HoCoSo CONVERSATION

"Why Living Well is Good for Our Health" with Celine Vadam

• HoCoSo Conversation / Celine Vadam • Season 1 • Episode 32

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Celine Vadam is in conversation with Jonathan Humphries, your host. Together they explore why and how living well is good for our health. They will be tackling questions such as:

  • How to create and maintain healthy relationships?
  •  How do we actually create openness in terms of communication?
  • What does it mean by psychological safety? 
  • How to potentially create a more authentic approach to life? 
  • How this all links together so that we can ultimately be in a place where we can respond to the environment and create the environments rather than reacting to them? 

Celine is proof of how powerful and empowering living a healthy and sustainable life can be. She is a consultant with over a decade of expertise in hospitality, tourism, wellness/spa, F&B and sustainability, from operations to development. She is also a certified integrative health coach from the Institute of Integrative Nutrition and a holistic wellness practitioner (energy healing, yoga, nutrition, mindfulness).

Celine founded WE(i) Think in 2020, aiming to bring a wellness and sustainability angle to the hospitality and tourism industry. She launched the Hospitality of the Future ThinkTank in December 2020, brainstorming with industry experts on what hotels should thrive towards with sustainability, wellness and innovation at their core.

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Jonathan Humphries [00:00:00] I am your host, Jonathan Humphries. Welcome to the HoCoSo conversation. These podcasts are dedicated to exploring individual life journeys. They are designed to provide insights into how people manage transitions and ultimately become better versions of themselves. Each conversation is an evolving discovery and allows you to follow us as if you are here with us in the room. Thank you for choosing to listen to the HoCoSo conversation. Welcome to the HoCoSo Conversation. It is an absolute pleasure to be having a conversation today with Celine Vadam. Celine is a living and breathing example of how powerful and empowering living a healthy and sustainable life can be. She founded WE(i) Think in 2020, aiming to bring a wellness and sustainability angle to the hospitality and tourism industry. She loves to travel and discovers new cultures. She is passionate about the outdoors, fitness, wellness and sustainability. We will be exploring today why living well is good for our health. We will be discussing how to create and maintain healthy relationships. How do we create openness in terms of communication? What does it mean by psychological safety and how we could potentially create a more authentic approach to our lives where we are connected much more through our individuality. Where we are then in a place where we can put ourselves, where we can take responsibility through the choices that we make, we can ultimately be in a place where we can respond to the environments and create the environments rather than reacting to them. I hope you enjoy this valuable and enriching conversation with Celine Vadam. Thank you very much for joining the HoCoSo Conversation. Celine, it's a pleasure to have you on the hook as our conversation. I'm really looking forward to our conversation today and the overall topic. We're going to be talking about wellbeing. Why? The purpose and also looking at relationships, the importance of maintaining and creating great relationships and lots of other topics. Just as a bit of context, Celine, what I would like to do is just tie this in with regards to the research that we conducted last year, which was around how people have higher levels of resilience, and this was an industry wide survey of senior executives. And what we found were that those that exhibited the highest levels of resilience and therefore greater performance actually in their job also had very strong personal relationships and family relationships and friendships and also strong relationships with coworkers as well and colleagues. But it was the personal relationships that really stood out. So offering an insight into the importance of balance in one's life, But what it didn't do, it just created the headlines in terms of the results, and it didn't give us the why of why relationships are really important for us in terms of our wellbeing. And I thought that that could be a really good place to start this conversation. So without further ado, Celine, I'm going to hand over to you and just ask why you think that that was so important in terms of the results findings, in terms of relationships and what that means to you, given your focus on the area of wellbeing. 

