Uncommon Courage

How do we land a message with someone not ready to hear it?

March 24, 2022 Andrea T Edwards, Dr Frank Hagenow Episode 53
Uncommon Courage
How do we land a message with someone not ready to hear it?
Show Notes Transcript

One of the challenges for anyone trying to raise awareness of the climate emergency or the myriad social issues facing humanity is, how do you share this knowledge with people not ready to listen to it? And people are not ready to hear it for many reasons. It’s hard and depressing, it will force them to change everything, the fear of eco-anxiety is strong, facing it shatters a beautiful reality, and so much more. It’s not an easy challenge to overcome. 

But if we have any chance of waking the world up to the multiple crisis’s we face, we have to ensure our communication skills are so good, we can break through and gain attention. To help me understand the psychology of communication, I reached out to my friend, Dr. Frank Hagenow CSP. A psychologist, author and professional speaker, Frank understands this better than anyone I know. I hope his ideas help you in further finetuning your communication to help you deliver your message. Communication is such a critical skill right now. I’ll invite more experts on to help with this critical pillar in the climate fight. 

Please note, we had some issues with Frank’s audio, which could be lessened but not fixed. The bird noise is definitely me. I have a ‘singer’ that visits every day. It’s lovely. 

To get in touch with Dr. Frank Hagenow CSP

His book Leadership Without Mind Games: How to Win People with Ethics and Decency on Amazon 

Website https://linktr.ee/drhagenow   

LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/frank-hagenow-csp/ 

YouTube https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCsXtHihce9UQlu4OepOtNxw 

Facebook https://www.facebook.com/Dr.FrankHagenow/

Twitter https://twitter.com/DrFrankHagenow 

To get in touch with me, Andrea Edwards

Websites https://andreatedwards.com/ and https://uncommon-courage.com/ 

My book Uncommon Courage, An Invitation mybook.to/UncommonCourage

And the workbook mybook.to/UncommonCourageAction

And my Facebook Group Uncommon Courage https://www.facebook.com/groups/442905877003333 

To get in touch with me, all of my contact details are here https://linktr.ee/andreatedwards

My book Uncommon Courage, an invitation, is here https://mybook.to/UncommonCourage

My book 18 Steps to an All-Star LinkedIn Profile, is here https://mybook.to/18stepstoanallstar

Unknown:

