Meet Mike Jones

Mike Jones @ Better Happy

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[00:00:06] Mike: I do think that it's two extremes. I think we've got life can be so much better now. We've got so much more opportunity than we've ever had and most of us, if we're honest, would not go back to being hunter gatherers. if it was offered to us now, you know, get rid of all your stresses that you have in modern life.

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[00:00:39] Mike: So it's, it's extremes, you know, it's extremes like yes, you can be more happy. Yes. You can create more freedom. Yes. You can live the exact life you wanna live, but also you've got lots of decisions to make. You've gotta avoid process food. You've gotta avoid socially isolating yourself because you're pursuing the thing you're passionate about.

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[00:01:08] Ross: Better Happy enables organizations to develop healthy, motivated, high-performing managers, safe from burnout, and as they say, when your managers thrive, your people and business thrive. In this episode, he openly shares the ups and downs of his fascinating career, which involves two tours of Afghanistan living in a Tibetan monastery and setting up his first startup a CrossFit gym. All of these experiences led Mike to create his highly successful business, better Happy

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[00:02:23] Ross: Rachel Leon LinkedIn said enlightening episode of the Excellent People Soup Podcast highlighting how mindfulness is much more than meditation and breathing, and advocating for the use of mindful communication within teams.

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[00:02:45] Ross: get a brew on and have a listen to part one of my check with Mike Jones.

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[00:02:59] Mike: Hello, Ross. Thank you for having me

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[00:03:16] Ross: They don't always get everything right.

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[00:03:20] Ross: absolutely. So, so one of my research department unearthed, they say Mike Jones is the founder and owner at better happy making happiness in the workplace. A reality by training managers and leaders in health and happiness. It sounds all right so far I can see you nodding.

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[00:03:36] Mike: I'm nodding

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[00:03:38] Mike: on a podcast, cuz obviously people can, can sense the nod

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[00:04:02] Ross: But due to the changes of modern life, more people than ever are struggling with poor health and burnout. That's a pretty big problem to solve, but let's look at how you've been approaching that. So if we've got this right in about 2018. You started to deliver health based 90 minute workshops to companies like Deloitte and Southampton football club.

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[00:04:51] Ross: And you've moved away from standalone workshops and developed the better happy methodology that truly transforms individuals, teams, and businesses.

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[00:05:01] Ross: Excellent. Well, kudos to my research department. They seem to be doing all right. They've discovered a bit more. They really recognize your passion from your social media presence that you want to support businesses in driving optimal levels of employee health and engagement. And they also discovered a bit about your journey to this point, which included a career in the military, which involved two tours of Afghanistan. You were in military intelligence and a physical training instructor. And at some point you had a terrible relationship with a manager, which led you to become really disengaged there. then there was a chapter where you lived in monasteries, in Nepal and Thailand, volunteering and learning about what makes people healthy and happy.

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[00:06:14] Ross: And you were really interested in bringing act to the workplace into this work with travel lodge and we work together on the co-design of that. And we'll talk a bit more about that in part too. Just to say here, the outcomes were tremendous and there's a great video, which brings that to life beautifully, which I'll put in the show notes.

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[00:06:55] Ross: I think, hats off to, to travel lodge for

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[00:07:00] Ross: And the stats you had 77 members enrolled on the program, less than five of them. Didn't complete all three sessions. Some people traveled four hours each way to attend each session and The feedback attendees gave the course an average of 9.2 out of 10, and that was a response rate of 61 out of 77. So that's pretty healthy response rate. So, but on top of the data, you had multiple attendees telling us it had helped them improve or changed their lives.

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[00:07:42] Mike: it's thanks to your help as well. And your guidance

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[00:08:03] Ross: I used to love watching it. And apparently you are in the frame to be the presenter. Now, I dunno if there's anything you can say about that or whether it's all under wraps at the moment.

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[00:08:31] Ross: but I think, I think it's more about the energy you bring and the skills you bring in, in communicating with people as

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[00:08:40] Ross: Did, did you ever watch it as a, as a Nipper?

