Black Belt Mindset for Life & Business with Raj Soren

One of the cool things about doing the Keep It Human podcast is being able to share thought leaders with you from all over the world. And today we're going to the UK. I want you to meet my new friend Raj Soren. He's a business coach and consultant, and he's also just written a terrific book, Black Belt Mindset for Life and Business. And that's what we're going to talk about with Raj today on Keep It Human. Okay, here we are today. We're going across the pond to meet another fellow martial artist who's learned to apply martial arts philosophy and techniques to real life and to business. So, I want to introduce to you my new friend, Raj Soren.

Thank you, Jim. Yes, my name is Raj Soren, and I've been spending 40 years of my life in martial arts. Particularly traditional Japanese jiu-jitsu under—

oh, we don't hold that against you—

yeah, under the Japanese Jiu-Jitsu Foundation in the UK. I've also been training in Aikido for the last 15 years, so I've gained black belts in both those martial arts. More recently, I've been developing my skills in Brazilian jiu-jitsu, so the groundwork And the purpose of the book really is to engage with individuals in terms of mindset, because the mindset of success and the challenges we face on a day-to-day basis are very similar to black belt mindset. You know, we get through different challenges when we're grading, we have to get fit, when we have to go through defense strategies, how to problem solve when we're being attacked, how to block and move out of the way. It's very much the same in life, isn't it? We have to defend ourselves in the challenges of day-to-day life, the adversity that follows. Personally, I had a number of different health challenges in terms of one day I was at work, I thought I was having a heart attack. I had palpitations, chest pains, feeling dizzy. Luckily, it wasn't a heart attack, it was a burnout. I was thinking, how many other people in this world suffer from burnout and stress? Even though I was very busy in my day job as a sales manager looking after 25 million area and looking after 14 people.

Well, that'll do for you, right?

Yeah, that alone will stress you out. And I started interviewing people from around the world. Uh, and started doing some work on stress management. Even though I was doing martial arts, I was probably doing too much of everything. Uh, so to refocus and getting back to the roots of, of focus, resilience, uh, and making sure I had balance in my life as well.

You know, that's one of the things that I found so interesting the first time we talked, when you talked about, um, letting go of some of the things in your life. And martial arts, really, I'm interested to hear your perspective about it because I've always thought of martial arts as as kind of a reductionist practice, right? That we take this complex situation, let's say a life and death scenario, right? And we try to reduce it to its elements. And in our practice, we try to reduce it to its elements, right? We practice and we isolate kicks and punches and grappling and whatnot. And then we reconstruct it and put it together. But really, we have to appreciate the simplicity of it, right? If we don't take care of the simple things, the complex things can overwhelm us, right?

Yeah, the foundations, the basics is vitally important, especially martial arts, you know, whether it's having a good stance, making sure you're able to block, be able to move, make them deflect, or to take down the opponent.

I never got them, I never got the blocking part too good, see.

Were you using the technique of blocking with your face?

I was, one of my nicknames was Face Block, how about that?

Yes, we all have to go through that. If you're doing proper martial arts, you've got to be punched in the face on a regular basis. That's all part of the learning curve, isn't it?

It makes— well, it makes us— it strengthens our character, right?

Definitely. We've all got stories to share about broken ribs and broken bones here and there. Yeah, and bruises, uh, you know, all part of the character building, isn't it?

It is, isn't it? But let's talk about that balance thing for a second. I just did an event where we got into the— well, we got into balance on a number of levels, but particularly the subject of work-life balance came up. And again, this is part of your story. I remember you talking about that before.

Yes.

And I don't know, I don't see it as a static condition, but I think Western mind, we tend to think of it as a static, some kind of static position. I look at it more as a dynamic process. Is that how you see it?

Yeah, yeah, definitely. So life doesn't stand still. For example, you know, if you've got water that is stacked out in a pond that doesn't move and becomes stagnated, whereas in a river it's flowing and moving. So it's very much in life, in martial arts, it has to be flowing, always adapting and being resilient to changing.

