Latest / The You Project / #2217 Kicking Down The Vulnerability Door - Christian O'Connell
Transcript
- 0:00Speaker 1: G'day team. It's the Bloody You Project. Of course it is.
- 0:02Speaker 1: What else would it be? Who else would it be
- 0:04Speaker 1: but me? Fatty Harps just coming at you live. Not live.
- 0:08Speaker 1: It's live at the minute, but you'll hear the recorded version.
- 0:12Speaker 1: I'm pretty excited because we've got a big deal. How
- 0:15Speaker 1: do I know he's a big deal? He said to
- 0:16Speaker 1: me before we were chatting, I'm a big deal. So
- 0:19Speaker 1: announce me like that. Completely not true. Christian O'Connell, are
- 0:23Speaker 1: you a big deal or not really?
- 0:25Speaker 2: I don't think anyone's that big a deal. I've interviewed
- 0:27Speaker 2: big deals. I've met big deals and they're interesting people.
- 0:31Speaker 2: I'm yet to meet the real big deal. I don't
- 0:35Speaker 2: think it helps ourselves even if you were a big
- 0:37Speaker 2: deal or to think you're a big deal. I don't
- 0:39Speaker 2: think the world needs more people that think they're big deals.
- 0:42Speaker 2: The people that think they're big deals are screwing up
- 0:44Speaker 2: the world and the people around them.
- 0:47Speaker 1: Wow, you just right out of the gate some wisdom
- 0:49Speaker 1: and some insight.
- 0:50Speaker 2: Yeah, I like that. It's pretty good, isn't it?
- 0:51Speaker 1: Yeah, fuck yeah. That's good. Keep going. Okay, Eddie.
- 0:54Speaker 2: I am.
- 0:55Speaker 1: How is that? I was thinking before, so your new book,
- 0:58Speaker 1: and we're not here to plug that, but we'll plug
- 1:00Speaker 1: it anyway. We'll talk about it mainly because I think
- 1:04Speaker 1: it's a fascinating title and area and insight into the
- 1:09Speaker 1: human experience. That's great. This separation between you, the bloke, Christian,
- 1:15Speaker 1: the bloke, Christian, the dad, Christian, the husband and thinker
- 1:18Speaker 1: and the bloke who has all his own bullshit and
- 1:20Speaker 1: issues like all of us. And then Christian, the personality,
- 1:26Speaker 1: the persona. And my insight into you for what it's
- 1:29Speaker 1: worth is that you are someone who has managed to
- 1:33Speaker 1: do high level media work. without the persona bit. Like
- 1:38Speaker 1: it just seems like talking to you before the show,
- 1:41Speaker 1: talking to you now, listening to you on radio, seems
- 1:44Speaker 1: like there's a very small gap. I'm sure there's a gap,
- 1:47Speaker 1: but between almost private you and public you, it almost
- 1:51Speaker 1: seems one and the same.
- 1:54Speaker 2: I think that shortening that gap has been my... mission
- 2:00Speaker 2: and that's been my path to authenticity and I think
- 2:03Speaker 2: that's the same for everybody I think you know to
- 2:05Speaker 2: get out of our To get out of childhood and
- 2:08Speaker 2: teenage years, we all have to adopt a persona. That's
- 2:10Speaker 2: the only way you can do it. It's hard getting
- 2:12Speaker 2: out of the teenage world, getting into the real world.
- 2:14Speaker 2: It's harder than launching a rocket, getting that terminal velocity
- 2:18Speaker 2: to really get out into the real world and then
- 2:20Speaker 2: suddenly confronted with the real world. You realize, oh, it
- 2:24Speaker 2: doesn't care about my dreams and my vision board.
- 2:27Speaker 1: No.
- 2:27Speaker 2: You've got to have your way with the world, not
- 2:30Speaker 2: the world with you. And so the world will crush
- 2:32Speaker 2: you a million times over the course of your life.
- 2:34Speaker 2: And so I think everybody has to adopt a persona
- 2:37Speaker 2: to survive your 20s and 30s. It's needed. And then
- 2:42Speaker 2: I think as you get older, you start to realize,
- 2:44Speaker 2: I certainly did. I got into my 40s and I
- 2:47Speaker 2: don't know how old you are, Craig, but I found
- 2:49Speaker 2: personally when I got into my 40s, the best way
- 2:51Speaker 2: I could sum it up is that's when shit gets real.
- 2:54Speaker 2: And all these defense mechanisms. All these successes you want
- 2:59Speaker 2: to build in your life, they will all be challenged
- 3:02Speaker 2: and they will all be kind of like rocked to
- 3:04Speaker 2: the foundation. They were for me. I look back now
- 3:07Speaker 2: and that was only for a good thing. I didn't
- 3:09Speaker 2: realize how much I was living in a persona, actually.
- 3:11Speaker 2: I built an act. And it was a successful act.
- 3:15Speaker 2: But eventually, my mid-40s, I was feeling quite trapped and
- 3:17Speaker 2: constricted in it. And I really felt this more because
- 3:20Speaker 2: as my daughters were getting a bit older and entering
- 3:23Speaker 2: their teenage years, They would say, I heard you saying
- 3:26Speaker 2: this on the radio, but you said this to us.
- 3:28Speaker 2: And so they were getting confused about who I really was.
- 3:32Speaker 2: And I didn't like that. And so, yeah, I really
- 3:35Speaker 2: felt there was too much of a distance then between
- 3:39Speaker 2: what I really felt, what I really said. And I
- 3:43Speaker 2: just didn't want to become an avatar. And there are
- 3:46Speaker 2: a lot of people in my industry who are frozen
- 3:48Speaker 2: into an act. I just didn't want to be, I
- 3:51Speaker 2: didn't want that. And so I guess a very overreaction
- 3:54Speaker 2: crate to do that is to move to the other
- 3:56Speaker 2: side of the world and Australia. You don't need to
- 3:59Speaker 2: do that. In fact, don't do that, okay? You don't
- 4:02Speaker 2: need to move to the other side of the world.
- 4:03Speaker 2: There's far more calmer, smaller ways to do it. But
- 4:06Speaker 2: that was essentially what moving to Australia and starting again
- 4:11Speaker 2: in Australian radio after 20 years in the UK, that's
- 4:14Speaker 2: what that opportunity gave me. It was a radical stripping
- 4:18Speaker 2: away and moving more towards– shortening that gap and now
- 4:23Speaker 2: it's really interesting years ago when i started in radio
- 4:26Speaker 2: in 1998 i was obsessed with only one thing my
- 4:29Speaker 2: only metric was being the funniest person on the dial
- 4:32Speaker 2: that was it and i worked everything was about that
- 4:34Speaker 2: and um i achieved that now it's so funny my
- 4:38Speaker 2: relationship with what i do is completely different it means
- 4:40Speaker 2: more to me when people say you're real or when
- 4:43Speaker 2: they meet me they go i'm so glad uh you're
- 4:46Speaker 2: just like how you are on the radio um I,
- 4:49Speaker 2: it means the world to me. Authenticity means far more
- 4:52Speaker 2: now than like being, just being like a heat seeker
- 4:55Speaker 2: for what, where's the next funny, where's the joke, where's
- 4:56Speaker 2: the joke. So the fact that you said that, that
- 5:00Speaker 2: means the most to me. I think my favorite people
- 5:02Speaker 2: who are friends and even the people, my peers who
- 5:05Speaker 2: I really respect, they have this comfortableness. They just move
- 5:10Speaker 2: through life and their day to day. They're not, I
- 5:12Speaker 2: think a lot of us, I was certainly like this
- 5:14Speaker 2: for a lot of my life, almost like a shapeshifter,
- 5:17Speaker 2: quite a chameleon. how I would speak in certain situations
- 5:20Speaker 2: to try and get approval, try and get validation from people.
- 5:24Speaker 2: Then afterwards, I'd hate myself for feeling like that. I'd
- 5:27Speaker 2: feel exhausted for trying to keep up this act. And
- 5:30Speaker 2: I was performing my life, really. And so now there's very,
- 5:34Speaker 2: very little of that. And I'm so much happier.
- 5:38Speaker 1: Yeah, beautiful. I think when we're growing up, we're taught
- 5:43Speaker 1: and told and trained to think that success is something external.
- 5:48Speaker 1: Like it's about what you have, what you do, what
- 5:49Speaker 1: people think you, your brand, your bank balance, your dough,
- 5:53Speaker 1: your car, your, your part, whatever. And for me, that was,
- 5:59Speaker 1: that was my model. It's like, it's all about getting stuff,
- 6:02Speaker 1: owning stuff, doing stuff, getting recognition, climbing the whatever ladder.
- 6:07Speaker 1: I got to a point when I was about 32
- 6:09Speaker 1: where things were going wrong. Well, from the outside looking in,
- 6:12Speaker 1: I was successful, but the inside out I felt shit,
- 6:17Speaker 1: like physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually bankrupt. And people did
- 6:25Speaker 1: not know that. And it was because for me anyway,
- 6:27Speaker 1: I was trying to resolve internal stuff with external stuff.
- 6:32Speaker 1: which is why we keep moving the goalposts. You know,
- 6:35Speaker 1: it's like, well, once I get there, I'm good. And
- 6:38Speaker 1: then we get there and we go, actually, I'm not good.
- 6:40Speaker 1: I must be on the wrong mountain. It must be
- 6:43Speaker 1: that mountain over there.
- 6:44Speaker 2: Yeah, it's totally that. If that, then this. You know,
- 6:50Speaker 2: if you get somewhere else, think fails somewhere else or
- 6:54Speaker 2: achieve something else, then you'll be happy. And you're right,
- 6:57Speaker 2: you get it. And it's kind of like with Donald's.
- 7:00Speaker 2: it's like they're dirty calories. It doesn't nourish you for
- 7:05Speaker 2: more than 10 minutes. And you're like, oh, I still
- 7:07Speaker 2: feel the same unease and a bit of emptiness inside.
- 7:12Speaker 2: It isn't what I thought it would be. And then
- 7:14Speaker 2: you're like, well, what do I do now? What next?
- 7:17Speaker 2: This was the game. We've been raised to play it
- 7:19Speaker 2: like this. And yet I feel really, I've achieved, and
- 7:23Speaker 2: yet internally, in terms of my happiness, I feel really unfulfilled.
- 7:27Speaker 2: And it's actually frightening, isn't it? Because you think, well,
- 7:30Speaker 2: what do I do then?
- 7:31Speaker 1: Yeah.
- 7:32Speaker 2: Yeah.
- 7:33Speaker 1: I guess the dichotomy is on the one hand, you've
- 7:35Speaker 1: got to do stuff. You've got to have a business
- 7:38Speaker 1: or a job. You've got to make dough. You've got
- 7:39Speaker 1: to pay bills. You've got to do all the practical stuff.
- 7:42Speaker 1: But in the middle of all of that, there's still this, well,
- 7:45Speaker 1: for many people, there's still this disconnect. There's still this hole.
- 7:48Speaker 1: There's still this sadness or anxiety or overwhelm or whatever
- 7:54Speaker 1: it is, despite the fact that from the outside looking in,
- 7:57Speaker 1: it's all shiny for some people anyway. Getting to the
- 8:01Speaker 1: point where you go, well, which is a real self-awareness moment.
- 8:06Speaker 1: I've got all the things or a version of all
- 8:07Speaker 1: of the things that I wanted, but I actually feel worse.
- 8:12Speaker 1: What is that about? What is that about? Where does
- 8:16Speaker 1: fulfillment Where does calm live? Where does contentment live? Like,
- 8:22Speaker 1: what is that? Does it correlate with all my shit
- 8:25Speaker 1: or not? You know, so for me, trying to go
- 8:28Speaker 1: on that psychological, emotional, spiritual, call it whatever you want,
- 8:32Speaker 1: that kind of journey of trying to figure out who
- 8:35Speaker 1: I am, like beyond my stuff, like it's consciousness is
- 8:39Speaker 1: almost everything. The beginning of consciousness is recognizing your lack
- 8:44Speaker 1: of consciousness because we're just so groundhog day. We do
- 8:47Speaker 1: what we did yesterday, day before, week before, month before.
- 8:51Speaker 1: You know, so.
