions that have come in, a lot of these questions have come in from our Facebook group. Excuse me, got croaky voice this morning. And if there are people do have questions for the future, [inaudible] send those in, send them in to info@nakedrecoveryonline.com, info@nakedrecoveryonline.com, and just let us know that this is a question for the Ask Me Anything. It is our expectation that we will continue to do these from time to time. The general format of this is, I’ve basically picked some of the random questions, fire them at Adele, put her on the spot, and we take it from there. Sometimes they’re short, sometimes they’re long, et cetera, et cetera.
Adele: Absolutely no preparation whatsoever. Just off the cuff, right?
Simon: And I’ll try and trip you up occasionally just to see how it goes.
Adele: Just for fun.
Simon: So we’re recording this in kind of getting close to middle of December, but we’re probably going to put this out either just before the New Year or just after. So, just for context or if a reindeer goes past or something, understand the context. Okay so, oh actually the first question I have here, I did actually … Those are questions. Sort of ring around here and I want to start here is, question for you is where are you? And I guess before you answer the question, the thing behind that is of course, you’re always around, you’ve just come back from a trip, so perhaps you can share a little bit about that, where you are and what’s going on.
Adele: Yeah, so the nicer of the incredible job that I have, which I’m so fortunate to be able to do what I do, I mean, I absolutely love working with people going through various life changes, traumas, mid-life crises, that kind of thing, is there’s just lots of travel, as I travel to clients, we run retreats all over the world. And I’ve just come back from Peru. We were just at the Inca Trail with a group of amazing clients, and sort of stormed through 53 kilometres of up and down stuff at altitude. It was super awesome. And then we went down to Patagonia. Months before I was in Lisbon and then in London. And I’m now in Thailand, so just kind of wrapping up some retreat stuff towards the end of the year.
Adele: And very excited, because we’re actually going to be launching a whole bunch of new things in New Zealand from February, March next year after I get back from South Africa in between. But basically, we’ve worked out that a lot of people are extremely attracted to doing retreats in New Zealand. New Zealand is a fantastic location, because it’s just breathtakingly beautiful. But it’s also quite, the flight times and locations and settings just make it absolutely perfect for all of our clients and the people who come to us from the United States. We’re still going to be running retreats and things across Asia, as we always have done, but it’s just opening up a whole new territory. We have a lot of clients and people from Australia and Tahiti, Polynesia Islands, that kind of thing. So it’s just a whole new location for us. And we’re going to be spending a lot more time in New Zealand next year.
Adele: But we’re a global small business, we continue to run things all over the world. But yeah, I’m going to be locating myself a lot more in New Zealand from next year onward, which is going to be-
Simon: Yeah, we’re looking forward to that. So we’ll then have a real base in Thailand, South Africa, and New Zealand, which I think-
Adele: And in London, of course.
Simon: Yeah, we’ve done less retreats in London. And if people want to escape life-
Adele: Well we do, yeah, exactly. We do kind of more Lisbon or Spain or that kind of thing. Not many people like to escape to London.
Simon: Yeah, people are heading the other direction. And same for America, because I’m sure there’s many beautiful places there. But we do get a lot of American clients of ours coming over to us in Thailand and, hopefully, soon in New Zealand, as well. So yeah, we’re looking forward to that. So, that will be kicking off early 2020. Just touching on one thing you mentioned there about your recent trip, so just want to straighten out, that wasn’t actually a holiday, right?
Adele: Right.
Simon: That was actually an event. So, perhaps you can tell us what it’s called and just a little bit more of the-
Adele: Yeah.
Simon: Because we are … Just a little bit that, your intention about running that again.
Adele: Yeah, so the Peruvian/Patagonian adventure … One of the things that’s really cool is obviously we help people get over big life changes, and traumas, and things. But once they’re beyond that and they’ve moved their life to the next level, what they’re really interested in is how they can break through all areas of life to move the entire base level that they’ve set in their life completely to the next level. So I wanted to create a retreat for long-time clients of ours who were just up for the next thing. And this challenge was called Naked Discovery. It was all about achieving limitless potential and the science behind achieving limitless potential. All the latest developments in quantum physics, latest developments in manifestations, latest developments in intentionality and goal setting and that kind of thing. We basically had a 21-day retreat abroad, where we also set physical challenges, mental challenges all the way through the journey. So, every day there was a new challenge that was being set and the group had to push themselves through something quite tough to reach breakthroughs.
Adele: Everybody, they were kind of bonding with each other, they were bonding to themselves, they were breaking through various things in their lives, finding people from home, having these huge insights, experiences, that kind of thing. So, massively challenging experience to lead, as well, because I was also on the journey with them going through the challenges, myself. And unfortunately, on the Inca Trail my boots were awful. I had 18 blisters all over my feet, having to hike the 53 kilometres with-
Simon: Your own transformation.
Adele: Yeah, in pain myself, leading other people through their own physical transformation. I’m not really a personal trainer, but I sort of feel like I became one instantaneously. It was an immensely transformational experience for everybody. Everybody, upon return, it’s been two weeks, and just touching base with everyone and how they’re doing in their lives, they’re in the stratosphere right creating absolute chaos wherever they are. Almost unrecognisable in their lives as they’ve come back. We’re really excited about leading that particular adventure again, because the journey to limitless potential, you really learn how much you get in your own way. And how much limitations like physical pain or you tell yourself a certain story, “I can’t do that. That’s not who I am. Oh, I don’t do things that way.” And it’s just a barrier to limitless potential. And actually when you remove all these conversations in your head and physical gibbity gibbities that you keep generating and conversing about, actually anything is possible. You can actually create amazing components and adventures within your life. We all were on the journey together. It was amazing.