That's it, isn't it? And at different times, I always like, um, That symbol, the Tai Chi symbol that Dr. Yong talked to, and for those listening, I just reunited with Dr. Yong after 30 years. We did an episode of the Keep It Human podcast with Dr. Yong recently. It's really worth listening to. I think he's one of the greatest living philosophers we still have. He says he's in his 80s now. I couldn't believe it. Doesn't look it. That's what martial arts practice can do for you, right? But that idea that that tai chi symbol looks like it's always moving, right? And one side's a little bigger than the other, saying to us that at any given time, our work might need more of our attention, right? Our personal life might need more of our attention. Our health might need more of our attention. And you certainly—

Well, this is— Yeah.

Go for it, because you certainly went through that.

Yeah. You know, the— Yeah, the Kaizen principle, you know, embracing continuous improvement and change, really, because both in business— I was— I lost my job 4 times in my career, so that's going to be quite devastating for most people experiencing that and having to rebuild your life again and getting a new career. So, you know, trying to instigate some of the principles of martial arts, you know, whether it's Kaizen or kinryu-ken. It's learning to embrace imperfections and setbacks because they're true to life, isn't it? And transforming yourself through these tragedies, these challenges. And this is what makes us strong. You have to face the reality of day-to-day challenges and getting that balance right. You might focus more on your career, more parts of your life, more on your family, more on your martial arts. It can come at a price if you get that balance wrong.

How did you recognize that?

That's— making sure that we are constantly aware. Yeah.

But you had those moments and it's interesting because that's one of the things I felt the spirit with that, again, we were talking just before this program. I mean, one of the themes that we're working on a lot these days, we get a lot of requests for our uncertainty principles, workshops and keynotes and whatnot. People are struggling with that, but How did you find what, you know, are there early warning signals that people can pick up on since both of us ignored those at certain periods of our life, maybe, right?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think it's picking up on the signals of stress and well-being. Able, maybe not being able to sleep properly at night. Your breathing tends to change, you know, breathing as well to help with circulation. Not getting enough exercise sometimes because you spend so much time on a computer. Even though you might do some martial arts, you spend 6 to 10 hours a day on a computer possibly. So the relationships you have as well, are you impacting on your behavior? Are you irritated a bit more and not having good conversations with your partner or friends and family? So these are telltale signs and, yeah, deterioration in your health. And not getting, you know, walking out in the fresh air, these types of things. But your body's constantly there telling you these signals. But if you are stressed, but you're not listening to them. So we need to be more mindful to understand these signals.

I couldn't agree with you more. There was a time I remember one of my, one of the fathers of one of my students came in and he had talked about wanting to start the program for a couple of years and He had just come back from the doctor's and the doctor had told him, he said, "Look, your health is deteriorating." He was showing some of the acute signs of diabetes onset and a heart condition. Doc basically said, "Look, you better start working out or you're gonna be dead." And he told me the story and I said, "You've been talking about coming in here for 2 years. When are you gonna get started?" And of course the first thing he says, "I don't have the time." I said, "You know exactly how much time you have. The doctor just told you." If you don't get in and start exercising, you've got maybe 2 years. You've got to carve, right? We all have the same allotment of time day to day. We've got to carve it out, right? I'd say it this way, probably the least selfish thing we can do for the people around us is take care of ourselves.

Indeed. You know, you've heard the story about if you're on a plane and cabin pressure changes, Who do you put the oxygen mask on? Is it your child or yourself? And the answer really is on yourself. You know, you need to look after yourself before you can look after people around you. So the health and well-being and mental fitness yourself is important for you to become the best version of yourself to help others. And something in Japanese is hara-achibu, practicing self-discipline, moderation. Learning the art of balancing, avoiding burnout. So it's important to get that understanding of those signals, looking after your wellbeing, looking after your mental fitness. But more importantly, you're doing it for the purpose of being the best version of you to help others around.

