Latest / The You Project / #2069 The Success Charade - Ian Williams
Transcript
- 0:00Speaker 1: I'll get a champions of taps. Who else would it be?
- 0:03Speaker 1: Of course it's me. It's typ And when I say
- 0:06Speaker 1: it's typ it's typ esque today. So recently, a few
- 0:12Speaker 1: weeks ago, I had a guy called Ian Williams. He's
- 0:16Speaker 1: a gun, he's an absolute ripper doing great things around
- 0:19Speaker 1: men and mental health is showing up and stepping up
- 0:23Speaker 1: and doing beautiful work. God bless his little socks while
- 0:26Speaker 1: in his case, fucking gigantic socks because he's a big unit.
- 0:30Speaker 1: Here's a podcast called the Artistry of Humanity, and he
- 0:33Speaker 1: kindly asked me to go chat with him there. Now,
- 0:37Speaker 1: what us podcasters do sometimes is we share each other's episodes,
- 0:41Speaker 1: so they'll record me on theirs and then they put
- 0:45Speaker 1: it up, and then a few days later I put
- 0:47Speaker 1: up the same conversation over here at typ Central. So
- 0:50Speaker 1: for those of you who didn't hear me on him,
- 0:54Speaker 1: which I'm guessing is most of you of my particular audience,
- 0:57Speaker 1: that is this is that this is the conversation that
- 1:00Speaker 1: he and I had a little while ago. And yeah,
- 1:06Speaker 1: I think, look, some of you are going to hear
- 1:09Speaker 1: stuff you've heard, so I'm going to give you the
- 1:12Speaker 1: heads up there might be some because remember, for me
- 1:15Speaker 1: in this instance, I'm talking to a new audience as
- 1:18Speaker 1: he's interviewing me. So for some of you you might go,
- 1:21Speaker 1: I've heard the old bloody Harper tropes and the old
- 1:23Speaker 1: bloody stories and oh these old chestnuts, so you might
- 1:28Speaker 1: want to listen. Some of it you won't have heard.
- 1:32Speaker 1: Some of it you will have heard if you're a regular.
- 1:35Speaker 1: Either way, I think it was a pretty good chat.
- 1:37Speaker 1: Here's a good dude and enter at own risk. All right, team, see.
- 1:43Speaker 2: Yup, Hey Craig, how are you my friends?
- 1:54Speaker 1: Oh buddy, I'm good. Thanks for having me on your show.
- 1:57Speaker 1: Thanks for coming on. Mind, it was nice to meet you.
- 2:00Speaker 1: We are probably a little bit kindred spirits, so I
- 2:03Speaker 1: don't know what's going to happen in the next hour.
- 2:05Speaker 2: Probably a lot of swear.
- 2:06Speaker 1: And you're misrepresenting me. You're misrepresenting me.
- 2:12Speaker 3: Represent myself. I was like, I'm a big fun I
- 2:15Speaker 3: have to tell it. I mean, missus keep telling me
- 2:17Speaker 3: to tone it down.
- 2:18Speaker 2: I said, I can't help it. I'm from Liverpool. This
- 2:20Speaker 2: is that we talk.
- 2:21Speaker 1: There's a lot of there's a fair bit of research
- 2:23Speaker 1: so that people that swear are more trustworthy. Maybe I'm
- 2:27Speaker 1: just cherry picking this research, but more trustworthy, some suggests
- 2:32Speaker 1: more socially and emotionally intelligent. I don't know. I'm going
- 2:36Speaker 1: to hold onto that.
- 2:37Speaker 2: So I've just noticed both of those down mates.
- 2:40Speaker 1: I'm let's just wheel that out whenever we can, because
- 2:43Speaker 1: also we're both insecure and we both need approval. But
- 2:45Speaker 1: other than that, we're fucking rock stars, all.
- 2:49Speaker 2: Right, mate. Look, as I say, appreciate you coming on.
- 2:52Speaker 3: What I like to do is obviously you're doing some
- 2:55Speaker 3: really great stuff and I really appreciate the work that
- 2:58Speaker 3: you're doing, and I love your honesty and author anticity
- 3:00Speaker 3: it shines through.
- 3:02Speaker 2: So I'd really like to understand who little Craig was.
- 3:05Speaker 3: You know what made this man that's sitting in filming
- 3:08Speaker 3: me today doing the great work that you do. And yeah,
- 3:12Speaker 3: just if you wouldn't mind take them on a haigh
- 3:13Speaker 3: level journey of you know what?
- 3:15Speaker 2: What what made you? My friend?
- 3:17Speaker 1: Thank you? So I grew up in the country in
- 3:20Speaker 1: rural Victoria and I was only kid, only child, so
- 3:26Speaker 1: mum and dad. Mum and dad are still around. God
- 3:28Speaker 1: blessed hern and Mary. And yeah, I was like a
- 3:32Speaker 1: really mediocre kid, not a great student, not a great athlete.
- 3:35Speaker 1: I was fat. I was more. I don't know, you
- 3:37Speaker 1: can say it when it's about yourself. I think I
- 3:40Speaker 1: was morbidly obese. I was the fattest kid in my school,
- 3:44Speaker 1: and at school my nickname was Jumbo, So parents and
- 3:47Speaker 1: teachers and kids called me that, so very few people
- 3:51Speaker 1: for quite a few years called me Craig. That was
- 3:54Speaker 1: obviously pre political correctness, but so kind of yeah, really
- 4:00Speaker 1: really average and in some ways probably below average kid,
- 4:04Speaker 1: like not a genius, not a creative talent, not a
- 4:08Speaker 1: great academic, not physiologically blessed, not genetically blessed, but you know,
- 4:15Speaker 1: a relatively happy kid. Had good friends, good friendships, good influences.
- 4:22Speaker 1: And I guess when I was about fourteen, I had
- 4:23Speaker 1: a I had a moment at the school swimming sports
- 4:29Speaker 1: the epiphany when I was the fourteen year old kid
- 4:31Speaker 1: who weighed ninety five kilos at five foot six or
- 4:34Speaker 1: seven or something like that. Right, So, yeah, I was
- 4:37Speaker 1: a big kid. Will now put that in context, I'm
- 4:40Speaker 1: I think I'm five ten now and I'm eighty kilos,
- 4:43Speaker 1: So I was literally four or five inches shorter and
- 4:47Speaker 1: fifteen kilos heavier when I was fourteen than I am now.
- 4:52Speaker 3: I'm six four and ninety seven kilos, so, you know,
- 4:56Speaker 3: putting that into comparison, meat woe.
- 4:59Speaker 1: Oh dude, I was a big kid. So and anyway,
- 5:02Speaker 1: I had a moment and in that moment where I
- 5:04Speaker 1: was very embarrassed and humiliated and all of the things
- 5:07Speaker 1: which were creations of my own doing in many ways,
- 5:10Speaker 1: but again I was a kid. I decided that I
- 5:14Speaker 1: was going to not look like that, or feel like that,
- 5:17Speaker 1: or experience that, or have to be that socially anymore.
- 5:21Speaker 1: And you know, I think a lot of times when
- 5:24Speaker 1: we create change, or when we do something that is
- 5:27Speaker 1: life changing, we make a decision, we take an action,
- 5:30Speaker 1: we change a behavior. I think that is often precipitated
- 5:35Speaker 1: by an event or an awakening or some kind of
- 5:38Speaker 1: internal switch. And so for me that I got really
- 5:43Speaker 1: humiliated at this point in time, just because I had
- 5:47Speaker 1: to swim in front of all of these people and
- 5:49Speaker 1: take off my T shirt and be there in my
- 5:51Speaker 1: big fat body that I really didn't want to do
- 5:53Speaker 1: this thing, and I tried to avoid it. And I
- 5:55Speaker 1: went to a private boys college where everyone had to
- 5:58Speaker 1: do everything, and that's nobody's fault. But so I went
- 6:02Speaker 1: through this experience and I came. I literally came out
- 6:05Speaker 1: of the water at the other end of the pool
- 6:07Speaker 1: after struggling through my fifty meters freestyle and went, I
- 6:13Speaker 1: didn't I probably didn't say it like this, but essentially
- 6:15Speaker 1: I went, fuck it, I'm never going to feel that again.
- 6:17Speaker 1: I'm never going to experience that again. I'm never going
- 6:19Speaker 1: to put myself in that situation again. And yeah, I
- 6:23Speaker 1: came out, and I just I just created a new
- 6:26Speaker 1: operating system. So I lost thirty five kilos in about
- 6:30Speaker 1: four or five months, and I went down to sixty
- 6:33Speaker 1: kilos probably within about six months, but maybe a little
- 6:36Speaker 1: bit less. And so obviously losing weight and not being
- 6:40Speaker 1: obese anymore and being fitter and being a bit stronger
- 6:43Speaker 1: and being a bit more healthy and functional and operational.
- 6:47Speaker 1: All of those things were good, of course from a
- 6:49Speaker 1: physiological point of view. But interestingly, for me, what kind
- 6:54Speaker 1: of really was the game changer was me starting to
- 6:59Speaker 1: realize my own potential, me starting to see the space
- 7:03Speaker 1: between what was possible and my story about what was possible,
- 7:07Speaker 1: my story about who I thought I was and the
- 7:10Speaker 1: reality of who I could become. And so that kind
- 7:14Speaker 1: of moment in time, and those subsequent months in time
- 7:18Speaker 1: were for me very cathartic and very influential and very
- 7:22Speaker 1: formative in terms of how I kind of progressed from
- 7:25Speaker 1: there and became a young man and started working in
- 7:28Speaker 1: gyms at eighteen and started you know, you know, honestly
- 7:32Speaker 1: becoming quite obsessed with it all and probably not in
- 7:36Speaker 1: a good way at times, with health and fitness and performance.
- 7:38Speaker 1: And then yeah, eventually going to university and doing a
- 7:43Speaker 1: degree in excise science and then becoming a university lecturer
- 7:46Speaker 1: and writing the first course. I wrote the first course
- 7:49Speaker 1: in Australia for with one of my friends for personal training.
- 7:53Speaker 1: I opened the first personal training facility in Australia in
- 7:56Speaker 1: nine ninety. I started pteeing people. So I was born
- 8:02Speaker 1: in sixty three. I started pteeing people. I started in
- 8:05Speaker 1: the fitness industry in eighty two. I started pteeing people
- 8:09Speaker 1: in eighty five, So nobody ever knew what a trainer was.
- 8:13Speaker 1: I spent my life explaining to people my job, and
- 8:15Speaker 1: most people thought that's not a real job, and it
- 8:18Speaker 1: kind of wasn't at that stage because there was no industry,
- 8:21Speaker 1: there was no regulation, there was no qualification, there was
- 8:25Speaker 1: no insurance, so I'm literally doing a job that doesn't exist.