Adele: We had a moment in the middle where it was like, “Gosh, there’s some real conflict beginning to happen personally, within the group, or whatever.” But the way that we, I chose to lead it, we would address absolutely everything. There was just radical openness, transparency. And I mean, this group just bonded so deeply. I mean, there were war cries, there were sing alongs. The rest of the people on the Inca Trail were like, “What are you doing? What are you guys doing? You’re doing something, because you’re crazy.” We were like entertaining everybody on the Inca Trail. We’d stand at the top of this peak that we’d climbed, I don’t know, it was like 4,200 metres, whatever the thing is up there. We’re doing yoga. We’re leading like 80 other people who are on the trail with this yoga thing. And then we’re talking to them about transformations. And they’re just like, “You guys are crazy. We’re loving it.” So they’d follow us and they’d do our sing alongs and war cries with us.
Adele: It was an amazingly spirited adventure. Super fun. I can’t wait to lead it again. It’s just so much fun.
Simon: That sounds amazing. I’m sure you’ve got some friendships there that will be unbreakable and will last for three lifetimes, right?
Adele: Oh yeah, they’ve got this group chat that they’re on and there’s just so much banter. It’s very funny.
Simon: And one thing that’s really intriguing to me about that is the, I think there’s a tendency for us as humans to separate physicality and mentality. We always look at those very separate. And we do that a lot, right? We’re not a physical experience company traditionally. This is probably the first time really we’ve done something a bit more physical. And the two are intrinsically linked. If you force yourself to hunch over and walk slowly all day long, you will feel depressed by the end of the day. And the opposite is true as well. If you are down and you force your shoulders back and you walk around powerfully and speak in a strong voice, you’ll feel better by the end of the day. And that’s just a very simple example, but there’s such an intrinsic link.
Adele: Actually, and it’s, I’ll actually cover one of the points that we cover on the retreat around the science of emotion. For that, I studied quite a lot of pharmacology and that point, like actually what is an emotion. And from a chemical perspective, each emotion has its own chemical blueprint that it follows. And each emotion actually generates different chemistry within the body. And when you suppress an emotion, actually what’s happening is your cell receptors shrivel back, and they’re not connected, and the energy isn’t flowing throughout your body. So the generation of an emotion is actually not the problem, but the suppression really is. So if you’re feeling really angry and you just ignore that and do nothing with it, you can actually create complete chaos within your body as toxicity begins to build up because the cell receptors are not connecting and not flowing properly and they’re blocked.
Adele: And what we were really discussing on the retreat is that emotion is like a formula. It’s thoughts plus sensation. So, you can’t actually separate thought from your physical state, to your point. Your physical state has everything to do with the emotion getting generated. Because if you’re thinking, “Oh, I can’t do this. It’s impossible for me,” and you’re hunched over and you’re in that physical state, you’re actually holding your body in a particular way and you’re thinking these negative thoughts, you’re now really generating and feeding this negative emotion. It’s kind of like it then spreads like wildfire. And really when we’re looking, from a therapeutic perspective, at treating depression and really negative emotions, one of the first cognitive behavioural techniques is what we call behavioural activation, where you actually have to change your state. You have to get into action. You’ve got to move your body, because if you’re jumping around, doing star jumps, it’s quite impossible to feel really deeply depressed at the same time.
Adele: So, separating, you can’t separate your physical state in an emotion. Emotion is really that combination of a negative thought plus that physical state. So by shifting the two elements of the equation, but thinking more positively, accessing those negative thoughts through language, and by changing your physical state, you can actually change the way that you think and feel as a result of that.
Simon: It’s very empowering, right? When people realise it’s under their control.
Adele: It’s really empowering. And what I noticed about myself, which was kind of a personal breakthrough, I was in agony at one point, we’d been hiking for 10 hours that day, is that when I’m in incredible pain, I seem to get really funnier. I started singing and doing war cries and making jokes and poking fun at the tour guide and chasing after him and poking him with my hiking stick. I don’t know where that came from, but it was a really interesting moment of kind of going, “You could be in pain and still produce the results. You can still break through something and get there.” Whereas, actually what would normally happen in those moments, you go, “I’m in pain,” and sit there in a heap and cry.
Simon: Yeah, there’s a reason humour exists, right? I mean, it wasn’t just, it’s a needed, important emotion, I think. As a non-coach and as a non-scientist, it’s just my observations that, for me also, if I’m in a really ridiculous, stressful deadline, and this is more true for me if I’m working in a team than perhaps on my own, if I’m honest, but then there’s lots of jokes and it’s kind of great banter. And it’s actually quite enjoyable and there’s humour in those dark moments. Black humour, right? So, I think one of the purposes of humour is to lighten a grave situation, because it helps us move through it. We are complicated, complex animals. And just another thing, of course, emotion, I think e comes from some Greek word which basically means feeling, and the rest of the word is motion, right? It’s just a feeling which then leads to an action. And those emotions can be good or bad, depending on what those actions are. But it is us that’s choosing the action.
Adele: And also the reverse, that particular emotions can also lead to particular feelings. It’s a vicious circle. When you’re stuck in a depression, I mean, I’ve been stuck in really bad depressions at certain points of my life. So I can really relate to some of the very very traumatic feelings that people have. And we mus never downplay. When someone is massively and deeply and clinically depressed, it is like a circle you can’t get out of. You’re thinking and you’re feeling in this absolute circle. And really you need somebody to help you interrupt that pattern and kind of signpost for you, “Hang on, let’s just step out of that for a second. Let’s take a look. Let’s become aware of what’s happening and let’s take a look at actually these components. And manipulate these portions of the equation in a particular way.” So, I think having support from people when you’re in that dark space is really really critical to breaking out of it.
Adele: But when you’re at a place of mastery, and that’s really what a lot of the Naked Discovery was about was mastering emotion and mastering your limiting beliefs, you can really play and toy with those portions of the equation and it’s very very powerful, very empowering and very powerful.
