Wellbeing at work: Why financial health is only one success factor

Intro:
Hello, and welcome to the CPA Australia Podcast, your weekly source for accounting, education, career, and leadership discussion.

Michael Papadopoulos:
Hi everyone. And welcome to our CPA Australia Podcast. I'm Michael Papadopoulos.

Beau Turner:
Hey, I'm Beau Turner. Michael is a member of the CPA Australia Corporate Committee here in Victoria, and I'm the current chair of the committee. Joining us today is Duncan Young, who is an expert in this topic. In today's podcast, we want to explore health and well-being for finance professionals. Today, we are looking for practical tips and ideas that we can use in our daily lives. Many of us are under pressure every day in our work and home life and want to remain healthy. But how do we turn these awesome ideas into rituals and habits?

Michael Papadopoulos:
Over recent times, we've seen increased stress levels due to high regulatory and compliance demands, a fast changing business environment you could call it. This has been heightened by the global pandemic that hit in February 2020, and which found us providing important inputs on our organization's financial ability to withstand such a crisis. Liquidity, cashflow, forecasting went from being important to the number one priority in a short space of time. As finance professionals, we focus on financial well-being. When we're under pressure, we spend all day at our desks. We might even skip breakfast or lunch altogether, or just go for convenience, which is not always the smartest option. In this podcast we'll explore how we can approach well-being in our daily lives, and how finance professionals such as CPAs can make incremental changes during their work and home life to improve their overall health and well-being.

Beau Turner:
As I mentioned today, we are joined by Duncan Young. Duncan is the head of workplace health and well-being at international property group Lendlease, which has operations in Australia, Asia, Europe, and the Americas. We're fortunate to have Duncan join us today in a personal capacity, and does not represent Lendlease. Duncan is a passionate advocate of the positive impact that workplaces can have on health outcomes. He believes health is a journey, and that small steps can lead to larger incremental change that help individuals to thrive, not just at work, but in life. His strategies and programmes are research-based and grounded in the workplace, making them applicable in any environment, and that they're directly transferable between organisations. Duncan is based in Sydney and keeps himself in balance by pursuing his twin passions of surfing and ocean swimming on a daily basis.

Michael Papadopoulos:
Hi, Duncan, welcome to the podcast. Thanks for taking the time to talk to our CPA listeners on this very important topic.

Duncan Young:
Thank you and thank you for having me today. I really appreciate the opportunity to talk to your listeners.

Beau Turner:
Duncan, can you tell us a bit more about your role and how does your role seek to improve employee well-being, mental and physical health and in turn productivity?

Duncan Young:
Great, thanks Beau. And yes, my role is an interesting role. If I think about the last 27 years at Lendlease I've had a few different roles over time, but I'm now the head of workplace health and well-being. So what that really means is we use behavioural science to help people thrive in both work and life. You've got to remember that well-being's a continuum, at one end people are struggling or suffering right through to the other end, which is where people are thriving and flourishing. So our goal is to help people live the best version of their own lives, again, in both work and life. And we can do that by supporting people both at work, so that's the places we create, the environments that we shape for our employees, as well as helping them mentally through programmes like mental health first aid, like positive psychology programmes like Appreciative Inquiry.

Duncan Young:
And of course, helping people be active. We have become a largely sedentary society, so we're hoping that people will move more often, especially in the times of pandemic. Currently, it's very easy just to lock into your seat and sit there all day. Of course, the last couple of things are about social connections, so we work with people and help them essentially retool and relearn how to do small talk and stay socially connected. And of course, recovery and things like that, so your learning happens when you sleep well at night, your mood is enhanced when you have a good night's sleep and that all plays into people being more productive in the longer term.

Michael Papadopoulos:
Well, Duncan. That's a really interesting role. Tell me when it comes to well-being in our profession, what best practises have you seen in the market?