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[00:08:46] Ross: Oh, dam it, man. I thought it would be something that, that, um, you may have heard of

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[00:08:55] Ross: Yeah. I feel, I feel bloody old now,

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[00:08:59] Ross: Peace Supers. I don't know about you, but I'm finding this happens more and more in life. You share an iconic cultural reference from your youth only to be met with Tumbleweed. consider this to be a people suit. Public service announcement for it will happen to you or it might have already started When I think back, I think it started for me at least a decade ago, I was in a major government department leading an HR for the minister's offices, and we had a new minister, Barness Wilcox.

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[00:09:42] Mike: I suppose like the, the old programs that I remember that were old to me when I was younger things like shooting stars and, the teenage.

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[00:10:14] Ross: I just need, which is the other

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[00:10:17] Ross: No, I don't think I's said that. So Leonardo and they'd be fighting over these models. Did you ever have any of the models

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[00:10:39] Ross: I'll have to send you a clip of superstars so you can catch up with the drama that it was, and it's such a good format, that's for another conversation or another podcast.

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[00:10:49] Ross: But Mike, we we've had a, a little insight from my research department to you and your background.

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[00:11:07] Mike: Well, first of all, you, your research, team's done a lot of, a lot of good work there. You've done some deep, you've done some dig deeping so well done. yeah, I,

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[00:11:24] Lessons learned in military

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[00:12:04] Mike: So I hadn't considered before, you know, I've probably seen a job as a way to pay the bills before that a way to get some life experience, but I'd never thought about the overall impact that a job has on how you feel as an individual, which I suppose is obvious. If we consider, we spend 50% of our waking hours, Monday to Friday at work

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[00:12:24] Mike: well, I came to the realization after suffering depression.

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[00:12:27] Mike: So I. BA basically back to back tours of Afghanistan. So I spent almost a year in Afghanistan with a, maybe a couple of months in between, and this was at the same time as having this poor relationship with this manager. And I made up a statistic on a post the other day said that, you know, 99.3% of people will have a bad relationship with a manager at some point in their career, which I then followed up with.

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[00:13:01] Mike: And I just got to a point where I felt for the first time in my life, I felt hopeless. I think if you imagine the impact of having a poor relationship with a manager going into the military environment and times that By 10, at least, because, of obvious reasons, you know, it's a very, enclosed community.

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[00:13:32] Mike: So even people that might want to intervene and help you, they have this kind of ulterior motive of protecting the rank structure. And so you feel everyone's against you and it makes you feel very hopeless and it can quickly become very overwhelming. There's quite, there was quite high rates of suicide, in the military due to things like that.

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[00:13:51] Ross: I guess I hadn't thought about it like this, that the, the structures don't enable you to go to your management and go, Hey, could I give you some feedback?

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[00:14:15] Mike: You know, you, you still hear the stories of world war II, where somebody would refuse to shoot somebody and then they would be shot for refusing orders.

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[00:14:25] Ross: gosh. It makes, it makes me think about creating this environment of, safety and trust, which I would say that I haven't had great exposure to. military environments, but I remember one time at a, an event, a conference talking to someone in the military who was in bomb disposal. And he wanted to really foster this culture of psychological safety there, because if the junior person spotted something or said, maybe there's something that we should look at there, or maybe we should look at, for example, that wire, he wanted that person to be able to say that freely, because if he didn't, it could cost lives, but that, that is possibly quite a unique, set of contexts.

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[00:15:26] Mike: And when it's life and death, you'd be amazed at how well teams start to get on and how well leaders perform. You know, when a leader's life is literally when their life is in the hands of their team, they will be a good leader, nine times outta 10, because it's, it's now a life and death situation.

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[00:15:53] Mike: I, I had a bad experience, you know, I'm not certainly don't wanna make out that all military leaders are bad. There's some of the best leaders in the world come from the military. And I had lots of very [00:16:00] positive experiences as well, but, it is this particularly negative one that was a very good learning curve for me, a good life experience.

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[00:16:17] Mike: Yeah. I think I started to realize this when I started to go to Afghanistan. So when I joined the military, I joined the military at the age of 20. And my reasons for joining the military were, I didn't have to write a CV. it got me out of my hometown and it kind of sounded fun. that was my reasoning for joining the military.

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[00:16:48] Mike: Is this really who I want to be? And the answer was no, you know, I can still do a good job. I didn't feel particularly good about it. And the longer it went on, the more apparent that became.

