Hello, I'm Bonny Snowden, ex-corporate person, a mother and successful artist entrepreneur. It wasn't that long ago though, that I lacked the confidence vision and support network to focus on growing my dream business. Fast forward past many life curve balls, waves of self doubt, and so many lessons learned, and you'll see Ignite my thriving online coloured pencil, artist, community, a community that changes members' lives for the better. It gives me freedom to live abundantly whilst doing what I love and spending quality time with my beloved family and dogs all whilst creating my best artwork with coloured pencils and mentoring others to do the same, but this life wasn't always how it was for me. It used to only exist in my imagination.
I've created the it's a Bonny old life podcast to help increase people's confidence, share mine and my community's experience and hope through fascinating personal stories champion the other amazing humans in my personal professional and membership community and create another channel through which I can support others to realise their dreams. If you're a passionate colour pencil artist or an aspiring one, who's looking to create their best work and a joyful life.
You love you're in the right place. Grab a cuppa and a custard cream. Let's get cracking This year. I have been introduced to the most amazing, inspiring and fabulous people. People who have given me totally different perspectives in life and my guest this week has had a huge impact on me and my family. Having been through quite a turbulent time in the last few years kept for the most part safety tucked away in a drawer labeled not to talk about.
When I first started chatting to my next guest, it was all supposed to be about my business and another book I was writing. I think the first time we spoke, she clearly saw something flitting across my face and she literally stopped in her tracks and asked me some very pertinent questions, questions I hadn't prepared for. And I remember sitting, crying, not having any tissues to hand and the tears were literally dripping off my nose.
She got me opening up that drawer, pulling everything out and sorting through it, which in turn has made me reevaluate many, many things. Susie Powell, author, coach, friend. It is my utter pleasure to be talking to you today. Okay. Bunny Loveless. We're all sorted. We've got our cups of tea. Indeed. We have pick of the mind.
I have to say I don't like a small cup of tea. I'm a tea girl. I love, I love a big cup and I can't work until I have a cup of tea. I can't do my writing. Yeah, it's funny. Isn't it? It just kind of sets us, sets us straight. I'm so, so, so, so pleased that you are chatting to me today because,
well, I want to talk about you, but I just want to sort of set the scene a little bit because you have, and I've got to be careful that I don't cry because I tend to cry in our session. If you have a good cry, good cry speed for us all Bonny, do you have this brilliant, brilliant way of just being able to make me cry,
but you have made such a massive difference to my personal and my business life. This last well over 2021, you know, and it's just been fantastic. And I, I mean, I only, I was introduced to you to help me with a book that I was wanting to write. Yeah. And I remember the first, the first session we had,
we'd kind of talked about the book. And then I think the second session we had, we were talking about something else and you're just like, hold on a second. Can we just backtrack a little bit? I saw this sort of fleeting eye rolling thing you were doing. And then you just went womb and you started saying, right, let's talk about this.
And I remember, oh my God, honestly, I was so embarrassed. I was sitting there. I had no handkerchiefs or tissues or anything around me. I was crying and crying and praying. I had tears rolling down and this is disgusting, but it had like snot rolling all down my face. I had nothing to clean with all of these emotions and everything out,
but I, you know, I'd been squishing down for an awful long time and you're absolutely brilliant at that, but you ha you are multifaceted and you have all of these amazing things that you do, and you have your, your own absolutely incredible story as well. And I just wanted to sort of, I just wanted to talk about you and all of the amazing things that you do in your and your,
just your fabulousness. Oh, great. I love talking about these things. Well, thank you Bonny. Yeah. I mean, I've been a coach for a long time and people normally do cry when they talk to me because we talk when we get right in there, we get right into what's going on in people's lives. And I love that. And I'm very privileged to be in those private,
intimate moments with people where they can really share that stuff and get it out all too often. We live life without getting the real stuff out. You know, we, we, we pushed stuff down. I spent 25 years studying humanness and emotions and training, how to change and create transformation. And people's science. I was lucky enough to when I was working at MTV,
I met Paul McKenna, the hypnotist, and he and I got on very well. And he said, you know, you should come to some of my seminars. So I said, yeah, sounds nice. So I went along to one and it was an NLP neuro-linguistic programming seminar, which teaches you really how to use your language, your neurology in your brain.
