Ever wonder about the symphony of benefits music can orchestrate in our lives, particularly in the workplace?
Terry Stuart of Deloitte joins us to share his harmonious expertise from his The Awesome Music Project and work with NYC based Reverberation, illuminating how melodies and rhythms aren't just soul-soothing, but also brain-boosting and performance enhancing.
Our conversation harmonizes the insights from "Reverberation: Do Everything Better with Music" , that highlights the science-backed benefits of music on mental health, creativity, and even corporate productivity. We also celebrate the arts' broader impact on the brain and discuss the essential integration of these findings into the corporate, and educational spheres.
Striking a chord on stress management, we emphasize the delicate balance between intense work stressors and essential recovery, with a spotlight on the pivotal role of quality sleep. Terry shares his personal anecdotes how tuning into calming music and ambient sounds can transition us into a tranquil slumber. We discuss the necessity of disconnecting from stimulating content pre-sleep, and instead, sinking into fictional worlds or utilizing AI sound technology to achieve the restorative rest that primes us for peak performance.
Lastly, we discuss the collective power of music in building communities, shared emotions, and perhaps a future where music is as much a part of therapy as it is of our playlists. We tease the brain waves of upcoming projects poised to intertwine music with healing and personal growth, targeting schools and corporations with the magic of virtual reality. Tune in as we reveal how these endeavors promise a new approach to mental health and community-building, with a special invitation for you to become part of this groundbreaking movement.
(The audio opens with a description of the book, Reverberation. Unfortunately due to technical difficulties we lost the video for this episode)
Find our more about Wellbeing at Work's Global Summits, our Global Hub Community of C-Suite executives and our Bespoke division at wellbeingatwork.world
Ever wonder about the symphony of benefits music can orchestrate in our lives, particularly in the workplace?
Terry Stuart of Deloitte joins us to share his harmonious expertise from his The Awesome Music Project and work with NYC based Reverberation, illuminating how melodies and rhythms aren't just soul-soothing, but also brain-boosting and performance enhancing.
Our conversation harmonizes the insights from "Reverberation: Do Everything Better with Music" , that highlights the science-backed benefits of music on mental health, creativity, and even corporate productivity. We also celebrate the arts' broader impact on the brain and discuss the essential integration of these findings into the corporate, and educational spheres.
Striking a chord on stress management, we emphasize the delicate balance between intense work stressors and essential recovery, with a spotlight on the pivotal role of quality sleep. Terry shares his personal anecdotes how tuning into calming music and ambient sounds can transition us into a tranquil slumber. We discuss the necessity of disconnecting from stimulating content pre-sleep, and instead, sinking into fictional worlds or utilizing AI sound technology to achieve the restorative rest that primes us for peak performance.
Lastly, we discuss the collective power of music in building communities, shared emotions, and perhaps a future where music is as much a part of therapy as it is of our playlists. We tease the brain waves of upcoming projects poised to intertwine music with healing and personal growth, targeting schools and corporations with the magic of virtual reality. Tune in as we reveal how these endeavors promise a new approach to mental health and community-building, with a special invitation for you to become part of this groundbreaking movement.
(The audio opens with a description of the book, Reverberation. Unfortunately due to technical difficulties we lost the video for this episode)
Find our more about Wellbeing at Work's Global Summits, our Global Hub Community of C-Suite executives and our Bespoke division at wellbeingatwork.world
Hello and welcome to the second part of my conversation here on wellbeingatworkworld with Terry Stewart, a senior partner at Deloitte. For those of you who missed our previous episode, we had, I think, a great discussion about the state of well-being at work across companies, certainly here in Canada, and also I'm sure a lot of that was applicable to other parts of the world, certainly in the US the role of leadership, the importance of well-being in terms of the performance of an organization and where we stand in terms of well-being. Right now we're going to move this conversation forward somewhat and speak about something which Terry is going to be joining us in New York in a couple of months, in March. Let's talk about the work he's done with the impact that music can have on well-being, how we can use it to enhance how we feel and our wellness. So welcome back, terry. Good to see you again. Great to be here, john.
