Keeping Mentally Fit is one of the biggest challenges of COVID-19 and in this week’s regular chat Morris Miselowski, Global Futurist, and Hong Kong Radio 3’s Phil Whelan catch up to talk about the impacts COVID is having on our mental health and what we can do about it

Transcript:

[00:00:00] Phil Whelan: [00:00:00] it’s 12 minutes past 12 and it’s Tuesday afternoon. That means if you have a moment and you’d like to see and join in, if you like with Morris Miselowski, get us on Facebook live morning brew where Morris is right now. Good day, Morris, how are ya?

Morris Miselowski: [00:00:14] Hi. It’s so wonderful to see you.

Phil Whelan: [00:00:16] I know last time it was down the beach

Morris Miselowski: [00:00:18] and the wind thing. Maybe we should call it television.

it’ll never catch on.

Phil Whelan: [00:00:25] That’s not a bad idea at all. Is this your, your your covert set up because you’ve got, you’re looking really slick there today.

Morris Miselowski: [00:00:31] Yeah. This is, this is the office, the bunker back home.

Phil Whelan: [00:00:34] Yeah. Not better to what’s been happening more is I’d been away. James has been looking after things wonderfully and I’m sure you’ve had some good chats. What kind of ground did you cover with James? Anything that I need, I need to know.

Morris Miselowski: [00:00:45] So we talked about, we talked a lot about jobs and where coven was going to take us in that job.

The front. We had to look at security last week too. And this notion of the apps and things that were going to happen with w that lots of us are going to be asked to use and [00:01:00] whether that was a safe thing to do or not. And you know what I came out with, cause it’s my usual line every week, Phil, you know your niceness Navalny this niceness and evilness.

It has a purpose now, but for me it needs to have a grandfather clause, meaning a sunset clause. Sorry. Meaning that at some point they’ve got to be able to turn it off in assurance. Nobody’s looking at this anymore.

Phil Whelan: [00:01:19] It’s not going to happen. That was it.

Morris Miselowski: [00:01:21] I don’t know. I don’t know. Cause in Australia we’re, we’re kind of being educated, which is a nice way of saying the press is talking about it more and more.

On Saturday, our prime minister that we’re going to have this app given to us and we need 40% of the population to have it on their mobile device, or it’s useless. And they’re saying without legislation yet, but they’re promising that it will have a sunset clause when we’re over this, whenever that thing is, they’re going to turn it all off and everything will disappear here.

Phil Whelan: [00:01:48] Sunset close. Explain that a bit. What other examples

Morris Miselowski: [00:01:52] of that? Perhaps? I think at some point somewhere down the track that it will disappear. Like sunset. Yeah. And so they’re, they’re [00:02:00] promising us at this stage without there being legislation that at some point when we reach whatever it is that we have to reach, they’ll turn it all off and nobody will be, nobody else will be able to spy on us.

But I think it’s all, it doesn’t really matter, Phil. We need to have it so we can get back outside. Yeah. He’s just saying,

Phil Whelan: [00:02:16] Oh, they’re not going to spy on us anymore. Okay. And of course, no

Morris Miselowski: [00:02:19] worries. There’s a million ways they can spawn. It’s really, that made this, I mean, it’s, it’s so silly to say this is going to be, they’re spying on us anyway.

Phil Whelan: [00:02:28] Yeah. Yeah. I want to bring up a quote that Morris, you can read about this on his, on his website and everything, which I’m sure you’ll find out about in a second. Maurice gave me a very gloomy quote this morning. Oh, it fat. have you got it there? If you’ve got it, then Oh, here we

Morris Miselowski: [00:02:42] go. Would be fact.

Phil Whelan: [00:02:44] It was, it was, something about, well, we’ve changed, we’ve changed and we’re never going back and all that stuff.

Morris Miselowski: [00:02:53] Which quotes are Phil. Sorry. So you voted lows. What was talking over you? So I don’t know which one you be.

Phil Whelan: [00:02:59] Alright, here we [00:03:00] go. It says, the person we were pre covert 19 has gone forever. And with it, the hopes, aspirations, and dreams of the future self, we might have become an, I read that on your website, Morrissey.

But

Morris Miselowski: [00:03:12] that’s what I’m said. It’s so melodramatic. It’s wonderful. But it’s truthful because we all had a vision of who we were going to Bay. We never saw this fork in the road coming and everything we thought about ourselves was based on it and never being here. So who were at work, how we were going to live, who we were going to love, where we’re going to go for restaurants and holidays, all that was part of our life.

