Sophie Stephenson was living the life she’d always wanted. She had a well-paid dream job in Australia, lived in a beautiful place and felt secure in the knowledge that this could go on, indefinitely. But she was, she realised, unfulfilled. She was not, it turned out, truly happy with this life at all.

By chance Sophie came across a reference to Nancy Kline’s book Time to Think. She described a way of being with one another that is both incredibly simple, and incredibly rare. We don’t give ourselves, or others, the freedom to think without interruption, or judgment, or time limits, or an obsession with outcomes. We limit our thinking, our conversations, our relationships and our entire lives by confining our minds.

Sophie began to question the life she had chosen. She began to ask what she really wanted, to explore the ‘authentic’ me, her instinctive mind, and gradually, she began to reclaim what really mattered. Sophie left corporate life, moved back to the UK, and met the man who is now her husband and father to her two children.

We need to reclaim time to think in our life if we are to do meaningful things with our life.

I was struck by how deeply Sophie listened and quickly figured me out. It was almost bizarre, in a nice way. I asked her how I could become a better listener, and how to ask better questions – both pretty crucial things for a novice podcaster to get to grips with…

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SHOW NOTES

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• The Thinking Project helps exceptional purpose-driven women create time and space so they can consciously create lives they love & businesses where everyone thrives.
• On Twitter
• Nancy Kline’s book Time to Think
• We need to reclaim time to think in our life if we are to do meaningful things with our life.
• Don’t just fill the time with nothing: it needs to be a bit more conscious and structured than that.
• Ruminative thinking – we just go over and over the same thoughts time and again (often negative)
• Our brains try to keep us safe by just thinking the same stuff over and over
• Thinking with someone else rather than ourselves helps keep it focussed rather than distracted. Having someone listen to us makes it easier.
• Usually we come up with lists of all the things we don’t want
• First big question: “what do you really want?”
• We jump to assumptions that stop us doing what we want to do, largely without evidence, largely unexamined.
• At root there are a couple of major assumptions that stop us: a sense of worthiness, belonging and being enough.
• We all have a need for safety, connection and autonomy, but they manifest in different ways for each of us.
• Thinking is like a seed – it needs the right conditions to thrive
• Consciously choose what it is that you want and do not want in life.
• We need to warm up to thinking well and more deeply. Ask “so what?” to your answers lots of times.
• Being a better listener starts with talking less, and choosing to become a better listener. Stop interrupting. Get really interested in other people.
• Get interested in other people. Not necessarily in the subject they are interested in, but in the fact that they are interested in that.
• To ask better questions, think about what is the purpose of your question?
• The best questions are ones that you do not know the answer to.
• Ask either very broad or very specific questions. For example, “what do you want to think about?”
• Her decision-making has changed. It used to be about challenge and proving what a well-lived life entailed.
• Often we lead the life that we think we Should live, rather than the life of our choice.
• Change your motivations from being fear-based to doing things that you love.
• When making a big change some people leap into the unknown, others establish some breathing space and time and security to cushion the leap.
• You don’t have to make enormous changes and drastic switches – it can be small steps that are transformative and life-changing.
• The experiences when we are vulnerable are often those that transform our lives
• The relationship between vulnerability and trust
• Meditate, drink lots of water, and remove social media from the phone – all simple but not easy and beneficial things.

TRANSCRIPT

Below is the transcription of our conversation. It’s done by AI so is perhaps a wee bit ropey here and there. If these transcripts prove sufficiently useful then I will make the effort to clean then up and make them better. Do let me know if you think it’s worth my time to do that. (Or, better still, do it for me…!). If you’d like to listen as you read along you can do that here:

https://otter.ai/s/hCd1SaUjRMWVUAQC38i12A

Alastair Humphreys
I was interested when I found out about you and the idea of the thinking project. Because one of the reasons I’ve got on my bike for a month is to try and give myself some time to think. So tell me please about reclaiming time to think.

