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Living a Life in Balance – a conversation with author Abdullah Boulad
24 Plays29 days ago
Michael Millward meets Abdullah Boulad.
Abdullah tells Michael about how a combination of personal and professional stressful in his early thirties prompted a career 180 shift from corporate to mental healthcare.
He spent seven years working to gain a wide range of health and well-being qualifications. He then established The Balance a group of rehabilitation clinics.
Abdullah explains the six stages of The Balance approach. It involves a wide range of health and well-being professionals who create individual programmes that help clients to achieve long-term and meaningful lifestyle changes.
Buy Living a Life in Balance: A Holistic Guide for Physical, Mental, Social, Spiritual Health & Performance at these bookshops
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Transcript
00:00:05
Speaker
Made on Zencaster.
Podcast Introduction
00:00:07
Speaker
Hello and welcome to Rest and Recreation, the work-life balance podcast from Abisida. I am your host, Michael Millward, the managing director of Abisida.
Meet Abdullah Bullard
00:00:20
Speaker
Today, I am joined by Abdullah Bullard, who is the author of the Living a Life in Balance book and creator of The Six Method Approach to Health and Wellbeing.
00:00:33
Speaker
As the jingle at the start of this podcast says, Rest and Recreation is made on Zencaster.
Zencastr Promotion
00:00:40
Speaker
Zencaster is the all-in-one podcasting platform on which you can make your podcast in one place and then distribute it to the major platforms like Spotify, Apple, Amazon, and YouTube Music.
00:00:53
Speaker
Zencastr really does make making content so easy. If you would like to try podcasting using Zencastr, visit zencastr.com forward slash pricing and use my offer code ABUSEDA. All the details are in the description. Now that I have told you how wonderful Zencastr is for making podcasts, we should make one. One that will be well worth listening to, liking, downloading and subscribing to.
00:01:21
Speaker
As with every episode of Rest and Recreation, we won't be telling you what to think, but we are hoping to make you think.
Abdullah's Background and Residence
00:01:30
Speaker
Today's Rest and Recreation guest is Abdullah Bullard, the author of the book, Living a Life in Balance.
00:01:40
Speaker
Abdullah is nowadays based in Malacca. Malacca is a place that I have never been, one of the Balearic Islands, but hope to get there one day. When I do travel to Malacca, I will be sure to make my travel arrangements with the Ultimate Travel Club, because the Ultimate Travel Club is gives me access to trade prices on flights, hotels, package holidays, and all sorts of other travel essentials. There is a link and a membership discount code in the description.
00:02:08
Speaker
Now that I've paid my heating bill and I do need the heating on today, it is the middle of November. We can make a podcast. And of course, Abdullah is going to tell me that it's quite warm now. I suspect in, uh, in Malacca. Hello, Abdullah.
00:02:22
Speaker
Hi, hello, nice to meet you. Yes, nice to have you here. Thank you very much for for being able to join me. What is the temperature in Maloka today? Today actually we have we have a cool day, one of the first cool days now in autumn. It's around 20 Celsius degrees.
00:02:39
Speaker
Richard from a UK perspective is actually quite warm.
00:02:44
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Yes. So what did you do as this at the start of your career? was I started at the age of 14 with my kind of first entrepreneurial business ah where I collected or bought parts of computers, desktop computers at that time and and sold them as a whole. So this was my first encounter being an entrepreneur and then trade. So you're in that same sort of industry that from a British perspective was beware and balance sugar and was involved as well. But how did you go from being a technology entrepreneur to being health and wellbeing entrepreneur?
Health Challenges and Lifestyle Changes
00:03:27
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In my younger age, i I studied of course, I was studying architecture initially and then I went into studying business because I wanted to be entrepreneurial. I felt I needed to do something ah more on the business side.
00:03:45
Speaker
As you live in Switzerland, obviously, you land somewhere in the the world of finance. I was involved with banks and on the business side, had several encounters, being a consultant to organizations, businesses. um I had my my own business in the private equity venture capital field, and I had my employees.
