Latest / Hardiness with Dr Paul Taylor / An Incredible Life of Resilience and Philanthropy, with Peter Baines, OAM

Transcript

An Incredible Life of Resilience and Philanthropy, with Peter Baines, OAM · Hardiness with Dr Paul Taylor

• 0:09
  Speaker 1: Peter Beans, Welcome to the podcast.
• 0:11
  Speaker 2: Thanks Paul. Great to be with you, mate.
• 0:14
  Speaker 3: I mean, before we get into your story, which is
• 0:17
  Speaker 3: a freaking amazing story, before we get into the meaty
• 0:20
  Speaker 3: part of it, you spent quite a long time in
• 0:23
  Speaker 3: the police force in Australia.
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: Just just just talk us through.
• 0:28
  Speaker 3: How were you when you joined? Why did you join?
• 0:32
  Speaker 3: How many years did you sir?
• 0:33
  Speaker 4: As well, Yeah, so joined at the age of nineteen,
• 0:38
  Speaker 4: and that was a minimum age. And you know, you
• 0:41
  Speaker 4: might think it was something that I'd always wanted to
• 0:43
  Speaker 4: do given that basis, but that's not the case. I
• 0:46
  Speaker 4: actually went to UNI after school and very quickly dropped
• 0:51
  Speaker 4: out because I went there without purpose or reason, and
• 0:56
  Speaker 4: then join the cops. And the funny thing is like
• 0:59
  Speaker 4: i'd end up reach turning to university to do a
• 1:01
  Speaker 4: science degree and a law degree and graduated from both
• 1:04
  Speaker 4: of those. But joined the cops when I was nineteen
• 1:08
  Speaker 4: and worked in uniform in Western Sydney four for about
• 1:13
  Speaker 4: four years, and then I moved into the forensic area
• 1:17
  Speaker 4: as a crime scene investigator, so I was attending scenes
• 1:21
  Speaker 4: of major crime and homicides and suspicious deaths and things
• 1:26
  Speaker 4: like that, and I did that for you know, I
• 1:29
  Speaker 4: ended up leaving two thousand and nine, and I guess
• 1:36
  Speaker 4: where it got interesting, Paul was after the Bali bombings in.
• 1:40
  Speaker 2: Two thousand and two.
• 1:41
  Speaker 4: I'd work in Bali with the identification of those who died,
• 1:46
  Speaker 4: and then I got called in the aftermath of the
• 1:49
  Speaker 4: tsunami and went to Thailand and that was really defining.
• 1:53
  Speaker 4: Like I'd spend most of two thousand and five leading
• 1:56
  Speaker 4: the Australian team and the international operations to identify the
• 2:01
  Speaker 4: five and a half thousand bodies we recovered. And then
• 2:05
  Speaker 4: at the end of two thousand and five, because I
• 2:08
  Speaker 4: spent most of my time in Thailand, then I was
• 2:09
  Speaker 4: invited to work for Interpol in Lyon in France, and
• 2:14
  Speaker 4: I was working on a highly classified counter terrorism project
• 2:18
  Speaker 4: around what we call CBRN, which is chemical, biological, radiological
• 2:23
  Speaker 4: nuclear threats. So for twelve months I was researching and
• 2:28
  Speaker 4: writing on what were the threats and trends on a
• 2:32
  Speaker 4: global scale around counter terrorism. And then while I was
• 2:36
  Speaker 4: in the UN. While I was in Interopol, I then
• 2:39
  Speaker 4: got invited to work for the UN through Southeast Asia
• 2:44
  Speaker 4: on capacity building and around counter terrorism and leadership. And
• 2:50
  Speaker 4: then at the end of that I was only supposed
• 2:51
  Speaker 4: to be gone because I was still employed by New
• 2:53
  Speaker 4: South Wales Police. I was only supposed to be gone
• 2:55
  Speaker 4: for twelve months, but I ended up being gone for
• 2:57
  Speaker 4: two and a half years. And then they contacted me
• 2:59
  Speaker 4: and said, you know, we've been paying you for two
• 3:01
  Speaker 4: and a half years, we haven't seen you.
• 3:03
  Speaker 2: It's time to come back.
• 3:05
  Speaker 4: And then when I went back, I asked for twelve
• 3:08
  Speaker 4: months leave without pay, and they refused, and so I resigned.
• 3:13
  Speaker 2: And so I left all of that. So I ended up.
• 3:15
  Speaker 4: Doing twenty three years and I left that in two
• 3:18
  Speaker 4: thousand and nine.
• 3:20
  Speaker 3: Right, So the forensic stuff, So look, I'm ex military
• 3:26
  Speaker 3: and I know that. You know there are high pressure
• 3:31
  Speaker 3: environments military, police, force, first responders, all of those things,
• 3:36
  Speaker 3: and particularly then being in forensics, you see a lot
• 3:42
  Speaker 3: of shit.
• 3:44
  Speaker 1: There's obviously a lot.
• 3:46
  Speaker 3: Of burnout in your professions, a lot of burnout in
• 3:50
  Speaker 3: the military and first responders. How did you manage that
• 3:56
  Speaker 3: process of seeing like horrible stuff over and over because
• 4:01
  Speaker 3: the human brilland's not designed for that ship, right.
• 4:04
  Speaker 4: No, Like there's you know, people have said at different times,
• 4:08
  Speaker 4: I can't imagine what you saw, and I say, that's
• 4:12
  Speaker 4: a good thing you don't need to and you know,
• 4:16
  Speaker 4: the changes that bodies go through through decomposition and so forth, it's,
• 4:22
  Speaker 4: you know, it's pretty horrible. And you know, when I
• 4:25
  Speaker 4: arrived into Thailand, like I was, I was flying into
• 4:28
  Speaker 4: the site in a HELLI and as we came into land,
• 4:33
  Speaker 4: the first sense of apart from the visual destruction that
• 4:37
  Speaker 4: I saw flying up the coastline, was as we came
• 4:40
  Speaker 4: into land, I could smell outh.