What's the other one broke, rubbing how we programmed for certain things and it can unwrap this beautifully. And we've all got stuff that we've suppressed and pushed down. And it's not good for us to do that. It's good to let it face it and let it out. But we can't always do that. If it's just us with us, you versus you.
It's not easy to do it because it takes a little bit of digging. And that's what I learned to do was how to really ask the right questions. And we study people, I study behaviour, eye movements. Particularly, you mentioned that, you know, when someone, you, you can see when you're talking to someone, unless they're a very good actor or actress,
how they react deeply to things that you say to them, we are all experts in understanding human language, human conversation, and human reaction to things we can tell. If we've upset someone we can tell if someone's really joyful, we can usually tell if someone's lying to us. So all of these things where we were studying the micro of human behaviour and language,
and that's what I trained to do as a coach. And so that's why if you and I having normal chat, I can jump on something, go, Hey, Bonny, did you, is that really how you feel about that? Or something like that. And then we can begin to get to the really interesting bits. Yeah. Yes. I know all too.
That's right. You know, and it is, it's fantastic to have somebody that you're working with that does recognize even over zoom. I mean, we, you know, you're in a B3, aren't You? Yeah. And I don't coaching online for 20 years. I was really ahead of the game. I was still going on Skype for years and years and years.
And people always go, I want to see you personally. I lived in London at the time. So it often easy to see people personally, but I get a better result on screens actually, because there's nothing to distract us with with each other. There's no, you can't just run off and go and do something else or say hi, so you are there.
And that's the best place to coach from when you have someone a hundred percent with you. Yeah. Oh honestly, the coaching is just, it's the most amazing thing. And people it's funny. I was talking to somebody else who was sort of, he happened to be given some life coaching and was, was all sorts of very poo-pooing it. And you know,
everything like this until he actually had it and it completely transformed his life. And he was like, I thought it was this some weird, you know, oh gosh, this is what we should be doing. And, you know, and then he was like, totally transformed his life and made him into the person he is today. So powerful. It's really powerful.
And you know, I think everyone needs a coach. Everyone has a coach, Tony Robbins who supposedly, I mean, I know he's he's stuff has come out about him, but he's an amazing performance coach. He has a coach, you know, I know who's coaches. I know actually the guy who trained me trained Tony Robbins, we all need a coach.
And we don't even know what we don't know. We don't know what we need to fix. And that's why having coaching at any level. It could be on a personal level. Good coaching covers all aspects of life. It covers work, life, health, emotions, relationships, all bets, because being human is complex, not just the identity. Oh,
I'm a painter or I'm an artist or I'm a writer or I'm a nurse that, yeah, that's a good sort of definition at some level, but it's not who we are, who we are is, is complex. I've been coached by Michael Neil, my friend in America, who I'm actually Paul, when it full and McKenna's coach, I've had various coaches along the way.
And when you have a good coach, you never come away thinking, oh, well wait. So that was, you come away. Wow. You know, I feel completely different. I got this off my chest. I realised about this. I didn't even know I was doing or had this problem. And it's very solutions orientated. And it's very practical.
You give people tools where they could actually improve things in their life and we only get one life. So we might as well do it. Well, We do. We do. And I know you've, you've, you know, you're, I think you're writing a book about this, and I know you're talking about this for, you know, an awful lot,
but you know, only too well that you only have one life. Yeah, indeed. I am. I might in a new book at the moment it's called. I lost my mind. And it's a story of when three years ago I started behaving a little more oddly, even than I normally do. And I kept forgetting things. I was meeting a friend in a cafe local to my house and I was an hour late,
which is not usual. I'm on time. I'm an on time person. She's whoa. She's, you've been very strange lady. Did you forget we were meeting or did you go shopping? And so I said, no, I couldn't remember the way. And I couldn't remember how to get here. She went, that is restraint. She's a Serbian woman who takes no shit from anyone.