- 8:29Speaker 1: I'm a personal trainer in a country where there are
- 8:31Speaker 1: no personal trainers. So it was very much, you know,
- 8:35Speaker 1: trial and error. Yeah, and it just kind of went
- 8:39Speaker 1: from there. Mate. I realized early that how much I
- 8:41Speaker 1: knew about bodies and anatomy and physiology and biomechanics and
- 8:45Speaker 1: nutrition and exercise programming and progressive overload and all of
- 8:50Speaker 1: these things that you need to know as an exercise
- 8:53Speaker 1: scientist or exercise professional. I realized that how much I
- 8:56Speaker 1: knew about that wasn't nearly as important is how much
- 9:00Speaker 1: I understood the human inside the body. Because I was
- 9:03Speaker 1: pretty good with bodies, but not brilliant with humans. So
- 9:08Speaker 1: probably from when I was about and you know, obviously
- 9:10Speaker 1: I'm an XI scientist, and I've worked with athletes and
- 9:13Speaker 1: teams and blokes in prison, and you know, tens of
- 9:16Speaker 1: thousands of the general public, and I employed five hundred trainers,
- 9:20Speaker 1: and so I did all that. I worked in the
- 9:22Speaker 1: fitness and strength and high performance space. But the thing
- 9:25Speaker 1: that I was really fascinated with and have been ever since,
- 9:28Speaker 1: is how human beings work. So you know, now, as
- 9:32Speaker 1: I said to you before we started recording. I'm in
- 9:34Speaker 1: the last four weeks of my PhD in psychology, so
- 9:38Speaker 1: it's you know, the last thirty five years have really
- 9:40Speaker 1: been me trying to understand how people work and how
- 9:44Speaker 1: potential works, and what success is and what failure is,
- 9:47Speaker 1: and you know, how we self sabotage and yeah, and
- 9:51Speaker 1: the journey continues.
- 9:53Speaker 2: That's beautiful.
- 9:54Speaker 3: I'm just looking back to that fourteen year old who
- 9:57Speaker 3: you know, was called, as you say, very politically, he
- 10:00Speaker 3: called jumbo, even by teachers.
- 10:02Speaker 2: That would have had.
- 10:03Speaker 3: A massive, massive impact on you, and obviously it would
- 10:08Speaker 3: have been seems like part of the drive of the person,
- 10:12Speaker 3: you know, influence of me today. Is that something that
- 10:14Speaker 3: you've had to kind of on peck and process and
- 10:17Speaker 3: kind of come to terms with as you've got older,
- 10:20Speaker 3: as that has there been some kind of trauma that
- 10:21Speaker 3: you're about to go through.
- 10:22Speaker 1: That Like, honestly, I try to be really self aware
- 10:28Speaker 1: around this and I look back and I think, were
- 10:30Speaker 1: any of the people who called me jumbo, Like my
- 10:33Speaker 1: best friends called me jumbo, so there was no malice.
- 10:36Speaker 1: They actually loved me. But I was just this big,
- 10:40Speaker 1: huge kid, and you know, it didn't it. Yeah, I
- 10:46Speaker 1: don't think it really traumatized me. But you know, trauma
- 10:48Speaker 1: is an interesting thing, and being affected emotionally and mentally
- 10:51Speaker 1: by things is It's complicated. When I look back, I
- 10:56Speaker 1: don't think that anyone was trying to hurt me. I
- 10:58Speaker 1: think they're probably I got picked on for being fat,
- 11:02Speaker 1: and that was very overt and very obvious, you know,
- 11:06Speaker 1: and there was probably I don't know that trauma is
- 11:09Speaker 1: the right word, but a bit of I guess sadness
- 11:12Speaker 1: and or anxiety around being bullied or picked on for
- 11:16Speaker 1: how I looked and for my weight. But at the
- 11:20Speaker 1: same time, I think, while I wouldn't suggest that for anyone,
- 11:24Speaker 1: and I don't think, you know, in an ideal world,
- 11:26Speaker 1: there'd be no bullying, there'd be no criticism, there'd be
- 11:29Speaker 1: none of that. But we don't live in that world.
- 11:32Speaker 1: And I look at my childhood compared to many other childhoods,
- 11:36Speaker 1: and I'm like, well, Craig, you like your trauma was
- 11:40Speaker 1: a one out of a hundred. So I don't, on
- 11:45Speaker 1: no level do I think I had it hard. I
- 11:48Speaker 1: had a few very minor social challenges, but for the
- 11:53Speaker 1: most part, I look back with fondness, and you know, gratitude.
- 11:57Speaker 1: I grew up with great parents, great friends, great time,
- 12:00Speaker 1: great environment, had all the opportunities. We weren't by any
- 12:04Speaker 1: means wealthy, Like I don't know how my parents paid
- 12:07Speaker 1: for me to go to a private school. I feel
- 12:09Speaker 1: there's a bit of sacrifice in there. But yeah, for
- 12:12Speaker 1: the most part, yeah, nothing but gratitude. Mate.
- 12:15Speaker 2: That's beautiful.
- 12:16Speaker 3: And the thing you touched on there about I think
- 12:20Speaker 3: in the pain, that's where we get our lessons, that's
- 12:22Speaker 3: what gives us those drivers. So being that fourteen year old,
- 12:25Speaker 3: you know, ninety five kilos guy has driven into where
- 12:28Speaker 3: you are today.
- 12:28Speaker 2: You've used that, you know, and I think you touched
- 12:31Speaker 2: on there.
- 12:32Speaker 3: You know, if people talk at traumas and everybody in school,
- 12:36Speaker 3: I believe the majority probably would have been bullied at
- 12:38Speaker 3: some stage.
- 12:38Speaker 2: I remember being bullied when hours, I don't know about
- 12:41Speaker 2: fourteen fifteen.
- 12:43Speaker 3: I came back and I lived in a different area
- 12:46Speaker 3: and it was the summer holidays, and I was.
- 12:48Speaker 2: Away from all my friends for a period of time
- 12:50Speaker 2: from the school.
- 12:51Speaker 3: And then I came back and for some reason I
- 12:53Speaker 3: felt a bit shy, thought, oh, they've all been buddies
- 12:55Speaker 3: together that I've been a bit and I came back
- 12:56Speaker 3: and I just sat back a little bit more and
- 12:59Speaker 3: those just kids have very you know, kids a lot
- 13:02Speaker 3: different than than maybe when you're adults, and me being
- 13:05Speaker 3: silent must have signaled this weakness that then they came.
- 13:08Speaker 2: Through and I sensed this bully and it was difficult.
- 13:11Speaker 3: But you talk about it's a once a hundred because
- 13:15Speaker 3: this but also everybody's biggest pain is their biggest pain,
- 13:18Speaker 3: because there's a lot of people have on the podcast
- 13:20Speaker 3: who've had sexual abuse, you know, physical abuse, real traumatic events.
- 13:24Speaker 3: But at that moment in time, that was my biggest
- 13:27Speaker 3: traumatic thing. And I remember thinking to myself, this life, shit,
- 13:31Speaker 3: it's not worth it, you know, And I was. I
- 13:34Speaker 3: wasn't genuinely starting to question stuff because I hated going
- 13:37Speaker 3: to school, so I hated the existence of it.
- 13:40Speaker 2: Only for a short period of time, but it got
- 13:42Speaker 2: pretty dark and the think about it.
- 13:44Speaker 3: But if you put that on the spectrum of somebody
- 13:46Speaker 3: over there, you know, people I've spoken to nowhere near
- 13:50Speaker 3: and similar to yourself. I had a mum and dad
- 13:54Speaker 3: who up until obviously recently, my dad just passed. They
- 13:56Speaker 3: stayed together fifty six years. But even within those dan
- 14:00Speaker 3: I've seen things that hang on a minute. There's a
- 14:02Speaker 3: lot of sometimes there's a lot of argument, there's a
- 14:04Speaker 3: lot of this. I felt like I was in Fatal
- 14:06Speaker 3: Flake quite a bit. They had two more others. One
- 14:09Speaker 3: took a bit of a Roague path. So although it
- 14:12Speaker 3: was kind of it wasn't as severe as others. I
- 14:14Speaker 3: do think it's worth Colin ow greg that those dark
- 14:17Speaker 3: times can't feel very dark when we're.
- 14:19Speaker 1: In them, right, Oh of course, yeah, yeah, one hundred percent.
- 14:22Speaker 1: And it's not to devalue anyone's feelings. It's a really
- 14:26Speaker 1: tricky thing, like you know, grief and trauma and sadness
- 14:29Speaker 1: and mental health, to try to navigate that and realize,
- 14:35Speaker 1: you know, it's like a really interesting thing is when
- 14:39Speaker 1: you see, say three people in the same situation, and
- 14:43Speaker 1: in that situation, one person is traumatized and one person
- 14:47Speaker 1: is curious, and one person is unaffected, and you go, oh,
- 14:54Speaker 1: is that a traumatic situation or not? And you go, well,
- 14:56Speaker 1: two people are not traumatized, one is. And this is
- 15:00Speaker 1: not to be critical, this is to try to dig
- 15:02Speaker 1: into how does trauma work, how does mental health? How
- 15:05Speaker 1: does anxiety work? You know, you go, oh, that's a
- 15:09Speaker 1: stressful situation. And you go, well, how come that guy
- 15:12Speaker 1: or that girl isn't stressed in the middle of that situation.
- 15:15Speaker 1: Why is that person not stressed? And that's because the
- 15:18Speaker 1: situation doesn't cause the stress. It might be it might
- 15:22Speaker 1: create a trigger in an individual, But if a situation
- 15:27Speaker 1: was let's say, universally categorically stressful, then every person in
- 15:32Speaker 1: that situation would experience the same emotional state, which is stress,
- 15:36Speaker 1: which is distress, which is anxiety. And so part of
- 15:41Speaker 1: navigating trauma and grief and mental health and sadness and
- 15:45Speaker 1: anxiety is not like you said, it's not to say
- 15:49Speaker 1: you're good or bad. It's not to say this is
- 15:51Speaker 1: more traumatic than that. This is it's not that at all.
- 15:55Speaker 1: It's starting to understand the self, the me, the individual,
- 16:00Speaker 1: the way that like my stories, and to understand the
- 16:03Speaker 1: relationship between your stories and your mind and your physiology. So,
- 16:08Speaker 1: if for example, I am in a situation and you
- 16:11Speaker 1: are in the same situation next to me, you and
- 16:14Speaker 1: I are in the same room on the same day,
- 16:17Speaker 1: being exposed to the same stimulus, and in the middle
- 16:20Speaker 1: of that moment in time, sitting next to you in
- 16:23Speaker 1: that room, my story is we are in danger. This
- 16:28Speaker 1: is terrifying. This is bad, something terrible is going to happen, etc. Etc.
- 16:35Speaker 1: This is my story. Then the fear response, or the
- 16:39Speaker 1: emotional response is fear and anxiety and dread and anger perhaps,
- 16:43Speaker 1: And then the physiological response is my sympathetic nervous system
- 16:47Speaker 1: kicks in. My blood pressure goes up, my heart rate
- 16:49Speaker 1: goes up, my body starts producing adrenaline and cortisol, and
- 16:52Speaker 1: blah blah blah. There is this cascade of physiological consequences
- 16:57Speaker 1: as a result of my story. And then all of
- 17:00Speaker 1: a sudden I am legitimately and genuinely in a state
- 17:06Speaker 1: of stress, and my body will tell you that. Conversely,
- 17:11Speaker 1: old mate Ian sitting next to me, cool as a cucumber,
- 17:15Speaker 1: is like, well, this is not stressful at all. This
- 17:17Speaker 1: is fine, and you're thinking about what you're going to
- 17:20Speaker 1: have for lunch once we get out of the room. Right,
- 17:23Speaker 1: So you are next to me in the same place
- 17:25Speaker 1: on the same day, I'm producing cortisol, adrenaline, Nora Perreefron,
- 17:28Speaker 1: you're producing dopamine and a bit of serotonin or whatever,
- 17:32Speaker 1: because you're actually having a bit of a good time.