• 4:42
  Speaker 1: I was going to say, the smell would just be.
• 4:44
  Speaker 4: Like I walked in through the gates of a temple
• 4:48
  Speaker 4: and there was three and a half thousand decomposing bodies
• 4:51
  Speaker 4: on the ground, you know, and those those type of things.
• 4:54
  Speaker 4: They were unprecedented in scale. And you know, the body
• 5:00
  Speaker 4: he goes through decomposition accelerates if it's been in water
• 5:04
  Speaker 4: and if it's in heat. These bodies came from the
• 5:09
  Speaker 4: water and were laying on the ground in the heat
• 5:11
  Speaker 4: of the temple in temperatures that were, you know, pushing
• 5:14
  Speaker 4: forty degrees and so decomposition was quite rapid, and you know,
• 5:21
  Speaker 4: and just how the body breaks down, and then when
• 5:24
  Speaker 4: you have that many it's it's you know, it's something
• 5:26
  Speaker 4: that has to say that people don't need to imagine
• 5:30
  Speaker 4: and the descriptions enough, you know. But I think for me, Paul,
• 5:34
  Speaker 4: to answer the question, how did I get through and
• 5:37
  Speaker 4: how did I work through that career because basically, you know,
• 5:41
  Speaker 4: on a weekly basis, if I wasn't exposed to death
• 5:45
  Speaker 4: in some level, it was an unusual week, you know
• 5:48
  Speaker 4: that be that a suicide, be it a homicide, a
• 5:51
  Speaker 4: fatal car accent or something. That's where my work was,
• 5:54
  Speaker 4: you know, and and work offered you know, support programs,
• 6:00
  Speaker 4: things like that. A lot of it, though I would suggest,
• 6:03
  Speaker 4: was a way to mitigate the exposure for the organization.
• 6:06
  Speaker 4: And you know, and we were in a high risk area,
• 6:10
  Speaker 4: the forensic area. There were four areas within the police
• 6:13
  Speaker 4: that were considered high risk for PTSD and our area
• 6:18
  Speaker 4: is one of them. I think, how did I move
• 6:21
  Speaker 4: through successfully? And you know, I've been asked that question
• 6:24
  Speaker 4: a lot, And if I had the answer, you know,
• 6:27
  Speaker 4: if we could say this is what you need to
• 6:29
  Speaker 4: do to avoid it, you know, you'd solve it. But
• 6:32
  Speaker 4: you know, it's different for everyone, and I think I
• 6:34
  Speaker 4: think the thing for me was that my role continued
• 6:39
  Speaker 4: to change. You know, I spent probably like nineteen years
• 6:43
  Speaker 4: in the forensic area, and I continued to change and
• 6:47
  Speaker 4: that was through through promotion and opportunities that came my way.
• 6:52
  Speaker 2: You know.
• 6:52
  Speaker 4: When I worked had ten years in Tamworth in regional
• 6:56
  Speaker 4: New South Wales and where you'd respond to make of
• 7:00
  Speaker 4: crime and homicides and you could travel three hundred kilometers
• 7:04
  Speaker 4: one way to get to a job. You could spend
• 7:07
  Speaker 4: several hours at the job, drive three hours home and
• 7:11
  Speaker 4: you sit down and have dinner with the kids and
• 7:13
  Speaker 4: then get called out at night to drive three hundred
• 7:15
  Speaker 4: kilometers in the opposite direction, you know. And we were
• 7:19
  Speaker 4: on call for seven seven days out of ten, and
• 7:23
  Speaker 4: then you'd have four days off and then you come
• 7:25
  Speaker 4: back straight onto call. And you know, I think that
• 7:29
  Speaker 4: that's the thing that really wears people down is that
• 7:33
  Speaker 4: they look forward into their career and say, you know,
• 7:37
  Speaker 4: I might be forty years old and unless I relocate
• 7:43
  Speaker 4: or from where I live, particularly you know country blokes
• 7:47
  Speaker 4: or country staff, unless they decide to relocate to the
• 7:50
  Speaker 4: city or leave their area of specialty and go back
• 7:54
  Speaker 4: to uniform, they're on call for another ten fifteen years,
• 7:58
  Speaker 4: you know.
• 7:58
  Speaker 1: And see them the sea is just the grind, right.
• 8:02
  Speaker 4: Yeah, it's just going where's the change come from? And
• 8:05
  Speaker 4: I think that was where, you know, for my role,
• 8:08
  Speaker 4: like I worked in Sydney in the Forrensic area, then
• 8:10
  Speaker 4: I went to Tamworth and then I got promoted to
• 8:12
  Speaker 4: the boss of the Tamworth section. Then I came back
• 8:15
  Speaker 4: to Sydney, and then I was these state operations coordinator,
• 8:18
  Speaker 4: and then I had all these international deployments, and so
• 8:21
  Speaker 4: I think it was the continual.
• 8:23
  Speaker 2: Change for me.
• 8:24
  Speaker 4: That's the only thing I can think of, you know.
• 8:26
  Speaker 4: And of course it doesn't happen to everyone, like the PTSD,
• 8:29
  Speaker 4: but for some people, you know, they can be exposed
• 8:33
  Speaker 4: to it for three years and go off. Some can
• 8:35
  Speaker 4: do it for twenty five years and then go off.