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[00:16:58] Mike: so I kind of felt lost actually, when I left, cuz I, I'd never really had the confidence in myself or the, the levels of self-esteem to truly think about what I wanted with life. And maybe I thought that the career, the money, the respect that you get for being in the military, maybe I thought that was gonna tick the boxes as that's what society tells us, the girlfriends. But the truth is That's not what happened. You know, I found out actually those things don't make you feel particularly happy.

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[00:17:38] Ross: It's fascinating to hear about having the, the confidence to think about what you want to do and your purpose. Cause I think that's essential When we're training people or coaching people on working with their own values, it's the it's realizing that they have that

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[00:18:16] Mike: And we tend to feel annoyed with ourselves or with others. When that, when that happens, we just stop doing it. stop playing on computer games to 10 hours a day and go, go and find a better job, you know? And you like, okay. but when you look into it, you've gotta ask yourself, well, why, why is that person doing that?

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[00:18:45] Mike: And the only reason is cuz they don't believe in themselves. I can't see any other reason why we wouldn't, you know, and I know this cause I'm talking from personal experience and when you don't have the confidence to pursue what you want to pursue, you do what society tells you to do.

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[00:19:10] Mike: that's what happens. And it all comes down to confidence in my eyes.

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[00:19:23] Mike: It's be it's because you're unhappy with yourself and not doing what you know you should be doing. So well, it's my theory. So you mask that with short term pleasures and, and like you said, masks of actually how you truly feel.

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[00:19:46] Mike: I don't think it's the same now, but you, from the moment of signing off, as they call it, When you make yourself blacklisted in the military, in the, in the eyes of the people you've got 12 months till you leave, unless you've got a, a written job offer.

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[00:20:04] Ross: so what happened next? Tell, tell us the next chapter.

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[00:20:25] Mike: And didn't come home for a. Two and a half years. Uh, well, I'll be honest. My first month I just got drunk in Thailand for a month, cuz I felt so relieved at being out the military. Uh, then I lived in Australia, worked on fishing, boats, worked in bars, worked in warehouses, went back to Thailand, lived on monastery, studied Buddhism, lived in Nepal, the mountains above the weather, teaching kids, English and studying Buddhism, uh, and the mind and spirituality and different cultures.

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[00:21:02] Transformative moment

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[00:21:11] Mike: and I remember. Living in Perth, in Western Australia, which is one of the most isolated, yet most sunny cities in the world. And I had a very casual rooftop bar, job and I remember walking to work one day in my flip flops or thongs was as the, as Aussies, call them through Perth train station.

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[00:21:46] Mike: You know, I've got no, no stress whatsoever, but I still feel. Like I'm like I'm craving for something else. Like it's not quite right. And I remember thinking to myself, cause I wasn't unhappy. This is the key thing I wasn't moping. I was, I was happy, but I [00:22:00] felt like something was missing.

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[00:22:17] Mike: I knew how lucky I was compared to so many. and at that moment when I was thinking, am I just miserable? I saw in a bookshop window, multiple copies of this guy's face, who I now understand to be the Dalai Lama with the title of the book, the art of happiness. Which I thought to myself that seems apt. considering how I'm failing right now. a book on the art of happiness from what looks like very wise spiritual guy who I now am a super fan of. So I went and bought the book. And at this point I hadn't read a book. You know, I'm embarrassed to say probably for three or four years, I'd been drinking, traveling, doing everything else.

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[00:23:09] Mike: And I've read this, I couldn't put it down. I read it over two days and that completely changed my philosophy on life, my approach to life and the. Actions I took from that moment forward, still, still to this day, because it taught me what happiness really is. And nobody had ever talked about that before.

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[00:23:47] Mike: not making a positive difference in the world, you know, just kind of living for my own selfish gain. if I'd read this earlier, I I'd have had 10 more years of being a better person cause that's what made you happy ultimately, so that, that was the ma major transformative moment for me in my life.

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[00:24:12] Ross: stab in the dark kind of thing.

