Charlotta Darnell Psychological Strength Trainer

Nigel Rawlins: Charlotte, welcome to the Wisepreneurs podcast. Could you tell us something about yourself and where you're from?

Charlotta Segerlund-Darnell: Hello, Nigel, and thank you for inviting me. I'm based in Stockholm, but I accept clients worldwide, of course, because I work digitally. And I'm a CBT therapist, I'm a behavioral scientist and mindfulness instructor, and I'm also a CBT addiction therapist. But I call myself a psychological strength trainer and I, I use a mix of coaching and therapy in my sessions.

Nigel Rawlins: So tell me what you mean by a psychological strength trainer.

Charlotta Segerlund-Darnell: Well, I wanted another title than therapist or coach. And I've been very interested in the field of resilience. How do you stay resilient? Which people are more resilient than others? And what do they do? So, I use knowledge and experience from that field. But the word resilience, I just use strength trainer instead. And I also want to de dramatize seeking help for mental issues. So I wanted to sound a bit like going to the gym, really.

Nigel Rawlins: Hmm. I think that's a good approach. So let's talk about a little bit about that. What do you come across in terms of mental health , and you work with women or men ?

Charlotta Segerlund-Darnell: I work with both. I actually have more men than women, , and I think that's a bit unusual, but it just have end up like that.

Nigel Rawlins: Well, sometimes it's not because sometimes the opposite sex can actually have a different approach, I prefer to work with women.

Charlotta Segerlund-Darnell: Do you prefer or have, has it just happened for you that way?

Nigel Rawlins: It's always actually happened.

Charlotta Segerlund-Darnell: That's interesting.

Nigel Rawlins: The way it came about is that most of the clients I have, and I've basically been running a marketing services company for about 25 years, most of the people I interact with are women. They might work in a big organization, but it's the women that I work with.

One of my biggest clients is a construction company. The husband runs it, but the wife is the one who works with me. And then I work with some professional women. And it works well because women, I think, are very good working cooperatively, so I don't have to do all the work. Whereas I think often men expect me to do all the work and, the thought's not always there.

So I have a preference for working with women

Charlotta Segerlund-Darnell: Yeah,

Nigel Rawlins: and I work well with women. I think I'm gentle. I'm not pushy

Charlotta Segerlund-Darnell: I've been listening to your podcast, and I can understand that Nigel, because you're a good listener as well. Not, not all men are that.

Nigel Rawlins: I wasn't always a good listener. I think It must be an age thing, but let's go back to some of the mental health issues. What are you seeing out there? What, what are the mental health issues that maybe people don't recognize is a mental health issue and, that they may not want to seek help?

And is it different between the men and the women?

Charlotta Segerlund-Darnell: Oh, this is, uh, very interesting questions, and I would start with explaining my own perspective on this question, because I think it's important to separate mental sickness with mental health, and I would like more people to be more proactive and interested in being healthy, than just searching help when they are sick or feeling really bad or depressed or have anxiety.

So, in a perfect world, I would like people to seek help early when they recognize, I use wine as stress management. I'm not feeling happy. I don't have energy. That's not being mentally healthy. That's when you're going to do something about your mental health.

The question, if women and men seek help for different issues, I would say women seek help earlier than men. When men contact me and say they have some problem with stress, it's often very much severe problems than when a woman says that. That's my experience.

Nigel Rawlins: That is my concern too. The thought that popped into my head as you were saying that is we go out and we do all our exercise to get nice and fit, but we don't practice looking after our mental health as we do after our exercising. So, unfortunately, I'm assuming that when somebody is deeply under stress, it's very difficult to counteract that.

What do you do in that situation? And then I'd like to go back and talk about how do we actually, build resilience?

Charlotta Segerlund-Darnell: So, if someone is very stressed or so to speak, I always look at how do you sleep, how are your days? What stress management do you use already? And it's super important to see where they are, how close are they to a burnout? Because if they are very, very close, you shouldn't give them advice as you should exercise intensively.

This is a problem with some coaches that use the same model on every client. Maybe they don't have the academic background, so they can't really see where they are. But it's super important to get this straight, because if you're not sleeping well, if you have a lot of symptoms, you should just calm down the system for a while.