Duncan Young:
This is a question we get a lot and people say, "What are the best practises, and how can I apply that to my organisation?" But the caveat or the caution here is the best practise for your business is the one that meets the need of that organisation at that time. So it's no use going into a really advanced programme if we haven't got the basics right. So the basics like the guard rails for people to thrive in life, it needs to be shaping their environment. What kind of work environment have they got at the moment? What kind of home environment are they working on? Have they got the right tools? Are they getting the right breaks during the day? We know recovery doesn't happen just when we sleep but also during the day. So we look at all those small initiatives over time.

Duncan Young:
One of my favourite one is really about encouraging people to think about what has worked well for them in the past. We call that Appreciative Inquiry. We know that change largely happens when people work on their strengths. And if they've got to reflect on what's worked well in the past those times when they've had good health and well-being, what are the small things you're doing, and then translating that into their every day. So that could be adequate breaks during the day. That could be the kind of food they're eating. So there's a lot of conversation at the moment between your gut biome. That's the state of your guts. As we know about 90% of serotonin is actually generated in your stomach. That's the happiness hormone. And of course the recovery, foods, social connection, all those kind of things make a really big difference.

Duncan Young:
So in summary, you've just got to make sure that your practises, I suppose, or your programmes that you have meet those five things, which is physical activity, recovery, sleep, social connection, and one we call wild card. So that could be about learning, curiosity, purpose in life, and of course having relatable role models. So getting people within your business to actually be the role model or show the leadership around health and well-being. And they're generally not coming from a CEO, by the way. We're influenced largely by our peers in many of these. So making sure we're looking around at the organisation and encouraging those who already have a headstart, whether that's in sleep science and physical activity, or whether it's in what we eat and encourage those to share their knowledge.

Michael Papadopoulos:
That's great. Thanks Duncan. So you mentioned that there's five things to improving life, which I'm sure we've read about and heard a lot about in the media especially with the pandemic, but I'm really curious to know Duncan, how have you approached the topic of well-being during these times of a global pandemic, and how have you managed to share these ideas with people in your organisation?

Duncan Young:
Great, thank you. Yes. Well, you can think about the pillars of well-being in quite a few ways, so quite a common way to think, and this is how we think about how to lay sort of four pillar approach of supporting healthier mind, developing healthier bodies, building healthier places and supporting a healthy culture. So if we think about those pillars, then we apply them to my daily life. So I'm a big person who follows a routine, and you've got to remember that our routine has changed. So my previous role pre-pandemic was I used to do a lot of travel and a lot of keynote speaking. Obviously not a lot travel in the last 18 months, so I've had to rethink about how I do my every day, spend a lot of time podcasting and talking to people on Zoom and or MS Teams.

Duncan Young:
But how I make sure I'm on my best is that I look at the strengths that have worked for me in the past. I'm a regular swimmer. And for some of you who live in Sydney, there's a small group called the Bold and Beautiful down in Manly. And every morning, obviously not during the pandemic, but there are many of us that get to swim every morning and taking that time to start your day with something positive. So if you can't swim, go for a walk, walk the dog, whatever you do, greet the morning, get some sunshine.

Beau Turner:
You're Icebergers.

Duncan Young:
The Icebergers, exactly. So when you get up and you follow that routine, it really does set you up for the day. We know that for example, if you go to bed and wake up at a certain time every day your body gets into that routine. I've got a thing called a lark chronotype so I actually go to bed quite early. I'm generally asleep by 9:30 and I'll wake up every day, every day of the year at 5:30, because that's when I go to swimming. So I don't sleep in on the weekends. I have this routine that I follow the whole day. And then when I finish that, we have a little bit of social connection, quick coffee, a dog walk with my wife up to the local cafe. And then the work day begins. So every day's a little bit different during the pandemic, but largely it's about research.

Duncan Young:
What are those weak signals we're seeing? What are the mental health pandemic that we're seeing heading our way? What kind of programmes can we build to actually help the others thrive in life? So obviously I do a lot of talking as I'm doing today, but my way of approaching health and well-being to help others and including myself, is to think of it in a three-phase approach. One is building awareness. So that is helping people understand what well-being is. And then I foster curiosity. So we do a lot of work with heart rate variability monitors. And for me seeing others and their VO2 max or their resting heart rates, allows me to reflect on what I'm doing every day. And then lastly, the lasting habit change. So I'm learning a lot as I'm coaching other people to live their best lives, about the small things I can do every day.