Simon: Yeah. Next time, I think we’ve talked about this a little bit and we need to move on, but when we said it’s just brainstorm around this initial concept, it wasn’t that long ago, and it’s great to see it come through and really get to the field in such an excellent way. We will be looking at doing a Discovery again in next year. Me and you will have to sit down and decide when, where, et cetera, et cetera. So if people are interested in this and this is not a conversation about the Discovery, but if somebody is interested, just send us an email to info@nakedrecoveryonline.com, and we’ll get more information to you as soon as it becomes available, but we’re still putting that together as we speak.
Simon: Okay, I think we should probably move on. I’ll pick a light question so we can get going. Who is Piper?
Adele: Oh, Pipey, Pipey, Piper, Pipes, gosh, she’s got so many nicknames. She is our support angel. So she is an American gal who lives in Sweden, and she does all our client relations, bookings, chatting, invoicing-
Simon: Yeah, replying to customers’ inquiries and things like that. So you people may hear from her.
Adele: Yeah, customer service. Yeah, she’s married. She doesn’t have any kids yet. She loves ice skating. She’s awesome.
Simon: Don’t be surprised if you get a random message from Piper. That’s one of the gang. She tends not to be in videos too much, but she’s one of us.
Adele: She’s a bit shy.
Simon: Okay, next question. Okay, so I am a mother of three girls and a grandmother of eight. My divorce was tough and it was long, 14 years. Even if I “won” in justice, I still have a hard time to feel in peace and definitely get over this trauma. There’s not actually a specific question, but I guess the underlying question there is, despite this being a long time ago, and having completed that cycle and even getting the kind of logistical result that she was hoping for, sounds to me like she hasn’t got the mental peace or the mental conclusion that she perhaps needs. So what could she do to help achieve that?
Adele: Firstly, thank you so much for that question. I think it’s brave to admit that. I think a lot of people don’t really have the courage to admit that maybe something from the past is incomplete for them, because they judge themselves as well. Kind of thinking, “Well, it’s been so much time. What’s wrong with me. I should just-“
Simon: It’s also a good start, right? I mean, I guess that’s a good, to observe that, be aware of it is a first start to taking some action to move through it.
Adele: And I think this is not an isolated case at all. Every year we get loads of messages like this from people that have gone through a trauma many many years ago, 15, 20 years ago, and they’re not over it. And the deal-
Simon: Well, we’ve had people who’ve been divorced for 40, 50 years, was it? Yeah, incredible.
Adele: The deal is really that it’s all about this concept of time healing wounds. We’re incredibly passionate with Naked Recovery and Naked Divorce that time really doesn’t do anything, it just passes. Over time, you become more used to something or you become more numb. It kind of lessens its grip on you, because life moves on and other things begin to happen. But it doesn’t mean that you’ve actually processed what has happened. Processing is a very active journey. And healing is a function of learning, and healing is a function of active engagement with a topic. And if you have not actively engaged in the topic, actively learned whatever the lessons are that you need to learn from that trauma having happened, actively engaged with all the kind of ins and outs and left no stone unturned in that area, you haven’t processed this and you haven’t healed. Healing is a very active, very specific journey. So don’t make yourself wrong if you feel like 14, 15, 20 years later you haven’t healed from something. Don’t expect to heal if you haven’t done that kind of processing. It will still have a bit of a grip on you.
Adele: So processing is a journey that you have to grow through to actually unpick what has happened and look at it from every angle and do some kind of forensic analysis on it to put to bed and put to rest any of the things that are lingering and incomplete. And once you’ve done that and you’ve processed it, healing is a forgone conclusion.
Simon: Great. I mean, the analogy we often use is about an accident, right? Someone has an accident, like say your daughter or your son’s had an accident, fallen over, cut their arm, it’s going to hurt. And if it was down to them, they wouldn’t clean the wound up, because it’s going to cause more pain. So they leave it, scar forms and that scar’s going to be with them forever, right? Emotions work very very similarly, I think. Unless you actually go back to that wound and they say unpick almost literally, only then once you’re gone through that process … And there can be a little bit of pain to that process, unfortunately, but that is part of it, part of that learning experience. Then you get clarity and you can get real closure. And then that wound can, with a bit of effort and a bit from time, literally completely disappear.
Simon: So this is a long one. I might do these in bits. And perhaps I’ll need to repeat it as well. So stick with me. I left my husband three months ago after 29 years of marriage and loads of counselling along the way. We don’t own any property and there’s not too much in the way of finances to sort out. Before I left, my husband agreed verbally to our financial agreement, and I put it in writing and offered to pay for our separation agreement to be drawn up by my lawyer and to have our parenting agreement lodged with the court in New Zealand. We have to be separated for two years before we can get a divorce. However, at that point, he ceased to reply. So she lost contact. Now, I’ve moved out, and the priority is our 11-year-old daughter to ensure she is settled into her routine. Only communication we have is to do with her. I decided to not push the financial settlement, as he is well and truly in the grief cycle, as he did not want this. So, I don’t want to tip him over the edge. What, and this is the question, what, in your opinion, would be the recommended timeframe for me approaching him again to settle our financial affairs?
Simon: That make sense? It’s a long question.
Adele: From the moment you’ve lost contact, about seven to eight months. So that’s, when someone isn’t processing something actively, they’re just in the roller coaster of their emotions, that’s about the timeframe for enough new things to happen in their life that they’re a bit distracted. There’s enough new things coming on the horizon … I mean, maybe you start seeing somebody else or something begins to happen, that he’s a bit distracted from that initial pain and turmoil. You could probably have that conversation at that point. But don’t assume that he’s done any processing. Don’t assume that any therapy has happened or any growth or anything like that.
Adele: I think also when you do make contact, you’ve got to tread lightly. It’s sort of a fact-finding mission initially, rather than, “I’m tired. I want to get this over with.” I wouldn’t go in guns blazing like that. I would go, “Hey, I, firstly, just want to say thank you for the way that you’ve handled things with the daughter.” Definite compliments and appreciate and commend them on the way that they’re parenting and that that has been their focus, and that you’re really appreciative of that. Ask the question, “In terms of moving forward and reaching some closure, when would be a good time to have some conversations to-“
Simon: Address this.
