Polly Bateman

Jingle 0:00

Habits in health episode 58. Welcome to the habits and health podcast, where we believe creating healthy habits should be easy. Brought to you by an educator and coach for anyone who wants to create a healthier life. Here’s your host, Tony Winyard.

Tony Winyard 0:19

Welcome to another edition of habits and health. I think you’re gonna love this episode. My guest is Polly Bateman. She’s straight talking, empathetic, she’s very humorous. She’s a mindset and performance mentor. And she kind of sets out to disrupt your beliefs and break through to self imposed barriers that we tend to put on ourselves. It’s, well I believe, it’s a really interesting conversation. I’m definitely hoping that we’re going to have Polly back for another episode because there was so many. When I asked a few questions I asked her and the answers that she gave. There were so many different avenues. I wanted to explore the things that she talked about that we just didn’t get time. This may be one of the longest episodes, but there was so much more I did want to explore with Polly, so we’ll almost certainly be doing at least one more episode. with Polly. So hope you enjoy this week’s episode. If you do know anyone who would get some real value from some of the mindset stuff that Polly talks about. Please do share the episode with them and hope you enjoy this show.

Habits and health my guest today Polly Bateman. How are you, Polly?

Polly Bateman 1:35

I’m good. Thank you on this grey and drizzly morning.

Tony Winyard 1:41

Where abouts are you? I know you’re in the UK. Where in the UK are you?

Polly Bateman 1:45

If you looked at London on the map, I’m just over to the left in Hampshire.

Tony Winyard 1:48

Okay, so I’m not so far from you. I’m in Gloucestershire

Polly Bateman 1:52

Yeah, not too far away at all.

Tony Winyard 1:55

And I know you’re big into mindset and performance and so on. So do you want to tell us a little bit more about what it is that you do and how you got into that?

Polly Bateman 2:08

I started off, very entrepreneurially minded to begin with and didn’t really enjoy working with people, I enjoyed businesses that specifically kept me away from people. Because I kind of liked doing things my way. And it wasn’t a case of my way or the highway, I was just very driven. I’m very focused and felt like lots of people of my own age weren’t so much, you know, but I was driven from a sort of 18 years old onwards. So quite an unusual younger person, for sure. I’m far more and far cooler. Now I’m older than I was back then. I don’t know if I am cool. But I know I’m cooler than I was when I was a geeky, 18 year old. And I was I was trained up in retail and management. So as bad as far away from people and health as you could get in many senses, because it was back in the day, I’m not back at all. But it was back in the day when you did whatever you did to get the job done. And you know, your health and your well being were not a priority, particularly. So it wasn’t seen like that. In fact, it was almost seen as a weakness, you know, and sick days were frowned upon and things you know why people might have them and mental health wasn’t even a term that people used in the workspace back then. So ultimately, I trained up in that environment became self employed very, very quickly. By the age of 21. I was self employed and remain safe for 10 years. And then a chance conversation with somebody told me about a job working for the defence medical welfare service that I thought sounded really cool. And I had no real idea of what it would entail. But I had three brothers, who were military, and as a result in different in different ways as well. So as a result, I was like, I like that environment. That sounds fun, because the defence medical welfare system looks after military personnel and their families when they go human down. And of course, they rarely anywhere near home. So I did that job for four years. And it was pretty amazing. And it really opened me up to a world of observing people when they are lost and confused or frightened or, you know, which has what happens when we are unwell. And I really noticed patterns of human beings as well. And I remember one particular young man who I struggled to think very much of him to be honest, he was in the military and he’d had a little accident we’d fallen off the pavement and in the process of falling off the pavement had seriously damaged his leg that I’m okay with. What I found difficult to be with is his legs develop this kind of weird swelling where it was twice the size of the other leg. And it was very, very clear he would like to spend the day with the curtain wrap round him and would dangle his leg off the bed to keep it full of fluid. And I remember observing There’s something what is going on here, this guy doesn’t want to get better. And there was a time when I, we talked to him and I was sort of giving him a little bit of a pep talk release. I’m saying, you know, you need to get yourself back to work, you’ve got a wife with a baby. And he looked at me, aghast, and said, Well, I’m done. Now she can go to work or look after the kids. I’m not doing it anymore. I’m handicapped now. And I remember observing it and being so stung that somebody would want to be set up like that for the future. And this was a young 20 something year old. What I understood, and I’m not judging him, I’m just observing the watts so and how I felt at the time, is that that got me really interested in what was have him think that that was his best option that ill health, what what did he need to have a big fat excuse and a big fat reason? And I don’t mean excuse doesn’t he’s using it as an excuse, but it’s a great reason, right? Then step off reality, and take a backseat, why did the world stress him so much, that that’s how it worked for him. So that was fascinating to me, and probably began the switch of observing people very differently, down to the fact that even when people had cancer, I noticed the different cancers carried different personality traits in the host of the cancer, the person who had it that sounds very cold and clinical. But it’s been factual. And I noticed, I kind of got this gut feeling about who would recover and who wouldn’t. And I noticed that their mindset was a huge part of this. And also the familial situation, the people that were very alone and weren’t feeling very loved, were far less likely to do well and disappeared much more quickly from this plane than those that had huge families and an awful lot of love around them that probably gave them more reason to want to get better and to live. So when, when I met and married my military husband, which I swore I wouldn’t do.

I very much decided that it felt very natural, working with people and training up as a coach at the time, felt very natural to me. So I trained up as a good old fashioned life coach back then. But very quickly notice that when people used to say to me, you know, oh, are you a life coach, I would be like, Oh, sort of. And I knew that life coaching, you know, a bit of life laundry wasn’t really what I wanted to be about, it didn’t have enough gravitas for me. So I set about a process. Of course, after course, after course, the eternal study, more than one coaching course, clinical, hypnotherapy, NLP. And then slowly was moving through different modalities. Then I got to psycho neuro immunology, which is the mind body connection and went Hello. And that really sparked an interest in me. But that aside, I don’t think I became the coach I am today until a moment in time, that caused me to stop and take a long, hard look in the mirror, which was a year when I found myself completely alone with my husband away in the Middle East. And our only child had just started boarding school because we were a mobile family constantly moving around. And he was fine. He’s an only child. So he was thrilled. You know, but that that only child bit was also a deep pain point for me, because I’d had six miscarriages at that point. And I had another one in the bank, but just didn’t know it. And the process of taking a long, hard luck of how I ended up with such a small family and so alone in a situation I never thought I’d find myself in. And it started off as curiosity. And then I think definitely later on in the year, there was a psychiatrist, friend of mine, I was just casually chatting to and I said, you know, don’t need a doctor, I think I might be a little bit depressed. And she went darling, I have no doubt that you are depressed at the moment. And it was like, Ah, so he knew that it was a time of internal reflection and that I had a kind of hit a wall. And I knew I couldn’t be coaching anybody. When I was in that mindset. And the journey I went on then was a deep dive into why do I do what I do think what I think and feel the way I feel? What has had me show up in the world the way I do, what has what is it that I’m seeing in other people the patterns that they see in their health and their well being and how they behave and and how do we get there? And I wasn’t really planning on working out for anybody else. At the time. I was mainly planning on just working it out for me. I was like how do I walk myself back to A Life I actually love and away from this. And I discovered something really profound in that we we spend our time looking outwards, you know what’s on the horizon? What’s over there? Oh, you’re the reason I’m here. Oh, it’s been cuz you’re in the military, so I have to move around. Oh, it’s because of that, that I can’t get a decent career going because we’re always on the move. You know, you look for justifications to explain your current circumstances. And it’s a bittersweet moment, the day you discover truly that you’re in the driving seat. Because there is a moment of honesty we have to have with ourselves off, like all I put me here, I did this to me. And there’s equally the moment of like, Whoa, I didn’t know I had the steering wheel, you know. And it’s a funny old moment of taking responsibility for your life fully, and understanding that you created everything, on some level, even the bad stuff, which is so difficult for people to hear at the front end, you know, of any work that I do. And it’s interesting, I have a curriculum I’ve put together now where this reality hit me of. Now I see how we get to where we get. And I walk past people in various states of health frequently, observing them. And my heart kind of goes out to them that they don’t know that there’s actually another way