She said, I'm taking you to the hospital right now. No, no. Anyway, she did. And she saved my life because what happened? I went to the hospital and I found I had a humongous brain tumor and they said, okay, go, you've got three weeks. So get your family here. Now don't wait a week and write a well and get your fed first and order those,
give them three weeks. But I knew deep down that I wasn't going to go. It wasn't my time. And some people thought I was just diluted and oh, sweet. She thinks she's going to be okay. She's not, I knew we would. And I, and my son was saying to you though, so I started on, I pulled out every tool in the toolbox.
I knew from my own kind of coaching and so on. And I do a lot of meditation, prayer, visualization, CBD oil did all sorts of things hypnosis. And anyway, sh Jakarta sh oh, I had the most simple thing was I had a near death experience, which happens when you have a trauma in your life and you leave your body for a period of time.
And then you come back into your body. So you kind of dead for a period of time. And I was, and I came back in and when I came back in the most extraordinary thing happened, I came back in a different person, has different operating software, different perspective on life, a different understanding. It's like I'd been hanging out with the angels and I came back and I saw,
I see the world differently now in a, in a very beautiful way. And I know that compassion, kindness, love, respect. All of these things are hugely important to be as a human being. I also believe that anything is possible. Really. We have this infinite consciousness, infinite capacity. So at the time I was writing, I being commissioned to write a book on creativity called the art of creativity.
Once I was Ellen and I went through this treatment, I was in hospital for weeks. So I asked my brothers to bring in my laptop, which they did. And I just started to write, and I got given this book, I kind of arrived and wrote me in a way. And I wrote this book on seven habits. You remember seven powerful habits to unlock your full potential creativity.
Yeah. I wrote this book based on really more information that I'd seen when I left my body. Honestly, I'm sitting to just speak to those because I know some people, I know some people kind of don't don't understand this. They don't get it, but I, I honestly truly believe. And I think you have to have that. You do have to have that belief system and it's,
and it's not about, you know, medical treatments don't work and all of this type of stuff, but it definitely there's this deeper sense of, I don't know, whatever it is. It's just, it's a real fascinating area. Isn't it? I mean, he can't, human beings were so magical and complex and you think we get, I'm thinking this morning and gosh,
I was asleep for nine hours last night. What happened? I zoomed off and left, left myself, resting in my bed somehow. And what happens, what happens when we sleep? You know, how amazing is that just simple things that we do every day, how our body breathes us, every moment we're breathing and our body is doing trillions of processes and ours is even thinking about it.
And we're just one little human dots on this big planet earth, with all these plants, all these creatures, all these dogs, all these cats, all these animals, all these beautiful things going on, all growing and being magnificent. They can't, this isn't for me, it's not random. You know that there is a, there is a design behind this and I'm always very respectful of that design or whatever it is.
And I don't think we're meant to even know how it all works. Cause how could we, you know, our little brains, I'm not sure we can cope with that kind of information, but it's a very interesting thing. And it's interesting that my situation now combined, all the things I learned early wrong about mine technology about meditation. I'm big on meditation.
What were the David Lynch foundation for many years, probably about 15 years now. And that teaches TM, meditation, meditations people around the world. And it's taught to, for example, serviceman, who've been in service, that's men and women. Who've been in the wars, people in abusive situations, all sorts of things. It's useful to help get people better after trauma shock,
all of these kinds of things. So meditation has been a big foundation stone in my life for many years. And it's only helped me through when I was told, you know, I have long to live. When you were told you only have a few weeks to live the mind sharpens and you think, holy moly, what am I going to do every day to make this worth in case I'm not hanging around,
you suddenly start talking to people differently. How would you talk to people if you thought you would never see them again, you'd probably tell them you love them, but it wouldn't. You probably say, thank you. I love you. And thanks for, you know, you've just been amazing in my life. You'd see all the things you'd be meaning to say.
And perhaps you've never said in your life, I would encourage everyone to have a think about acting in life as if you've, haven't got that much time left and be grateful, be loving, be kind to everyone around you and do the very best you can because it's true. We aren't here for very long time. Even if we live for another 80 years,
that's still not a very long time, you know, how quickly time goes by. So it does shop in the mind of how to live life. Yeah. And how lovely would it be if everybody was kind, Oh, and why not? You know, some custom things, it's not like I have to give you 500 pounds every time I'm crying.