- 8:53Speaker 2: Many people I talk to. It's so much, isn't it,
- 8:55Speaker 2: being alive right now, right? It's overwhelming. We need these
- 8:58Speaker 2: automatic programs. We just do. But what happens is they
- 9:01Speaker 2: are running us. And so that's why I called the
- 9:04Speaker 2: book Unscript, because I was trying to think of a
- 9:06Speaker 2: way that I could explain to people. Because most books
- 9:10Speaker 2: about storytelling and speaking, they always just focus on the
- 9:13Speaker 2: low-hanging fruit. eye contact, where to put your hands, and
- 9:17Speaker 2: that kind of bullshit is easy. You teach someone that,
- 9:20Speaker 2: and yet suddenly someone says, hey, quickly, can you just
- 9:23Speaker 2: get up and say a few words at a family
- 9:25Speaker 2: gathering or take this meeting? And they fall to pieces.
- 9:28Speaker 2: And so I was like, until you really look at
- 9:29Speaker 2: the root causes of why in certain situations speaking is hard,
- 9:34Speaker 2: because everyone has how to speak. It's a flow process.
- 9:36Speaker 2: But in certain situations... suddenly an old story or how
- 9:41Speaker 2: you feel about yourself in that moment comes up and
- 9:44Speaker 2: that's what creates the disconnection and blocks. And so the
- 9:47Speaker 2: easiest way I could explain it was about the scripts
- 9:49Speaker 2: we have. And if we're not aware of them, they're
- 9:51Speaker 2: running every single interaction you have. Most of them are
- 9:54Speaker 2: installed at childhood, you know, through schooling. And then that's
- 9:58Speaker 2: why the book is unscripted. It's to actually delete, get
- 10:02Speaker 2: rid of those scripts that aren't serving you anymore. They're
- 10:05Speaker 2: actually creating a harder connection for you. They're leading to disconnection.
- 10:10Speaker 2: And so it took me a long time. I used
- 10:11Speaker 2: to think, Craig, that the really good radio shows were
- 10:13Speaker 2: about preparation. And they weren't. They were about presence. You know,
- 10:19Speaker 2: I'm at my best. And I think it's the same
- 10:21Speaker 2: for any job or whether you're with your family and friends.
- 10:24Speaker 2: The more present you are, the more internally grounded, the
- 10:28Speaker 2: more regulated, the more centered you are, the more fully
- 10:32Speaker 2: resourced you are to your own genius, your wisdom, creativity,
- 10:35Speaker 2: problem solving, sense of humor, playfulness. I think, yeah, presence
- 10:43Speaker 2: is the key to all of it for a happy life.
- 10:47Speaker 1: It's so interesting the way that like our thinking, our beliefs,
- 10:51Speaker 1: our ideas, as you said, you're used to another word,
- 10:54Speaker 1: but I use the word programming, conditioning, whatever it is.
- 10:58Speaker 1: You kind of, when you're a kid, you're told who
- 11:00Speaker 1: you are and how you are and what you are
- 11:02Speaker 1: to an extent. And then you wake up one day, hopefully,
- 11:05Speaker 1: and you're whatever, 14, 18, 24, 61, whatever. And you
- 11:11Speaker 1: realize that you've been living a script as your book explores. Um,
- 11:17Speaker 1: And you're being who people told you to be. Even
- 11:21Speaker 1: things like questioning, is this my belief or is this
- 11:25Speaker 1: dad's belief? Or is this my church's belief or my culture's? Like,
- 11:29Speaker 1: why do I think this thing? Where did it come from?
- 11:32Speaker 1: Did I choose it? Did I choose this belief or
- 11:36Speaker 1: did it choose me? And what's the byproduct of that?
- 11:40Speaker 1: Have I ever thought critically about that? Because, you know,
- 11:43Speaker 1: within the context of groups, whatever the group is, whether
- 11:46Speaker 1: it's a family group or a social group or a
- 11:48Speaker 1: religious group, part of you feels obligated to be that
- 11:54Speaker 1: or live that or because then people, then there's a
- 11:57Speaker 1: chance of if I don't think like everyone else in
- 12:00Speaker 1: my echo chamber, I'm going to be rejected or disconnected
- 12:04Speaker 1: or unloved. So it's very hard to be authentically you
- 12:10Speaker 1: sometimes when you feel compelled to be what everyone wants
- 12:15Speaker 1: you to be.
- 12:15Speaker 2: Yeah, what you've talked about there, I think that fear...
- 12:21Speaker 2: of speaking up and speaking out and being judged and excluded,
- 12:25Speaker 2: that's a primal thing. That comes from really, our survival
- 12:28Speaker 2: was about fitting in with the tribe. Because actually, if
- 12:31Speaker 2: you got kicked out of the tribe, or we spoke
- 12:32Speaker 2: out of turn, or maybe challenged a leader, or you
- 12:34Speaker 2: were seen as weak then, and you were thrown out
- 12:37Speaker 2: of the tribe, you'd probably die. So literally, I think
- 12:39Speaker 2: that's where we get the language, I died on my
- 12:40Speaker 2: backside up there. I think it really does come, that's
- 12:43Speaker 2: what we get frightened of. speaking up and not just
- 12:46Speaker 2: public speaking. I define public speaking as any time there's
- 12:49Speaker 2: more than two people. And so that can be in
- 12:51Speaker 2: a team meeting at work or on Zoom or a
- 12:54Speaker 2: Microsoft Teams thing. And so that fear is very real.
- 12:57Speaker 2: It's hardwired into us, you know, that programming to fit in.
- 13:02Speaker 2: And then it's also about validation and approval. So it's
- 13:05Speaker 2: very easy for people to say, you should be more vulnerable,
- 13:08Speaker 2: you know, and so in vulnerability is important. Vulnerability is
- 13:11Speaker 2: one of those words that some people get kind of
- 13:12Speaker 2: a bit irritated by these days. So I I have
- 13:15Speaker 2: a different understanding of it. For me, it's more about,
- 13:17Speaker 2: for me, same thing is being undefended. Anytime I feel
- 13:21Speaker 2: that I'm defending some part of myself, I'm always like,
- 13:25Speaker 2: all right, just whose voice is this? Is this dad?
- 13:28Speaker 2: Is this a script from childhood where, you know, suddenly
- 13:32Speaker 2: you're 10 and the teacher calls you out about a
- 13:34Speaker 2: school project and you're feeling that, okay, you're not 10,
- 13:36Speaker 2: you're 53. you are running your own team meeting, you
- 13:40Speaker 2: can dial down the overreaction right now. Just go, okay, sorry, guys,
- 13:44Speaker 2: I'm getting a little bit hot here. Let's go again.
- 13:46Speaker 2: I was just getting a bit defensive there. So, you know,
- 13:49Speaker 2: and I think when we're thinking about, should I say
- 13:52Speaker 2: this or should I share this story? And, oh, I
- 13:55Speaker 2: don't want to say that. People might judge me. Those
- 13:57Speaker 2: are the best stories. You know, the more, I think
- 14:00Speaker 2: the more undefended I am, the more I'm truly myself.
- 14:05Speaker 2: What is it I'm actually defending as well? What is
- 14:07Speaker 2: it you're defending? That's a great question sometimes to ask yourself.
- 14:13Speaker 2: And you can really track that down to the where,
- 14:17Speaker 2: keep going one click deeper, one click deeper. It often
- 14:20Speaker 2: just goes back to childhood or old stories.
- 14:24Speaker 1: When I first started research for my doctorate, which is
- 14:27Speaker 1: loosely around social intelligence and self-awareness. I was trying to
- 14:33Speaker 1: figure out when did they first start researching this? And
- 14:37Speaker 1: I'm sure it's earlier as well, but Socrates said 2,500
- 14:41Speaker 1: years ago, to know thyself is the beginning of wisdom,
- 14:44Speaker 1: which I'm sure you know. But it's like trying to
- 14:48Speaker 1: figure out who I am genuinely apart from what I've
- 14:54Speaker 1: been told and who I've been told I am and
- 14:56Speaker 1: trying to figure out my own identity because for me,
- 15:02Speaker 1: I grew up as a fat kid who became a
- 15:04Speaker 1: fit kid, fat kid, isolated, neglected, dejected, rejected, all that shit.
- 15:12Speaker 1: And then I got in really good shape. Then all
- 15:14Speaker 1: of a sudden accepted, connected, valued, seen. So all of
- 15:19Speaker 1: a sudden I was a body. Oh, like, and my
- 15:22Speaker 1: self-worth and my self-esteem and my identity was tied into
- 15:27Speaker 1: this kid that was fucking jacked and he could, you know,
- 15:31Speaker 1: I was strong and fit and I lifted weights and
- 15:33Speaker 1: I was lean and, and for a long time, more
- 15:36Speaker 1: than I would like to admit, but I told you
- 15:39Speaker 1: I set up gyms and my first job out of
- 15:42Speaker 1: school was in a gym. So I essentially was a
- 15:46Speaker 1: body with no identity because my body was my identity.
- 15:49Speaker 1: I got my entire sense of self-worth through what people
- 15:53Speaker 1: thought of how I looked. And that's embarrassing, but well,
- 15:58Speaker 1: a large proportion of it. And trying to figure out
- 16:01Speaker 1: Who am I beyond my brand or my body or
- 16:04Speaker 1: my pretty or handsome face or my academic achievements or
- 16:10Speaker 1: my bank balance or my status? Trying to figure out
- 16:14Speaker 1: who you are beyond what you're not, especially, I love
- 16:18Speaker 1: the second part of your title, the radical act of
- 16:20Speaker 1: being yourself. How do we move closer towards that awareness?
- 16:24Speaker 1: How do we figure out who the fuck we are?
- 16:27Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, that Socrates quote sums up, doesn't it?
- 16:30Speaker 2: You know, it's that an old saying as well, to
- 16:33Speaker 2: thyself be true. It's probably like those two sort of phrases,
- 16:37Speaker 2: those truest things in our lives, aren't they? And one
- 16:39Speaker 2: thing I want to say as well as Craig, as
- 16:40Speaker 2: you were like, I can still hear there's a bit
- 16:42Speaker 2: of shame and judgment about that. I mean, what else,
- 16:46Speaker 2: you know, what else can we do sometimes in life?
- 16:48Speaker 2: We need these identities. It's really hard being us. It's overwhelming.
- 16:52Speaker 2: We don't know any different. We're not taught any alternative ways.
- 16:56Speaker 2: That's the best thing we've got sometimes is to have
- 16:59Speaker 2: an identity. And for a while, they work. They keep
- 17:01Speaker 2: us safe. They help us. They can provide safety and
- 17:05Speaker 2: a good living for ourselves and those around us. So
- 17:07Speaker 2: I would have more compassion to that. Good on you.
- 17:11Speaker 2: You really worked hard to try and make a better
- 17:13Speaker 2: life for yourself. And we don't know then what we're doing, really.
- 17:19Speaker 2: We need these identities. And after a while, if we're
- 17:22Speaker 2: lucky enough, we do enough inner work, we realize that
- 17:24Speaker 2: actually We don't quite need such a strong identity. And
- 17:30Speaker 2: then when I moved to Australia, I didn't realize how
- 17:33Speaker 2: much of an identity I had around being the number
- 17:35Speaker 2: one guy. I was the number one guy in the UK.
- 17:38Speaker 2: I was on a show of two and a half
- 17:39Speaker 2: million listeners. I won over 25 awards. And I just
- 17:43Speaker 2: hadn't realized until I gave it all away. And then
- 17:48Speaker 2: suddenly I was here, unknown, uninvited, and a foreigner. And
- 17:53Speaker 2: I was desperate to get that identity back. I was like, oh, no, actually,
- 17:57Speaker 2: can I have some of it back? And it was,
- 17:59Speaker 2: I don't know, you said you want to walk away
- 18:00Speaker 2: from it. You walk away. And it was like, oh.
- 18:04Speaker 2: But what it gave me was this, I learned more
- 18:07Speaker 2: really about authenticity and connection that way. And to your
- 18:11Speaker 2: question about how do we move closer to the truth
- 18:12Speaker 2: of who we are. For me, it's like, those are
- 18:15Speaker 2: really big questions now. So my daughters are 22 and 19.
