#24: Stack the Deck in Your Favour with Jonathan Cave

Tania Cotton: Welcome to the LifeWise Show where we explore the things in life that make us feel truly alive. Today's conversation is particularly special because I'm welcoming back my very first LifeWise guest, Jonathan Cave. Jonathan joined me six years ago and challenged us all to redefine success. More than a leadership coach, Jonathan has a natural talent for listening deeply, joining the dots to bring clarity to complexity and helping people move forward with greater self-awareness, sense of purpose and an enthusiasm for life. At the end of our very first LifeWise conversation, Jonathan shared that one of his aspirations was to write a book. This year, that vision became reality with the launch of the Tree and the Mountain at the MiPhy Women's Leadership Conference in Geneva. In The Tree and The Mountain, Jonathan invites readers on an inner journey revealing how we can stack the deck in our favour to live healthier, happier and more productive lives. Welcome back, Jonathan. It's been truly wonderful to watch your journey over these past years and finally to get to read your new book, The Tree and the Mountain.

Jonathan Cave: Wonderful to see you again and thank you for inviting me back on your podcast.

Tania Cotton: Now, Jonathan, you had the perfect life. You were a lawyer for some of the richest, and we could say in inverted commas, 'most successful' families in the world. Yet there appears to be a difference between perception and truth. There was what you described as a 'happiness gap'. Financial wealth, status and power does not equate with the richness of feeling truly at home in your body, peaceful in your mind and deeply connected to others. In writing this book, was your intention to help us close this gap?

Jonathan Cave: It was. I wrote the book for myself first, bringing together the 10 years of deep personal exploration that I had gone through, which remains my primary focus. The coaching of others is secondary in the sense that it comes out of that exploration. So I always remember to keep on developing myself, keep on exploring myself so I can better help people around me. The happiness gap is the gap between who you are and how you live. And that perception versus truth got so big for me that the last 10 years have been to close that gap and the book is one way of doing that in the sense I wanted to bring everything together and share it more widely with a greater audience.

Tania Cotton: That's wonderful. Now for the thumbnail of this podcast, we could have had you standing in a suit in front of a wall of law books or speaking into a microphone at a very important conference. In stark contrast, we have you and your family on a beach stacked one on top of each other looking like a delicious club sandwich. I just love this photo. Why did you choose this photo?

Jonathan Cave: This photo says everything about who we are. A very tight knit family. They're the most important people in my life and for a long time I treated them as secondary. Now they are very much primary with myself and life is an opportunity to connect with a few people intensely and spending time with my family, my wife, my son, my daughter brings me the greatest joy. And so that's why I chose the picture.

Tania Cotton: Well, I'm very glad you did. In fact, you showed me that picture six years ago and I hung onto it in my mind as 'I know I'm going to use this picture one day'. Now your book, The Tree in the Mountain, invites us to dare to become. What is this invitation to become what?

Jonathan Cave: To become our true selves. That's the idea behind it. And I believe it takes courage to be happy. We're taught to look outside of ourselves for things or recognition success. And this dare to become is an invitation to switch from external success metrics like income, status, impact to internal success matrix like joy, bliss, alignment, connection. And I think we are all here trying to figure out who we are and how we can impact the world. And so 'dare to become' is the philosophy or the expression to say, "Don't wait. Be who you are meant to be".

Tania Cotton: Why is it so difficult? I mean, when you describe what it is to be yourself, it sounds such a better place than being someone else. Why is it so difficult?

Jonathan Cave: There's a lot of reasons for that. There's a lot of expectations of how we should be expectations from our parents, our culture and we get a lot of messages which condition us to a certain format and what I recommend is to go on the other side of the coin and say, "Well, actually you are your own reference point. It's your life." As far as I know, we have one and it's to really seize the opportunity to live the human experience fully. And that starts by answering the question, who am I really?

Tania Cotton: Yes, because our world seems to be made up of many multimedia opportunities to not show who we really are, not be who we really are. We've become multimedia masters of making our lives look perfect from the outside, but also to make ourselves look like how we think others expect us to look. Yet on the inside, we're not commonly taught to look inside, are we? Not at school, I'm sure not at law school, at university. I mean, not even in many homes.