Adele: “… move this forward and address it?” I think, again, because what’s you’ve got to get is if you’re the one that pulled the plug, that person that you’ve done that with has lost all control. Now life is not by their control, it’s totally by your control. What they’re going to instinctively do is find ways to regain control in their life. And the way that they do that is by refusing to engage. “I won’t engage. It’s now my terms.” That kind of thing. So when you reengage with someone who has lost control, it’s important for them to be in control of how they reengage. So getting them to actually set the timeline or to have some control in the way that the process moves forward is beneficial. Try to find a way to make them feel empowered, rather than your call, your decision, your timeline, your everything.
Simon: And I guess it must be very tempting to, “Okay, it’s been eight months now. Enough of this.” It must be very easy to say that, but I can totally understand why that wouldn’t be the best approach. This is to myself here. So yeah, that’s good. And I guess, if there is a disagreement or conflict, which is very easy to have in that situation, trying to remind both parties there is some agreement. So, “I’m sure you agree, we both want our 11-year-old daughter to grow up to have a good education. Dah dah dah dah dah.” Find a point of agreement. “We just have slightly different agreements about the best way to achieve that. So let’s investigate that.” Reminding yourself and reminding the person you’re talking with that there is actually a shared goal here. And that’s important, that’s really important to encourage them to participate and move along.
Adele: And also sandwich everything. There’s got to be acknowledging and appreciating something that they’ve done, then tackle something difficult, and end it with, again, acknowledgement and appreciation. So it’s not just, “You’re taking so much time. You’re wasting time. We have no clarity. What’s happening? When are you going to get back to me?” That is a bit aggressive, and it doesn’t really lead to a good outcome. From a financial perspective, taking time to unwind finances is a smart negotiating tactic. Sometimes people collapse the unwinding and conclusion of the divorce settlement and the finances and all that stuff, they think if they do all those bits, they’re going to get closure emotionally. It’s totally separate. You’ve got two camps. You’ve got the business side of this thing and you’ve got the emotional side of this thing. The one has actually very little to do with each other. People have signed agreements, the ink has dried and they’re still crying, because they don’t feel emotionally complete about anything. It’s because these things are totally separate.
Simon: Which kind of reverts to the previous question as well, doesn’t it? Yeah, which talks about someone had gone through, got the agreement she wanted, but still hadn’t got over the trauma. That’s good.
Simon: Next one. Will I ever, sorry, yes, will I ever have a love relationship again? That’s all it is.
Adele: This kind of makes me sad when hear a question like that. I’m just like … I mean, obviously, we have no context. We’ve got to imagine a context, you’re trying to answer the question, but-
Simon: Well, I guess we could kind of come up with some context and answer that.
Adele: I will assume the person, maybe it’s been some time since they’ve had somebody. They’re feeling a bit sad, feeling a bit lonely. And when there’s been some time, you begin to make things up in your head. “Oh, there’s no one there. There’s no one for me. I’ll never meet anyone. It’s never going to happen. All the good ones are taken.” And we start to enter into these cliché thoughts about things. The thing is, certainly with my research into how thoughts become things, and really, the link between mindset and manifestation in reality, these things are so interlinked. When you start to get into a negative mindset, it’s quite dangerous. You really begin to find evidence for the negative mindset to be true. And you begin to manifest things that you really don’t want.
Adele: There’s a saying that when you worry about things, you’re almost praying for what you don’t want, because you’re fixating and focusing so heavily on this thing that you don’t want, panicking almost superstitiously like, “I don’t want this thing to happen, but all I can do is think about this thing happening.” Thinking about that thing happening obsessively is really dangerous, because you’re actually at risk of creating it.
Simon: You’re really focusing on it, right? I mean, you’re almost kind of making it.
Adele: Exactly. And I mean, from a quantum physics perspective, there’s this really, go and research and check it out, there’s this thing called the Double Slit Experiment, which is basically shooting electrons at a board behind a screen, and basically … I’ll try and summarise. I’m not a quantum physicist, I’m just going to totally blow the way that I explain this. But I want to kind of do it in layman’s terms as much as possible, which is that scientists have found that, in many many experiments, electrons behave in different ways. One minute they looked like a wave, and they can kind of hit the back screen in a wave of potential and possibility and that anything’s possible, the electron can go anywhere. But sometimes, they act like particles and they can quite specifically land in a particular location. And the most fascinating part of that experiment is that when they put an observer … When there’s no observer, particles act like waves, and they can go anywhere. When there’s an observer observing the way that electrons land, they actually fixate very particularly on a particular point. And that the observer’s thoughts completely influenced the way that the experiment ended up. Meaning the way that you are thinking, the way that your mindset is geared is totally influencing what shows up in your world, how it shows up, what’s possible for you, what isn’t possible for you.
Adele: So if you’re like, “Oh, I have no money.” You’re just thinking, “I have no money. I have no money.” You will start to actually create having no money. Money will get lost, bills will suddenly come in, boilers will blow up. Things will start to occur, where you’re like, “I’m just losing money. What’s going on?” “Oh, there’s no partner for me. Will I ever find love again? Never. There’s no love. All these other people are so lucky. They find love, I don’t find love.” You begin to actually create that, because this thing in your head is not actually separated from your reality. From an actual particle, physics perspective, it’s very very connected. What you’re thinking about the most, actually begins to really expand in your universe.
Adele: So my coaching for somebody like that would be like, “Go get a coach. Go and examine this. Go have a look at it. Where did you come up with this idea that you will never find love again? Get out of your own way by putting that really limiting belief to bed, so that anything becomes possible again.” I’ve coached so many people who have been single their whole life, 40 years single, and within six months, they meet the love of their life, get married, and have a wonderful time. How did that happen? That’s got nothing, it’s actually just removing the limiting belief and seeing that ocean of possibility in front of you and taking actions congruent with manifesting what you want.