- 18:20Speaker 2: They're being overwhelmed by this question of like, what's my purpose?
- 18:22Speaker 2: How am I going to know my purpose? I tell you,
- 18:24Speaker 2: when I was 19 and 22, my purpose was to
- 18:27Speaker 2: go down the pub and try and meet a girlfriend.
- 18:30Speaker 2: That was my purpose, right? Try and get earned money
- 18:33Speaker 2: to go and see bands, buy clothes. That was my purpose, okay?
- 18:37Speaker 2: I think it's overwhelming for everyone now, constantly streaming meaning, purpose.
- 18:42Speaker 2: For me, I think it's more helpful to follow the energy.
- 18:45Speaker 2: What lights you up? What excites you? You know, when
- 18:48Speaker 2: I thought about Australia, it just, I couldn't explain it
- 18:51Speaker 2: to people. They thought it was, you know, me and
- 18:53Speaker 2: my wife were mid-40s. They thought you're too old to
- 18:55Speaker 2: have a gap year. And, you know, so people are like,
- 18:59Speaker 2: are you having a midlife crisis? You know, now I
- 19:01Speaker 2: think it's a midlife correction. And so, but I followed
- 19:05Speaker 2: the energy. There was like this, I need to move
- 19:08Speaker 2: to Australia. I couldn't explain. We didn't know anyone here.
- 19:11Speaker 2: There was no rational explanation. But in terms of following
- 19:15Speaker 2: the energy, And often I think a lot of the
- 19:18Speaker 2: answers about who we are underneath who we were told
- 19:24Speaker 2: we should be and how we should speak is actually
- 19:27Speaker 2: the clues are often there in childhood. Before all these layers,
- 19:30Speaker 2: all these scripts are put on. When I was a kid.
- 19:33Speaker 2: I loved words. I love storytelling. I was obsessed with
- 19:37Speaker 2: storytelling and being funny. I love making mom and dad
- 19:41Speaker 2: laugh when I was at family get togethers. I want
- 19:43Speaker 2: to make my grandparents laugh. I just saw, I grew
- 19:47Speaker 2: up in a working class background, so there wasn't a
- 19:49Speaker 2: lot of money, but what I did see was something
- 19:51Speaker 2: that was freely available, which was storytelling and joke-telling. And
- 19:56Speaker 2: in my family, on my dad's side, all Irish, incredible,
- 20:00Speaker 2: you know, part of a big tradition of storytellers. But,
- 20:03Speaker 2: you know, if I'm telling a story to my dad,
- 20:05Speaker 2: you know, or his side of the family, if you're
- 20:08Speaker 2: taking your time or stumbling or it's waffling on, my
- 20:10Speaker 2: dad would be on you. You know, it was a
- 20:13Speaker 2: tough crowd. And so I learned very on how to
- 20:15Speaker 2: tell stories because otherwise dad would just go, it's boring.
- 20:18Speaker 2: Where's this going, son? You know, and so I learned
- 20:21Speaker 2: a lot about, you know, so when I'm working with
- 20:24Speaker 2: people and I don't know who I am, first thing
- 20:27Speaker 2: is like, tell me about childhood. You know, most people
- 20:29Speaker 2: go and tell you about the tough times and like, hey,
- 20:32Speaker 2: we get the tough times. Tell me about the good
- 20:34Speaker 2: times then. What did you like to do as a kid?
- 20:37Speaker 2: There are often seeds there, right? It might not be
- 20:40Speaker 2: the exact thing, but there's some foundational seeding in us
- 20:45Speaker 2: at quite a young age of actually later on, you know,
- 20:48Speaker 2: when you look back and you go, oh, wow, there
- 20:50Speaker 2: was something there. As a kid, I used to read
- 20:53Speaker 2: as a teenager, I was obsessed with spirituality. There was
- 20:56Speaker 2: no one in my family like that. People used to
- 20:58Speaker 2: laugh at me. I was just very interested in like,
- 21:01Speaker 2: you know, the spirit world and spirituality and energy. And
- 21:04Speaker 2: I learned about Tai Chi and acupuncture. I was just
- 21:07Speaker 2: a teenage kid in a working class background. My mom
- 21:09Speaker 2: was a nurse. My dad worked in a car factory
- 21:12Speaker 2: when cars were made not by robots, by people banging
- 21:15Speaker 2: bits of metal. And so where did that all come from?
- 21:18Speaker 2: I would read books about leadership when I was 15, okay?
- 21:22Speaker 2: I was 15-year-old kid at school. And my mates used
- 21:25Speaker 2: to laugh at me. But again, I would just go
- 21:27Speaker 2: to the library and like, why is this book demanding
- 21:31Speaker 2: that I take it? I'd read about how to give presentations, right?
- 21:35Speaker 2: You know, make notes. But I was just like, I
- 21:37Speaker 2: don't know. Now I look back and I'm like, wow,
- 21:41Speaker 2: those early seeds were there. And so I think often
- 21:43Speaker 2: the answers are in childhood. But for me, it's like,
- 21:46Speaker 2: It's following the energy, you know. And you know a
- 21:50Speaker 2: lot of people say, you know, what would you do
- 21:52Speaker 2: if you couldn't fail? I prefer the reframe of that,
- 21:55Speaker 2: of what would you do if you could fail? Because actually,
- 21:58Speaker 2: it was more likely that I was going to fail
- 22:01Speaker 2: coming the other side of the world and starting again
- 22:03Speaker 2: in radio here. Breakfast Radio in Australia is the most
- 22:06Speaker 2: competitive in the world as well. Shows get fired within
- 22:09Speaker 2: a couple of months of bad ratings. That easily could
- 22:11Speaker 2: have been me. But I still was determined to give
- 22:14Speaker 2: it a go. And like, I just... I'm just following
- 22:17Speaker 2: the energy. He says, come here. I've got no idea
- 22:20Speaker 2: if it's going to work. People kept saying, how are
- 22:22Speaker 2: you going to make it work? And I was like,
- 22:24Speaker 2: I don't know. I don't have. I lied to the
- 22:26Speaker 2: people hiring me. I said I had a three-year plan
- 22:30Speaker 2: and a strategy. And I didn't. They just needed to
- 22:33Speaker 2: know that I had that. I didn't. How could you?
- 22:37Speaker 2: you know, I'm speaking to crazy Australians on the radio
- 22:39Speaker 2: and you're English and people are like, who the hell
- 22:41Speaker 2: are you? No scan retune. Um, so yeah, I think
- 22:45Speaker 2: the most important thing in our life is what you
- 22:47Speaker 2: said at the beginning of it. It's getting closer to
- 22:50Speaker 2: the truth of who we really are. And that's a
- 22:53Speaker 2: big brain question. It's not something you answer up here.
- 22:57Speaker 2: It's something you answer in here. And that is, I
- 23:00Speaker 2: think our life, our lives are always talking to us,
- 23:03Speaker 2: but we just don't slow down enough to really hear
- 23:06Speaker 2: what it's saying. Sometimes our life is calling to us
- 23:08Speaker 2: when we're in trouble. In my early 40s, I started
- 23:12Speaker 2: to have very, very severe panic attacks, Craig. And at
- 23:15Speaker 2: the time, I kept saying to people, they came out
- 23:16Speaker 2: of nowhere. Now I look back, no, they didn't. They
- 23:19Speaker 2: started about three or four years before that idiot. So
- 23:22Speaker 2: you decided that the best thing, they were like smoke
- 23:24Speaker 2: alarms then. And so I was like, oh, I'll just
- 23:27Speaker 2: take the battery out. I'll work harder. I'll do more projects.
- 23:30Speaker 2: I'll drink more wine. I'll work out harder. And I'll
- 23:35Speaker 2: just try and just keep moving. I used to think
- 23:37Speaker 2: it was like if I was a moving target, anxiety
- 23:40Speaker 2: wouldn't find me. Then the smoke alarms became full-blown fires.
- 23:45Speaker 2: And then everything is, it was the only way my
- 23:47Speaker 2: body would really get me to slow down and listen
- 23:50Speaker 2: was to threaten the thing I loved, which was live broadcasting, radio.
- 23:55Speaker 2: And I did almost, for a while, I couldn't get
- 23:57Speaker 2: on the radio and I thought I was going to
- 23:58Speaker 2: have to quit, which would have broken my heart. But
- 24:02Speaker 2: also learning how to be with myself and understand what
- 24:06Speaker 2: the panic attacks really were changed my whole life.
- 24:10Speaker 1: When did you get okay with vulnerability and was there
- 24:16Speaker 1: something that opened the door on that? Yeah.
- 24:22Speaker 2: Um, and I think it's something I'm still bouncing around with,
- 24:25Speaker 2: to be honest, you know, I say this in the book,
- 24:28Speaker 2: I'm not writing this stuff as a master. I'm not
- 24:30Speaker 2: Tony Robbins. Um, what I think I'm very good at
- 24:33Speaker 2: is being honest and authentic. And, um, I think what
- 24:36Speaker 2: I really, you know, people talk about being vulnerable and
- 24:39Speaker 2: they think it's writing a social media post. No, it's
- 24:42Speaker 2: that that's performing it. It's when it actually comes out
- 24:45Speaker 2: your mouth. That's what took me a long time to realize.
- 24:48Speaker 2: It's one thing you put in a book, Craig, when
- 24:50Speaker 2: you say out loud, that's when, um, I think that's
- 24:56Speaker 2: when it gets real. And if you think about anything
- 24:58Speaker 2: in life, a dream, a vision for a company, telling someone,
- 25:02Speaker 2: you know, that you love them, you know, saying a
- 25:04Speaker 2: text message, saying it out loud. And so I got
- 25:08Speaker 2: over these panic attacks. I got out for the first
- 25:10Speaker 2: time in my life. And then I never told another
- 25:13Speaker 2: soul about it. Mom, dad, sister, best mates never spoke
- 25:17Speaker 2: about it. It was just something between me and my wife.
- 25:20Speaker 2: That was it. And then I wanted to write the
- 25:24Speaker 2: true story of why I moved to Australia because people
- 25:26Speaker 2: are like, when I moved here and within 15 months,
- 25:29Speaker 2: I managed to get my show to number one and
- 25:31Speaker 2: people want to know that, Oh God, tell us a
- 25:33Speaker 2: story about this midlife thing and all that. And so
- 25:35Speaker 2: I thought, do you really want to tell the truth?
- 25:38Speaker 2: Are you really going to be vulnerable? Because the truth
- 25:39Speaker 2: is it starts with the panic attacks. Um, you know,
- 25:43Speaker 2: because actually through getting help, I'd realized how lost I
- 25:46Speaker 2: was in my life and I stopped making my life
- 25:51Speaker 2: an adventure, Craig. And, My life was calling me. And
- 25:55Speaker 2: often those callings to deny them is more dangerous than
- 26:00Speaker 2: actually doing the thing that is calling you. We think
- 26:03Speaker 2: that that's the risky thing. It isn't. It's riskiest staying put.
- 26:07Speaker 2: That's the life half lived. And it will break you
- 26:12Speaker 2: apart living a life half lived. I was living a
- 26:14Speaker 2: life half lived and it was breaking me apart. And
- 26:17Speaker 2: so the calling was to more adventure. And so I thought,
- 26:22Speaker 2: I should tell the real story. It begins with the
- 26:24Speaker 2: panic attacks. And so I thought I'd just put it
- 26:29Speaker 2: at the beginning of the book, two or three chapters.
- 26:31Speaker 2: We'll move on all into the success, superhero, getting the
- 26:35Speaker 2: show to number one, the other side of the world.
- 26:37Speaker 2: And of course, the book comes out. No one wants
- 26:40Speaker 2: to talk about, how did you get to number one,
- 26:42Speaker 2: the other side of the world? No one cares. Tell
- 26:45Speaker 2: me about the panic attacks. I would have panic attacks
- 26:48Speaker 2: before doing interviews because they can ask me about the
- 26:51Speaker 2: panic attacks. And so it was then when I really
- 26:55Speaker 2: realized what being vulnerable is. It's actually, at the beginning,
- 26:59Speaker 2: it's going to feel uncomfortable. But the other side of that,
- 27:03Speaker 2: oh my God, it changed my life. I started to
- 27:06Speaker 2: talk about the panic attacks. I still get emails to
- 27:08Speaker 2: this day from men and women, especially men, thanking me
- 27:13Speaker 2: for talking about panic attacks. Now, Craig, I'm not a professor.