- 17:34Speaker 1: Your heart rates low, your blood pressure is low, your
- 17:37Speaker 1: parasympathetic nervous systems just cruising along because you calm and
- 17:42Speaker 1: then you go, well, how does that work? Well? That
- 17:46Speaker 1: works that way because people respond differently to the same thing,
- 17:50Speaker 1: and the way that we respond, even physiologically, is often
- 17:55Speaker 1: a byproduct of the story that we tell ourselves about
- 17:58Speaker 1: what is happening. If my story is I'm in trouble,
- 18:02Speaker 1: then my body believes it. My nervous system, my cardiovascular system,
- 18:07Speaker 1: my respiratory system, my endocrime system believes it because my
- 18:11Speaker 1: body can't distinguish between my bullshit story and the objective truth.
- 18:17Speaker 1: The subjective story of Craig will be the determinant of
- 18:21Speaker 1: my physiology in that moment, not the objective reality of
- 18:25Speaker 1: the room, which is why you're in a good state.
- 18:27Speaker 1: I'm in a shit state, and understanding how this works
- 18:32Speaker 1: is really fucking important for people, that's not. And by
- 18:37Speaker 1: the way, this is not about self loathing. This is
- 18:39Speaker 1: about self awareness. This is like, oh, oh, you know
- 18:43Speaker 1: what creates anxiety in my life? I do?
- 18:48Speaker 2: Oh?
- 18:48Speaker 3: They again, great kind of overview there with depth and
- 18:53Speaker 3: simplistically explained, And as you're describing that, I'm kind of
- 18:57Speaker 3: reverse engineering the way that you use this as a strategy, right,
- 19:01Speaker 3: because what you're just describing to me is that's why
- 19:04Speaker 3: I think the importance of gratitude, of the story that
- 19:07Speaker 3: you're telling yourself on a daily basis. And what am
- 19:09Speaker 3: I looking at? What's my brain looking at? What am
- 19:12Speaker 3: I thinking about? Because I become that I often describe
- 19:16Speaker 3: if I'm having a really shit day, and I've had
- 19:17Speaker 3: a few shit days recently, that I have this moment
- 19:20Speaker 3: in time. I love fucking Australia. I always wanted to
- 19:24Speaker 3: come here. I had something in me when I was younger.
- 19:27Speaker 3: I came here when I was twenty one. I spent
- 19:29Speaker 3: six weeks here.
- 19:29Speaker 2: I thought I'm gonna move there.
- 19:31Speaker 3: Life events happens, ill fated marriage, this, that and the other,
- 19:34Speaker 3: and I didn't come up here until I was thirty
- 19:37Speaker 3: five thirty six. And I remember the moment I landed
- 19:41Speaker 3: here and I got the job, and it was this
- 19:42Speaker 3: overwhelming feeling of joy which just consumed the shit.
- 19:46Speaker 1: Out of me.
- 19:47Speaker 3: I can remember that moment and it just gets rid
- 19:51Speaker 3: of all the crap and body and I just remember
- 19:54Speaker 3: that and it's like, in that moment of high gratitude
- 19:57Speaker 3: love the highest frequency, nothing else can li They and
- 20:01Speaker 3: I am. I'll preach it to the day I die.
- 20:05Speaker 3: That people don't realize there's a strategy to change your
- 20:08Speaker 3: physiological and mental state that is there for you, and
- 20:13Speaker 3: it's not as complex and hard as sometimes as people believe.
- 20:16Speaker 3: And what you've just described here, you know, it's the
- 20:20Speaker 3: story that we tell ourselves. I've just been back to
- 20:22Speaker 3: the UK. I've got two brothers. All three of us
- 20:24Speaker 3: see the world totally differently. And that thing that you're describing,
- 20:27Speaker 3: I was sitting in the room and what you described happened.
- 20:30Speaker 3: Three of us were seen reacting differently and three different things.
- 20:35Speaker 3: And there's a satin person I won't say a brother,
- 20:39Speaker 3: could be might be who sometimes sits in that victim
- 20:42Speaker 3: mentality and bloody, all that painful and I'm witnessing it,
- 20:48Speaker 3: and I'm going, you are creating this crock of shit.
- 20:53Speaker 3: Whether it's be a relationships that aren't working, whether it
- 20:56Speaker 3: be this situation that you're sitting in this darkness and
- 20:58Speaker 3: you're staring at this darkness. Well, is that what this
- 21:01Speaker 3: life's about?
- 21:02Speaker 2: Do we'd have to? It's like with grief? Am I do?
- 21:06Speaker 2: I do?
- 21:06Speaker 3: I love my dad less if I'm not sitting and
- 21:09Speaker 3: staying at the grief all day or not?
- 21:12Speaker 2: Is that is what? What is life about? His life about?
- 21:15Speaker 3: Is life about learning from that and honoring that? And
- 21:20Speaker 3: you know, trying to how do I look at grief?
- 21:22Speaker 3: And that's something I'm trying to explore it.
- 21:23Speaker 2: Now.
- 21:24Speaker 3: I'm far, I'm over here, I'm extracted from the situation.
- 21:27Speaker 3: Sometimes I feel a bit distant from it. And there's
- 21:30Speaker 3: a question, and I'm asking myself, should I be sitting
- 21:32Speaker 3: in this more? Should I be more upset because of
- 21:34Speaker 3: a want?
- 21:35Speaker 2: Who I can? I can go look at it and.
- 21:37Speaker 3: Put sad music on with Dad's sad music and staying
- 21:39Speaker 3: at his face and read the letter that I wrote
- 21:42Speaker 3: on the eulogy and I'll cry my eyes out?
- 21:45Speaker 2: What is that? You know?
- 21:47Speaker 3: And that's another question that I would maybe pose to
- 21:50Speaker 3: you because that's something that I'm kind of working through.
- 21:52Speaker 2: With the moment.
- 21:54Speaker 1: Yeah, It's it's so funny. We have these ideas of
- 21:57Speaker 1: how things should happen and how we should when they happen,
- 22:01Speaker 1: and ian you know that there's multiple steps of grieving
- 22:05Speaker 1: and you need to grieve the right way for the
- 22:08Speaker 1: right amount of time, in the right chronological you know,
- 22:11Speaker 1: it's like how about fuck that? How about how do
- 22:16Speaker 1: you feel? Mate? Well? I feel actually I don't know
- 22:18Speaker 1: why I feel okay, cool. We're not pretending that dad
- 22:21Speaker 1: didn't pass away. We're not we don't not love dad.
- 22:25Speaker 1: We're not being disrespectful. I think you know, there's no
- 22:30Speaker 1: set It's like, what's the best way to lose weight? Harps?
- 22:33Speaker 1: I don't know? Who are you? You know?
- 22:36Speaker 2: How?
- 22:36Speaker 1: I mean? It's probably involved some food, some exercise, some sleep,
- 22:39Speaker 1: maybe a supplement maybe not, Maybe some decisions, maybe some
- 22:43Speaker 1: fucking resilience, maybe some consistency. I can give you forty
- 22:47Speaker 1: different ingredients to help you lose weight. Oh cool, what's
- 22:50Speaker 1: the best way to build a business. We'll sit the
- 22:51Speaker 1: fuck down, let's workshop that. What's the best way to grieve?
- 22:54Speaker 1: It's the same, Like we have this stupid mentality that
- 22:58Speaker 1: there is only one way to create this particular outcome.
- 23:04Speaker 1: And the thing is that you are not me and
- 23:05Speaker 1: I am not you. What will work for you could
- 23:09Speaker 1: be a fucking disaster for me. I can eat a
- 23:12Speaker 1: handful of nuts and I go, that's a healthy snack.
- 23:15Speaker 1: One of my friends eats one nut, they have a
- 23:17Speaker 1: fucking anaphylactic reaction. So it's not a nuts good or
- 23:21Speaker 1: are nuts bad. It's about the individual response to the
- 23:24Speaker 1: same stimulus. It's like talk therapy. A lot of people
- 23:29Speaker 1: think talk therapy is the solution to all problems. That's absolutely,
- 23:35Speaker 1: unequivocally not true. Talk therapy is really good for some
- 23:38Speaker 1: people and not so great for other people. And it's
- 23:42Speaker 1: not that talk therapy is categorically good or bad. It's
- 23:46Speaker 1: just not optimal for everyone. It's just like, hey, should
- 23:49Speaker 1: I train with dumbbells, barbells and free weights or pinloaded machines? Well,
- 23:54Speaker 1: let me find out about your body and your background
- 23:56Speaker 1: and your injuries, and let's have a talk and let
- 23:59Speaker 1: me see what you can do, and then I will
- 24:01Speaker 1: help you make it like this idea? Right? So, mate,
- 24:05Speaker 1: you just fucking grieve, But I also think let's not
- 24:09Speaker 1: overthink it. Let's not get up and go, oh shit,
- 24:12Speaker 1: what should I be doing? Read my grief? What should
- 24:15Speaker 1: I do to fucking just do life? Bro? And if
- 24:18Speaker 1: you're sad, you're sad. If you're happy, you're happy. Don't
- 24:20Speaker 1: feel guilty for being happy. Don't feel guilty for being sad. Like,
- 24:24Speaker 1: we overthink the fuck out of things, and we invest
- 24:28Speaker 1: our time and emotional energy in things which do not
- 24:31Speaker 1: give us a good return, like you obsessing about how
- 24:36Speaker 1: you should grieve is a waste of your time.
- 24:39Speaker 3: I appreciate doublether and going back to that kind of
- 24:43Speaker 3: that victim mentality of you know and you know to tear.
- 24:46Speaker 3: Maybe overused, but I've there's people in and around my
- 24:51Speaker 3: world who I just watch and I just think that
- 24:53Speaker 3: the conversation where having now you're talking to me, I'm
- 24:55Speaker 3: talking to you, there's an awareness I can understand what
- 24:57Speaker 3: you're saying.
- 24:57Speaker 2: I grab it and go that makes sense.
- 24:58Speaker 3: That doesn't obey that, don't buy that, but I can
- 25:01Speaker 3: take I can consume the language. There's people I think
- 25:05Speaker 3: cannot consume our language at times. They just haven't got
- 25:09Speaker 3: the level of consciousness I'm seeing. I always say people
- 25:11Speaker 3: level conscious one to five and the same people, I
- 25:13Speaker 3: just think, you can't consume this. And my thing is,
- 25:17Speaker 3: and I'm witnessing that. I'm witnessing people who like, we're
- 25:21Speaker 3: just saying you as you were describing stuff to me,
- 25:23Speaker 3: I'm reading it. It's there's a story coming in place,
- 25:25Speaker 3: and I can Then we just spoke about gratitude and
- 25:27Speaker 3: we nod to each other and we explain and we
- 25:29Speaker 3: go Okay. Now, I might not do all these things
- 25:31Speaker 3: every day, but it brings it back to the forefront
- 25:34Speaker 3: of my mind. I'll probably come off this thing, I'll
- 25:35Speaker 3: get some stuff from it, and I'll do something. But
- 25:38Speaker 3: there's people, there's other people, and I think there's with
- 25:40Speaker 3: a lot of large parts of the suffering has come
- 25:42Speaker 3: from there's a language barrier to a lot of people.