So welcome to my wonderful friend, Dr. Frank haga. Now, how did I do with the German pronunciation? Yeah, perfectly girl. That's a rarity. As I said in the introduction, Frank is a doctor of psychology, an author, a speaker, and a very good friend. And I'm just so happy to have you here. Thank you so much for giving me this time, I appreciate it. Thank you so much for having me and for the invitation, really appreciate it. And you've got so much insight that I think is so valuable to my audience. And I really wanted to really get stuck into some pretty key issues for me, and it's about our inability to necessarily face up to some of the biggest crisis that that we're facing in the world. And I think there's a psychological aspect to that, that I think would be important to understand both for me as someone who's out there trying to get people to listen, as well as people who may be struggling with taking on board the information, because it's so uncomfortable to face it. But before we do that, tell everyone about you, and how wonderful you are, from your, from your beautiful home in Venice. Yeah, well, as you as you already know, I moved here to Venice, years ago, and yeah, and Venice was really hit hard by by the pandemic, there were so many, many dead bodies, they couldn't even get rid of them. So the, the military forces have to come in here and, and helped him to get rid of these corpses here. And this was really traumatic for for Italians here, which also lead to some kind of discipline and willing to act to measurements they took here and, and people were really, really patient friendly. And so I I'm, well, it's hard to say but it was quite comfortable. Being here in Italy, during the pandemic, because people are sold so well patient and friendly and, and polite and respectful, which was not the case in Germany, for instance, right. I didn't know about the bodies in Venice. So yeah, it's been a really, really, really tough time. Let's go back and have a look at your profession. You've been a doctor of psychology, 2030 years, give us the background. Psychology was always something which interested me, especially communication, psychology and business psychology. So I'm not that concentrated on all that same mental diseases, which many, many psychologists concentrate on, but I was always interested in. Yeah, in business and in personal relationships, and how people communicate and what we can do to make these relationships better. Yeah, right. And which is one of the one of the reasons that I wanted to invite you here is the communication side. But you've recently re published your first book in English, you want to just quickly tell everyone about your book. Yeah. Of course, this was something I had in mind when I came here, before the pandemic am and and then it turned out that all our gigs were canceled, because there were no more no present events anymore. And so I took the time here to translate my book into English, which I wrote in two years ago in Germany. But then I quickly discovered, it's not just possible to translate it anymore, because two years have passed. And my book is called Leadership Without mind games, and how to win people with ethics and decency. And so many things have changed in these two years, we had this horrible president in the United States, and I couldn't resist to dwell on leadership and having some references to this guy there and we have pandemic and so I had also to concentrate on how managers can deal now with crisis. So it was some kind of writing again, right? Yeah, it's that that period, the Trump era, you know, it's not even about politics. For me it was just about seeing somebody in the public space, the most powerful leader on earth just speaking in such a divisive and disgusting way. It was very disturbing for me to see that it snow. So many people made it about politics. But to me it was just about dignity and respect, you know? And it was Yeah. So yeah, but well, perhaps it's not really the idea to concentrate in politics. But the most disturbing thing for me was not that there was some kind of orange clown in the White House now, and from my perspective, doing a poor job, but that almost half of the population most directly the opposite opinion of and so you have these two, two positions, like people like me, or you saying, Well, this is the worst case scenario. And there are on the other hand, people who say, Well, this is the best president ever, and they're really convinced. And these are not all idiots, you know? Yeah. And this, this is something I really, really found disturbing, because this community is so deeply divided into the two opposite positions. And it's so hard to get together. Somewhere. Yeah, yeah, I was reading one of the journalists who her name is Carol, she's a journalist who uncovered the Cambridge analytical scandal with Facebook. And she was talking about Putin's information more that's been going on since 2014. And basically, it's all about dividing us. And, you know, from Barak Obama, to Trump, to Joseph Biden, and then, of course, around the world with Brexit and everything else that's been going on. We are puppets in the war. And I think it's a good opportunity for us all to stand back and say, Do I believe what I believe? Because it is correct? Or am I a victim of these four? And I think if everybody did that, no matter what side, you see yourself on, I think we might have an opportunity to come together because we need to come together, you know, the divisions have been sewn by somebody who wanted to defeat us. As she said, on this interview, I was watching America has been at war for a number of years, and so as so as Europe, through this information more, and so let's just quickly start there. You're sitting in Venice, I know you're from Germany, the whole world is consumed by what's going on in the Ukraine. I think a lot of people still think the war is there. But from what I'm seeing with global energy prices, food prices, the war has already become a global war. And the people who are going to suffer the most of the people in the in the poor countries. So I read an article on Sri Lanka, the government's basically out of Federal Reserve, so