How did you find, I don't know if it's, it's funny because sometimes people challenge me on the idea of confidence. They say, oh, you're a very confident person. And I told you a bit of my story. I mean, I started this whole adventure as a drug addict. Drug addicts aren't very confident people. I learned somewhere along the line to substitute courage for confidence and courage not being the absence of fear. The absence of fear is stupidity. I just decided that even though I was afraid, I was going to go ahead and do something. You know, how, how did you discover that, that strength to be able to tell others maybe sometimes enough is enough? I have to, I have to pull back. I have to take care of myself because I know that's something that, that you probably faced, especially when you had that that health episode.

Yes, exactly. I think it's a self-realization that you're not Superman or Superwoman. Wait a minute.

No, wait a minute.

Yeah.

You just ruined my self-delusion.

Indeed. I think the courage came from self-reflection and realizing that, you know, we're all human beings. Another episode happened during COVID took me months to recover, thinking each day I was going to die. Even though I thought I was fit and healthy, the stresses impacted your immune system, the ability to, you know, combat external disease and other issues. And, you know, how do we recognize that in our bodies and tell ourselves Things have to change. We all have habits, don't we? We have creatures of habit. Unless some of those habits change and we have the courage to change them, then nothing's going to improve.

Yeah. And I love that you introduced that word, just right too. Sorry about that. There's a lag. I should have said Raji. We're talking to Raj from England, from the UK. Which is always exciting. It's so cool to be able— I have a love-hate relationship with this technology. I'd rather be in the room with you and hopefully we can make that happen sometime soon. But it's also a blessing that we're able to connect around the world. And that's probably a good place to ask people to join the network too. Join the Keep It Human network because we want leaders like Raj involved and we can share ideas. Leadership is sharing. The rest of the conversation is about what we're willing to share and how. Yeah, how we put it together here.

Yeah, you talked about courage. I mean, I struggled at school. I failed most of my exams at school. I was a slow learner. I managed to scrape into university, then managed to get a degree in biology and chemistry, even though I failed my chemistry exams initially. 15 years later, I'm doing a master's in business and entrepreneurship. And even though I couldn't put a sentence together when I was young, you know, here I am now, later on in my life, writing books, you know. So I got the courage to write a book. I think it's a good reason to read these books. One of the books I started writing is Little Pocket of Confidence: The 10 Golden Steps, because I wasn't very confident when I was growing up. I would put my hand on and that's out there in the world now, and so on. And coping with stress and adversity, inspirational stories, also available out there. Because I've had lived experience. I've not been confident. I've had stress. I've had burnout. But then I've had experiences that I can share with the world. And hence the Black Belt mindset came along, that I wrote recently, you know, Black Belt Mindset for Life and Business. How to incorporate skills that we've grown up with in our corporate life, within our coaching careers, and the discipline of martial arts, because that's what's going to make a difference. Those skills are not just in martial arts, they're there in life. We need focus, we need resilience, we need the beginner's mind. All these attributes and qualities are there to help us become better human beings. You know, that's, that's a theme that we can learn from each other, can't we?

Yeah, and that's a theme that so many of my masters shared that I was so blessed, Dr. Young in particular, but Professor Cirio, the same thing. He said martial arts is to enhance your life, not detract from it. And he said that particularly when people were becoming too obsessed with their practice, right? And forgetting about their family and forgetting about other things in their life. No, I like that. And again, we're back to that idea of dynamic balance. But before we I want to hear more about how you apply it in business, but before we leave this idea of confidence and courage, that's really interesting. A lot of parallels, a lot of parallels in our lives. I still don't feel I'm a terribly confident person, but when I feel confident, it's not that I have a surety of an outcome. I think that's a very dangerous place to depend on for confidence, but I think too many people do. Where do you derive your confidence from? I'm interested. I bet you we're in the same place, but I want to hear it from you.