 

Celine Vadam [00:03:54] Well, thanks so much Jonathan for having me in this podcast. I'm thrilled to be here with you. And in terms of the topic of relationships, I'm not surprised that you found that on your survey. So like there's this study of the blue zones, the places where the people live the longest on earth. And one of the key findings that they had from studying the people in this area was actually that wherever they were in the world, they had close relationships. So really highlighting how relationship is a key component of living a long and healthy life. And there's something, for example, in Japan called Moai. So since they're young, they kind of put people of the same age together and they use that as a support group of friends. And like they grew up together and even in their older days, like they still meet regularly, even every day and still really have close relationships. I remember, though, like in other cultures, like my daughter's family from her dad's side are from Senegal and there they do every month the women get together and they all put a bit of money in like a common pot and give all that to one person every month and it's shifting every month. And there again, like another type of support group and relationship system. You have also like this mastermind group when you have like a group of people coming together every week or every two weeks to discuss specific topics and talk together. So relationships in general are really like a key and important factors of health and wellbeing. That's also something that was found with COVID that people, it's relationship and connections. Like with COVID, a lot of people felt really depressed or very like bad because they had less relationships than before. Like when you go to work, you go to the office, you go to do your, if you have like activities, etc., you socialize a lot. And we are social beings and there's actually something that's going back like a long, long time ago about the fact that we our social being is when we were like at caveman age. So like a long time ago we had to rely on the group for survival. You couldn't go like alone, like to hunt for, like, whatever animals or to get berries. Because if you are going alone, if something happens to you, no one was there to help you or like get you back or go and call people. So there's all this idea of socializing, doing things together for survival. And we kept that. And I even read, I don't remember in which book I read that. But in terms of the bond between man and woman until in cave age, it wasn't only like a biological bond to aim to procreation. It was also a survival bond to know that you have someone who supports you and who's there for you, and also if the tribe had to move somewhere else for whatever reasons, you had at least one person who knew that they had to take someone with them. So you could rely at least on one person who will remember not to forget you and leave you behind. So there's also this idea of this survival need of connection, of being with people and socializing. 

 

Jonathan Humphries [00:07:44] It's a nice analogy and it's interesting, right? So I was going to ask the question around meaningful relationships because it's one thing forming relationships, but actually forming deep, meaningful relationships is the deeper sense of connection is that's where it becomes really important. And I think what you highlighted there is the what we would call today the buddy system, which is used in military settings where somebody looks after a younger recruits or even they buddy up within their particular platoon. Also in work culture, we also have what's essentially called a buddy system where somebody looks after a newer person within the company. We also have mentoring where people look after somebody who's more junior. So we have these systems within our culture. We've obviously translated them from those days. We also have them in our friend relationships and personal relationships as well. But I'm just curious, it's also about having deep and meaningful relationships, high quality relationships. How do we do that? How do we get to that level? You mentioned, you know, at its essence historically it was about survival. And, you know, when times are really tough, that's when actually the relationships tend to become stronger. You know, actually what we saw in COVID, you're right, there was the loneliness factor where people felt more isolated, but it also in some ways brought people much closer together because there was a essentially a common kind of threat if one wants to see it that way. So then there was the kind of bonding and binding together of human beings. So I'm just wondering how we kind of do that on a more regular basis without that kind of threat to our existence and build those meaningful and quality relationships. 

 