• 8:37
  Speaker 4: There's no set ingredient.
• 8:40
  Speaker 2: Yeaheah.
• 8:41
  Speaker 1: Absolutely.
• 8:42
  Speaker 3: And did you have a strategy of compartmentalizing stuff, you know,
• 8:49
  Speaker 3: like like going to a homicide or seeing all this
• 8:51
  Speaker 3: shit and then all of a sudden, I've got to
• 8:54
  Speaker 3: walk into the host, sit down and be your dad
• 8:56
  Speaker 3: to young kids. Did you have any sort of strategy
• 9:00
  Speaker 3: to be able to switch rules or whatever.
• 9:04
  Speaker 4: Not really, mate, I don't think there was a strategy
• 9:06
  Speaker 4: as such. I think it was more just you know,
• 9:09
  Speaker 4: like whether I was returning at two o'clock in the
• 9:13
  Speaker 4: morning after being called out and you come home, have
• 9:15
  Speaker 4: a shower and jump in the bed, or whether it
• 9:17
  Speaker 4: was just returning after a normal day at work, and
• 9:21
  Speaker 4: you know, you walk through the door and like, I
• 9:24
  Speaker 4: didn't necessarily speak to my wife in the detail of
• 9:29
  Speaker 4: what I've done because it's just not for any reason
• 9:32
  Speaker 4: other than that was just my job.
• 9:34
  Speaker 2: You know.
• 9:34
  Speaker 4: It's like you talk about those type of things when
• 9:38
  Speaker 4: it's new, but for me, it's you know, it was
• 9:41
  Speaker 4: more about where are you going, how does it impact
• 9:43
  Speaker 4: upon the family, And you know, I think it was
• 9:47
  Speaker 4: like arriving at a homicide scene. You were always filled with,
• 9:52
  Speaker 4: you know, a lot of emotions, and it was around
• 9:55
  Speaker 4: that's what you train for. You were there to you know,
• 9:58
  Speaker 4: you turn on as you as you drive to the job,
• 10:01
  Speaker 4: you arrive, you're ready and because you only get one
• 10:04
  Speaker 4: go at entering a crime scene for the first time,
• 10:07
  Speaker 4: you know, and so you were thinking about what you
• 10:11
  Speaker 4: were there to do, as opposed to you know, the
• 10:14
  Speaker 4: loss or the destruction or the death or you know,
• 10:17
  Speaker 4: the cruelty. And you know, I think I talked about it,
• 10:21
  Speaker 4: you know, carrying you know, in Thailand. We had the
• 10:25
  Speaker 4: bodies that were frozen and shipping containers in body bags,
• 10:29
  Speaker 4: and you know, we would walk in and you never
• 10:32
  Speaker 4: knew what was inside the body bag, whether it was
• 10:35
  Speaker 4: an adult or a child, you know, or what nationality.
• 10:39
  Speaker 4: But when we lifted the kids off the shelf, instead
• 10:43
  Speaker 4: of putting them on trolleys, we'd carry them in our
• 10:45
  Speaker 4: arms and you take them up to where you had
• 10:48
  Speaker 4: to do the post mortem and open the bag and
• 10:51
  Speaker 4: look at the innocence in their faces, you know, and
• 10:54
  Speaker 4: you move their hair out of their eyes, and you go,
• 10:57
  Speaker 4: I don't want to do this anymore. And you do
• 11:00
  Speaker 4: that a couple of times a day, and you get
• 11:02
  Speaker 4: me out of here. But of course we had to stay,
• 11:04
  Speaker 4: and you know, we stayed. And the reason was because
• 11:09
  Speaker 4: you knew what you were giving the family who had
• 11:13
  Speaker 4: lost their loved one. You were giving them an answer,
• 11:16
  Speaker 4: you know, you were I talk about the most difficult
• 11:19
  Speaker 4: times I faced in Thailand was dealing with the relatives
• 11:22
  Speaker 4: of those who lost someone. But the most rewarding times
• 11:27
  Speaker 4: in Thailand were dealing with the families of those who
• 11:30
  Speaker 4: lost someone. You know, it was a juxta position where
• 11:35
  Speaker 4: if you didn't see the families. It could be too
• 11:38
  Speaker 4: easy to not recognize that everybody you know that you
• 11:47
  Speaker 4: identifying was someone's loved one.
• 11:50
  Speaker 2: But you can't.
• 11:52
  Speaker 4: You can't immerse yourself into the story of everybody that's
• 11:56
  Speaker 4: before you because you know that you can't operate that way.
• 12:01
  Speaker 4: So it's a balance.
• 12:02
  Speaker 3: It's a balance, and it's a very fine balance between
• 12:06
  Speaker 3: you know, doing the job and doing it effectively and
• 12:09
  Speaker 3: thinking about why you're doing it and unbecoming desensitised to
• 12:15
  Speaker 3: what you're seeing, which is what can happen to a
• 12:18
  Speaker 3: lot of people, that desensitization.
• 12:20
  Speaker 4: And I don't know, mate, like that's not my area
• 12:22
  Speaker 4: of expertise by any stretch of the imagination. But I
• 12:25
  Speaker 4: reckon all your all you're doing there is delaying they
• 12:30
  Speaker 4: impact of that because I reckon it comes back at
• 12:32
  Speaker 4: some point. That kind of stuff has to be dealt with.
• 12:36
  Speaker 4: And you know, and I think when we look at
• 12:38
  Speaker 4: generations gone past, they dealt with it by getting on
• 12:42
  Speaker 4: the piss, you know, and just drinking and not talking
• 12:47
  Speaker 4: about it led to problems at home, domestic violence and
• 12:50
  Speaker 4: alcohol abuse and and you know, people never processing it.