You shouldn't do extensive work with anything, really. So, that's super important to look at. Many people search in an earlier stage when they are, I'm feeling, I don't have the energy levels that I used to have, I don't feel motivated for almost anything or so. And then I always look at what kind of things are they using?

Are they using a lot of sweets? Are they binge watching Netflix? Are they scrolling on social media? And all those things can lower our baseline of dopamine. And, I think it's a great book, Anna Lembke, Dopamine Nation is a book that I think many modern people would benefit of reading because we are all in this modern world and we have these triggers everywhere around us.

So if someone comes in and just have low energy and not feeling motivated as they used to be. I would look at things like that as well.

Nigel Rawlins: That's critical because they've got to start somewhere. But the first thing they've got to do is recognize that they're having a problem. One of the things I'm noticing a lot, and I have three children, they're all grown up, one of them particularly has just quit work, because he was suffering a lot of anxiety, but he's in a very good position because he owns his house, and he's young, but his anxiety got to the point where he stopped work and he's decided to travel around Australia for a couple of years, but because he's a tradesperson or tradesman, he can work anywhere, and he's got three trades.

So he's not worried about money, he's well off, but the anxiety was so bad that he just had to quit work and he's been unwell. And he knows he's just gotta get out there. And I think it'll all disappear when he starts moving forward.

Charlotta Segerlund-Darnell: Mm.

Nigel Rawlins: Are you noticing there's more anxiety in the world

Charlotta Segerlund-Darnell: It's more anxiety, it's more depression, it's more feeling just not happy. And, it's a complex question to answer, but I'm quite sure, and I don't want to sound like a boomer hating the internet, but I mean, we are constantly interrupted by things, really.

Our brain aren't made to be like this. And you and I, before we started recording, we were just talking about books and how we love to read. And I can see people in, in middle age or younger who has been big readers who have loved reading books, but they say, I just can't find the peace to sit with a book and read.

And that's also a warning sign, because then I would guess, you have lowered your baseline of dopamine. You need stronger stimuli to get motivated. So sometimes it's something like that, can make people feel depressed and anxious. Because they are stressed, really.

Nigel Rawlins: I see the world is just full of distractions now and, as we know with the algorithms, devices are designed to keep us scrolling. I go on Twitter and I can disappear in there for half an hour. There's so much good stuff in there.

But I find wonderful articles and some wonderful information and some great books. But also, you get a skewed idea of what's happening in certain countries and that's a problem too. You think, oh, they're all demonstrating in London or something like that. And it's just a snippet. I mean news has always been like that to grab your attention.

Charlotta Segerlund-Darnell: Mm.

Nigel Rawlins: But nowadays there's so much attention grabbing out there. Just like when we look on LinkedIn and we scroll down and everyone's got something to say.

Charlotta Segerlund-Darnell: Yeah.

Nigel Rawlins: So it could be a bit overwhelming. So what are some steps that people can do to start building their resilience do you think?

Charlotta Segerlund-Darnell: When you look at people who are more resilient than the average person, I mean, bad things happen to them as well, but they bounce back more easily. So, when you look at them, you see that they have on a group level, of course, more optimistic mindsets. They see themselves and others in the world in a more optimistic way.

And optimistic doesn't have to be they are happy all the time. But they are constructive thinkers. They also have good cognitive skills. That's a big area in itself. They have good stress management. They have strong social bonds. They also don't have many bad social relationships. They end them or whatever. They also have a sense of purpose. They are also value driven. So, it's a big, big field. And I don't know if you're interested in this with the blue zones on the planet. Have you, have you read? Yeah? Because I can't help making the parallel with the blue zones. Because when you look at the blue zones are some areas in the world where people live long and happy and healthy lives.

And they don't need me, they don't need therapists and coaches, they just seem to, uh, have a good life, and They too have this, good physical health. I didn't mention that. That's super important as well. They move all the time. They have strong connection in the community. They have strong social bonds. They eat healthy food. So I would say they are also resilient. They are also recovering quickly from setbacks.

Nigel Rawlins: I think that's important, what she's saying is about the movement, but it also makes me think that they do get outside a lot more,

Charlotta Segerlund-Darnell: Yeah, they do.