Yeah, um, confidence for me comes from belief in an idea, something that's important. For example, if it's— I'm confident I'm making sure I want to protect my family. Yeah, I'll do whatever it takes to protect and support my family. I'm confident when it comes to mental health and well-being because I've experienced depression. My poor daughter experienced mental health challenges, one of my youngest daughters. She was suicidal, jumping out of windows, and diagnosed with psychosis and ended up in hospital for 4 months. She has bounced back. She's got autism, but, you know, I get courage because I help support her, and I'm really proud of what she's achieving. She's writing a musical on psychosis now about her life, and she's turned that around, you know. She's still managing her psychosis, but I'm super proud of her. Um, and so I talk about well-being and neurodiversity, so I'm confident because I want to help others understand that, that world. I'm confident about martial arts because I know what difference it's making to people's lives, in the people I teach. Maybe they'll help to protect their life one day, maybe it'll help to boost their confidence, maybe it'll help them become better versions of themselves physically as well as interacting with others. So that's where I get encouraged because I'm challenging things that make me uncomfortable.

I'm very glad and grateful that you shared your experience with depression because when COVID hit, we were experiencing our best year ever with, at that time, most of the speaking was branded under the Sensei Leader. And we had a tremendous year set up in in 2019 and we saw it all disappear to zero in about 4 weeks once the lockdowns happened. And so that was the first— I'm sorry, I got to correct that. It wasn't the first time in my life I experienced depression. It was the first time that I was really conscious of it, that I was really aware of it. And my therapist actually has been trying to encourage me to talk about that more. That's why I appreciate you sharing that so much. Because many, many people go through this, right? And yet we're still— there's a stigma. We're still very hesitant. I'm still hesitant to talk about— I don't share it well. I'm sharing it with everybody now, but it doesn't feel that way. I'm talking to you, right? It just happens on the screen. Yeah.

Men don't like talking about their mental health because we've been brought up to be strong enough to talk about these emotional things.

Even though most of the women in our lives would I disagree with that perception.

Yeah, yeah, this is the thing. This is also why I run a men's talking group online, Men Let's Talk, Talks of Silence, because we know we're not that good these days at connecting with other men to talk about our emotions and our well-being. And depression, a lot of us are in silent depression. What I mean by that is that we don't recognize it. They're not seeking medical help. We've got to be cautious about having to be addicted to drugs for depression as well. We know that there's good things in drugs, but at the same time, they say that exercise, 80 to 90% of exercise, will get rid of depression. And, you know, and getting out there in the fresh air just shows you that comes through martial arts or exercise in some form of fashion. But we're not getting enough exercise. We're not getting it. And a proper breathing. And hence we're stumbling across all these different challenges at work and pressure. And half the time it can be solved by exercise. What would you say, Jim?

No, absolutely. And it's interesting, there's so many studies now that even if you are using medication to help you get through, and I did at first, I got off of it very quickly because I recognized some of the signs from my addiction experience, right?. And I recognized early on, I said, I don't want to be on these medications for very long. I was grateful they were there because the depression was so acute at the time. But so many studies now show that even if you're on medication, exercise will enhance the beneficial effects of whatever you're taking. Right. And breathing. I'm glad you brought up breathing. It's still an acute thing. And I was just joking with somebody because we got talking about Bruce Lee. It's almost inevitable when you're talking to to civilians that you're going to come across Bruce Lee, right? Although the generations are starting to phase out. But I shared with them, I said, you know, Bruce Lee, we admire Bruce Lee, most of us, much more as a philosopher and, you know, rather than a movie star and a martial artist. And he talked so much about the importance of breathing and gave us a lot of exercises to incorporate. You don't have to go off in the mountain. You don't have to shave your head, although if you do, you'll be as good-looking as Raj and I are. But there's lots of ways you can— how do you incorporate it in your practice? Because even just a few minutes in segments helps a great deal, doesn't it?