00:04:11
Speaker
But later on, after doing this for for for many years, I had some life incidents myself, my family. Many, many incidences happened um over a short period of time. I neglected my business during this time and And a few months later with all the stress, um yeah I landed up in a hospital with a heart attack. So this was kind of the shift where I felt after a long learning curve and story that I needed to change my life.
00:04:47
Speaker
I feel as if I've had similar types of situations. There was a time like 10 years or so ago where I had a whole series of very stressful life events happening within what seemed like yeah it was a couple of months, but it seemed like it was a couple of hours.
00:05:03
Speaker
And I've described it as my big wake-up call. is of like You can carry on as you are at the moment, or you can take this as like the wake-up call. Fortunately, I didn't have any major negative health effects, but it lost an awful lot of weight. That was very, very thin. And I thought, this is the wake-up call. This is the chance I have to select change the way in which I live. And I got back into being thinking about fitness, thinking about diet, thinking about how I slept, um you even down to like, is this person a good person to be in company with? ah Are they adding to my health and wellbeing or are they a drain on my resources, so to speak? And ended up a lot happier as a result ah of actually being given that wake up call to then sort of think, okay, we need to review life and how we're going to live and think, how do I want to change?
00:05:59
Speaker
There the similarity stops because I didn't write a book. You wrote a book about your journey into um a better way of living. Tell us about the book, Living a Life in
Balanced Life Principles
00:06:10
Speaker
Balance. My book I wrote so with the intention to share my story, to help others, so also for them to see what was able to help me and my family.
00:06:26
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And I created this based on the understanding that in every human's life, there is of course the healthy eating and the food and and and there is mental health. Everyone talks about something, but I felt the it has to be built as a pyramid.
00:06:46
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You have to start with something, you have to focus on something, and then you can go up the ladder. So what I say is the first focus should be the physical house, also eating the physical, the sleep, the the routines. If you manage this, then you can go into the level of mental house. And if you manage a mental health side, you focusing on yourself initially, then you can improve the social interaction, the connection with others, and and how to improve and make more sense, meaningful connections within and around your life. And then, last but not least, there is more the spiritual side, the acceptance side of it. So long story short, it's it's a summary of but best practices where I felt I needed to share with the with the world. It made me think about, with my HR professionals hat on, is those models of motivation and Hertzberg, Maslow, those sorts of things where we have to sort out the basics first before we can actually then rise up the the levels of motivation to get to the point where we've got self-actualization.
00:08:07
Speaker
When you're saying start off with the with the physical, make sure that your physical needs are met first, because unless you' you're hungry, that is going to be your priority. You've got to put food on the table. Once you've got those types of things sorted out,
00:08:23
Speaker
then you can start to work on yourself and build up to, like you say, okay, there's the mental health, there's the mental health of yourself, then the mental health of how you can contribute to the mental health of the people around you. And am I right to think that when you're working on the mental health of people around you, you are almost training them, converting them so that their interactions with you are supportive of you as well as supportive of themselves.
00:08:48
Speaker
Yes, ah absolutely. Just to take take this point of food. we In our society here in the Western world, in Europe, it's rare that someone doesn't have anything to eat. yeah So we are not comparing ourselves. So we have to to talk about what environment we live in and what this brings into our life, the way we live.
00:09:11
Speaker
because we are not in tribes, we are not in ah with with families living together. We we live very individualized and this brings other problems with it, like the loneliness and so on, but that's that's a story for itself. When we talk about, let's say, eating, all our clients at our rehab clinic, they have enough to eat.
00:09:34
Speaker
Yeah, it's more when you eat, what you eat, all the entrepreneur entrepreneurs we work with, they have everything, but it's like the mix. It's like if you if if if you but could compare it with with a meal, ah you let's say you have the old ingredients, you have enough ingredients, but knowing how to cook is something different, and knowing how it will taste, it's also a different thing.
00:10:00
Speaker
And I think every every person should learn how to use the ingredients of life and and the the tools which are out there to create a sensible and meaningful life for themselves. Yeah, it's a nice way to put it. I suppose learn how to use all the tools or the ingredients that are out there already available. And it's interesting. You're making me think that actually, although we don't live in tribes very much, we live in families, but even in families.