It was who we thought we were going to be. At some future point and all of a sudden this thing covert came along and it took us down to detour and we’ve had to become somebody very different. So we’re, lots of us are at home now. We’re not necessarily doing the satisfying work that we might have otherwise done.

We’re not going out and enjoying the sunlight, the sunlight or whatever else would have done. So we’ve had to become a different sort of person. And lots of people I’m talking to down the track of very worried for who they might be afterwards. Will they have a job? You know, will the family be safe? All those [00:04:00] kinds of negative questions, which are really part of living through these aims.

Phil Whelan: [00:04:03] It’s almost like a bit out of taste to talk about the positive side of things. I mean, quite understandably so, but instead of this, how about we say something along the lines of is it a test and how well are we doing? If it is.

Morris Miselowski: [00:04:16] Yeah, look, I don’t mind that at all, but really the purpose of that was a webinar we did last night.

It’s a series of webinars every Monday night in Australia, and your listeners are more than welcome to join me next Monday night. What we talk about really are positive things feel. Cause you know, that’s really where my head takes me. Yeah. It was an opportunity really for us to press reset and reboot.

It’s horrible what’s happened to us. We don’t want to ever have happened, nor do we want it again. But let’s take this opportunity to rethink who we are.

Phil Whelan: [00:04:44] It sounds a bit blahzay to say reboots. I’m sure everybody listening and watching knows what you mean, but we have to watch our language right now then

Morris Miselowski: [00:04:50] we, we do.

But I actually think it is an opportunity to do that. And we had a psychologist on last night. We had Judith David on. She spoke to us pretty much most of the hour, exactly [00:05:00] that she was talking about. The notion that we have really, in many ways, been stripped back to a human in a way that we’ve not ever had in any of them living memories.

And that is that. Everything that we thought we were, everything we thought we could achieve, no longer is possible, and we’re often waiting now at the behest of somebody else. So waiting for government department that tells us we can do it. We’re waiting for something else. So our lives are very, very different.

She, I, we talked about the notion of maybe taking some of the good stuff out and what’s happening to us and moving forward with that as part of a future self. By that it was my example, and I’m sure it’s happening in Hong Kong, but can’t get there, can’t tell you, you’ll tell me. But in Victorians and Kilda, when we go for our daily walks, there is so many people walking around saying hello to each other

working in the slow lane.

They literally are taking a deep breath. They’re stopping, they’re talking, they’re playing their kids, they’ve reformulated their lives. It’s not that nine to [00:06:00] five anymore. Kids are becoming important in a different way, but there’s

Phil Whelan: [00:06:03] one thing missing with all of these things. Morris, that’s people’s incomes across the board.

They’re losing out

Morris Miselowski: [00:06:08] big time. Yeah, and we know that Phil, I mean, again, I’m not for a moment saying any that’s not real, but what we have also in that guys is there is a government in Australia and lots of places around the world. They’ve agreed to subsidize wages. And they’re giving people all sorts of income to be able to sustain them.

It’s not a great deal of money, but it’s something now that’s interesting cause you and I have spoken over the years about this notion of can we give people what’s called a universal wage? Should the government, in fact, give everybody enough money to live off regardless of who they are and what they do?

And everybody’s always said no. Well, I

Phil Whelan: [00:06:44] why it’s like nothing for nothing or something. Is it one

Morris Miselowski: [00:06:46] of those? Yeah, that’s usually at one is because we’ll go economically break. Well, we’re not going to, it’ll be difficult, but we will come over and I’m talking about Australia specifically. Yeah. We overcome this.

It will take us years, but we will do it. So the going broke thing doesn’t work. It was really the [00:07:00] social inequity that many people believe. Look, you’ve got to work for it. Yeah, I’m going to get it out on the handouts in lock. You just got,

Phil Whelan: [00:07:06] uh, a, yeah, I was about to say Victorian. I mean, it is a very Victorian

Morris Miselowski: [00:07:11] notion, so it’s Victorian.

Of course there’s, but that’s, but that’s the notion of what happens in most of our life. I mean, as much as we don’t want to agree with it, Phil, that’s the, like many, many people in our capitalist worlds say it. So I’m fascinated to see how quickly we’ve all taken on board. And I think rightly so. I think it’s a great thing we did.

We’ve all taken on board this universal wage. The other thing that really tickles my fancy is the fact that we have become a martial law. I mean, in Australia we have martial law. The government literally overnight has become a dictator for the right reasons, often doing the right things, and we’ll debate for years whether it was or it wasn’t, but it seems to be okay for the moment, bringing in all sorts of laws, which literally are locking us back into our homes.