• 12:54
  Speaker 4: And again it's the balance of living in it or
• 12:57
  Speaker 4: avoiding it, but it's got to be dealt with at
• 12:59
  Speaker 4: some point.
• 13:00
  Speaker 3: Yeah. No, let's pivot night and talk about your book
• 13:06
  Speaker 3: and the amusing charity arms across the water. Was there
• 13:11
  Speaker 3: a particular moment that inspired you to start that.
• 13:16
  Speaker 4: Yeah, I went up to It was on one of
• 13:19
  Speaker 4: my last apployments into Thailand. I went up to a
• 13:23
  Speaker 4: temple where there was a group of kids, Thai kids
• 13:27
  Speaker 4: who were living who had all lost their families, lost
• 13:30
  Speaker 4: their home, and we're living in this big tent. And
• 13:36
  Speaker 4: I realized that I couldn't change what had happened, but
• 13:41
  Speaker 4: it felt within my capacity to do something around what
• 13:44
  Speaker 4: happened next. So I couldn't change the fact they lost
• 13:48
  Speaker 4: their parents, but it felt like I could do something
• 13:51
  Speaker 4: around that how they spent each night. So I set
• 13:54
  Speaker 4: up the charity and with a view of just building
• 13:58
  Speaker 4: a home. And you know, that was the first first
• 14:03
  Speaker 4: I guess exposure and honestly I thought, you know, build
• 14:08
  Speaker 4: the home and the problem solved, and went over for
• 14:10
  Speaker 4: the opening of the home, and twelve months later and
• 14:14
  Speaker 4: realized the journey had just started. You know, it wasn't
• 14:17
  Speaker 4: something that was finished, It was only just beginning.
• 14:21
  Speaker 3: And when did you get the crazy idea to run
• 14:26
  Speaker 3: the equivalent of thirty three marathons in twenty six days.
• 14:31
  Speaker 3: Was there a moment where it kind of came to
• 14:34
  Speaker 3: you and you thought, right, this is what I'm going
• 14:37
  Speaker 3: to do? Or did it just sort of evolve by bit?
• 14:41
  Speaker 4: Yeah? No, It's like since two thousand and nine, I've
• 14:45
  Speaker 4: been leading charity bike rides in Thailand, so probably half
• 14:51
  Speaker 4: a dozen times a year I take people from Australia
• 14:54
  Speaker 4: from groups to size of fifteen up to seventy, and
• 14:58
  Speaker 4: we go and ride somewhere between five hundred and sixteen
• 15:01
  Speaker 4: hundred kilometers over that respective number of days. And so
• 15:06
  Speaker 4: you know, I've done forty three of these charity bike
• 15:09
  Speaker 4: rides in Thailand. In a few weeks, I'll be back
• 15:11
  Speaker 4: with the next one and love them.
• 15:13
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 15:14
  Speaker 4: But as the twenty year anniversary of the tsunami came close, I,
• 15:21
  Speaker 4: you know, I said to my wife I need to
• 15:23
  Speaker 4: do or we need to do something significant to mark
• 15:26
  Speaker 4: the milestone, and riding a bike might have been the
• 15:30
  Speaker 4: obvious thing, but I've done so much of it I went,
• 15:33
  Speaker 4: you know, that's not really hard. You know, I can
• 15:36
  Speaker 4: spend you know, hours on a bike. All I need
• 15:39
  Speaker 4: is time, and I'll cover distance, you know. And I thought,
• 15:44
  Speaker 4: that's not going to really challenge, it's not going to
• 15:47
  Speaker 4: be hugely satisfying and not really going to bring the
• 15:50
  Speaker 4: type of awareness or fundraising. And I thought, you know,
• 15:53
  Speaker 4: and I came up with this idea to run from
• 15:57
  Speaker 4: a home that we support in the northeast of Thailand
• 16:01
  Speaker 4: to the origins of our journey, which is the south
• 16:06
  Speaker 4: where the tsunami project is, you know. And I thought,
• 16:09
  Speaker 4: maybe if I run that distance and I wasn't a runner,
• 16:13
  Speaker 4: so the you know, the chance of success ida, Yeah, yeah,
• 16:21
  Speaker 4: I think that's what. You know, the fact that it was,
• 16:24
  Speaker 4: you know, finishing was so uncertain is where part of
• 16:28
  Speaker 4: the joy and part of the challenge and the brilliance
• 16:31
  Speaker 4: in it was. And so it was two years out
• 16:35
  Speaker 4: I made that came up with the idea, but it
• 16:38
  Speaker 4: took me a month before I shared it with my
• 16:41
  Speaker 4: wife because I thought, I don't want to put this
• 16:43
  Speaker 4: out there and then not do it.
• 16:45
  Speaker 1: You know, it's too important social evidence when you put
• 16:48
  Speaker 1: it out there. Yeah, yeah, and then you go to
• 16:50
  Speaker 1: follow through.
• 16:52
  Speaker 4: I thought about it for a month and then I
• 16:54
  Speaker 4: walked out this morning and I said to her, I said, CT.
• 16:57
  Speaker 4: I said, I think I want to do this from
• 17:01
  Speaker 4: home hug in the northeast down to Batham nam Chai,
• 17:05
  Speaker 4: and I'd had a look on Google and you know,
• 17:07
  Speaker 4: if you drive it, it's about thirteen hundred k's And
• 17:10
  Speaker 4: I said, this is what I want to do. And
• 17:12
  Speaker 4: her response, you know, Paul, whatever she said there and
• 17:16
  Speaker 4: then was going to set this up either for success
• 17:18
  Speaker 4: or it was never going to be see the light
• 17:20
  Speaker 4: of day, you know.