Celine Vadam [00:09:36] I think it's something quite new, like not new, but in the sense that it's funny, I was talking with something around those lines with my daughter the other day, like in terms of generations and how like one generation before, like or two, like there wasn't a sense or an awareness of emotions and all the things around mental health and life was very different. Probably had less time to think. And relationships were more like maybe more simple. You know, like life was harder, but it was also more like, not organized, but, you know, like your day was filled with work all day and hard work and like tasks to do, etc.. And today, like, emotions were not really that much involved. You were not really like talking about your emotions to even your partner or your kids. So that's the topic that's pretty recent to be like so vocal about talking your emotions and how do you feel and how are you like reacting to certain things and like mental health. So I think now like with that and with that process, we were bringing so much more weight on relationships and really like asking for so much more from our relationship. You know, like the depth that we are looking for in a relationship is quite yeah, it's quite new and it's not something that you probably like, if I ask, I don't know my grandparents or even my parents like did you have deep relationship with your friends? They would be like, what? What are you talking about? Whereas if my daughter like the level of relationship they have, like she has with her friends quite deep and the conversation, they are very like around their emotions and all these kind of things. So a relationship evolved and our expectations from relationship evolved. And I think it's probably harder to maintain good and healthy relationships because now that you are aware of all these expectations that you will be expecting from someone and retrospectively that they're expecting from you, you will be probably more careful of how you analyze things. You're also more aware of your own emotions. So when someone's sending you something instead, sometimes of letting it go, you're taking it more like analytically and like, why did this person say that or did that? Or it's probably sometimes a bit more complicated, I would say. But at the same time, it's also like deeper and if you have good communication, well, I'm not a relationship expert, so but I think communication in any case is key because that's where you are able to express like I think one thing before people, well, it's still the case, but you now realize that people can't read your mind. And unless you express what you're expecting, what are your boundaries, what are your needs, it's easier for the other person to understand what you want and give it to you or not. if it's not aligned with what their values are, their needs are, etc. So the fact that now you are able to articulate and vocalize what our values and our needs makes it easier for you of a person, but at the same time it can make it more difficult for you as a person because they know what you expect and they have to keep up with it and really be able to match it or make it happen. So yeah, it's always a fine balance and I think that in any case, communication is key and and it's so interesting to see that to take time to observe people and how they react and how, you know, when you start knowing like how the brain works and how the parasympathetic nervous systems work and how sometimes people react to things instead of like responding to things and how this is all due sometimes to like just the way their brain is wired. Then it starts getting interesting because you start taking things less personally because you know that some of the reactions of people are not against you, but it's more like mirroring the other person's own, like fears or own like thinking system. It's a fascinating topic. I think there's so much to learn from. Yeah, like the brain and how it works and the body in general. Like we're so lucky to have such wonderful super computer bodies that can do so many incredible things and we take that for granted a lot. 

 

Jonathan Humphries [00:14:41] I think there's so much there, Celine, that I'd just like to unpack it a little. So there's three separate areas I'd like to kind of explore with you. The first is you talked about openness, communication, open communication, and I think that's one of the foundations of good relationship. And this ability to be vulnerable, which has been explored in many areas, both professionally and personally, leads to if one is able to do it in a psychologically safe environment. And I think that's the key aspect, then we are able to be understood. And I think that that mutual understanding allows for that connection. So it all kind of ties together. And, you know, I think just kind of linking it into well-being as well as a kind of general topic and also tying it back into the survey that we did with leaders. I did another survey at a conference late last year, and it was all around retaining and attracting the best talent. And I asked a large survey through LinkedIn what people were looking for from their leadership. And I also asked the audience, what did they think that people were looking for from them as leaders? Now, interestingly, the leaders thought that people were looking on the most part for professional development opportunities. People themselves were looking towards leaders for psychological safety, as in the ability to be able to communicate openly and to be understood. And I think what's interesting and what we've just been explaining is that that is actually the foundation of our personal relationships as well. But it also translates into our work relationships and also the cultures that we're in from a work perspective. And, you know, I just wondered if you had a view on this need for psychological safety in relation to wellbeing, because I think it's for me anyway, just having done those surveys and also taking a reflective kind of position on it, you know, and we both have children so also kind of creating that environment for my boys, that psychological safety I feel is incredibly important. It means that they can talk openly about what's going on in their lives without having to feel the need that they have to hide things from me, which I think as a parent is is a huge plus, actually. 

 