Phil Whelan: [00:07:53] Does this bring up the conversation of democracy then.

Morris Miselowski: [00:07:55] Yeah. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So all these things that we once thought were sacrosanct. There were [00:08:00] things we could never talk about. Things that were always part of our life that were the structure and the fabric, and you didn’t have to worry about them because they would just wear now all of a sudden aren’t anymore.

And it’s really interesting to see the big debates on these types of issues. It wouldn’t have happened before Phil. So for me, what I’m hoping is, I’m really hoping is that, not that we’ll go to universal wage and not, that will be. Continue to be a martial law, but that will take some elements of the good stuff out of this, some elements of the good stuff, and we might mix it in to a future world.

Phil Whelan: [00:08:30] Take us through a little bit of what went down last night. I mean, any particular angles from your guests, for instance, that you went on? That’s a very interesting.

Morris Miselowski: [00:08:37] Yeah, it was. We talked about what it was and we talked about the notion of many people get their self worth from their work, so if you ask them who they are, the first thing they’ll tell you is, I’m a broadcaster on the futurist, on the plumber, on the, on the landscape, or whatever it is, and that defines them.

Yeah. At the moment, that’s not true. Most people can’t say that with any certain thing. If they do, it still makes them feel uncertain. So [00:09:00] Judas talked about the notion of really understanding ourselves and using this time to get really comfortable with us

Phil Whelan: [00:09:07] finding us Morris’s very interesting one because in some, I mean certainly where we are, to be Frank, there’s a lot of people define themselves by the four wheels they sit upon and the four walls they live within.

Yeah.

Morris Miselowski: [00:09:17] So she gave us a really good insight and I love it and I’m going to plagiarize. And so she didn’t say this, I said that, but truthfully I pinched it from her. She said, really, really what we are as a human is, sorry, who we are as a human is not what we are. And we have to get those two things really distinct because the, what is the job title?

But what is the driver of that Lamborghini or whatever the car is? And she said at times like this, all the wop falls away. All we’re left with is who. And we have to get really comfortable with who we are. And from a psychologist viewpoint, she said that one of the most difficult things she sees and has in her many, many years of practice is that most of us feel uncomfortable with ourselves.

We’re not used to being by ourselves. We’re not [00:10:00] used to being alone. And she thought this was a particularly good period for us to get a bit more comfortable with not being by ourselves as in one on one, but actually getting comfortable with ourselves as not being that. Whatever that title is or the or the driver of that car.

Phil Whelan: [00:10:14] Hang on a second, Morris. Let me invite people to join us on Facebook live if they can. Morning brew. Interesting conversation from Morris this morning. And this is where you can just put your thoughts and feelings if you want. And basically it was sort of saying how are things really going to be different?

And I’m not even going to say when an F cause that’s a tricky topic as well, isn’t it? Morris? Give us a key thing to perhaps get our listeners going. What would you say is a key thing to consider before they give us maybe their point of view.

Morris Miselowski: [00:10:40] So it really comes back to me is understanding your core, what makes you joyful and happy, and don’t make it a job title.

It’s what makes you get up in the morning. I mean, really it is what makes you get up in the morning if you won that mythical Tetes lotto or the Tetes or whatever it’s called in Hong Kong. In other words, if you want a squillion dollars and didn’t have to work again, most of us would still want to do [00:11:00] something to be active.

Yeah. What is it you would want to do? What is it you would want to do then? And we’re not going out to find that all to win that mythical manual that, that’d be great. It really is going back to the core of who we are. The other thing she said and with her that lots of movies and things, but I like the way she phrased it in the way she put it into context was that your enough that the answer, the question is do wherever you are and whatever you do.

And she said me. So you know me is always enough. That’s all I need to be me is always enough and me is a progression, make changes through life. So I’m giving all thought. Maybe I should start charging for psychological advice.

Phil Whelan: [00:11:37] I’m glad you mentioned that, Morris, because I must talk about money here. A lot of people are being hit really hard freelancers of the world, whatever business they’re in, they’re really getting slammed with all this stuff.

And we’re starting now to talk about money as a necessity rather than a vanity.

Morris Miselowski: [00:11:53] I think we’re starting to see it that I’m not sure it is because it goes back to the previous, that if we hold the value of everybody [00:12:00] getting universal income, then money almost becomes a material. Everybody has it.