00:10:31
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Everybody's got their own interests. Everybody's got their own agenda, their own timetable. We can end up being quite isolated and there is always the risk of loneliness, but isolation, being alone and loneliness, completely different things. But what strikes me is that although we are individuals and potentially operating very much alone, we do just seem to follow the, the herd.
00:10:55
Speaker
Everything we do is like what we're told to do by the media, what we're told to do by influencers and celebrities and
Recognition and Trauma
00:11:02
Speaker
what is said in the newspapers. its we We are individuals, but we look for other people to have done things first before we do them. And what you seem to be describing is that, yeah, other people had done them, done gone through this process, but you've brought all the different ideas together and then created your own model as well. Yes, yeah yes exactly. So the what you're referring to is a phenomenon I understand as something looking for meaning and acceptance and in life.
00:11:39
Speaker
If we break down what every person really wants is to be seen, to be recognized, to be useful, and that's the main focus we we have to but to look into. If a human follows the tribe or follows the social media and follows fashion and so on, the main goal for that is to be seen, to be recognized, to be accepted, to be loved, maybe at the end as well. But there comes also in play, how was your childhood? Is there trauma? Any type of trauma in our mental health field affects how and in what intensity you look out to the world instead and of looking inside you,
00:12:27
Speaker
Because this is where we, this is the happiness and this is the essence. If you accept yourself, if you if you know who you are and and what life you want to live and achieve, you don't, you less look outside.
00:12:42
Speaker
Yes. It all sounds really interesting. And of course, you've gone through these life experiences, you've learned from them, shared your learning in the book, living a life in balance, but then also developed it further and and you've created a business and ah that's why you're in Malacca in
The Malacca Retreat Experience
00:13:04
Speaker
Spain. You've created a retreat that puts all of the things that you have learned and described in the book.
00:13:11
Speaker
living a life in balance, you've created a retreat where people can learn much more about this. Yes, exactly. My main idea was when I when i started with this, I was an entrepreneur, I struggled for long, my my bad lifestyle was was okay because I was still young, I was still healthy and everything. But at some point, it's not enough.
00:13:35
Speaker
yeah The routine, the bad routine, if it goes on for too long, it will get you at some point. My experience also as an entrepreneur was I couldn't find really support out there. It was individual services and they they tell you, yeah, now you have to go to this one. Now you have to go to do this one. And everyone was telling me,
00:13:59
Speaker
Different things so I was missing one place which aligns all these Areas together the mental health the physical health what happened to me is this happening again? You know you have a lot of feelings emotions, but also the physical side and the routine food exercise I I was lacking in one place to tell me what I need to do or to help me with all the areas and aspects and this is where I felt creating a place for entrepreneurs or or executives, business environment oriented with the need of a more holistic integrative approach where multidisciplinary team comes into play. With multidisciplinary, I mean, you have a doctor, you have a psychiatrist, you have a psychotherapist, you have a massage and yoga and person training and the nutritionist and altogether they talk.
00:14:56
Speaker
And that's something i I was missing. And this was my main motivation to create the balance with my expertise from Switzerland. And why I'm in Mallorca is basically because of the sun. we know that's That's great for poor mental health. It's not just because it's not a selfish decision for me. Of course, it comes with it, which is fine. From studies, so we know that the sun helps with depression. It helps healing. It helps lift your feelings, and emotions. We have the sea and we have mountains and we do activities and all this helps.
00:15:34
Speaker
When somebody mentions the word retreat, you sort of think like massage and therapies and healthy food and going out into the countryside, so to say, you'd very rarely find a retreat in the middle of the city.
00:15:49
Speaker
But what you're talking about there is much more of a, there's a medical aspect to it, doctors, psychiatrists, those sorts of people as well involved in the whole, I suppose holistic is a good word to use approach that you've adopted. My understanding is that you have six phases of your therapy recovery type model.
00:16:14
Speaker
Could you tell us what the what those six stages are? Yes, of course. um So what we designed is is a concept, a method to-made treatment programs on the individual, because every person comes with a different issue, but all have something in common. Maybe someone comes with more alcohol use disorder ah combined with some traumatic experience from childhood, ah some some business is failing or anxieties or a depression involved, but everyone has a different intensity of all these environments. yeah yes And what what we do is we want to tailor a program to what the client is really ah in need and not to have a one size fits all approach. That's the the major different thing.