they can't get the money to buy medicines and food for the people. And this is to me, this is the start of the world rising up in revolts. And because hungry people get angry, right? Yeah. So how are you coping with everything that's been happening in the last few weeks? And what advice would you give to people who are sitting in a lot of fear right now? Because, you know, we've got the nuclear threat hanging over our head? Obviously not, you know, the cost of living has gone up quickly. How are you feeling? And what would you advise? Well, I'm also deeply disturbed, involves the development which is going on. And I'm also frightened, because this is such a fragile situation. And from, from my perspective, almost everything is possible. And however, fear is not a not a good advisor, you know, and this is so easy to be to be sad, if you are fearful or if you are desperate, and then it's difficult to deal with a situation especially when the situation is so overwhelming and you feel so helpless and powerless in many cases, and so, there's always always the question What can I do what can I act on right now, and I think one thing is to share your concerns and to talk to people and and not to people who tell you well Cheer up, everything will be fine and so on, but people who are also concerned and concentrate on things you can you can do and this is what is going on right now, in the world, people are showing so much solidarity they are to the demonstrations and they are collecting money they are sending goods to the to the Ukrainian border. And so, are there are so many many possibilities to act and get out of this fear. So I would I would always try to concentrate on things I have an influence on I can make a change and and take some Action and not be in paralyzed by fear. But I'm aware of that this is it's easy to add, and, and hard to do scared I always say the path out of fear is action. So it's good to have it backed up by by an expert. I've been reading a fair bit about the Russian Orthodox Church. So I'm always looking for the hope and the possibilities. And I think the greatest hope that we have is the Russians rising up within the country to stop this. I think that's our greatest hope, no question about it, we're seeing some really interesting moments where like, reporters are going on television, there's a lady who has a sign, and she obviously is putting yourself at risk of 15 years in jail to do it. I think it was just yesterday, they turned off Instagram access and the influences devastated and people are mocking them for being devastated. But the reality is that action by the government could mobilize the youth and then the church story, which I don't think a lot of people are paying attention to. So in 2019, the Ukrainian Orthodox Church became independent from the Russian Orthodox Church. And that is part of Putin's goal to claim that the power back for the church and his schisms happening all over the world around the Russian Orthodox Church. So keep an eye out for the good news is, I hope that we can look back on these time as a time where people rose up and claimed back or claimed what they really want. And that is not to go backwards, it's to go forwards. And so we're banking on the Russian sort of doing that job for us. Because if we have to do the job, then it becomes swing when I say we are countries, right, it becomes something much more devastating. Yeah, and and I think hope is really an important thing here. And especially if we can't do directly something to influence things. But I think it's comforting to know that every dictatorship in history hasn't last forever. And yeah, it's took time and I'm, I know what I'm talking about as a German with this Nazi past, though we have here and collective guilt am and passionately, this didn't last forever. But sometimes it takes a while. And sometimes there are many, many people suffering or dying on the way until people are liberated. Yeah. Now it's true. Look back at your history, the bad guys never win, right? Fortunately, not on the long term perspective, but they can do a lot of bad things on their way. Yeah, exactly. So the sick the trick is, we've just got to get this resolved as quickly as possible, because the IPCC report came out recently, and it said, you know, we're facing some incredible challenges ahead, if we don't make the right moves this decade. So for me this this war, when it broke out, I was just stunned that this time for humanity, this is the action that a leader is going to take and you know, and using the fossil fuel industry, they're they're pushing for, for more rights to dig more, drill more oil, do you dig oil or drill oil editor? It's just like, Come on, guys. This is it. This is this is the chance, you know, the greatest crisis humanity has ever faced is the global climate crisis. And for me, this is just in the middle of this. And as well as the nuclear threat hanging over our heads, it's like, it just feels like the most stupid, ridiculous thing we've ever faced as well as the most frightening. It's hard, right? Yeah. And the problem is that do not always act logically. But almost every time, Michael, logically. So there is always an explanation and the reason behind action, even if it seems unreasonable, or stupid or dangerous at the moment, because sometimes people have short term goals inside, they are willing to go for it no matter what. Yeah, yeah, I think that's the problem. We struggle to understand the mindset of a man like Putin, because it's so far away from him from where the majority of us are, you know, I look at people like Mark Zuckerberg or you know, you can go around the world and find them all, but they seem so disconnected from the reality that the majority of people exist in. And I'm using Putin, he's sort of pushing everyone away. You've got this tiny, small inner circle now, but that disconnection, what he puts that why does that happen? Like, is it his wealth and power, the disconnect is creates the barrier, or sometimes it's the phenomena you also find in leadership. Or we all already talked about this Nazi Germany, for instance, Hitler, he was surrounded by people who are are willing to tell