Celine Vadam [00:17:14] Yeah, I agree. And I think that that's also where, you know, like our expectations in relationships in general has changed. Before like you wouldn't expect your boss to be like a psychological support for you, you know, and your boss would not sit down with his employees and listen to all their complaints and everything. But now, like, I think that the higher you go and the more people you manage, the more your job is kind of turning into yeah, like people management, but in a sense of the therapist. But, you know, I think that there's this skill set that people in management need to have now that the way we manage people now and before us changed so much. And that's why I think a lot of time like there's, especially with the new generation like they're the employees and the employers like have conflicting visions or conflicting views because as you said, like leaders who are probably also from the maybe a little older generation think that professional like progression is the key. But for employees what they really want is to know that they will be treated well, they can be themselves in the work environment, etc, things that you are actually like seeking from your family as well before. And there's probably also like again, like this is my own opinion I'm not a professional psychologist or sociologist or whatever, but I think there's also to do with, you know, like the fact that the nuclear family kind of model exploded, like you're not living close to your parents anymore or close to your siblings or to your family. So you want to recreate somehow these family safety feeling somewhere. And well, where do you spend your most time? At work and with your coworkers. So because at home, like if you're like a single person, you live alone, you don't have this family support anymore. If you live in London and all your family is in regional UK, for example, or you're not living close to them, kind of again, like we're back to this need of connection and because you need connection, you're like seeking it from all over circles. And your closer circle in your adult life is actually your work environment. And we see that also now, like with the way that companies start rethinking retirement homes and how they're trying to see like how they can recreate like a family or at least like this connection or like relationship network in retirement homes because the same like you have like parents or grandparents very isolated because their kids left and they may live far away. And like back in the day, you were living like when you were old, you were living at your kids place. And you could have like generations of family, like living in the same place or like very close to each other and supporting each other and being there for each other. But now, like you have people living in a lot of different places and it's hard to recreate that. It's hard to be there. So we have to rethink the model of socialization differently. Like villages, there's a lot of the youngster who left now and leaving the older people alone. So again like it's about recreating these social connections, putting back together like in these new like retirement homes models you have mixing student accommodation, for example, with older people accommodation to mix their generations and give the students this nuclear family setting that they don't have because they had to go away from their family to study and then give older people the same but the other way around. So we're trying to kind of recreate those conditions, but with strangers at the end. And that's also where the difficulty comes and the difficulty in both sides, like how do you interact with strangers who are not part of your family but kind of become your family of substitution, but also like and what is the importance of your like, blood family because they're not there for you anymore like physically. The other people are there physically. There is so many, like things that come up with those things too, you know, like so many thematics that you can start to like unpack from there and like, where is your loyalty towards your family? Like if you know your parents are sick and you can't take care of them because you live far away. But now that's kind of the norm like to live far away from your parents and it's creating a lot of rethinking how we live, rethinking the family model. There's so many kids like my daughter included with split families. Your dad lives in one place, your mom lives in one place. You probably spend more time with one than the other. And yeah, like again, that's also like, where do you fit in there, how do you recreate relationship with all these people? 

 

Jonathan Humphries [00:22:53] Yeah, I think it's definitely a need and I think that we need to be careful that we don't automatically assume that things are done by sociodemographic profiling. Just because somebody is of a certain age doesn't mean that they're necessarily going to get on with people from the same age, which is what's for example, elderly homes, care homes had been based on. And what we realized today, it's the same as you know, when we join, let's say, a fitness class or a yoga studio or whatever it might be, what we're actually looking for, yes, in some aspects we're looking for just the the very level, the basic level, which is to kind of to do the thing that we set out to do. But at a deeper level, we're looking for people that we can share our values with that have the same value system, and that allows us to create those communities that you're talking about with, you know, as you said, strangers. So how do we know that it's going to be okay? How do we know that we're going to feel comfortable? How do we know that we're going to feel psychologically safe is because we're going to create communities based on value systems, I believe, going forward. So it's going to be much more around psychographic profiling in terms of how we connect with people in the future. And that in itself will be hugely helpful. And I think that then leads to and I'm just going to circle back a little bit the whole role, the situation regarding, you know, companies, communities, is that I think that historically as well, we had many different roles that we played. So we had very specific roles. We had a role at home, which was, let's say, a son or a daughter or a sibling or whatever it might be. And then in the community we had another role. And then within the immediate family unit, we might have a role as a mother or father or whatever it might be. And then in the company, we might have another role as a manager or as an employee or as a specialist or whatever it might be. And we kind of historically played roles. We kind of adhered to those different roles, and we talk about it, roles of responsibilities. We talk about it a lot. But I think what's different today is this need coming back, is this need to be authentic in all of the roles that we have to be our true selves and not be playing a role. And I think that that's where it becomes really difficult and really challenging. And I think that's why there is a need. And don't forget, it's the need from people that in order to stay where they are working and to perform, they want to be themselves. They want to be comfortable in that environment and be recognized for who they are. Otherwise they will go somewhere else where their values are. Also, they connect with other people with similar values. So people are looking for that to a greater extent than they ever did before. Rather than playing a role and then trying to find time somewhere else where they could be themselves. So I think that that authenticity is really key to wellbeing as well. The ability to be authentic no matter where we are or what we're doing, who we're with. And I feel that that ties in with that aspect of relationships that we were talking about at the beginning. But I'm just curious from a wellbeing perspective as well, and I'll come on to that role for leaders then is much more you could say a leader is coach, right? So they're really looking kind of to try and figure out how those people within their team or organization, they can be the best version of themselves, which is much more a kind of coaching approach than other leadership approaches now we've got this a whole different models of leadership, but I'm just wondering how that plays in with wellbeing in terms of authenticity and values. What do you think, Celine? 