Simon: I’ve seen hundreds of people go through your programmes and at the start, there’s absolutely no way in the world they’re even remotely considering another partner. I mean, and I do a dating service, just like alien. And that’s not what the course is about, right? You move through them. At the end of that course, two weeks later you get an email going, “I’ve just found a new guy. Or I’ve just found a new chick. And he’s awesome. She’s awesome.” Because once we are actually clean of that stuff, 99% of us actually do want to be to somebody. And then they’re open to it and then, guess what, they find it. So I find that-
Adele: And I think part of it is, just a final point, is that really what you’re saying, “Will I ever find love again?”, you’re actually, that’s what we call a scarcity mindset. So there’s various mindsets. In our mentoring programmes, we discuss mindsets and the danger of falling into them, because you do. You wake up one day and you go, “This is now my model of the world. Will I ever find love again?” That’s called a scarcity mindset. When you’re coming from a scarcity mindset, you now begin to do calculations in your brain like, “Oh, there’s only like three people in the universe for me. I already had the love of my life. He’s gone. There’s no one else there.” Now you go to the shopping mall, everyone looks married. “Everyone’s happy except me.” You really start to feed this thing.
Adele: And actually the reality is there’s an abundance of people in the universe. And if there’s an abundance of people in the universe, that actually means that you don’t need to feel so afraid. You don’t have to put up with things that don’t work. You can actually end things, because you know that you’ll find something that fits your needs more appropriately. And you can set things free, because you know things are going to move in and out as they should. You don’t need to put up with negative situations. “Oh well, she’s fine. She’ll do.” Or “I have friends. I don’t have love in my life, but I have so many friends. These people are wonderful.” It’s like, “No. Where did that come from?” Examining these limiting beliefs and getting out of your own way. That’s really critical.
Simon: And okay, we don’t have the context here, but if I were a betting type man, I would say that this person hasn’t done anything active about it. I mean, just reading it again. Will I ever have a love relationship again? Just sounds so passive. And they’re not actually doing anything about it, and they’re not going to environments where there’s going to be other single people.
Adele: Well, actually it’s worse than that, because a lot of the people we’ve worked with in our dating programmes and stuff, they have tried. They’ve gone to a few speed dating events, or they went to a party and they tried to talk to somebody, or they went on a date and the person didn’t call back. So they have taken action, and they’re now resigned, “It’s never going to happen for me.” But you’ve got to understand, again, there’s a formula. There’s a formula for everything. And I love coming up with formulas for stuff, because I’m like, “Let’s try and make this simple for everybody.” The formula is really you can take actions until you’re blue in the face, if your mindset is wrong, the actions you take are inside this container that is totally disempowering and is designed incorrectly to actually manifest the wrong thing. You have to have that combination of good mindset with action appropriate to the intention and the thing that you’re trying to create and generate. The combination of the two is what gets you the results that you’re looking for.
Adele: Bad mindset, you can take actions until you’re blue in the face, yeah, you’re not going to find love, because ultimately, underneath everything, you don’t believe that you’re lovable. You don’t believe that the person is out there for you. You think there’s not enough people out there. You have scarcity, you don’t have abundance. I mean, there’s a host of stuff in that negative mindset, which needs to get, like a thorn, you need to extract that, so that the actions that you take are more effective. It’s about effectiveness, not just taking no action. I mean, there are definitely people that take very little action, but it’s probably because they’re resigned. They’re probably like, “It’s never going to happen. I’ve tried everything.”
Simon: And is that person being the person they need to be to attract the best person into their lives. I mean, unless someone’s in what appears to be a depressed state to somebody else observing that, well, that’s not a particularly attractive person to most people. Try and become the person you think you’re ideal partner would want to be or want to meet. I think that’s quite a nice-
Adele: We call it raising vibration. You need to imagine … if people can … Ninety percent of the time, if you’re going to a party or whatever, there are people at the party, you don’t know why, your eyes just are fixated on them, there’s something about them. They just seem so alive and colourful.
Simon: [crosstalk]
Adele: And it’s basically like there’s something about them, you can’t explain it. They’re just shiny, they’re exciting, they’re exciting, their butt or whatever. And you’re attracted to this person and you don’t know what it is. Really what it is is their vibrating at quite a high level. And you’re drawn to them. They’re magnetic. That really means that they’re out of their own way. They’re in flow in their life. They are processed, dealt with. There isn’t drama and issues and crises going on over there. They’re done the work. And those people are very enigmatic and magnetic people, because there’s no stuff really going on there. I think that’s really what we aim to achieve in our programmes is to kind of get yourself to be in a place where your stuffless, for whatever better expression, it’s [crosstalk 00:40:20]. You’ve gone through the stuff and you don’t have all this stuff in the way, so you can connect and bond with people at an epic level.
Simon: And I’ve seen people in that state and it’s an incredibly alluring state. I’ve seen it in men and women. Obviously, I’m a straight guy, I don’t get attracted sexually to the guy. But you can see them in their state. And in a conversation with a female friend and there was a singer on stage. Just a small, local band basically. And she was fancying the pants off this guy. And it did appear to be a good looking guy to me, and I thought, I was just really intrigued. And she like, “There’s just something about him.” And it was like, “Actually, yeah, now I see.” Just the energy, sort of freedom he was expressing and was just in his zone, in his flow. And she said, and yeah, I could see it was totally alluring. And of course, that can be from anybody. And yeah, very captivating. I have seen that.
Simon: Cool. Good. Slight change of topic, but still very valid. It’s particularly around New Years theme, which we are approaching as we record this. Do vision boards work? Suppose we should explain what a vision board is, actually start there.