It's the kindness is free. It's freely available and does good work out there. You know, if you're kind to someone, it comes back to you for a start. If you're going to look at it that way, Not why we're kind, but it does. It comes back to you like a boomerang when you're kind to people, kindness is infectious and it's a lovely thing.
And children need to understand that. And yeah, young people, everyone needs to understand the power of kindness. Yeah, no, absolutely. And again, you know, just kind of tell him, telling people that you love them and all of that type of thing. I remember, I don't know whether it was last night, the night before my eldest son.
He's, he's a funny one anyway. And he just walked in. He'd said something. I was drawing away and, and he said, oh, night, mom love you. And it's not something that he normally says, I think it was a bit tongue in cheek. And then off he went and I was like, oh, I love you too.
And it was like, what, what I love you too. Oh, I thought you said, what's the matter with you. Yeah, It's funny. But you know, it's funny, isn't it? How we get used to saying things and get used to not seeing things. Yeah. Yeah. W w you know, I play this game where sometimes I go into a shop.
If something comes up that I can be glad about or, or see, I love this, I've got a little local shop that they have fresh bread in every day, and they're very sweet. And they have like four vegetable items, not a lot of choice, but it's all beautiful. And it's grown by the farmer, lives up the road. And I always make a point of telling them,
oh, these, I love these tomatoes. You know, they're so brilliant. And I really enjoy making my lunch with those and just giving someone a bit of kindness, giving someone a bit of nice feedback. And now when they walk in their little faces light up, so I'm having an effect on their physiology. They feel better when they see me because they know that I'm not going to complain about the fact,
there were no bananas in today. I'm going to tell them how good that tomatoes are. For example, this is a kind of, just a way of living where you're spreading nice vibes to people and you feel better, they feel better. And it has this ricochet effect. So I'm on a mission with that. It do, you know, it really is.
It really is. It's it's. I mean, everything I do, I try to do from a, you know, a place of kindness or positive. I mean, you know, positivity is something that I really believe in there are times where it can be really quite hard to be positive. Yeah, absolutely. Well, you know, it's tough times,
particularly right now, people are going through a lot of anxiety, fear overwhelm. There's a lot going on that we don't know about. People have had a rough couple of years, very rough indeed. And it's, it can be very tough. However, I would say to people, don't hang out in that tough area, learn how to see what is good.
And there's always something good in, in someone's life. And people go out, you know, you don't know what I'm going through. Well, okay. But now I've got bigger story now. Cause I've been through brain cancer and close to death and, and had a really tough treatment. I've kind of got more of a, of a ticket to be able to say,
you know, whatever you're going through, find that the good stuff find what is making your heart sing. And I think we, you know, it's our duty as humans. So to try and live a life that is pleasurable and nice as much as we can. And of course there are going to be bumps in the ground. And that's where we learn really important stuff that people say to me,
I'm so sorry. You had to go through all that. And so I, my honest feeling about it is that was such a great learning experience for me. It's changed my view of the world in a really good way. It's made me a much better person, and I'm really grateful now for many things in my life and it's improved things. So going through that hard challenge of cancer has in many ways,
given me a stronger bedrock for living and I can that event. Now I'm out the other side and I'm also not afraid of death. You know, I came back by the way with no fear and I'm not afraid of dying. So that's a very nice feeling because I'm not getting phased or upset about things. I've learned how to keep my emotions strong,
whatever the weather out there and try and be, just be a good person, appreciate your life. It's a very precious thing. We have to really take a little bit of time and go, you know what? I'm just grateful. Gratitude is an amazingly strong emotion. It says. Yeah, amazing. So you're in a beta. Yes. You haven't always been in a beach house.
You've lived in London and yeah, I had a PR agency in London for a number of years. I said, I've went to MTV and I did press for pop stars, Robbie Williams and George Mike and stuff. And I had so much fun. And then I set up my own PR agency in London. That's still going now 25 years later. And I was lucky enough,
you know, I looked up to people like Michael Jackson and Madonna and organise a lot of big music events. And I always got on really well with music stars and the artists, because I didn't care who you are. You're a person to me. And I always behave that way. You know, I was always just normal with people and these big stars don't normally have that.