• 17:22
  Speaker 2: And basically she said, well, I believe in you, and
• 17:25
  Speaker 2: that's all we need.
• 17:26
  Speaker 4: All we need is someone who says I believe in
• 17:29
  Speaker 4: you to hold you and share the celebration, but to
• 17:33
  Speaker 4: be there when it's really difficult and when success is
• 17:37
  Speaker 4: not assured. And so, you know, for twelve months I
• 17:41
  Speaker 4: started planning and then made it public twelve months out
• 17:48
  Speaker 4: and said this is what I'm going to do, and
• 17:50
  Speaker 4: train for about fifteen months and went over there and
• 17:54
  Speaker 4: did some simulation runs and then hit the ground on
• 17:58
  Speaker 4: the first of December last year.
• 18:02
  Speaker 1: And why in your mind did it have to be
• 18:07
  Speaker 1: something really hard?
• 18:10
  Speaker 5: Was it all about raising awareness or was there was
• 18:13
  Speaker 5: there something else in there about this can't be about
• 18:18
  Speaker 5: grade is going to be something ludicrously hard.
• 18:23
  Speaker 4: Yeah, you know, there was three aspects to the run,
• 18:26
  Speaker 4: raise awareness, raise funds, and do the run. And those
• 18:33
  Speaker 4: three elements of the run. I don't know if I
• 18:35
  Speaker 4: said right, but I meant run the three elements of
• 18:39
  Speaker 4: the run, and the most important was the run itself.
• 18:42
  Speaker 4: You know, we attached a million dollar fundraising total. We
• 18:46
  Speaker 4: raised six hundred and seventy thousand. It was as spectacular
• 18:49
  Speaker 4: failure as a mate tells me when it comes to fundraising.
• 18:53
  Speaker 4: I don't lose sleep about not getting there. And the awareness.
• 18:58
  Speaker 4: You know, we wanted to raise the profile of the charity,
• 19:01
  Speaker 4: but you know, it needed to be something for me
• 19:06
  Speaker 4: that was something I'd look back on and think that
• 19:10
  Speaker 4: was worthy of a twenty year commitment. I wanted to
• 19:13
  Speaker 4: demonstrate to the kids in the homes that we support
• 19:18
  Speaker 4: of my commitment. I knew that doing something incredibly hard
• 19:27
  Speaker 4: without certainty of success would be growth for me. And
• 19:31
  Speaker 4: you know, at my age, it can be easy to
• 19:35
  Speaker 4: live an easy life. But growth comes in being uncomfortable,
• 19:42
  Speaker 4: you know.
• 19:42
  Speaker 1: And that's your singing my song.
• 19:44
  Speaker 2: That's where we grow, isn't that, mate? You know, it's
• 19:48
  Speaker 2: doing hard things that's where we build. Resilience.
• 19:52
  Speaker 4: We get stronger physically, mentally, spiritually, and you know, the
• 19:57
  Speaker 4: right the run every day, running sixty kilometers in temperatures
• 20:02
  Speaker 4: of you know that we're hitting forty degrees with the
• 20:05
  Speaker 4: humidity at a level that was just incredible, you know,
• 20:08
  Speaker 4: as an insight, I was drinking between fifteen and twenty.
• 20:13
  Speaker 2: Liters of day.
• 20:15
  Speaker 4: Jesus, fifteen to twenty liters a day, I was drinking,
• 20:19
  Speaker 4: and then I was eating on top of that, but
• 20:21
  Speaker 4: I was losing. I'd weigh myself at four thirty in
• 20:25
  Speaker 4: the morning when I woke up, and then i'd weigh
• 20:28
  Speaker 4: myself when I finished the run each day before I
• 20:31
  Speaker 4: jumped in the ice bath, and I would lose between
• 20:34
  Speaker 4: two and a half and three kilos a day, even
• 20:38
  Speaker 4: though I was taking on that much fluid, like overnight,
• 20:42
  Speaker 4: I'd put back on most of that way, But it
• 20:46
  Speaker 4: was just an example of how much fluid I was
• 20:48
  Speaker 4: leaving on the road, you know. And I came in
• 20:51
  Speaker 4: empty every day, you know, like and that's the best
• 20:55
  Speaker 4: word I can describe it. But it was, you know,
• 20:58
  Speaker 4: the hardest thing I've ever done, you know, waking up
• 21:02
  Speaker 4: the next day and doing it again. For twenty five
• 21:05
  Speaker 4: consecutive days, but the best thing I've ever done in
• 21:07
  Speaker 4: my life.
• 21:09
  Speaker 3: So I interviewed a guy on my podcast called Stan
• 21:14
  Speaker 3: Beacham who's a sports psychologist, and we were talking about.
• 21:16
  Speaker 1: Doing hard stuff right.
• 21:18
  Speaker 3: And he said, now, I apologies my listeners because they've
• 21:22
  Speaker 3: heard this a few times, because it's one of the
• 21:23
  Speaker 3: best things anybody's ever said in my podcast. He said,
• 21:26
  Speaker 3: in order to lead your best life, you need to
• 21:28
  Speaker 3: take on as much challenge and responsibility as you can tolerate.
• 21:32
  Speaker 3: But he said, every nine and then you need to
• 21:35
  Speaker 3: walk right to the edge of yourself and stir into
• 21:40
  Speaker 3: the abyss, and you need to work out what the
• 21:43
  Speaker 3: abyss tells you, and you walk back and you take.
• 21:45
  Speaker 1: It on board.