Yeah. Well, breathing is vitally important. It sounds strange that we have to teach ourselves how to rebreathe again, right? Because we tend to have shallow breathing, don't we? I do it through my chest. As opposed from abdominal. You know, abdominal breathing is best done when you're totally relaxed and you're not thinking, oh, someone's going to take a photograph of my belly sticking out. You know, we tend to breathe in when we're taking photographs, don't we? And so breathing is vitally important for getting the right level of oxygen in our system, for the circulation in our bodies, and it helps to calm the mind and reduce heart pressure. Blood pressure, the heart rate, calming of the mind if it's done properly. There's lots of different breathing methods out there— box breathing, making sure that you breathe in a way that helps you calm your mind, and breathing in an outdoor space as well. Very good to get connection with the, the universe in terms of the ground, the energy you gain from ground, from trees. You've heard of forest bathing, where you spend time in the forest and with nature. That's supposed to be rich, helps reduce stresses. And breathing those particular, uh, and those environments are very good for you. Or if you're in your own room and just getting time away from the computer, away from the desk, and breathing in a way that's going to help with your mindset. Mindset quite important. If you're just doing the breathing without the mindset, then it's not going to work. You have to be in the right space, you have to create the time, you have to be courageous, you have to put that time and discipline aside to breathe in the right way. Whether it's having a routine in the morning, uh, before you have stressful situations at work and business, or at nighttime as a routine.

So breathing in the right way, slightly So let's pivot a little bit to what are the principles that you learned as a martial artist that you feel were most applicable in your life and business? Because again, you had a pretty— well, you know, I guess I did too. I never worked in a big organization. You know, it's interesting now that I work inside so many big organizations. But I also find that, you know, no matter how big our organization or society is, we tend to organize it in smaller groups. I mean, we're only wired to to handle so many people at any given time. So, you know, that's part of it. But the stresses that you were talking about in a big organization, and I see that. I don't know, maybe because I was in a smaller organization, I had the liberty to take the time without having to answer to, you know, to other people. I'm not sure what it is, but at any rate, I'd like to hear, you know, what do you think the principles of martial arts that you found that were most applicable to help you navigate that that world in big business?

Yeah, in big business, as you know, there's a lot of pressure to— all about numbers, getting the results in, getting the sales in, closing the call, share prices, all these things. And sometimes as managers and leaders, we're always maybe not prepared for that or haven't been set up in the right way to understand that. In martial arts, something called zoshin, Cultivating beginner's mind. Amen. This is stay curious and open to learning. Yeah, through life's journey. And we're learning every day on our feet in the business world, whether it's organizing a deal, takeover, merger, leading other teams. So we have to understand that we're all human beings and to not impose too many of our own ideas too strongly on people, you know. Be listening, to be compassionate leader. In martial arts, you have to be compassionate to understand other people, whether they're neurodiverse, whether they're different genders, you know, to understand, have that open mind. So that's very important. And something called wabi-sabi is finding beauty in imperfection, the value that has in our life and in our business. Because we tend to fix something because it's broken. Sometimes you have to leave it broken and accept it, you know, try and fix it if we can. Otherwise we get too stressed, don't we? We're trying to fix someone's kata in martial arts, uh, oh, that's wrong, that's wrong, that's wrong. You know, they are where they are because they're on that learning curve. Uh, we have to accept that people are learning curve and It'll frustrate, you know, we have to be compassionate in those situations to say, look, I'm learning as well as the student. And in a business setting, we have to accommodate that in our culture because sometimes we can get overly zealous about certain things within the organization. Things don't change as fast as we'd like. Sometimes it's the organization's you're in the wrong place. You need to change your organization because it's just not right for you. The same with martial arts. You might find some martial arts great and some instructors fantastic, and others, um, you, you want to avoid because they haven't, you know, they haven't got the right mindset to teach and develop leaders. So, you know, developing leaders is vitally important to have those skills in place to understand that leadership and management are two different type of things. You're trying to— yeah, martial arts, you're trying to get a replacement, aren't you? You're trying to find the next leader, the next black belt that's going to take over from you.