And they have a lot of yes, people and they don't know who their friends are. Anyway, I got on really well with artists. So I, I, I carved out a career looking after celebrities and artists and musicians and actors and things like this. So I had a company in London, so I was living there very fast. Life looked incredibly glamorous,
funny. You know, I was always on a flight going somewhere. I was always going off to some massive party or hanging out with these amazing people in Hollywood, but, and then I'd come home and I felt quite lonely. I was getting to that stage where I thought I'd been holding down a relationship was tricky. And the, I must remember to have a family.
I must remember to slow down and enjoy this and make this life, you know, what I want it to be. So I kind of opted out of that lifestyle and I decided I had to make a radical change from London and this fast show, busy lifestyle. I came to the island on holiday with a friend and I was sitting on a rock one day and I was just thinking,
I want, I want the side, but I want peace and quiet. And I want to get away from this buzz of the city. So I made some plans and I just gave everything up. If I courageous, actually I gave everything up, just me and my son. And we came with two bags, no plan and just everything in two bags each and I made our life here and it worked from day one.
I loved it. And I, I, what I like about it is, and like living in the sunshine and I like, I like this way of life out of the city. I like slow. You know, I've got really good friends here. It's a different kind of living. And I've seen both sides of the coin. And so I've lived quite radically different lives,
one full on busy CEO of a big company with music stars everywhere. And then this one living in a farm, in a quiet space, growing registered rules is really nice. I love that. Well, I think I know which one I prefer. Anyway, I needed the perspective. You know, I was still, oh, I want to do something big with my life.
I want to be someone. And so when I got that on this, isn't it, It's funny, isn't it? You know, and you kind of go through life. And one of the things that people or that I hear an awful lot from, from people in my sort of community as gosh, I wish I'd found this earlier. I wish I'd done this earlier.
And you know, actually I don't, I don't think we should wish our lives away like that. I think we have to do whatever it is that we have to do and we're supposed to do. And I, and I really do believe we are in wherever we are at the moment is where we're supposed to be. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. I love it.
There's a restaurant here that we drove home has a science age. You are exactly where you're meant to be, and that is so true. You know, don't waste your time away and don't wish you were somewhere else because you are where you are. And in many ways, you're like this perfectly designed, you know, for however it, whatever the big master plan is.
We don't know. Well, I don't know. There is a design to life where we bump into people, coincidences happen, we meet all sorts of people through our lives. And I believe that everyone we meet there is meaning behind that. You know, everyone you meet. So I always look for that. I was asked people a lot of questions,
find out about them. I'm curious about other people and find out what, why, why are y'all bumping into them? Why are you meeting them? Well, what is it that you have to exchange with each other, for example, and when you look at life, like that gets really interesting down to the level of, you know, people you bumped into in the day,
randomly just there is no coincidence. So that makes it fun. And I think we're meant to be here to have fun, enjoy life and sort of honor it really. And I think art and art, you know, I'm a big fan of creativity and art in life, because I think that taps into this special flow that we have, which is beyond the day to day beyond the material,
there is something magical about this. When you pick up your pants or where you pick up your brush, or if you're a dancer, you start dancing. Or if you're a musician, you pick up your instrument, whatever is happening here is magical. A brilliant. So I I'm, I'm fascinated by this area of art and creativity and the people who do it.
You know, I've never met a boring artist in my life. No. And it's, and it's about kind of digging into who they are, isn't it? Because you know, a lot of people, they, I mean, I would, I would say I'm, I'm not a particularly interesting person at all. I'm just a normal, you know,
whatever, just sitting here doing my thing. And I don't have, I don't have particularly strong views on anything really, but then when you get talking and you know, if you've got somebody who compulsive pull stuff out of you, then actually, you know, even an ordinary person like me can be really interesting and have a really interesting backstory about, you know,
w what's happened in their life and their feelings and all of this type of stuff. And it's, I guess it's this two way thing, you know, I might be sitting here thinking I'm completely ordinary. And then we have a conversation and all of this stuff comes out because, you know, you're extraordinary about being able to extract stuff from people. I want to say a couple of things here.