00:17:10
Speaker
Yeah, I think with healthcare care in the West, as most people will experience it, is that you have to fit into the the services that it is cost effective for the healthcare care provider to to offer to you. What you're saying is that your approach is is very much more individualistic and more person led rather than yes system process fed.
Healthcare Approaches Comparison
00:17:35
Speaker
Yes, I would. Health care today, there are three three options of health care, in my opinion. The first level is general health care service. The NHS or other countries, national ah insurances, they cover that. That's the base.
00:17:58
Speaker
But then there is there are centers or clinics, hospitals, they tell you, we do tailor ah your ah you so service.
00:18:09
Speaker
it's kind of Let me compare it with shoes. yeah the The general health care part is like you have one size, you have just a slipper. You put on the slipper, it has to work for you. yes you You can walk with a slipper. No no problem.
00:18:27
Speaker
yep but it's a Yeah, it's just one size. The middle one where where where they say is it's tailored, you get this and this more more individualized. This goes then into the direction of, okay, now we get a shoe and you have sizes. You can choose the size of a shoe.
00:18:48
Speaker
yeah Good, great. um It fits better, it holds longer, maybe it's more suitable. What do we do and the balance, I would describe as a tailor-made shoe. And that's healthcare 3.0, I would say, to understand really based on assessments what patient needs and create a team, the right team around it, the right people around it, and the right treatment around it. That's the third level. And more and more, luckily,
00:19:18
Speaker
This approach has been recognized ah worldwide and more and more offers and services are becoming more available for for more people. Sounds interesting. The other parts of your model are like the biochemical restoration ah technology and neurobiology based treatment as well, then there's Also, making sure that it the approach that you've implemented actually lasts, so making it sustainable for the individual. ah Making it, like you say, multi-disciplinary and integrated as well. And then um trauma-informed, because you've mentioned trauma a few times in our conversation and
00:20:03
Speaker
I totally get the idea that if trauma happens early in life, then that if that hasn't been dealt with because the person who's experienced the trauma as a child isn't emotionally equipped to actually communicate what the trauma is, then it's going to store itself up into human and it is going to have an effect in adult life. And I think there's numerous research that sort of demonstrates that that does happen. but you've You've summed up the whole sort of approach of this, which is to look at the individual holistically and put things in place that deal with that individual in a way that the individual will be able to sustain the changes that are required to live a life in balance as your book is called. I'm wondering like from the experience that you've had of working with your, are they clients or are they patients?
00:21:00
Speaker
No one wants to be a patient, right? So it doesn't matter how we call them. but For us, they are clients. they They are in need of something and we are here to help them. right I say clients. Right. Okay. So when somebody decides that they're going on this journey, what would be the characteristics of the type of person that you can see someone one arrives and you can see because of their attitude, their behaviors,
00:21:28
Speaker
whatever it is, that that person is going to be going to find this process useful and it will be a success for them. What what sort of people find it easy to adopt and to be successful at?
00:21:41
Speaker
It's the attitude, it's the openness. Is someone open? Is someone able to listen? Is someone willing to implement what we're talking about? And is someone accepting that this is a process which doesn't end when they leave back home, but it it takes time and it takes effort to this to be implemented into their life.
00:22:08
Speaker
So we live in the instant instant world, the instantly disposable world, and yet There's a mind shift that is required to go into something which isn't, I mean, this is, this is me listening to you and thinking like this isn't so much a treatment as such, which has a start and an end. This is a lifestyle change, which like you say, you have to have the right mindset in order to embark upon it and the right mindset to maintain it and sustain it and ultimately be successful at it.
00:22:42
Speaker
but it isn't something that is like a course of antibiotics that hasn't finished the course of antibiotics and then it's done. You're talking about something that is much more holistic and is something that will um last and has to be done over a long period of time.
00:23:01
Speaker
Yes, you need to start with a reset. I see ourselves as the support reset and put you in a direction. yeah um Because before you don't know what direction you you you're going and you cannot get out of it by yourself, whatever the situation is. You need you need to break it. You need to break the cycle and then set the new direction.