No, you're hitting on so many deep things. And one of the things I really want to emphasize, what you talked about, that you're learning as you're helping to guide your students, right? And I think more leaders in business could benefit from that. Most of the lessons that I learned about leadership happened in the martial arts because what's the sensei's job? That's how we arrived at those three disciplines. To inspire, touch people's hearts, not just their heads, right? To empower, make sure they have the tools they need to succeed and to guide, to be willing to be there face to face. And in business, we'll call it mentoring, right? I think those are the three most essential disciplines for a leader. And what you said is to be sensitive, to be compassionate, to listen actively, to quote Carl Rogers again, right? To be able to understand where that student is, where are they in their journey, not to push and crit— you know, it's funny because criticism, I think more business leaders could benefit from what we learn in martial arts. It's easy to go and tell people what they're doing wrong. It's more difficult to seek that smaller step and say, this is that one little thing the person's doing right. Let's build on that. We still need to point out and correct, you know, but I think more often we can build on that. And it is a slow process, isn't it? You know, you hit it. Perfection is not a destination. It's a never-ending process.

Exactly. It's a journey, isn't it? Yeah, because sometimes we recognize things aren't wrong, but do we recognize things that are good?

It's harder to see, isn't it?

Isn't that weird? Yeah. So I think it would help with human relationships when leading teams or in businesses to spot people doing things well. And sometimes the characteristics we have is that we spot it. A lot of men are problem solvers. We like to see what's wrong and try and fix it. Let's look at what's going well and encourage it.

Yeah, especially unless you want to be great. Yeah, unless you want to do everything yourself, right? And this is an old saying too. Lao Tzu, I quote Lao Tzu a lot. The leader is best when the people barely know he exists. When the work is done, they will say we did it ourselves, right? It's very difficult. And maybe it is a male quality, a masculine quality, let's say, because I think effective women leaders have the same thing. We should borrow from each other's qualities. Qualities all the time, right? Again, there's that idea of yin and yang, but that idea of being, you know, being a little bit more, not jumping in and fixing, because if you do, that person never realizes, never learns how to do it for themselves, right? And that's dangerous. You can't empower an organization if there's one person trying to do it all themselves. Though I admit I've been guilty of it. I'm sure I'm not the only one at times, right?

Yeah, I've been guilty of it. You see someone doing something wrong, then you want to try and fix it and do it for them. They don't go through that experience of learning and failing, or whether you want to call it failure or not, it's an experience.

I do.

Everything in life is an experience, so you can learn from it. Yeah.

I like that you use that F word. That's a good F word, right? You know, the dojo, the trading hall, it's hard sometimes for people to understand this from the outside, but it's not a place of success. It's a place of failure, right?

Yeah. Yeah, yeah, because you learn through failure because not everyone passes the grading. You know, you have to— there's a certain expectation in life for showing up. There's a certain expectation within your job and career is that you have to meet those qualities. To lead, because you won't be there for long, because your employees will vote you out, your senior leaders will vote you out if you're not acting to the way that's going to help to improve the lives of the organisation or the people around you. Same with the sensei, you know, you've got to tell people straight, but at the same time you've got to do it in a way that encourages them to want to keep going. And not everyone gets a black belt, they say, what was it, 1 in 10,000? Or 1 in 1,000 get black coffee.

Yeah, 1 in 1,000. But we tried to improve those numbers. And here's why, right? I mean, the failure is something that we're going to face every day. I think it's important. But when we get to that test, you know, here's where the rub was. And see if you agree. I think this should apply in business too. We were challenged a couple of times because people say, well, hardly anyone ever fails your black belt test. I said, that's true. That's a lesson I learned from our military academy, West Point. I heard somebody talking from West Point. West Point has a high dropout rate compared to other universities. But this guy was saying, he said, we're not trying to make people fail. He said, but we understand not everybody is equipped for success as an officer in the United States Army. It could be applied to any military. He said, so on graduation, we don't want people failing in their senior year. We want them sorting themselves out before that. And I think that's what our attitude was with the black belt. We want people to succeed the day that they're testing for the black belt. But how many people dropped out along the way, right? How many people selected out or did, like you said, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Self-selection is happening. People realize that. Are they willing to pay the price to become a black belt? And some martial arts, it's very difficult to get black belt. Some other martial arts, you know, it seems to be quicker rise to getting black belt. So if you're with a good organization, you know, you have to fight your way through to get to black belt. You have to go through the sweat, you need to go through the tears, the challenges, and train on the way, and then you know you've earned it. And it's been worthwhile, your journey. And sometimes people get to a level where they go from brown belt to black belt, but then they struggle. And then some people fail. Then you just go back to the drawing board and figure out what you can do to improve your skills. You know, what can you do to— you know, same with business. Sometimes you fail in business, and the most successful business people are the ones that go back to the drawing board. You failed in business, You're not in business unless you failed at least 3 to 5 times.