Speaker 1:Okay, so you kindly sent me this book here, which I'll look. It's come up backwards on the screen. So this is Do Everything Better with Music. Reverberation by Keith Lancelber. The Forward by Peter Gabriel. I know you're working with the team that are doing this book, so can you tell us a little bit about that project?
Speaker 2:Yeah, maybe if we rewind just a little bit. Four years ago, rob Carly and I started a charity, a foundation, called the Awesome Music Project, and that was the result of my own mental health challenges and a family member actually writing a suicide note, and I got curious about why. Is it that when somebody has anxiety or depression, we have two modalities we give them drugs, antidepressants, or we send them to a therapist, and we weren't looking at any of the other tools to deal with our mental health. So we created the Awesome Music Project. And for those shoppers, the Awesome Music Project Songs of Hope and Happiness is on amazoncom. It has 111 stories in it about songs that make people happy, from people like Sarah McLaughlin and Michael Buble, chris Hadfield, amanda Lang, et cetera.
Speaker 2:So I don't want to go too deep into that. But that was the genesis. We wanted to raise money for music and mental health research to prove, based on science, the healing impacts of music on our brains. And then fast forward four years and the book that you just showed, reverberation Do Everything Better with Music, came up, and I got that about a month ago, and Michael Herman and Anna Gabriel and Peter Gabriel have created Reverberation as a company, but they took three years of neuroscience research and synthesized it into a beautiful book that I would call the Playbook for Living a Better Life with Music. So how do we relax and sleep better, how do we thrive and exercise better? How do we focus all the nine skills that we need as humans? And so they've done an awesome job of having science-based work that's actually also super engaging and fun. They've got people like David Byrne in it, mick Fleetwood, questlove, so lots of artists, but really it's all about giving everyday humans some skills and some approaches to use to live a better life with music.
Speaker 1:Now, I think most people would agree with the premise of this in the sense that music affects your mood, improves your mood. I would obviously think that happy music would like to be a bit more cheerful, etc. But this is a bit more profound than that. There's some solid science behind this about how it has a concrete impact on our minds Bye.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it was very important to Rob and I when we created AMP and it's also one of the fundamental values for the reverberation team that any of the work that we're doing is not just fluffy. Yeah, isn't this a nice happy playlist? What do the best neuroscientists at Johns Hopkins say? What do the folks at Stanford say? What are the folks at Harvard Medical? What are the folks at McMaster or U of T say? And how do we actually prove and show the healing power? So they're doing studies on this and they're synthesizing it so that they give us ways to do it. But it's grounded on very fundamental science across all of those threads. And this side, by the way, is emerging. It's coming out, and when you have our book coming out four years ago, you have reverberation coming out in this past year you have do every sorry, this is your brain on art by Susan Maxim and Ivy Ross coming out and it's looking at our writ large. So painting, photography, poetry and music. And Susan is one of the top folks at Johns Hopkins. She's helped create the neuro arts blueprint, which is what parts of our brain are impacted by what components of the arts.
Speaker 2:And then when you have Andrew Huberman, who's now blown up in the in the world of neuroscience. So if anybody any of your listeners haven't gone to Andrews, if they're want to geek out on science. Andrews podcast called the Huberman lab. He basically takes Stanford research and exposes it. He did an hour and 40 minute podcast on music. So, like the science world's waking up, now we need to get the corporate world to wake up and also the government and the education world so that we have kids learning these skills, just like they're learning math and languages. And we need the corporate world to wake up. And that's what reverberation is really all about. Cool.
Speaker 1:So the book makes a very bold claim so let's do everything better with music. So that's not meant, that's not how I felt, like hyperbole, is it? That's a genuine claim that this music will perform, but everything goes better with music, yeah.
