242 – Penny Kechagioglou

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Welcome everyone to another enthralling episode of the art of living proactively hosted by yours truly Tony Winyard. Today, I’m thrilled to have a poignant conversation. With the prodigious Penny Kechagioglou.

We’re peeling back the layers on what it means to live a life full of purpose. All the way from the philosophies of Greece, to the practicalities of modern day living. Don’t miss out on this enriching exchange, filled with wisdom and wit. Remember if you do enjoy the show, hit that subscribe button on your podcast player or on YouTube to stay updated with our episodes. We’d love to hear what you think. So please leave us a review and drop your comments on YouTube. And if you think this episode could inspire a friend, don’t hesitate to share it with them. Stay tuned. Sit back and let’s embark on another insightful journey together.

[00:00:59] Tony Winyard: Welcome to another edition of The Art of Living Proactively. My guest today is Penny Kechagioglou, how you doing Penny?

[00:01:08] Penny Kechagioglou: I am doing very well. How are you? Tony?

[00:01:11] Tony Winyard: I’m doing well, thank you. from your name, so you are originally Greek, are you,

[00:01:16] Penny Kechagioglou: I am indeed. Yes.

[00:01:19] Tony Winyard: so how long have you been in the uk?

[00:01:21] Penny Kechagioglou: Ah, more than half of my life, I would say. so I came to train as a doctor, when I was 17 and I never left. I fell in love with the country, fell in love with the people, the culture, and yeah, I made my family here. So here I am.

[00:01:41] Parable about being proactive

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[00:01:41] Tony Winyard: I’m gonna start the episode in a different way from how I normally do. I’m going to read this parable to you and then ask you your opinion of what you think of this.

In a lush and bountiful valley, there were two villages separated by a great river. Each year when the rainy season came, The river would swell and many villages would fall ill from a mysterious ailment after drinking its waters. In the first village, the inhabitants would wait for the illness to strike and then call upon their healer.

The healer, skilled and wise would administer herbs and remedies to soothe the symptoms. The village celebrated him for his knowledge and the relief he brought. Year after year, they endured this cycle, always reacting to the sickness, grateful for the temporary reprieve the healer could provide. In a second village, a young woman observed the patterns of the sickness.

She noticed how it always followed the rains and the rising of the river. Rather than wait for the disease to afflict her people, she proposed a solution. Let’s build a well away from the river with clean water that won’t be tainted by the rains. Many resisted questioning the effort required for such a task, but the woman persisted.

And with the help of like-minded villagers, they dug a deep well. When the next rainy season came, while the first village, once again tended to the sick. The second village remained healthy. Drinking from their untainted well. The two villages represent two approaches to health. The first is reactive.

Always waiting for problems to arise before seeking a solution. The second is proactive, observing patterns, predicting challenges, and taking action before problems occur. In life it’s often better to dig a well before you are thirsty.

[00:03:38] Penny’s thoughts on being proactive

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[00:03:38] Penny Kechagioglou: Beautiful. Oh, that was beautiful. I always love, analogies or metaphors as we call them in Greece. stories like that which give, important messages that we can apply. In day-to-day life And what’s best example at the moment? What’s happening in healthcare, isn’t it where I work, where we see everything as let’s wait for the crisis to happen and we’ll deal with it and we put the best measures out and we work fast, we work collaboratively.

Take Covid for example. What a brilliant example. And then. When things are calmer, we are not putting proactive measures for things to prevent from happening and, develop in the meantime instead of wasting energy to treat something. it would have been marvelous to be able to prevent so many illnesses.

[00:04:34] Tony Winyard: [00:04:34] How was your medical training?

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[00:04:34] Tony Winyard: I’m presuming when you first got into the medical world, would I be right in assuming most of your training is to react when people are ill, rather than anything preventative in the first place.

