A Life Less Ordinary with Sophie Elwes

This week I had the pleasure of interviewing Mark Berry who is my friend and personal trainer. We’ve known each other for years and every time I have a session with him, we end up deep in conversation and he is a real fountain of wisdom and life advice, as well as a great trainer.

Growing up on a council estate in Wandsworth, Mark has always been committed to helping others (alongside his love of sport, mainly football). He started back in the 1990s doing care work in a residential care home. Along the way he’s picked up a lot of knowledge working alongside physiotherapists, he trained as a personal trainer, gym instructor and aerobic instructor and has worked at One Trust for 32 years as a care worker for people with learning disabilities and complex and challenging needs. We know each other from his ‘side hustle’ as a personal trainer in my local gym. His philosophy of training is that it is for everyone. ‘If someone wants to, we’ll find a way’ is what he says of this - he’s all about ‘yes we can, not no we can’t.’

To mix things up, we recorded this from the gym, to give listeners a flavour of our relationship and the sort of conversations we have (in between rounds of boxing) - the sound quality is a little compromised but hopefully you can still enjoy Mark’s wise words.

In this episode we talk about the importance of taking time out, remaining calm and being patient. Mark opens up about his realisations of his self-worth and how he uses this learning to support and lift up others. We talk about training, how it’s good to challenge yourself, and about the limitations put on us particularly in childhood by our upbringing, schooling, medical diagnoses, and we discuss how important it is to question and challenge these.

As you can hear from the episode, people come in and out and its a true reflection of Mark’s character and how friendly he is.

I know, for me, my sessions with him provide me with mental health support as much as physical, and we talk about this, particularly for men, and how the gym can provide a safe space for men to talk and get things off their chests, under non-intimidating circumstances.

You can follow Mark or Sophie on Instagram.

Sophie has a conversation with cross-bench peer and eight time gold winning Paralympic medallist, Baroness Tanni Grey-Thompson DBE DL. Tanni sits in the House of Lords where she advocates for disability rights, welfare and disability sport. She first went to the Paralympic Games in 1988 and to four more Games after that, winning 11 Paralympic medals, eight gold medals, breaking three world records in wheelchair racing and, on top of that, won the London Marathon six times. Tanni talks about growing up in the 1970s in Wales with Spina Bifida, how her parents refused to allow her to be discriminated against, her experiences competing at five Paralympic Games. They discuss transport for disabled people in the UK, the discrimination they’ve both faced and how things have changed as a person with a disability over the course of Tanni’s life. We discuss impact of Coronavirus for people with a disability, how lack of access combined with wheelchair skills can be empowering and Tanni shares her words of wisdom about how she’s reached her level of success.

Jonny Benjamin MBE is an awarding winning mental health campaigner, writer, film producer, public speaker and vlogger. At the age of 20 he was diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder, which is a combination of schizophrenia and bipolar. Having been affected by mental illness from a young age, Jonny is passionate about improving mental health for young people, and has started up a charity Beyond. The charity held the first-ever mental health and wellbeing festival for primary and secondary schools during Children’s Mental Health Week in February this year.

Jonny tells me his story about how mental illness has affected him from a young age and about the devastation he felt at getting a diagnosis of schizoaffective disorder due to the stigma surrounding it. He tells me about his intention to take his own life and about the life-changing meeting he had with the stranger on the bridge and about how his words of positivitiy and optimism changed Jonny’s mind, which led him on, some years later, to create a campaign to find this stranger called ‘Find Mike’ with the charity Rethink Mental Illness which went viral and was shared by millions all over the world.
We speak about the pressure on teachers to take responsibility for children and young people’s mental health and how more action needs to be taken to support this.

We discuss compassion focused therapy and self-love – an area we are both passionate about. And Jonny emphasises the importance of active listening – something that many of us don’t do properly, but can be hugely helpful for people.

There is still a damaging stigma around mental illness and Jonny is having an amazing impact in dismantling this. For many people right now, poor mental health is absolutely rife and so I was so pleased to have this conversation with Jonny, to hopefully shine some positivity and hope for those struggling, that there are ways to get better. Jonny also gives some great advice for those wanting to help others.
jonnybenjamin.co.uk
educationsupport.org.uk
mentalhealthmates.co.uk
The book Jonny recommended by Dr Kristin Neff self-compassion.org
@mrjonnybenjamin
@sophieelwes

Jambo Truong is a practitioner of integrative medicine with a specialism in complimentary medicine and therapies who has impressive credentials and a vast knowledge and repertoire of different practices.
Growing up in South Wales and feeling like an outsider as being from an ethnic minority, as well as being queer, he faced a lot of bullying and had to learn to defend himself. Witnessing his sister passing away from an asthma attack at a young age set him on a path to wanting to help others, as well as introducing him to meditation.
As a student he volunteered at a drug and alcohol centre which we talk about in some depth and he shares a strong commonality found amongst service users, ways to help people 'find their spark', and an intimate understanding of the root of substance abuse issues.
Jambo is a bodyworker and talks about the diagnostic tools he uses from looking at the positives in a person and what he can tell from a person's face alone.
He has some incredible advice around what we can all do to help ourselves and a profound philosophy about trauma.
Follow Jambo on Instagram here and learn more about him via his website here.

Mo Gawdat is the former Chief Business Officer at Google X (aka the Moonshoot Factory) and before that had a successful career as a stock-trader and tech executive in Dubai. Despite having professional, personal and material success he was miserable, and no amount of new Rolls Royces could make him happy in a sustained way. He decided to use his engineer's mind and research skills to come up with equation to engineer and maintain happiness. He wrote a book about it called Solve for Happy which became an international bestseller.
In 2014 this equation was put to the ultimate test when his beloved son, Ali, died aged 21 due to medical negligence in a routine appendix removal operation. Mo shares with me how he coped with the aftermath of the wonderful Ali's death and what he has learned on his journey to understanding how to live well and with joy in this 'game called life.'
We talk about the tests that life gives us, and how to avoid getting 'tested.' He gives some interesting insights into the extent to which we have choices in life. He tells me about the negativity bias that exists in our brains and how he talks to his brain to control and reframe his thoughts, in a way that serves him.
More information about Mo's quest to make one billion people happy can be found here.
Solve for Happy: Engineer your path to joy by Mo Gawdat is available here.
Find Sophie Elwes on Instagram.