On this episode Kat is joined by Max Fortis, Sales Director at Clarendon Speciality Fasteners, who shares the differences in family dynamics, especially in Italy where your living room is the local café, and why social connections are so important for our wellbeing. KEY TAKEAWAYS I see less connection here in the UK. In Italy, everyone’s door is open, they don’t have to make appointments to see their family members they just pop in. In the UK, people live more insular lives and it’s easy to get trapped in your own world. I even find myself being much less sociable in the UK than I am in Italy. In Milan all my colleagues would take lunch together as well as taking 2-3 coffee breaks during the day. It was a cultural shock when working in the UK and I was offered a coffee and someone just went to the coffee machine and brought it back to my desk and left it there. Or everyone had lunch at their desks rather than going out and making an effort to invite me for a beer after work. Work is completely separate from their private lives, which sometimes is good, but you can easily feel more alone. During covid, I started doing a lot more work myself as I had got some bad habits with regards to separating work and private live, I was always available and working almost 24/7. I was also locked into social media because I couldn’t go back to Italy as often as I wanted. After a while I realised that I needed to set barriers and develop better habits to support myself and my family. I turned things around by spending more time with my family, doing more active listening, having more positive habits with my phone like putting it in a box when I get home from work and not looking at it until later in the morning. Me and my wife make time in the morning to have coffee or tea together before the kids wake up and in the evening we don’t just put the TV on, we put music on and have conversations. I read a lot more than I have in the past and all this fills up my energy tank and I’m actually doing more now than I was before. BEST MOMENTS “People need to be more spontaneous, let people in, pick up the phone and call people rather than just looking at what they’re doing on social media.” “Personal space is a really strong barrier in the UK than in other countries. I’ve worked all over the world; in Chile you become part of your colleagues’ families very quickly, the parents of my friends insisted I call then uncle and aunty.” “A habit is something you do without realising that you’re doing it, making time for my friends, family, my daughter’s friends is something that I do without thinking about.” “Making yourself indispensable at work often isn’t the right thing for you and for your family, the last 2.5 years has been a rollercoaster journey, but I’m definitely happier now.” ABOUT THE GUEST Max Fortis is sales director at Clarendon Speciality Fasteners where he helps clients to identify the best solutions for their fastening needs and to ensure that engineers chose cost-effective solutions. LinkedIn ABOUT THE HOST Kat started her career as a teacher, before moving into Tech where she worked in different executive roles within teaching and consulting working across the globe, both in the public and private sector. Despite appearing 'successful' on the outside, she paid a heavy ‘life’ price. In 2016, her whole world collapsed. The reason? The compound effect of years of unhealthy and toxic habits that destroyed her health, relationship and career. She suffered a severe breakdown and lost everything. In the middle of this she got headhunted for her first CEO role. She rebuilt herself by changing just one small habit, and built a series of positive habits which has transformed her professional and personal performance, resulting in becoming the healthiest and happiest version of herself.  She is a positive habits international keynote speaker and teacher, giving talks and delivering high i