Speaker 2:And I would maybe broaden the aperture on that. So music and sound, right, and so it doesn't always have to be popular music with lyrics and so on. But what I love is the book takes the nine kind of fundamental skill sets and so relaxing, focusing, loving, thriving, connecting, escaping, creating, feeling and becoming and actually boils it down. So if you think about those skill sets, I challenge you to say what do you do in a day that doesn't fall in one of those buckets? Right, and it's not that you have to have. So let's be clear. It's not that you don't have to have music on every moment of your day. That would be unhealthy. Silence, silence, is actually very healthy as well. It's also absolutely not a magic pill. You don't listen to one song and then life has changed. Right? This is something that we're working on over time, we're building skills, we're retraining our brain and whether it's exercise or it's other things. So yeah, but it is all aspects of your life.
Speaker 1:I shouldn't just scrap the heart medication and listen to Brian Eno. That's not good advice.
Speaker 2:And, to be clear, there's a place for medication. So, before I get accused of being like anti-pharma, that's the thing. However, this music thing is unless you're subscribing to all the services I am, it's basically free and there are no known side effects that are bad. So that's really the key here.
Speaker 1:Yeah, there are a couple of these things that I want to. Maybe the best way of getting the audience to understand how this works is to unpack a couple of the ideas in the book, a couple of the things that people do in the book that they just or they advocate using music with India, and I'm going to pick a couple of my favorites Before we do that. We had a conversation earlier about music and psych, because I'm an avid cyclist and I know that there was this sort of gradation of music. If you're really fit to listen to GraphWork and I'm not really fit by who sometimes listen to GraphWork by cycling but I actually don't like listening to music when I exercise. I want to listen to the world around me, and you did mention there about it's not about music, it's about sound as much as music. There are people who listen to a lot of music while they're out walking, getting my way when I'm on my bike, right, Because they don't know that I'm coming. I like to listen to the world. Is that okay?
Speaker 2:Yeah, okay everybody has to do what works for them. So, john, you're okay to have silent stuff. I will say if you become a serious performance cyclist, your cycling will and it's proven perform better if you have music on at a particular level. I'll give a minor plug and I don't have any commercial relationship with these guys, but this headset aftershocks. I'm not doing Bluetooth today so that we have better sound, but this is my normal headset and it's a Bluetooth headset and it's called Bone Conduction, so it actually sits on this little part of your ear and way better health-wise for you.
Speaker 2:It was designed for people that are blind, because they actually need to hear ambient noise. So if they're out walking and they're on a phone call or they're listening to some music, they need to hear the car coming. So this leaves your ear canal open while still going through the bone conduction through your ear. So aftershocks, it's actually just called Shocks. Now SHOKZ, I love them. I've had them for eight years. I came across them ironically at a day that we were doing impact work at the CNIB the Canadian National Institute for the Blind Camp up at Lake Joseph and they had a tech day for the blind, and I'm an innovation guy. I'm curious about all this stuff and I said, oh, where are those new headphones? Let's check them out. And it's like whoa, these are actually pretty good. I do most of my calls during the day with them. They're super light. They've got ones that you can load your songs on. You can swim with them, oh cool.
Speaker 2:So all of that to say this is and, john, you and I've talked about the dichotomies of often we look at the world. You can either be performing or you can have being. You can either do your bicycling or you can have music. I'm gonna say you can actually be safe and listen to music while you ride and I put them on because I ride up and down up at my cottage and there's a lot of cars flying by and I wanted to make sure I could hear the cars coming but also listen to my tunes. That would get me pedaling faster and harder. By the way, your comment on Kraftwerk that you shared with me when I was working out at the gym this morning, I said, okay, I gotta go check it out, and I worked through. I started with Rapper's Delay, which is the recommended 111 beats per minute for somebody slightly over 55, okay, maybe 60. Your song Tour de France by Kraftwerk is actually recommended in the book and it's 133 beats per minute and I did find that my repetitions, like my revs, just naturally started going faster.
Speaker 1:Right, there are slower songs on that particular album by Kraftwerk. So there's one called An Echocardiogram, which is basically someone breathing really heavily and soundly exhausted, which relates much more to what I'm doing than that fast stage one of Tour de France thing. But so we digressed a little bit there. Just thank you for indulging me in my obsessions with cycling and Kraftwerk.