I see them people in pushchairs, wheelchairs, I mean, not pushed as well, obviously, we there are people in push jazz as well, but they’re there, I see adults in wheelchairs, and, and I see how they are being run around after by the rest of the family. And I look at what’s being created there. Now, obviously, I don’t know their independence circumstances. And I understand that there are all sorts of things that happened to us. I’m not judging it and saying they shouldn’t be there. But sometimes I’ve seen them jump up, and pull a skirt up to their body in a shop and move around the rack easily enough and then get back in the wheelchair. And I’m I’m bemused how this is working for them. You know, in the the nanny state kind of thinking that we’ve got of dear government, please tell me how I need to live my life. What should I do now? Should I stay indoors? Or should I go out? What should I eat? Should I wear a mouth? Should I have another vaccination? What do you say about the vaccination? And I mean, I’m not going to get into all of that. But I’m just, I’m blown away by the lack of responsibility. People take for their own health and life. Because, you know, can you imagine how frightening for them it would be if they found out they were actually in charge of this? Can you imagine what a big job they’d have on their hands. And I have been to talks, though, there was a profound talk, I went to have a lady who, when she was diagnosed with cancer, was really against any conventional medicine, because she felt it was akin to cut burning and poisoning her body felt like it was like killing for peace, it just didn’t fit for her in any way, shape, or form. And of course, you know, there are various nuances to this mind to this perspective, I am thoroughly aware of that. And there are different circumstances and sometimes we need a medical leg up to help us get somewhere and the medical lega will have sometimes break the emotional block as well, at the same time. You know, I’m not saying that, that isn’t something to turn to ever. But this lady said that she tried every therapy that there was, you know, and I just want to be really straight about her journey here. She tried the green juice, the Gerson therapy, she tried. You know, she turmeric and black pepper and all the things that we know that are anti inflammatory, and she lived a clean and organic life and, and the cancer got worse. And eventually she was moved to a hospice and she knew she was in the final days, she still wasn’t taking any medication. And she was in a tremendous amount of pain. And the cancer had spread through all her organs and into her bones. And she said it was she was really conflicted about dying because she had a son, and she didn’t want to leave him. Without her. I think he was a little bit older, but she still didn’t want to leave him. And she said, while she was there in the hospice, she suddenly had an epiphany moment, that inside the very heart of a cell, there is nothing. It’s empty. And she got there for that at the very heart. She was healthy.

She knew she was profoundly healthy on a deep level. And that day, the cancer began to recede. And it was two years later, she was stood in front of us, telling us this, that profound knowledge of pure health inside of her had changed everything. And it flipped it around. She was she was carrying a walking stick and leaning on it because her bones were still recovering. But her body was entirely recovering. And it’s so challenging for people who don’t want to die and do have cancer who who can’t get to that space. Have that epiphany moment but the people that I’ve seen Do you recover from cancer have an awakening of some kind, they have a mental shift. That’s a paradigm shift. And it changes the way they view the world. You know, I know one lady who had cancer before I met her, and the way she talks about it, she’s like, Oh, I’m one of the lucky ones, you know, I know, I see. You know, and it’s like, such a beautiful way to talk about it and to observe it. And, of course, there’s so many more complications to it, just while I’m on such a punishing subject, you know, children get cancer, and that’s desperately difficult for us to understand. And their thinking is so much cleaner than all of ours. But you know, it goes back to, that’s when it starts going back to epigenetics, which is where our genetics have got these tags on them that are dictating whether our gene expression is on or off. And our environment really does play a huge part in this role. And actually, what I realised when epigenetics became the thing was that actually, this is exactly what I had done as a coach, I had discovered in that year of self reflection, and all the work that I did on myself over the next 18 months, was that we actually get coded as human beings, and the coding, decides how we’re going to be coding was running you. And the coding starts, as soon as we’re becoming conscious of everything that’s going on around us. So from that moment that you go to school, and they go, Oh, look at your shoes, and it’s just your friends, right, there is a coding moment, to follow trends and to be like the others, you know, you put your hand up in the classroom and you get laughed at. Right there is a moment of caution born, that will tell you to be really mindful of knowing the answer or avoid putting your hands up and walk into a classroom of 17 year olds and ask them a question and see how few actually wants to put the hands up and how they will look at the ground. That’s a lesson we all learn in some dangerous putting yourself out there because you might get it wrong. And I fundamentally understood that we are coded through cause and effect. And when the effect is unpleasant, we see ourselves as the cause. And we’re coded through right and wrong. Because when we learned wrong, through our caregivers, whoever they were from parents, to teachers, to your mates, Mom, where you were having a sleep sleepover, you know any of these things, as you learn this process, you very much also learn shame. You learn how dangerous it was to upset the people that were caring for you. And you were so small and dependent. You needed them. And then what happens is you develop this idea that you’re wrong. We never question. They’re wrong. elbows off the table. Oh, that’s me. I’m such a sloppy eater, you know, and getting your homework wrong, big red marks all the way through your work. I don’t know how to do this. I’m wrong. And we develop this idea, which is most arguments today are about proving who’s right and who’s wrong. And that can happen even when it’s a silly argument about the dishwasher. Don’t put the glasses there. I’ve told you before. Oh, you always say that they do get washed. But there’s a subtext underneath this that says, I’ve asked you not to put the glasses then why do you keep ignoring me? Why am I not enough to be heard? And the other person is saying, You are enough. I just forget. And please don’t point out my enoughness and forgetting, because if you point that out, then you’ll know I’m not enough. Because maybe that’s a truth, and I’m terrified. That’s a truth. That’s the real conversation that’s going on. But it looks like we’re arguing about where the glasses go in the dishwasher. But there’s a much more profound conversation. You know, we have three fears only as a human being Am I safe? Am I loved? And am I enough? Those are our three fears. Without those three fears, you’re fine. So think back to the next time last time you had an argument and even the next time you have one consider which one of those three has been triggered.