- 25:46Speaker 3: They're not understand so they're suffering that are either suffering
- 25:49Speaker 3: in silence or the or the you know, telling everybody
- 25:52Speaker 3: under the son about the about the about the suffering
- 25:54Speaker 3: and making it worse. But I think there's a language
- 25:58Speaker 3: barrier to get to these people.
- 26:00Speaker 2: People.
- 26:00Speaker 3: And I think, you know, there's so much awareness out there,
- 26:02Speaker 3: but the suicide rates keep increasing, the mental health crisis
- 26:06Speaker 3: keeps increasing. There's a as I think we've foken on
- 26:08Speaker 3: your podcast, I think there's a there's no shortcomings in information,
- 26:13Speaker 3: you know.
- 26:14Speaker 2: Anywhere we go. I can tape into it. Now with AI,
- 26:16Speaker 2: I can tape anything.
- 26:16Speaker 3: Again, I get battered with everything, right, But I think
- 26:19Speaker 3: there's a real language barrier. My question to you is,
- 26:24Speaker 3: you know, is that something that you see and what
- 26:27Speaker 3: what do you believe? Is an anecdote to an antidote
- 26:29Speaker 3: to the how how can we tackle that? Because there's
- 26:32Speaker 3: a huge crisis, but some people just can't understand the language.
- 26:36Speaker 1: Yeah, that's a good question. So I think there's two
- 26:39Speaker 1: things that come to mind. I'm gonna answer that immediate question. Second,
- 26:45Speaker 1: but I'm going to speak to something else first. First
- 26:48Speaker 1: thing I think is, let's say, let's say you recognize
- 26:51Speaker 1: that I've got a problem, and you're my friend. You're educated,
- 26:55Speaker 1: you're knowledgeable, you're compassionate, you love me, you care about me,
- 26:59Speaker 1: you want the best for me. But I might not
- 27:03Speaker 1: be interested in what you've got to say. So you
- 27:06Speaker 1: can you can have the right language, you can have
- 27:08Speaker 1: the right intentions, you can have the metaphors, the stories
- 27:11Speaker 1: that all of that. And I'm like, hey, Ian, fuck
- 27:13Speaker 1: off right.
- 27:14Speaker 3: And I can ask you a question on that point there. Yeah,
- 27:18Speaker 3: is that ninety percent of the time, ego, do you believe?
- 27:22Speaker 1: I think it's fear. I think it's fear because if
- 27:25Speaker 1: you're right, then I'm gonna have to own up and
- 27:28Speaker 1: step up and listen to you and do something. And
- 27:31Speaker 1: I'm terrified. I'm a man, and I'm terrified of everything,
- 27:35Speaker 1: and this this fucking shell, this ego, this bullshit, this
- 27:39Speaker 1: alpha male fucking thing that I'm wearing. It's all bullshit.
- 27:44Speaker 1: It's all hiding fear and all of that stuff. Right,
- 27:47Speaker 1: So that the problem is that sometimes we and I
- 27:52Speaker 1: mean you and me and people like us, we have
- 27:54Speaker 1: good intentions because although we're flawed, we try to do
- 27:58Speaker 1: the right thing and you fuck, I fuck up. Welcome
- 28:01Speaker 1: to humanity, right, But there have been many times and
- 28:04Speaker 1: I do it less and less because I've learned my
- 28:06Speaker 1: lesson where I would, with very good intentions, try to
- 28:10Speaker 1: help someone who actually needed help, but they didn't want
- 28:13Speaker 1: the help. And so in the middle of that me
- 28:16Speaker 1: trying to tell them how it was going to work
- 28:19Speaker 1: and what they should do, and I go, you know,
- 28:21Speaker 1: I know you're a bit fucked up, but I've got
- 28:23Speaker 1: answers and I'm educated and I've been down there, and
- 28:25Speaker 1: that's cool. All I would do is I would create
- 28:28Speaker 1: more disconnection than connection, and more problems and solutions. So
- 28:33Speaker 1: recognizing that somebody needs help is not the same as
- 28:36Speaker 1: someone asking you for help, and so we need to
- 28:39Speaker 1: be very careful about one if at all we approach that,
- 28:43Speaker 1: or two if we do how we approach that now,
- 28:48Speaker 1: pursuant to your initial question, your honor language really matters, because,
- 28:57Speaker 1: like if I talk about my research with my doctorate,
- 29:00Speaker 1: talk about you know, metacognition and theory of mind and
- 29:03Speaker 1: metap perception and metaaccuracy and all of these fancy fucking
- 29:07Speaker 1: words and the consensus effect and all of this psychological
- 29:10Speaker 1: language that is actually relevant for every human that's got
- 29:14Speaker 1: a brain in a mind. It's broadly universally relevant. But
- 29:18Speaker 1: if I just start talking like a researcher or a scientist,
- 29:23Speaker 1: the average person who is not dumber than me, it's
- 29:26Speaker 1: just a different language. In fact, a lot of people
- 29:28Speaker 1: are smarter than me that have never set foot in
- 29:31Speaker 1: a university. Right, you're one of those people. You're a
- 29:35Speaker 1: very fucking smart human. And I was very impressed with you.
- 29:38Speaker 1: Your natural intellect, social, emotional and intellectors through the roof, right,
- 29:43Speaker 1: And I mean genuinely thank you. Yeah. But but then,
- 29:48Speaker 1: you know, so Craig needs to understand, well, how do
- 29:51Speaker 1: I share this thought, this idea, this message, this encouragement,
- 29:56Speaker 1: this insight in a way which resonates within, which resonates
- 30:00Speaker 1: with this audience, Because in fact, my whole PhD is
- 30:04Speaker 1: around trying to understand the Craig experience, you know, or
- 30:08Speaker 1: in your case, trying to understand the the Ean experience
- 30:11Speaker 1: for an audience, be that an audience of one at
- 30:14Speaker 1: a coffee table or an audience of fucking ten million
- 30:18Speaker 1: on the television, right. And so I need to try
- 30:23Speaker 1: to understand not only how other people perceive me and
- 30:26Speaker 1: whether or not this message is landing, but I need
- 30:29Speaker 1: to try to understand what is their language, what is
- 30:33Speaker 1: their level of knowledge, what is their current psychological, sociological,
- 30:37Speaker 1: emotional state in this moment. Not what do I want
- 30:40Speaker 1: to say at them. I need to try to understand
- 30:44Speaker 1: their present emotional and psychological state so I can build rapport,
- 30:49Speaker 1: build trust, build respect, build connection. And then once I
- 30:53Speaker 1: have that level of real world in the moment, interpersonal engagement,
- 30:59Speaker 1: then I can carefully wheel out some ideas and information.
- 31:03Speaker 3: What you've just described there is kind of really really
- 31:08Speaker 3: interesting for me.
- 31:09Speaker 2: And you know, if I look.
- 31:12Speaker 3: Back at everything that I've been through over you know,
- 31:18Speaker 3: my forty forty seven years and all of the work
- 31:22Speaker 3: I'm doing at the moment, there's not many men who
- 31:27Speaker 3: are actively going to reach out. They suffer in silence,
- 31:32Speaker 3: and they don't even know that they need help. And
- 31:35Speaker 3: they don't even know they need help. Then in this
- 31:37Speaker 3: I talk about that suicidality risk, you know, and I've
- 31:39Speaker 3: got this matrix of twenty questions.
- 31:42Speaker 2: If anybody sits.
- 31:42Speaker 3: Below fifteen, they're at risk as far as I can say,
- 31:45Speaker 3: because they've got no things to clamber too. They've got
- 31:48Speaker 3: no health and fitness, they've got no internal work, they've
- 31:50Speaker 3: got no safety net, and they don't even know. So
- 31:54Speaker 3: for me and the work that I'm trying to do
- 31:56Speaker 3: and scale and talking to you know, incredibly smart people
- 32:00Speaker 3: yourself can only add value because we're at the early
- 32:03Speaker 3: stages of what we're trying to achieve is how do
- 32:06Speaker 3: we bring awareness to the people who aren't aware, who
- 32:09Speaker 3: aren't looking. It's not even about sometimes you know, it's
- 32:13Speaker 3: about you know, they might just this language might get
- 32:16Speaker 3: them in passing. You know, they could be oh, and
- 32:18Speaker 3: it sticks to someone and they go, oh, I just
- 32:20Speaker 3: heard something there that resonated with me.
- 32:22Speaker 2: Now going to come on board.
- 32:23Speaker 3: And that's why, because of what's happening, there's got to
- 32:28Speaker 3: be a commonality message and that needs to be getting
- 32:32Speaker 3: banged out on repeat for humanity right now because it's
- 32:36Speaker 3: not landing everything that's out there, whether Ian Craig, you know,
- 32:41Speaker 3: fucking Tony Robbins, fucking whoever, everything else, it ain't landing
- 32:45Speaker 3: with the people that needs to land with. They're suffering,
- 32:47Speaker 3: they're in silence, and they're killing themselves. So I'm really
- 32:52Speaker 3: intrigued and and hell bent on solving this. And my
- 32:57Speaker 3: one is about number one. I believe we have to
- 33:00Speaker 3: stay away from the word suicidality because of the stigma.
- 33:03Speaker 3: We have to have this kind of community brotherhood, you know,
- 33:06Speaker 3: and you know, the manly side of it. We're coming
- 33:09Speaker 3: together as men, right because and having this collective thing.
- 33:12Speaker 3: But then is attractive to people to come in and
- 33:15Speaker 3: once they come into our safe space, making sure that
- 33:17Speaker 3: the language is simple, so fucking simplistic that it captures.
- 33:21Speaker 3: And again I'm not you know, I'm not belittling anyone.
- 33:23Speaker 3: It might be of the lower intellect or the people
- 33:26Speaker 3: who haven't been through the skill system to a level
- 33:28Speaker 3: that you know other people have. And I think that's
- 33:31Speaker 3: the success equation. The success equation is simplifying the shit
- 33:35Speaker 3: out of it. And how do we draw people in
- 33:38Speaker 3: not into an ian you know, into a small community
- 33:42Speaker 3: or a Craig work short, but it's.
- 33:44Speaker 2: It's bigger than that. It's do you know what I mean?
- 33:48Speaker 3: And I'm trying to and I'm almost asking what's your
- 33:50Speaker 3: opinion or what ideas you have to to pull these
- 33:54Speaker 3: people through are taking their own lives.
- 33:57Speaker 1: Yeah, So I think when people I work with a
- 34:02Speaker 1: lot of people who are struggling, and you know we're
- 34:08Speaker 1: talking before about you know that my problems, if on
- 34:12Speaker 1: the one to one hundred minor are one, right, So
- 34:15Speaker 1: I'm my overwhelming every day. If it's not my default,
- 34:20Speaker 1: I try to make it that you know, is you know,
- 34:23Speaker 1: just gratitude. But I think with people who especially blokes,
- 34:28Speaker 1: because and again I don't I actually think some blokes
- 34:32Speaker 1: are better than people think. Everyone goes ah, men are
- 34:35Speaker 1: all fucking idiots. They can't that's not true. It's not true.