• 21:46
  Speaker 3: And then every nine and then you walk back to
• 21:49
  Speaker 3: the edge and you find that over time you have
• 21:52
  Speaker 3: to walk further to reach the edge right. And I
• 21:56
  Speaker 3: can just see the smile on you and you like
• 21:59
  Speaker 3: when I and even when I say that, they get goosebumps. Yeah,
• 22:03
  Speaker 3: how many times do you reckon? You stirred into the
• 22:06
  Speaker 3: abyss on that run?
• 22:09
  Speaker 2: Twenty six times every day?
• 22:13
  Speaker 4: You know? The hardest thing we were saying, we were
• 22:16
  Speaker 4: chatting before we hit record that you know, the lead
• 22:19
  Speaker 4: up to the run was, you know, I almost lost
• 22:22
  Speaker 4: my life because of the wrong prescription of medication. And
• 22:28
  Speaker 4: I went to Thailand where I hadn't been able to
• 22:30
  Speaker 4: train for a month. I hadn't been able to run
• 22:33
  Speaker 4: for a month. And you know, my coach had said
• 22:36
  Speaker 4: to me, the highest failure rate in these multi day
• 22:40
  Speaker 4: events is within the first three days.
• 22:43
  Speaker 2: Day two.
• 22:44
  Speaker 4: Day two on the run was the longest and the
• 22:47
  Speaker 4: hardest from just getting it done day Like, I started
• 22:51
  Speaker 4: in the dark and I finished in the dark, and
• 22:53
  Speaker 4: it's only sixty k so that shouldn't be happening, right,
• 22:56
  Speaker 4: And it was just the you know, the injuries or
• 23:01
  Speaker 4: the chafing, the blisters then that are carried from the
• 23:05
  Speaker 4: first day into the second day made it so difficult
• 23:09
  Speaker 4: because I'd lost so much condition, you know, and it
• 23:13
  Speaker 4: took me a good week to get it back. But
• 23:15
  Speaker 4: then day fourteen was and this is where one of
• 23:19
  Speaker 4: the things we have to respond to the conditions we
• 23:22
  Speaker 4: find ourselves in, not the ones we've hoped for. Right,
• 23:25
  Speaker 4: So day fourteen I start running.
• 23:28
  Speaker 2: That's a great.
• 23:29
  Speaker 1: Sorry that that is a great preamble for life. Can
• 23:33
  Speaker 1: you just say that again?
• 23:35
  Speaker 4: We have to respond to the conditions that we find
• 23:37
  Speaker 4: ourselves in, not the ones that we hope for. So
• 23:41
  Speaker 4: Day fourteen, Day fourteen, I'm running and it and you
• 23:45
  Speaker 4: know it. I could tell this story for hours, right.
• 23:48
  Speaker 4: But the night before Day thirteen was my birthday, and
• 23:53
  Speaker 4: we're in a town called hua Hin, which is a
• 23:56
  Speaker 4: major resort town on the way down.
• 24:00
  Speaker 2: I was probably well.
• 24:00
  Speaker 4: I was thirteen days into the run, exactly halfway from
• 24:04
  Speaker 4: a calendar day. I was a bit further in kilometers.
• 24:08
  Speaker 4: I went to a fundraising dinner that night that had
• 24:10
  Speaker 4: been held for us at a hotel, and my whole
• 24:14
  Speaker 4: recovery process went out the window. Didn't have my normal recovery,
• 24:18
  Speaker 4: didn't get in the ice BA, didn't have the massage,
• 24:21
  Speaker 4: didn't have the normal tech boots, nothing, because I had
• 24:24
  Speaker 4: to rush off to this dinner, came back quite light
• 24:27
  Speaker 4: late at night, woke up the next day and everything
• 24:30
  Speaker 4: had gone tits up. And then I was running on
• 24:34
  Speaker 4: this morning and I got shin splints in my left leg.
• 24:39
  Speaker 4: Now now you know the pain because you've had them.
• 24:42
  Speaker 4: And I see this when I tell this story at conferences,
• 24:45
  Speaker 4: there's people who sit in the audience and you can
• 24:48
  Speaker 4: see them. You know their face, you know, turns into
• 24:51
  Speaker 4: pain and there's people sitting there going I've got no
• 24:54
  Speaker 4: idea what you're talking about. And I describe it as
• 24:58
  Speaker 4: like having a screwdriver jam into the bone in your leg,
• 25:01
  Speaker 4: and it's not something that builds up. They're not there,
• 25:05
  Speaker 4: and then they're there. And I was running and it
• 25:09
  Speaker 4: just came to me. It just hit me, and you know,
• 25:12
  Speaker 4: I got into this pretty distressed state and the pain
• 25:16
  Speaker 4: was just really intense, and I was running and I'm crying,
• 25:20
  Speaker 4: I'm starving, I've got snot running out of my nose
• 25:23
  Speaker 4: and got myself into this real condition and I ended
• 25:28
  Speaker 4: up getting to lunch and it was all up in
• 25:31
  Speaker 4: the air. Like even at that point though, mate, I
• 25:34
  Speaker 4: never thought that the run was off. I never thought
• 25:38
  Speaker 4: I never questioned whether I'd finish. It was just I
• 25:42
  Speaker 4: had to deal with something that hadn't been planned for,
• 25:45
  Speaker 4: you know. And I got up from lunch and I
• 25:48
  Speaker 4: had eighteen kilometers to go to the end of the day.
• 25:51
  Speaker 2: And normally the.