 

Celine Vadam [00:27:20] Well, I think it's very important, like being authentic and like respect your values. And I think also like there's also like, but to allow that there's also a lot of structural changes that needs to happen because the roles, as you said, like we used to have like very defined roles, like really like in a box, and now the roles are changing, the lines between different roles becomes more blurry. Take a simple example like men and woman, like the role of men and woman in the household evolved a lot, and the same in a company. And now like to be able to, in terms of think of a company like the role of women, like it evolved a lot and now like women want to have a seat at the table, but want to have a career, etc. But it goes with like changes in their role in the household because if you have to have a full time job at work that allows you to progress in your work, but at the same time you have a fulltime job at home because you have to take care of everything. You know, like you can be superwoman at some time, you're going to burn out. So it needs also like structuraly to allow people to be themselves. And that means allowing woman to have structures where if they got pregnant, it doesn't mean that they're stopping their career and they can't continue growing their career. And the same for men like, you know, like when men have kids, they should be allowed the same way as women to leave work to bring their kids to the doctor or to go to their kids recital. There's a few, like structural things in terms of companies that need to happen to allow people. And I think that today it's increasingly like an important factor of work progression of choosing a company to make sure that, yeah, like you are in an environment that will allow you first, like even before respecting your value, but to allow you to at least do your role the best possible and will facilitate that. And then comes like allowing you to be yourself, allowing you to, respecting your values, respecting that it can be so much like it can go from respecting your religion or non religion, respecting skin color or your gender or your sexual preferences, your political preferences, your views of the environment. There are so many things to take into consideration and that can be overwhelming for management and leaders as well because there are so many things to take into consideration that at some point you may be okay, like if I do this, I'm going to might offend this person, but this person will be happy. But this person will, you know, like it can be like very, sometimes you are like stepping on eggs because you try to respect everybody. So I think that that's where like having strong company values is important because from your company values and from what you as a company you want to represent, where do you want to engage yourself? What are, what is your vision, your why, it's going to help you attract people who adhere to those values. And I think that's probably like easier or like more authentic way to do it, that trying to do it the other way around, you know, like because at some point you have to, you can't make everybody happy. And I think that as companies, we need to understand to be as inclusive as possible, of course, but also like attracting talents because they are attracted to your values and what you represent, and that's how you can, how I guess it will help also to have people who are authentic because they will be attracted to work with you, because they share your values and they think that as a brand they will be proud to work with you and they will, they can bring their authentic self to like when they come to work with you. 

 

Jonathan Humphries [00:32:03] I think absolutely all of it of what you said. You know, one word describes it for me, it's individuality. You know, moving away from, you know, gender defined roles and norms, moving away from, you know, historic context around race, religion, all of these kind of things. It's just focusing on the individual, which, you know, allows people to be authentic, allows people to safely communicate, allows people to feel connected, allows people to find people with a similar value system as themselves, allows people to find environments and companies that share those values. So, you know, I think that in itself, in a way should help with people's overall wellbeing. And we kind of started from another place right? It's interesting. You know, we've had many discussions as well. And I'm sure, you know, normally when we talk about wellbeing, it's a kind of all of the things that we can try and control, you know, looking after our health, looking after our nutrition, looking after our sleep, all of those kind of things. What we've been talking about during this conversation is the environment actually. 