00:23:26
Speaker
And that's where we help. I mean, we are enablers. um And often we often we say, and with many people, we can we can bring the water to them, but they have to drink it themselves. I think many appreciate this individualized side, the individualized approach we follow.
00:23:46
Speaker
And because of that, we don't push them to do something they don't want. So we find other ways to achieve the same thing with their interests, to raise their motivation to do this change for themselves and their surroundings.
00:24:00
Speaker
It all sounds really very interesting. I like this idea of it being individual, not being forced to do anything, but you will get out of it. I suppose what you put into it and how you arrive will and influence how you leave. Yes. And every person brings a different, different backpack with them from their past. You mentioned again, also the the trauma. Trauma can be a lot.
00:24:25
Speaker
every Everyone, every human has trauma, but what is trauma? it's Trauma is is your response, what happens to you. we are Humans are sponges. Everything we experience, we we save in our
Understanding Trauma with Gabor Matei
00:24:39
Speaker
body. We save. Some are good, some are bad, some are really bad and affecting your life and feelings and emotions.
00:24:48
Speaker
And then the the term you also mentioned, neurobiology, just to comment on that. This is just to make clear that human beings are much more complex than just let's take a pill and or let's take a nap. We know today that our gut affects our brain. This is the brain gut connection we talk about. But we know also that every human has different neural pathways.
00:25:17
Speaker
And the way you live, the trauma you lived happened to you is affecting that as well. And this combination of what's happening in your body, what happened to you, and what is your neural connections, this is unique. So how can you how can you address this with, ah let's say, a pill to fix something quickly?
00:25:40
Speaker
That's not what we do. What we try to do is really to find what is really underlying in the essence of what is causing an issue, a problem. It can be a behavior. It could be the trauma. It could be a physical issue and so on. It sounds like the issue could be something that has happened to us or something that we actually do to ourselves.
00:26:03
Speaker
Yes, with trauma, it's also what happens in you. It's not just what happens to you because every human is different again. If maybe the same thing happens to you and happens to me, it may affect you, but not affect me in the same way. So that's why Dr. Gabor Matei, a famous trauma ah therapist and advocate for trauma,
00:26:31
Speaker
says trauma is what happens inside you and what and not what happens to you. ah that's There's a lot of sense in that, an awful lot of sense. You know, I do these rest and recreation, the aim is to make people think, today you have certainly made me think Abdullah, thank you very much. You're welcome. Really appreciate you today. If, like me, other people have started to think, where can they find more information about the work
Further Information on Abdullah's Work
00:27:00
Speaker
that you do?
00:27:00
Speaker
Please visit our website. It's the balance.clinic. And you can find all information there. You can reach out to me, you reach out to my team. We're happy to have a conversation. Brilliant. Thank you very much. Like I say, I really appreciate your time today. It's been very interesting. Thank you. You're welcome. Thank you for inviting me. Thank you.
00:27:19
Speaker
I am Michael Millward, the managing director of Abecedah. In this episode of Rest and Recreation, I have been having a conversation with Abdullah Bullard, the author of the book, Living a Life in Balance and creator of The Balance Clinic. You can find out more about both of us at abecedah.co.uk. There is a link in the description.
00:27:43
Speaker
If your connection has been buffering as you've listened to this episode of Rest and Recreation, you may like to know that 3 has the UK's fastest 5G network with unlimited data. So listening on 3 means you can wave goodbye to buffering. There is a link in the description that will take you to more information about business and personal telecom solutions from 3 and the special offers available when you quote my referral code. The description, just like Abdullah's book,
00:28:13
Speaker
Living a life in balance is well worth reading. If you've liked this episode of Rest and Recreation, please give it a like and download it so that you can listen anytime, anywhere. To make sure you don't miss out on future episodes, please subscribe.
00:28:29
Speaker
Remember, the aim of all the podcasts produced by Abecedah is not to tell you what to think, but we do hope to make you think. All that remains for me to say today is until the next episode of Rest and Recreation. Thank you for listening and goodbye.