Speaker 1:So a couple of things we talked about in our last conversation which I wanna revisit in relation to music, and the first of those was relaxation. I think it's the first chapter in the book, and we talked a lot about rest, the importance of rest. What about? How does relaxation play in this music world? That's that you're in now.
Speaker 2:So relaxation is a broad continuum. So we talked last time about stress and that stress is actually good as long as it's not sustained stress on an ongoing, perpetual basis. So stress, whether it's your brain or your muscle. Stress and then recover, stress and then recover. And so we go through our days at work, stressing and meeting, stressing in activities, stressing to create new things, and we don't necessarily all do the recovery that we need to do. So there's relaxation slash recovery during the day. Some people do breathing exercises, some people do meditation, some people will put on music or tunes that will relax them after they've had a big meeting.
Speaker 2:Often we don't actually use that intentionally, and so I think people are gonna more and more get to. How do they do that intentionally? Then? The other part of this is preparing yourself for sleep. So the number one thing you can do for your mental health, your wellbeing and your performance is to get good sleep, and getting good sleep means enough hours, typically seven and a half to nine. People say eight. We actually go in 90 minute cycles, so seven and a half is probably better, and then nine if you're gonna go longer, but and we've heard a lot about alcohol and other things on that. So making sure that you're not having six drinks and then thinking you're gonna have great sleep because you're chilled out, you're gonna work two drinks, two drinks and your actual REM is not good. And REM is where all the brain gets flushed out, all the processes get cleaned up, that's your engines maintenance mode. So the book goes through the brainwave states from Delta to Theta to Alpha to Beta to Gamma, and we want to be in each of those states at different times. So we wanna be in Gamma state if we're gonna get creative and design a new product, right. We wanna be in Beta state. That's our normal active state when we're working through our day. But when we gotta chill down we wanna get down into Delta and Theta, and that's getting ready for sleep and into sleep.
Speaker 2:And so how do you use music? So I use, again, not a plug for a product, but I use an AI based engine called Endel, german software, and I use it in a whole bunch of different ways, but the number one way I use it is when I'm going to sleep, and so it has a very slow set of sounds. It's not songs that I know or lyrics that I have, but the sounds gradually slow down and they get down to 60 beats per minute, which is our resting heart rate typically when we sleep. So I use that. I set it for a 20 minute timer and I almost never hear the timer shut off in bed, so it's taking me down, it's chilled my brain out and ready to go. But I also use Endel for focus, so if I need to do some writing or some strategizing or some mind mapping I'll put it on at focus and it's got a very different beats per minute at that level.
Speaker 1:Cool Because I've heard a fair bit about white noise and brown noise. I'm not sure what brown noise is, but I did hear about it the other day.
Speaker 2:It doesn't sound nice, though, john. It doesn't sound nice, it doesn't does it.
Speaker 1:No, it doesn't, but I know white noise and I know something. I actually find the I'll listen to. I'm mentioning Brian Eno again, I'll do something ambient like that. I find the kind of listening to the recordings of rivers or the rain on the window. I find that a little annoying really. I'm just in there, though, but that's just me, I'm not talking it. Yeah, but I also listen to podcasts, I think I suspect it's probably not a good thing to do when you're going to sleep.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so yeah.
Speaker 2:And so why is it not? It's not horrible, right? It's not like you're smoking in bed, right? So in the world of, how bad is it? It's not at that level. But what you're doing is and it's simple when you think about it when you listen to podcasts, you're listening to ones you're curious about your brain is active, like it's going. And what you're trying to do when you go to bed which is why they say you know you shouldn't be watching TV in bed, you shouldn't have devices by your bed, et cetera, et cetera You're trying to tell your brain I am ready for sleep. So you want to calm it down. And I found I was reading, we were running out of time. This is 10 years ago.
Speaker 2:I was reading all these self-help books when I was getting ready to go to bed.