Nigel Rawlins: Because I think a lot of us, if we're working in the knowledge economy, we're sitting at a desk in front of a computer. And I know myself now that, especially when you have to think, and the world is more complex now, and with all the disruptions, if you're trying to do something, it's mentally difficult.

And, you know, your brain gets to a point where, gee, and that's an issue because I think in past times, when we worked in factories or we produced things, you could see that you've, you created something and finished it. Like if you work in a car plant, the car, you do your bit and the car gets built.

But when you work in knowledge work, it's in our heads. And you wonder at the end of the day, what did I do? And the end of a week, plus you were sitting down all day. I mean, do you think that that's got part and parcel with what's

Charlotta Segerlund-Darnell: going on?

So glad that you brought that up because I forgot to say about that, but many people sit down eight or nine or thirteen hours a day. It's not healthy. It's not healthy for your body. It affects your longevity. It affects your psychological strength or resilience.

And then the sun exposure early in the morning, many people don't get that, and many freelancers who have had works before, have been to an office before, maybe they did get the sunlight in the morning then, but now they're working from home and choose their hours, and it's easy to forget the importance of early sunlight exposure. Because that affects how you sleep in the night and so on.

Nigel Rawlins: I totally agree with that. That's part of my routine is to get out and walk in the morning, and I'm very lucky because I live in a small country town and I can walk down to a bay and

Charlotta Segerlund-Darnell: Yeah.

Nigel Rawlins: say hello to all the dogs who come running up to me,

Charlotta Segerlund-Darnell: Oh,

lovely. Yeah,

Nigel Rawlins: but yes, you're right.

I now I spend most of my time sitting down in front of computer screens and writing and occasionally do some client work. But I've noticed, especially at my age, I'm starting to get fat around the middle. And I'm thinking, well, it could be an age thing, but I've realised it's because I'm sitting a lot.

Charlotta Segerlund-Darnell: Yes.

Nigel Rawlins: you know, one of the things I do is try and set my timer for 25 minutes and get up.

Charlotta Segerlund-Darnell: Yes. And move.

Nigel Rawlins: I'll go outside and because we've got a lovely garden with vegetables and fruit trees. I'll go and dig up some weeds or mow the lawn

Charlotta Segerlund-Darnell: Yeah, you're blue zoning your life, Nigel.

Nigel Rawlins: Yeah, but I have to force myself to do it.

But sometimes I won't. I'm intensely working and I feel the strain in the middle of my back and I'm thinking that must be the life for an awful lot of people.

Charlotta Segerlund-Darnell: Ah, yes. Oh, yes. always recommend people to do this breathing exercise in the flow of work and also the progressive, how do you say that? It's a stress management tool where you contract your muscles in all your muscle groups from the toes to your neck. The relaxation, uh, because the tensions builds up in our bodies.

We are supposed to move

Nigel Rawlins: Well, one of the concerns I get because, you know, I'll go to the supermarket and shop, is the posture that people have.

I'm seeing a lot of necks forward, bent backs, and unfortunately a lot of overweight people, which I think when you're sedentary, and you're not exercising a lot and believe it or not, I exercise an awful lot and it doesn't do much. I guess people don't realise is exercise might use up 600 calories or kilocalories, but a doughnut is the same. You can eat one doughnut and you've just,

Charlotta Segerlund-Darnell: Exactly, when you have put on weight, and I have clients now who I work with who are also going to lose weight. I think you have to realize that for a while in your life you have to be on a diet in some form because it will not be enough to just move and eat better for a while.

And I say this because often when people start a diet, after a couple of weeks they get a small depression and are like, am I going to live like this forever? I can't stand it. But it's not forever. You just have to do this because it's impossible to move as much so you, you lose weight. it's not possible when you have extra kilos on your body.

If you have, I mean, just a few is possible, but if you have a lot, it's not possible. You have to have a diet for a while.

Nigel Rawlins: So let's just talk about that for a moment. When we talk about diet, you do have to cut your calories back, but you cut them back by avoiding, chocolates and things with lots of sugar, processed foods, white bread. You know, all of those are incredible, when you use a calorie counter and you click it in, a couple of slices of a beautiful bread is a lot of calories.

It's quite astounding. I do count my calories now. I notice, If I have some alcohol, how many calories that.