Sophie Stephenson
So one of the I mean, just even saying that, like the fact we have to reclaim time to think in itself is so telling. But we do, I think if we want to get good quality outcomes. So if we want to make sure we’re doing the right things, enjoying our life having really good. Yeah, experiences and doing stuff that’s meaningful to us. I think the first step is, whatever it looks like. So if you a month away is reclaiming a big chunk. But a lot of it too is like it doesn’t have to be those big chunks. But it has to be consistent enough.

But in my experience, it’s not enough just to

let you don’t want to just feel that with nothing. It’s like what are you going to do with that time? to think differently?

Alastair Humphreys
Okay, so

what stops people thinking them, because I remember my, my brother when he was little, sort of our family storeys when my brother was little, he said to her dad, dad, to ever talk to yourself inside your head. Yes, that’s cool thinking. So do we just all think all the time? Yeah, we

Sophie Stephenson
do. So but unfortunately, most of what we do is what’s called women’s shift thinking. So we just think over the same thoughts repeatedly, coming up against the same old untrue limiting assumptions. So we don’t actually move forward in our thinking. That’s a great

Alastair Humphreys
phrase, I’ve heard of that.

Sophie Stephenson
Yeah, and most of it is negative, most of it is either backward looking or projecting into the future, which we’re really bad at doing. So our brains are really bad at projecting

Alastair Humphreys
into something we don’t know. But as in an accurate,

Sophie Stephenson
it’s hard, it’s really hard for us to project forward into the future we haven’t seen. So what our brains will do is just try and keep us safe. So even if it’s safe isn’t good. We’ll just say doing what we’re doing. Because how do we know like, there’s the potential, it could go wrong, that potentially it could be worse, it’s potentially get hurt, it could lots of assumptions that your brain would just quit on to and then stop. So most people best exhausted from thinking. But it’s because the quality of the thinking is just the same with the same thing same and same and you don’t get past that.

Alastair Humphreys
And you took a new said, then the one thing that’s important to try and do is so much the additives thinking so a concerted effort to think more thoroughly more deeply, more focus, what what is it.

Sophie Stephenson
So I suppose I I teach people how to be with somebody else in a way that enables them to think for themselves, because unfortunately, we’re even when we’re on our own. So say you’re on your own, and it’s lovely, you will end up distracting yourself. So after about depending on your nature, it might be 10 seconds, it might be might get a lovely 10 minutes, you’ll start distracting yourself and what having somebody else there who’s listening to you, giving you really good attention, treating you like meat or encouraging you kind of keeps you on track. Whereas normally we kind of have a thought and we think, again, we think thinking should be linear. So you start a and you’re gonna get to be and it will be a lovely journey. And actually, as we ready journey is the softer A, then it goes poo. And it all goes wrong when you take the wrong turn. And, and that’s what we do in our brain. So we make all these different Connexions and we’re thinking about stuff. And at that point when it gets hard. So all I want to do is like different would distract ourselves. So it’s at that point, I think you can almost pause and say what what is it on one? Like, what is it I’m trying to get to? And again, what most people end up with is what they don’t want to see. As long as I don’t want this, I don’t want that. But I think the first thing is start really thinking about what do you like, What do you want? And just allowing that to be? And not having to justify and not having to defend it? And I’m going to explain to him, just allow yourself to feel into that.

Alastair Humphreys
And is it? What do you want?

Leaving aside the

hypothetical barriers and obstacles and realities? Because I think sometimes we’re trying to think what I want. And I think before I even got any way down the line, I dismiss it, I think all I can’t afford that I think what the time or I’m not an expert at that is that is that a parts of it trying to park the problems, whilst you first of all, establish what you what, what you’re after, and why you on that.