Everybody has access to enough now. I know. That’s a silly comment. It’s not well thought out. It’s not meant to be, but it’s part of the esoteric conversation that people have had for forever since we were put on this earth. Now the different regimes, different ways we look at the planet, different ways we divide up what we have on this planet.

This is a really interesting time to be talking about all those things because everything we thought was so certain just isn’t anymore.

Phil Whelan: [00:12:27] So as humans, let’s be honest, we tend to be reactive because we perhaps lazy. We don’t go to the doctor unless something hurts. And doctors have said time and time again.

Well, if you came to us before, it might not hurt that. No, no, no. We’re going with that. So we’ve been forced. To be reactive. Now this is not just like, Oh, whatever. I’ll forget about it. We can’t.

Morris Miselowski: [00:12:49] No, you can’t. You’re absolutely part of it whether you want to be or not. I mean, you can be one of those protesters around the world and say it’s all nonsense and we shouldn’t be social isolating and the rest of it, but the reality is most of us on the planet have [00:13:00] bought into this.

We actually think it is a real pandemic. We think there are really our issues and we are all, for whatever reason, better or worse, part of this journey. The other thing, and again, it seems to be quoting Judith a lot. No, it’s great. Yup. The other thing she said to us last night was that even though we’re all in it together, she actually got quite heated about this and I liked it cause it was something I hadn’t thought of before.

Even though we’re all in this and we keep hearing all this dribble, you know, in the media and everywhere else and we’re part of this, we’re all in this together. She said, in fact, we’re not. We’re all individual humans. What we’re doing is responding to the same thing, but every one of us is individual and the way that we’re responding to it is 100% correct for me.

Not for anybody else. So some people might be overplaying something or be overly concerned about something that doesn’t make them wrong. It makes them them.

Phil Whelan: [00:13:49] This is fascinating. There’s so many angles to what you’re talking about. I’m finding it hard to put it all together. I want to be able to say a logical sentence, but I can’t.

But everything you’re saying is ringing true. Most it really is. Or, or due to the set.

[00:14:00] Morris Miselowski: [00:14:00] Yeah. Yeah. So again, going back, we were on the last night for an hour and 10 minutes, so it’s on the future.com in the media is the section, and you can rewatch last nights, and the one before that last Monday’s was about jobs in covert as well.

But last night you’ll be able to watch Judah. So again, business futurist.com in the media is the tab you want and you’ll see it there. But. I liked it because it gave us some really homely advice, which is really what we need at this time. It wasn’t heart level, it was just really sincere from the gut conversations.

You know, if you want to go further, and I, this is a concept I’ve never heard of before. She said that humans have five personality types, and it’s by the acronym of ocean, O, C E, A N ocean. So according to the personality type that we have. Speaks a lot about the way that we’re going to react to covert and react to other things in life.

So I’ve done some research since, and she told us what ocean is, but it stands for this. [00:15:00] It’s openness to experience is the openness to experience. Conscientiousness is the sea. Extroversion is the agreeableness is the a, N N is neuroticism. Ocean, and apparently it’s a psychological tool that’s been around for ever and ever.

It’s how they quickly evaluate. It’s like triage. It’s, it’s a quick evaluation of the mental state of somebody. And what she was saying was, depending on which one of those personality types, you’re more often in because we all move depending on situation, but more often will really depend on how vastly important this thing will be, how catastrophic it will be, or whether it’s an opportunity.

In other words, if you’re open to experience the O and Ocean and this is just an opportunity, you’re just looking at it exactly like that. If you aren’t neurotic, which is the end, the other side, then of course everything about this is going to be catastrophic. Everything about this is going to be wrong.

So from her viewpoint, that’s why she said, it’s really [00:16:00] about me as a human. It’s not about all these other things. It’s how do I react to it? And she gave us this really interesting tool of ocean, which you can Google, O, C, E. A. N. and is that

Phil Whelan: [00:16:10] alone? Is that, that’s the thing is

Morris Miselowski: [00:16:13] it’s been around for 40 50 years.

I’ve got to come up. Yeah. Psychological piece of theory that’s been well taught, well researched for a very long period of time, and it’s a really quick way apparently, that psychologists or psychiatrists have used to quickly be able to assess people before they do a lot of in, in depth work. And it does give you, I’ve looked at it quite a lot since last night.

It does give you a really good insight into how we might approach things.

Phil Whelan: [00:16:37] Yeah. There were a couple of very well known tests. I suppose this, this product has got to be a test for. This is a

Morris Miselowski: [00:16:43] test for everything

Phil Whelan: [00:16:45] very. Let’s talk about some general

Morris Miselowski: [00:16:46] tips for coven. That’s the only thing. There isn’t enough tests or

Phil Whelan: [00:16:49] how ironic noise.