Speaker 2:And my brain was all excited about all the content and I was like I would wake up in the middle of the night, excited not anxious, but excited about something. But I'd wake up and disrupt my sleep and so then I said, okay, I need to read something. That is just a total distraction. So I read fiction and I went through a lot of Robert Ludlem. I went through a lot of Ian Rankin You'll probably appreciate Scottish Cryomotha and I've had a bunch of different ones where I just I immerse myself in that world and it's not stuff that I know for me my brain is going to get carried away with. So I can calm down with my whoop band that I used to hear. I had 14% better sleep when I would read for 20 minutes before going to bed. Yes, because I tracked it over more than six months.
Speaker 1:There's a stat in the book isn't there about. If you listen to music for 45 minutes before going to sleep, that triggers a significant improvement in the quality of sleep.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think that's. Yeah, the things that do. So it's all about calming your brain. So the music but it's not any music, right?
Speaker 2:If you're listening to Black Eyed Peas', pump it Before Going to Bed, that's probably not going to calm you down, right? So you want to listen to those calmer songs, the right beats per minute. You want to reduce the light in your space. You want to not be reading a bunch of work stuff before you go to bed. So I have a PM routine that I try to do after the workday, like between 6.30, gets all the work stuff out of the way, and then my evening can be spent with my significant other and family and friends and so on, and then get ready for bed. When you're ready for bed and the book goes into a ton of that on relax all the way to what are the various components at each of those phases of sleep and how do you go through it right, and there are a lot of people who are insomniacs and they really need these kinds of tools to help them get to sleep and stay asleep.
Speaker 1:So I'd like to talk about napping, but I'm aware that time is always a bit of a constraint in this conversation. So napping good.
Speaker 2:Just let me say napping good yeah, done properly napping. You have to 20 minutes, 90 minutes, 20 minutes or 90.
Speaker 1:So we've covered napping. That's good, because I think that's.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:I think that's important and the older I get, the more important it becomes. Anyway, the other thing was you mentioned not smoking in bed. I think that's probably also good advice. And that brings us on to the next topic I wanted to cover here, which was around connection. But I know again in our previous conversation we touched on that and you mentioned that it is a single. It's been identified as like the single biggest determinant of longevity is around the quality and your human connections, and it's also the Surgeon General Bridges report this year. So there's a lot of buzz around the important connection around wellbeing, and one of the stats that gets thrown around is that being lonely is equivalent to smoking 15 cigarettes a day, and I actually met the people who came up with that research.
Speaker 2:Yeah, send me the link to that one, that's, given how much we now know about smoking, that's a pretty punch in your face kind of stat, right.
Speaker 1:It's not like one of those stats you consult. It's about 70% of change initiatives fail. It's not one of those and I think I don't think that is from Deloitte, I think it's from somebody else. This is anyway. I digress. There is a chapter here on connection, on how music works for connection, and I must hear a bit more about that.
Speaker 2:Connection I focus on. If I look at, we're all about purpose statements these days. My purpose statement is to help people connect with themselves and others to achieve their best potential through the healing power of music, and so connection starts with connecting with yourself, and what I would say is music helps you feel things. So when I was coming back from the gym this morning, I was thinking about our podcast and going through stuff and I went okay, let's just go at some of the music that has done stuff for me. And I played Brave by Sarah Bareilles and it brought tears to my eyes because Brave was a song that I listened to, driving for a two hour drive with my daughter at. She was 12 or 14 at the time and every time we went up north we'd put she was the DJ, she got to put on all the songs and this was one of her songs and it's an amazing song. So that connected me with her at that moment. And then at this moment I'm driving in my car by myself, but I connected back to that and I connected with my own feelings and emotions. Right, so we know that it connects us with others. We know that for most people not everybody if you're an introvert or claustrophobic or whatever, going to a concert not a great thing, or if you're immune, compromised, center. But for most people, listening to an album at home and I have a turntable now yeah, we're back in turntables. And finals of thing, yeah, I have a turntable in my condo, I have a turntable up north and and what we know is, if I listen to that music on my Spotify on my headset and then I listen to it on the turntable with a couple other people here different feeling, different connection we start talking about it. And then if I go see you too at the sphere, or if I go see, imagine, dragons or something Very different experience, right, and we're connected.