Adele: Yes. Yes, yes, yes, yes. Not in isolation though. Let me just say that as a caveat. So, okay, goal setting, massive topic, huge, rife with complications. A lot of people, we always get these messages. I think one of your questions will undoubtedly be, “Why don’t New Year’s resolutions not work? My goals don’t stick. What am I doing wrong?”
Simon: Dumb question, but yeah.
Adele: There’s been a lot of studies, some of them Harvard, Stanford, loads of studies being done on goal-setting and [inaudible 00:42:15]. And ultimately, there’s a few principles. Number one, if you write something down as a goal, you will outperform anyone who’s just thinking about something and hasn’t written it down. So that’s number one, if you write down your goals and you write them down in a particular way, where it’s as if it’s already happened, so there’s that formula-
Simon: “I have done X, Y, Z.” I think proved, yeah.
Adele: SMART. We’ve all heard this thing, the SMART goal: specific, measurable-
Simon: Action?
Adele: Actualized, and then realistic and times based. Can’t remember the exact thing, but it’s basically, write the thing down as if it’s already happened in time. Then, if you involve other senses in the articulation of a goal, you, again, outperform anyone who has then written the goal down. That’s where vision board comes in. Vision board-
Simon: What you smell, what you hear, what you’re seeing at that time, right?
Adele: Vision board is now you’ve taken your goals and you’ve created pictures on a board, you’ve like, “by this time, 31st of December 2020,” or whatever the date is that you’re aiming for and these pictures of what you’ve achieved and there’s pictures of what you’ve achieved. There’s a house, there’s a- And I mean, I’ve created vision boards where I dust them off years later and I’m like, “Holy cow. Almost all these pictures on here have come true. How the hell did … What?” It really is like eerie when you create these things and you forget about it. You put it in a drawer. You really actually, your ability to manifest outperforms just the written goal thing.
Adele: So I’ve always been incredibly goal-focused and orientated. All our programmes are like that. Naked Divorce is massively goal-focused and orientated. And there’s a technology within Naked Divorce, the Break-up Reboot, where people are listening to this audio programme, and in the theatre of their mind really visually, experiencing the end state of what it is that they’re looking for. And I used a lot of interesting technology and things in developing that audio. It’s like clinical hypnotherapy, timeline therapy, there’s binaural beats. There’s all sorts of hemi think technology and stuff inside that programme.
Adele: And we had so many clients that were like, “I fricking love that thing. Literally, the healing goal is exactly what I manifested in the programme. Can you do it- Can you make this thing in another way?” And that’s where we came up with the GOal Getter programme, because we were like, “If you want to make it more generic, where it’s like ‘I have these goals and I want to manifest them.’ Can we use the same technology to achieve that?” So really the thing is write them down, brilliant. It’s better than people who didn’t write them down. Put a vision board together, yeah, that’ll totally outperform those who have written them down. Create the goal in every sense: visual, auditory, kinesthetic, gustatory, olfactory created in this theatre of your mind where this thing is coming alive and you enter this parallel reality where you are totally single-mindedly visualising, experiencing that goal, now you have outperformed all of them together. I would say, it’s kind of yes, vision boards work, but not in isolation. You’ve got to actually have, if you go into the theatre of your mind, you really can see, feel, hear, experience that thing coming alive. That’s really where the rubber begins to hit the road.
Adele: In addition to that, the importance about goal-manifestation is congruence. Like I’ve sort of talked a little, I’ve touched on some things around limitless potential, manifesting, the focus on whatever you’re thinking in your mind is what expands, your mindset, all these things. If you have congruence, again, you will outperform everybody put together. That single-mindedness, almost dogged single-mindedness, “This is what I am manifesting to here and no further. This is what I’m going to do. This is the life I’m going to live. This is how it’s going to be.” That doggedness is really key. If you are like, “Well, it would be nice if I could have that. I’d really love that. I’ll try my best to get that.” That kind of language is like a limp biscuit, nothing’s happening. It’s like when you dunk your biscuit in coffee and it just disintegrates, that’s what happens to your goal, it’s just meh, just goes meh. You actually got to be dogged and single-minded and focused. And when a negative thought enters your mind, you need to know what to do about it. That’s part of what we cover in our mentoring programmes, all our programmes, is how to have that doggedness with what you achieve in life. So the outcome and the goal at the end of it, your ability to actually create and manifest that, you can kind of predict reliably that it’s going to happen.
Simon: Yeah, something that comes up for me there, I remember asking a group of young kids actually who would want their dreams to come true. And everyone sticks up their hand and yeah, I know all want their dreams to come true, but then when I actually interrogate that, none of them had actually dared to dream. Literally, none of them had actually created a conscious dream about where they want to go. So they all wanted their dream to come true, but they didn’t have a dream. Well, you’ve got to have the dream first, right? So you’ve got to pick what you want to achieve and then your dream has a small chance of coming true, doesn’t it?
Adele: And actually on that point, I want to give credit to you, Simon. So many of you don’t know, Simon runs this event called Play Brave. It’s an event that he runs a few times every year for underprivileged kids that live in orphanages and that kind of stuff. And on your point, Simon, about some people don’t dare to dream. And a lot of the kids in orphanages, they’ve learned to just make due with life happening to them. They get removed from their homes and things happen to them. Their victims of the Rohingya massacre, their parents become drug addicts and suddenly they end up in this orphanage. And how do you dream when life just happens to you so cruelly?
Adele: And what I love about the event that you run is that it’s designed to break through those negative mindsets and give people the ability to dream again and to think of being creators of their future and their destiny, and actually that they can author their lives a little bit, or a lot actually. And to kind of give them the skills and techniques to do that, like negotiating, creating products, creating businesses. It’s been really beautiful to watch the progression of the kids and the teens that, almost the same group that you’ve worked with over the years, and just to see them becoming more bolshie and getting smarter with the games. Where they’re actually coming up with stuff where we’re like, “Oh crap. We didn’t see that coming,” is really really cool. It’s really great.
Simon: Yeah, I’ve always really … I mean, it was quite nerve-wracking the first time I did it to 300 kids, but I’ve really enjoyed delivering it. Then for me, I get a lot of value out of delivering it. It’s not a selfless thing at all. I really get a lot of value … I learn about myself, about them. And one of the things that, because we’ve touched on it, one of the things that really stands out … I know we remember this last time, I think there was a particular game, which we found really hard. I really found this game hard. And I’d given it to you and other people as a test, and no one got this game. And it could have totally backfired, but I had this idea that actually with less education, we can actually be more creative and actually … Education has very good mindset of trying to achieve very good things, but it’s really controlling, and it really strips out a lot of our creative thinking away from it.
Simon: And some of the youngest kids, I mean, I have usually ranging between eight to 18, there’s usually a couple a little bit older, couple a little bit younger. And you’ve got these six to eight, and they did it in like three seconds. We got problems that we could give to some of them mid-forties, you could give them a day and couldn’t solve it. All right? And I’m not joking. I’m not, because I don’t I think I’m an idiot either, just wired differently. It’s kind of tragic that we lose a lot of that. And particularly in Thailand where I run the event, their education system is very very rigid, and that the teacher is like a god and everything they say is never criticised or interrogated. There’s some benefit to that, but there’s also some harm in it sort of loses that creative thinking. And that’s what I was trying to do. I don’t teach them in the sense that I tell them anything. You know already. I just give them environments and problems and we just sit back and watch them come up with solutions. And it’s really stunning to see them do that. They teach us some stuff.
Adele: I think a lot of people that have kids can attest to the fact that your children teach you. You just learn your whole world from that. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to have kids. But I absolutely love being around them for that reason. I think as adults we can really learn from this concept of daring to dream. And then actually dreaming is a really important facet of life. And if you’ve got so resigned about life and life happening to you that you’ve stopped daring to dream, you need to interrupt that pattern. Because one thing we’re really aware of in our company and the way that we live our lives is that life is short. We don’t know how long we’ve got here. And I think when you get that at a really intrinsic, deep level, you want to make the most of the journey. And you don’t put up with things that don’t work at 100%. You don’t settle for second best. The world is full of people that have just settled for second best, and they’re not fighting for limitless potential in their lives. And I think there’s a lot to get from that concept. When you bed in really deeply, you take that trip, you go on that motorcycle ride, you go do those things, you go on that date, you ask that girl out. You go and do what it is that is scary, because life is short.
Simon: Absolutely. Okay good. Thank you for the Play Brave plug. Unexpected, unintentional, but thank you very much.
Adele: It’s awesome.
Simon: Yeah and I’m proud of that event. New Year’s resolutions, staying on this theme, New Year’s resolutions don’t work, so why bother doing them? So this is obviously, a little bit related. I guess you’ve already gone into some detail about-
Adele: I kind of feel we’ve sort of answered that. I think they don’t work because you just did them in one modality, being you thought about them in your brain. Like if you wrote them down, or if you did something more evolved with it or you actually created a project plan, you’re, probably a lot of your New Year’s resolutions actually happened. But if you just thought about it and sort of made a quiet commitment to yourself where you didn’t even declare anything on your social media, where other people are like, “Oy. You said you were going to do this. What happened?” Don’t expect them to stick. They don’t stick because there’s not enough of an existent structure to bring them into being.
Simon: Just thought that literally just come up to me for this second. We call it New Year’s resolutions, right? And by, let’s say, end of January, February, well, it’s no longer New Year anymore. No wonder that thing evaporates and leaves us.
Adele: That’s a really good point.
Simon: If we called it This Year’s resolutions that would be very very different, right? This Year’s resolutions-
Adele: Because actually there was a study done. I think it’s the 17th of February is the sweet spot. That’s when all the people, everybody joins the gym on the 2nd or 3rd of January and then by the 17th of February everybody’s vacated again.
Simon: Because it’s no longer New Years.
Adele: I think that’s a really good point. We’ve actually in the labelling of it being a New Year’s resolution, we actually make it a, failing at it a forgone conclusion.
Simon: Yeah, for me This Year’s resolution sounds so much more, I don’t know, solid somehow, instead of just temporary. I think we’ll probably wrap it up there. The last one though, I think to finish is what are your, let’s call it resolutions for next year?
Adele: Oh goodness. I have this little procedure. I have this little process that I do. And Thailand’s really great for it, because there’s this kind of temple of beginnings and endings. It’s really cute. It’s called Doi Suthep, it’s high up in the mountain, overlooking the whole of Chiang Mai. They have this little ritual that you do around the temple and things like that. Even if you, I’m not a massively, I’m not Buddhist or anything like that, I just like the little thing that you do around the temple. It feels like a very spiritual little place. So I do this little thing every year. And I’ve done it in a very committed way. I always complete my year. I always powerfully look at, “Right. Let’s look at the year, everything. What are the high points, the low points? What can I learn? What wasn’t good? What do I want to do differently next time?” I think it’s really important to have that kind of stuck take, honest assessment of a year and actually review a year, rather than just stumble into the next one after four bottles of wine or whatever. I always complete the year and then I kind of take a look at ultimately what I’m aiming to achieve in my life. And I look back if I’m aiming to achieve that legacy of my life, looking back of what do I want to kind of get out of the year ahead.
Simon: [crosstalk]
Adele: Exactly. Next year is really, there’s some kind of themes that I’m looking for. I always have something around health and fitness, so sort of looking at the wheel of life, like health and fitness. Next year, I’m, after 22 years, taking up my squash again. Terrified, because you know obviously spending more time in New Zealand, literally everyone and their mother seems to play squash. So I’m like, “Damn it. Good time to get into that and get a kind of fitness goal.” I’ve decided I want to be a really hot 45 year old. So I’m on this mission. Get back into my triathlons, get back into, because I haven’t done any this year. My last was a marathon swim. So health goals and focusing on being young, vibrant, hot 45 year old. Like, “Let’s do it. Let’s go for it.”