I know that you've got to be careful about saying calories in and calories out, but it is about a better food.

Charlotta Segerlund-Darnell: It's not really the truth that it's a calorie in and a calorie out, because a calorie in could be something healthy with high fibers and good nutrition and or it can be just, how do you say, empty calories.

Nigel Rawlins: When we're talking about the blue zones, most of their food would be unprocessed.

Charlotta Segerlund-Darnell: Sad about the blue zone in Japan, the Okinawa, I heard something about that McDonald's came to town and they're not the blue zone anymore, but I don't know if it's true or I hope it's not.

Nigel Rawlins: Sometimes we see photographs from people on the beach from the 1970s and they're all lean.

Charlotta Segerlund-Darnell: Mm.

Nigel Rawlins: And I remember myself, I was very skinny in 1970.

Charlotta Segerlund-Darnell: Mm.

Nigel Rawlins: And I remember the food, it was just basic food. We did have supermarkets with lots of stuff, but we just had steak and vegetables.

Charlotta Segerlund-Darnell: I ate my first burger when I was, I think, 11 or so. They opened a fast food restaurant in the town I lived. But I think it's so important now we're talking about weight, and it's a lot of shame around the subject. So I think it's so important why am I talking about weight and that is because it's about health and it's both about cardiovascular health and how long you're going to live, but it's also about psychological health and mental well being.

It affects those areas to a high degree. It also affects the brain. So, we want to be these lifelong learners, and if we are overweight, it will affect our brains as well. So, it's from the health perspective, it's not from any shaming perspective or how we look, how the parents are, or something like that, so that's important to say, and I have had one client, she first came in and she wanted to work with her self esteem and so on, and after some sessions we, we just worked around food, because food is something that we do several times a day, and if every time we eat something can connect it to, is this good for me? Is this beneficial for my mental and physical health? Does it provide me with the nutritions that is important for me? It also is connected to how you feel about yourself. How do I take care of myself? How important do I think my health is? Psychological health and physiological health. It's connected.

Nigel Rawlins: I read an awful lot about longevity and I think the things that are coming through loud and clear to me at the moment, especially as we get older, is our bodies do deteriorate after a period of time if we let them go. And strength training is one of those. I think flexibility is another area.

And stress reduction as we get older, because if we let those go, they're the things that are going to reduce our lifespans, so, do you want to talk some of those?

Charlotta Segerlund-Darnell: With the longevity, the thing I like the most with the perspective is that it's a perspective that doesn't just accept that we get sick and old. It has a completely another mindset around aging. And for me, it's not that I want to live till I'm 120, even if I think we will maybe do that.

Some of us, but it's about having a healthy lifespan. So, where were I? Longevity. Movement. Where were we? We were at food, strength, exercise, yeah. The body ages , not your whole body are the same age. You can measure the brain, you can measure the skin, you can measure all of it. And the way I see it, I can do what I can do.

I know I lose muscles, with a high percentage every year. I'm 52 now, since I was 30 something my muscles are declining, if I don't do something about it. And I don't want to to get weak and sick, fall and stuff like that, if I can prevent that. But then I had to go to the gym. I really have to go and lift heavy weights.

And the flexibility as well. If I don't do my yoga, I go to Bikram yoga, I get super stiff. I have morning stiffness as everyone else. So, I do the yoga, and I don't have that. So, some longevity nerds, they are really into this. This famous millionaire guy spends two billion dollars or whatever it is. But I think it's a fun experiment because this experiment we have when we eat, with western world, we eat processed food, we don't get sunlight, we sit 10 hours a day. So I think it's fun that he's experimenting in that way. And we can learn something from that. I'm not going to eat 100 supplements, but I can follow him and see what's happening when he does.

You know it sounds

Nigel Rawlins: very much like what we're talking about. Getting sunlight, moving more, eating unprocessed foods. It sounds like early humans because early humans in the nomadic lifestyle, that's what they do.

Charlotta Segerlund-Darnell: And then we have the microbiomes in our stomachs, the gut health. Have you been rabbit holing in that area as well? Yeah, yeah, me too, for a couple of years now.

Nigel Rawlins: we should explain it a bit more.