- 34:39Speaker 1: And no, culturally we really haven't been historically supported to
- 34:44Speaker 1: be overly expressive and emotive and conversational around feelings and
- 34:48Speaker 1: all of that, but that that's slowly becoming a thing
- 34:52Speaker 1: in the past. But having said that, I think ladies
- 34:54Speaker 1: are generally better, but I think blokes are improving. So
- 34:57Speaker 1: well done blokes, But I mean, you're an alpha male, right,
- 35:03Speaker 1: but you're also a compassionate dude. But you're a blokey bloke,
- 35:06Speaker 1: and I'm a little bit the same. I think what
- 35:10Speaker 1: people need is they need to know that you are authentic,
- 35:16Speaker 1: that you or me, that you are coming from a
- 35:19Speaker 1: place of love, That this is not a strategy to
- 35:23Speaker 1: build a business or make dough. Right. I say to
- 35:27Speaker 1: people all the time, like I've written seven books, I
- 35:30Speaker 1: reckon in two, I don't know, twenty one hundred episodes
- 35:35Speaker 1: of a podcast. I have never once advertised any of
- 35:41Speaker 1: my books. I've never ever encouraged anyone to buy one book.
- 35:45Speaker 1: I don't talk about it. I never sell anything. I
- 35:49Speaker 1: never push programs. You can go to my whiteboard my Instagram,
- 35:54Speaker 1: which is all handwritten whiteboards. There are over six thousand posts,
- 35:59Speaker 1: and there might be in six thousand, there might be
- 36:02Speaker 1: ten where I'm letting people know I've got a workshop
- 36:05Speaker 1: coming up, right, because one I make enough dough talking
- 36:10Speaker 1: of fat blokes in suits, right, I can just rock
- 36:12Speaker 1: up do that, and I know you're not allowed to
- 36:15Speaker 1: say that. I don't care. They know I'm fucking with it, right, right,
- 36:19Speaker 1: I turn up and I talk to them, and they
- 36:21Speaker 1: know I love them and the amazing women that are
- 36:24Speaker 1: part of the crowd as well. Right, I just turn
- 36:26Speaker 1: up and I do my thing, and I fuck off
- 36:28Speaker 1: and I get paid well. So it's not like, oh,
- 36:31Speaker 1: I need money from all of my I don't. I
- 36:33Speaker 1: don't because I actually money's not a high value for me.
- 36:38Speaker 1: That's not to say that, you know, it shouldn't be
- 36:41Speaker 1: for anyone else. Right, I'm just speaking personally, but what
- 36:45Speaker 1: I try to be, and this is just my philosophy.
- 36:49Speaker 1: The biggest compliment for me is when people meet me
- 36:52Speaker 1: and talk to me and go, oh my god, you
- 36:54Speaker 1: know what I love? I go, what do you love?
- 36:56Speaker 1: They go, I love that you're exactly the same here
- 36:59Speaker 1: at the coffee shop as you are on the podcast.
- 37:02Speaker 1: I love that that is actually how you are. And
- 37:06Speaker 1: because I don't have a persona, you know, I don't
- 37:08Speaker 1: get on the podcast. Get everyone, welcome to the You project.
- 37:12Speaker 1: It's harbs, it is number coming up today. There's none
- 37:15Speaker 1: of that. It's just like you're a bit of a
- 37:18Speaker 1: fuck with at times and you're a genius at times.
- 37:21Speaker 1: Welcome to being you know me too? Do I have
- 37:23Speaker 1: a fuck up? Yes? Am I smart? Depends on what
- 37:26Speaker 1: room I'm in sometimes I'm the dumbest in the fucking room, right,
- 37:31Speaker 1: But I think if people know that you have integrity
- 37:34Speaker 1: and authenticity and that you are coming from a place
- 37:36Speaker 1: of love. This is going to sound weird, and I
- 37:40Speaker 1: probably shouldn't fucking say it, but I'm going to be vulnerable.
- 37:43Speaker 1: When I was thirty, I was a millionaire when a
- 37:47Speaker 1: millionaire was a lot, so that's thirty two years ago.
- 37:50Speaker 1: I owned multiple businesses. I had a beautiful house. I
- 37:52Speaker 1: had a beach house because I had all kinds of shit.
- 37:55Speaker 1: I was writing for the Herald Sun, I was making
- 37:57Speaker 1: lots of dough, and in the middle of all of that,
- 37:59Speaker 1: I was fuck and miserable. Bro. And I'm not saying
- 38:01Speaker 1: one caused the other. I'm just saying, oh, so you
- 38:05Speaker 1: can actually be in inverted commas, successful and simultaneously sad
- 38:10Speaker 1: and anxious and not sleeping. Oh well, then that idea
- 38:14Speaker 1: that I had of what success is and what that
- 38:16Speaker 1: would mean emotionally and mentally, that for me, that was
- 38:20Speaker 1: a flawed concept. And so you know, that kind of
- 38:25Speaker 1: exposed me to the truth. My truth anyway early on
- 38:28Speaker 1: that wealth is about a lot of things that may
- 38:32Speaker 1: or may not involve money, wealth is about love and
- 38:35Speaker 1: kindness and connection and belief and truth and gratitude and
- 38:40Speaker 1: self awareness and compassion and empathy. And that sounds cheesy
- 38:44Speaker 1: and cliche, but I really don't care. So yeah, I
- 38:48Speaker 1: think if people.
- 38:49Speaker 2: Will see that in you, yeah, I love that. And no,
- 38:53Speaker 2: I don't think it's cliche, and I don't think it's cheesy.
- 38:55Speaker 2: I think it's absolutely right.
- 38:56Speaker 3: And I think I said that the two questions that
- 38:58Speaker 3: I've been I got this from one of the guys
- 39:00Speaker 3: early in the podcast, this line, and I think that's
- 39:02Speaker 3: something I try to live by.
- 39:03Speaker 2: It's that question of are the actions I'm.
- 39:06Speaker 3: About to take or the words I'm about to speak
- 39:08Speaker 3: going to intentionally calm harm to others?
- 39:11Speaker 1: Now?
- 39:11Speaker 2: If if I if the.
- 39:13Speaker 3: Answer to that is yes, I am going to do that,
- 39:15Speaker 3: then I'm not being a good human I'm going against
- 39:17Speaker 3: the collective of humanity. And that's why I say we
- 39:20Speaker 3: have collective consciousness. We're all dropped from the same ocean,
- 39:23Speaker 3: and you know, and I believe that is what we're
- 39:26Speaker 3: trying to get to. And my thing is, if we're
- 39:28Speaker 3: all drops of the same ocean, some of these droplets
- 39:30Speaker 3: aren't hearing this message, and they suffering in silence. They
- 39:33Speaker 3: haven't got the tips and the tricks and the simple shit,
- 39:36Speaker 3: the stuff that you've spoken about, you know, which I'm
- 39:39Speaker 3: thinking gratitude is such a game changer. I don't do
- 39:43Speaker 3: it enough. When I do do it changes my state
- 39:46Speaker 3: and all the shit can't live there. And I think
- 39:48Speaker 3: we get rid of all of these pills and stuff
- 39:50Speaker 3: that people then get associated to. They're going to go, no,
- 39:53Speaker 3: I am this and I have to take these pills.
- 39:55Speaker 3: They then live in vanilla and for the rest of
- 39:57Speaker 3: the days, the self identify with this fucking illness and
- 40:01Speaker 3: they're not giving themselves the kind of an opportunity to
- 40:03Speaker 3: experience life, and they usually decline. I'm witnessing that with
- 40:07Speaker 3: a couple of friends around me at the moment. So
- 40:09Speaker 3: I totally agree with you there. And you talked about
- 40:13Speaker 3: those things within you know, people and emotional intelligence and
- 40:17Speaker 3: honesty and authenticity, and it does shine from you. I
- 40:19Speaker 3: said this at the beginning, and I think when you're
- 40:22Speaker 3: talking about you know, people in suits and stuff, that
- 40:24Speaker 3: is one of the things. The reason why And again
- 40:27Speaker 3: I teld you i'd to send you an email with
- 40:28Speaker 3: you know, the kind of mission that we're on you know,
- 40:31Speaker 3: I'm already working.
- 40:32Speaker 2: With companies at the moment.
- 40:33Speaker 3: And one of the biggest things that I see is
- 40:37Speaker 3: most people in organizations are wearing a mask. They're just
- 40:41Speaker 3: wearing this mask more so than even in everyday life
- 40:44Speaker 3: we all wear masks. But like it's like I want
- 40:46Speaker 3: to wear a mask and my boss because don't want
- 40:47Speaker 3: to piss them off, because I want to get that,
- 40:48Speaker 3: you know, pay increase and I want to get that,
- 40:50Speaker 3: you know, I need to get to where they need
- 40:51Speaker 3: to get to. And they're all kind of performing, sometimes
- 40:55Speaker 3: more so than others. And I believe as leaders, genuine leaders,
- 40:59Speaker 3: if we can remove our mask and and and actually
- 41:02Speaker 3: have a conversation with people where you know that that's
- 41:05Speaker 3: not a mask, and that leads in with the vulnerability
- 41:08Speaker 3: dissolves the mask.
- 41:10Speaker 2: It dissolves the mask.
- 41:11Speaker 3: And if we all it's like the biggest thing I
- 41:13Speaker 3: say in an organization I've seen a time and time again,
- 41:16Speaker 3: you get these you know, stereotypical bosses who are you know,
- 41:19Speaker 3: high performers driving for the business forward. Somebody comes through
- 41:22Speaker 3: to them with their team and they might have been
- 41:24Speaker 3: doing something wrong for five years and they identify, oh shit,
- 41:28Speaker 3: have cocked up and it might have cost a bit
- 41:29Speaker 3: of money and stuff. That boss then you know, beerates them,
- 41:33Speaker 3: gives them shit, this, that and the other. What's going
- 41:35Speaker 3: to happen That person's going to close up, put a
- 41:38Speaker 3: bigger mask on. They'll never reveal where the problems are
- 41:41Speaker 3: within an organization and we we we then block you
- 41:46Speaker 3: know what it is. And I think that happens within society.
- 41:48Speaker 3: That's like a microcosm within the workplace. And what we're
- 41:53Speaker 3: talking about is authenticity vulnerability. If we all just drop
- 41:57Speaker 3: the fucking mask, everybody having relationships with things that are real,
- 42:01Speaker 3: it's all facade. And it's so important with in business
- 42:05Speaker 3: because that's how we identify with our best return on
- 42:07Speaker 3: effort is to improve a business. And I think it's
- 42:12Speaker 3: so many people talk about it, it's on the walls,
- 42:15Speaker 3: but it's fucking bullshit. You know, it's it's on the walls,
- 42:17Speaker 3: it's the it's on the laptop, and they don't realize
- 42:20Speaker 3: that to connect with somebody, it's not actually that hard.
- 42:24Speaker 3: You've just got to be real and ask yourself, I'm
- 42:27Speaker 3: I being real, Do you know what I mean?
- 42:28Speaker 2: I don't know what you've experienced within the workplace.
- 42:31Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, I agree with you. Also, I think
- 42:40Speaker 1: there's an element of social awareness and social intelligence that
- 42:43Speaker 1: needs to be injected into that because people are at
- 42:48Speaker 1: different stages of their developmental journey. Like forty seven year
- 42:53Speaker 1: old a In. He could rock up and chat to
- 42:56Speaker 1: twenty three year old ay In and twenty three year
- 42:59Speaker 1: old ay And would think forty seven year old and
- 43:01Speaker 1: was a fucking idiot because twenty three year old and
- 43:04Speaker 1: wasn't ready well right then. So it's like, yeah, that's true.
- 43:11Speaker 1: What you're saying is true or relevant or appropriate, but
- 43:15Speaker 1: this person isn't where you are, and you can't make
- 43:19Speaker 1: them be where you are mentally and emotionally and developmentally.
- 43:23Speaker 1: So that's where wisdom and judgment and social intelligence and
- 43:27Speaker 1: situational and awareness come in. Where you go, Ah, even
- 43:32Speaker 1: though I have some insight and some wisdom and some
- 43:34Speaker 1: knowledge that could help this person, it is not appropriate
- 43:38Speaker 1: that I share it. And that's just wisdom.
- 43:42Speaker 2: No, No, I totally agree.
- 43:45Speaker 3: But how do you how do you foster the truth
- 43:48Speaker 3: within an organization? You know, remove the mask to collectively
- 43:53Speaker 3: the majority of the workforce. We need to hear the truth.
- 43:56Speaker 3: That's why we identify problems. You understand how people tick
- 44:00Speaker 3: bring in those ideas because a lot of people who
- 44:01Speaker 3: sit silent in meetings because they're afraid that they might
- 44:05Speaker 3: get clipped for something wrong. So we don't get those
- 44:09Speaker 3: you know, we get those people a bit more silent.
- 44:11Speaker 3: You might have fantastic ideas and in an organization, we
- 44:13Speaker 3: might not get them. So what would your kind of
- 44:16Speaker 3: tip be, then, to foster truth as much as possible
- 44:21Speaker 3: through organizations considering those social kind of elements.
- 44:25Speaker 1: Oh that's tricky, dude, I mean they think. I mean,
- 44:28Speaker 1: depending on which research you look at, you know that
- 44:31Speaker 1: maybe I'm just saying maybe everyone, maybe twenty percent of
- 44:35Speaker 1: CEOs a sociopaths. Right, yeah, yeah, right, you've heard that
- 44:40Speaker 1: or a similar figure. So that's one in five. Well,
- 44:43Speaker 1: good luck telling that ny or that girl that you
- 44:46Speaker 1: disagree with them. That is not a great career move.
- 44:51Speaker 1: Oh no, I was really honest, and now I don't
- 44:54Speaker 1: have a job. So you know, they like being being
- 45:01Speaker 1: honest and being truthful and being direct. It seems like
- 45:05Speaker 1: that's what we should all do.
- 45:07Speaker 2: But there, but that's that drag. It has to come
- 45:10Speaker 2: from the top, right.
- 45:12Speaker 1: Oh, you know, one like I've been a leader of
- 45:16Speaker 1: sorts my whole life in that I've managed people, led people,
- 45:19Speaker 1: coach people. I'm not saying I'm a great leader, by
- 45:21Speaker 1: the way. It just happens to have been my journey.
- 45:25Speaker 1: But when I employed my first person, like in my company,
- 45:29Speaker 1: I was twenty six. I had no idea how to
- 45:31Speaker 1: do that. I didn't know how to be a good
- 45:34Speaker 1: boss or a good role model or like it. But
- 45:36Speaker 1: I kind of like you. I think you and I
- 45:39Speaker 1: are quite similar because you've kind of figured stuff out
- 45:44Speaker 1: experientially and in the moment, and I figured it out
- 45:46Speaker 1: as I went along, and I we used to have
- 45:50Speaker 1: these monthly staff meetings. At this stage. When we had
- 45:53Speaker 1: these monthly meetings, I had three different gyms, and I
- 45:57Speaker 1: used to get all of my staff members to one
- 45:59Speaker 1: of the gyms. It was usually Friday, at midday when
- 46:02Speaker 1: we were the quietest. I'd get all of them to
- 46:04Speaker 1: my main gym, which was huge, a huge place in
- 46:08Speaker 1: Brighton on the Peene Highway and Victoria. I'd get everyone
- 46:11Speaker 1: there and we'd sit down and I'd try and make
- 46:13Speaker 1: it pretty productive, pretty light, pretty quick. But the first
- 46:17Speaker 1: thing that I would say to my group is how
- 46:20Speaker 1: am I going go? Don't tell me what I want
- 46:24Speaker 1: to hear, tell me what I need to here, Don't
- 46:26Speaker 1: be inappropriate, don't be a bit sure you know, don't
- 46:29Speaker 1: be a prick just for the sake. But if I
- 46:32Speaker 1: am doing in your eyes, if I'm doing a bad job,
- 46:35Speaker 1: tell me what it is. I will take it on
- 46:38Speaker 1: board and I will do my best to address it.
- 46:40Speaker 1: And so for me realizing that I'm flawed, realizing I'm
- 46:44Speaker 1: not the best boss, I'm not the best leader, realizing
- 46:47Speaker 1: that they are going to talk about me anyway, realizing
- 46:51Speaker 1: that they think that I could do things better anyway,
- 46:55Speaker 1: as much as my ego didn't want to hear it,
- 46:59Speaker 1: it was actually it didn't always prove to be fruitful.
- 47:03Speaker 1: But you can't do much more than that. So, yes,
- 47:06Speaker 1: you are absolutely right. I think it needs to start
- 47:09Speaker 1: at the top. I think the boss, the leader, whoever
- 47:12Speaker 1: she or he is, needs to walk the talk because
- 47:16Speaker 1: what you do teaches people way more about you than
- 47:19Speaker 1: what you say. You can say all the words, but
- 47:22Speaker 1: unless the words are backed up with behavior and consistent behavior,
- 47:26Speaker 1: people won't trust you or believe you.
- 47:28Speaker 3: No, I couldn't agree more and I've seen that. I've
- 47:31Speaker 3: seen that time and time again. I remember in a
- 47:34Speaker 3: large organization I was working for. As said, I've been
- 47:37Speaker 3: in senior roles similar to yourself and led large kind
- 47:40Speaker 3: of companies and whatnot.
- 47:41Speaker 2: But I've kind of I found the higher upper God.
- 47:45Speaker 3: The more I was aware of the bullshit, as like,
- 47:47Speaker 3: because when you're down here, you think when it was
- 47:49Speaker 3: up there, it must be like they're like God's you
- 47:51Speaker 3: know what I mean, We've got this philosophy and stuff.
- 47:53Speaker 3: But then you kind of realize, hang on a minute,
- 47:55Speaker 3: this is pretty horrendous the way they're talking.
- 47:57Speaker 2: They really don't give.
- 47:58Speaker 3: A shit about the people, and it's like they're just
- 48:01Speaker 3: driving for the dollars. And what I always think is
- 48:03Speaker 3: they don't understand that you can if you do it
- 48:06Speaker 3: the right way. It's not like all fluffy, just people.
- 48:09Speaker 3: There's a business to be run, and we have to
- 48:11Speaker 3: make big decisions and we have to, you know, coach people.
- 48:14Speaker 3: Sometimes there's a lot of people have removed out of
- 48:16Speaker 3: organizations because they were never going to change, and unfortunately
- 48:19Speaker 3: that happens. But there's an ethought the reason that would
- 48:21Speaker 3: be done is to protect others within the organization, for example,
- 48:25Speaker 3: And I think there's a big lack in what I
- 48:28Speaker 3: saw and I went through my toughest time. I remember
- 48:31Speaker 3: looking out on Cougie Beach as the manager director of
- 48:33Speaker 3: a business and achieving my goals living exactly in the
- 48:37Speaker 3: area I want to live. When I used to be
- 48:38Speaker 3: in the UK, I used to do in the pits
- 48:39Speaker 3: and down Liverpool, go for runs, wind Chap that was
- 48:43Speaker 3: my son town. It was fucking wind and rain and
- 48:45Speaker 3: I have a red face. Now I've got bronze time,
- 48:47Speaker 3: running in the sun, fantastic coffee. But I was looking
- 48:50Speaker 3: at the beach going is this it? In a more
- 48:53Speaker 3: money than I've ever ends, the job that I always wanted,
- 48:57Speaker 3: And I'm looking out at the water to go, and
- 48:58Speaker 3: I couldn't even beans the water and the beats the
- 49:01Speaker 3: thing that I wanted because I was so frustrated in
- 49:04Speaker 3: my head with the toxic things I was witnessing from
- 49:08Speaker 3: the people.
- 49:08Speaker 2: I was trying to protect my team and I was hearing.
- 49:10Speaker 3: Such horrendous Then going back to those questions, are the
- 49:13Speaker 3: actions of the words I'm about to speak or take?
- 49:15Speaker 3: They were happening in left, right and center, and they
- 49:17Speaker 3: were they were happening on my watch with people above me,
- 49:21Speaker 3: and I was trying to protect my team, and it
- 49:24Speaker 3: was so harsh that over a period of time I
- 49:26Speaker 3: had to exit. I couldn't exist in this anymore. Because
- 49:30Speaker 3: that's the thing, if you genuinely are a good human being,
- 49:33Speaker 3: there's only so long that you can sit in.
- 49:36Speaker 2: That environment because it's so toxic.
- 49:38Speaker 3: For you as a human being that you're gonna go
- 49:40Speaker 3: pop and you have to remove. And you know, so,
- 49:45Speaker 3: as leaders, we have to look out for underneath us.
- 49:47Speaker 3: But as a leader, if you've got someone above you,
- 49:48Speaker 3: you've got to protect your own energy as well. Because
- 49:51Speaker 3: what I've seen a lot I call them, I've used
- 49:54Speaker 3: my own little term unhappy journeymen, the people who kind
- 49:58Speaker 3: of maybe want to aspire for things and they get
- 50:00Speaker 3: all these clips and they haven't got that role that
- 50:03Speaker 3: they want to. And then you look at them, thinking,
- 50:05Speaker 3: you're quite smart, but you've accepted you're in this company.
- 50:09Speaker 3: It's been there like thirty years and they've just accepted
- 50:12Speaker 3: that this is it. But you can see life they
- 50:15Speaker 3: just kicked the shit out of them. They don't put
- 50:17Speaker 3: the head above the pulpit. They don't defend the team.
- 50:20Speaker 3: They just go along for the ride and they can
- 50:22Speaker 3: talk to talk when they need to. For customers and stuff,
- 50:25Speaker 3: and they just I just look at them and go
- 50:26Speaker 3: unhappy journeymen. And I used to look at them and think,
- 50:29Speaker 3: I never want to be one of you. But I
- 50:31Speaker 3: felt myself getting kicked along at some point like that.
- 50:35Speaker 3: Does that make sense to you in the corporate environment.
- 50:38Speaker 3: Is that something that you've seen or experienced.
- 50:40Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, I think zooming backwards from the micro
- 50:47Speaker 1: of that story, zooming back to the macro of most
- 50:51Speaker 1: of us are going to work, not all of us,
- 50:53Speaker 1: but a lot of us are going to work for
- 50:54Speaker 1: about forty years, right, fifty years, forty five whatever. I
- 51:00Speaker 1: think it's really important that we think about that, the
- 51:03Speaker 1: impact of one the impact that we have on those
- 51:06Speaker 1: that we work with. And you know, if my and
- 51:10Speaker 1: you've done this, and I've done this, if your work
- 51:12Speaker 1: and intersect with your passion and your purpose and your
- 51:16Speaker 1: people skills and your person if you can actually, like
- 51:19Speaker 1: I realized early on, I wrote about this the other day,
- 51:22Speaker 1: I didn't want a job. I wanted to work, but
- 51:25Speaker 1: I didn't want a job. I was shit at having
- 51:27Speaker 1: a job. I was shit at having a boss. I
- 51:29Speaker 1: don't like working in that ecosystem. It's like, oh, clock
- 51:33Speaker 1: on it this time, go home at that time, and
- 51:35Speaker 1: basically do a version of that for the next ten years.