Duncan Young:
And I know that sitting at my desk for 10 hours a day doesn't work for me. I'm a bit of a fidgeter. So I might take one or two of my meetings every day walking. I make sure to get that physical exercise in the morning. I greet the sun. We know vitamin D is a big issue for us, but we want to make sure we reset our circadian rhythms with some sun. I've started eating a lot more fish too by the way so I have salmon two or three days a week, or rapeseed is another good source of these omega three type of products that are really good for you. And thinking about then how you recover. Obviously there've been a lot of people who have indulging a bit much during the pandemic, a bit more drinking than they normally like. So we want to make sure that some of those unhealthy habits don't creep into your life. But I always say to people just start small and go from there. And that has worked for me, and I hope it will continue to work in the future.

Beau Turner:
I personally love this stuff. It's great to hear, but not everyone can be Icebergers in the morning, but you've touched on it a little bit with the work from home side of things. And what do you think is the best way to combat the challenges of obviously now working from home for a long, long periods, only touched on it a little bit, but also staying engaged and connected with your team and colleagues?

Duncan Young:
Yeah. Look, you're right. Not everyone's going to swim with me. I used to sell them, "If you want good health and well-being, all you need to do with swim with me every morning," but not many people take me up on the offer, unusually so. So if we look at luminaires, like James Clear, he's written a book called Atomic Habits. So the first thing we need to do is to ensure that our environment is set up for success. So just in my house I'm surrounded by leafy green vegetables. I've had to hide the booze during the week. There are no chocolate sultanas in the fridge, and where I work every day is set up for me to do my best. And I try and work in bursts as well, so the Pomodoro techniques I work for sort of a 40-minute bursts and take a 10-minute break.

Duncan Young:
We know that that is a far more effective way to work. And obviously I'm not in a meeting every environment. So sometimes your times are dictated for you. If you're not going to swim, you just need to move. So if you get up and walk for two minutes every hour, that can sort of offset some of the sitting, and they say bursts as little as four seconds can make a big difference to your day. So if you've got a staircase, just walk outside, walk up and down the staircase, for even a minute can make a big difference. And that was actually supported by a recent study in the Charles Perkins Centre, where they got people just to walk up three flights of stairs. So 60 stairs, three times a day for six weeks, doing nothing else in your life, don't change anything else. They found after six weeks their VO2 max which determines how fit you are had increased by 5%.

Duncan Young:
So this thing that they did for literally less than two minutes a day, increase their VO2 max by quite a large amount. So it's the small things that matter. It's what you eat at lunch. Do you have a break when you're not staring at your phone? Because obviously we're spending a bit of time on not only on work stuff, but Instagram, Facebook, et cetera. And we also need to give our eyes a break. We just need to make sure that every 20 minutes we look up 20 feet for 20 seconds. I know as I age, the muscles in my eyes are sort of going and I need bifocals these days which is pretty uncool, but it's these small things that you do during the day that adds up to a big difference over time.

Duncan Young:
Also because we're not travelling I suggest to people that they recreate their commute. So in the old days I used to ride my push-bike down to the ferry at Manly and get the ferry into the city. Now, I actually either go for a walk around the block before I start work, or I ride my bike to the ferry and I ride back. We just want to replicate something that gets us moving and thinking about our day. And probably the most important thing for the people is the ability to switch off. We know that when you look at your phone too much, the blue light, it activates you, so we want to turn off the phone at least an hour before we go to bed. Want to also be mindful of what we're reading so try not to read Girl with the Dragon Tattoo or Enemy of the State or anything like that.