Tony Winyard 19:03

There’s a lot to unpack in what you said. One of the things that I was thinking as you were speaking then; you mentioned about when you had these moments of self awareness and you started kind of looking at yourself more how long ago was that?

Polly Bateman 19:18

2016 started right at the end of 2016. He was away for the whole year. And I think it was around the July August time I started to realise I was not a happy bunny. And I was bored I was over I’ve trained in to understand what a six month tour feels like when we were in a new territory at seven a nine or you know and I yeah, I was really struggling by then. And my son was noticing it you know he’d gone from being his normal happycow self to starting to get almost daily phone calls which stopped the minute Tom came back. He was obviously his environment was often was checking where are you parents? Are you there? And like I said these daily phone calls that I was getting, they were happy. He was fine. He just I noticed the increase in phone call, he needed to know, he would have also been picking up on the vibe that I was emitting that I wasn’t as happy as I had been, he would have been checking in on me. And we think that we hide things from children. We don’t they really just like books that they know, they might not consciously be able to compute it. But they know,

Tony Winyard 20:20

So six years ago, and so how much has your thinking changed in those last six years?

Polly Bateman 20:30

Well, I thought Tom was the problem before the husband, I thought his job was the problem, I thought moving all the time was the problem. And that that explained everything. But here I am married to the same man who is just as busy as he always was. And yet I have an entirely different life and an entirely different business, because my thinking shifted, and so did the view. And, you know, it’s not just a case of this is something I fought as I went through this process of realising, when I did the work, what I got to was a place of understanding about how I viewed myself. My My father had never been in my life as a little girl, for all sorts of complicated reasons, which I’m very open about, but then they’re not particularly juicy. Because he didn’t really feel particularly up to parenting. My mother decided she didn’t like him very much, she left him and he basically said, Well, I’m not paying for a kid, if I’m not there, then. And, you know, I’m sure he had his reasons. And I definitely know since I’ve revisited him as an adult, that he has his own trauma as well. And I’m very clear about that, that he’s suffering from post traumatic stress disorder, from his time, actually, in the military, interestingly, that that would then become my environment on some level too. And,

and then my mother, eventually, I think she had a very low opinion, I was a teenage pregnancy, she was 19 when she got pregnant with me. And I think that, you know, sadly, back in those days, I’m told that if you got on the bus without a ring on your finger, everybody tattered at you, you know, he was seen as the, the local naughty one holder, don’t be hanging out with her, you know, sort of thing. And, and I think my mother experienced a lot of shame around that. Whereas actually, we didn’t have sexual education back then. And nine times out of 10, people didn’t even know, there’s a wonderful film out called Philomena. And the the the lead role is played by Judi Dench. And, you know, she very loudly announces as the character at one point what I didn’t even know I had a clitoris, you know, people didn’t know anything about their genitals really, and how they worked. But beyond the basics. And you know, I’m not saying that my mother didn’t know, I don’t know whether she did or not, I’ve actually never asked her Did you know what was going on. But basically, I was born the day after her 20th birthday. And I know now she was just a child when she had me. But she had a very low self esteem. And the next relationship she got after my father that was significant was my stepfather, who was very abusive. He was very controlling, very violent, and he used to demean her a lot. And of course, I have had a huge insight into domestic violence, having lived through that as a child. And I know that it comes with a mindset that believes on some level, they kind of deserve it, and they wouldn’t get any better, but also a mindset that fears rejection. So it’s way easier to stay with Better the devil, you know, because you’re so scared of being out there on your own. And, you know, I had my own version of that it was nowhere near as deep as, as my mother’s had been. But I definitely had my own version. And I could be needy in relationships, and I hated it. And he broke up with me, I was a heap on the floor crying. And I’ve been out, you know, I’ve had boyfriends that I didn’t even particularly like that much, but I thought it was all I could get. And this unpacking of who I was, really showed me that I had a view of myself that had been developed around you see, we write stories based on the circumstances we find ourselves in. The problem is, your young brain is so developmentally immature, that it cannot create the full picture for you. So if you love a teacher, and then the teacher is in a bad mood, one day, you will literally take what you know about the world and fit it into what’s happening. And so that would be something along the lines of, you know, oh, the teacher doesn’t like me, or no, you know, and then you become withdrawn from that teacher. What you don’t know if maybe that the teachers husband walked out on them or or wife walked out on them last night or that they’ve got a migraine or, you know, you have no capacity to understand that there’s a bigger picture and that’s not how they normally are less than we need to give them a wide berth today, let’s make a record. We don’t really have that capacity to to think outside of ourselves and know that, you know, we’re meant to be selfish as children. The problem is, those stories that get written go in and become a narrative about yourself. And then we grow up thinking people don’t really like me. Or, you know, I used to say, I think I’m Marmite for people, people either love me or hate me. I mean, what a terrible thing to think that people might hate me what was so wrong with me that I could be loathsome. But that was the thinking I had. Because I probably develop that around my father isn’t here. So he hates me and my mother is, well, she liked me that much, I think she’s pretty stressful. So dealing with everything she was dealing with. And I definitely made that mean, something, I made it mean that she didn’t like me that much. And so all those narratives, they grow up, you grow up and you create the world, at the level of stress that you’re akin to, you actually go out and you want to recreate the vibe that you understand too easy, and you get bored, too difficult. And you might you’ll just whatever it is, you’ll move back to the vibrational energetic state that you know and understand. So mine was one of high stress. So I put myself in stressful situations all the time, I created a lot of drama. I took everything personally, I mean, I’m gonna make myself sound like a complete asshole here. But I wasn’t. But I was very, very sensitive inside. So I kept it private, and I kind of have my public persona. And then I’d have the girl sobbing in the bath at home that nobody saw. And I didn’t know any better. And what I realised in 2016, and really, it was a kind of an unfolding through to 2018, where I did this deep dive is that I had developed a life to fit with who work who I thought I was, which was worthless and unlovable. Now, one dried, ended up completely alone. And my husband could be quite cold, and his family were even colder. And, you know, I remember stood on the steps at his house once looking out into the garden of this, what look like a very traditional English family. And the parents were celebrating their 40 wedding year, you know, 40th wedding anniversary, and I was like, Oh, this is what I dreamt up, you know, I’d grown up in my dysfunctional, difficult family, where, you know, kids weren’t allowed to come and play at my house because of my violence stepfather. And I was the weird one. And here I am on the steps thinking, This is amazing. I can’t wait to be part of this, that rose garden, I mean, like, wow, this is what other people live, like, you know, I was so excited. And, and once my husband did love me very much, he did have a lot of cool traits, but I stepped over all those red flags. I didn’t appreciate, you know, that’s what I thought I would have to deal with anyway, especially if I wanted to be part of this environment. And it was so sad, because actually, I’ve never met a more dysfunctional family. And today, they barely speak and the parents have died, who I loved very, very much. But that cold Victorian upbringing leaves people quite isolated and full of opinions and justifications, and embrittle, about the world. And it wasn’t an environment I flourished in remotely, makes me very sad today that they barely speak as a as a group of siblings, because they’re not really, you know, connected in life in the same way. I mean, you know, anyway, that’s, that’s them. And that’s their choice to live how they wish to live for sure. But there’s a lot of ill health, there’s a lot of pain and physical discomfort in, in their lives. Interestingly, and my husband, his mindset has shifted along with mine is a very fit and healthy human being. And there isn’t a lot of pain, he’s younger, but not by, you know, not by gazillions of years or anything. And it’s very clear to me, that that sort of uptight thinking creates a lot of rigidity in the body and inflammation as well. Yeah.