Are you right? The greatest— there's a beautiful thing. The best successes, certainly in my life I've learned that. That's why I'm so obsessed with uncertainty is that the greatest try— there's a quiz I give people when I'm doing workshops. I always ask them to think about their greatest triumph, their greatest moment of success, and then think about what the conditions were just before that. And a vast majority of the time, people will say they were in trouble before they achieved that great success, right? Something wasn't going too smoothly before, right? And I think that's why we appreciate that. And before we wrap things up, I'm curious because I don't see a whole lot of difference culturally in business in different parts of the world, especially in leadership. I mean, there are some interesting differences. But I see many more similarities. And just as we do with martial arts styles, right? Why do you think we've— how did we get to this position where we coddled a couple of generations and we didn't— we created too safe an environment. We didn't create the conditions for challenge to overcome challenges and adversities like you're talking about, which really is where our growth happens, right? How did this happen in business and how can we cure it?

Sometimes we become over-compassionate. We don't want people to have sports days at school because we don't want people to lose. Do we help or do we soften people up that way? We came through life through the school of hard knocks. It's to survive, you have to pick yourself up. No matter how many problems you have in life, you pick yourself back up. I think we need to get the balance right, isn't it? It's the re-education. Of, from past experience, these seasoned failed business people who've become successful mentoring and supporting the new generation. And yet we can still learn from the new generation because people are becoming millionaires and billionaires in the digital environment. So they're doing things that we could have never done so quickly. But it comes at a price because they've not gone through the experience of learning and failing, some of these individuals. So when Vaila comes along, they won't know how to handle it. Then they'll have to need people, coaches like us, to help them, because we've gone through enough failures to fill up, you know, maybe you have.

I don't know. Yeah, that's—

I think, yeah, we have to be able to— it builds character, doesn't it? Failure builds character to become better in fitness and life.

I'm grateful for it.

You know, we should look for opportunities indeed. Yeah, even though, you know, you've had your own personal challenges, uh, we all have our personal challenges, but we have to build on it, don't we? It becomes part of it. We can't forget it. It becomes part of our DNA.

Yeah, it sure doesn't help if we forget it, that's, that's for sure. And that's, that's the thing. And I, I don't think either of us are being Pollyannish about it. You know, we're not lollipops and puppy dogs, guys. These lessons, it's trite to say, well, every failure is a lesson. Well, sure, if you're willing to confront it, if you're willing to examine, you know, it's painful sometimes to examine your own faults and failures. But yeah, I think we're singing in harmony. That's where every good thing happens, huh? Yeah. Let's tell people how to get in touch with you for coaching and how to purchase your books and I'm sure they're available on Amazon and other places like that.

Yes, indeed. Yeah, there's a number of places you can get hold of my books. Black Black Mindset for Life and Business is on Amazon. So that's available on there. Coping with Stress and Adversity: Inspirational Stories is available on a company called studio3.org. I'll send you the details. You can post that with your organization. And you can get a hold of me on my website, blackblockmindset.uk. And, and we're in the same space. We're in the Black Belt mindset of developing this mindset to the world. And they need more people like us, Jim, to help shape leaders of the future.

And we won't even ask people— we won't even ask people to get punched in the face to do it right. Unless they want to.

Exactly. Punch in the face. Yeah, punch in the face with bonus.

There you go. Raj, let's make this the first, not the last visit to Keep It Human. And I really appreciate you being here today.