One is, there is no, no one is ordinary for stock in my bag. None of us are you ask anyone yourself included extraordinary backstory, no only even dream that there was a backstory like this. So we all have this compartmentalise somehow behind us, that, which we carry on often on a, on a load behind. And we hide it is on our backs sometimes,
but none of us are ordinary. We've all had extraordinary stories. I talked to my mom when she was alive, about her days in the war, what it was like being in a bunker with planes coming by bombs, dropping ration books, not knowing if your family, if the boys were going to come back from war, all these sorts of things,
extraordinary lives and us, we have in this moment in history, we have a different kind of pressure. We don't have walls. We have other things to give us pressure, but everyone has extraordinary stories. And I have never met an ordinary person. And you, Bonny are certainly are not an ordinary person. So if I was coaching you right now,
I say, buddy, no enough of the ordinary. There's nothing ordinary about any of us. And I think that is part of it. Let's celebrate celebration is a brilliant thing. Celebrate the wins, celebrate how you are, celebrate the little tiny things and sell it. Most importantly, celebrate yourself and your life really important. Yeah, it is. It is.
And I know that we've had a few sessions about this because I, I find it really, really difficult to celebrate stuff. You know, I'll have sort of like a, a few big things happen and it's all like yay right into the next Big sort of, I think most times, you know, you've written a book Bonny and that's like, wow.
And we need to just spend a moment going. That's incredible, actually, you know, if you were a little, going back to a little girl, swinging your legs on the chair in the classroom. And like, if, let me put it in my terms for me, I was always told in the classroom that I was rubbish at writing. And I was asked not to say the English exam at school because I would definitely pull the grade style and they wanted the grades to be,
you know, decent across the, the year. So I was told, you know, that the English is not my thing. And here I am published author of four books. So don't believe what people tell you. But also when you're a little girl, if I was at my, I remembered this this week, my grandmother, when I was in her house,
I went up the top of the stairs and there was these big bookcases with loads of old, old books. And I would spend hours as a little girl putting the books off the bookshelf, smelling them, seeing them, looking at the pages, feeding the pages. I had no clue. Well obviously my, some part of me knew that I would end up being a writer.
But as a little girl, I remember I enjoyed so much reading and looking at books and we didn't really have books in my home. My grandma had books. So I enjoyed that. And it's interesting that that became, this has become a big part of my life books. You know, I care about books, I read books and write books, and that is what I do now,
you know, writing. So if we kind of don't know the things that are going to excite us and take us on our path, and sometimes we don't find out till really old to rebuild. I'm thinking of, I met Louise hay, who, who created hay house, the publishing company. And she did this in her fifties. She just started to laugh.
And now it's, I mean, she's passed, bless her, but many people have not started their careers to relate. And suddenly something happens and they find that they find their thing and start doing it. It's you don't have to find your thing when you're in your teens or your twenties, you can find it anytime. And some people wait quite a long time before they find out really what is their niche?
And as long as we find it at some point, it doesn't matter when we find it. Oh gosh. Yeah, they are you, you know, and, and I guess it's that, that's very similar to, to me, I suspect, you know, not having sort of found out until my sort of late forties. Really? Yeah. So,
you know, I didn't, I mean, I drew at school and all of that type of thing I know is a failed, failed art students wanted to go to, I wanted to go and do a degree in art, but I wasn't good enough. I was told I wasn't good enough and I wasn't good. Didn't get in anywhere. So at 17 I just went full-time work.
And you know, I look back on that and I think, well, thank goodness, thank goodness. I didn't do that because I could have come out. I don't know, completely differently and, you know, try to completely different life. But you know, everything that I learned then from the age of 17, I went into an advertising agency and learned paste up.
So the, the old art or paste up, you actually, oh God, it was like an old bus. I had to do the type setting on this old thing where it was all the, the, the type was on a, like a belt that spun round neck. And you had to type all these codes in, and then you just got long strip of time.