So, you know, it’s, it was a, it was a journey to I think I’ve sort of rounded off the point a little bit. But the point is that I could see, you know, what I thought I deserved, I literally walked head into headlong into thinking, well, this is how it is, if you want to be grown up and married. But I’ve recreated my marriage. And it’s, it’s such a warm and loving and loyal space now. And I also, this is a difficult one for people to potentially hear. And I just want to acknowledge that before I say it, but we train people how to treat us. We make it clear in hidden cues, what we’re expecting from them, and they will deliver. And it’s so interesting because my husband used to sort of do some quite dismissive actions at times, I can roll his eyes and tut at me. I don’t recall the last time he did that. Because I got to a point where I said it’s not okay to to dismiss me with that anymore. Whereas I remember him doing it to me in public years and years ago, and I would just look down and feel ashamed and think, Oh, God, I said something stupid. So to get to the place of understanding who you are, how you came to be, is actually the beginning. Have a restoration of the relationship with yourself. All those little coded moments as a child is the disconnection from yourself. It’s the breakdown of the relationship with yourself. And then we end up with opinions and justifications, and we surround ourselves with people who support those. And we call them friends, that these are the people that will think like you think so that you don’t have to change your view of the world. And we will continually go out to reconfirm to ourselves that what we think is the way things are is the way things are, we are always practising confirmation bias.

Tony Winyard 30:41

Clearly you’re thinking like 180 degrees differently from how you were many years ago, and you’re seeing the world very differently, and how is it now? So with the clients you’re working with, are you still coaching people?

Polly Bateman 30:54

It’s thriving now, can’t blame Tom anymore.

Tony Winyard 31:02

Is it a case of now the people that you’re coaching, do you find it easy to see the issues that they’re having, and then help them turn those around?

Polly Bateman 31:12

in a heartbeat. So interesting, I, I always create a space at the front end of any connection that we have any connection call or any I mean, sometimes I meet people at events, and they know who I am, and they just begin, you know, just that sort of verbal diarrhoea comes out because they just need to be heard. And it’s so important, I let them tell their story through their current perspective through the lens they have today. Because you need to be heard, seen and understood. And I actually know better than them how they got there. And I know how real that confusion feels. I know how angry I was in 2016. Actually, underneath all of this, that I was a nice human being I knew I was a good egg. I help old ladies over the road if they need it. I don’t kick animals. I’m a good human, I’ll give you a quid if you need it. You know, I was pretty full of rage about how unfair and lonely and lost I was, and then couldn’t see why. Why did stuff just keep happening to me again and again. And that’s how you see it, you see that stuff happens to you, you don’t know you’re actually part of the you’re drawn to circumstances that will reflect what you’re expecting to see, you know, there was an experiment done. And I really need to get my facts checked on this. But it’s something I read. And when I say check my facts, not about the validity of it. But so I can repeat the name of the exercise. And two groups of people were separated, they were obviously kept apart from each other. And they were told when they were given this particular sheet of paper with an argument on it. That was sort of a almost like a political type of argument. And they said, you will see and we need you to go through this piece of paper and see that your viewpoint in Group A, and they were given a viewpoint or standpoint, your viewpoint is completely, you know, validated here. And B groups viewpoint is is not? Can you find the evidence, and they gave them half an hour. And of course, they did the same with the B group. I don’t probably even need to tell you what happened. They both could see in the writing how, what they were looking for. And it was actually a completely neutral piece of writing, where one in one sentence, they would say something and then the next one, they take it away, you know. So the point is, everybody knows that this happens on some level. And I can make it very simple. We’ve all played that game where you’re driving down the motorway. And you say right, how many blue cars can you see in the next five minutes and parents plates, keep the kids quiet? And give them some focus. And when you look for all the blue cars, you will then say at the end of it, there were 10 or there were however many. And yet, if you said to them, how many red cars were there, they won’t be able to tell you. They weren’t looking for them. Yeah, that’s exactly what happens. And it’s down to something called your reticular activating system, the bundle of nerves at the top of your neck that literally filters out information. So there is all sorts of information around you that you’re love that there’s masses of opportunity that everything’s okay. But if you don’t feel loved, and you don’t think anybody’s rooting for you, and you don’t feel okay, and like there’s much going on for you, you won’t see it. You can’t because you are being controlled by your core beliefs. And the really sad thing is, is that a thought that is just a thought when we are a little one. Like oh, you say parents left? Dads left. I mean, I don’t really want to pick on dads here because it’s just as much in both directions mums left if mom hadn’t left. You know, Mum Mum obviously doesn’t love us. That’s a thought on its own. It doesn’t do an awful lot but it can be that’s a pretty toxic thought. Right? And it’s thought energy is very potent. It It literally runs your day. Later on, you might go to a friend’s house and the mom has been loving and gorgeous, and you have another you have a repeat of that thought. Now a thought that gets repeated are my mom’s not like that she doesn’t love me. And repeated thought what’s happening is you’re already beginning to look for the evidence to support your thoughts system. And a thought that gets validated and repeated becomes a belief, a core belief that gets validated becomes a core belief, you know, it’s deeper and deeper. And at that point, your biases are activated. And then your reticular activating system runs interaction as well. And so you’re only ever seeing the world that you’re expecting to see that fits with your viewpoint as you got coded growing up.

And what I see is that when I had those ward rounds back in, you know, the days when I worked for dem Ws, I saw patterns in illness, even if it was on an elective Ward, I saw patterns in the problems they had on the personalities that showed up. I’m one of those weirdos that can see what’s not being said and can kind of see the stuff that’s sort of almost intangible. And that really got me thinking about what it is and how the mind impacts the body. And this is what the Chinese talk about the meridian flows, if energy doesn’t flow, it becomes blocked, and that becomes that creates inflammation. And that creates illness. The root cause of every single illness is inflammation, the root cause of inflammation is blocked energy.

Jingle 36:35

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Tony Winyard 37:00

So when you’re able to see these core beliefs that people have, and the issues that are emanating from that stuff, but how are you able to help them to see that, change those core beliefs?