Charlotta Segerlund-Darnell: Yeah, and that's not easy to explain because this popularized version that it's, that we have good bacterias and bad bacterias in our gut.

That's not really true, but I'm not going in there really that deep. But the bacterias in our stomach and our whole body, they affect our health. They affect our all over physiological health. They also affect our psychological, our mental health. When you have a good balance, very simplified, feel better and you also live better life, better health span and you feel happier because it affects our brain and I mean, dopamine and serotonin, especially serotonin, that affects our moods and motivation and everything, it produces in the stomach, not in our brain.

So it's a proven connection, the gut and the brain, and when we eat processed food, for example, that does nothing good for our gut health. And when we eat a lot of greens and different kinds of greens and so on it's good for our gut health, but it's much more complicated than this.

And there are so many interesting experiments when you transplant, one mice, uh, bacterias to another mice and the mice get the same. If the fat mice get the thin mice bacteria, the fat mice get thin and we have actually done experiments in humans with this as well and with the same results.

Nigel Rawlins: I've seen those, it's fascinating isn't it? So we were speaking about mental health and building resilience and it's not as simple as it sounds, doesn't it? It's, you know, we have to work on our bodies and that's on our minds, on our food, on our strength. So we're a bit more complicated.

The interesting thing about bacteria is that bacteria is like a time traveler with us.

Charlotta Segerlund-Darnell: Yeah.

Nigel Rawlins: It's not part of being human, it's, it's in there.

Charlotta Segerlund-Darnell: Yeah. It's so fascinating.

But I heard someone say a thing that I think it's correct. That when you eat, healthy nutrition, dense food with high fibers, you are feeding yourself . But when you eat high in sugars and uh, fast food and everything, you're feeding your bacteria, but the bad ones.

speak.

Hmm. Yeah, no, yeah,

yeah, Well,

Nigel Rawlins: them?

Charlotta Segerlund-Darnell: For one, it affects their deep sleep that night. So, that will be a problem in the long run. Just after a couple of weeks doing that, you will experience high level of stress and low levels of motivation and stuff like that because you haven't got enough deep sleep. So that will happen.

And of course, as we were talking about before, the dopamine, when we are, sometimes, eating a bit of chocolate, sometimes having a glass of wine, sometimes binge watching Netflix, sometimes scrolling on the internet, it's not a problem. The baseline of dopamine will remain the same. But when we start doing things like that, alcohol, chocolate, shopping online, whatever, too often we are experimenting with a baseline of dopamine.

So, if the baseline of dopamine is lowering, we will experience less motivation and feeling less happy and experience more depression and anxiety.

Yeah, they help them to fall asleep, but percent ruin their deep sleep. So someone said something and it's just funny, it's not an advice, but drink your alcohol in the morning, so it doesn't ruin your sleep, but maybe it's better to have your glass of wine at lunchtime.

Nigel Rawlins: Yes, I think so. I find that too. And I guess a lot of people nowadays have smart watches that they can measure these sorts of things and there are sleep apps. I do notice, I keep an eye on my sleep. I'm happy if I get some nice deep sleep. But if I've had a couple of glasses of wine, the deep sleep is gone, and it does affect my heart rate and all that.

But I'm probably more aware because I don't drink as much anymore. Like I might go for a week or two without drinking. And now I prefer if I'm going to have a drink, it's social when I go out and only one glass and really enjoy that glass, rather than chug it down like a lot of people, let's talk a little bit about self leadership.

What does that mean to you? And how do we do that?

Charlotta Segerlund-Darnell: It has become a popular word or concept and, it's science from the 1980s, but it's become popular after the pandemic really. I think that because people were working from home and, they had to lead themselves, in a new way. So, the way I see it, the way I use self leadership is, it's a lot of a mindset thing.

Who is, who's leading me? Am I reacting to the world or can I be proactive with certain areas and for, people who run their own business or are freelance or whatever, self-leadership, whatever you fill it with, is something that you're CIO of your own life, your health is your problem and needs your solutions, your finances, your marketing, everything is in that self-leadership.

But it's different from person to person, what we fill it with. The mindset, this is me, the business is you, as I say. No one is coming.