him what they think he is expecting to hear. And so if you are in a leadership position, you are often surrounded by people who are depending on you who are on your payroll, and they have their own interests to keep things as they are, are not to get a fire, they're there. And so sometimes leaders are living in some kind of bubble, and especially when they are equipped with with massive power, there is some kind of feeling I'm invincible, or I don't care because I have power here, I can do whatever I like, and I will be supported by by people around me. So why should I change the thing? And, and this is something which often happens, because they are losing. Sometimes the the connection to reality. Yeah, right. Okay, so, gotta get Frank's book and understand the mindsets. So one of the things that I really wanted to talk to you about, and for me, there's, I feel this incredible urgency to keep the climate conversation alive, even while we're in the middle of this crisis. So when the pandemic first broke out for about three or four months that the people who were talking about the climate emergency went quiet, because they knew that wasn't the time to continue that conversation because the world was adjusting to this new reality. But this time with Ukraine war, I'm finding that that's not happening like it did the last time. And I'm part of that as well, I'm pushing out more and more, I'm doing a daily tip. And, you know, I'm just because we need to keep it going. Because what's going on in in Ukraine is so disastrous, from a human preparedness perspective, it's mind boggling that the biggest priority that the world faces, and then then the IPCC second report came out in the middle of all of the Australian basically, nobody was paying attention. But one of the things that I really want to I want to understand, and I'm hoping my audience will appreciate this, too, is I'm talking every day I'm sharing every day, I'm trying to do it as delicately as I possibly can. I know that what I'm sharing is an uncomfortable truth. I know that when people decide that they're ready to face it, they will do it. But until that decision is made, they will continue with life as it's always been. And I'll often talk to people, and they'll say I'm just not ready yet. I'm just not ready yet. And I never push people because I know that I can't force someone to to be ready, they have to make that decision themselves. But once you make the decision, you also have to accept these enormous amount of grief because you can't face up to the truth of the climate emergency without going through this period of grief, because it is quite a terrifying reality, which I've been facing for many, many years. So I get it right. What is it that stopping people from saying I'm ready? Can you help us understand that? Well, I can try. Yeah, try. I have some ideas on that. But of course, I don't have all the answers, but especially when it comes to really, really complex problems. Well, as you already mentioned, it, it's, first of all, some kind of priority. For instance, if you're now sitting in a cellar, in the Ukraine, and you are fearing for your life, because there are missiles, hitting your house, you don't care about the climate. You care for your own life, and to survive this very night, or the next day, or to get out of the country or to take care of your beloved ones. This is so close to you that every everything else vanishes is in the future. And the future is far away. We are just dealing with problems right now. And and this is understandable. If I'm on dance tomorrow. I don't I don't need any climate change anymore, because I'm not affected and if my family is terminated, well, I have I have different different things to deal with. So first of all, the question is, what is my concern right now? What is my suffering right now my threat I'm dealing with right now. And do I have capacity for other things on top, which are also important, of course, no matter? No doubt about it, but they don't matter for me. So this is one thing prioritizing and the next thing is, I think climate change is a really important but a really big, big issue. And it's the problem, which is so huge and so difficult to deal with. And it's so far in the future, we need a lot of that same mature perspective and rational thinking the future to see that it is necessary to do it right now. So can I just clarify that so when you say in the future and far into the future, so basically, the latest report is, if we don't act within this decade, we're pretty much screwed. I know, a lot of the data has always been presented as 2100, which to me definitely is in the future. But I've always been reading very different perspective. And this report came out saying it's happening faster, and it's coming sooner than we ever expected, you know, Thwaites Glacier, the doomsday glacier is supposed to break off within the next three to five years from which will increase global sea levels, which will impact you know, there's more than a billion people temperature is going to hit 1.5 degrees this decade, it's going to be embedded by next decade. But 1.5 is too hot to leave the majority of the tropical regions of the world. And I think that 3.6 billion people in the world are living in regions that are facing more and more stress. So to me, it's not a long way away, it's already here, and the way we behave in the West, and how we buy and how we consume and how we drive and fly and all that sort of stuff. That's what we need to reduce. And, of course, the person in the Ukraine totally get it, a person living on the streets in India, they don't know where their next meal is coming from, they're not part of the problem of the climate crisis, those people but the wealthiest people, the top 10%, in the world, who are still living relatively comfortable lives, we might be paying more gas, we're going to be able to afford our gas, our gas, and food increases the people at the bottom of those societies fine, but it's those people, you know, so I suppose people who were comfortable, there might be suffering more than normal, and obviously, the pandemic, but it's those people I'm talking about. And I think that's