Polly Bateman 37:14

Yeah, it’s a really good question. Because, you know, how do you get out of that, right? If that’s what you’re doing? The first thing you have to do is acknowledge that this is what’s going on. And acknowledging and understanding because it’s the way it’s explained in science even it’s not even how Polly explains it, right? But the way it’s just explained is actually something that’s incredibly easy to understand that makes us go oh, oh, am I being run? Oh, right. Because basically, your brain is running your day, your identity is running your day. And I explained to people, how your brain is set up for survival. So the brain is always looking for the threat. Therefore, it’s kind of set negatively rather than set positively. And as a result, you know, the longest journey people ever make is from the head to the heart. Because what happens is we get cut off from the heart, because we’re constantly going what the head says. And the issue is here is there’s actually more information that goes from the heart to the brain than the other way round. So we are missing loads of information when we do that, and we don’t feel heartful you know, we feel heart empty, and we get pains and physical pain will replace that. And the point of all of this is, is that as soon as you can understand just that this process is what’s occurring. If you’re asked the right questions, you know, tell me about, you know, if like, for example, when your parent left, what did you make that mean? What was the story that you wrote about yourself? And you get them to put it out there, and you capture it with them? In the minute it’s no longer in here in the noise in our head, and we’re looking at it possibly written down on paper? Is the moment they go, oh, oh. And then I will ask them a very direct question that’s quite provocative. Sometimes if they have said something like, Well, that didn’t love me, and I thought I was worthless. I will say, can I just ask you? If we look back at that six year old, is that a truth that your dad didn’t love you? And they’ll know already that that wasn’t the truth. And they you know, I have people say things to me, like, I have a very complicated relationship with my father. He is not very expressive at all, but I know he loves me. So there is a knowing whereas as an adult, you develop that prefrontal cortex and your brain management system kicks in, there’s an awareness but it doesn’t fit with the coding that you had. So there’s there’s a pain because there’s a struggle between the two. So when we look at it, and I’ll ask the question, and can I just check in are you actually worthless? I mean, you know, it depends on the person and how the session is going, how direct they’ll be, but I’ll I’ll be as provocative as I need to be. And then as gentle as is required in the situation as well. And they’ll go No. And that’s the first moment, they have contradicted the noise in their head, where they said, No, actually, dad didn’t not love me, and I’m not worthless. Oh, great. Now I’ve got something to work with. And I take people through a process of looking at all these moments of coding, and I know the kind of Cornerstone moments that we need to look at. And as people go through this process, they start to relax, they start to let go of Because suddenly, they’re not got the same noise in their heads of I’m a loser, I don’t get things like that. That stuff is for other people, I don’t know how to manifest only clever people know how to do that I can’t earn a decent amount of money. It’s all about your belief system around yourself, that you then project out into the world. You know, I was listening to one of my mentors last night that I like to go back and listen to and it’s sadly a guy that literally died on the second of February this year. And so he’s quite present in my life at the moment, someone I worked with last years and lovely chap called Bob Proctor, who was part of that film The Secret and he is a real sort of one of the grandfather’s of self development for us in the world, for sure. And I was listening to him say, in conversation, you know, if you think that you, if you’re earning 100,000 a year, the only reason the earning earning 100,000 A year is because you don’t think you can earn 100,000 a month. And you know, I mean, there’s that’s taking it to money, but essentially, it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter what your whatever you think, you know, what are your beliefs about something because they’re basically dictating how it all goes. And the wonderful, wonderful

fallout on all of this, is that when you understand you’re just seeing your thinking out there. When I see something that troubles me, and I, you know, for example, in my own business, if I’ve hit a roadblock, I’m like, Oh, what’s this bringing up in me that I need to go in and deal with, because the roadblock I’m looking at is just a blocking me. So I’m empowered to go back here. I don’t look out there for the answers I look in here. And that means I don’t feel like a victim. And I also can look after Polly you know his his the line for anybody who’s listening. You are the adult that you needed as a child. At any point, an any day. Remember that when you’re struggling, you’re the adult you need it, it’s your child that’s freaking out, not you today. Whatever is challenging you today is just a repeat of a pattern that you struggled with for years. Go back to the beginning and look after the child and walk them out of it. You are that adult and that you are the one you need.

Tony Winyard 42:47

When when you’re helping people to take responsibility for their own lives, rather than just accept what’s happening. What kind of transformations have you seen in some of the people you’ve been working with?

Polly Bateman 43:01

Oh, I can literally burst into tears right now. I mean, it’s been profound. I’ve seen people, like their arm suddenly go up and shake. And that’s a block of energy, it wasn’t necessarily a problem with their arm, it’s just energy has suddenly shifted. They physically relax, they get a twinkle in their eyes, they smile again, they suddenly stop taking everything so personally because they get that how how anyone else is being is how they’re being. And there’s a profound moment for me when my my husband rolled his eyes years ago again. And it was the moment I looked at him and I was like, ah, you know what, it wouldn’t have mattered whether his wife was called Polly, Jenny, Bob or Sue, he would have rolled his eyes regardless. Because that’s how he behaves. That’s on him. Not me. Yeah, there was a moment of relief. And I remember saying to him, you just rolled your eyes. And you know what I get that says more about you than it says about me and I feeling really good about that. But what was that? Can you cut that out? Because it’s a really rude thing to do to somebody. And I don’t like that you let yourself down like that. I don’t like that you make yourself out to be somebody who would dismiss other human beings that way you can see my language turned it back on him. There was nothing to do with me that he rolled his eyes, how someone chooses to behave is their choice. Now they may be I have come across many people who are dealing with traumatised partners who behave really erratically and violently sometimes, and they need to get help with that trauma. But what I do know is that deep down inside every single human beings a magical magical person who can be as enlightened as they want to be if they just learned to reject the coding and get themselves out of their own way.

Tony Winyard 44:51

It sounds very much like you’re you’re doing a lot more than just coaching and you’re verging on territory in, psychology, psychiatry Have you ever considered exploring, maybe studying some of those areas?