 

Celine Vadam [00:33:30] Yes the environment. And you know, like the environment is so like underrated because you go to a class, for example, to teach you how to eat well. So you go like you learn these like few cool recipes and you're super pumped when you come back home. And you were like, okay, I'm going to cook these recipes now. Then you go home and like two days later you're like, Okay, I'm going to do this recipe and you open your kitchen cabinet and all you have is like ingredients, like things that don't allow you to make these healthy recipes. So while you go back to cooking the way you are, so unless you clear your cupboards and put in there the ingredients you need to do these healthy recipes, you're never going to make it. So I think that's like a big part of making like long lasting change is changing first your environment. And I did studies on that with people with addictions and they go to rehab. And when they come back, well, after a few weeks, they're going back to their old habits. And there's actually this great book called Atomic Habits who talk about that, too, and like how to create routines and like healthier routines. And your environment is like the number one thing, because if you go back to the same environment, you will quickly go back to your same habits. So you need to change your environment if you want to implement new like healthy new habits in general, but even more new healthy habits. And you can do like some little hacks to help you with that. But again, like it's hard to do, but the environment is so important and it affects so much your your mood. And they've done things with flowers too, you know, like you take two flowers and one flower, you like speak badly to the flower and the same flower, like they get the same amount of water, the same amount of sun, but one receives like the very negative words and the other one receives like words of love. And after a few weeks, like, there's one who's blossoming and the one who had the negative comments is just perishing and dying. So imagine that like times, I don't know, like 200 people in your company or like times, if you have like a toxic environment at work, how like much impact it can have on your mental health and you multiply that by the number of employees that you have and you can imagine how like how many people are impacted by the environment of your company. So that brings a lot of responsibilities to work, which they didn't have before. Like before that responsibility fall into families and addiction as well. You know, like you had your community a church, mosque or synagogue or temple whatever your religion was. But now that religion really like declines, like and the family, like is spread out. People search that from work and that wasn't really the goal of work to do that, but now it's kind of taken that responsibility. 

 

Jonathan Humphries [00:37:01] Well, I think there's an aspect to it as well. I think people are working longer and harder than they ever have done as well. And I think given that it's also in the employer's interests to look after and be conscious of the impact that the environment is having on the employees' mental and physical and spiritual health. Because ultimately, if it is a, let's say, good environment, then in theory, you know, those people in that environment should be more healthy, they should be able to perform better, they should be willing to stay longer in the company. There should be less turnover. And if it's a bad environment, toxic environment, as you've highlighted, then you would expect the opposite to be the case. And therefore it's in companies best interests to really create the environments that look after the wellbeing of people. And that's, you know, we started off with one of the big questions we wanted to address during this, which was why living well is good for our health. That was the kind of overall context. However, you know, looking at it from a environment perspective, we can see even living within the right environment or at least trying to influence our environment in a way that allows us to live well. So I'll just take the example you just gave. Actually, I'll give a real specific example. So I, in the last few months have quit drinking alcohol and eating meat. Okay. Now, that means that when I go shopping, I don't buy meat unless I buy a little bit for my boys, maybe just one meal, and then I cook separately per week. Now, thankfully, they're very open to that and they're quite happy to explore different things to eat. However, if I was in an environment which was constantly resistant. Resisting the change with somebody that wanted to eat meat all the time, was constantly complaining about eating only vegetables and fish, etc. That would be a very tough environment for me to be in because I'm now conflicted with what I would like to do and the environment that allows me to do it and the relationship that is important to me that I want to, you know, be part of. So it's interesting having, you know, stop drinking alcohol now, going out with friends. I find I need to have another dynamic to, you know, the socializing and the relationship. It's not about the wine. It's not about the beer. It's not about having kind of long evenings, you know, talking into the early hours. It's about, you know, really looking after myself. And that's changed the dynamic to a certain extent. But what is positive, I have to say is that the friendships, you know, I realize are not, they are deep and therefore they are around much more than just the social aspect of, you know, drinking and partying. So that for me is very helpful. But I can imagine that there are many other people that face much more resistance than I have faced in terms of making these transitions and challenges. So how do people deal with those situations, those relationships which are not allowing them to do the things that they know is the best for themselves? How can one change that situation? Have you ever had to, Celine? 