• 25:53
  Speaker 4: Model I had was I'd run five k's and then
• 25:56
  Speaker 4: I'd meet the support vehicle and I could take on
• 25:59
  Speaker 4: fluid salt tablets, eat and sun cream and change close
• 26:03
  Speaker 4: to every five k's I was taking on fluid by
• 26:06
  Speaker 4: meeting the support vehicle. But the pain from this shin
• 26:10
  Speaker 4: splint that turned into a stress fracture was so intense
• 26:14
  Speaker 4: that I was shit scared that if I stopped start running,
• 26:19
  Speaker 4: I wouldn't start. So I left that lunch stop and
• 26:23
  Speaker 4: I had a soft flask, a half lead of flask
• 26:27
  Speaker 4: in my hand. And there was a Buddhist monk who
• 26:31
  Speaker 4: runs the home up in the north where I started.
• 26:35
  Speaker 4: She rode thirteen hundred and fifty kilometers about seven meters
• 26:40
  Speaker 4: behind me. We hardly ever spoke, but she just rode
• 26:42
  Speaker 4: behind me. When dogs came out, she would run up
• 26:45
  Speaker 4: and get rid of the dogs right. But this day,
• 26:49
  Speaker 4: as I rode, I just held up the flask and
• 26:52
  Speaker 4: it was like Tour de France. She'd ride up next
• 26:54
  Speaker 4: to me, take the hand flask and go and get
• 26:57
  Speaker 4: it filled up from the support vehicle and bring it back. Now,
• 27:01
  Speaker 4: that day, I got through the thirteen k mark and
• 27:05
  Speaker 4: I didn't stop, and I kept running. My next schedule
• 27:08
  Speaker 4: stop would have been at eight k, But as I
• 27:09
  Speaker 4: got towards that oent, I'm not stopping, and a ran
• 27:12
  Speaker 4: that whole eighteen kilometers and the euphoria that I felt
• 27:16
  Speaker 4: running along the beach that day. That day was a
• 27:20
  Speaker 4: defining moment of the run. And there was two things
• 27:24
  Speaker 4: that I learned from that day. One was that the
• 27:28
  Speaker 4: reward follows struggle and sacrifice. The greater the struggle, the
• 27:33
  Speaker 4: greater the sacrifice, the greater the reward. And the second
• 27:37
  Speaker 4: thing I learned was that leaders bring the weather, because
• 27:40
  Speaker 4: how I finished each day, how I arrived to see
• 27:44
  Speaker 4: the team matted. If I turned up and I looked
• 27:47
  Speaker 4: like a beaten dog and I have my head down
• 27:50
  Speaker 4: and was sorry for myself, then that's the team would
• 27:53
  Speaker 4: respond like that. They didn't know how to respond if
• 27:56
  Speaker 4: I turned up in this really shit space, right, But
• 27:59
  Speaker 4: if I turned up and felt the same. But if
• 28:03
  Speaker 4: I turned up and celebrated and punched my fist and
• 28:06
  Speaker 4: you know, called out, yeah we've done it and all this,
• 28:08
  Speaker 4: then they celebrated and the message. The real learning was
• 28:12
  Speaker 4: that as leaders, how we turn up matters. And you know,
• 28:17
  Speaker 4: it's like staring into the abyss that day. My toes
• 28:21
  Speaker 4: were over the edge, mate.
• 28:24
  Speaker 1: Bet your fuck, I bet you were. It was like
• 28:25
  Speaker 1: you were dangled over the abysse, mate, But it was.
• 28:29
  Speaker 4: It was you know, it was such a defining moment
• 28:32
  Speaker 4: and the high that I had at the end of
• 28:35
  Speaker 4: that day, and you know it was captured on video
• 28:39
  Speaker 4: with the emotion in the team. Everyone was just sobbing
• 28:44
  Speaker 4: because of what they saw me go through that day,
• 28:47
  Speaker 4: and it was just, you know, it's just unbelievable.
• 28:52
  Speaker 1: That reminds me of gem Stocktial.
• 28:56
  Speaker 3: Are you familiar with gem stocktall No, who spent seven
• 28:59
  Speaker 3: and a half years in the Hanoi Hilton prison camp
• 29:03
  Speaker 3: and he was their leader. So the Vietcom tried very
• 29:06
  Speaker 3: hard to break him. They tortured him on sixteen separate
• 29:09
  Speaker 3: occasions and put him in solitary confinement for four fucking years.
• 29:14
  Speaker 4: Right.
• 29:15
  Speaker 3: He was asked at the end of it, and he
• 29:17
  Speaker 3: inspired his fellow prisoners to survive. But he was asked
• 29:19
  Speaker 3: at the end of it if he ever lost faith
• 29:21
  Speaker 3: for hope. And here's what he said. He said, I
• 29:23
  Speaker 3: never I never doubted that I would get out. I
• 29:28
  Speaker 3: never lost faith in the end of the story, And
• 29:32
  Speaker 3: he said, and I was determined that I would prevail
• 29:38
  Speaker 3: in the end and turn the experience into the defining
• 29:42
  Speaker 3: moment of my life, which in retrospect, I would not
• 29:47
  Speaker 3: treat it, which is pretty frigging amazing. But that just
• 29:52
  Speaker 3: it connects into what you said something there about the
• 29:56
  Speaker 3: reward and the struggle and the suffering.
• 29:58
  Speaker 4: What was it that you said that reward struggle and sacrifice.
• 30:04
  Speaker 4: You know, I think that the size of the reward
• 30:07
  Speaker 4: is commensurate to the struggle and sacrifice. And this is where,
• 30:11
  Speaker 4: like I think we, you know, as a community, as parents,
• 30:15
  Speaker 4: as corporate leaders, we try to remove hard things from
• 30:19
  Speaker 4: people's life, you know, but how do we build resilience?