Sophie Stephenson
So once I let yourself what you want, first, and then. So a lot of what I teach you is about to their backward assumptions. So we jumped to these assumptions that will stop us, you know, feeling how we want to feel or doing what we want to do. And it can often be really useful just to interrogate those, because again, when they’re in certain assumptions, something we take us to unreal, largely without evidence and largely unexamined. So it sits in our subconscious. And you can almost then just make a list of like, well, what what machine that’s stopping me from doing this victory, and you can list them all. And some of them will be true, you know, and some of them, but it’s the untrue ones that were interested in. So it’s, so a lot of those are just the logistics. So yeah, it might take a lot of time and money. And you might have to change things. And you might, people might laugh at you it might fail. It’s like Yep, that’s Yeah, and you still want to do it.

Alastair Humphreys
And this is, in your experiences at the same things that stopping everybody.

Sophie Stephenson
That’s really interesting. And I just wrote a piece on this, asking that very question, because I think, at roots, there are a couple that keep coming up again and there around a sense of worthiness, a sense of belonging, and a sense of being enough. The route seem to drive people and again, they they tap into our need for safety and need for connexion and our need for autonomy. So I think monsters I think so. But I don’t know. And what’s interesting is the way they manifest is completely different for each of us anyway. So my need for safety and connexion would be very different to how that would manifest in your life. Because of Lyft experience. That’s what’s that’s what’s so fascinating.

Alastair Humphreys
And this word illness, longing, and being enough, is it there’s a difference between men and women?

Sophie Stephenson
Interesting, I’ve never seen a gender split in any of the work I do. So I used to work in very male dominated societies, most of the work I do now is with much more with women. And I’ve seen no difference at all. But I think that’s so the, like, the best analogy I’ve come up with is like, if you’ve got a seed, and he throw it in the ground, it will try his best to grow. Like it will do its best. But if you put it in the right soil and the right conditions, and you give it exactly what it needs, it will thrive and flourish. And I think our ability to think is the same. So I can just say something like just go and have 10 minutes and do some thinking. And they’ll do their best, you know, based on what they’ve done previously. But if you give them the right conditions, and you pay them attention, and you treat them like they’re an equal and you don’t you encourage them rather than compete with them. They’re much more likely to thrive. And so I think it’s it’s that is like men and women, I don’t think a difference in the conditions we need to throw, how we demonstrate that might be how we choose to live that. But I think the conditions are universally recognised. Pretty simple. We just don’t get them

Alastair Humphreys
simple, but not easy improvement. Nice.

So how do how would someone go about trying to think more thoroughly and effectively about their life without having a

Unknown Speaker
expert listener

Alastair Humphreys
like you to sound off against? Or does the boy is it some do you think? Do you believe that? to think deeply you need someone listening to you?

Sophie Stephenson
I think it makes it easier? I don’t think it’s impossible. And so I think so at its most simple, I think what you’re doing so making time is the first step. So without that really hard, having a sense of ease. So trying to think when you’re stressed, is impossible, our brains don’t work very well. So getting is not enough, just have time, you got to have that space where you can be. And then allies of exactly as they start allowing yourself to consciously choose what it is you want in your life and what you do. And then I would just be asking myself, you know, say and do one at a time. So don’t try and aim with one. And then just sort of asking yourself like, what am I assuming that would stop me from doing this? And then asking yourself at that point. Do I think that’s true? So do I think these two are not? Is it true? Because that’s a really different question allows you to justify all of those assumptions. But do you think that that assumption is true? That’d be a pretty good place to start.

Alastair Humphreys
Do you think that assumption is true? Or is it masking or

manifesting some different thing?

Is that Japanese The awesome thing of asking why five times do you know that? Yeah. And I love that I can you explain that more eloquently than I do? Yeah, I

Sophie Stephenson
mean, I think that’s going beyond I mean, one of the one of the things I teachers around, like we don’t do up, like we need to warm up to thinking well, so that we can just have a conversation. And it all stays on the surface. So it’s like How are you? I’m fine. How you doing? Yeah, it’s fine. Yeah. Great. Nice adventure. Yeah. And in this, and it’s all lovely, but there’s no depth to it. And what time does and what listening and you can do that you can listen to yourself, what what that does is allow you to get deeper into your why. But why do I want it? Why do I want this? And it’s like, you know, Microsoft like so well. So, so what? Okay, so I want to do this. So what, folks, I want more freedom. So well. Oh. And at some point, you’ll get that like, Oh, interesting. And that’s what I’m really interested in? Is that those moments of like? Yeah,

Alastair Humphreys
clarity, clarity. And I’m one of the reasons I’m doing this podcast is that it’s just really selfish, selfish, indulgent way to get to meet cool and interesting people and forced them to tell me stuff is great. So I really like that. But what I’m noticing in my brief podcast career, is that it’s really hard to listen to people.

What, on a

simple level, because I’m trying to fiddle with controls and think about my next question, but I think the the time that this will be useful for me is if I listen really deeply to what people are saying, think about it. And then ideally, another question. So how do I become a better listener?

Unknown Speaker
And its most simple, just stop talking. You

Sophie Stephenson
know, I think people mistake listening as they think it’s a trait. I think people think you’re either a good listener, or you’re not. And it’s not, it’s a skill. So you can you’ve got, if you want to be a better listener, you’ve got to choose to be a better listener.

Alastair Humphreys
You said you used to be a bad, terrible,

Sophie Stephenson
yeah, my mom’s out, I shouldn’t have gotten one. But she said mom’s wanna four sisters. And I honestly don’t think I finished the sentence. Hello, left. Whoa, you know, and that was a good thing. But I used to chronically interrupt. And I think people interrupt for lots and lots of different reasons. One is to show empathy and excitement, they think they’re going to forget what they say. When we care deeply about things, we find it really hard to not interrupt. But when somebody is trying to think, well, the impact of interruption is they will stop. So it’s getting Can you kind of, are you more interested in what the other person’s about, say, than what you already think? And for me, I always think I know I think currently, what’s much more fascinating to me is learning something new, that I don’t know that I can integrate into my experience and start thinking refresh. So I think one is can you get really interested in other people, and you don’t even have to be interested in content, but just fascinated that they’re fascinated with something. And then try as best you can, to not interrupt. So allow someone that space. And I think of it as like people don’t think they think in waves. So you have a way of thinking and that wave of self generate. So it will then get his own speed, and it will generate another way of thinking. And most people in that pause, think that’s my, that’s my time to go, I need to say something. And my sort of advice and experiences like there is power in that was like, just let it ride itself out. And people will just go again, and again and again. And if they want something from you the last we’re really good at asking for. So if I’m finished on a Sunday, I’ll ask you. So just getting more and more comfortable with silence, that that is the place where new ideas are being generated, but not a place that need filling or need to be rescued. That is magic, magic. And

Alastair Humphreys
I feel really bad about

them. So then once once the silence ends, and is your time to speak? How do you ask better questions?

Sophie Stephenson
So, again, I would say what’s the purpose of the question? So if for me, the best person purpose for question is because it’s going to help someone think for themselves. So I’d be trying to get them to generate their own questions. So I’d ask them, you know, what outcome do you want? What are you looking for? What interesting, and then I’ll get them to help them frame up a question. I think the challenge with trying to I mean, the best questions are questions you don’t know the answers to. Like, you don’t ask the question. You already know the answer. You know, that’s that, for me is the first thing is is like you want to have a curiosity.

Unknown Speaker
curiosity.

Sophie Stephenson
Yeah. And, and not humbleness. That’s the way it’s just like a sense of possibility around the question. But I think a question that’s got an outcome you’re driving to is a rubbish question. Like, just right. Yeah.

Alastair Humphreys
Yeah, leading someone towards? Yeah, the place you think they should go?

Sophie Stephenson
And for me, Mike, the questions I asked them tend to be, they’re either very bored or very specific. So the question I ask anyone, so whether it’s coaching in a court is like, what do you want to think about? And what are your thoughts? Because it’s the biggest borders question we can come up with. And then they will allow the process of working out what they won’t, and it will narrow down. And then I’m asking a specific question around, say, what would you like to accomplish?

Unknown Speaker
What do you want to think about now? And what do you

Sophie Stephenson
what about you found this fascinating in terms of, like, I think there is a real parallel around? Why do people go on adventures? Like, what is it you know, there’s something around, I think, connecting more deeply with themselves or with places there’s, there’s something exciting, and it’s the new you know, people are and for me, what I found about thinking for myself is it’s all those things, it’s like, I live a really not adventurous in a, I don’t go travelling often that’s kind of that definition of adventurous, but I live a life. That’s really true to me. And it takes courage. And I think good travels takes courage, you know, and courage in its truest sense, which is, the route is cool, which is hard, staying true to what your heart says. And I think that good travel gets you closer to what your highs telling you is important in your life. And I think that’s what you’re thinking does exactly the same thing is what? What is true to us, and how do we live that in a way that’s meaningful? No, I’m

Alastair Humphreys
very much agree that you are pursuing an adventurous life. That’s why when I came across you I was intrigued. But in a former life, you live the more traditionally adventurous life. You’re in the world a

Unknown Speaker
new he said, Yes.

Alastair Humphreys
What was what, what was? Did you join the Navy for adventure? From what

did adventure mean? In those days?

Sophie Stephenson
I think I joined the Navy because I chose what I thought would be hardest and least likely do is life, I can succeed in that environment. I can probably. So I think my decision making my 20s was much more around challenge and proving proving to other people what a good life look like.

But I also was intrigued, you know, I definitely was.

They offer amazing training. And there’s lots of really good stuff about the Navy. But I don’t think in some ways, it’s it’s very what’s the word curated? adventure. So it’s, it’s, it’s safe. So you see a lot of do a lot. But it was an I mean, for 21 year I was commissioned at 21. I had amazing, you know, leadership, Introduction to leadership and working with people and sort of doing that identify, nessa is looking at for adventure, I think I was looking for myself, I think I was just growing up.

Alastair Humphreys
And what did you prove to yourself in the military,

Sophie Stephenson
I proved to myself that there are certain boundaries that I’m never, that I would not compromise on being myself. So for me to stay in the military, and I have really good, I’ve got a lot of friends in the military, I’ve got a huge respect for it. But for me, personally, so in the military, I wouldn’t have been able to be me. And that became really clear at that moment. What I proved was, that was more important than anything else, really. So whatever I had to do to get out, I would leave.

Alastair Humphreys
Okay, so

yeah, so yeah, that was quite a distinct phase of your life.

Then you went off to live in Australia, and you’re

living the corporate life and you’re drinking wine in the sunshine and having a lovely time and living the dream? Why, then, what made you change that, to stop that? Come back here, change job? Because in some ways you putting words in your mouth in the idea of living the dream is that they leave fair or not? And if so, what then made you want to change? And what I’m interested in is,

how,

what is it that people want

to do in that life? And what stops them taking the steps towards that? So what I’m interested in in this question is, you have that life in Australia, which sounds lovely, what then prompted you to decide to change to come back to here and

Sophie Stephenson
say that life I was living with around what I thought I should do, and what I thought success was, and I got there. And it was a really distinct evening, as I remember sitting there in this beautiful house surrounded by everything I said I wanted, and it was almost like this shares, like this, isn’t it at all, like this isn’t enough? It’s not my life. Okay. But I’d found multicoloured science thing. So I’ve been doing a lot of thinking for myself over a two year period around, what do I want and what’s scaring me. And I think I was scared. Like, I think up to that point, I had been living my life based more on what I was scared of. So not having enough money not being successful, not due to the knots, that were driving my behaviour. I like that point. I was like enough, like when’s enough when is enough, like when will have enough money, when will have enough security, when will have enough of these things to stop that being a driver. And I decided that was enough. So I had enough. And I would stop and I would start making my decisions and applying everything to like, what do I love? Like what do I want? So my motivations completely shifted from being fear based to being much more driven by love and not loving that kind of is like more would offer passionate about what drives me what energises me, what do I want my life to look like, without reference to anyone else?

Alastair Humphreys
And what was what was the

first step you took towards actually turning that into action? Because this is your way well, being in a nice house in Australia thinking, this isn’t what I want. And then what steps you take two concrete steps towards making a change.

Sophie Stephenson
So the first step for me was a decision. So I decided I would leave Australia and come back to the UK. So that was I was it wasn’t an when No, it wasn’t me if it was when so I knew I was going to do that, which therefore meant I was going to leave my corporate job, which was well paid. And I think this journey will be different for everybody. So for me, I wasn’t prepared to just leap. So I wanted to make sure I had a bridge between that life and sort of leaving. So I did a two years masters is kind of I like get out of corporate. But don’t just leap into the unknown. So I did I trained as a teacher in Melbourne University, and that kind of just gave me a bit of breathing space around one world and another. And then I knew once I finished that course, I would come back to the UK and start again, ironically, I don’t I teach now, but I don’t do sort of educational classroom based teaching at all. But again, I think that was just a meander towards where I wanted to be. And I think like some people say, leap, you know, some people can do that. I’m quite, sort of, I wasn’t prepared to do that. You know, I wanted some a little bit of security around that leap. I think that will be that’s different for

Alastair Humphreys
everybody. But yeah, my thinking on that is it’s always much easier to leave when you have a safety net. So I think often the people who are advising, just leave, actually have safety net, and certainly my life, I’m very glad that I also like trained to be a teacher. And that, although I’m not a teacher, it’s always ever since felt like a safety net. For this writing, whatever good is wrong, I can go get a teaching job. And if that fails, I can go get a job in McDonald’s or something. So having this safety net with knowing I can do things, if it all goes wrong is reassuring, toasting making stuff happen.

Sophie Stephenson
And you’re going to sell lies. And I think that’s the things like people think it’s like life happens in these small steps. So let you start and you make a decision, you make a decision. And sometimes the small steps lead you like way off course. And then it feels like this enormous leap to get back. And it’s like, ah, but actually, it can also just take small steps back as well. And then all of a sudden, you you know, but I think we’re so seduced by the idea of like, you can just switch, you just, I don’t like what I’m doing change. And that’s just not been my experience to like, I think things need doctoring. And we need to be gentle and kind and have some ease around it. And it might take some time. But you’ve got to you know, if you just start, that’s okay. And knowing it might take some time. But I think Yeah, what people just want it to be now. And it’s actually that just, again, has not been my experience. It’s like, but what’s possible, in small steps is transformative and life changing. And amazing and exciting. You just got to take me.

Alastair Humphreys
Yeah, it’s it’s really interesting how much what you’re saying is complete parallels with my more normal adventuring experience. And

I’m interested in your thoughts on

vulnerability, and is being vulnerable, not just a sign of weakness?