And then you had to take that and paste it in to make all of it. Yeah. So all of that memories and learning how to do stuff obviously has brought me to where I am now. So yeah, you're obviously right. You know, it's it's yeah. Life is amazing, isn't it? And he's amazing. And I'm waiting my memoir moments.
I'm having to think back to my life. And as I'm writing this, this memoir and this autobiography, if you will, I'm touching into old memories. I haven't thought about for years and I'm realising, so like almost every day, I'm like, oh my goodness, that is kind of what that happened. And that led me to me, this person,
which led me to do this. And there is a, a beautiful design to how things unfold. It's just that most of the time we're so absorbed with the day-to-day hassles and things that we don't even notice. But actually when you zoom out and have a look, maybe one day do some journaling, right? I'm a big fan of jet journaling gets us to put down stuff on paper with words,
and it allows us to make sense of, of life. And you can actually see how things all work together. Whereas when you're just busy living life everyday, you don't see that, but there is a magic to it. There is a beautiful harmony and mathematics to how everything all fits together. And I can see now how certain jokes I had. I had many jumps when I was younger.
For example, when I was 16, I went to the job centre. They happen and they said, yeah, we've got one in a hospital. It's an art therapist. I can't do all. I've been told. I'm no good at art. They say, you don't really need you. You know, you just let other people do the arts.
And you're just helping as an assistant. I went, okay, good. So I did this art therapy job in the psychiatric unit of hospital. And I tell you, Bonny, I draw, I've drawn so many stories up of that job. Like in my creativity book, for example, I put some stuff in there about it, that one little job over the summer when I was 16 informed a lot of my knowledge now about artistry,
creativity, and how that can heal you. I've written a lot about it. The healing nature, creativity is very healing. And I began that with my 16 year old self in a psychiatric unit, seeing people who were completely bonkers, pick up a pen and start drawing and losing themselves and feeling great. And, and when the art class was finished,
they'd go back to being that psychotic selves. And I saw them joining the dots on, wow, creativity has powerful part to play when we are losing it for, we have troubles in life. People can pick up a pen, pick up a paintbrush and find some solace that, and we know there's so many people who are able to do that. And so that little job gave me that insight,
how interesting that was to me. And I thought, yes, that's amazing. And I know that I know that's the case. Cause being a, being an artist suddenly I don't, I don't do this every day. And I wish I could all day, should I say? And I know that when I, when I want to calm down or I've,
I'm kind of in a place where I'm a little bit sort of maybe a bit stressed or anxious or whatever. I know that sitting down and drawing will just completely take me away. And I will, I will start with my art classes that I, that I, I hold I'll maybe start on a Tuesday morning and I'll wake up. I might feel a bit grumpy.
The dogs might do something they're not supposed to do well, but you know, whatever. And I go into my art class. Gosh, actually, maybe, maybe I'm going to cancel because I just don't feel right. As soon as that pencil hits the paper, I'm a different person. If Oh, lovely. That is, I have the same feeling when I'm writing,
you know, time goes by suddenly it's the afternoon. I didn't read it. Where does it, what happened that, you know, time, just time doesn't exist. And this is the state of flow that we're talking about. When you get into the state of flow time, doesn't exist. We sink into the really deeply into that process of whatever we're doing.
When we get into flow for me, it's writing and I'm in my happy place. So to identify that and be clear about that, it's a wonderful thing. And to know I'm the same. If I'm feeling grumpy or a bit disheveled by life, I come and start writing and it takes me off. It transports me and it will instantly shift my mood in a really good way.
So I think we're very lucky as artists and writers and things too, to have that available to us because many people have had to bypass that probably because of schooling school really hammers out. A lot of art capability did for me, you know, art classes. I dreaded them because I was the worst one. And I, you know, it was very clear.
I was the worst one in art and that was to make me feel good. And yeah, I had to go through all that process of sitting next. We were producing amazing work. Wow. Look at this, look at what Sarah has done. It's amazing. Okay. It's amazing that it caused a lot of pain and disruption inside. So to be able to find your thing that takes you away with the fairies,
let's say it's just joyous and beautiful. And so we're very lucky to have art. Definitely. Absolutely. Absolutely. So there's one question that I've been asking everybody, and I'd be really, really, I'm really interested actually to hear what you're going to say, because I think it's going to be amazing when it comes to confidence. What's your number one.