Nigel Rawlins: Now that's an interesting point because , for example, if you are a freelancer or you're self employed and you've decided to move out of work, you do have to manage yourself and the interesting thing about working for yourself is your brain is what we call your capital. I mean, you can have money in the bank, but the brain is how you're going to earn your living nowadays.

Unless of course you're using your hands and you'll still use your brain then. But most of us don't, tend to use our hands so much anymore, apart from typing and picking up things. That's the whole point about our conversation is how do we maintain that ability to keep working? What are your thoughts on that?

Charlotta Segerlund-Darnell: I think it's important to realize that we are, at least the one I've been working with so far, are knowledge workers. So we are using our brain as a tool that is our tool. And we have to find ways, so that the brain can rest. Because we can't be on all the time. We will not do a good job. We will not be able to learn new things, for example, if we are on all the time.

We have to find ways to rest from what we are doing. And the way people do it are diverse, of course, some people, like to block time for focus time or try to get in a flow state and there are many different tools and they are suitable for different personalities, really, but the brain has to rest between the reps, so to speak.

Nigel Rawlins: Yes, that's an important concept. What I realize, and I've been working for myself probably 25 years now, is that in an hour, I can often do an awful lot. Now, I do marketing services. That means I find somebody to do this and do that and do this, or I can do it.

And I can do it fairly fast in an hour, because I'm used to doing that now.

Whereas if I think if I worked in an office, it might take me all day or a week to get something done. And that's what I think the, people working from home for themselves don't realise, is they don't have all those distractions. So an hour of their time can be quite intense, mentally, and that is where you need the break.

Charlotta Segerlund-Darnell: Some people have this natural in them, they just work and they go and do something else, clean up the apartment, go to the gym or whatever. If you don't have that, that your days look like you're totally exhausted in the end of the day or after, then you can put an alarm, like I work for 90 minutes and then I have a 15 minutes break.

The way you feel, are you feeling happy or are you feeling sad and exhausted and stressed all the time? It has to be the guideline for if you're going to change anything.

Nigel Rawlins: So you're saying you've really got to listen to yourself. I have Google and Siri, and I just say, look, time me for 25 minutes and then it gets an alarm and off I go. A lot of people who work from home sort of feel guilty about being distracted and going off and do the dishes or hanging out the washing and I think that's all good.

As long as they figured out that they need to do these tasks but I sometimes think we try and do too many things in a day.

Charlotta Segerlund-Darnell: Some people do too much in a day, and others procrastinate a lot. It's so individual. But, running your own business, you are never done. You have always things to do. And that you have to accept that, somehow.

Nigel Rawlins: That's one of my concerns at the moment is, in my marketing services work, I sometimes work with trades people or tradesmen, mostly men. What they find is once their business gets very busy and they've got a number of people working for them, they get so bound up in there that they lose their relationship.

And, and I've been hearing, very wealthy tradespeople, cause building houses and they've got a whole big team and they're turning over lots of money, but their relationship at home is gone to the dogs. They come home and they will drink heavily.

Charlotta Segerlund-Darnell: Yeah, that's my clients, you know, I have clients like that, and I have, I still have, because I was more into leadership coaching before, so I still have, more CIOs than I have freelancers, and I have more entrepreneurs than I have freelancers, yes. But I'm going to the freelancer side more and more.

But, it's so sad when you meet these men, it's often men that they are in their 60s, and they have these amazing careers, of all the money they need and so on. But they have missed the relationships in their lives and they often drink a lot. It's sad, but you can really strengthen relationships even if it has been 40 years of this.

Nigel Rawlins: Well, the point I try and make to them is, okay, you need to figure out how you're managing this business so you actually have time where you don't go home stressed and tired and neglect your relationship and just do the routine, but it'd be a tough call. The sort of way I would do is I'd grab him by the ears and say, buddy,

Charlotta Segerlund-Darnell: Mm.

Nigel Rawlins: but you can't do that, but I probably can, physically.

Charlotta Segerlund-Darnell: The sad part is that they often come when, when things have gone so far, when they're divorce is a fact, or when they are drinking so heavily that they really have an addiction, so please come earlier. It just feels like a big step. Come just a little bit earlier, please.

Because it's not that big step as they think in their head that they are. Because they don't want to acknowledge weakness. Often it's been their life goal to appear strong every day and every second.