- 27:17Speaker 2: I don't speak about, but this is what's going on
- 27:19Speaker 2: at a physiological level. And here's my 10 plan for
- 27:22Speaker 2: optimization to slay your panic dragon. It's not about that.
- 27:26Speaker 2: I normalize it. I talk about it really honestly. Anxiety,
- 27:30Speaker 2: panic attacks. I still have little episodes now. They're little episodes.
- 27:33Speaker 2: I'm better. I now have got better tools and techniques
- 27:36Speaker 2: and a kinder way, kinder way of treating myself in
- 27:41Speaker 2: those moments. But just to let you know about what
- 27:43Speaker 2: I mean, why it changed my life and what it
- 27:45Speaker 2: does to people. Um, I did an interview about four
- 27:49Speaker 2: or five years ago, um, on the imperfects podcasts. And
- 27:53Speaker 2: it's the first time I'd really spoken publicly about the
- 27:54Speaker 2: panic attacks. Um, And I felt ashamed. I was almost
- 27:59Speaker 2: going to ask them to edit some of it out.
- 28:00Speaker 2: I'd gone too far and had this kind of vulnerability hangover.
- 28:03Speaker 2: But I thought, don't do that. You're actually dishonoring your truth.
- 28:08Speaker 2: You wouldn't tell your daughters to do that. Sit in it.
- 28:11Speaker 2: And I did. And I got this. I was fearing judgment.
- 28:14Speaker 2: I was feeling shame. It didn't get any of that.
- 28:16Speaker 2: All I got was acceptance, healing. Healing en masse. Hundreds
- 28:20Speaker 2: of people emailing me. Oh, my God. Didn't know about
- 28:23Speaker 2: the panic attacks. I've had panic attacks that really helped.
- 28:26Speaker 2: And then two years ago, paramedics arrived one day to
- 28:30Speaker 2: try and save my mother-in-law. He's having a massive heart attack.
- 28:34Speaker 2: They couldn't save her life. But one of these paramedics,
- 28:36Speaker 2: a man called Rob, who's now a good friend of mine,
- 28:38Speaker 2: saw him a couple days ago for dinner. At the
- 28:42Speaker 2: end of when he's packing up, he's putting all his
- 28:44Speaker 2: bits away in the defib cart. He says, I really
- 28:47Speaker 2: hope to meet you one day. I know you are.
- 28:50Speaker 2: I actually just want to say thank you. And I
- 28:51Speaker 2: was like, well, what do you mean? He goes, I
- 28:53Speaker 2: heard you talk about your panic attacks on a podcast
- 28:55Speaker 2: once and it saved my life. I went, what do
- 28:57Speaker 2: you mean? He goes, I was having them. He's been
- 28:59Speaker 2: a paramedic for 40 years, proper PTSD in what he's seen.
- 29:03Speaker 2: And he said, I was really scared by them. I
- 29:05Speaker 2: was in a really dark place. And suddenly you were
- 29:07Speaker 2: talking about them. You just normalized it. I'd always hope
- 29:10Speaker 2: one day that I'd bump into you to say thank you.
- 29:12Speaker 2: I just, as soon as I arrived, I didn't realize
- 29:15Speaker 2: it was going to be today. I can't leave without
- 29:18Speaker 2: saying thank you. I know it's really unprofessional. And so
- 29:20Speaker 2: I really called the book Unscripted because Rob unscripted. I
- 29:24Speaker 2: didn't away from taking off the successful radio DJ and
- 29:27Speaker 2: talked about the panic attacks. I didn't know what the
- 29:30Speaker 2: gift is when we really get undefended. And telling my
- 29:34Speaker 2: story really helped him. And in, yeah, worst day of
- 29:37Speaker 2: my life, he helped me in some way. way as well.
- 29:40Speaker 2: He gave me a new level of connection and acceptance
- 29:43Speaker 2: toward myself. So that's what I really learned. The vulnerability
- 29:47Speaker 2: is truth, is courage, and it's actually uncomfortable to begin with. Otherwise,
- 29:52Speaker 2: if it wasn't, we'd be doing it all day long.
- 29:56Speaker 1: You know, I think, mate, thank you for sharing. I
- 29:58Speaker 1: love all of that. I'm going to teach you a
- 30:02Speaker 1: new word today. So the word is metaperception, and that
- 30:06Speaker 1: was six years of my life studying this thing. And basically,
- 30:10Speaker 1: it is your ability to understand how other people, be
- 30:13Speaker 1: it an audience of two and a half million or
- 30:16Speaker 1: one paramedic, how people perceive and process and experience you.
- 30:20Speaker 1: And Like we rather than really try and understand what
- 30:26Speaker 1: is the Craig or the Christian experience, we worry about
- 30:29Speaker 1: whether or not people like us, right?
- 30:31Speaker 2: Yeah.
- 30:32Speaker 1: But that when you open that and we'd be surprised
- 30:37Speaker 1: because most of us have a negative concept of what
- 30:41Speaker 1: it's like being around us and, of course, I'm a
- 30:43Speaker 1: dickhead and, of course, they– and we're so worried about– letting,
- 30:49Speaker 1: for want of a better term, the real version of
- 30:51Speaker 1: us step foot outside of the cabin into the wilderness
- 30:55Speaker 1: that is humanity. Yeah. That, as we were talking about,
- 30:59Speaker 1: we have this persona. But the irony is, because I
- 31:03Speaker 1: did a similar thing in that I was quite, I
- 31:07Speaker 1: had a persona too. I was very guarded about and
- 31:10Speaker 1: particular about and specific about how wide I would open
- 31:14Speaker 1: the door because if they saw past the Craig show,
- 31:18Speaker 1: and saw Craig in the fucking corner, I'm done. You know,
- 31:23Speaker 1: I'm a public speaker. I've written books, all that shit.
- 31:26Speaker 1: I'm definitely not you, but I've got a little bit
- 31:29Speaker 1: of a profile, and that's how I make dough is
- 31:31Speaker 1: I sell tickets and put bums on seats and do stuff, right?
- 31:36Speaker 1: But for me, I did one episode, and I can't remember–
- 31:41Speaker 1: It was a long time ago. We've been doing this
- 31:42Speaker 1: for nine years and I never listened back, but I
- 31:46Speaker 1: listened back and I fucking hated it because I thought
- 31:49Speaker 1: I was being somewhat fraudulent, right? And then I went,
- 31:54Speaker 1: I'm just, if I lose half my audience, whatever. Then
- 31:58Speaker 1: I just started to talk about, you know, not every
- 32:01Speaker 1: episode and all the time, but I just went, okay,
- 32:03Speaker 1: so here's all the shit I'm bad at. Here's all
- 32:05Speaker 1: the things I'm scared of. These are all the things
- 32:08Speaker 1: that I've like, but when I opened that vulnerability door,
- 32:12Speaker 1: the irony was the audience grew, the connection grew, the
- 32:16Speaker 1: trust grew, the respect grew because they feel like, you know,
- 32:23Speaker 1: in your case, you're not a celebrity, you're a bloke
- 32:27Speaker 1: who's on the radio that we like. And you think
- 32:29Speaker 1: about the reality of if you've got a great team
- 32:32Speaker 1: around you and everything is from a production point of view,
- 32:35Speaker 1: beautiful and well-planned, but they think you're a dick, you've
- 32:39Speaker 1: got no radio show, right? If they don't connect with you,
- 32:43Speaker 1: like you, trust you, respect you, irrespective of all the
- 32:47Speaker 1: other bits, they're not coming back. And I think it's that,
- 32:52Speaker 1: you know, for people who have figured it out and
- 32:56Speaker 1: still works in progress like you and me, That vulnerability
- 33:01Speaker 1: and that openness and going, hey, I'm still a work
- 33:04Speaker 1: in progress and I fuck stuff up all the time.
- 33:08Speaker 1: I operate in ego and fear and my own bullshit
- 33:12Speaker 1: comes to the surface. And I quite often catch myself
- 33:17Speaker 1: doing something to impress somebody that I think is at
- 33:21Speaker 1: a higher status than me. I'll say something which has
- 33:25Speaker 1: got to, it's true, but there's a bit of mayo
- 33:27Speaker 1: on it.
- 33:27Speaker 2: I'm like, what am I doing?
- 33:30Speaker 1: Like the thing is that you're not perfect. You're far
- 33:32Speaker 1: from it. Same here. You're just a guy who thinks
- 33:35Speaker 1: deeply about yourself and others and the world and humanity,
- 33:40Speaker 1: and you're just unpacking that as you evolve and grow
- 33:43Speaker 1: and go. And I think that's the appeal. It's not like, hey, everyone,
- 33:48Speaker 1: eyes to me, I've figured this shit out. Get out
- 33:50Speaker 1: a pen and paper. No. You know, when I talk,
- 33:54Speaker 1: even as an expert, which I'm not really, but an
- 33:57Speaker 1: expert in exercise science or psychology or whatever, I don't
- 34:01Speaker 1: say this is the unequivocal truth. I might say something
- 34:04Speaker 1: like this research tells us that, but I don't like
- 34:08Speaker 1: the way the studies were run. But here's my thoughts, insights,
- 34:12Speaker 1: stories and experiences. And another thing that you do beautifully,
- 34:16Speaker 1: consciously or not, because you're funny and And because you're
- 34:21Speaker 1: a storyteller and it's not like manufactured, scripted or orchestrated,
- 34:27Speaker 1: it's just you doing you, right?
- 34:29Speaker 2: Yeah.
- 34:30Speaker 1: Well, people connect with stories emotionally. They connect with humour emotionally,
- 34:34Speaker 1: but they don't connect with data or information emotionally. So
- 34:39Speaker 1: that combination of intelligence plus passion, and I'm not pissing
- 34:43Speaker 1: in your pocket, it's like my impression of you as
- 34:47Speaker 1: building in the storytelling and the funny stuff. It's a
- 34:50Speaker 1: nice combination for someone to like, I like listening to you.
- 34:56Speaker 1: I don't like listening to everyone I talk to. I
- 34:59Speaker 1: appreciate the honesty. And I love what you just said.
- 35:03Speaker 2: There were so many moments where I felt these pings
- 35:05Speaker 2: come in like, oh, yeah, yeah, I hadn't thought of
- 35:08Speaker 2: it like that before. You also, you just said something
- 35:12Speaker 2: so powerful at the beginning. I will take it with me.
- 35:15Speaker 2: You talk about storytelling. Storytelling doesn't mean a five-minute story.
- 35:19Speaker 2: Storytelling can just be in the description. You talked about
- 35:22Speaker 2: stepping outside, you know, talking about outside a comfort zone,
- 35:25Speaker 2: I guess, really, of our defences. You talk about stepping
- 35:28Speaker 2: foot out of that cabin, out into the wilderness. That
- 35:31Speaker 2: image is what vulnerability and what love is, really, because
- 35:36Speaker 2: staying inside that, the safety of the cabin, isn't a
- 35:39Speaker 2: way to live a fully loving life. Loving yourself, loving
- 35:44Speaker 2: this short adventure we really get in life. beautiful storytelling
- 35:48Speaker 2: in that. Then if you realize that that's a story,
- 35:50Speaker 2: it tells me a story of what life is really about.
- 35:53Speaker 2: We all have these little cabins, several, you know, and
- 35:56Speaker 2: the invitation always from life is to just crack the
- 36:00Speaker 2: door open a bit more. You know, we don't have
- 36:02Speaker 2: to smash down the door and just be open to everybody.
- 36:04Speaker 2: You can be taken advantage of. But Ken, sometimes we
- 36:07Speaker 2: just open it a bit more. So you did that beautifully.
- 36:09Speaker 2: There's something I really think that is really important for
- 36:13Speaker 2: me is, I think I'm very good about just being
- 36:16Speaker 2: more and more honest about my messiness and our messiness.