Duncan Young:
You don't want to go to bed with your mind sort of thinking about all those things. So you can read to quiet your mind, but an end of work routine. So you stop your work, let's stay in the light for a while, you stop at six o'clock every night. Try and write down all the things on your plate, because what happens when you physically write something on paper, it actually takes it out of your mind, your frontal cortex, and puts it down on paper where you know to find it tomorrow, very easy to pick up.

Duncan Young:
And by having that actual break and closing your laptop or not going back into the study after a certain time makes a really big difference to allow you to live, get on with the second phase of your life. I was alarmed to find out the other day that we work about 80,000 hours in our career, but this is set to increase because we're living 10 to 15 years longer than our parents. So this might be 90 or 95,000 hours. So think about those small things you do every day because they'll make a really big difference over time.

Beau Turner:
Yeah, that's amazing. You know we finance and accounting folk love stats. So, hearing those percentages and those numbers it's ... yeah, that extra amount of effort that people have got to put in now is just so real, isn't it? Sort of by extension of what you were saying, what's the best examples that you've seen practically, either in personal business of bringing these ideas into people's ideal day?

Duncan Young:
That's a great question also. So again, we're going to go back to the reason why I can't recruit people to swim every morning is not everyone swims. Beau Turner:
Yeah. Duncan Young:
And so we've got to think about what works for you. So if you have previously been an avid walker then I suggest during lockdown that you keep on doing that as your actual thing. We know that when we look at the physiology of executives, so we put heart rate variability monitors on them. We measure their resting heart rates, essentially their parasympathetic versus sympathetic systems so that's your stress system and your recovery system, we find that those people that have the best balance and perform best at work largely have a really good physiology. So they've previously had a habit of running or swimming or whatever it is that works for them. And they've managed to keep that going their entire life. Duncan Young:
So you've got to make sure that you are building that physical exercise and that mental recovery into your every day. So because everyone has a different solution for how to stay healthy or how to perform at their peak, you've just got to reflect on what's worked in the past and remember, try to do it in a small way. There's a famous saying by David Brailsford, he's a supportive team director for Team Sky, the cycling team. If you make a 1% improvement every day for a year, you'd be 37 times better after the end of literally 12 months.

Beau Turner:
That's what we like.

Duncan Young:
Yeah. This is called marginal gains. So the well-being is a compound interest of the small things you do every day. Now the problem for the punters like us is that because we don't see change, we give up too early, but under the surface all these little things are happening. So change is not linear. So if you start on a course of changing something, whether that's an exercise routine, eating healthy food, you might not see the change for 30, 60, or 90 days, but under the surface it's all happening. So choose something, work on it, make it part of your routine, so make it easy.

Duncan Young:
I know that Michael for example sleeps in his walking kit because he likes to get up and walk every morning. There's an in-house joke but I think if walking's your thing, you need to make sure that your kit is visible when you get out of bed. You need to make it health frictionless for yourself. So it's those people who are thriving, who are those who have the routine, whether that's sleeping better, physical exercise, social connection is really important. And of course, purpose mastery, autonomy.

Michael Papadopoulos:
Duncan, you mentioned about switching off, how do you switch off when there's so much bad news regularly on TV at the moment?

Duncan Young:
Yeah, look, that's a difficult one too. So be alert, but don't be alarmed I suppose, is the saying. This is showing my age, but in 1992, I did a Dale Carnegie course and the Dale Carnegie course teach you a lot about how you frame stress. So if you think about things in three rings, one is you should be aware of them, but there's nothing you can do. That's the circle of concern. So that's like, we should be aware that these bad things are happening, but not dwell on them if we can't actually influence them. So the next ring is, can we actually influence them in a small way? So that's the area of concern the next ring in, and then obviously the middle ring, the ring where you can actually make a change is your mindset, your actions, your thoughts, and things like that.

Duncan Young:
So think about every problem in terms of what can I ... actually how can I influence it, and is there something I can do immediately to fix it? And if not you've just got to let it go. So thinking about stress or that mindset is really important. Also we know from the SARS pandemic, which happened a couple of years ago, this is pre-COVID. We had the SARS. We found that people still experienced a thing called post-traumatic growth, even though they were highly stressed at the time. So post-traumatic growth is actually relatively common. So a bad thing happens to someone and they learn from that experience or something difficult that happens in their life. So even though it's not easy at the moment for me, I've learned a lot about work. I've learned that I can do podcasting. I learned that I can do virtual online programmes and things like that.

Duncan Young:
So we've got to look for the learnings and look for what has worked, because I can tell you, I don't know whether you are the same, but negative self-reflection comes pretty easily to me. And so if we can think about the things that have worked, think about what we can influence and focus on, that makes a big difference. And of course, coming back to setting up that environment. So at the end of the day, pack your laptop away, make sure you write the list to start tomorrow, and then you will hit tomorrow refreshed and ready to go, otherwise your mind will just continue to ruminate on all of the issues going on, whether that's at work or in life as well.

Michael Papadopoulos:
Thanks Duncan, we're going to take a short break now. And when we come back, we're going to explore a little bit more on our podcast on health and well-being for our finance professionals, any particular challenges we face and what we can do to help ourselves.

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Michael Papadopoulos:
Welcome back. As we mentioned in this part of the podcast, we'd like to focus on us, as finance professionals, in particular, the challenges we face and what we can do for ourselves. Duncan's touched on quite a few of those at the moment, but as finance professionals we spend the majority of our time in front of a computer screen. In many cases, multiple screens, a smartphone, working simultaneously across many apps including email, Excel and various financial reporting systems, a sedentary lifestyle, you could call it. In the meantime, a lot of our colleagues and friends are talking about stand-up meetings, walking meetings, coffee meetings, doing more than 10,000 steps, taking regular breaks, blah, blah, blah. Duncan, can you explain to our listeners what you found to be the problems posed for finance professionals spending most of their time in front of a screen, and more importantly, what can do to adapt our work style?

Duncan Young:
So we need to plan our days for a bit more movement that we've got so if we know that we've got a meeting heavy day, and obviously as financial professionals, the ability to walk in meeting whilst you're looking at an Excel spreadsheet is probably going to be a safety issue. So I don't encourage you to do it. But obviously the finance industry also has a human side. So if you're coaching someone or you're having a one-on-one or you're just having a team update, there's no reason why you can't do that walking. Obviously you don't go to a busy road or whatever. You just need a little post-it note in your pocket. You need the right set up. And as little as a 10-minute walk outside can make a big difference to your day. Obviously in between your breaks hopefully you can stand up. You can either, if you've got a staircase in your house, use it.

Duncan Young:
If you've got a dog, quick walk. So it's making sure that you're designing those breaks into your every day. I personally find that work tends to fill the voids in my day. So unless I'm deliberately and intentionally planning the small things to improve my health and well-being, it gets away from me. So if you're looking at your screen all day, you've got eye health. So you want to look away from your screen, give your eyes a break as I say every 20 minutes look 20 feet for 20 seconds. Ideally every hour, make sure you get up and walk around the house for two minutes, whether that's a cup of tea, whether that's just walking to the backyard or whatever. Can you do a part of a meeting standing up? Now stand-up meetings aren't great in itself because long-term if you stand up too much it leads to varicose veins, musculoskeletal issues, it's actually the sit to stand transition which is a big thing.

Duncan Young:
So visualise you're just getting out of your chair or it's like a mini squat. If you can do a few more of those during the day that'll also make a big difference, but also making sure that you can plan your day, having a bit more autonomy about those things. So if you have got a meeting heavy day, when you know you're in front of the computer the entire time, make sure the other parts of your day involve some movement to make up for that overall. And of course, what you eat at lunch obviously makes a big difference. So leafy green vegetables, nuts, pulses, et cetera again can make a huge difference to how you think, feel, and act in the afternoon. We all know that you get the afternoon coffee slump. We actually know that Facebook, the most common time for people check Facebook all around the world is at three o'clock. That's often because we had that slump after lunch, you lose the will to live on those Excel spreadsheets.

Duncan Young:
And so we just need to be aware of those. So sometimes go with the flow. If you're having a slump at three, get up and have a walk outside, or make sure what you're eating at lunch gives you a slow release of glucose. So that's nut pulses, yoghourts, all those really good fresh foods. I think some of the other fast food type elements might give you a bit too much sugar and therefore you can have a slump afterwards. So they're just again the basics. Make sure you're recovering during the day, making sure you're eating well, getting a bit of movement even if you can't do walking meetings, and socially connected. That's the other thing we haven't touched on today, but we know there's an epidemic of loneliness heading our way. It's actually a loneliness epidemic on a global perspective.

Duncan Young:
We know about 10% of the population of the UK are categorised as lonely. Australia is a bit about the same as that. The problem with being lonely is it reduces your life or your life expectancy by about 26%. It actually has a physical impact as well as a mental impact as well. So it's really important that we stay connected. And obviously we can't go out hugging everyone because it's COVID at that moment, but you can still stay connected to people with a simple text. "Hey, how're you going? I've been thinking about you. Hope you're travelling all right." View it through to a Zoom, or even if you go up to your coffee shop, making that small incidental connection with either your barista, look him in the eye, him or her, say, "Good morning."

Duncan Young:
If you've got a dog and you walk past other dog walkers, say good morning. We know that Gillian Sandstrom's done a lot of work in this and that 10 to 15 times during the day, we have an opportunity to connect with others or make those weak connections. Make sure we just look up and say, "Good morning," to people that you pass by. It can make a big difference to your well-being, and it actually makes you feel part of your community. This sense of belonging is what loneliness doesn't have. And you can make it up with your weak connections, like your barista, like your dog walking buddies every day. So there are a few tips for you.

Beau Turner:
Yeah. So true. That really resonates. The other thing that springs to mind you sort of touched on the making it part of your daily routine, but also, I know we can only go exercise with one person at the moment, but booking in that morning run with your neighbour or your friend to actually have that accountability as well. I definitely find that if I've got to self-motivate it's a little bit tougher than your friend waiting for you on the corner sort of thing. But I do know that I just want to drill into your Lendlease work. And I've heard about this 30-day challenge. I'm just interested to hear and for our listeners in the corporate sense, what programmes you've got running at the moment.

Duncan Young:
Great. All right. So as I mentioned earlier in the podcast, we approach well-being in a three tier approach. One is building awareness. So that is telling you about well-being. The second one is about fostering curiosity. That's largely done through heart rate variability monitoring, and we see more than 2000 people having worn the monitors, what works for people. And I can tell you drinking red wine before you go to bed doesn't work. So you can pass that as a solution-

Beau Turner:
That [crosstalk 00:29:50] that out.

Duncan Young:
... for your sleep. But that rules that out. But reading does, reading does, or mindfulness or stretching, all those kinds of things helps you get a good night's sleep. And then lastly, we have this thing called Build your Ideal Day. So in the year 2000 previously year 2000, most psychology was based around stabilising people whereas Martin Seligman looked at helping people thrive in life, and they looked at a strength based approach. The methodology we follow is called Appreciative Inquiry, and we've built a whole programme called Build your Ideal Day. It's a 60 to 90-minute programme where we ask people to reflect on the good things that have happened when they've had good health and well-being.

Duncan Young:
We ask them to think about how might that play out in the future, what you're going to do tomorrow on one specific thing you're going to focus on. We've had two and a half thousand people do that. It's been translated into Japanese, Italian. We've run it all over the world, and the same 30 ideas keep on coming up. When I say to people, "What are you going to do tomorrow?" Largely they're saying the same thing. So we built a thing called the 30-day challenge, which is made from the top 30 ideas coming from people.