[00:04:47] Penny Kechagioglou: Yes. I would say in its majority our training is, learn how illnesses present and be able to treat them. but I wasn’t satisfied with just that. And that’s why when I finished my training and during my development and specialty training in oncology, I also trained in public health. Because I just wanted to understand the epidemiology of things and how we can use preventative measures to.

To prevent illness essentially, and even cancer. And and that gave me a holistic view of the healthcare system, how we can see it both ways and maybe apply both ways because we know that certain illnesses cannot be prevented. traditional medicine applies, but we can do a lot to apply prevention measures in other illnesses.

[00:05:40] You also trained as a Functional Medicine doctor?

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[00:05:42] Tony Winyard: And you trained as a functional medicine practitioner, didn’t you?

[00:05:45] Penny Kechagioglou: I have Indeed. Yes.

[00:05:48] Tony Winyard: And what was it that, how did that come about? what made you want to pursue that?

[00:05:55] Penny Kechagioglou: Similarly to, to public health. in cancer in particular, I have always been fascinated about what’s causing cancer and from my own experience seeing my own relatives, young, particularly dying, and I’m always interested in what are the risk parameters that make people sick. and as we are discussing prevention, I think there are a lot of the root cause of cancer lies in

first of all in our lifestyle choices, but also, how pressurized we are in life. Stressed in particular, the foods, what that we eat. and there’s always a physiology around this and a science around this. So I decided to look a bit deeper and go back to the physiology, which is what functional medicine is about actually.

It’s all based in science, in biochemistry and physiology. Try to explain what happens in the GI system. What happens with your microbiome? How can, Microbiome disturbance can lead to cancer, which are the pathways and what natural therapies could be used to treat or prevent. And that’s why I did the training and that’s what personalized medicine is about.

I think we need to combine our traditional knowledge with what functional medicine is telling us as well.

[00:07:23] “All disease starts in the gut”

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[00:07:23] Tony Winyard: You mentioned about the GI tracts. One of the things that you just said, and it was in your country of origin, was it 2000 years ago or something that Hippocrates said something about all disease starts in the gut.

[00:07:34] Penny Kechagioglou: indeed. Maybe that’s where my eagerness to learn about functional medicine is coming from. but yes,it’s true. and how we choose to lead our lives. The food that we choose to eat, we know that they play a huge role. in the whole chain of cancer development. As I say, not in all cases, but it’s about, taking the best of both worlds, taking the best of what we know from traditional medicine. Functional medicine is also science-based, and apply both natural and medical approaches to treat cancer, which is the area of interest of mine.

[00:08:17] When did you graduate?

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[00:08:19] Tony Winyard: so you’ve been involved in medicine for quite a while now. how long ago was it you first studied?

[00:08:24] Penny Kechagioglou: So I graduated in 2003, so 20 years,

So in that time, since you’ve gone through the training, the additional training that you’ve done with functional medicine and holistic and whatever, would you say that there’s more of an acceptance of things like functional medicine and integrative medicine now than there used to be?

[00:08:46] Penny Kechagioglou: I think that there is a lot more interest from the clinical community in studying functional medicine, which is nothing more than going back to the physiology and biochemistry, as I mentioned. Yes. Is actually going back to basing and taking a proper history from patients, understanding the factors from even from birth that may have contributed to their kind of illness and not just cancer.

I have learned through functional medicine to take a really detailed history, which has revealed so many things about the person that I have opposite me, and also help them to understand what has happened. since the birth and how they grew up as children, whether they used antibiotics, whether they had illnesses, how could that impact in their current illness?

And it helps them understand it better even cope with it better. So I think. More doctors are now looking at a holistic approach to care, which is going back, as I say, to understanding the root cause of things. there’s still a bit of skepticism in some parts of the world and I think UK is one of them, but over the last couple of years, there has been a greater movement with several associations that have helped in that regard to get more clinicians to understand.

Prevention to start applying lifestyle medicine in clinic and to look at the patient as a whole person.

[00:10:22] Why did you choose to work in oncology?

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[00:10:22] Tony Winyard: So what was it about cancer that led you in that direction in the first place?