Polly Bateman 45:05

Well, I do study them, just not officially. So I read all the books and everything. And it’s funny, I was actually in a talk with a psychiatrist who was giving a presentation on epigenetics the other day, and she couldn’t answer one of the questions that I could answer. And I was in the right sort of environment to step in and create the, you know, give the answer to the audience member. Because fortunately, it was a crowd that know me, so it didn’t look too out of place. And she and the psychiatrist knew me as well. So it wasn’t a sort of move that would have been in any way embarrassing for her. But yeah, I I’ve been on my own journey, you know, those those seven miscarriages as well. You know, that journey just to touch on this, given that this is a very health focused podcast, that journey back to health back to not being infertile and not being hormonally imbalanced. And I can’t actually prove whether the infertility is gone or not, because I haven’t actually popped another Sprog. But, but I would if I you know, if it happened, I think never seen my husband doesn’t really help. He’s incredibly busy at the moment. But I think also my body, you know, those those chances are a lot slimmer. Now, that’s just the way biology works. Yeah. But what I know is that the the sort of hormonal journey I would go on through the month, I’ve definitely redress that, you know, I discovered by working with people, like I read a book called, it must be my hormones by Dr. Marion block. And I like, I recognise myself the whole way through. And for anyone listening, that’s an incredibly readable book, it’s very easy. It’s not heavy science, and lots of case studies real Oh, that’s me, you know, and you recognise yourself. And I also understood that my thinking was, was I needed to help my thinking by not dragging my body as much as perhaps what might be encouraged to sometimes, you know, the idea of forcing a body that was already unhappy to have a baby through IVF, you know, like, I understood, my body was talking to me, so I wasn’t gonna force something, I was going to see what what’s the root cause that I can rectify, which is very difficult. And of course, I’m very blessed than that I already had a child, it’s very difficult for some people to hear that. But you know, you’re, you’re way more set up, if you go back to the root causes, and let the body do the talking. Because the talking of the body is the reflection of the mind anyway. So you know, when we dig into this, it’s amazing watching people go, you know, I literally see people have these personal moments of, they go quiet, they just sort of go, ah, oh, oh, and they’re speechless for a moment. And I just say, just be with it, you know, you don’t need to talk to me just be with this. Because because most of my clients on Zoom now, and I, I have a group as well, which was a, something I set up to make the course that I did my one to one more affordable. And people in that group, you know, somebody said the other day, she’d only done two sessions. She’s like, kind of just ask anybody else feel physically different. And they were all then contributing go, yeah, walking taller and feeling way, my husband thinks this course is amazing, because I’m way less snappy. And the heart lifts, you know, and it’s a wonderful process that they go through first of all realising are, this is how I got here. And that that creates empathy. And you know, when we’re angry, it’s a level of a lack of empathy that we have for ourselves. And the level of empathy that you have for other people directly correlates to how much you have for yourself. But that empathy suddenly starts growing. And they they’ll go through sometimes feeling a bit sorry for their parents of realising their parents just didn’t know any better. That’s how I actually now feel about my husband’s family. It’s like, Oh, bless, you just don’t know any better. You actually think this is how the world is. And I really get how lost and confusing that concede, and how righteous people will be about their way of being. So, so there’s, there’s, there’s that and then there’s the Oh, God, I’m gonna have to do something about this now, because now I know.

Now, I’m realising I’m in the driving seat. And, you know, this is usually around week seven, whether all this is done to me, isn’t it? You know, they sort of really thinking that through. And it’s also you know, that that that can feel a little overwhelming to begin with, but it’s also deeply empowering, because it’s like, fancy knowing you’re in charge of your own body. And guess what, your own life fancy, you know. And it’s deeply liberating. You know, they were asking me the group was on a Wednesday night, they were asking me last night, they said to me, you know, what do you think when something happens? And I said, Well, I can see very clearly it’s got nothing to do with me and one of them one of my course, attendees, when Pat must be so freeing. And I was like, yeah, and you’ll get there. She’s very early on in the process at the moment and like, you’ll get there. It is freeing. It’s amazing seeing people kick off around you and know that it’s got nothing to do with Even if they’re talking to you, and I’m very quickly able to disarm aggression towards me as well, because I, I acknowledge how they’re feeling bad. I tell them, I make it clear, I know you’re not angry with me, I know that this is about the situation. And by pointing that out to them, they very quickly shift from being angry towards you. And they go, yeah, yeah, that’s right. Because nobody wants to be seen as a bad person. Nobody wants to be seen as aggressive. I mean, sometimes people are deeply traumatised, and you know, I know of people, and in the world of psychiatry, sometimes you, you can numb some of the, the peaks of those feelings enough to help them then use the the mindset to then work on the mindset because the feelings are so overwhelming, you can’t get to, to be able to work on the mindset, there is a, there is a place for it, for sure. But I’m just a real advocate of using it to a smallest degree possible. And just as a leg up if we need it.

Tony Winyard 51:03

We’re 49 minutes in and I know, at least 10 different areas I’d like to explore and we just haven’t got the time to explore them all.

Polly Bateman 51:12

You’ll have to get me back.

Tony Winyard 51:15

Well, I’m gonna go on to now; before, when I sent you the email before we started speaking. You gave me a couple of habits that you said will be useful for people. So let’s explore those. One was about visualisation or simply using imagination. So could you expand on that?

Polly Bateman 51:30

Yeah, whatever you can imagine, you can ultimately hold in your hand or see in your life. Because if you think about everything that we ever created, it started as a thought. And I’m very aware that sadly, one of the things that we tell children not to do today is to stop daydreaming, Stop daydreaming and get on with your work. You know, it was actually daydreaming is a crucial, crucial element. And one of the biggest problems of the tech world that we have today is that we have very little time left to to daydream, because we’re often on our phones. And it really kills creativity. And if you’re too, too busy to be bored, then you’re too busy to be brilliant. And it’s imperative. We see it now in terms of meditation, that’s another way to do it. There’s a lot of meditation that tells you to empty your mind. And I really struggled to do that. I definitely think I’m probably high functioning ADHD on some level as an entrepreneur and as most entrepreneurs are, and I’m, you know, study like a bitch. I’m like a real demand signal for content and growth all the time, which is okay, so what I do is I allow my brain to wander down the lanes, it wants to go deeply relaxing, to have the time to lay listening to beautiful music and daydream deeply healing for me to do that. But what I do is I focus on the outcomes that I want in those daydreams and those imaginings and those visualisations. I see myself like, what would I be doing? Who am I with? What are we wearing? You know, what does my jewellery look like? What am I eating, and I create a beautiful life. And if nothing else, that gives you a proper leg up in the day that you’re in, even if the day you’re in is not as beautiful as the light you’re creating. But the other part of that is that you are energetically raising your vibration. You know, and I get really grateful for what I have got. And the fact that I’m on this journey, and the beautiful things I can think about isn’t about being materialistic. Sometimes, you know, I think about my son’s future. And I think about how much I want him. And by the way, I think about, I tell my body, you know, I still think about, maybe we should do some twins, and we could do a one hit one, you know, to hit wonder, right at the end of the line. You know, maybe we could still pack that in body. And I imagine I’ve got names, they’ve got their names, and I see them playing and, you know, and I know that I’m informing my body when I’m doing that, that this is something that is possible. And if you can think about it, then it is possible. And one of the things to do after visualisations is think who else is doing that? Because that’s confirmation, it’s possible as well. So that’s a habit that I’ve got into that I adore.

Tony Winyard 54:07

And what about people who say they’re not able to visualise, they’re not able to see things when they try to do that? How do you help those people?

Polly Bateman 54:16

Yeah, I can walk into a room that’s badly decorated, and imagine it being beautifully decorated. And some people have to just walk out like, Oh, can’t bear it, and they can’t see past what’s there. So then what we do is we can build those pictures. You know, that’s when you build a visualisation board. And that’s when you can watch movies. And, you know, there’s, there’s actually a service I’m thinking of offering, which is where we build the movie for them so that they can watch the movie again and again and sit inside it because what we know is that when we watch a movie, we become emotionally triggered. And it’s the emotional triggering of the visualisation that you’re looking for the emotional triggering that. Oh, yeah, that’d be amazing. That’s the moment you’re looking for because that’s the moment is raising you up. And you are beginning In the process of energetically bringing it to you as well.