Let’s talk about generalizations. We’re talking about things like that. Resetting. People are saying the world is resetting. I was talking to a couple of very sort of hot [00:17:00] conservationist guys this morning. I said, the water looks cleaner, and Gary said to me, I think you might be imagining it, but maybe I am imagining, but it seems cleaner to me.

Morris Miselowski: [00:17:07] Yeah. So your openness to experience then on the ocean or the outside,

Phil Whelan: [00:17:15] Morris, if you were talking to a bunch of sick farmers, for instance, in this thing about reset came up, where would you take that conversation?

Morris Miselowski: [00:17:22] Ah, so when I get the opportunity to do that, and I’ve had it already, I talked to them about the reality that they know and people my age have difficulty with, and that is that their will will constantly change, that they will never have to worry about being stuck in doing something for 20 or 30 or 40 years.

They’ll be using a myriad of skills and that they always need to be open. So opportunity, they always need to see and find their own way. And this period for them really illustrates that really well because the rest of the world that had been so used to things being predictable day in, day out are now learning that lesson with kids.

And I saw, well, social

Phil Whelan: [00:17:56] media and anybody over 40 would probably have [00:18:00] you think that it’s a slap in the face for millennials who are lazy in self entitled.

Morris Miselowski: [00:18:04] Apparently. Oh look, I don’t agree with that. I think every generation is, I mean, every single generation, the Beatles, the Beatles were given to us by the devil incarnate.

They were taking us to hell. I mean, every generation says that of every other generation, Phil, and it goes back to Socrates and all the way back. Yeah.

Phil Whelan: [00:18:19] All right, Morris, we’ve just got a couple of minutes left. So this webinar, it really sounds like people should watch it. Tell us slowly and clearly anything you want our listeners to go and check out.

Morris Miselowski: [00:18:28] So the past two are at BusinessFuturist.com. You can watch them at your leisure next Monday. I’ve just been confirmed. You actually are the first to know this.  we have a huge company Australia called seek.com they are employment agent. They are an employment online employment space. Their CEO, Paul Bassett, is joining us next Monday night and we’re going to be talking how to get ready to apply for jobs.

Pre, during and after Covid. He’s going to talk to us about the jobs that are currently on his site, what, what companies are looking for right now, and how [00:19:00] to prepare ourselves. So resumes, job interviews, and all those sorts of things is next Monday night,

Phil Whelan: [00:19:05] or the cynics will say he’s wasting his time. I hope he’s not.

Morris Miselowski: [00:19:09] he’s not, there will be jobs. Of course, there will be, and we will move into a new space. There’s a whole new way, a whole new, well, not a whole new way there. There will be a different way of approaching this, and Paul is the best person to tell us that. It’s the largest employment site in Australia, in Australasia, actually.

Phil Whelan: [00:19:24] Yeah. That makes a lot of sense. Now, a lot of people whose jobs weren’t so well known now are, I mean, they may not be getting paid at all or very much at all for doing them, but that we’re talking about performers and people like that.

Morris Miselowski: [00:19:35] Hey. Welcome to my life. Welcome to moments. It’s

Phil Whelan: [00:19:37] like when you left yesterday, I was going to say, when you left the room virtually, what were you thinking, Morris?

that

Morris Miselowski: [00:19:43] it was dinner time and I was really hungry,

but it wasn’t, it wasn’t notion around me and I really liked the point that we’ve talked about already that. Even though we keep hearing this, this well [00:20:00] trotted phrase that we’re all in this together. Yeah. Her comment that we’re, that we really aren’t, we’re individuals responding to the same sort of circumstance and that makes it valid, but it also means that we have some control over the way that we approach.

What we have to do.

Phil Whelan: [00:20:14] Fantastic. Moris. It’s really fascinating stuff and there’s tons more to talk about. As the weeks go by, I’m Sean, and as when when things do tend to possibly ease off, I wonder if you’re going to change your tune. Once again, Morris, tell our viewers and listeners where they can catch out your webinars.

Morris Miselowski: [00:20:28] So it’s BusinessFuturist.com – in the media section. You’ll see the tab there and I’ll put up a link there and tomorrow when it opens up for next Monday nights.

Phil Whelan: [00:20:38] Brilliant. I’ll talk to you next week. Morris has always been fascinating to talk to you by, by Morris Miselowski there on the line from Melbourne .