Speaker 2:So why did the village? Why are the village people so successful? Because why mca connects to everybody. You are, you got to whoa, it's totally goofy or cool the game I recently went to see cool the game down in Niagara Falls and Celebrate good times. Come on, yeah, and it's a connection. And there's actually an energy connection, yes, between the people. And what's awesome if we come back to science because this is it really needs to be about people Understanding the science is there. If you go to McMaster University in Hamilton, there's a theater there, a music theater called the live lab, and it holds a hundred and twenty or hundred fifty people. So it's a concert hall and they put EEGs on the performers and EEGs on the audience and so they can measure flow between the performers, they can measure flow with the audience, they can see before and after. And Through that research which is world-class and world-leading here in Canada at at McMaster, we're gonna learn more about how much better.
Speaker 2:Because here's my secret goal, john Don't tell anybody but my secret goal is I want to get Prescribed by my doctor and paid for by my insurance company. Concerts I want to go to a lot more concerts and I want to get it prescribed. Have.
Speaker 2:I got do I know the people for you a connect with the social prescribing for In Toronto, because yeah, and we're doing good things in Canada, but not as far as where the UK has gone with the NHS and some other things. But yeah, that's why we created amp to get social prescribing everywhere and policy change at the government level as well as as well as funded by the insurance companies.
Speaker 1:But I think it's interesting because my immediate thing, I think about connection, I think about gathering with people and stuff, and there's clearly a dimension of this music thing that's quite personal, about connecting with your own, connecting with your own emotions, connecting with people, a secret secrecy. I go sick, sick and asleep, but there's already interesting group in Toronto to acquire choir, if you heard of that. No, no one to perform.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, blue is. He's in our book. He's in our book. He has a story and he has performed. So we took the book and we actually did for fundraising events. We did stories, songs and science. We would have somebody tell a story about a song that was healing for them. Have an artist like the bear, naked ladies or choir or Chris adfield Perform it and then we'd have a neuroscientist or a music therapist actually talk about the science of what's going on in your brain when you're listening to music and choir pop up. You don't have to be a real singer, they do pop-ups. We had at our book launch. We had 400 people singing hallelujah, led by no boo. So, yeah, no that.
Speaker 1:Sort of sense of community and togetherness and belonging that it creates is quiet. It's shockingly Effective, as that I mean it really is.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we just need to use it more often, or even yesterday, watching my wife is a big fan of women's soccer and Christine St Sinclair's final game right, and people singing the national anthem and the way that Sort of binds people together in a way that it's and it's like and it's not I shouldn't say it's my, it's like that, okay, that's what I would listen to like. I've got me Just got a great new my vinyl version of the of the of the National anthem, but when you're in that environment and it plays and you join in, it's amazing, isn't it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you see a lot of people crying when they're at the Olympics and their flag goes up and they sing the national anthem right, yeah, yeah, whereas if it was silent they just raise the flag in silence. People would be like yeah it evokes emotion, and so there's a connection between our brain and our heart, neurologically, yes, and actually creates that, and then the tear ducts get involved and then all kinds of craziness happens.
Speaker 1:We can. We can maybe not another time talk about the dark side of this, because it's clearly open to, I think, some abuse here I would say, but that's not, that's conversation, I like I've had the opportunity to pick two ideas from the book. I wanted to hear more about what's your favorite chapter, as it were, in that it wants to run in there, that you'd like to share from the book.
Speaker 2:The ones that we went to thrive, I think so there's favorite in the sense of I think they're so Important for people to read and just to consume and so relax and thrive or big on that perspective.
Speaker 2:I like the chapter I love it might not be the right focus for this one. I think when you get into like feeling is Really the right one and I'll I'll just share personal Pifny. So you and we've talked about this previously in the summit like I'm a type A personality, I have ADHD, type A. In a different way, I have ADHD, I have anxiety and have had anxiety. I have aphantasia, which probably most people don't know what that is. Aphantasia is a blind mind's eye. So if you say imagine and close your eyes, imagine Apple or a beach, I can't see them. I can hear a description. So all of those things affect me.