- 36:20Speaker 2: Because in this day and age where there's more and
- 36:23Speaker 2: more AI slop, we don't know what's real and what's
- 36:26Speaker 2: genuinely human. The only way we're really going to know
- 36:29Speaker 2: what's human, and that's why it is. I think it
- 36:31Speaker 2: is a radical act now to be yourself and not
- 36:33Speaker 2: be a bloody algorithm or let AI script your interactions,
- 36:37Speaker 2: what you're saying and thinking. and believing is to double
- 36:42Speaker 2: down on what's us, what's human. That's messy. You know,
- 36:45Speaker 2: that's deeply flawed. That, that, I want more of that.
- 36:50Speaker 2: I don't need more fake influencers. People talk about AI slop.
- 36:53Speaker 2: Do you know what I think is far worse? Human slop.
- 36:55Speaker 2: It's everywhere. All these bullshitters and fake gurus online who
- 36:59Speaker 2: are going to heal you and they've done ayahuasca and
- 37:01Speaker 2: all this stuff. I've got no time for it. I
- 37:03Speaker 2: think we're fed up with it now, these optimizers. Sounds
- 37:06Speaker 2: bloody exhausting. Get up at midnight to have a sauna,
- 37:09Speaker 2: go and get a nice plunge, have a gratitude journal
- 37:11Speaker 2: for an hour, work out for 10 hours. You sound joyless.
- 37:15Speaker 2: You know, the subtitle of the book is Your Magic
- 37:17Speaker 2: is in the Mess. I really believe that. You sharing
- 37:20Speaker 2: your story about who you were as a kid, how
- 37:23Speaker 2: you felt about yourself. When we tell our unique story,
- 37:30Speaker 2: everybody always finds themselves in your story.
- 37:34Speaker 1: Okay.
- 37:34Speaker 2: You talk about you've been a fat kid and why,
- 37:36Speaker 2: of course you built this identity up to go and
- 37:38Speaker 2: be this jacked up dude. I'm like, yeah, I get it.
- 37:41Speaker 2: I absolutely get it. I know a couple of other
- 37:43Speaker 2: people have done that. One of them was a Hollywood actor.
- 37:45Speaker 2: So I get that. I really get it. It's not
- 37:48Speaker 2: my story, but I find myself in yours because you're
- 37:51Speaker 2: really being deeply honest about your deep flaws and those
- 37:55Speaker 2: flaws are I see flaws now as like, you know,
- 37:58Speaker 2: you look at a piece of wood and it's deeply grained,
- 38:01Speaker 2: isn't it? And it's the markings that make it. That's us.
- 38:05Speaker 2: The flaws are the beautiful contours of who we are,
- 38:09Speaker 2: the rings of our life, our pain, our losses. You
- 38:12Speaker 2: think about the best comedy shows you love, drama shows
- 38:15Speaker 2: and movies, books, all those stories, they are stories of transformation.
- 38:21Speaker 2: They are people overcoming tough times. Why do we still
- 38:24Speaker 2: watch all those TV shows? The biggest movie in the
- 38:26Speaker 2: world this year, if not the decade, is The Odyssey.
- 38:29Speaker 2: Forget about all the Marvel crap movies and franchise movies.
- 38:33Speaker 2: The Odyssey, I went to see it last week. Three-hour movie.
- 38:37Speaker 2: I love the fact it's taken me six weeks to
- 38:38Speaker 2: try and find a slot to even sit down and
- 38:41Speaker 2: watch a three-hour movie about a 3,000-year-old poem. In this
- 38:45Speaker 2: modern age of distraction, I think actually reminds us We
- 38:49Speaker 2: are starved of real stories and human connection. If you're
- 38:54Speaker 2: telling me that's the biggest movie of the year, I
- 38:56Speaker 2: think there's hope for us. I really do. I think
- 38:58Speaker 2: it's a great, it says a lot about where There's
- 39:01Speaker 2: hope for us because actually, if you can sit down
- 39:03Speaker 2: for three hours and watch this mysterious, mystical movie, you know,
- 39:09Speaker 2: an ancient Greek poem, some of it doesn't make sense.
- 39:13Speaker 2: It shows me that there's a real longing for stuff
- 39:17Speaker 2: that is about the real heart of being us. And
- 39:21Speaker 2: that's about a flawed man. Odysseus is a really flawed
- 39:24Speaker 2: man reckoning with his identity as a war hero and
- 39:29Speaker 2: looking at the true cosmology of the identity to others
- 39:32Speaker 2: and himself. And his quest to come home isn't just
- 39:35Speaker 2: a physical one. It's the quest we're all on individually,
- 39:38Speaker 2: come home to belong to ourselves, not just to other people.
- 39:42Speaker 2: And I think collectively, we're at our odyssey at the moment.
- 39:45Speaker 2: We are at danger of being lost a bit, of
- 39:48Speaker 2: forgetting who we really are.
- 39:52Speaker 1: What was among the things, maybe the top one or two,
- 39:56Speaker 1: but among the things that you needed to, for want
- 40:01Speaker 1: of a better word, unlearn? Like what did you need
- 40:04Speaker 1: to unlearn? Like something that was a belief or a,
- 40:08Speaker 1: I don't know, a perception that you had that was
- 40:11Speaker 1: perhaps stopping you? Was it psychological or emotional blockage?
- 40:17Speaker 2: I think it's one that's been a pattern and a
- 40:20Speaker 2: blockage at home as a dad. and as a husband,
- 40:22Speaker 2: and it was on the radio as well. And that
- 40:25Speaker 2: was that I misunderstood vulnerability as being weak. And anytime
- 40:30Speaker 2: I felt vulnerable, I would. Those nuclear defense systems that
- 40:35Speaker 2: we've installed. And so for me, that would, I have
- 40:41Speaker 2: a gift for language that can also be destructive at times.
- 40:44Speaker 2: It can be saying things that I say as a
- 40:46Speaker 2: joke to try and cut people down or keep them
- 40:49Speaker 2: at distance. And I've had to learn that is a
- 40:52Speaker 2: coping mechanism. It's been our fear. It came out of childhood.
- 40:56Speaker 2: I was bullied quite a bit as a young kid.
- 40:58Speaker 2: And so you developed, you know, I love just making
- 41:01Speaker 2: people laugh. I really do. But there's also I realized then, oh,
- 41:04Speaker 2: I can control. I can create safety here with the
- 41:08Speaker 2: bullies by becoming this funny persona. But for me, I
- 41:12Speaker 2: took for too long. Vulnerability meant weak and judgment and ridicule.
- 41:17Speaker 2: And so I shut that sensitive part of me down.
- 41:20Speaker 2: I kind of like concreted it over. I built a
- 41:23Speaker 2: funny act on it. And then I think the panic
- 41:27Speaker 2: attacks were a way of that sensitive part of me
- 41:31Speaker 2: saying this, you can't really board up the basement of
- 41:35Speaker 2: your soul because actually all your joy, your sensitivity is
- 41:38Speaker 2: your gift. A couple of years ago, I was going
- 41:41Speaker 2: around saying Father's Day, it's a bit shit, isn't it?
- 41:43Speaker 2: It's not Mother's Day for three months. There's adverts everywhere.
- 41:47Speaker 2: Book your restaurant now. Get mum this. There's a thousand
- 41:51Speaker 2: different cards. Father's Day, you go to the supermarket, it's
- 41:53Speaker 2: like three cards. There's an old footy ball, a tennis,
- 41:57Speaker 2: a wooden tennis racket, a cricket bat. It's like Father's
- 42:02Speaker 2: Day is just so underwhelming. And I said, no one
- 42:04Speaker 2: really takes their dad out for lunch like they do
- 42:07Speaker 2: on Mother's Day. You're out for lunch. It's full of
- 42:09Speaker 2: mums being treated. Dad should get that too. So I
- 42:12Speaker 2: hired a pub. And I invited a hundred dads in
- 42:14Speaker 2: our family to come and all have a collective lunch together.
- 42:17Speaker 2: It was one of the most loveliest things. My family
- 42:19Speaker 2: were there. It was brilliant. At the end, I said, look,
- 42:22Speaker 2: you don't have to, but if you want to come
- 42:23Speaker 2: up and, uh, kids, if you want to just say,
- 42:25Speaker 2: what do you think your dad's superpower is? And, uh,
- 42:29Speaker 2: I just meant it's a bit of fun to be honest.
- 42:31Speaker 2: These kids were getting up and, uh, They started to
- 42:34Speaker 2: sort of make a few roast dad and then they
- 42:36Speaker 2: would say what they thought his superpower was. Seeing these
- 42:39Speaker 2: dads break down, sobbing in tears was amazing. Watching it
- 42:46Speaker 2: where actually these defenses they built up, they're struggling, trapped
- 42:51Speaker 2: behind it. What keeps the world out keeps you tucked
- 42:56Speaker 2: away as well. You can't let that love in. And
- 42:58Speaker 2: just seeing these kids, but anyway, at the end of it,
- 43:01Speaker 2: I said, well, thanks for doing that. And then my
- 43:02Speaker 2: daughter said, we want to say something. And I never
- 43:05Speaker 2: like to use my kids as like, this is what
- 43:07Speaker 2: I do. You're not props in that. But they went, no,
- 43:10Speaker 2: we want to say something about you. And I thought
- 43:11Speaker 2: they just want to roast me. I was like, oh,
- 43:13Speaker 2: this would be good fun. Anyway, they get up there, Craig,
- 43:16Speaker 2: and they go, do you know what our dad's superpower is?
- 43:20Speaker 2: He is Mr. Emotional Man. You know, dad cries at
- 43:25Speaker 2: TV shows and movies more than mum does, more than
- 43:27Speaker 2: we do. Sometimes there'll be a TV advert and we
- 43:30Speaker 2: will say without looking at dad, dad's crying right now.
- 43:33Speaker 2: And I go, yeah, I am. And I love that
- 43:35Speaker 2: now they see me really owning that sensitivity. It means
- 43:40Speaker 2: that we have a more of a loving, honest relationship.
- 43:43Speaker 2: If I hadn't, I think, made a better friend of
- 43:47Speaker 2: my sensitivity, I'm not as close a dad to them.
- 43:51Speaker 2: You know, they find it funny, you know, that I
- 43:54Speaker 2: will be. But I think when I'm crying now, because
- 43:56Speaker 2: sometimes I'm like, well, they once saw me cry for
- 44:00Speaker 2: five minutes during the Paddington moment.
- 44:03Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
- 44:04Speaker 2: And they're going, they didn't understand. I explained it a
- 44:07Speaker 2: couple of years later. I went, look, it's taken me
- 44:08Speaker 2: a long time to understand this guy's about the Paddington thing.
- 44:11Speaker 2: They're like, we don't need to get into a dad.
- 44:12Speaker 2: Don't make it weird. But no, no, I need to
- 44:13Speaker 2: explain something to you. I think a lot of that
- 44:16Speaker 2: was crying for the times I couldn't cry when I
- 44:18Speaker 2: was younger. And they were like, Oh, Oh. And now
- 44:21Speaker 2: they've seen what young boys are like. They see what
- 44:25Speaker 2: other dads are like, who are not quite free sometimes
- 44:29Speaker 2: to express themselves as I am. Um, They get it.
- 44:33Speaker 2: They really understood. Yeah, I bet. You know, they've seen
- 44:36Speaker 2: what my dad's like and what the Irish side of
- 44:38Speaker 2: a family can be like and how it shows up
- 44:41Speaker 2: in men who actually their emotions and their heart are
- 44:45Speaker 2: iced over, are thawed away from them. The contents of
- 44:48Speaker 2: their heart almost frightens them what's in there. And that's actually,
- 44:52Speaker 2: that's heartbreaking. And so I said to them, I think, look,
- 44:55Speaker 2: those big tears sometimes like at Paddington, I don't think
- 44:58Speaker 2: it's about Paddington. I think it's about when I was
- 45:01Speaker 2: a kid, that all got pushed down. And what the
- 45:05Speaker 2: lovely thing now is being more, you know, more open,
- 45:08Speaker 2: less defended, actually means I can really fully feel things more.
- 45:14Speaker 2: You know, we talk about feeling better. It took me
- 45:16Speaker 2: ages to talk about learnings. I think it took me
- 45:19Speaker 2: until last couple of years, feeling better is about feeling
- 45:22Speaker 2: your feelings better. That's it. Sometimes that's all it is,
- 45:26Speaker 2: just being allowed. You let nerve, anxiety, shame, You let
- 45:30Speaker 2: fully feel it. It only takes about a minute or two.