important to be very specific about who we're talking about. Perfectly. Right. And, and, of course, it's also a question of, of power. To be your example, as a homeless person in India, you even if you care about the climate, can't do very much about it, because you are, you're not equipped with enough power or money to make a change, and you probably don't fly and have a car and as you already said, You are not, however, psychologically, in always the question, Am I willing to invest in long term or, and, and people are often just looking for the short term pleasure or to make suffering go away, and go away. This is something already Sigmund Freud talked about, he called it the principle of pleasure, versus the principle of reality. And, and from his understanding, it takes him process of development of growing maturity. And to get from this, I want pleasure right now, no matter what, like, like a child, you know, he's just looking for the next pleasure or relief from pain and not having a long term perspective. For instance, if you if your take the child to a doctor, and there has to be an injection, of course, child would say, No, I don't want this injection because this might painful for me, and I don't see the necessity in it, and I will get better anyway. And whatever kind of argument will be there. So you need someone who's taking responsibility and having this long term perspective with mature perspective, and say, Okay, on the long term run, it's necessary to do it like this. It's like this vaccination discussion we had, during the pandemic, people were afraid of some side effects. But to understand that the side effects are so so unlikely, and they are far less severe than an infection would have been it's some kind of, well, rational ensure thinking. And this is something which is not all the time the case managers in the brains of leaders, because after all, they are still human beings. Yeah, that's such an interesting perspective. for the child, I remember doing an assessment for a public relations agency and things 75% came out in this category as children. And then there were two, there were three other categories, because there's always four, right? And there were about three people in the entire organization that came out as adults, and I was one of them. So, yeah, I get that. But like when I think of a parent who's looking at their child's future, if we act now, and act decisively, we reduce the suffering our children will have to endure in the future. So as parents, that obligation seems to be their own pleasure versus our children's potential suffering in the future, I'll just give you a simple example. One of the things that I know is when you step into the climate emergency and educate yourself, you very quickly realize that in order to do what we need to do, there's a lot of sacrifice. And the first thing that I remember is, I started to mourn for the things that I would lose that held importance to me like just even silly things like Christmas crackers at Christmas time, right? I couldn't buy them anymore, because they're full of this useless plastic that's going to stay in the environment for 500 years. So just silly things, but And while most people will be like, Oh, who cares, right? But when it came to Chris, the first Christmas when I said no more Christmas crackers, and I said to everybody who was coming, I'm not doing this, I'm sorry, I know people are have a, an emotional connection. It's part of your heritage, right? And it's step by step, it's step by step, you say, now I'm going to give up this now I'm going to give up this you know, you reduce meat, especially red meat, and you become vegetarian or vegan. So it's a step by step process, but there is mourning, and I think is it is that something that the human our human nature is, is it something that we struggle with sort of fronting up to, to last, like, we don't want to, you know, I mean, we all know that loss is not much fun, but to embrace these time, it is about accepting loss, it is about confronting some very, very frightening information about the state of the planet, but if we don't do it, then our children are going to suffer more. So it's a bit of a struggle for me that one, that's probably where I struggle the most trying to understand where people are, yeah, well, there there is finished seeing, which means in a way translated like something like habits are in at the beginning, like cobwebs, and in the end, like wires of steel. And so, you know, giving up habits is something which is just really, really hard, if our habit is not really, really healthy for us, like for instance smoking. And I know what I'm talking about, because I smoke for 10 years in my life, and I ended up with 60 cigarettes a day. So, every smoker knows smoking is not really healthy, it costs you a lot of money and there are so many many disadvantages to it, it just because of this knowledge, every smoker head has to quit smoking immediately, but knowledge does not lead to the friend or change behavior because this knowing things does not necessarily mean we will behave differently. Because we have some short term benefits from it, if you smoke a cigarette, you feel relief, you feel relaxed just right now and you won't get lung cancer immediately the next day. So you can have some kind of pleasure without negative consequences for for a long time. And so, when it when it comes to changing behavior, knowledge is of course an important thing. But the next step is also you need the willing so you need the will to take action and and there has to be some benefits for you. Otherwise you won't you won't overcome this habit. of for instance, I was I was running in the past and I ran a marathon and when I started running, this was not some and running for five minutes was also a pain in the neck and having the idea of running for an hour or two hours or three hours of and having fun with that enjoying it and this takes this takes a while and this takes a lot of practice and overcoming your own comfort zone and so it takes a while to get this this benefits from it and and that thing is willing alone and knowledge does not work. We'll get into action. So you need also