Tony Winyard 55:04

So another one of the habits you were talking about was learning how to take yourself in each moment with smart questions clear direction…

Polly Bateman 55:12

yeah, so the visualisation has already created the direction, I know where I’m going, I know that I want to run a centre, pop, you know, possibly more than one in the world as well, that is all about human potential and true leadership. Because true leadership, not really what we see very often out there anyway. And true leadership is very, very responsible. So I, that’s what I want to see. And I have, I can see a tree lined driveway, you know, I know roughly what the house is like, I’ve got a vision board as well. And it’s got pictures of the kind of windows and the window dressings and the sort of furnishings, I would love, I see beautiful gardens, I know that we’ll have a meadow, which will be full of bees and butterflies and things like that, you know, and that it will be a very organic space around me. And in the true sense of the word organic, you know, we know pesticides and stuff use there. And I want to kitchen garden and will feed people well and, and I see the results they get. So that’s the direction that I create. And I can bang on about that for hours, because I’ve got all the details. But the other thing that I do is that if I engage in a behaviour or find myself somewhere that is not helping me move towards that, I stop and ask myself, how is this serving you? And when you look at how something is serving you even the stuff that you don’t want going on in your life, there is an answer. And most people go well, it isn’t? Oh, it is because otherwise you wouldn’t put it there. I am smart enough and trained and evolved enough now in my mindset, that if I say I want to lose weight, but I’m cramming a whisper bar down my neck, then I am on some level sabotaging something I say I want. And you know, it’s like getting brave enough to ask yourself that smart question. How is this serving you right now? What is this doing for you? Because our identity wants to keep us small and safe. But the heart wants us to thrive.

Tony Winyard 57:08

As I said we’re running out of time. But before we finish tell me about The Grumpit!

Polly Bateman 57:14

So The Grumpit is a character that I made up for my son and this is a place I had to get out the way of myself. So there’s a website, the Grumpit.com where people can go and look at The Grumpit. And he’s wonderful. He loves you very, very much. And he’s round and soft and fluffy. And he’s got long legs and knobbly knees. And he basically has the best his eyes and nose in the whole world. And he listens, looks and sniffs out for how your day is going. And if he hears or sees or smells anything new, or different, or unusual, or that he doesn’t like he goes from being all soft and fluffy to being all spiky, and he runs around inside of you and gives you those funny feelings. So this was a character I literally made up for my son. Because if you say to a child, pull yourself together or behave yourself, they don’t know what you mean. They can’t compute that kind of self reflection. But if you say to them what’s going on with your grumpit right now see giving you some funny feelings, they will spill the beans on their emotional state and what’s going on for them instantly. And I developed this when Harry was just four. And so this is a long time ago, in 2012. And all my friends at the time like you’ve got to do something about this Poll’. In fact, actually it was before that, you know that I actually was using the character from when Harry was two and he’s 14 now. And it was you know it, it was

it was my friends were like, This is amazing. You should write a book, you should get it out there. And I was like, you would say that. And my identity was running me. I didn’t want to put myself out there. What if people said it was stupid? What if it wasn’t ever bought and nobody liked it? What actually happened was when I was taking myself on in 2017, I was doing another course and the leader of the course challenged us all to do a community project to put ourselves out in our communities and be a leader. And it was all to do with self expression and leadership. And this wonderful woman said to me take it into schools and see if it’s got legs. So I was like what? Oh, because I said I wanted to see if this character could had any agency. So we took it into schools and I interviewed teachers. And I remember this moment of silence where they were all kind of looking down and sort of listening and looking at me. And I was like, oh my god, they think I’m a knob. They can’t believe I’ve come in and told them this stupid story. And then one of them said, this is a genius idea. And she she went on to explain to me that all characters that currently exist, are already in existence and the child must relate to it. But what’s new about the grumpit is he’s an expression of you and he’s only feeling thinking and doing what you’re thinking, feeling and doing. And that if you what it helps children do is to talk to their grumpits meaning their objectifying their feelings. and therefore able to look at them objectively rather than be subjectively involved with them. And then they’re able to self soothe. Because we say to children now use your secret really is scary, or does it just seem scary. And I developed a workshop and took it around scores across the whole of the south and southeast of England and throughout London. And the feedback we got was just tremendous. And so we published the book, I say, we I’m not really sure who that me and my grumpit, we published the book. And, and now we’ve just put it online free for schools. And I am working towards some PR to help schools understand it, they’re beyond the ones that I have directly connected with where they can download it. And I give them the workshop and explain how to do it, they get a free colouring in black and white page of Grumpit. And basically, what we found is that there was a side effect that we didn’t see coming, which is where special needs children who struggled to express their emotions are talking freely about their grumpits, because we’ve given it’s given them a focus. It’s an amazing side effect that I cry sometimes when I go to these schools, and I see the children, I’ve had a teacher come up to me once in tears. And they’ve been this little curly haired blonde boy, who had talked and talked and talk to me the whole way through the workshop. He was adorable. And this teacher was in tears and shaking. And she said to me, he doesn’t speak. I was like, what, but the Grumpit had just opened him up to expressing himself and he was so excited about it. And then when the children colour in their grumpits, they’re expressing their own colours, they’re expressing their own state of well being. What’s interesting is it’s now become a tool that teachers can use. So that if the wellbeing shifts and the grumpit colour shifts, they can visually see. And then we’re now I’m literally having the puppet made. It’s, it’s all happening. We looked at two, I wrote the email last night, we’ve had the two samples back and we’re like, right, we need to tweak this button this bit. And the idea is to get puppets into ELSA rooms across the countries, and ELSA is the Emotional Literacy and Sensory Assistance. So to help children we want to put a Grumpit in every school so that they can use it. And they can have conversations because I, a friend made me a kind of a puppet, which was very sweet. And the puppet sits on my shoulder, we only bring him out towards the end because the children go wild for him. And he’s my Grumpit. So he’s got the same colour hair as me. And basically he kind of whispers in my ear. And then I tell children what he said, you know, my moving his mouth because he’s the proper hand puppet. And they just think he’s hysterical. And they want he’s been licked and kissed and hugged to death, you know, and they, they want to put their hands in his mouth. And they just as they want to talk to him. And so he really excites and incites their imagination. So I want to make sure Scott with the camera skew at the moment, the mental health issues for children, post COVID are profound, which is why I put the book online for free and want to do whatever I can to support. So yeah, let’s get Grumpits at every school.

Tony Winyard 1:03:03

And it sounds I mean, obviously, there’s huge benefits for the kids. And you know, you’ve expressed or you’ve told us but it sounds to me like there’s there’s an avenue, there’s a way that this can be taken further to to help adults as well?