Adele: And then I think definitely some goals for the business. We grew the business 20% this year and to kind of keep on that growth mission, keep missioning on that. Expanding, we’re moving our online programme to a different platform. So we really want to have new web technologies and things we are offering to people. I want to really launch in New Zealand and Astro Asia. It’s an area of the world that we’re quite passionate about now. So I think that kind of launching of that part of the world.
Adele: From a personal finance perspective, I’ve got some goals around investments, finance, properties, that kind of stuff that I’m looking at. And kind of from a personal perspective it’s just spending time with people that I care about, love, more time with my family, more time with friends, connecting with people that I really care about. I’ve got some trips planned next year to connect with people I haven’t seen in a while.
Adele: Yeah, very specific though. I get very specific and then I use my own audio programme, even though you’d think, “God, aren’t you tired of listening to your own voice?” Yes, but if I could get someone else to record the damn thing, I would. I could listen to someone else.
Simon: [inaudible]
Adele: Yeah, so that’s kind of my plan. What’s yours?
Simon: Actually, I’ve yet to it, honestly. I do, as you know, still focus quite a lot around the business and can echo some of the things you’ve stated. So yes, we’ve got a lot of real solid plans next year, which are already well-firmed up, I think. So yes, we are building a new platform. It’s going to take some time to build, and it’s definitely going to be some evolution to that putting our staff a little bit at an MVP, minimum viable proposition, and grow that. But I have very specific goals about where I expect to get that to. I tend to be a little bit shy about revealing that, but yeah, I have very … I think it will be the best platform of its type in the world, quite frankly, in our niche. It will take some time to get there, but I feel we can achieve that. And so excited about that. Excited about the Discovery, excited about you in New Zealand and the possibilities that’s going to bring. This is a business as well, and I love that we’re going to have, in particular, South Africa, New Zealand, and Thailand as three beautiful locations that people can escape to and do some of the programmes, as well as other locations as well. That’s just touching on some of them.
Simon: Me, personally, I haven’t gone into that as much. I have another little project I’m working on at the moment, sort of just filling that up a little bit. Skiing, putting skiing back on my radar. I’m off to Switzerland for 10 days in a little bit, which I’m looking forward to. And some health and fitness stuff as well, which is also, I’ve dropped five kilogrammes in the last month or so. That wasn’t a particular goal, it’s a consequence of some of the stuff I’ve been doing. So, yeah, not doing New Year’s resolutions. I’ve just realised how bad that is, but I’m doing Next Year’s resolutions. And I’m-
Adele: 2020 resolutions. I think let’s all look at that as a really good statement for the year. It’s like, let’s actually create 2020 resolutions, as opposed to New Year’s resolutions-
Simon: 2020 eyesight, 2020 vision,
Adele: I like that.
Simon: We can do something around that. Let’s wrap it up here. Just a quick mention, because it is relevant, actually really relevant. You touched on GOal Getter. We will put out a message, but I know it’s one of my chores. Need to put out a message pretty sharpish about that. That is actually to help people in this process. Perhaps you can just give us a little bit of a-
Adele: Yeah, let me just talk a bit about it. Every year we run, we have various modules within our mentoring programme. One of them is GOal Getter. It’s this really important starting off a year very powerfully, where you do a full, kind of like the exercise I was talking around. You run through the previous year, learnings, ups, downs, all that kind of stuff. And then really assess where you’re at in your life and create some goals for the future year. And then we break it down and work out how you’re going to get that done. So, we automatically do that with all of our clients, but we’ve had a few messages and people on the website and friends of clients who are like, “Oy, I want to do this thing as well.” So we actually make GOal Getter available to anyone. If people want to come and book in a GOal Getter, it’s like a two to three hour assessment where we actually run through everything, we set it up, we give them the complimentary audio programme that goes with that so that they can listen to it for the full month, and actually quadruple the possibilities of manifesting their goals.
Adele: We’ve got an offer on that. If people are interested, they can take us up on it. But it’s such a powerful programme. In our mentoring group, we’ve, about, a ridiculous number, over 80% of the goals that the group have come up with have been manifested, it’s now December, have already been manifested for the end of the year. It’s so … I love it. I think it’s a very very powerful-
Simon: We ran it for the first time last year, and it was already very quickly producing real significant results in people said it was amazing. To clarify, Adele said all our clients, what she actually means is all our mentoring clients. So, we have some of our clients, usually after they’ve done a programme with us, will be invited to actually join an ongoing monthly programme with you. There’s different levels. And those clients get that included. It’s just part of their package. They get that as a sort of honorary, for free. But if you’re not in that programme, we have to charge, because it takes so long to do. But it’s really really valuable. I’ll get a message out probably in the next few days about that. We can go ahead and book you guys in. You can start creating this vision in the right, the best, most powerful way that’s going to get the results that you need. And at the end of the day, we’re a results-based business. It’s where we’ve always separated ourselves out from many of the life coaches out there. Tell me your story and stuff. We’re much more interested about folks achieving results. Adele works incredibly hard with her clients to achieve that with great results.
Simon: Cool. I think that it’s it. Thank you Adele for your time. Always awesome. I will be working on this and getting this out there pretty soon.
Adele: Brilliant. Yeah. Fantastic. So thanks for that. And again, for all our listeners out there, if you’ve got questions and things that you want answered in the next Ask Me Anything send those in. We always keep everything confidential. We’ll never mention who you are or anything about you, but it’s an opportunity to get answers to anything you want to know.
Simon: Yeah, absolutely. Okay. Over and out. Thanks guys.
Adele: Okay, brilliant. Thanks. Bye.
Simon: Bye.