strategies and skills to take action. And sometimes it's important that people tell you Okay, and if you want to do something against, for instance, climate change, you can do this that and it should be something which is something you can get your hands on and and do it right now for instance, I'm I walk on a beach in Germany, and they had the these boxes there. And they were asking the persons who were going for a walk just to collect something which is washed up to the beach, like wood, or bottles or nets, plastic bottles, whatever, to put it just there into this box, this is an thing with the instruction, and people are able to decide, am I willing to do it right now or not, and it is so easy to pick up a plastic bottle and throw it into this into this container. I love that. So so my takeaways are, obviously anyone in the climate sort of movement who's trying to raise awareness to change behaviors, whatever we do, it's got to be easy. One of the things that I'm trying to do a lot of, you know, I'm doing these daily tips. And I'm trying to make it simple here. This is this is an idea for today, if these groups should go and do it, right. But the other thing is hopeful. So I, I do not want to go into doom and gloom about the climate emergency because we still have time to make it not worse. We can't fix it. But we can make it not worse, right. So I'm I refuse to go into the Doom. So that's something I always communicate is please don't don't share doom. And the problem is, when you first start to face up to the climate crisis, it's very difficult because you are sitting in Doom, because all of the information is doing. But if you share a message of doom, people are not going to do anything about it. They're just going to go into hopelessness or helplessness, right. So being positive, showing easy ways, hopeful anything else that you can think of, I think, as you already said, to think of the power of making a change, where can I make a change, I probably won't make a change in the pollution of the Chinese industry for us. But I can make a change in my personal environment, and you are doing a lot of charity work in your community, which makes a change for the cam when when I when I talked to, to my audience in conferences, and we are spending days in a really beautiful and expensive hotel, I often recommend to tip the roommates when they leave with five or$10, which is not much for us. But it makes a huge change for the roommate who I even work for less than five bucks an hour. So there is the possibility to make changes and in your, towards your local community. There are so many things you can you can do for charity. Or, for instance, I myself, my my idea to give something back is I do one speech for free each month. So because I often get requests from the companies and they say, Okay, we would love to have you here and to talk at our conference or whatever. But we can't afford your fee. And so I said, Well, I've got this charity contingent and this there is one speech for free, and you give whatever you can afford, of course, you have to pay the expenses and accommodation. And there might be some some budget you have, and let's say it's $2,000 and they say okay, we can afford$1,000 Then I say okay, maybe$2,000 And this is something I will give at the end of the year to charity. And so this is this is my part of giving something back and sometimes I give money to the local hospitals. Sometimes I spent for children, cancer fighting children cancer. Sometimes I donate to them for refugee organizations, em and so this is my part of giving something back and I think there are so many possibilities in your personal life, you can you can do to make change and make the lives of other people better. Yeah, I love that I have a policy of if you make money, you pay me, if you do good in the world, I'm there, I'm there to support you and to help you be successful, because that's kind of, for me, you know, there's other companies who are not willing to pay with us for the services of people like us. But I know that what I do can make a company more profitable, so they should pay my fee. But if you're a charity, or you're just an organization that's doing I mean, I'll, you know, I'll get on the phone with climate scientists of the world and help them with their communication strategy. If they reach out to me, I will help them because I need them. We need their voice out there. But But going back to the original thing, so for people out there who are trying to communicate around the urgency of the climate, have you got any, any things that you'd want to add, that could help them be more successful in succeeding with their message and getting their message across anything else that you can think of? Well, I think nothing is so sexy as success. And if you are successful doing things, because you make a change in people's lives, and you make some efforts, and they have success, and it's it's important to talk about it. And we already talked about personal benefits, sometimes it's good to get some social recognition or some acknowledgement or association, in local media, for instance, like, I'm doing good things, and it is shown for the world, and might be a benefit for me, and some kind of motivation to keep up. Yeah, also, I mean, I don't want the recognition. That's not something that I find appealing. But what what I would love is for, there's someone in everyone's community, who is a voice out there trying to drive change in the world, or in their local community, or even in their family, right? There's somebody in everybody's life who has not stopped working, there's a lot of people who've, you know, just recently, just in the last couple of years, there's a lot of senior business leaders who've said, I'm out, I'm out of the business world, now I'm going to focus on the climate, and they're gonna do everything they can. But there's a lot of people who have been struggling for a long time, because they've made it a priority. And of course, to do work like this, you don't necessarily get financially rewarded for it. And you don't necessarily get the recognition either for it. But also you don't necessarily get the support of your community. So like a Greta tunberg came onto the global stage, and she gets incredible support, but she also gets incredible criticism. I mean, it's been quite disgusting. And what watching what people are willing to say about her, you know, she was a young girl when she started, right. But the other thing that people can do, if they don't want to join the fight, they can at least support the people who are and that's very simple, you know, commenting on their posts, sharing their content, videos, podcasts, blogs, you know, telling them that they're there for them not in private messages, none of that private message prays, I get so many private messages from people talking about the work that I'm doing. And I'm like, please don't say it privately, say it publicly. Because that actually helps more because other people see it. And then other people get bought into what you're doing. But it's the public support that really matters. Yeah, people struggle with that, for some reason, they don't feel that they can do it publicly, that they have to do it privately to any idea what that's all about, well, getting getting out in the world with your personal stance on always you might be vulnerable, or you might be criticized for this mentioned greater work. So it's not always easy, just getting out telling your opinion and every everyone is your friend. So this is difficult, especially when you have a very, very well, let's say, extreme opinion, because this means a lot of people are not agreeing with you. And they will tell you, especially in social media, so people are really reluctant with getting exposed there. And and the other thing is, well can always support someone else but you can also lose something as you already mentioned, for yourself, like thinking of you I need the car right now, do I need to take the plane? Can I also find a different way to get the job done without in the environment? So it's something about your mindset and as a parent, you can can educate your children Children and and up to them. And so there is a huge influence do you have in your little bubble? Yeah. Oh yeah, my boys came back and admitted to me that they bought plastic bottles of water the other day when they're at a shopping center and I'm like, How could you? How did you? And they're like, they're like so sorry ma'am, I'm so sorry. But because we've been talking about it for a long time, and I, I, you know, I don't expect it from other people, but I do expect my boys to prepare themselves take a bottle of water with them anywhere they go so that they're not forced into that situation, you know, and it's so it just gave us another chance to talk about it. You know, come on, this is your responsibility. You know, this is for your future. This is where we're playing the beaches, you've seen the mess, you know how bad it is? Come on, come on. So I'm just constantly trying to do that without I don't want to turn them into paranoid little fellas. Yeah. And, and you probably don't want to I bro to get them annoyed. Because if you're causing some resistance, this won't help you know. And, and we often especially when we are so convinced of something which is right, we have some kind of missionary passion. And we are driven and trying to convince people who might not are willing to be convinced right now or not in the way we want that or not that actually, whatever thought finding the right way and right tune in to reach people is I think often the challenge for us, especially when we are talking to people, though, it's always involved in transporting our message in a way that others can also receive them and best case take action for not get into resistance get into the Doom, limbo. Like, what can I do, I'm so overwhelmed by all these troubles and I'm so such as art, I can't. Yeah, so it's really about being in tune with the person that you're trying to communicate with. So just recently, I had a situation where people were doing things around me that just fundamentally, they're just changes I've already made, I was watching people, you know, buying fast fashion, you know, from the brands that are contributing not just to environment destruction, is human slavery in the supply chain. There's deforestation linked to these brands, I mean, these are these to me, these are really, really big things. And these people will continuing to buy from these brands and support these brands. And there's so many emotions in me rolling around in these moments, but I don't say anything, because I don't think it's appropriate for me to say anything, because I'm not, I'm not their mum, all I can do is continue to gently put a message out there into the world and try and make people aware so that they can make different decisions. And that's kind of the strategy I've got. Now, you know, like, I'm not judging anyone who I will not make anyone feel ashamed of themselves. Like even when you really try not to make someone feel ashamed, they still feel ashamed. So you know, I've learned a lot over the years, but it's always a delicate touch. This is how I'm doing things as I'm living my life. But I'm not going to judge you for how you're living your life. Because you're not where I am. And you're not as aware of these things as I am that I will try to contribute to that knowledge in my own way without you feeling uncomfortable. So I suppose that's essentially all we can do, right? Well, when I when I studied psychology, and psychology is often involved helping people to do things better, or get better, feel better, in various ways. And you're often often confronted with problems people are coming to you, especially when you're working as a coach, or a therapist. And they expect you to help them to deal with their problem and overcome their problems. And one thing we learned in the university, the first thing was work harder than your client. This is something which can be changed some kind of mantra, you know, you often have ideas, you often have this will to help. But if you are working harder than the other, this work and so it's always about understanding, okay, what is my car? What can I do? What impulses can I do? What kind of support can I do? The work is up to the