Duncan Young:
Again, there's nothing scientifically belting it out of the park with this. It's largely about how you sleep. How many hours you sleep each night, seven to nine hours obviously, the time you go to bed, what does your bedroom look like? This is bedroom hygiene. Is it quiet with no light? Is it cold? Should be sleeping less than 18 degrees, all that kind of stuff. Then it's what you eat. So we know the modified Mediterranean diet. We know in places around the world that traditional diets generally have low incidence of mental health disease. So we know again, if you eat well, then you're going to have a better mindset. We think about stress. We think about how you can move. We think about how you can connect with people. So one of the challenge for example is, "Today's challenge is for you to go and talk to a stranger."

Duncan Young:
And this is why it's good for you. This is why it's good for them, and this one's good for your community. So we actually teach you a couple of tricks about how you might communicate with someone. So again, each part or each challenge is less than a two minute read. And that generally the action only takes two minutes, but it gives people 30 health nudges that they can take away and try and incorporate into their whole life. Of course, I'm under no illusion that you're not going to incorporate 30 ideas into your every day otherwise there'd be no time for work, but we're trying to just get you to think about what has worked in the past for some people. You too might benefit from that and then we take away, the secret sauce comes from when we all share what's for us and then we too can try that.

Duncan Young:
That's the real thing that comes from it. It allows well-being to bring people together. We know that people who sleep well, eat well, exercise regularly, and have a good amount of optimism in the future are largely nicer to be around, are better at work, et cetera. So focusing on your health and well-being really does help your career. Because as I mentioned, the chances of me retiring in my early sixties are pretty slight. I'm going to be here until my mid-seventies, probably my early eighties, because we are going to live these long lives. So making sure you actually have the energy to keep on working, and keep on working and being a valuable part of the society is really important.

Duncan Young:
And you can only do that if you've got good physical and mental well-being. There's probably another thing, it's funny at CPA we probably should talk about financial well-being, but it's really important that with other pillars, banks often have the financial pillar within their well-being matrix of making sure we're set up for the future, making sure that we're planning our investments for the future. It makes a really big difference over time, having the autonomy and control of your own life through wealth accumulation is another really big thing I think.

Michael Papadopoulos:
That's great Duncan. I can actually vouch, I did the 30-day challenge with you a couple of months ago. It's been fantastic. I've certainly shared it with a lot of friends and got a lot of interest. And I definitely do more walking every morning. Lastly, I know you've repeated a number of messages Duncan around environment and food and lifestyle. If there's a couple of insights or some key takeaways that you could give our listeners today, what would they be?

Duncan Young:
A couple of insights to take away. All right, the biggest gains in people's well-being are for those that currently do nothing to doing something. So it doesn't matter what you do. Just start something. So we know that change isn't linear. You're not going to see the results tomorrow, but stick with it, so choose something small and build over time. These are the small, intentional choices we make every day. I'm going to end on a quote from James Clear and he says, essentially, habits stand in the way of where you want to be. So every action you do, because about 40% of your daily actions are actually habits. So they're without your control. You just do them automatically. So if you are able to make those small, intentional changes, over time your life will bend in that direction. So every action you take today is a vote for the person you want to be. So think about that when you walk, how you sleep, how you eat, how you socially connect, and what your future looks like. So thank you again for having me. It's been great talking to you.

Beau Turner:
That's awesome. Thanks Duncan. And thank you everyone for joining us today. Yeah. Especially thank you to Duncan for taking the time out to join us, really shared some valuable insights into health and well-being, and we really appreciate your time. To use some finance phrases, developing good habits is managing risk for our own life and future planning for good health. And I can certainly relate to a lot of the topics that you've raised. And thank you very much. Thank you again.

Duncan Young:
Thank you for having me.

Michael Papadopoulos:
Well, thanks Duncan. We know this is a very important topic and thanks for all your tips and useful comments and pointers. Hopefully you can all put them into practise very soon, just like Duncan and Beau, I'll close the podcast with a quote for you. I'm sure all you finance professionals would appreciate it. It comes from Anne Wilson Schaef, an American clinical psychologist. Good health is not something we can buy, however it can be an extremely valuable savings account. Thank you, until our next podcast, goodbye.

Outro:
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