Polly Bateman 1:03:18

Well, we’ve all got on. So don’t think you haven’t got a Grumpit, he is he’ll kick off every time he thinks there’s something he needs to keep you safe from. So the grumpit. The reason is, it is we know that the identity and the ego is sometimes called it so a Grump It. And basically yeah, there is I’d like to develop it. I’m in talking to writers at the moment to develop the teenage version, because my 14 year old son, you know, a bit too cool to talk about his grumpit now at school. He’s very proud that his mum has developed it. And the first book is called Harry and the big scary slide. And it’s all about Harry not wanting to go and it’s like it’s too big and scary. And we’ve got thegrumpit to help him and he and the grumpit work together. You know, he calmed his grumpit down so it could go on the slide. So essentially, yeah, we need to develop the teenage version. But yeah, and then adults, adults love the grand picture, like, Oh, I’ve totally got one of those minds purple. They don’t mind being this lovely, cartoony character, who is ugly and gormless in equal measure, but really cute as well. So we made it so that he was really an offensive and seeing it on paper when the illustrator kept drawing the image out of my head was just such an incredible moment. Again, I cried. I cry for joy a lot these days, you know, I cry because I can see things that help people and I get out of bed for two reasons only to empower and free people. And if anything I’m doing doesn’t do that. I know not to do it because it won’t, it won’t excite me.

Tony Winyard 1:04:43

Personally, I’ve got to stop myself asking you questions because we’re just gonna, we’re gonna be here all day otherwise, but I do want to ask you about a book that really moved you. Do you remember the book that you mentioned?

Polly Bateman 1:04:56

I do, “The five people that you meet in heaven” by Mitch Elborn, it’s a beautiful book when the character is a chap called Edie, and he basically has an accident right at the front of the book and dies and goes to heaven. And he goes to heaven, because the accident was him saving a little girl from from dying. And so he died so that she didn’t. And essentially, when he gets to heaven, he meets a bunch of people, including somebody who died, so that he didn’t, and he didn’t even know about it, she died out of sight and around the corner from him. And, and really what the book is about is a beautiful tale that there are people in your life today that have a role in your life that you may never know anything about. Their job is to make sure that you’re on that part of the road at that given time or a few Imagine you’re walking along and someone bangs into you, and it knocks your coffee over you. So you’re like, Ah, damn it, and you go into the next shop, because they’ve got a bathroom facility in there to clean up. And while you’re in there, you buy a shirt, and the person who sells a shirt to you is your future wife, and you would never have met them if someone hadn’t, you know banged into you. There is a beautiful pattern that is occurring that we can’t see in existence, and it’s so wonderful. And now when I’m ever driving along and I get Miss Daisy in front of me when I’m in a hurry, I’m like, okay, I get it, you’re part of my pattern. I’ll dig behind here and I’ll stop gobbing off about the speed that you’re doing that you’re doing a 30 and a 50, or something like that, you know, a 40 Excuse me, and I’ll just be with it. You know, it’s allowed me to just understand there’s a bigger pattern, and I can just be with that. So it’s a wonderful book.

Tony Winyard 1:06:32

As you were speaking earlier, I was thinking, I’ve got a feeling the book that you’re going to recommend is going to be something special. And yeah, it does sound something special. So I’ll have to get hold of that. How can people find out more about you Polly? What’s your social media, your website and so on?

Polly Bateman 1:06:46

So there was a lovely lady called Polly Bateman, who already had Polly Bateman calm who sells cards over in the US. And I was so like, ah, please give me a website. And she wouldn’t, which is fair enough. So I had to become the poly Bateman. And being British, I was super awkward about that to begin with when it was suggested to me. But actually, when we moved on to social media as I became a more savvy creature in today’s current climate and how we operate as a business, at the poly Bateman was something that no one else had, funnily enough. So it is ThePollyBateman.com. On my website, or particularly on Instagram, I’m not massive on Facebook, and I’m kind of developing my own platform, so that I don’t have to be on there. It’s not massively political about it, I just don’t particularly enjoy the algorithm and the way it works. But I am on Instagram. So same company, but slightly different algorithms. And the point is that all I do on there is try to push good content out, you know, stuff that’s really helpful, particularly on Tuesdays and Thursdays, those are the posts where I really put up teaching points as well. So @ThePollyBateman, you’ll find me on Instagram, or come to ThePollyBateman.com. And reach out and I’m always happy, we always engage my system manages all my messages. But I will always get back to people 100%.

Tony Winyard 1:08:00

And finally, is there a quote that you particularly like,

Polly Bateman 1:08:06

I love this, quote, “Thought creates the world and then says I didn’t do it”. That’s by a chap called David Bohm. I really love that because I think I lived my life with my thought creating my world. And I didn’t know that I was doing it for so long. So our thought our thinking patterns create the world, you see, you’re living inside your own hologram, a hologram of your own making. And as someone who’s, who’s gone from a difficult marriage that felt cold and functional, to the marriage I’ve got today, and from a business that was barely bumping alone, I feel like I’m having my butt scraped along the ground, to the six figures that my business earns today. You know, it was such a huge transformation. That is such a short space of time really over a couple of years that I really understood that it was my thinking that they are at the root of everything. And, and my health as well. You know, I’m big on this on our health issues and, and how health relates, you know, the certain things that come up in certain areas relate directly to us, a thinking we have about ourselves. So yeah, that’s one of my favourite of all time quotes. Because, you know, it is it’s how most people live sadly, that they thought it’s creating their world but not telling them that they’re doing it. They don’t know that they’re driving that thinking.

Tony Winyard 1:09:25

As I said, a few times, I’d love to go on a lot longer, but we’ve gone well over an hour. But as you mentioned, I definitely would love for you to come back to do another episode sometime because there’s so much more to explore. So thank you for your time. I really appreciate

Polly Bateman 1:09:45

it. You’re welcome. Thank you so much for having me. And I hope it’s helped somebody in one small way somewhere.

Tony Winyard 1:09:50

I’m pretty sure it isn’t. There’s no doubt about that. So next week, episode 59 We have Pamela Spence. Pamela has been fascinated by herbs since growing up surrounded by the fragrant wet markets of Singapore as a teenager. After a hectic career in film and television, she left to study herbal medicine in 2002, and has been running a successful clinical practice writing and teaching about herbs ever since. She’s often given expert comments and media include on the BBC in Hello magazine, Financial Times, and many other places. And she’s spoken about this in Russia, East Africa, Italy and Germany, helping connect people to their local plants and rediscover how they can impact their well being. So, we talk to Pamela next week. She’s a medical herbalist. We find out a lot more about what what is a medical herbalist, and how do they help people and talk about herbs and many other aspects related to health. That’s Next week, episode 59 with Pamela Spence. If you know anyone who would get some more value from some of the gems that Polly shared with us today, please do share the episode with them. And hope you have a great week. See you next week.

Jingle 1:11:11

Thanks for tuning in to the habits and health podcast where we believe creating healthy habits should be easy. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe and leave us a review on your favourite podcast app. Sign up for email updates and learn about coaching and workshop opportunities at TonyWinyard.com See you next time on the habits and health podcast.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai