In this conversational video, Hishem Azzouz interviews Speaker A about practical strategies for achieving work‑life balance and the role of therapy in personal growth. Speaker A explains how setting non‑negotiable routines—such as morning time with his daughter, nightly bedtime rituals, weekly family days, and monthly date nights—creates a sense of balance without demanding equal hours for every domain. He emphasizes the importance of aligning daily actions with core values and using weekly planning (e.g., blocking Sunday time for relationship or health activities) to maintain that alignment. The discussion then shifts to mental‑health challenges: Speaker A shares his journey into therapy after a period of emotional suppression, describing how a therapist helped him recognize intrusive thoughts, potential OCD tendencies, and the distinction between unwanted thoughts and personal identity. Therapy is portrayed as a coaching tool that reshapes thinking patterns, improves self‑understanding, and prevents relationship conflict. By regularly attending therapy—even when life feels stable—Speaker A aims to continuously learn about his mind and sustain healthy relationships with his partner and daughter.
Chapters
On every given week, if my personal development's getting time, if my mission's getting the time it needs, and if my family gets the time that we need, I feel in balance and fulfilled. Now, it doesn't mean they all get 12 hours a day because it's, it's too hard to do that. One's going to be up here, one's going to be down there. But if I've got non-negotiables in place, like for example spending a bit of time with my daughter before I start the day, trying to put her to bed at night, spending an evening with my girlfriend, half an hour chatting um, every month we go and do a date night, every week we have the whole family off. If she's happy with that and I'm happy with that, we're balanced, we're perfect there. And then I'm making sure that I'm spending the rest of my time on these other areas. Now it's like a tightrope and I'm walking on it just trying to stay in line with these things. And if I'm ever going too much this way and I'm neglecting the family, my girlfriend would tap me on the shoulder and say, Jack, I need you over here, we need to be doing this. That's my cue to say, okay, pull back a little bit. Yeah.
I appreciate sharing that.
I know a lot of people struggle with that, like I did, because I think people look for like just complete balance, and it's not. It's just like, what are my values? How much time do each of these things need every week? And that's only going to come with you planning these things in. We all know we want to improve and stuff, right? I want to improve my relationship, but what behaviors and actions are you taking to improve that? Sit down on a Sunday when you block all of your work time in, blocking your time for your date night or your relationship or whatever it is that you want to improve—
your health—
and just put the time in like you do your work stuff and stick to them times like you do your work stuff, and these will all stay together.
Yeah, I just think the reason I bring that up is because, like, I think you can really easily fall into the trap of, like you're saying, I'm doing— I'm putting all of this work and energy into it for us but actually, because I've had these conversations with people, that can sometimes actually be to the detriment of your relationship and the people you care about if you don't like talk about it.
Definitely.
And I definitely like fell into that. Um, just like, just personally interested, and then we'll get into, uh, this, but what made you arrive at the decision of, I think if we were to speak to a therapist, it might help? Like, how did you end up at that?
The therapist thing for me is when I went through my own transition and journey of like going out all the time where I didn't have no one to talk to, and I'm, I'm very I was very closed at that time, like talking to anyone about feelings. That I've never grew up in a household where anyone's talking about any feelings or sitting around or asking, how did you get on today? It was just never like that for me. It's very suppressed. No one talks about nothing. I thought I needed to see a therapist because I just wanted to explore it. First session, very just like, you know, no words are coming out. Um, as I got into it, and I think you've got to find the right person with this, I started talking more. As I started to talk more She started to help me understand the way that I think about things, and then I overcome something. And then I was there every week. I went there every week for like 3 months, and that, that helped me so much that anytime I feel like there's something I don't understand about myself, I'll go talk to someone that knows about that area that I'm, that I'm, that I'm unsure about. Because the way that I used to think, because I was so not in control of the way that I think, or my mind, or understanding my thought process— when someone's helping you understand your mind it doesn't seem that bad. Like, example, I've, I've done an assessment and they said it's highly likely, like, I've got OCD, for example, right? They haven't diagnosed me. They can't until you go through like 10 weeks of therapy, XYZ. The way that I used to think is like, when I come to an end of a, um, a turning, I would say, what would happen if you drive your car straight through the bush? Or you walk past something? Like, I get sporadic, okay, um, negative dark thoughts, right? Ages ago, because I wasn't in the way of control of my mind and I didn't know about all of this stuff, I would think, mate, you're a fucking lunatic. Like, there's something wrong with you. You can't tell people because you're having those thoughts. Because I'm having them thoughts, but then thoughts are not mine. It's just coming from a place. It's a subconscious program or an OCD or whatever it may be. When I started to understand things like this through therapy, I was like, oh, you're not— you're not nuts. That's not you. You're not thinking like that. You're not consciously saying, right, drive yourself over that bridge and kill yourself. Does that make sense? You're just getting an intrusive thought out of nowhere. So like, these people help you understand the way that you think, just like a coach would or a mentor. They help you change the way that you think and see that. And I knew I've been to this person and it's changed me. My girlfriend been to a few times and I thought, look, me and you, we don't know what's going on. Let's book this in and let this person help us because this is an expert and she's going to help us get through this. And just by doing that, it was— me and my girlfriend never ever argued. We had a daughter and it was an argument over petty stuff, pretty much like builds up, builds up all over, over nothing, like completely nothing. And by speaking to that person—
not that little thing though, is it?
No. And we never argued before that. Then we had the daughter and then it was like arguments popping up all over the place. I was like, oh, fucking hell. We could see why people split up. And where we're both sort of growth orientated, it was like I don't want to split up. We haven't—
yeah, what's going on?
It's not that problem. Let's go talk to someone about that. And she helped us see things differently, like change the way that we think. And by doing that, it just completely changed everything. That's why I'm so like believing— even now, for example, I'm in a good spot in my life, but I'll go see a therapist once or every other week, even if it's bad or good. I just want to improve. I just want to learn more about myself and understand where— what's going on in this head of ours, because a lot goes on. No, I really respect that.