Sophie Stephenson
No, and I don’t think I would stand on the shoulders of there’s so much research now around and we don’t like getting vulnerable, and nothing is okay. You know, I think that’s okay, just acknowledge that, like, we don’t like any vulnerable, it draws on really strong triggers around all of it, like a base instinct is to survive. So soon as you start feeling vulnerable, emotionally or physically, is I draw the stress response, which is completely natural. But for me, it’s like the people, I am the most vulnerable with the people, I have the strongest relationships with the environments I’ve been in where I’ve been the most vulnerable, the public lesson, just stupid, you know, but like, we’ve actually been vulnerable, or the experience that completely transformed my life, you know, and it’s like, so they just can’t see a correlation. It’s almost like, we think it but it just doesn’t stack up. And it just doesn’t stack up to experience. And I think if we want to, I’m trying to figure out like, what, what makes me feel vulnerable. Most of its untrue, you like it was that feeling either being untrue and limiting assumption, you know, it’s like, the people might judge me or I might be, you know, might do something, it’d be so bad. I’ve never have any money coming in ever again, it’s like really, you know, I think I’ve got pretty good track record now of being able to get myself out of trouble. But I just I just don’t think it stacks up. And I think if you could anyone can ask themselves the fret, whether it’s a friend or relationship where you have been truly vulnerable. How has that relationship sustained over time, and, but there’s also, I think, a really interesting relationship between vulnerability and trust. So people think to be vulnerable, you have to trust somebody. And actually, it’s the other way around. The people we trust are the people who are vulnerable with us, and the people we can be vulnerable with. And that’s those really strong trusting relationships. But there’s almost this especially in organisations as well, we only want, you know, you have to have trust to be do and it’s just not true.

Alastair Humphreys
I found vulnerability to be almost. But one of the most thrilling parts of identity is just choosing to do something that makes you feel vulnerable. And that might be in the physical sense. so emotional. Like one of my favourite adventures have ever done was I spent a month busking through Spain with the violin, despite basically not being able to play the violin, and being really shy, and the thought of having to play music in public horrified me. And the first day I stood up in this town square to play was the first time I ever bus and I just felt extraordinarily, naked, invulnerable, it’s horrific. But as the trip progressed, I just the vulnerability of being rubbish, became such a strength. And it was a really wonderful things. I just feel really bad. This is tapping into so many things made me very uncomfortable, but I’m going to do it anyway. And that then becomes almost like a superpower. Yeah, it’s once you embrace it. So fantastically positive assets, isn’t it

Sophie Stephenson
is. And I mean, in some ways, I think that’s why

it’s really hard to think for yourself is actually quite a radical, challenging act. Because when you think for yourself, invariably things start changing. You know, you start actually really taking responsibility and making choices. And that sometimes comes with a necessity to change and a vulnerability around. This might not be working, and I’m going to have to do something. But as you do that, more and more, and as I was saying, I have got complete, and not in any arrogant way, and unshakable confidence in my inability now to think, because I’ve done it so much. And I’ve pushed through that, like, Oh, I don’t think I can do that. Interesting. And really examine those assumptions around what does it What does that mean? Am I truly fundable? Or is it just a bit uncomfortable?

But it is it’s it is a supercell.

Alastair Humphreys
My final question for you is, what do you do? regularly? That is simple, but not easy?

Sophie Stephenson
Good question. Good question. What do I do that is simple, but not easy.

Meditate, simple, but not easy. I drink a lot of water. Simple, but not easy.

Unknown Speaker
I

Sophie Stephenson
don’t have any social media or gadgety things on my phone, so I have not my phone. And when I’m with my children, I don’t have my phone at all. So when I’m when I’m with the kids, and I on a weekly basis, think for myself. So that’s either in person. So with one of my partners, if I don’t have someone else I’ll do on paper. So we’ll sit down, give us a half an hour. And we actually say what I’m think about and I’ve got a lot going on paper exercises I do. And it can just stop that moving forward.

Alastair Humphreys
Brilliant. They’re fantastic answers sofa. So enjoy talking to you. It’s been really, really fascinating. So thank you for your time. Thank you for helping me learn to be a better listener.

Unknown Speaker
And you are going to be such an international superstar

Alastair Humphreys
when my podcast is listened to by more people than just your husband, who

Unknown Speaker
you get to appreciate you going on

Sophie Stephenson
to what I’m most appreciated. Alastair is

there is you make such an easy connexion with people that I could talk to you for hours, and but it feels really equal. So it feels like we were just having a chat and it’s a lovely dialogue that I get to learn and we just get Yes. It’s the connexion and ease with which he connected.

Alastair Humphreys
Thank you very much.