Speaker 2:I spend as a creative intellect, if you want to call it that. I spend a lot of time up here. Right, I'm a consultant, I solve people's problems. I'm a coach, I try and ask questions and help people. So thinking all my time up here and what I realized through many years of therapy is I was not truly connected with my heart and probably a reasonably common situation, especially for men but with a lot of individuals. And so I went and after divorce, after some changes, after having to take a leave, I was like I got a feel again and I got to get into that and I had some folks that really helped me. And they helped me by giving me homework to watch this really sad movie or go to listen to the songs that really help you. And our book is intentionally called Songs of Hope and Happiness, not necessarily just happy songs, and so there's a real purpose for super sad songs. Oh, my God, who's the band? I just drew a blank on them. Songs to Die by An old.
Speaker 2:You'll know it Not known by that but anyway, uk band that just had super sad songs Anyway. But they heal you and there are ones that are sad and then there are ones that bring you through. So Peter Gabriel talks about he creates songs that are meant for particular things. He created a song on his latest album called I Grieve to help people go through the sadness and come out the other end.
Speaker 2:When I was going through the first stages of divorce and this is I'm willing to disclose this but I may deny it later like Fight Song by Rachel Platten was like my I'm coming back and I'm going to do my thing and it was a little angry, it's a little, I'm coming out and getting on with it when I get into tough situations.
Speaker 2:I've discovered I'm getting back to my farming roots and so I've discovered some country bands and there's an amazing Canadian country band called the Hunter Brothers and they have a song called Hard Dirt and it's called I Grow Better and Hard Dirt, I grow deeper when the river runs dry, right, and so if you listen to the song inspirational for me, and then there's other songs that I go to that help me feel like Danny Michelle, who's an amazing Canadian singer-songwriter. He has a song called Don't Be so Hard on Yourself number one on CBC last year and it's amazing and it just reminds us of things. I have songs that I can take myself down and go into the trenches. I have songs that can start to pick me up. I have songs that can deal with adversity.
Speaker 1:I'm thinking I'm probably listening to too much craft work. You've got to mix it up a little bit.
Speaker 1:There's not a lot of feeling, and even a song like Computer Laugh, it's really about the computer, it's not really about the laugh. Anyway, thank you, this has been. I've thoroughly enjoyed this conversation. Thank you for sharing a little bit about your story when we spoke first in our first conversation about your own experience with mental health and family, and also that last bit there about your own music that you listened to and where and the impact of that and really how your approach to work, combining the needs for both deformments but also rooted in a notion of well-being and how we support one another. It's just been an inspirational conversation to me, so I've really enjoyed it. So thank you so much and hopefully Thank you, John.
Speaker 2:We will be there to share a stage if much.
Speaker 1:So I look forward to that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and thank you, John, for what you and the well-being at Work Summit team are doing, because getting these talks and I've listened to several of the other ones, they're amazing speakers that you have and I'm honored to have been on I will say the gift for your listeners is either of these books Awesome Music Project, Amazon Best Seller and all of the money from that goes to Music and Mental Health Research and this book Do Everything Better With Work great Christmas presents.
Speaker 2:By the way, stay tuned because there's a two like, there's a two-year I don't think I'm disclosing any of that I shouldn't but a two-year podcast that's in the works that will be coming out shortly. So a bunch of episodes. There's a TV series that is in discussions with a couple of the known streaming services and what the real impact that they're going to have is taking it into 100,000 schools next fall. So having that knowledge and capability of those nine skills in VR, headsets and so on, and also to corporations. So any of your listeners can connect with us and we can co-create and bring that to life so that all of us can use music to heal us in a better way and to live better lives.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, it's a wonderful project and it's been great to find out more about it, and I tip my hat to you, to the work that you're doing with them and also with the other, the Awesome Music Project. So thank you so much and we'll get together in March.
Speaker 2:Okay, thank you.
Speaker 1:Looking forward to it. Goodbye to all my listeners. Thank you, okay.