 

Celine Vadam [00:41:07] Yeah, like yeah, like in so many times and so many ways. I think the importance is to be like aligned with yourself and know that you're doing that for like you have like a personal, like a purpose to it. If you're doing it just to annoy someone or, you know, you know what I mean? Like, you need to have like to genuinely want to do that and you have like a greater purpose for yourself of doing that. That's first reinforce you and reinforce what you're willing to do or what you're willing to drop to do it. So like you were talking about meat, and I rarely eat meat like very rarely though when I did this shift with my daughter, she started to complain like, Oh, like you're not cooking the same. If she wants to eat meat like, once in, like she can have some, there's no issue with that. But the funny thing is, you know, this idea of leading by example, and she started to see, like, the benefits it had on me and explaining like why I was doing that and showing her like different ways of cooking and that actually, like, not eating meat was opening so many other options of creative cooking, like using so many other like techniques and ingredients and all those kind of things and kind of getting her excited. And the funny thing is that when she was going back to school, like and I was asking her what she had for lunch, she was like, Oh yeah, I had the vegetarian option. I was like, Why? You keep complaining at home because I don't cook with meat. And when you're at school and you have the opportunity to eat meat, you're not doing it. She was like, Yeah but the vegetarian options that looked like so much nicer. So like if you try to force it, it's not going to work. And I think also, like, well, with your kids, you can do that. But sometimes with certain friends you have also at some point to accept to let go some people. And along your life there will be people who will stay for a while and some people who will come and go, or like some people who would stay for a while and then go. And sometimes it's hard to accept that. But like, I had a really dear friend, but she was really like always very very negative. Like there's a difference between having someone who's having a hard time and being supportive of them and having someone who's really like always in that negative mindset and dragging you down with them, you know? And at some point it was like, okay, I'm seeing that we can't continue this friendship anymore because this is draining me. And you're getting frustrated because I don't see things your way and you're already draining me. So at some point, maybe it's better if we're not talking anymore. And it's sad, but that's life. And I think that this is a hard one to do and a hard one to accept. But yeah, like, sometimes you have to let some people go and, you know, like with the example of drinking with friends, like if I don't know if they're frustrated because you have like a tea or juice while they are having a glass of wine, maybe it's because they're, like the thing and I remember we talked about that, that sometimes you doing something different than them or not doing something that they are doing is mirroring them what they are doing. So, for example, you not drinking wine makes them question huh? So I'm drinking wine. So the fact that it doesn't maybe he thinks I'm a bad person or like I'm having a bad behavior because I'm drinking wine. So at the end they are not upset with you, they're upset with themselves because they're starting to question their own habits. And the easier way to question that is to tell you, well, you're not fun because you're not drinking wine anymore instead of saying, well, that's okay, you know, like I like drinking wine, like my pleasure every week is to have a glass of good wine on Friday evenings, if you prefer to have water, it's fine. Me, I enjoy my wine, so it's fine. But if their intention with drinking is kind of, I don't know, inhibiting some of their emotion or not allowing themselves to go into a certain conversation or to go into a deep relationship with you, then that's how they become frustrated because you're not drinking and that's really triggering their own habits. So yeah like relationship also like there's so much into that and like, yeah sometimes like someone as I said earlier on, like someone's picking on you sometimes is more like a reflection of what you're triggering into them rather than you personally. And it's easier for us to take things personally. But a lot of time it's not about us, it's about the other person. 

 