Jonathan Cave: Yeah. I mean, the whole system is based on looking outside. You went to school, you learned subjects like geography, math, science, you were tested on them and then you were taught to look outside and analyze external systems and that can translate into jobs and companies, etc. And so that is highly developed, but what's not developed is the power of insight, literally being able to look inside yourself to your own systems, your energy system, resilience system, decision making system, fear system that we all have inside us. The more we understand our internal systems, the more then there is a coherence between our internal and external so that they flow together. Just like ying and yang, night and day feed each other. They're part of the same system. They're not in opposition. They're nurturing for the other part.

Tania Cotton: You've just made me hear the word insight in a whole new way. Insight was one word that I was familiar with, but in-sight somehow feels different to me, and it feels also as if your book is a journey of self-awareness, self-insight inviting us to ask ourselves questions which give us these insights into who we are and how to connect with our deepest purpose.

Jonathan Cave: The more we develop our power of insight, the more it leads to foresight, the more it leads to wisdom. So the path to wisdom for me is not looking outside, it's looking inside to try and get as close as we can to the truths of ourselves and of the world around us and that gives us access to something which then translates or at least is felt by someone listening as wisdom. I don't want to have that when I'm 85 years old with grey hair and look the part of the wise man. I think we can all develop that at any age by developing our power of insight.

Tania Cotton: It will probably not surprise you that the one thing that I really enjoyed and resonated with me in your book was this idea of a central alignment line. In the MovementWise workshop at the conference we explored the physical, mental and emotional 'kinks in the chain' that can cause our bodies, that act like a slinky dink, to go off course and when we're present in our bodies and aligned physically and mentally and emotionally, our posture and our movements can create efficient systems of energy, storage and release. Talk to me about what the central alignment line means to you.

Jonathan Cave: So the central alignment line is this virtual access that goes through us, which is our high energy, high performing, authentic self. And we've all been on this virtual line in the sense that we feel in a state of flow, confident, no fear, and just feeling at our highest potential and we've all felt that, but it's fleeting, it's accidental. And my explorations were, how do I connect to this line so that I can stay close to it, not necessarily on it, because that would be perfection and we're all perfectly imperfect, but how can I stay close to this line where I'm at my high performing, authentic, high energy self? And so, the central alignment line is made up of three elements: our values, which is our foundational energy, which anchors us. So imagine your three core values at the base of the line giving you that strong foundation. our three greatest talents, which is our transformational energy, how we transform the world without even meaning to, but we have these talents and imagine these three talents as the central balls on this vertical line and then our three aspirations, which is our directional energy of who we want to become, what we want to do and what we want to have. And imagine those three balls again on the line taking you upwards towards the sky. So the central alignment line is this beautiful state of being, which the more we connect to it, the higher our quality of life, the more we feel we are being true to ourselves and the more that permeates our environment, our connections, our interactions, because we're bringing the most precious thing, which is authenticity to the table.

Tania Cotton: I still remember when I was asked, I was probably in my 30s, like, what are my values? In fact, it was Dorinda Phillips who was on my second and third podcast who asked me this question walking by Lake Geneva and I was shocked at how hard I found it ... I had to really think about it. I mean, this should be so fundamental. This should be our fundamental education of knowing what our values are because it directs everything. Why are our values so foundational? And perhaps you can give us an example. I mean, what are your values, Jonathan?

Jonathan Cave: Sure, with pleasure. So my three core values are love, honesty, and making a difference. Now, love permeates who I am, how I see the world, opportunity to love moments, people, experiences, places, and life itself. So whether I'm working, not working, love is behind it. Honesty came to me because of the opposite, which is dishonesty, which I can't stand. I have literally a physical reaction. So I know that honesty is very important and being honest with yourself first helps you be honest with people around you and then making an impact and I don't know whether it's a value or not, but it's been there for the last 10 years. It's every conversation, every moment, every smile, bring the best of you so that you can make an impact and just show that you care and that you're connected and that you want to build rather than destroy. So knowing those values help me in practice in all my decision making because I look at my options and say, "Well, do they help me live my values or not? " Option one, option two, option three. And they really give me a foundation upon which I choose to be courageous and live life fully.

Tania Cotton: That's a very strong beginning to building your central line and I loved the way that you describe it in your book. I love the way you use the breath, deep, slow rhythmic breathing to get us out of our heads and listening to our hearts, to get authentic insights into what's most important to us. Has breathwork always been a powerful tool for you through which to connect with your subconscious?

Jonathan Cave: No, is the answer to that? It's more recent. I started exploring breath 10 years ago when I created an exercise that helps me connect to my central alignment line every morning, which I do. It takes me one minute, but I've explored breathwork since then and I'll give you a very recent example, which is my mother-in-law passed away a few weeks ago and the day before she passed away, we were in the hospital and the systems were shutting down and she couldn't talk anymore, but the breath was there, her upper thorax was going out, coming in and I was really focusing on her breath and that showed me that she was alive and the next day when we came back, she had passed and the breath wasn't there and there was a deep silence. And so the breath, that experience really reminded me that breath is life, no breath is no life and breathing in terms of developing our power of inside and going inside, breathing is the pathway to go away from the mind and to the heart and beyond.

Tania Cotton: Now in our last podcast I was speaking with Jonny and Caroline who you introduced me to and it was from the question of having had deeper experiences with breathwork practices myself. I think it's interesting to know that there is a tool that's breathing deeply and coming into a parasympathetic and connecting with yourself, but then there is breathwork on a whole other level that can give you surprising insights into yourself.

Jonathan Cave: I'm very grateful to Johnny who introduced me to deep breath work, and I've done many sessions with him and every single time I've discovered things which either had been repressed or which I had forgotten and came out with a clear review of myself. So as a pathway to deep exploration of self, it has been absolutely incredible leading to very significant breakthroughs, one of which I'm very happy to share. It's that I have fears. We all have fears, but those fears were sitting on something even deeper, which I didn't realise, which were distortions that I had built my life on and I'll share two of them. One is 'it was not safe to be me and still now it is not safe to be me' as a distortion that compelled me to play so many roles simply because it wasn't safe to be me. Now that came from breath work and Johnny, I'm very grateful. And the second distortion that was 'a foundation of my construction was love is performative'. So, you have to perform to deserve love and that translated into the lawyer who worked 14 hours a day, who neglected his family because love is performative. 'You have to earn it. You don't have to earn love'. You don't have to work for love. Love is around us. It's within us. So those distortions, once we realise that they're in our deep construction, we can go beyond and really change our relationship to ourselves and that's what happened.

Tania Cotton: Thank you. I'm so grateful to you sharing that with us and I hope it will give others the courage to use this and other tools that we hope to share on this podcast. I'd like to talk to you next about talents and I think your superpower, Jonathan, is to help people listen to and reconnect with their hearts. Is this the secret source for you?

Jonathan Cave: Yes. I think it is. I mean, to keep it short, I was a highly mind driven, high achieving, ambitious lawyer and the mind was focused on performance. It was driving the car as quickly and as far as it could and that was my modus operandi, but it was driving me into a wall which I could see approaching, which would have possibly translated into terrible relationships with my kids, problems with my partner, health problems had already started, maybe a long and successful career, but at the cost of probably everything that was dear to me. So the big jump was going from mind driven to heart driven where the heart is focused on balance. The mind is focused on performance, but the heart is focused on balance, which includes working hard but knows to put the boundaries. So yes, that has been the greatest shift and I'm very grateful now to be a heart driven person, completely changed my life.

Tania Cotton: I would say that's your greatest achievement and that's one that I think we will all aspire to. Another extraordinary talent you have is the ability to disarm the most skeptical, armored, dare I say, male and through what I witnessed with CEOs, so very high achievers. I've witnessed this and it fills me with awe and respect as if you offer us authenticity as our only choice. Is there just an inner confidence knowing that just enables you to get people to drop their defenses?

Jonathan Cave: It's trusting the process, which is that I fundamentally believe we're all trying to be ourselves and to define what that means and impact the world around us. And so when I'm talking to a CEO who might have repressed his or her sensitivity or built their lives as I did on some distortions, I walk in without any judgement of them with a very open heart with extreme deep listening so that they feel like the only person in the world and automatically they don't feel any danger or any judgement or any pressure and I think they automatically release their own barriers and within a few minutes they're sharing things with me, which mentally they're going, "Well, I just met this person. How come I'm sharing such deep things?" But that's because of the environment that's created beyond the words, beyond what I'm saying. I think people feel the energy. I think we connected at energetic level in a huge way beyond just the physical and the words that we use. And so 99 times out of a hundred, we go deep very quickly.

Tania Cotton: I am definitely a witness to that and I found it's the thing I remember most actually is how I felt very small. There were four male CEOs and there were little me who was feeling a little bit broken at the time, a little bit fragile and I really felt I didn't belong there and by the end of it we were all wanting to support each other and all there was just a humanity, just a human connection between us all and everything else dropped away. I mean, you created that environment - that is quite a talent! Now I remember you asking me very uncomfortably, what were my talents? I think I was squirming, "Oh, why is it one so hard sometimes? Yeah, why is it difficult for many of us to recognise our talents?

Jonathan Cave: Because they are so natural to us that we don't recognise them as such. It's who we are. It's like a tree does photosynthesis. Is it even aware? Probably not, but it's part of being a tree, you photosynthesize. I think talents is an interesting one because in a lot of cultures and families, there hasn't been much emphasis on talents, more on weaknesses that need to be improved and things that we don't do well. So that's one reason, but also question of ego for saying, Oh, you're really good at that. Or even you saying, "I think I have this talent and it's really impacting people". Well, who do you think you are? Kind of thing. Talents is an interesting one because I think a lot of people don't know their talents because it's so natural to the person that they don't recognise them as such. And secondly, even if they do know their talents, they haven't fully accepted them as this transformational energy and the gifts that they've been given because the talent is a gift. So including CEOs and high achievers, I'm always fascinated by that.

Tania Cotton: So it's our values, talent, and then our aspirations that are the key components of our central alignment line. So why is it important to get clear about our aspirations?

Jonathan Cave: Because the world is so uncertain and anxiety driven and generating that knowing who we want to become, what we want to do, what we want to have is bringing us clarity and clarity counterbalances uncertainty. Certainty doesn't exist. We don't know what's going to happen in five minutes, five months, five years and people who chase certainty are chasing something which is elusive and they will never reach, but we all have the power to give ourselves clarity of who we want to be, who we want to spend time with, what impact we want to make, and to focus on that. And that's very reassuring and people who have clarity, have aspirations fundamentally change the world because they're concentrating on evolving themselves. It's this inside-out approach which comes back in terms of the night and day I was saying earlier, the more you focus on yourself, ironically, the more you will positively impact the outside world.

Tania Cotton: I will think about this. Lots of food for thought. Well, the golden key for me in your book was understanding the difference between being driven by fear and being driven by love. Now what fears were driving you when you were climbing your tree? I mean, how were you able to trust that you could listen to your heart and need from the heart? How can we trust and let go?

Jonathan Cave: So the fears, first of all, I'm happy to share mine, fear of not being loved is a big one, fear of disappointing, fear of not being seen and fear of abandonment. And I could spend hours, which I won't, on each of those. And I think knowing our deep fears that come from our construction enable us to transition from being fear driven in the deep part of the iceberg to being opportunity and potential driven. And when we start moving along that spectrum, the heart opens, we connect to it in a way that we are willing to give the keys to the heart and trust that we will always be enough and that we always have our place and that those fears while they will remain there are no longer driving our daily decisions, actions and behaviours.

Tania Cotton: We are willing to give the keys to our heart. That is a really beautiful phrase that I would like everybody to sink into the depths of their heart and let's work with that. Now the power of nine, when you introduce this to the CEOs in our course, a very intimate group of five people, I expected there to be a lot of resistance because you use energetic movements of the arms in standing to move the body with a verbal acknowledgement of what our values, talents, and aspirations are three times each, our three values, our three talents, and our three aspirations, and repeat these daily. Why is this such a powerful practice? I mean, everybody embraced it and everybody felt a benefit. I mean, is it the power of positive talk over negative self-talk? I have no idea, but you, everybody was 'On It' with you.

Jonathan Cave: It's connecting us to the central alignment line and this energy and nature which is all around us and which is within us with this foundational transformational and directional energy, which every living thing has. I think it speaks to the subconscious and the deep inner child. It reassures him or her that seven year old child inside us who has remained a child and has fears and it reassures him or her. I think most people on the surface adult trained shouldn't fear anything. They might do presentations or speeches, conferences. They know their stuff. It's not going to disappear, yet CEOs are terrified of big speeches or being on a panel in case they forget. That's not the adult who fears. It's the inner child who was triggered. And so this exercise, which I have done every single morning for the last 10 years and you could say, "Right, well you don't need to do it anymore'. It's so ingrained. It's probably automatic in you. It does me so much good by aligning me, energising me and connecting me to my inner child, reminding him of who we are, the adult Jonathan and the seven year old Jonathan, because I need him as I walk into the forest of life and the day that's waiting.

Tania Cotton: I'm talking about the forest of life and nature. I know for me to find my central line, for me to find my balance, it's critical for me to spend time in nature and also to spend time alone. What are your reflections on this?

Jonathan Cave: The more we connect to nature, the more we discover our own nature. And while we love mountains and sea and we go on holiday, my search was, well, how can I bring that natural energy into my daily life, including if I'm in a city with concrete and things around, not just on holidays to recharge. So the power of nine helps me do that. And when I'm feeling stressed or I'm feeling misaligned, I will do a power of nine exercise, which takes me one minute. In terms of being alone, I went away for three times 12 days in remote cabins to write my book because if I wanted to touch people at minus 50, minus a hundred metres, I needed to get there myself and stay there. So, the greatest gift I've ever given myself is three times 12 days isolated away from WIFI, even away from my family where the bees, the badgers and the flowers became my best friends.

Tania Cotton: And I noticed in your book you actually took the word alone and you split it into two so that it read al- one. Tell me about that.

Jonathan Cave: Phonetically, a lot of words we use including insight, which you mentioned at the beginning, insight, really being able to see in-sight. I think a lot of words have another meaning if we're tuned into this. Alone phonetically spells as al-one. So while people might fear being alone, actually it's an opportunity to be all one with yourself and with the world at large. And universe is another example. Uni-verse, and we understand that term, uni-verse: one song. What song, what instrument are you playing and what notes are you adding to the partition of life?

Tania Cotton: I love that so much. I mean, I always think of ... I've always thought my dream would be to be born as a conductor because how I see the world is I see people as different beautiful instruments and one of the favourite things that I love to do is bring different people together because I love the combinations of different beautiful people that make different beautiful sounds, getting together and playing together. And it's something that lights me up and it's something that feels very natural for me to do and that I can't stop doing somehow. It kind of is the golden thread of my life in a funny kind of way. In particular, this year I've brought people to the desert. I'm bringing people up to the Monte Rosa. We're going to be going to the Amazon. Nothing here was very planned other than there were different people playing different, you know, like different members of the orchestra who I wanted to meet each other and play together. Yes, this resonates with me. We're talking about music and vibration and resonating together. I'm so fascinated as you talk about these central lines and about values and talent and aspirations. Like in your family, do you discuss these things and talk about these things together and to appreciate the value in these things themselves must have brought you so close?

Jonathan Cave: Absolutely. I have to be careful because I'm a coach and I'm a dad, especially with the kids. So sometimes when they feel I'm going into the coach mode and talking about values, talents, aspirations, they say, "Oh, daddy's going into coach mode." And so I have to back off a little bit. But I read them the book before it was published because I wrote it for me, but I wrote it for them as well. I wanted young children and top CEOs to be able to get value at different levels from this book and they love the story of the book. Now, whether they're conscious of values, talents, aspirations, deepest fears, the way we make decisions, maybe they don't have too much life experience yet to be able to look at that with examples, but I'm hoping that a lot of seeds have been planted early, which I think we would have all appreciated, which can be watered and grow over time so that they have this inside out approach that will go with the outside in approach that society will give them regardless.

Tania Cotton: Now you launched your book at the Women's Leadership Conference and walking along the path in the mountains before this conversation, you were like, "Yes, well, it's a family affair." Because I was so delighted to see Stella and Ethan there, Stella who's 13 and Ethan who's 17. And of course your wife and then your mother who's the inspiration behind the conference and your brother. And so it was kind of a magical space in which to launch your book, but I really was tuning into them and talking to them behind the scenes like, what does it mean to them? I mean, they were so proud. It was really special for them that you could articulate this in a way that I think so many people can't. I mean, men or women are unable to articulate their deepest inner needs and insights and the practices that make them feel whole as part of a bigger whole. How was that for you?

Jonathan Cave: So they've really been on the journey with me and even though it's a fictionalised story inspired by my own story, the characters are actually the second name of my children. So Ethan Oliver Cave, there's a character called Oliver and Stella Audrey Cave. There's a character called Audrey. So they feel like they're part of the story, which is fun. In terms of having the family around, and I see this with you as well, when we're surrounded by people who we deeply and truly love, family, close friends, and we spend time with them with the aim of just connecting and being together, the magic flows out of that. This conference flew out of that. There was no intention to do six years and to get leaders from around the world. We just thought, "Hey, let's bring together inspirational women who are our friends and who we just want to bring together." And now it's become an international conference. So I firmly believe in the power of just doing things with people you love without having any final objective or result and the magic takes care of itself.

Tania Cotton: I think a lot of that ties in with knowing who you really are and no longer, just like you're not working towards the outcome, it's like you're no longer seeking validation from the outside, letting go of that and just knowing in yourself. You go with that internal knowing and trusting the wisdom in your body to take the next steps. Many of us tend to suppress our sensitivity in order to become what others expect or protect ourselves from the tough world out there. Is there a way we can reframe sensitivity as a strength instead of a weakness?

Jonathan Cave: Yes is the answer to that. Sensitivity has this negative connotation going back to expressions like boys don't cry, the cure song and girls cry too much, but sensitivity is the foundation of intuition and in leadership entrepreneurs or high achievers, that becomes that intuition, being able to listen to it, leverage it. Sourced in sensitivity is often what breaks the glass ceiling to go to the highest levels. A lot of people are very smart, mind driven, analytical experience, but it's the sensitivity. You notice the top CEOs, they will ask you a question and they will listen to your answer, but they're actually trying to figure out who is this person in front of me. Can I trust them? Are they authentic? When the going gets tough, are they going to stick around or are they going to jump? So I see over and over very senior people who have understood that their sensitivity is their superpower. They don't necessarily scream about it or talk about it at dinner tables because of the connotation and everybody has their opinion on sensitivity, but they use it to make massive advance in their company and projects. It's very impressive to see.

Tania Cotton: And now we've all experienced, I would think that feeling of feeling intimidated or being in the presence of a bully and being undermined, how can we not shrink into ourselves and lose ourselves in the presence of someone who can easily make us feel very small?

Jonathan Cave: This might shock people listening, but a bully is a gift. You might not feel that way if you've got a bully on your back right now, but here's why a bully has chosen you to come and put their finger on something and try and make you react talking about ... They can talk about anything and what they're after is power. And when we react, we give them that power and they feel satisfied and we feel terrible and they walk away and the same thing happens the next day. And this isn't just in the school yard, it can be very subtle and in a work environment or it can be anywhere. But why is a bully a gift? A bully is a gift for you to go from reacting to this person and what they're saying to responding to the same person and exactly the same thing. Reacting is emotional, uncontrolled. Responding is, "I'm in control. I still feel an emotion, but I'm aware of what's happening and I have the strength to manage my own emotions and not give the bully what he or she wants." So when you manage to do that, the bully who comes as usual trying to get their power realises something has changed. I'm not getting the same reaction and so they don't come back and see you. They go and pick on someone else. It has nothing to do with the bully. They're doing exactly the same thing. You have evolved yourself. That's the power we have inside us that a lot of people don't realise they have and we should use it.

Tania Cotton: Thank you. I think that's something that many of us need to have the opportunity to practice even and perhaps even at times it's just taking a breath and walking away, maybe disengaging, not being part of the drama. Jonathan, do you have a favourite quote you'd like to offer us as a nugget of inspiration to take away with us today?

Jonathan Cave: We've mentioned it a little bit in our discussion, but there's a quote in the book that really stands out for me and which is at the core that is: "Let your heart lead your mind execute and your energy speak for you." As I walk out every morning, that's what I say to myself. That's what I stay aligned to and it has brought me a lot of internal metrics of joy and alignment and calm and has led to external metrics as a result of those internal ones.

Tania Cotton: I'm going to stick that on my fridge. I really, really love that and now you mentioned it - Yes, that jumped out at me in the book and I remember thinking, "I need to remember that. I need to say that to myself and remind myself." Now in your book, you have the most beautiful illustrations by Olivia. Now before Olivia did the illustrations, I'd actually heard her speak at your conference and yes, Olivia and I have worked together and I had no idea at the beginning that she, as a lawyer, that she had this extraordinary talent. She's incredibly creative. How did you discover the talent within this wonderful person?

Jonathan Cave: I had an intuition coming back to sensitivity to share with her my manuscript, which was not illustrated. There was no intention of having any drawings and she kindly agreed to go through it and give me her comments, but instead of getting comments back from her, I got illustrations and what she explained to me is that she was reading and she'd have an inspiration and she'd see the image and the character on the mountain and the tree and she would just start drawing and without me having asked her without and she drew and drew and drew and so I got all these pictures back and when I saw them for the first time, I said, "Olivia, you're on the mountain and with me. There's no doubt. This is so aligned. This is how I have dreamt this and you have brought it to life. Would you be willing to illustrate my book?" And she very kindly said yes and we went on an incredible adventure. We're now connected for life and her drawings and illustrations have just given the story and the underlying meaning a whole new dimension, which I'm very grateful for.

Tania Cotton: This story gives me goosebumps actually, because you see the illustrations in your book, but I've seen so many of her creative exploits done in what I call multi-art forms using tissues and sewing and goodness and at a level you'd think that would be her professional job! And I think that speaks to the importance of self-expression because I know Olivia went on a hard journey herself in her professional life and had to go through a big transition and going and discovering the art in herself is probably what came out of that as it was her way of expressing herself and I've probably mention it on other podcasts, but I have a sincere feeling that lack of self-expression leads depression and that self-expression is critically important for all of us and we need to find our own way. And you help a lot of people find what nourishes them and their way and I would love just as many people as possible to have access to you and what you do. So how can people find out more and how can people contact you, Jonathan?

Jonathan Cave: So the book is available on Amazon if they want to read that, otherwise they can contact me by email. So Jonathan@myphy.com, M-Y-P-H-Y.com. I've also got a website, myphy.com and LinkedIn is where I ... I don't use much social media, that's the only place I go to, so please write to me. I'd love to connect and discover you and help if needed.

Tania Cotton: It's such a joy to speak to you again. It's great always to meet with you and I always use it as an excuse to walk and talk with you as well to have a good catch up. And how worthwhile that was before this conversation, because I discovered that you are about to go on a break to Hawaii with another book idea in your back pocket. Tell us more…

Jonathan Cave: Yeah. So I launched my company 10 years ago. I thought, "Hey, I'm going to give myself my 10 year gift, which is a sabbatical to Hawaii for seven weeks with my wife and two kids." And I've been dreaming about a follow up book to the first one, which is a practical 'how to live this inside out approach', dare to become who you are meant to be with practical frameworks and advice that I've been sharing with high achievers for the last 10 years. And so I will be spending a little bit of time doing that. I'll be with the family, but as we know with all families, sometimes we need also a little bit of a break. So I'll be getting up early and looking at the Hawaiian sunrise and will start writing the second book, a gift to myself and stay tuned.

Tania Cotton: I do have a feeling that everybody deserves this gift in life to recharge and to recenter yourself and to make you nourish yourself. As in sport, recovery is the most important part of training and taking time out to really look at ... We have transition phases of our lives where we need to recharge and then Melina, your wife, is definitely in that stage, is recharging before she moves forwards to a new phase in her career. And I think it's important to emphasize that just as the seasons have their phases, we need to have phases in our lives as well and that 'the power of pause' is necessary. To recenter before we move on and use our energy to the best benefit of both ourselves and all those around us. And being in nature is such a powerful way of doing this. Jonathan, thank you so much.

Jonathan Cave: Thank you. It's always so inspiring connecting and an expression of love to have this conversation with you. You're a wonderful person. I love you dearly and please keep on doing what you're doing and shining your light. It's making the world a wonderful place.

Tania Cotton: Thank you, Jonathan.