Latest / Man In Your Corner with Shaun Tucker / Ep. 31 | Overcoming Pressure and Dad Guilt to Reclaim Your Path as a Founder Dad
Transcript
- Shaun: Welcome back to the reset. This is episode 31 with your host, Shaun Tucker. And today is all about pressure. So if you're feeling the pressure, be it financially, mentally, emotionally, whatever it is, like you're not doing enough at home, trying to help out, take care of the kids, or you feel like you're not doing enough and you're just feeling so much pressure. Maybe your business is not doing as well as it should be and you're feeling this immense pressure to find the next sale, find the next client, which puts on this both external pressure and the thing that I wanna really focus on today is that internal pressure that's created and what to do and how you can deal with it. We create our own pressure. We are the ones who can change it. We are the only ones who can perceive it differently. And one of the things that I like to do ⁓ down what are the things that are causing me so much stressor. Stressure Pressure or stress. Maybe that's a new word. Stressure ⁓ and pressure all at the same time. This is one of the things that. if it gets out of control and you're feeling out of control, meaning that pressure that you put on yourself is just too high. This also applies to athletes and people at work, people doing and trying to hit KPIs or it's basically, basically comes down to being able to perform. And in this episode, you're gonna learn some strategies to not only overcome it, but if you're feeling like the pressure is too much and all you wanna do is quit or do nothing, then maybe there's something in this episode that will help you through what you're going through. I want to relate this back to a time in my life where I was actually going through university. So university was an interesting time for me because I have tried. What I mean by tried is I have three degrees to my name and only one of them was finished. So I started three degrees but only one finished and you can see this one on my board on my background here. When I finished high school, I felt this enormous pressure. And if you have kids around 18, 17 years old, going through their ATAR and getting their VCE or whatever it is, or maybe it's something else recognized where you are. I remember having this immense pressure to be able to compete against my brothers. To be able to do better than my brothers. And I'm one of six kids like I mentioned in previous episode. About four brothers and a sister. And I'm lucky number four in that line. So when it came down to well year 12 and performing to get the best possible score I could. I I a score of 73.25 and I cried. I cried because I was disappointed in my result. I thought that this meant I wouldn't get into university, I wouldn't be able to follow in the footsteps of my brothers and be able to show the world or my parents that I'm good enough to play at the same game that they're playing or a similar game. And so then after that ordeal, ⁓ my dad helped me through that episode of feeling like I disappointed the world and feeling like I disappointed my parents, even though all they ever wanted was for us to be happy within ourselves and look, if we got good grades, fantastic, but it wasn't, it wasn't that we had to get the good grades. They're happy with whatever we choose to do in life, which is very rare. But I still felt this obligation to try and prove and try and beat my brothers. And two of them, very, very smart men, easily surpassed. They completed year 12 before me, and one of them got a score in the 90s, the other one got a score in the high 80s. So my score felt like it was just nowhere near theirs. And so when it came to choosing universities, I was fortunate enough to get into Monash University, and I was fortunate enough to get into mathematics, because... The pathway that I wanted or perceived to want was similar to what my brother was studying, which was mechatronics engineering at Monash. I thought, this sounds really cool. I would love to work out how electrical engineering and mechanical engineering merge to work on things like robotics. I'd love to do that. Also, thought. And so university comes along and I moved into a place where I wasn't on the residential services. I moved in with my older brothers who were studying at the same university. And it got to a point where I was going to go into classes initially. When I first went to my first few classes, I felt so lost and so disoriented. I didn't really. have a proper orientation because I thought, ⁓ my brothers did it, I'll be able to do it similar to them. And so I ended up not showing up to classes and wasn't because I didn't want to, it was because I literally had no motivation. I couldn't even wake up in my bed like early enough to get to time on classes. So something was going wrong and I just didn't know what it was. I was so lost and disoriented. I just had no idea, but something within myself was adamant that it wanted to stay at university. So the scores that I got. I failed pretty much. I got a warning letter from Monash saying, you've failed more than 50 % of your classes. You're going to have to either rebuttal, so you can go in second year, but you got to make sure you pick up your grades. So I into second year and same thing happened. Yeah, this is probably the year that I had my kind of rude awakening when it came to alcohol and People turn to substances when they are quite lost and purposeless in life. just putting that out there, ⁓ this may or may not be you, but yeah, I guess I'm just speaking to an older, former version of myself. And so then I was like, okay, I got kicked out officially, which yeah, not too many students can say they've been kicked out of Monash for failing. ⁓ I can. And then I decided because, you know, one of the other things that I was pretty good at in high school was language. I studied Japanese. I was pretty good at English. I'm like, all right, let's go and study language. So went to. Eakin University and started studying Chinese. Got some credit for prior learning, jumped into pretty much skipped first year and yeah straight into second year. Same thing happened except this time I did the first semester I didn't really do too well I did better than when I was at Monash. Second semester I literally could not handle it I could not handle this pressure that I was putting on myself to and get a degree that I didn't want. I just literally burst into tears and didn't know what to do. Fortunately at this time I met my girlfriend then at the time and yeah my I was on the phone to my mum saying I'm so devastated because one part of me knows that I should you know complete and get the degree because I know that my girlfriend's family, they ⁓ value tertiary education, so that will tick the box off. But I just can't, I can't do this degree. Like I just don't want to do it. Finally, I made the decision that I didn't want to do it anymore. Cause I was failing again anyway. This was midway through the semester. Just wasn't showing up to class, wasn't feeling, wasn't feeling it. And at this point I was starting to get into the gym, I was studying. find my passion so there was this part of me that was like maybe you should pursue going to be a personal trainer. ⁓ So what happened was I remember being on one side of the door in my room I locked myself in talking to my mom saying I'm so ashamed to face my girlfriend right now I don't want to say that I'm quitting university. Anyways, opened the door after my mum convinced me. She's like, she loves you Sean, why are you being stupid? Just open the door. Open the door. My mum's a very wise woman. Open the door and... My girlfriend just, she comforted me. She held me safely and I just burst into tears more and more. And then settled the emotions and she took me up to Olinda and we went to a dessert place and pretty much just took it one step at a time. I decided that I wanted to become a personal trainer. Still know that I knew that I wanted to go to university. and I went to study my PT certs and then applied at a different university. I applied at the same university my girlfriend ⁓ was going to because she had somewhat ⁓ similar experience to me with universities that just didn't really care. and got into health science, studied health science and there was an opportunity to study in Germany for a year. Anyway, long story short, I found my passion. I started working with clients back in 2017 after I finished my degree. I then got married to that girlfriend who is now my wife and we have a beautiful two year old daughter. So anyway, long story short, it's a... The universe works in mysterious ways and if you're not a believer of life supporting you and helping you get what you want, well, I don't know what you believe in but it's not my job to convince you that this is the way that life works for me. And yeah, if you found this story somewhat inspiring or connected and relative to what you're going through, just know that There's always something bigger happening for you. It's just we can't always see it in the moment. So appreciate you for tuning in today and if you found this episode helpful I'd love for you to share it with just one person. Thank you so much and I'll see you in tomorrow's episode.