[00:10:30] Penny Kechagioglou: Cancer is, a unique and multifaceted illness. Okay? It has so many manifestations, such a diverse symptomatology, so many causes, and it’s an illness that doesn’t just affect the person that has it, it goes through it. That affects the whole family, the whole network. The social aspect and treating not just the patient, but the whole, network around the patient is what drives me.

And I wanna see improvements in patient experience, but also care experience. I’m also very interested in the research around it, into personalized cancer care. So it’s a, it’s a specialty I guess, which is ever evolving and with a vision to finding a cure or extending life expectancy. This is what drove me to go into it and the impact that a clinician makes.

The patient, on the patient and on their family is huge, and it’s about building the relationship and making sure that from the diagnosis through to treatment and survivorship, you look after the whole person. I think that’s a, it’s an amazing thing to do, so I thoroughly enjoy my work.

[00:11:55] Treating the symptoms rather than the cause

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[00:11:55] Tony Winyard: My perception, correct me if I’m wrong here, but the perception I have around cancer and funding, it seems that there’s far more funding goes into researching, drugs when someone already has cancer and hardly any funding into how to stop it in and lifestyle and preventative measures to try to stop people getting cancer in the first place.

[00:12:23] Penny Kechagioglou: Sure. I think one of the reasons is, I agree with you that cancer mutates and cancer changes according to what treatment we give, and it’s unlike antibiotics, new bacteria get developed or different characters. In the same bacterium. Hence why we’ve got Covid and so many other illnesses and different types of influenza and what are we trying to do?

Find vaccines and fight drugs to actually combat those illnesses. it’s similar, okay. We are trying to make people longer and we use traditional medicine methods to say, okay, you’ve got cancer. we’re gonna stop this from progressing. We are gonna make you live longer. Then we don’t, we forget to look upstream and say, okay, you’ve got cancer, but why did you get that in the first place?

who else has got cancer in your family? what has happened to your life the last couple of years? Did anything change that led you to this? and I think people have started to look into this, but we need to do more because we need to look more upstream to stop people getting the illness in the first place.

[00:13:33] Cancer, genetics and environment

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[00:13:33] Tony Winyard: something you just said then there about, I forget exactly how you said it, but you said, so who else in your family has got cancer? So is it a case then? If one person does get cancer, that other people in that household should take extra measures or maybe go and get some sort of screenings or whatever.

[00:13:53] Penny Kechagioglou: not necessarily. Okay. So we know some cancers are caused by, one in four cancers are caused by lifestyle factors we talked about. They’re not necessarily genetic, but a family that may eat the same diet. They may have the same habits. So if let’s say we address lifestyle habits in the person who has cancer, it’s an opportunity to improve the lifestyle habits for the whole family to prevent others. getting the same. and then we’ve got the other category where there may be cancers that do run in the family with known genes that we could do something about for the next generations. For the same patients, there may be other cancers, which is somewhere in between. There may not be a specific gene that runs in every member of the family, but there is some connection and these are the families where we need to look at.

Okay, making sure that female members get all the mammograms, on time they get the survivor screening, on time, the lung screening if they’re smokers. So there’s a still a lot that we can do. To prevent or detect early where we know the cancer is more curable.

[00:15:06] Penny’s magic wand for health

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[00:15:06] Tony Winyard: Say if I had a magic wand and I gave you the power for one day, you could make one major change in the uk. Around health measures, what change would you make?

[00:15:21] Penny Kechagioglou: Ah, just one. I wanna do more than one. the one change I would make is I would make exercise or physical activity something that’s prescribed routinely. it’s almost You go for your screening, you know you need to go. You choose not to attend, but you need to do it. I want every patient that, or not patient, every member, every citizen, let’s say to have a physical activity, stroke, exercise plan from the primary physician for a primary doctor, from nurse in the community.

According to what people can do, of course. So a personalized physical activity and exercise prescription. I think if we did that from childhood age throughout the schools, universities, adulthood, all the populations will be healthier.