client, or most of the work and otherwise, it won't on you. Yeah, and also you never going to succeed if you're shaming people, right? Of course not. Yeah. All patronizing or pontificating, or any of Those things differently when it comes to changing behavior or changing habits. If you if you want to change people against their will you need a lot of power, which brings us back to ideas we discussed about dictatorship. And and especially in our, our area or working field. Our power is. And and so it's about free will, and and convincing people and well, maybe company companying them on their journey, but but never to push them in a way which suits us more than them. Yeah. All right. So to everyone out there who's on the journey with me the frustrating, long, hard journey of trying to convince people that we need to fundamentally change and we need billions of us to do it. This has been really, really useful, gentle touch, keep going, keep believing. No, it's hard. It's hard. One of the hardest things is not getting supported, you know, you put something out there in the world, and it's like, sort of disappears into a hole. And it feels like nobody's paying attention. But I think people are paying attention. They really are. And let's just keep going and keep giving people hope. Because there's a lot of hope. And there's a lot of positivity in the world at the moment. And I know, it's hard to say it, I really believe that. But Frank, thank you, I really appreciate it. I really appreciate your insight. How can people find you? I think my name is enough. There is a website, my name, and I'm on social media. So feel free to connect with me. Wherever is listening now. It's just string tight, you know, and please find me somewhere. Yeah, and I'll put all your contact details on your website and the link to your book in the show notes as well. So people can get access to it. But I was really looking forward to our chat, because I just really wanted to, you know, sometimes you think you've kind of understood it. But to get the expertise of someone like you who can give you the words of the profession that sort of just helps to explain it just a little bit more. I think that's really valuable right now. And I think there's a lot of people out there are really struggling to make sense of things and why people behave they do and, you know, from not just from the climate emergency, but Putin, Trump all of it, you know, so just yeah, just getting those that insight from you as an expert in the field over many. I mean, how many decades? He must be about three now. Right? Yeah, yeah. Yeah. So you weren't listening to you've done the long yards. And, and there is no easy solution to really connects problems. And if there is a easy solution, it takes a long, long and blocking way to get there. So understand that there is no quick solution. And it's something like going on the marathon. taking one step after the other, and finally reaching your goal, then having this in mind, if it's a long journey, and it is suffering, sometimes it's not always pleasurable. And, and sometimes you're doubting yourself, this is always the case. And and the severe, the most severe that the problem is, the harder it is to go on this journey. And so I really appreciate your your effort. And read because I think it's really important to deal with when it comes to climate. It's funny the way you described the journey, for somebody that feels like me for the last 10 years, it's really, it's really hard and it knocks your legs out from under you on a regular basis. He's got to pick yourself up and keep going. So and I know many other people feel the same. So but our time is now our time is now the 2022 felt like a really big shift in in the world as far as the mindset that was needed to change. And I feel it felt like that really big shift happened. And then when when Putin invaded Ukraine, it was like, Oh, God, not now. It's not what we need right now. It was like, and that's why I think a lot of people, we're continuing with our work while that's going on, because we have to because we can't lose momentum like we did at the beginning of COVID. Again, and we have to just keep going, you know. So anyway, thank you so much for your time, my friend. It's been nice for him enjoyed it. Real pleasure, Andrea. Yeah. Well, we'll have to do it again. For sure. For sure. All right. Take care. You too. There you go. Thank you so much to Frank Hagie. Now for doing that lovely podcast with me in that group, that great conversation wide ranging, which I hope helps people not just out there fighting for the climate, but fighting for the social issues that matter, as well as just dealing with the mental health issues that we're all dealing with right now. The bad news after bad news after bad news, this conversation with Frank has actually inspired me to probably do a bit more of a series where I interview experts in communication, storytelling, psychology, and all those sort of areas that I think are really important in the fight that we have for the climate. So thank you, Frank. I also want to say thanks to Priscilla Priscilla Joseph, who is my amazing virtual assistant, she really worked hard on on editing this podcast, it was obviously challenging because of the the issues with Frank's microphone. But then Gary Kraus of legend, music Phuket who has done all of my original music for my podcasts and live streams, he also helped out as well. And I just want to say thanks to Gary, you're a total legend. If you want to get some original music done for your podcast, I absolutely recommend reaching out to Gary, he's an awesome human being great talent and he will do a great job for you. So tell him I sent you. Alright, so there we are. If you're enjoying my podcast, please give it a rating. It really helps. If you want to leave a review that helps too. But most importantly, if you agree with anything I'm doing, whether it's this podcast, or anything else I'm doing on social media, if it resonates with you, I'd really appreciate you sharing it. I'm doing this for all of us, not for me. So if you support my message, please do give it a share. Anyway, I will talk to you soon. Cheers.