- 51:38Speaker 1: Oh fuck, punch me in the face now. And it's
- 51:41Speaker 1: not good or bad, but it's not good for me.
- 51:43Speaker 1: So I think trying to recognize where do I flourish
- 51:47Speaker 1: in what environment, in what situation, in what context, doing
- 51:51Speaker 1: what job, with what people? Might I flourish Because if
- 51:55Speaker 1: I'm flourishing, then I'm going to be fucking great to
- 51:58Speaker 1: be around, or at the very least, I'm going to
- 52:00Speaker 1: be better to be around. I'm going to be a
- 52:02Speaker 1: better teacher, better problem solver, a better conflict resolver, a
- 52:05Speaker 1: better human, a better connector, a better communicator, more compassionate,
- 52:09Speaker 1: more loving, more empathetic, more aware because I'm doing what
- 52:13Speaker 1: I'm meant to do, and what I'm not meant to
- 52:15Speaker 1: do is a job. Fuck that, that's not what I'm
- 52:19Speaker 1: meant to do. Now. I'm not superior or better, but
- 52:22Speaker 1: me and a job don't work. I haven't had a
- 52:25Speaker 1: job since I was twenty six, which was thirty six
- 52:28Speaker 1: years ago. I don't this sounds melodramatic. I don't even
- 52:32Speaker 1: know if I'd be alive if I had a job.
- 52:34Speaker 1: If I had to just rock up and do now
- 52:36Speaker 1: for other people. Their job equals fulfillment and purpose and growth.
- 52:41Speaker 1: So jobs aren't bad. As I said before, Arman's aren't bad,
- 52:45Speaker 1: this workout's not again. I'm not an anti job or career.
- 52:49Speaker 1: I think for probably the majority of people, having the
- 52:51Speaker 1: right job with the right organization and the right conditions
- 52:55Speaker 1: is really smart.
- 52:57Speaker 2: I love that.
- 52:57Speaker 3: And I can even dial into a little bit bit
- 53:00Speaker 3: more and we'll close this out shortly. But like I
- 53:02Speaker 3: remember being in a in a corporate environment and kind
- 53:06Speaker 3: of going, what do I really like to do? And
- 53:09Speaker 3: I found myself one time I created this kind of
- 53:12Speaker 3: I used to call it the execution of excellence. I
- 53:14Speaker 3: created my own thing in this organization I used to
- 53:16Speaker 3: have and it once a week within the I had
- 53:19Speaker 3: multiple warehous as. I go to these warehouse and bring
- 53:22Speaker 3: all these managers together and they would kind of talk
- 53:25Speaker 3: to me about what they had done. And I had
- 53:27Speaker 3: a segment each week in this thing. And I found
- 53:29Speaker 3: myself one time, in complete flow, had this unbelievable feeling
- 53:34Speaker 3: of just you know, when you've got the whole audience
- 53:37Speaker 3: and they're looking at you, and you've got this collective consciouness.
- 53:39Speaker 3: I thought and a lot of time and I went,
- 53:41Speaker 3: what the hell was that? And I was like, I
- 53:44Speaker 3: think I'm meant to do this, you know, I think
- 53:46Speaker 3: I'm meant to do this.
- 53:47Speaker 2: Now.
- 53:48Speaker 3: If I put that two years later, I've I carried on.
- 53:51Speaker 2: I started the naxt Own business. I've just exited that.
- 53:54Speaker 3: You know that that that I now do this and
- 53:56Speaker 3: and folcas and I've worked with in organizations, work for
- 53:59Speaker 3: another leadership company. I've done workshops. But the workshop wasn't mine.
- 54:03Speaker 3: And I was standing there talking, I didn't get the
- 54:05Speaker 3: flow state. It felt like a job. I wasn't as
- 54:08Speaker 3: passionate about the thing I was talking about, if that
- 54:11Speaker 3: makes sense, because I was talking about something else now,
- 54:14Speaker 3: So it's not up. Sometimes the job can actually be
- 54:16Speaker 3: what are you passionate about? What are you feeling?
- 54:21Speaker 1: Do you know?
- 54:21Speaker 3: And that's something that I think a lot of people
- 54:24Speaker 3: in their job and what they do, there'll be aspects
- 54:27Speaker 3: of the way they'll go, and it's be conscious and
- 54:31Speaker 3: think about what it is that you really really enjoy.
- 54:34Speaker 3: Because people ask how do you find your passion? How
- 54:36Speaker 3: do you find your purpose? It's that excitement sometimes that
- 54:40Speaker 3: comes across. But if you're not a word of it.
- 54:42Speaker 3: It can scape pasture, and I think it doesn't almost
- 54:46Speaker 3: have this overwhelming feeling. And not everybody's going to get
- 54:49Speaker 3: the Craig thing or even where hopefully I'm going to
- 54:52Speaker 3: get to with Dean thing. But you can improve your job.
- 54:55Speaker 3: You can improve the enjoyment of your job. It could
- 54:57Speaker 3: be a sixty forty. You could be a sixty enjoyful
- 55:00Speaker 3: grind rather than an eighty grind ten percent and enjoy
- 55:03Speaker 3: you know what I mean. And I'm just thinking think
- 55:04Speaker 3: about those exciting things. Where did you get a bit
- 55:07Speaker 3: of a flow and where'd you get that enjoyment? And
- 55:09Speaker 3: it really really resonated with me that.
- 55:12Speaker 1: Yeah, man, Look, I think a really good question for
- 55:14Speaker 1: all of us to ask is how do I manage me?
- 55:20Speaker 1: How do I manage my mind and my body and
- 55:22Speaker 1: my emotions and my choices and my relationships and my
- 55:25Speaker 1: money and my career? And where do I work best?
- 55:29Speaker 1: How do I work best? Like? What? What lights me up?
- 55:32Speaker 1: You know? It's like right now I'm in my office
- 55:37Speaker 1: at home. I have a recording studio downstairs, a beautiful,
- 55:41Speaker 1: commercial quality recording studio right outside my window. I've got
- 55:45Speaker 1: a whole garden full of forty foot tall bamboo trees.
- 55:48Speaker 1: I've got a gym in the front garden, which is
- 55:50Speaker 1: fucking beautiful. I've got all this, and I'm not that.
- 55:54Speaker 1: If that sounds braggy, I apologize. What I've done is
- 55:57Speaker 1: I've built an environment where I work best. You know,
- 56:00Speaker 1: right now, I'm wearing shorts and bare feet. I never
- 56:03Speaker 1: wear shoes ever, unless I have to wear shoes. I
- 56:06Speaker 1: never wear long pants. Fuck long pants. Like you know,
- 56:10Speaker 1: I almost resent having to put on long pants, right,
- 56:14Speaker 1: And it's not, you know, Like every day I get up,
- 56:17Speaker 1: I put on a pair of cargo shorts and a
- 56:19Speaker 1: black T shirt usually, and I walk down the road
- 56:21Speaker 1: and I get some coffee and I sit there and
- 56:23Speaker 1: I think about shit, and I go, how good's my life?
- 56:25Speaker 1: And by the way I can walk, How lucky am I?
- 56:28Speaker 1: By the way, I don't live in poverty? How lucky
- 56:30Speaker 1: am I? By the way my life's not under threat,
- 56:33Speaker 1: I don't live in a war zone. How blessed am I?
- 56:35Speaker 1: By the way, somebody loves me, at least a few people,
- 56:39Speaker 1: God knows why. Like when you navigate, when you do
- 56:43Speaker 1: a treasure hunt on your life, when you go not
- 56:46Speaker 1: what's wrong, But what's right, what's fucking great. You know,
- 56:50Speaker 1: one of my best friends got blown up eight years
- 56:53Speaker 1: ago the other day, December one, So yesterday you got
- 56:56Speaker 1: blown up in an industrial accident by gas bottles. And
- 57:00Speaker 1: he was meant to die in inverted commas. Then he
- 57:02Speaker 1: was meant to be a paraplegic, and he was meant
- 57:04Speaker 1: to be essentially brain dead, and so on and so on.
- 57:08Speaker 1: I used to go visit him in the hospital. He
- 57:09Speaker 1: was in a coma for a long time. Then he
- 57:11Speaker 1: came out of a coma. They couldn't believe that he
- 57:13Speaker 1: didn't die. Then they couldn't believe he's got a traumatic
- 57:16Speaker 1: brain injury and a spinal cord injury, and they didn't
- 57:19Speaker 1: believe that he didn't die. And then they were saying
- 57:21Speaker 1: to everyone who would listen, and he'll never walk, he'll
- 57:23Speaker 1: never talk, he'll never have any quality of life. And
- 57:26Speaker 1: I used to go and just talk to him and go, mate,
- 57:28Speaker 1: that's all bullshit. You know it's bullshit. I know it's bullshit.
- 57:30Speaker 1: Stop fucking around. Let's get you in the gym and
- 57:33Speaker 1: let's rehab you. And six months after he was meant
- 57:35Speaker 1: to be dead, I started rehabbing him in the gym
- 57:38Speaker 1: in a wheelchair, and now he walks, and now he talks,
- 57:41Speaker 1: and now he's operational and functional. He's in pain and
- 57:45Speaker 1: he's not brand new, but he drives himself to the gym.
- 57:48Speaker 1: I see him three days a week. He's one million
- 57:50Speaker 1: times more inspirational than I will ever be. And because
- 57:55Speaker 1: he's in my life, I just thank God that I
- 57:58Speaker 1: can walk, can open a fridge and there's food, I
- 58:02Speaker 1: can get out of this chair. I can stand up
- 58:05Speaker 1: and give you a fucking hug. I can like, can
- 58:09Speaker 1: you do that? Can you? You know? For somebody who's
- 58:11Speaker 1: in a wheelchair, like my friend Joel Sardi, who's a quadriplegic,
- 58:15Speaker 1: Joel can't say, oh, I'm not doing quadriplegia today, fuck it,
- 58:19Speaker 1: I'll start Monday. Like he doesn't have a choice, So
- 58:23Speaker 1: he's just got to navigate life from a wheelchair, you know.
- 58:27Speaker 1: For Johnny, who my friend that I was just talking about,
- 58:30Speaker 1: he has constant pain twenty four hours a day, and
- 58:34Speaker 1: I've trained him for seven and a half years. He
- 58:36Speaker 1: had his accident eight years ago. Three days a week
- 58:38Speaker 1: we see each other, and in seven and a half
- 58:41Speaker 1: years he has complained to me zero times. Every time
- 58:46Speaker 1: I see him, I hug him. Every time I tell
- 58:49Speaker 1: him I love him, he tells me the same. And
- 58:53Speaker 1: it is a privilege to spend time with him, and
- 58:58Speaker 1: a privilege to be able to just get out of
- 59:01Speaker 1: this chair and go for a walk and turn on
- 59:03Speaker 1: a tap and there's cold water, push a baton and
- 59:06Speaker 1: there's air, there's warmth. Fuck, you know, I am the
- 59:09Speaker 1: luckiest person I know.
- 59:12Speaker 3: May First of all, thank you for sharing those stories.