Nigel Rawlins: These guys, probably left school young, and worked hard and most of the big businesses around my town are trades based businesses because they've been working 20 or 30 years. But I am hearing that story and it worries me because, I had that same issue when I first started out, I lost the plot and men do.

What you've said to me, and it's very clear, is those people who are working home, probably the freelancers, and mostly the freelancers, are probably not sure about how to actually structure their lives and keep on top of it. Because they're probably working away and they're neglecting their health, they're neglecting their mental health.

What are some takeaways that you would suggest to the freelancers right now to reflect on?

Charlotta Segerlund-Darnell: Well, if they can see themselves as the leader, they would like to have I think it's sometimes easier because we are so hard on our selves. So if they sit down and just say, if I was another person leading myself, what would I like that person to do? Maybe I would like to celebrate my wins, reflect on a project that went well, or give me some time off when I've been working hard, and just be that kind of person to yourself.

Nigel Rawlins: I think maybe we'll end up with some AI that's going to do that.

Charlotta Segerlund-Darnell: You can actually start right now. This is my day, this is my work task, can you be a coaching leader for me? It can be that. So, of course you can use AI already for that.

Nigel Rawlins: I can see the value of having a coach like you just to keep balanced to reflect on what they're doing, even if it's once a month that you talk to somebody, if

you are self employed to just check on things. Okay. How's your health? How's your diet going?

Charlotta Segerlund-Darnell: Yeah, and you have accountability partners.

Nigel Rawlins: I was very lucky, I had a mentor for maybe 20 years until he passed away.

Charlotta Segerlund-Darnell: Yes,

Nigel Rawlins: As you get older, unfortunately, this is what happens. People do start passing away. We would talk every day and we would talk through issues and it was at a fairly high level, a very strategic level.

But it, really did help me. And now I've been without him for a couple of years, and suddenly I'm doing podcasting and talking to people all over the world, like yourself, which has been wonderful. Well, At this point, is there something else you would like to raise that we haven't spoken about?

Charlotta Segerlund-Darnell: Oh, God. It's so much I'd like to speak about. What have we missed? What have we talked about, Nigel?

Nigel Rawlins: I think we've spoken about lots of things. We've talked about stress management, self leadership.

Charlotta Segerlund-Darnell: We haven't talked about growth mindset and learning new stuff.

Nigel Rawlins: Okay, let's do that. Charlotte, what are your thoughts on that?

Charlotta Segerlund-Darnell: I was also so interested in your thoughts about that because, we have to be in lifelong learning. That's a fact. I think we just have to embrace that. And, Carol Dweck's research about different mindsets, I think that's a very genuine work and she had studied a really large group because she studied students and so.

Really simplified, we have these two mindsets, but we can have them in ourselves. I can have a fixed mindset in one area and a growth mindset in another area. And you don't get one mindset and are stuck with that mindset for life. But in the fixed mindset, your goal is to show others that you are knowledgeable, that you're an expert. Your biggest fear is to be exposed as a failure or an imposter or so.

And in the growth mindset you want to be in new learning all the time. You want to feel like the dumbest person in the room because you know that then I'm learning new stuff. So you want to learn. So, to be in lifelong learning, It's very beneficial, of course, everyone gets that to have a growth mindset.

And you can test yourself, and you can add some words. And this sounds very pop psychology, but it actually works. But when you say, I'm not good at XY something, and then you add "Yet". It's a different perspective. I'm not good at social media or marketing "Yet". So, you always open up to, but I can learn.

With effort and so on, I can learn as everyone can learn. If I don't have a talent in that field, it may take a longer time. But I can always learn. But you have to get rid of that fear of being exposed as a failure. You have to get rid of that, you have to start enjoying being bad first, really.

Nigel Rawlins: I totally agree with that, because you've got to try it to figure it out, but I guess a lot of people give it up too early. I'm a bit of a junkie with online courses. I've paid for lots of them, but I haven't even started

Charlotta Segerlund-Darnell: nah.

Nigel Rawlins: I try and use a Thursday. It's Thursday today for me.

Charlotta Segerlund-Darnell: Ah, that's a good, that's good to have one day of learning.