- 45:32Speaker 2: And then you're like, oh, okay. It's the resistance to
- 45:36Speaker 2: it that creates all this fear. It's the fear of
- 45:39Speaker 2: our emotions, really. So I think they've really been the
- 45:42Speaker 2: big things for me was misunderstanding vulnerability as weakness. A
- 45:46Speaker 2: weak is bad for a man. You can't be weak.
- 45:49Speaker 2: You'll be taking advantage of it. You'll be picked on.
- 45:51Speaker 2: You're bullied, like you were as a kid. So it
- 45:53Speaker 2: took me a real long time, really long time to
- 45:55Speaker 2: understand that actually, My sensitivity, my vulnerability, that makes me
- 46:01Speaker 2: the comedian I am. It allows me to find and
- 46:04Speaker 2: tell better stories. I think the currency of great storytelling
- 46:07Speaker 2: is vulnerability. I never trust those bullshitters that tell you
- 46:10Speaker 2: a funny story. And it always ends with them, Greg,
- 46:13Speaker 2: having the upper hand. And then I said this and
- 46:15Speaker 2: everyone in the pub laughed. And I'm like, life doesn't
- 46:18Speaker 2: give you punchlines like that. You're more than likely, you
- 46:22Speaker 2: stumbled the end of that thing and everyone laughed at you,
- 46:24Speaker 2: not with you. That's a funny story, you know? So yeah,
- 46:29Speaker 2: those were the, those were the real big genuine game changers.
- 46:33Speaker 2: And look, I wish I could say that I'd learned
- 46:34Speaker 2: those lessons and, And they kind of like, you still
- 46:39Speaker 2: have to remind yourself, don't you, day in, day out.
- 46:41Speaker 2: You know, people talk about growth like it's a full stop.
- 46:44Speaker 2: It's always ongoing. The amount of times on the weekend
- 46:47Speaker 2: I was with my 19-year-old daughter at a footy game
- 46:50Speaker 2: and she was telling me something, I didn't even let
- 46:51Speaker 2: her finish. I went, well... It seems to me that
- 46:56Speaker 2: what you need to do is she went, dad, well done.
- 46:58Speaker 2: Well done. You're doing it again. Why listen when you
- 47:03Speaker 2: can just fix me when I don't need to be fixed?
- 47:06Speaker 2: I went, you know what? I've written a bloody book
- 47:08Speaker 2: on this stuff. And you're right. Give me a second chance.
- 47:12Speaker 2: Tell me again what's going on. And then we did.
- 47:15Speaker 2: And we had a far better conversation because she called
- 47:18Speaker 2: me out my own BS. I'm still reminded of those.
- 47:21Speaker 2: But those were the really big ones for me, Craig, personally.
- 47:24Speaker 2: It's a beautiful question as well to ask somebody.
- 47:27Speaker 1: Yeah.
- 47:29Speaker 2: What's it for you?
- 47:31Speaker 1: What I needed to unlearn?
- 47:32Speaker 2: Yeah.
- 47:35Speaker 1: I guess how I feel is not necessarily who I
- 47:40Speaker 1: am or how I am. So I've done, I would
- 47:44Speaker 1: say three or 4,000 corporate gigs. I could do 50
- 47:48Speaker 1: to a hundred a year.
- 47:50Speaker 2: Wow. Yeah.
- 47:52Speaker 1: And I have the, capacity to get up i'll be
- 47:58Speaker 1: at the side of you've done this i'll be at
- 47:59Speaker 1: the side of a room i'm standing against the wall
- 48:02Speaker 1: there's a bloke or a lady on stage introducing me
- 48:06Speaker 1: i've got my little bloody lapel mic on i've done
- 48:09Speaker 1: literally done a version of this thousands of times i
- 48:13Speaker 1: know my stuff and i simultaneously feel and know so
- 48:19Speaker 1: i feel i'm not good enough i'm inadequate i'm They'll
- 48:23Speaker 1: figure out I'm full of shit. I've just been very
- 48:25Speaker 1: lucky until now. So I can have the feeling of
- 48:29Speaker 1: lack of worthiness or competence or anything, pick it, intelligence, capacity.
- 48:36Speaker 1: I can feel like an imposter while knowing that I'm
- 48:40Speaker 1: not because I've got data and evidence. So the psychological is, well, Craig,
- 48:46Speaker 1: you've done this a lot. You're not terrible at it.
- 48:48Speaker 1: In fact, you've done three for this company and they
- 48:50Speaker 1: keep getting you back. So- that's evidence, right? But that
- 48:54Speaker 1: doesn't stop the feeling. So for me, trying to maintain,
- 48:59Speaker 1: I guess, the behavior and the focus in the middle
- 49:07Speaker 1: of the feeling of inadequacy or lack of worth or
- 49:10Speaker 1: whatever those things. And, you know, even when you get
- 49:13Speaker 1: reasonably educated, which I am, I say reasonably, still doesn't,
- 49:18Speaker 1: it really doesn't, like at might bump your confidence for
- 49:21Speaker 1: 10 minutes in some way yeah but that you know
- 49:25Speaker 1: it's like I talk to people like one of the
- 49:28Speaker 1: biggest oversold factors in the self-help personal development human behavior
- 49:33Speaker 1: is One of the biggest bullshit areas which might surprise
- 49:37Speaker 1: you and some is the whole motivation sales pitch.
- 49:41Speaker 2: Yes.
- 49:41Speaker 1: And I say to people, I don't care what you
- 49:44Speaker 1: do when you're motivated because everyone's a fucking superstar when
- 49:47Speaker 1: they're in the zone. I care what you do when
- 49:49Speaker 1: you can't be fucked, when you don't feel like it,
- 49:52Speaker 1: when it's not comfortable, when it's not easy, when it's
- 49:54Speaker 1: not painless, when no one's fucking watching, when there's no
- 49:57Speaker 1: cheer squad, there's no round of applause, there's no immediate
- 50:01Speaker 1: instant gratification or reward whatsoever. Like, what can you do
- 50:05Speaker 1: when most people would give up? Can you step up
- 50:08Speaker 1: when most people would give up? And that learning to,
- 50:12Speaker 1: because I always needed attention. I always needed approval, acceptance, belonging.
- 50:17Speaker 1: And if I was going to do something amazing, there
- 50:18Speaker 1: better be 14 people giving me a round of applause, right?
- 50:22Speaker 1: Because that was just me. And then recognising my own
- 50:28Speaker 1: bullshit in the middle of all of this and recognising
- 50:33Speaker 1: I would teach things that I didn't do.
- 50:35Speaker 2: Yeah.
- 50:37Speaker 1: They were true things. They were good strategies or ideas conceptually.
- 50:43Speaker 1: And I did it a fair bit, but I didn't
- 50:45Speaker 1: do it all the time. Like there were stages when
- 50:48Speaker 1: I was, like I was working at St. Kilda football club, uh,
- 50:54Speaker 1: as strength and conditioning coach and then driving to McDonald's
- 50:58Speaker 1: and eating shit on the way home.
- 50:59Speaker 2: Yeah.
- 51:00Speaker 1: Or buying fucking this much ice cream or whatever. So
- 51:04Speaker 1: I'm this authority of sorts giving out all of this wisdom, insight,
- 51:08Speaker 1: fucking the science, doing the dumbest shit ever behind closed doors.
- 51:14Speaker 2: Yeah. Sounds familiar. I get that.
- 51:16Speaker 1: Like forgiving myself a bit. and realizing, you know, that
- 51:21Speaker 1: how I feel doesn't need, is not necessarily a reflection
- 51:27Speaker 1: of my capacity or my IQ or my skill. And
- 51:31Speaker 1: that's just, I guess that's a self-doubt. That's an emotional thing.
- 51:35Speaker 1: But yeah, for me, it's been, you know, the self-loathing
- 51:40Speaker 1: has stopped, but the self-awareness has expanded.
- 51:43Speaker 2: Yeah. Isn't that beautiful? Yeah. Great sharing. I love that.
- 51:46Speaker 2: I could totally understand that. And those in those moments
- 51:50Speaker 2: at the side of a stage, you know, for me,
- 51:52Speaker 2: that can be like, people just presume, because I've been doing,
- 51:55Speaker 2: you know, morning radio, breakfast radio for 28 years. So,
- 51:59Speaker 2: you know, over half my life, two sides of the world. And, um,
- 52:02Speaker 2: people just think that you just sort of superhuman, you know,
- 52:06Speaker 2: at six o'clock, they don't realize, no, many mornings I'm tired.
- 52:09Speaker 2: I'm overwhelmed. And actually like you, that's my side of
- 52:12Speaker 2: the stage. I'm like, today's the day I'm going to
- 52:15Speaker 2: get found out.
- 52:16Speaker 1: Yeah.
- 52:17Speaker 2: I was been really lucky. And, People just being kind.
- 52:20Speaker 2: But today is the day. Sometimes it's during the show.
- 52:23Speaker 2: You know, you hear that critical voice, that inner shitty heckler,
- 52:27Speaker 2: I call it. You know, you're shit this morning. You know,
- 52:31Speaker 2: you always have been. Oh, God. Oh, you're still here.
- 52:34Speaker 2: I thought I'd left you in England.
- 52:35Speaker 1: No, no, no.
- 52:36Speaker 2: I'm still here. Still here. I have it sometimes during
- 52:40Speaker 2: a show. That side of the stage can be while I'm,
- 52:43Speaker 2: you know, talking to a couple hundred thousand people like today.
- 52:46Speaker 2: And so, yeah, it still shows up. But you can,
- 52:49Speaker 2: I guess, like what you're saying is, you know, because
- 52:52Speaker 2: often when I increase and I've just accidentally fallen in
- 52:55Speaker 2: the last couple of years into coaching people, you know, leaders,
- 52:58Speaker 2: and sometimes they just want help with their presentation skills.
- 53:01Speaker 2: Sometimes their messaging. Sometimes it's how they can find out
- 53:04Speaker 2: more who they are under a title to help them
- 53:08Speaker 2: really show up, not just as a title, but as
- 53:11Speaker 2: a more, more the qualities of a leader, not the
- 53:15Speaker 2: title somebody gives you and leave from status and power. Yeah, right.
- 53:19Speaker 2: And I spend a lot of time, people just think,
- 53:21Speaker 2: people presume you need a lot of confidence to do
- 53:23Speaker 2: what I do or to get on stage. You don't actually,
- 53:26Speaker 2: you need momentum. You just need to start. The enemy
- 53:29Speaker 2: of speaking is thinking about speaking. And so in the morning,
- 53:33Speaker 2: my job actually is confidence will arrive a bit later.
- 53:38Speaker 2: First of all, it's energy. And I think with speaking,
- 53:42Speaker 2: we emphasize the words part of it. To me, that's
- 53:44Speaker 2: like the tip of the iceberg. Our energy announces who
- 53:48Speaker 2: we really are more than our words do. People feel
- 53:51Speaker 2: the energy of who you are. They know these days,
- 53:53Speaker 2: you've got to believe that guy. I don't like that guy.
- 53:56Speaker 2: There's something about him. It's the energy. Energy is more
- 53:58Speaker 2: important than your words. So for me, it's an energy
- 54:00Speaker 2: thing in the morning. Beginning with energy, I add in
- 54:03Speaker 2: the emotions, then the words follow. It's a sequence like that.
- 54:07Speaker 2: Many mornings, I don't feel confident to do the radio show.
- 54:09Speaker 2: I really don't. I'm just tired. I might have had
- 54:12Speaker 2: an argument when my daughter's going through a tough time.
- 54:15Speaker 2: Last year, my mom might have a pacemaker fit. It's
- 54:18Speaker 2: literally two minutes before I'm going on air. I'm chatting
- 54:20Speaker 2: to my mom in the UK. Mom, I'll call you
- 54:21Speaker 2: back in a couple of hours' time. I've got to
- 54:22Speaker 2: do the radio show. And I'm on, you know, and
- 54:25Speaker 2: I think at home, that's not the last chat I
- 54:27Speaker 2: have with my mum, you know, and I've got to go.