Jonathan Humphries [00:46:56] Absolutely. I think that was the other, one of the other points I wanted to bring up was the ability to respond rather than react. And, you know, I think that perspective taking is very helpful in order to be able to respond rather than react to a situation. So I think you've given a good example there of how we can potentially do that. What I'd like to try and do here is kind of bring things to a full kind of circle. So we wanted to explore why living well is good for our health overall. However, what we have done is we have looked at relationships, meaningful relationships, what it means to have a meaningful relationship. We've talked about the importance of quality relationships. We've talked about essentially having reliable relationships, but also open communicative relationships, which creates a psychological safety so that we are able to be understood. And then that ties in with whichever environment that we're in. It allows us to be essentially a true version of ourselves, our authentic selves, which allows us to be individual, our uniqueness, to express our uniqueness and be who we are meant to be without adhering to the imposed kind of gender or other roles that are put upon us historically through context, which can be very limiting. It also means that in a way we have an opportunity to craft the environment that we're in by choosing the environment based on values, which means we can choose the people that we work with. We can choose our relationships and our friends. To a certain extent, we have our most important relationships, which I guess are the family relationships, which, you know, we hope through this process of kind of sharing our true version, that they will get to appreciate our values, even if they have different values from us. Because some of those relationships, it's not so easy to change and let go of. But hopefully they through seeing that there is a benefit to us through living the way that we want to live, they will appreciate that and maybe it has a positive influence on them. As you've highlighted with a small example regarding your daughter and the vegetarian food. And I feel all of this kind of gives a sense that as looking for the next, you know, ten years or so in the work and in the personal environment and, you know, tying it back with the survey at the very beginning, we're going to have a very most likely unprecedented, unpredictable time over the next ten years. We don't really know what's going to be happening. However, what we can do is really try and figure out how to be in the best possible and create the best possible environments, which, you know, I've mentioned. And therefore there is a role for the leaders to really kind of figure out how they want to do that through their leadership style. But there's also an opportunity for the employees to be openly communicating in a positive and constructive way what kind of environment that they really need and help shape that environment as well. So, Celine, I just wanted to say a big thank you for this conversation. I also would like to ask you, is there anything that you would like to kind of share as a parting wisdom, why living well is good for our health that we didn't get a chance to cover and we can always promise to do another session as well? 

 

Celine Vadam [00:51:10] Well, I think it's more like to wrap up. I think that now what we saw is that we have a greater choice. Before, like we did in our that choice, we couldn't, and again we were in that box and we didn't really have much option to move away from that box. And these were the models. These were like the containers and you had to fit in the container and that's it. And now we have so many choice. We can really be whoever we want. We can create the life we want. It's not because you grew up in a little town somewhere very remote that you can't, like, go and live in the other side of the world and create something very different than the life of your parents. Like before the life of your parents, your life was similar to the life of your parents and your grandparents, etc.. So now we have the choice to be whoever we want. And with that choice comes responsibility. And I think that we need to accept this responsibility and also the fact that with responsibility, there's also the chance to disappoint some people or like to have, you know, like you were saying we hope that our family will adhere to like accept our values, but they might not. And you should be okay with that. And like taking their, owning your choice, knowing that responsibility comes with it and being okay to accept whatever feedback or whatever actions are like what's going to come back from that choice and owning your choice. And that's, I think, where like you can really be true to yourself and true to your wellbeing is that it's really owning your choices instead of where you want to work, who you want to be, what your values are, what do you do for your health? Like how you eat, how you move, etc. Because we all have the same at least basic knowledge. We all know that we need to move everyday, to eat more vegetables and to like not smoke and not drink and all these things. We all know that, but we choose to do it or not do it. This is our choice and therefore our responsibility. So I think that yeah, that would be like my, well we don't think, you know, like, what do you want to do with your responsibility? You have the awareness, you have the choice. Now what do you do with it? 

 

Jonathan Humphries [00:54:05] That's wonderful. Celine I think that's a very, I think, positive and constructive way to close, let's own our choice and choices. Let's make sure we take responsibility for those choices and also the consequences that go with those choices as well. And also, what I like about the word responsibility is if we break the word down, it's also then ties in with our ability to respond in the right way. 

 

Celine Vadam [00:54:36] Yeah. 

 

Jonathan Humphries [00:54:37] So without further ado, Celine, I'd love to say thank you very much for your time, energy and insights on today's conversation, HoCoSo Conversation, it has been an absolute pleasure having you on this podcast. 

 

Celine Vadam [00:54:51] Thank you so much. Thank you for having me. Thank you. 

 

Jonathan Humphries [00:54:57] Thank you for listening to the HoCoSo Conversation. We hope you enjoyed this episode. If you did, please do share us with your friends and community. Take a look at our previous episodes and look out for our next ones. We look forward to you joining us on this unique exploratory journey.