[00:16:22] Tony Winyard: So I wonder if, for example, it’s unlikely to happen, but something that will be great if the government did some kind of funding so everyone had access to a local gym,it was much cheaper to attend a local gym, for example.

[00:16:37] Contact with nature

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[00:16:39] Penny Kechagioglou: That would be one measure. people don’t necessarily need to go to a gym to exercise or do physical activity. so I wouldn’t say that everybody needs to go to a gym. There are so many opportunities outdoors in this beautiful country for people to get in contact with nature. Whether on their own or with their friends.

and there are so many benefits from going out there and have that contact with nature. So if that, that would be my preference for most people. But of course, people work. They’ve got busy lives and sometimes the gym is the only option. And I agree. I think it would be good for people who don’t have any other, option or they can’t afford to do anything or go out, or they don’t have the place that they can go out.

Then subsidized, gym memberships it’s a good alternative solution, but we should encourage people to actually take advantage of the physical environment to do exercise. That’s my view anyway.

[00:17:44] Working for The Cancer Coach and Tree of Life

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[00:17:44] Tony Winyard: So I know you’ve been working with the cancer coach. how did you get involved with the cancer coach and maybe you could inform people as to what is the cancer coach?

[00:17:52] Penny Kechagioglou: Sure. So I have been trained as a health coach and again, that has been one of my most cherished training in my life, which has helped me as a person, also as a professional, and understanding my patients better, listening to them, and also improve my own leadership skills and my relationship with my colleagues and my friends and family.

So I place huge value in health coaching for lifestyle change, for prevention, and for health and wellbeing, for patients with cancer and with any other illness, but for healthy people as well. So I have seen the effects that has. People on me, on patients. And when I heard that Luke Watts who is the CEO of the cancer coach is bringing a tailor made program to the UK for patients with cancer and aims at that anti- cancer lifestyle.

The prevention element, which is missing in our healthcare system. I got very excited. so I met with Luke and he talked me through his vision and he talked me through his work in other countries, which has been very successful. I’ve read about the testimonies and I’ve read about, the health coaching team.

I met a lot of them. so we decided to, I should join the team as a clinical strategist and just bring that knowledge from oncology in general, but also the functional medicine element, the health coaching aspect, and how to put everything together. So we launched this Tree of Life program in the uk, which is already running in other countries as well.

And we are hoping that more and more patients and also healthy people, employees or people who don’t work can join and they can take it step-by-step, start from where they are, whether they have had a cancer diagnosis or they want to prevent cancer from happening. This is a very good evidence-based program for people to start from and they have the opportunity to have one-to-one or group co health coaching as well.

So I’m really excited to, to be part of this actually, because that’s what we need in the UK at present.

[00:20:25] Could this change how we approach cancer?

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[00:20:25] Tony Winyard: Do you think this could make quite a difference to how we typically treat cancer in the uk?

[00:20:33] Penny Kechagioglou: I honestly do. Obviously this should be seen in collaboration with other, other programs. There are lots of charities, for example, that support patients in many ways. it’s not a program that prescribes or recommends a treatment, but it’s a program that aims at that upstream element of the illness, which is, our lifestyle.

We know one in four cancers are caused by our lifestyle habits. How can we get to the point where we get that control and we change step by step the elements that we have control of and people who suffer from cancer at any stage in the journey would say that the most important element is to have that control, understand the illness, understand what they have been doing, what they want to change, what they value most.

And this is what the program is about.

[00:21:34] Tony Winyard: [00:21:34] What is digital health?

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[00:21:34] Tony Winyard: Part of the program, involves digital health. Could you explain maybe more what Digital Health is?

[00:21:40] Penny Kechagioglou: so digital health is using, digital means technology, could be access through, a mobile phone and app. The program is accessible through an app, is accessible through any digital means. It’s about creating that community. I think digital health brings that capability of linking people together.

From different parts of the country, but also from different countries, and that is very powerful. and digital health offers also personal monitoring. So you can link your devices with a software that can monitor your heart rate variability, your oxygen levels, so you can do a lot of self-monitoring as well.

To check, the state of your health before and after doing the program, but for me is the network and the capability of joining webinars, joining discussion forums, messages, contacting a coach, and having that one-to-one on a virtual consultation. These are all things that would never have been possible without digital health.

[00:22:54] How important is community?

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[00:22:54] Tony Winyard: One of the things you mentioned there was community. how important do you think community is in this?

[00:22:59] Penny Kechagioglou: Extremely important. there’s evidence that social isolation can increase the risk of cancer. Okay. This is a very well known statistic, and it’s important that particular patients who are already diagnosed, that they build that community of support, to exchange ideas, to check what they’re doing is right to even get motivated.

But even people without cancer or having other illnesses, having a strong community really can help them,Get courage to, to go through that journey of illness, to get through treatment. they have somebody who can say, yes, it’s okay. It’s normal. they have their clinician 24 7 to be able to answer that question.

So having a community of people who understand and they’ve been through the same, is absolutely fundamental. And also, to have fun, not just talk about the illness, talk about everyday stuff and share good things, I think is amazing.

[00:24:03] How does The Tree of Life work?

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[00:24:03] Tony Winyard: The Tree of Life is not just about the online element of it. There’s also going to be a face-to-face element as well, isn’t there?

[00:24:12] Penny Kechagioglou: absolutely. and again, that’s again very important. having that option to meet people face to face is absolutely critical, isn’t it? We saw how difficult it was during the pandemic to do all the consultations online, and then when things come down, people started to come to clinic, and I think that physical contact is extremely important.

[00:24:35] Covid and handshakes

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[00:24:35] Tony Winyard: So you said that, so now people are coming back to the clinic, and obviously during Covid handshakes were outlawed almost. You’re not allowed to shake hands. Do you think people are still quite scared to, to shake hands or how is that now?

[00:24:47] Penny Kechagioglou: It’s improving slowly and it’s wonderful to see, and have this physical contact. and again, Touch is something extremely important. We know that, there’s therapeutic touch, isn’t it? It’s not just the handshake, the handshakes about that building that relationship at the beginning with the patient, but actually a therapeutic touch is extremely important.

For patients to reduce anxiety, build trust. So having that eye to eye contact in clinic, be able to handshake. And sometimes we do, hug because these are situations that can be very emotional and, you live with people throughout the journey for sometimes for years and. And you do build that relationship.

So it’s, and people do need it some time to, to show their appreciation. So all of that is such wonderful humane gestures.

[00:25:44] Your thoughts on anxiety levels?

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[00:25:44] Tony Winyard: What would you say about the level of anxiety now generally in uk?

[00:25:51] Penny Kechagioglou: you refer to Covid?

[00:25:53] Tony Winyard: In general.

[00:25:55] Penny Kechagioglou: In general. Okay. I would say there is a lot of anxiety, at the moment. There is, I think, anxiety about. The complexity of the treatments, I would probably say my clinic time has probably increased by about 20% because of the complexity of the regimes. and people get overwhelmed. Okay. And sometimes you have to break the consultation into two to be able to get through the whole treatment plan.

And that, that can be quite daunting for people. I think the other anxiety is about, is about delays in making sure, people are worried, am I going to get my scan on time? Am I going to get a treatment on time? That creates natural anxiety. And I think the third one is about that integration piece of how people can combine complementary and traditional therapies and

we know about 50% or more of patients are using integrative oncology approaches, but they’re anxious that if they mention to their clinical teams, they’re not going to understand and approve, and that creates anxiety. So I think clinicians, we need to be open and be able to discuss patients if, for example, using supplements or they’re willing to

try anything like acupuncture for symptoms, we need to be open and receptive about these things and also, to advise them when things should not be done.

[00:27:30] The NHS and health coaches

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[00:27:30] Tony Winyard: You mentioned before about health coaching and how important you think it is, and from my understanding, the NHS are being more receptive now to health coaches.

[00:27:40] Penny Kechagioglou: The N H S has, you are absolutely right. I think there has been a concerted effort to recruit more health coaches, particularly in primary care. I’m not entirely sure whether that movement has been strategic, if that makes sense. or as strategic as I would have liked to see this. in terms of who are the people recruited?

What training have they done and where are they placed? Where would they add more value? So I don’t think, I have seen or we have seen yet the positive effect out of this. And I think there is more work to be done, in my view, to see how we can recruit health coaches in the secondary care, or how can we link between secondary and primary care and refer patients there?

So that referral and clinical pathway has not been set up.

[00:28:38] Tony Winyard: Do you think that will improve in the next few years?

[00:28:43] Penny Kechagioglou: I would hope so. I would like to see with people like me, like minded individuals like you and the cancer coach and other associations, we can create that pressure and we can spread the word that actually health coaching does work. And it could be the answer to the gap in preventive medicine that we have at present, and I truly believe that it is.

[00:29:10] How might the NHS change in the future?

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[00:29:10] Tony Winyard: If I was to ask you to look into a crystal ball, I don’t know if you believe in crystal balls, but if you were to look into one, how do you think things might change in health, NHS in the next 5, 10 years?

[00:29:26] Penny Kechagioglou: you don’t need a crystal ball to, to see that things are changing. and things are gonna have to change because there’s no other way around this. I think the fact that we’ve got now the integrated care systems and we are working collaboratively within systems. There’s gonna be more and more pressure to look at people in population health rather than being reactive or just reactive and dealing with a illness when it comes.

So we already see a big movement towards virtual wards, remote patient monitoring, treating people at home. We see hospital care at home. In the majority of providers at the moment. So that’s a big change compared to a couple of years ago. So I don’t think we are very far away from this. Preventative program or preventive medicine.

and you never know. I might start doing home visits in the future, which to be honest, I would love to, and be able to keep people at home. And we may see health coaches regularly seeing patients or through digital means, be able to consult patients more regularly as secondary prevention.

[00:30:44] Tony Winyard: Are there any questions or areas of what you do that I haven’t asked you a question about that you think it would be useful for people to know?

[00:30:54] There are lots of changes happening in oncology

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[00:30:54] Penny Kechagioglou: I think, what can I say? I’m quite involved with a lot of things. I’ve been a co-chair of the British Society of Interpretive Oncology over the past couple of years with one of my colleagues and I’ve seen quite a big change in the healthcare professional world in terms of being more receptive with the concept of functional medicine, integrative medicine, lifestyle medicine, and I’ve been particularly delighted to see that.

So I can now say that, I can ring three or four of my oncology colleagues and talk about this and something that I would never be able to do, have been able to do a couple of years ago. So I’m seeing a change and I love that change. And obviously the work that I’m doing with The Cancer Coach is very important.

the app that myself and Nina have built together to make integrative oncology free for people to access and democratize digital health. so I will continue, I would say, alongside the rest of my roles in the N H S to do that because I truly believe that this will have impact in now this generation’s health and next generation’s health.

[00:32:15] Writing a book with Katherine Steele

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[00:32:15] Tony Winyard: I mentioned before, a little while ago, I spoke with Katherine Steele, she was a guest on this podcast. And you are writing a book with Katherine?

[00:32:23] Penny Kechagioglou: I am writing a book with Katherine. Yes. One of the books I’m writing is one with Katherine.

[00:32:30] Tony Winyard: One of, so you’re writing Okay.

[00:32:33] Penny Kechagioglou: Yeah, I’ve written a book already. it’s a bit more scientific, on leadership and innovation in healthcare, but I’m writing a book with Dr Nina Fuller-Shavel, my co-chair of the BSIO around integrative oncology in breast cancer, which is due to be published in September sometime. And yes, we are preparing a book with Katherine around workplace wellbeing.

[00:32:57] Tony Winyard: And so the book that’s coming out in September, who is that aimed at?

[00:33:02] Penny Kechagioglou: It is aimed at patients with breast cancer. and it talks about integrative oncology approaches from an evidence-based clinical perspective. So it covers from the epidemiology to public health, we talk about and from the whole journey of the patients, from diagnosis to treatment to survivorship and end of life, how integrative oncology approaches can benefit patients.

[00:33:33] Tony Winyard: The thing that’s going through my head at the moment is I’m wondering how on earth you found time to do a book with all of the other things that you’re involved in, because she seems to be involved in so many things at the moment.

[00:33:46] Penny Kechagioglou: Tony, when the things that you brings you into flow, you probably ask a lot of your clients about this. The one thing that brings me into flow is writing. So you find the time, don’t you?

[00:33:59] Which book has moved you?

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[00:33:59] Tony Winyard: Absolutely. staying with books, can you think of a book that has moved you at any time in your life?

[00:34:07] Penny Kechagioglou: Yes. it was a book I read. I think I was a trainee oncology trainee. it was called Because Cowards Get Cancer Too. and yeah, it was, it was very interesting the way people generally live their lives and they don’t expect anything bad to happen and then, they wish they could have done something and they could have lived their lives

some somehow differently. And when we suddenly get an illness and we think, okay, I need to change this, I need to change that. and I always say, why can’t we change it now when we are healthy? why do we need to wait for something to happen before we make that change?

And before we make that Brave move. What? What? Who’s gonna judge us? Who’s gonna stop it? So it made me really think about how I wanna live life. And you know how I want people to be encouraged to live the life that they really wanna live?

[00:35:11] How to contact Penny

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[00:35:11] Tony Winyard: If people want to find out more about you, Penny, where would they look?

[00:35:15] Penny Kechagioglou: Oh, they have to just ring me and talk to me.

[00:35:19] Tony Winyard: Okay.

[00:35:21] Penny Kechagioglou: Yes. if you Google me, you’ll find me. so yeah, if people wanna get to know me, they need to talk to me. that’s what I would say. Or they can read my books or both.

[00:35:33] Tony Winyard: I’ll put links to the books and anything else in, in the show notes. So finally, is there, can you think of a quotation that resonates with you for any reason?

[00:35:43] Favourite quote

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[00:35:44] Penny Kechagioglou: yes, there is one. I might not say it exactly, how it was said, but Branson has said, You first say yes to something and then you find the way how to do this. And this goes back to the value of bravery that I mentioned, that we lead our lives, what we should lead our lives, and do the things that sometimes we fear most, but we should not live

with fear. If we wanna do something, let’s do something now. And it doesn’t have to be perfect. I think if we love something too much, and we are passionate about it, do it.

[00:36:26] Tony Winyard: I think that’s a great note to, to end the recording and so thank you Penny. Thank you for your

[00:36:30] Penny Kechagioglou: Thank you, Tony.

[00:36:31] Tony Winyard: I, I’m sure people are gonna have learned. A lot from this, so thank you.

[00:36:34] Penny Kechagioglou: Thank you very much.

[00:36:35] Next weeks episode

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[00:36:35] Tony Winyard: If you’re seeking sensational strategies for self-improvement. You won’t want to miss next week’s episode of the art of living proactively. My guest Jeff Seckendorf shares scintillating insights that are bound to shift your perspectives. Get ready to journey through the sunny streets of San Diego as we dive deep into topics that will transform your daily life. From perfecting your personal routine to cultivating a courageous mindset. Jeff’s wisdom is a treasure trove you won’t want to overlook. So mark your calendars and prepare to be profoundly inspired. And don’t forget to subscribe to the show on your preferred podcast player and YouTube. If you’ve enjoyed our content please leave us a review and feel free to comment on YouTube. And do us a favour, share this week’s episode with your friends and amplify the art of living proactively.