Nigel Rawlins: I do try. I realize, and I guess everyone needs to realize they can't be an expert at everything, but they do need to try and continue finding out new stuff. And that's the danger is there is so much out there that you can be overly curious.

Charlotta Segerlund-Darnell: Mm, of course,

Nigel Rawlins: Sometimes you need to manage that.

Charlotta Segerlund-Darnell: Mm.

Nigel Rawlins: One of the concerns I do have is that, I find I have been working with some very intelligent women. They underestimate how smart they are. That's a worry.

Charlotta Segerlund-Darnell: Sometimes they can have a bit of an imposter syndrome or a fixed mindset because, often when you have been very talented in one field or area, you get a lot of compliments and you get to hear a lot of how great you are at something and that can become connected to your self esteem, that I have to be good, I have to, I have to be perfect, I have to be good.

Otherwise, I'm bad. I'm bad at everything. I'm exposed. So, sometimes it's about having a talent, getting a lot of compliments for that, and then starting to incorporate that into your self-esteem that this is my worth. I'm a good person. I'm always great at what I do.

Nigel Rawlins: That's great. Now, we were also talking about reading before, that not a lot of people read anymore.

Charlotta Segerlund-Darnell: why do you think that is?

Nigel Rawlins: I think there's so much distraction and there's YouTube and there's podcasts. I know that my three children, one has a sociology degree, she hasn't read much anymore. My two boys, one's an electrician, one's a carpenter, they don't read much.

But when they're seeking information, they seek it on YouTube or they seek it from their friends if they need some advice. I just get that feeling that there's not a lot going on there.

Charlotta Segerlund-Darnell: Now, I know,

I'm a big reader and I have been since I was a child. I have four children from the age of twelve to twenty six. I thought that would come naturally because I read a lot for them and we have a lot of books and everything. But that hasn't happened.

I've forced them sometimes, but we live in a world where information is all over the place. And it doesn't have to be a bad thing that I don't read. It's just a different world. We couldn't do so much, we had to read. But my concern is that I can see that many people, they don't have the stress levels right.

I think they have a low baseline of dopamine. I think they have too strong exposure to fast digested foods. And the algorithms on both YouTube and social media platforms. It lowers our attention span really. And, I don't think that's good.

And a lot of people, they seem to not think this either, because they go on retreats a couple of times a year, so they just have a feeling, I have to reset my brain.

I have to just do nothing in a quiet room for a while. I have a dream, I would love to, in a couple of years, do only retreats all over the world. I love retreats, but it's something wrong with the world when we have this, I live this life, it's too much all the time, and two times a year I just shut everything down for a week.

Nigel Rawlins: The concentration span is reflected in a lot of the popular movies now. I'm understanding that each scene is about two seconds long.

Charlotta Segerlund-Darnell: mm,

Nigel Rawlins: You know, the cuts are two seconds, so, you're right. Being able to sit down and read for, say, 20 minutes? That would take a lot of concentration. I try and do that a couple of sessions a day, about 50 minutes to 70 minutes of reading.

But then again, I've got the luxury of being able to do that. I don't have to go to a job, apart from my own. And people have to figure out how that can fit into their day, maybe watch less TV.

Charlotta Segerlund-Darnell: And, and figure out, is it that I don't want to read? I mean, that's okay then, I guess. Or is it that I can't find the peace in my body and mind to sit down and read? I would say that's a warning sign of high stress levels and maybe a lower baseline of dopamine.

Nigel Rawlins: Yes, no, that sounds great. All right, we're probably coming to the end now. What ways would you like people to connect with you?

Charlotta Segerlund-Darnell: Oh, they can connect on LinkedIn. So I think you have the link in your podcast. Yeah, and of course I have my homepage and I'm just an email away, if want to connect like that.

Nigel Rawlins: I'll put all of those in the show notes. So, Charlotta, thank you very much for joining me on the podcast today. You've been a wonderful guest, and I'm hoping people are realizing that a coach like yourself would be very, very helpful to get them focused on what they need, especially if they're procrastinating.

So, thank you again for me.

Charlotta Segerlund-Darnell: Mm Yeah. Thank you so much for having me. It was nice talking to you today.

Nigel Rawlins: Lovely, thank you.