- 54:29Speaker 2: And so I can help separate confidence from content. You don't,
- 54:36Speaker 2: the confidence part, mindset is far more important than actually
- 54:42Speaker 2: just the commitment to courage, take the first step. Then motivation,
- 54:46Speaker 2: I find that motivation and confidence arrives later. And you're like, oh,
- 54:51Speaker 2: here you are. Great. Okay, can you guys help for
- 54:53Speaker 2: a bit now? And then they carry on. But if
- 54:56Speaker 2: I was waiting for motivation and confidence every morning at
- 55:02Speaker 2: 5.59 a.m., I wouldn't have had this career I've had.
- 55:06Speaker 2: It's not there. Not at 6 a.m. I'm sorry. It's
- 55:08Speaker 2: just not. I'm not a Buddhist. I'm a human being.
- 55:12Speaker 2: I'm tired, knackered. And so, yeah, that conversation. I always
- 55:18Speaker 2: think there's two conversations in life. There's the one out
- 55:21Speaker 2: loud and then there's the far more damaging one we're
- 55:23Speaker 2: having with ourselves at various times of the day. If
- 55:27Speaker 2: you spoke how you do to yourself, those conversations at
- 55:30Speaker 2: the side of our stage, if we spoke that to
- 55:32Speaker 2: a friend, we'd have no mates.
- 55:34Speaker 1: And you'd be considered a bully.
- 55:36Speaker 2: Yes, rightly so. I remember working with this great coach
- 55:41Speaker 2: and he was saying, hey, these critical thoughts, Christian, what
- 55:44Speaker 2: I want you to do is every time you think
- 55:45Speaker 2: one of them, just say ouch out loud. I was like, what?
- 55:49Speaker 2: He goes, yeah, just say, ouch. And so I did it.
- 55:53Speaker 2: I thought I've got nothing to lose. And it really
- 55:55Speaker 2: helped quite a lot. I actually just encourage people to
- 55:59Speaker 2: try it. Play with it. See if it works for you.
- 56:01Speaker 2: You actually, throughout the day, sometimes I'm out walking the dog.
- 56:04Speaker 2: And you're just thinking, you know, you really do need
- 56:05Speaker 2: to lose a bit of weight. Ouch. You suddenly just
- 56:09Speaker 2: calling it out. You really realize how many of them
- 56:12Speaker 2: you have throughout the day. Ouch. You know, you're going
- 56:15Speaker 2: to really have a second portion of that. Ouch. You know,
- 56:19Speaker 2: the ratings need to be higher. Ouch. You know, so
- 56:23Speaker 2: very quickly you can rewire. That's a very nice way
- 56:26Speaker 2: to speak to yourself. Probably maybe a kinder way or
- 56:29Speaker 2: just hear that, but don't have to fully listen to
- 56:31Speaker 2: it or believe it more importantly. Yes.
- 56:35Speaker 1: I don't know, a quick one before we wind up,
- 56:37Speaker 1: if you've ever had a version of this. I did
- 56:39Speaker 1: a gig not long ago. It was corporate. It was
- 56:42Speaker 1: quite big. There was a bloke sitting about 15 feet
- 56:45Speaker 1: from me, like third row auditorium, and he fucking hated me.
- 56:50Speaker 1: I knew that he hated me. Like he'd just have
- 56:52Speaker 1: that I hate you face going on and didn't laugh
- 56:56Speaker 1: at anything. Just had this, like other people would smile
- 57:00Speaker 1: or nod. And anyway, so I was telling myself, This
- 57:04Speaker 1: is how focused I wasn't. So I ignored the $ 499
- 57:08Speaker 1: and I just focused on the one.
- 57:10Speaker 2: Of course.
- 57:11Speaker 1: And this guy's hijacking. I'm allowing it to happen. He's
- 57:14Speaker 1: hijacking my brain and my emotional system. All I want
- 57:17Speaker 1: is this. I was going to swear badly. All I
- 57:20Speaker 1: want is this fucker to love me, right, because I'm
- 57:24Speaker 1: so fucking needy. Anyway. So I kind of get myself
- 57:29Speaker 1: back on track. I'm doing my thing and I end
- 57:31Speaker 1: up doing not a terrible job. At the end of it,
- 57:35Speaker 1: people come up, you know, a couple of questions or whatever,
- 57:38Speaker 1: the odd selfie or this or that, which is nice.
- 57:42Speaker 1: And he's standing in line. I'm like, oh, fuck. Why
- 57:46Speaker 1: is he standing in line? And he gets up and
- 57:51Speaker 1: he's vision impaired. And he's like, that was amazing. He goes,
- 57:56Speaker 1: where else can I listen to you? What else do
- 57:59Speaker 1: you do? And so I'm looking at the guy who
- 58:02Speaker 1: couldn't see me and all of the story that I
- 58:06Speaker 1: was telling myself about why he looked the way he
- 58:09Speaker 1: looked at me was 100% bullshit. The actual story was
- 58:15Speaker 1: he was listening deeply, but he didn't look the way
- 58:19Speaker 1: that I fucking expected him to look. So I derailed
- 58:23Speaker 1: half of my presentation because of my own bullshit. Yeah.
- 58:27Speaker 2: I've done that. Yeah. It's such a beautiful, powerful story,
- 58:31Speaker 2: you know, in terms of what it's like when we
- 58:32Speaker 2: do that. Because for other people listening, that might be
- 58:36Speaker 2: a social get-together, couple of mates or family get-togethers. Oh,
- 58:39Speaker 2: I'm being really boring right now. And I learned early
- 58:42Speaker 2: on with stand-up where I would not have a good
- 58:45Speaker 2: gig because focusing on someone not laughing at me and
- 58:49Speaker 2: thinking the other couple of hundred people were idiots. that
- 58:53Speaker 2: you know the truth and and then other comedians have
- 58:56Speaker 2: got me going you you're you're gonna you're gonna you're
- 58:59Speaker 2: making it really hard work for yourself and the audience
- 59:02Speaker 2: and you know i learned i learned recently that whoever
- 59:05Speaker 2: has your anger has your power and also we put
- 59:09Speaker 2: far too much overemphasis on the audience. We've got no idea.
- 59:14Speaker 2: You've got no idea. So forget trying to work out
- 59:16Speaker 2: what's going on in them. You don't know what day
- 59:19Speaker 2: they've had. They might have had a horrendous phone call
- 59:21Speaker 2: before your, you know, you can't. And I learned early
- 59:24Speaker 2: on in stand-up as well, I learned that really, to
- 59:27Speaker 2: play to the people who were getting the show. Now
- 59:30Speaker 2: that might be, you think only a third, but you'll
- 59:32Speaker 2: have a better show that way. And yeah, the amount
- 59:34Speaker 2: of times I've seen people and it might be 800,
- 59:37Speaker 2: a thousand people there. And, um, I'm thinking that guy,
- 59:40Speaker 2: that couple hate me. And then, you know, wrestling, you
- 59:44Speaker 2: just like, just to keep ignoring them, you know, you
- 59:46Speaker 2: guys like me. Okay. And then afterwards, you're like, they
- 59:49Speaker 2: come up to you, bring you a drink. Oh, one
- 59:52Speaker 2: of the funniest stand-up shows we ever, you know, oh,
- 59:56Speaker 2: I wasn't sure. Yeah, yeah. And you think, God, what
- 59:58Speaker 2: a waste of two hours of my life. So, yeah,
- 1:00:02Speaker 2: I've been at that story. The person who's visually impaired.
- 1:00:04Speaker 1: Yep.
- 1:00:05Speaker 2: What a power. That feels like one of those old fables, Craig,
- 1:00:09Speaker 2: where it's like there's a beautiful truism in that. And
- 1:00:13Speaker 2: you're right. We put the lens too much on them.
- 1:00:15Speaker 2: It's too much on them. It's more the focus on
- 1:00:18Speaker 2: how do you want to feel up there? You enjoying it?
- 1:00:20Speaker 2: Get connected to what you're talking about. Is this something
- 1:00:24Speaker 2: you're excited about? Are you looking forward to tell the story?
- 1:00:27Speaker 2: Have you got something which you think actually might serve
- 1:00:30Speaker 2: the room in some way? All right, be in that.
- 1:00:33Speaker 2: Stop trying to think. And also, we're having so many
- 1:00:37Speaker 2: random thoughts in our head, aren't we? You know, during
- 1:00:39Speaker 2: an hour of our lives, 10 minutes of our lives.
- 1:00:41Speaker 2: And also just realize that most people aren't thinking about you.
- 1:00:46Speaker 2: They actually don't give a shit. They barely know themselves,
- 1:00:49Speaker 2: let alone putting some calories into working out what your
- 1:00:52Speaker 2: deal is. So yeah, that version of projection, I guess
- 1:00:57Speaker 2: you'd call it. Yeah, I mean, the second radio show
- 1:01:00Speaker 2: I did in Australia, you know, this person emailed me saying,
- 1:01:03Speaker 2: no one invited you. And I was about half an
- 1:01:07Speaker 2: hour into it. I know, imagine that.
- 1:01:09Speaker 1: I thought it was- Dear Brian, thanks for your feedback.
- 1:01:12Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah. I was like, that is the most perfectly
- 1:01:14Speaker 2: worded heckle. It's genius. It's not a wasted word. No
- 1:01:19Speaker 2: one invited you. In that moment, I was about to
- 1:01:21Speaker 2: get ready to speak and I was just like, I
- 1:01:24Speaker 2: was 10 again. Even my voice now is, I was
- 1:01:26Speaker 2: 10 again. No one invited you. You know when you
- 1:01:29Speaker 2: went to a mate's birthday party and when you were
- 1:01:31Speaker 2: 10 and some kid goes up to you, you're only
- 1:01:34Speaker 2: here because my mum said we had to invite you.
- 1:01:36Speaker 2: And you're like, I was like this, but I'm on
- 1:01:38Speaker 2: a radio show. And I just had to pretend that
- 1:01:41Speaker 2: people liked me. Because there was no evidence when I
- 1:01:43Speaker 2: started that they did. And so, yeah, I've got my
- 1:01:46Speaker 2: voice in that. No one invited you. And actually in life,
- 1:01:51Speaker 2: I remember thinking at the time, well, you're right. No,
- 1:01:54Speaker 2: no one did. And sometimes in life, you're going to
- 1:01:56Speaker 2: have to crown yourself. you're going to have to invite
- 1:02:01Speaker 2: yourself because I actually think it's really great for us
- 1:02:04Speaker 2: to feel like we don't belong, to be in rooms
- 1:02:07Speaker 2: where we don't feel quite smart enough. I think it's
- 1:02:10Speaker 2: really good for us because you'll grow through it. You
- 1:02:13Speaker 2: will have to do some deep inner work. And then
- 1:02:15Speaker 2: you will actually, it's really good for us to keep
- 1:02:18Speaker 2: finding what rooms. I'm in one right now with this
- 1:02:21Speaker 2: book coming out. It's a really different book for me.
- 1:02:23Speaker 2: I went in, when it came out, I went into
- 1:02:26Speaker 2: a bookshop and I secretly had a look around And
- 1:02:28Speaker 2: I was with my 22-year-old daughter, who went, I haven't
- 1:02:32Speaker 2: got it. Oh, no, they must think it's rubbish. They
- 1:02:34Speaker 2: haven't got it. I said, I'm going to go and
- 1:02:35Speaker 2: wait around the corner. Can you ask them where it is?
- 1:02:38Speaker 2: She goes, Dad, dude. I said, I can't. It's embarrassing.
- 1:02:41Speaker 2: I can't have that rejection. They go, we're not stocking
- 1:02:42Speaker 2: that thing. So I go and hide around the corner.
- 1:02:45Speaker 2: I'm watching her. And she comes and goes, no, no, Dad,
- 1:02:48Speaker 2: they have. They said it's doing really well. It's in
- 1:02:50Speaker 2: the personal transformation section. I was like, It's there? She goes, yeah, yeah.
- 1:02:55Speaker 2: You've written a book about transformation and self-development. So I'm like,
- 1:02:59Speaker 2: and then, you know, you've got all those big heavyweights there,
- 1:03:02Speaker 2: you know, Meg Robbins and all that. And I think,
- 1:03:05Speaker 2: I don't belong there. But actually, maybe there's something different
- 1:03:09Speaker 2: than the way I tell it that does have, it's
- 1:03:11Speaker 2: my story. So that being, and even in a different
- 1:03:14Speaker 2: part of the bookshop, being in different rooms where you
- 1:03:17Speaker 2: feel like you don't belong, you feel like an imposter.
- 1:03:20Speaker 2: Now I can reframe that. And actually, when I'm imposter,
- 1:03:25Speaker 2: I think this is great. You're right where you need
- 1:03:27Speaker 2: to be. You're actually breaking new ground in your life.
- 1:03:30Speaker 2: That is living a full-hearted life. Fuck it. Yeah, keep
- 1:03:34Speaker 2: breaking new ground. Sharp rooms you feel like you don't
- 1:03:37Speaker 2: belong in. Good for you. Keep going. You know, take
- 1:03:40Speaker 2: half a step into that room. You don't need to
- 1:03:41Speaker 2: march in and go, I'm here. It might be a
- 1:03:44Speaker 2: bit awkward and mumbly and trembly to begin with. Don't matter.
- 1:03:48Speaker 2: You just walk into that room. back yourself, trust yourself,
- 1:03:51Speaker 2: invite yourself, crown yourself. You're right. No one's going to
- 1:03:56Speaker 2: crown you. You're not going to get invited. It doesn't
- 1:03:58Speaker 2: work like that. I wish it did, but it doesn't.
- 1:04:02Speaker 1: Yeah, perfect. I say a very similar thing. I say,
- 1:04:05Speaker 1: if you're the smartest in the room, fuck off, go
- 1:04:07Speaker 1: to another room, go where you're the dumbest, go where
- 1:04:10Speaker 1: you're the least skilled, the least capable, the least popular,
- 1:04:13Speaker 1: go there because your learning and your growth will be exponential.
- 1:04:17Speaker 1: If you're the smartest- It's like my training partner that
- 1:04:20Speaker 1: I train with every day of my life is an
- 1:04:25Speaker 1: ex-pro bodybuilder, amazing genetics, overwhelmingly stronger than me, all the stuff.
- 1:04:32Speaker 1: So I want to train with somebody who's fucking way
- 1:04:35Speaker 1: better than me because otherwise I'm going to coast, right?
- 1:04:39Speaker 2: Brilliant.
- 1:04:40Speaker 1: So hang out with people who drag you on.
- 1:04:42Speaker 2: Hey, bro.
- 1:04:42Speaker 1: What? I could talk to you for a long time.
- 1:04:46Speaker 2: Yeah, I just want to say one last thing. That's
- 1:04:48Speaker 2: so great about your training partner, right, Craig? Years ago,
- 1:04:51Speaker 2: I used to do, I've always been fascinated by martial
- 1:04:53Speaker 2: arts since I was a kid. And years ago, I
- 1:04:56Speaker 2: think it's about 15 years ago, I was really into MMA.
- 1:04:59Speaker 2: And I used to train a lot of Brazilian jiu-jitsu.
- 1:05:02Speaker 2: And my coach said, look, you're pretty good. Do you
- 1:05:04Speaker 2: want to get a lot better very quickly? I was like, yeah.
- 1:05:07Speaker 2: He goes, come and train with the black belts. I'm
- 1:05:12Speaker 2: not doing that. You know, I'll be tapping out the
- 1:05:14Speaker 2: whole time. He went, no, no, no. You want to
- 1:05:17Speaker 2: get really good very quickly. Train with the black belts.
- 1:05:20Speaker 2: I was like, yeah, I did. And within two or
- 1:05:23Speaker 2: three weeks, when I was then sparring with people that
- 1:05:27Speaker 2: were a couple of years ahead of me and almost
- 1:05:30Speaker 2: black belts, I was submitting them because I really put
- 1:05:33Speaker 2: myself in at the deep end. And you'll learn a
- 1:05:36Speaker 2: hell of a lot. It's a great thing in life
- 1:05:38Speaker 2: to be humbled. At first, I was. Every three seconds,
- 1:05:42Speaker 2: that hurts. I give up. Then bit by bit by bit,
- 1:05:45Speaker 2: you get overwhelmed and you just learn to just survive
- 1:05:50Speaker 2: a bit longer. Steady, steady, slow down. I remember chatting
- 1:05:54Speaker 2: with Black Belts afterwards about it all about six months later.
- 1:05:58Speaker 2: A lot of them said, do you know what? We
- 1:05:59Speaker 2: used to get really nervous sparring with you. Why? Because
- 1:06:02Speaker 2: When your white belt's like you are wild, you actually
- 1:06:05Speaker 2: don't know what you're going to do. And we had
- 1:06:08Speaker 2: more to lose than you did as a white belt.
- 1:06:10Speaker 2: They said, you know what? And one of them said
- 1:06:12Speaker 2: he was a five-time world champion. He said the worst
- 1:06:16Speaker 2: thing for a black belt to have is a black
- 1:06:17Speaker 2: belt ego. You're terrified of losing. He goes, I always
- 1:06:22Speaker 2: try and think like a white belt. And he goes,
- 1:06:26Speaker 2: you should always think like a white belt. And so
- 1:06:28Speaker 2: now before every radio show, I go, well, fuck the
- 1:06:30Speaker 2: 28 years. I'm a white belt. What am I going
- 1:06:33Speaker 2: to learn today? What am I here to learn? I
- 1:06:36Speaker 2: think it's a great way. You with your training partner,
- 1:06:38Speaker 2: I get that. That's like me being just smashed by
- 1:06:42Speaker 2: these monsters. And I'm just a radio DJ. You know,
- 1:06:45Speaker 2: these black belts just crushing me. But then I got
- 1:06:48Speaker 2: within three or four weeks, I was so much better
- 1:06:52Speaker 2: because I put my ego aside and I came out
- 1:06:56Speaker 2: much stronger. I enjoyed it. I was way more relaxed.
- 1:07:00Speaker 2: So I get it why you have a training partner
- 1:07:01Speaker 2: who's a beast, you know, and you're kind of like, oh, God,
- 1:07:05Speaker 2: this is going to be a bit uncomfortable today. But
- 1:07:07Speaker 2: it's good for us to be challenged. That's where we
- 1:07:10Speaker 2: find ourselves is always at those edges, isn't it?
- 1:07:14Speaker 1: Oh, I love it. That's so good. Do you know,
- 1:07:16Speaker 1: what's that definition of jujitsu? I think it's jujitsu noun,
- 1:07:22Speaker 1: the art of folding pajamas with people still in them.
- 1:07:28Speaker 2: Well, I used to get folded a lot. Yeah, they
- 1:07:30Speaker 2: were folding me up a lot. Yeah, that's exactly what
- 1:07:32Speaker 2: it was.
- 1:07:33Speaker 1: It's not for the faint hearted. The book is called... Unscript,
- 1:07:37Speaker 1: The Radical Act of Being Yourself. It's just been published.
- 1:07:40Speaker 1: It's out in good and shit bookstores. Is it on
- 1:07:43Speaker 1: Audible yet?
- 1:07:44Speaker 2: Yeah, I do all my audiobooks. I did the audiobook.
- 1:07:47Speaker 2: I think it's a privilege to write a book. And
- 1:07:50Speaker 2: it's an even better privilege to be asked to read
- 1:07:52Speaker 2: it to somebody. Because, you know, look, primarily most people,
- 1:07:55Speaker 2: the way they engage me is through my radio show.
- 1:07:58Speaker 2: You don't need to know who I am or listen
- 1:08:00Speaker 2: to the radio show to enjoy the book. But, yeah,
- 1:08:02Speaker 2: the audio book, I loved doing it. It will feel
- 1:08:06Speaker 2: like it's more– I wrote the book like a conversation.
- 1:08:10Speaker 2: I wanted it to feel like a conversation between me
- 1:08:12Speaker 2: and whoever's reading it. The audio book, you know, people
- 1:08:15Speaker 2: are telling me this, really does feel like it's a
- 1:08:18Speaker 2: deeper transmission. There's still something very magical to me. I
- 1:08:22Speaker 2: would say this, I'm a radio guy, but I still
- 1:08:25Speaker 2: believe in the power of the human voice. I think
- 1:08:27Speaker 2: it's so, I mean, look what you do. And yes,
- 1:08:29Speaker 2: it's filmed, but we're in a overly visually stimulated world
- 1:08:34Speaker 2: right now. 4K cameras, TVs, IMAX. There's still something really
- 1:08:39Speaker 2: magical about the human voice to heal us, connect us,
- 1:08:45Speaker 2: to bring us together. Look at in the last 10 years,
- 1:08:49Speaker 2: The biggest growth in entertainment has been this, podcasting. What
- 1:08:53Speaker 2: a brilliant thing. I listen to more podcasts than radio
- 1:08:56Speaker 2: because we starve, like I said, for real conversations. honesty, vulnerability.
- 1:09:02Speaker 2: No one trying to impress each other. We're just being
- 1:09:06Speaker 2: really honest about our flaws, our struggles. And isn't that
- 1:09:10Speaker 2: the best thing in the world right now? We want
- 1:09:12Speaker 2: people to show up more real. Stop pretending to have
- 1:09:15Speaker 2: it all sorted out. I don't believe you. And you're
- 1:09:17Speaker 2: intimidating me. So all these people telling us we need
- 1:09:21Speaker 2: to 10x this, you know, productivity hacks. It's exhausting. I
- 1:09:26Speaker 2: just want to have a nice life. I haven't got
- 1:09:28Speaker 2: time to do all your hacks. And also, there are
- 1:09:30Speaker 2: no hacks. You're a hack. There are no shortcuts in life.
- 1:09:35Speaker 2: You know, you're going to have to have real courage.
- 1:09:38Speaker 2: People say they want this greater life, yet they don't
- 1:09:42Speaker 2: want to have courage. Well, you don't deserve it. You're
- 1:09:45Speaker 2: going to have to make courage your best friend. Courage
- 1:09:48Speaker 2: doesn't mean the absence of fear. It means actually full-heartedly
- 1:09:53Speaker 2: trembling sometimes on hands and knees, crawling forward until you
- 1:09:57Speaker 2: feel like you can quite start to walk through certain
- 1:10:00Speaker 2: dark parts of your life. That's courage.
- 1:10:04Speaker 1: Oh, so good. So good. So Christian Liam O'Connell is
- 1:10:10Speaker 1: his full name. You can hear him every morning in
- 1:10:13Speaker 1: Melbourne and lots of other places. On Gold 104.3, Gold
- 1:10:18Speaker 1: 104.3 FM in Melb's. And what else do I have
- 1:10:23Speaker 1: to say? What's the subtitle of the book you told me?
- 1:10:27Speaker 2: Look, officially it's unscripted, The Radical Act of Being Yourself.
- 1:10:31Speaker 2: But really, you know, on the back of the book,
- 1:10:33Speaker 2: I think it's really important I put, you know, the
- 1:10:37Speaker 2: magic is in your mess. I've made a living out
- 1:10:39Speaker 2: of that. I'm a better dad because of that. I
- 1:10:42Speaker 2: met my wife that way through telling a messy story
- 1:10:44Speaker 2: once in a pub. And so that right now in
- 1:10:48Speaker 2: an age of optimization and AI gloss and what's human
- 1:10:53Speaker 2: and what not, the mess. Be messy. Talk about your messiness.
- 1:10:57Speaker 2: Just see what happens when you speak from that place
- 1:11:01Speaker 2: to people. Just watch what happens. Try it. Be a
- 1:11:04Speaker 2: bit 10, 20% more honest about your messiness and just
- 1:11:07Speaker 2: watch what happens to other people when you do that.
- 1:11:11Speaker 1: You're a good man. We'll say goodbye off air, bro,
- 1:11:13Speaker 1: but thank you so much for doing this. I would
- 1:11:15Speaker 1: love to chat to you again.
- 1:11:17Speaker 2: I hope this isn't the last time we chat personally
- 1:11:19Speaker 2: or here. I feel like I've met a new mate.
- 1:11:23Speaker 2: I've deeply loved our chat. Thank you, brother.
- 1:11:26Speaker 1: Say goodbye off air, but for now, thanks so much.
- 1:11:29Speaker 2: Thank you, Craig.