Tip. Yeah. Confidence. Okay. Confidence is, is a state of mind and best way. I've learned many techniques for confidence over the years. And NLP is really good for building confidence. And one of the techniques is you remember a time, remember a time when you felt really confident, it could be a tiny little memory. It could be when you were showing something you write proud of,
or you felt calm. You remember you felt confident, then you're confident to talk or confident to do confident to draw or whatever. Remember that time, close your eyes, play it in your mind, slow it down and directly. Remember the feelings you felt. How did you feel when you were in that state of confidence? Remember those feelings connect with those feedings,
go back into those feelings and really expand those feelings. Just spend time with your awareness on those feelings of when you felt confident everyone has experienced it. We've all experienced anger, sadness, grief, happiness, excitement, confidence. These are all things we understand. As humans we have experience, I can pretty much guarantee everyone listening will have experienced a range of emotions,
including confidence. So you go back in, you replay the memory and you put it in your mind's eye. That time when you felt really confident and you, you expand it, imagine it, you visualise it expanding and going all through your body. And I guarantee you that you will, when you do this technique, come away, feeling so much stronger and grounded and confident in what you're doing.
It's an amazing technique. So give it a try. It's an NLP technique and it's powerful Recommend to do. Now. I can confirm that it does work. Yeah, It is. It's fantastic. And I know we've done bits and pieces around that. I mean, I've yeah. Confidence. Hasn't been something that I've always had. And I know that when I started using coaching and learning more about coaching,
it increased an awful lot more because of these techniques that I learned. Yeah. I really liked that. And I think that's something that, So if I'm doing a big tool to a big audience and I'm pretty confident person, I don't get, I like big audiences. I might doing that. So I'm in my happy space there anyway. But if I was feeling nervous,
for some reason, say, I didn't know my content content very well. I would send to myself, stand, have a look at everything. Breathe is really good breathing because when you breathe and you bring more oxygen into the body, it calms the nervous system down. And you can have a direct control of your nervous system that way. So you calm yourself down with centreing,
standing firmly rooted, go outside with your shoes off. For example, get grounded, walk on some grass. That's really good. Come back, centre yourself. And if I was speaking to a large group and felt any sense of, or I don't know what I'm supposed to be doing, saying here, I would then breathe, get calm and just allow the body to come itself.
When you ask the body to just slow down, calm, breathe, and feel a sense of who you are in that space. It can make you just change your whole approach. You just need to take a little bit of time and reset. It's like setting the thermometer on an oven until you turn the dial, put it on that number. It doesn't know to go there.
So just allow yourself to reset your dial and go into calm and then begin what it is you're going to begin and keeping that state of remembering when you felt really confident for really strong. I love that. Brilliant. Thank you so much, Susie. I mean, it's always a, always a pleasure to talk to you anyway. You, you, we chat every sort of couple of weeks and it,
I know. I just, so look forward to our session. So thank you so much for sharing so much of your amazingness. And we'll talk again soon. Thank you, Bonny. I've loved our chat. I love talking about creativity and being a human it's so much fun. So thank you so much. And thank you for all that you do.
I'm always re inspired by your work and your talent, which is extraordinary. So thanks for having me on unstable. Oh my pleasure. Thank you. Take care. I really hope you enjoyed listening to this episode of my it's a Bonny old life podcast. If you did, I'd be so grateful to you for emailing me or texting a link to the show or sharing it on social media with those,
you know, who might like it too. My mission with this podcast is all about sharing mine and my community's experience and hope by telling your fascinating, personal stories champion in the other amazing humans, in my personal professional membership community, and to create another channel through which I can support you to realise your coloured pencil in life dreams, if you haven't done so yet, please help me on my mission to spread positivity and joy throughout the coloured pencil world. By following me on my socials at Bonny Snowden academy, or by getting on my list at www.bonnysnowdenacademy.com. And remember, I truly believe if I can live the life of my dreams, doing what I love, then you can too. We just need to keep championing and supporting each other along the way in order to make it happen till next time.