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[00:24:27] Mike: It was around the kind of, oh 8 0 9, 10 period, you know, post recession. So. The military has quite a high turnover of soldiers and it costs a lot of money to, to lose a soldier. It costs a lot of money to train a soldier. So the way that they were relying on trying to keep retention levels up was to constantly put the fear of God in you of leaving.

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[00:25:01] Mike: And I remember as I was getting towards the point of being really low in the career, thinking to myself, even if things get really, really bad, I could leave and go and live on a monastery. And I knew nothing about Buddhism, nothing at all. I'd never read anything about it, but I always had this kind of feeling that there was this life I could go and live where I, nothing else mattered.

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[00:25:37] Mike: So I had three weeks there when I was in the military. And then when I left, I went more permanently as such, still not knowing what I was looking for.

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[00:25:58] Mike: Yeah.

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[00:26:00] Mike: I don't know the series, but I know what you mean. It's what we all think. We think the shaolin in monks, up in temples with the

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[00:26:10] Mike: It couldn't be any further from that really? Um, they have phones, some of them, it's not what we tend to imagine it to be. There's no levitating. There's no secret spouse. It is. the, monastery that I lived in, in, in Nepal was. A breathtaking setting. So certainly movie quality.

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[00:26:45] Mike: It's very straightforward. You learn about the mind. You do repetitive tasks to get mindful. You, you clean the monastery, you, you sweep, you don't get loads of in depth instruction. Like you might think you will, you essentially get taught to get to know your own mind more by removing distractions From the outer world, to focus on the breathing. It's you read a few books of meditation, you know, quite a lot about what's gonna get taught to you on a monastery. I think that the magic's more in the environmental removal of external distractions, because most of us have never done that. probably the biggest transformation for me was that I I didn't know how to be comfortable on my own. So I used to drink every Friday and Saturday because when, as soon as I had time to myself, I was like, well, I don't wanna sit here on my own with my own thoughts and try and be relaxed. So I'll go and drink myself into oblivion because I actually don't like being in clubs either. So the only way I'm gonna cope with being there is being really drunk. I think that's a lot of people in the UK, we're not happy being quiet and on our own. So we drink and we eat and we constantly find ways to. Try and keep ourselves preoccupied. Whereas actually, if we could just learn to be quiet and peaceful in our own presence, I think we probably put a lot of bars outta business

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[00:28:08] Ross: turn that frown upside down and nonsense like

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[00:28:15] Mike: it's not right. Is it? I think the school, you know, we can, you can get lost in this subject, but the schooling systems really founded on creating workers for the industrial revolution, which is people that can follow orders and, and get on with stuff for that. Ask too many questions.

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[00:28:42] Mike: How to recognize that thoughts come and go. How to recognize that you are not your thoughts. They pass like clouds over the sun. You know, these kids are learning this stuff at six years old.

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[00:28:56] Mike: How many problems would be solved?

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[00:29:05] Mike: I dunno how excited the film would be.

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[00:29:07] Mike: what happened was I was living on a monastery in Thailand and I was on a silent retreat, which is a week of being silent, but it's, it's hardcore. There's not only are you silent, you have no books. So try and sit for an hour without looking at a book or your phone or having a conversation.

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[00:29:43] Mike: Doesn't bother me whatsoever, but I like my books. I like to be learning, but that's an addiction in itself as well. So just being truly quiet on your own for a week is, is hard. really hard. So it was a good experience for me, but it also kind of led to me having a bit of a kneejerk reaction and convincing [00:30:00] myself that, being on a silent retreat, wasn't the thing I should be doing with my life.

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[00:30:43] Mike: so that's what I wanted to do. I wanted to come back and help people be healthier and happier.

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[00:30:50] Mike: So I knew I wanted to open a business, but I wasn't sure how I was going to do it. I wasn't sure what it was going to be. And about six months after being back, I had the opportunity to, lease a unit at a very low cost, on the side of an existing gym. if I cleaned it out and tidied it up.

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[00:31:24] Mike: And that just took off. It did really well. So it went from startup to us, having our own unit with our own lease in two years, to us turning over six figures, having a team of four within five years. So. It was a really good startup business. And from the outside, looking in, people were probably envious of how successful I was in starting my first business.

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[00:32:20] Mike: Cause we've got the bad relationship with a manager. Well, it might, it might be those things, but. You find the thing that you might be passionate about. And then you're at just as a higher risk of suffering because you're gonna burn yourself out. And it's almost like a, continuum and you have to be in the middle.

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[00:32:51] Ross: Yeah. It's such, such an important point that it it's getting, it's getting that balance.

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[00:32:56] Mike: I don't think humans are naturally good multitaskers. I don't think we're naturally good at balancing our lives because we've never had to, you know, I always think back to hunter gatherers. And if you think about how the hunter gatherer went about their work, they worked together physically active in their community to work towards the same goal, which was survival of the tribe. But then they had time with their families. So their social life was there because they were working with them and then finishing the day with them. They switched off at night because it was dark. So they couldn't work anymore. they slept naturally. They, they had to talk to each other. They had, you know, talking's one of the best, forms of therapy, whether it was grunting back then or talking, we don't know, but

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[00:33:33] Mike: you know, so, so all of the things that we know contribute to good health happen naturally.

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[00:33:56] Mike: So I'm definitely gonna start putting that ahead of everything else. And then it's like, oh, [00:34:00] okay. And fit in some health stuff as well. Because if you don't look after your health you're gonna struggle because the work is sedentary and we sit down a lot. you've got this new challenge really where you, you think you're gonna solve it if you're just passionate about your work, but that's, that's just gonna create more issues as well.

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[00:34:14] Mike: you. And I will know about this because we've both got businesses and well, why do we have these businesses? Cuz we're passionate about what we're doing. You know, that's the reason we have a business and not, and not just a job, not that you can't have a job and be very passionate, uh, that you can have a job and not be passionate, but You are always at risk of burning out because, or working too hard or letting yourself slip because it's not naturally built in anymore. And we've never had to try and balance it all.

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[00:34:57] Mike: mm.

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[00:35:14] Mike: Mm. I do think that it's two extremes. I think we've got life can be so much better now. We've got so much more opportunity than we've ever had and most of us, if we're honest, would not go back to being hunter gatherers. if it was offered to us now, you know, get rid of all your stresses that you have in modern life.

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[00:35:48] Mike: So it's, it's extremes, you know, it's extremes like yes, you can be more happy. Yes. You can create more freedom. Yes. You can live the exact life you wanna live, but also you've got lots of decisions to make. You've gotta avoid process food. You've gotta avoid [00:36:00] socially isolating yourself because you're pursuing the thing you're passionate about.

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[00:36:07] Ross: so this almost brings us back to, to more recent events where you established better happy, where you started doing those, one off workshops in 2018. But for the moment, I just wanna ask you a question that I ask all my guests and it's for a song choice. this song isn't forever, but it would announce your arrival in a virtual.

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[00:36:39] Mike: I think I would choose a song which is called generator. I dunno if you've, if it rings about to you, but it goes, I could get a record player and a generator generat, the music that makes you feel better. I am I your first podcast go guess that's sung.

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[00:36:56] Mike: what, it's very, it's very upbeat. It's very fun. And. It's basically reminding you throughout the whole song. That your life's pretty good. So be happy. And obviously a lot of what we'll talking about today is that it's perfectly normal to not feel happy all the time. But I also think that our minds are inheritantly negative.

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[00:37:21] Ross: so the song's called generator, is that right? And it's by a group, is it,

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[00:37:27] Mike: What's one of the lyrics. I don't live in poverty, but I've got a little bit of money in a healthy body there's lyrics like that. They're really, and they're really positive and fun. So it makes you want to dance a bit and the lyrics are just great.

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[00:37:50] Ross: You'll hear a whole lot more about Mike's approach and philosophy at Better Happy. If you like this episode of the podcast, please, could you do three things? Number one, share it with one other person.[00:38:00] Number two, subscribe to the podcast and give us a five star review. Whatever platform you're on, and particularly if you're on Apple Podcasts, the Apple charts are really important in the podcast industry.

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[00:38:30] Ross: And on Facebook we are at People Soup Pod. thanks to Andy Klan for his Spoon Magic. And Alex Engelberg for his vocal. Most of all, dear listener, thanks to you. Look after yourselves. Peace supers and bye for now.

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[00:38:46] Mike: the only negative Ross so I'm gonna wet myself. I'm just.

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