- 59:15Speaker 3: I could feel like emotion coming through there. I really
- 59:18Speaker 3: love that those powerhouses of men that you know, they
- 59:23Speaker 3: are a kind of a blessing to humanity, that they
- 59:26Speaker 3: are a message folders out there who are struggling.
- 59:28Speaker 2: If they can fucking do that, we can all fucking
- 59:31Speaker 2: do that, right.
- 59:32Speaker 3: And I also want to touch on the fact that
- 59:34Speaker 3: you said that you love them and they said they
- 59:35Speaker 3: love you too, because something that I got through, you know,
- 59:39Speaker 3: one of the most beautiful things and it kind of
- 59:41Speaker 3: gets me emotion when I think about it, grieving in
- 59:44Speaker 3: the UK, going through what I was going through, and
- 59:47Speaker 3: there were several moments when I realized, fu me, there's
- 59:51Speaker 3: a lot of people messaging me, and I've got a
- 59:54Speaker 3: lot of men telling me I love you and I
- 59:56Speaker 3: haven't hit a lot before. And there was friends who
- 59:59Speaker 3: turned up I han't seen for twenty five years and
- 1:00:02Speaker 3: they were there at the funeral and they were talking
- 1:00:04Speaker 3: to me saying I miss you, and we were talking
- 1:00:07Speaker 3: about the times it spent together and it was unbelievable.
- 1:00:11Speaker 3: And I was like, when we need it, it's there.
- 1:00:16Speaker 3: And I think something you've picked up on before. You said,
- 1:00:20Speaker 3: men aren't as bad as what we make out with
- 1:00:22Speaker 3: stuff when we you know, men, when when the shit
- 1:00:26Speaker 3: hits the fan, men step up. And I felt that
- 1:00:31Speaker 3: and it was beautiful. And I also think if more
- 1:00:34Speaker 3: men would take it on a daily basis, Hey, I
- 1:00:37Speaker 3: love you brother. It means a lot because it's hard
- 1:00:40Speaker 3: to say sometimes. And yeah, I just thought i'd pause
- 1:00:44Speaker 3: on that. It's something that I've felt and I could
- 1:00:45Speaker 3: feel it coming through from you there too, Craig.
- 1:00:48Speaker 1: Yeah, mate, it's that you know, there are things happen
- 1:00:51Speaker 1: in your life. I'll tell you one more brief story
- 1:00:53Speaker 1: if you want to. I think you'll like it. It's
- 1:00:55Speaker 1: a fucking belter rise. So six years ago, I was
- 1:01:00Speaker 1: at the gym with one of my best mates in
- 1:01:02Speaker 1: the world. We've been training partners for twenty years. His
- 1:01:04Speaker 1: name is Mark Lampard. He was a pro bodybuilder. He
- 1:01:08Speaker 1: looks and walks like a crab, right, so I call
- 1:01:10Speaker 1: him the crab. So he gets called he gets called yeah, yeah, yeah,
- 1:01:16Speaker 1: So we just called him the crab. Anyway, we're at
- 1:01:19Speaker 1: the gym. It was a Friday night, I think it
- 1:01:21Speaker 1: was November seventeen, Friday night, seventeen oh five. He was
- 1:01:29Speaker 1: doing so five oh five pm. He was doing a
- 1:01:31Speaker 1: set of chins. He did twenty chins. He came down
- 1:01:35Speaker 1: because he's a genius. He held his breath the whole time,
- 1:01:37Speaker 1: which is clearly not a good idea had I don't
- 1:01:41Speaker 1: know about a million milligrams of coffee that day. He'd
- 1:01:44Speaker 1: been working outside, he was dehydrated, and all of that
- 1:01:47Speaker 1: culminated in a cardiac arrest.
- 1:01:50Speaker 2: Wow.
- 1:01:50Speaker 1: So so he died in front of me at five
- 1:01:53Speaker 1: minutes past five, in between the cable crossovers, the cable crossovers,
- 1:01:58Speaker 1: and he fell on the floor and five kilos face down,
- 1:02:03Speaker 1: smashed his face, blood coming out of his mouth. I
- 1:02:05Speaker 1: won't get too graphic, but and within a very short
- 1:02:09Speaker 1: period and no heart rate like dead, like dead, flat
- 1:02:12Speaker 1: lined cardiac arrest. So I started working on him straight away.
- 1:02:21Speaker 1: He was face down, and it's funny what happens in
- 1:02:24Speaker 1: moments like that. So he was probably twenty twenty five
- 1:02:27Speaker 1: kilos heavier than me. I turned him over like he
- 1:02:30Speaker 1: was a toddler. I flipped him over. I don't know
- 1:02:33Speaker 1: how my lower back did that, because my lower back's
- 1:02:35Speaker 1: a bit dodgy. No pain, no anything. Flipped him over,
- 1:02:38Speaker 1: started working on him for straight away. Within twenty seconds.
- 1:02:44Speaker 1: He was dead for seventeen minutes. So he went off
- 1:02:47Speaker 1: line at seventeen oh five, came back online at seventeen
- 1:02:50Speaker 1: twenty two. I worked on him for eleven minutes before
- 1:02:52Speaker 1: the paramedics got there. They worked on him for another
- 1:02:55Speaker 1: six before he took a breath. Wow, And I know
- 1:02:59Speaker 1: this sounds dramatic, but this is just a story as
- 1:03:02Speaker 1: part of my life. Probably the best thing I've ever
- 1:03:04Speaker 1: done in my life, and I've done some cool things, right,
- 1:03:08Speaker 1: And I don't mean an no great I'm not saying
- 1:03:11Speaker 1: that at all. Because you get in a situation like
- 1:03:15Speaker 1: that where your best mate is fucking dead, and there's
- 1:03:20Speaker 1: some interesting conversations that go on in your head and
- 1:03:23Speaker 1: you're like Oh, if anything is ever going to give
- 1:03:29Speaker 1: me perspective about what actually matters in the context of
- 1:03:34Speaker 1: being a human, in the context of my life, Craig,
- 1:03:38Speaker 1: this is the fucking ultimate teaching moment. And I've done
- 1:03:45Speaker 1: lots of great things. I've spoken all over the world.
- 1:03:47Speaker 1: I've built businesses and money and blah blah blah blah.
- 1:03:51Speaker 1: Fucking none of it even comes close to being able
- 1:03:54Speaker 1: to be part of helping him live, you know. And
- 1:03:57Speaker 1: he's we still train. We're training together at four o'clock,
- 1:04:01Speaker 1: which is three and a half hours from now. It's
- 1:04:03Speaker 1: got a pacemaker, thankfully hasn't died lately. He is healthy
- 1:04:07Speaker 1: as fuck, you know. But it's just that's what it's about, mate.
- 1:04:11Speaker 1: It's about love. It's about looking after each other. It's
- 1:04:14Speaker 1: about being there. Like, to me, one of the greatest
- 1:04:17Speaker 1: gifts of my life, not his mine, is that I
- 1:04:21Speaker 1: could do that.
- 1:04:21Speaker 3: For him, brother, that's beautiful, and tell him alone from me,
- 1:04:27Speaker 3: I feel like I know him after that story. Yeah, wow,
- 1:04:31Speaker 3: it is. You've given him the greatest gift. But it's
- 1:04:35Speaker 3: almost selfish for you because you would have felt so
- 1:04:37Speaker 3: fucking good after doing that.
- 1:04:40Speaker 2: You know, mate. That's rough.
- 1:04:42Speaker 3: Tears to my eyes, beautiful story and thank you for sharing.
- 1:04:47Speaker 2: Just to close, I mean.
- 1:04:49Speaker 3: You've given us heaps of golden snippets there to help
- 1:04:52Speaker 3: people as it is. But for anybody out there who's
- 1:04:55Speaker 3: struggling in any form of mental you know, health crisis
- 1:04:59Speaker 3: at the moment, what would you what would you recommend,
- 1:05:01Speaker 3: what would you say? You know it would be a
- 1:05:05Speaker 3: priority that maybe could assist them in their dark times.
- 1:05:10Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, firstly, I know you don't know me whoever's
- 1:05:13Speaker 1: listening to this and struggling, but I'm sending you love.
- 1:05:18Speaker 1: I think, you know, I think sometimes it's about starting
- 1:05:23Speaker 1: when you're not ready. You know, we have this story
- 1:05:26Speaker 1: in our head. It's not the right time, it's not
- 1:05:28Speaker 1: the right moment. I'm this, I'm that, And it's like,
- 1:05:32Speaker 1: you know, sometimes it's in the middle of the discomfort
- 1:05:34Speaker 1: and the uncertainty and the unfamiliarity and the unknown that
- 1:05:37Speaker 1: we have to be brave. And as I say to
- 1:05:41Speaker 1: people all of the time, you know, courage can't operate
- 1:05:45Speaker 1: in the absence of fear, like courage only operates when
- 1:05:50Speaker 1: we're scared. And so if you're scared, I get it.
- 1:05:53Speaker 1: I'm scared too, and I'm not saying that to make
- 1:05:55Speaker 1: you feel good. I have fear about things constantly. I
- 1:06:01Speaker 1: worry about things. I don't over worry. But do I
- 1:06:04Speaker 1: ever worry? Yes? Do I ever get anxious? Yes? And
- 1:06:06Speaker 1: I just think, you know, if you're depressed, if you're sad,
- 1:06:10Speaker 1: if you're anxious, if you're lonely, if you feel like
- 1:06:12Speaker 1: no one cares, you're not broken, You're normal. Like that's human,
- 1:06:19Speaker 1: that's human, and you know, reach out to someone and
- 1:06:22Speaker 1: do something. I know it's hard, because you know, sometimes
- 1:06:26Speaker 1: it's what we do when no one's looking and no
- 1:06:28Speaker 1: one's cheering, and no one's helping. Sometimes it's what we
- 1:06:32Speaker 1: do in those moments that are truly transformative.
- 1:06:36Speaker 3: Right, great, great way to finish some real gold.
- 1:06:41Speaker 2: Look.
- 1:06:41Speaker 3: I really enjoy speaking to you. I really enjoy I
- 1:06:45Speaker 3: could converse with you all day. Let's let's continue, you know, talking.
- 1:06:51Speaker 3: I'm going to say, I'm going to hit you up
- 1:06:52Speaker 3: whether it's there, with an email after this, because I
- 1:06:54Speaker 3: definitely could do with some guidance on a few things
- 1:06:58Speaker 3: from somebody who's been there, done it, you know. And Yeah,
- 1:07:02Speaker 3: I think it was a beautiful conversation and hopefully some men,
- 1:07:06Speaker 3: some women, some people will get some real value from that,
- 1:07:08Speaker 3: So thank you, Craig.
- 1:07:09Speaker 1: Pleasure mate. We're friends now, so giddy up butter Cup.
- 1:07:14Speaker 2: Thanks mate. I have a great day you.
- 1:07:16Speaker 1: Too, buddy. Alrighty, team, there you have it. Me and
- 1:07:28Speaker 1: the young boy just having a chat around the peaks
- 1:07:32Speaker 1: and troughs and the ins and outs of the human experience.
- 1:07:35Speaker 1: I really enjoyed my time with him, young Ian. His
- 1:07:38Speaker 1: podcast is the Artistry of humanity. Good Man, I hope
- 1:07:42Speaker 1: you enjoyed it. I'll see you tomorrow at t YP Central.