• 30:23
  Speaker 4: Where do we develop the muscle memory to deal with
• 30:26
  Speaker 4: hard shit? If we don't face it, you know, we
• 30:28
  Speaker 4: don't get the courage. We don't get the courage until
• 30:32
  Speaker 4: we've done something.
• 30:33
  Speaker 1: There's no courage farrier there. You've got to do it.
• 30:37
  Speaker 4: The only time I knew that I'd be able to
• 30:41
  Speaker 4: run fourteen hundred kilometers in twenty six days was when
• 30:43
  Speaker 4: I finished.
• 30:46
  Speaker 2: Isn't that true?
• 30:48
  Speaker 4: Ye? You know you said something when you were talking about,
• 30:53
  Speaker 4: you know, the fella in the prison there, and it
• 30:56
  Speaker 4: was a learning for me because my instant response to
• 30:59
  Speaker 4: that store he was mine can't compare to that. But
• 31:03
  Speaker 4: then I hear that when I tell the story as
• 31:07
  Speaker 4: I've done a couple of times this week at conferences
• 31:09
  Speaker 4: where people go, my story doesn't compare to yours, and
• 31:13
  Speaker 4: it's something I learned, and I actually share the story
• 31:17
  Speaker 4: during my presentations and I say, comparison is the thief
• 31:20
  Speaker 4: of joy. I like that, you know, if I stand
• 31:26
  Speaker 4: up and compare myself to the hardship that you've faced
• 31:30
  Speaker 4: in the military, you know, I take away and the
• 31:36
  Speaker 4: hardest thing we do is the hardest thing we'll do.
• 31:40
  Speaker 1: It's just about to say sorry, sorry for butting in.
• 31:42
  Speaker 3: I's about to say, the hardest thing we've ever figused
• 31:45
  Speaker 3: is the hardest thing we've ever fiarsed.
• 31:47
  Speaker 2: It's true, isn't it?
• 31:49
  Speaker 1: And that creates the barometer for what is difficult in
• 31:52
  Speaker 1: your life.
• 31:53
  Speaker 2: Absolutely. And it's the same with loss.
• 31:56
  Speaker 4: You know, when people are dealing with loss or hard
• 32:00
  Speaker 4: ship or whatever. And you know, I don't think that
• 32:02
  Speaker 4: there's value in saying, well, there's someone doing it harder,
• 32:06
  Speaker 4: or someone's lost more, or I think we can learn
• 32:10
  Speaker 4: from those that have gone before us. But comparison is
• 32:14
  Speaker 4: the thief of joy. And you know, and I suffered
• 32:17
  Speaker 4: from this. In the lead up to my run, my
• 32:21
  Speaker 4: coach Maddy Abel was coaching Ned Brockman as he ran
• 32:26
  Speaker 4: around Homebush Stadium in Sydney trying to break the thousand
• 32:31
  Speaker 4: mile record. And because of the Ned was running in
• 32:37
  Speaker 4: September and I was due to run in December. It's
• 32:40
  Speaker 4: only a couple of months. And because of the proximity
• 32:42
  Speaker 4: that I had to the insights of Ned's run, because
• 32:45
  Speaker 4: of our coach, the shared coach, I was watching Ned,
• 32:49
  Speaker 4: and I was feeling so insecure, so inferior that mine
• 32:53
  Speaker 4: didn't stack up that you know that it was never
• 32:56
  Speaker 4: going to be harder as hard. I was never going
• 32:58
  Speaker 4: to run, you know, as far or fast. I was
• 33:00
  Speaker 4: never going to raise the money. And I started to
• 33:04
  Speaker 4: really withdraw and then I went, you know, what the
• 33:07
  Speaker 4: fuck is that about? And I went, you know, like,
• 33:11
  Speaker 4: I'm fifty seven years old, I'm about to run fourteen
• 33:15
  Speaker 4: hundred chiometers. Why can't I just be happy with that?
• 33:17
  Speaker 1: Yeah?
• 33:18
  Speaker 3: And in ridiculous humidity. Now, didn't do that fucking humidity,
• 33:22
  Speaker 3: Let me.
• 33:22
  Speaker 2: Tell you, as at no point comparing, you know, but.
• 33:27
  Speaker 4: I know, I know.
• 33:28
  Speaker 2: But I tell you what.
• 33:29
  Speaker 3: When I go to Brisbane in summer, I walked on
• 33:32
  Speaker 3: the street two hundred yards and I think Jesus this
• 33:34
  Speaker 3: is for an Irishman.
• 33:37
  Speaker 4: True that, yeah, But see, this is the other thing
• 33:40
  Speaker 4: that I learned was that more in the training, that
• 33:43
  Speaker 4: this mindset of whatever the conditions, they're my favorite, you know,
• 33:50
  Speaker 4: Because I was training, I was in the I was
• 33:53
  Speaker 4: running in the snow in Japan. I was running in
• 33:56
  Speaker 4: the dead of night on our farm property in minus
• 33:59
  Speaker 4: four degrees.
• 34:01
  Speaker 2: And then the very next day I flew to Thailand
• 34:03
  Speaker 2: for work.
• 34:04
  Speaker 4: I got off the plane on the Sunday, so I
• 34:06
  Speaker 4: was running up at our farm at minus four degrees
• 34:09
  Speaker 4: at night on the Saturday. On the Sunday, arrived into Thailand,
• 34:13
  Speaker 4: I had to do a twenty k run. I'm running
• 34:16
  Speaker 4: around the loops of the park and it was forty
• 34:18
  Speaker 4: degrees and close to one hundred percent humidity, So I
• 34:21
  Speaker 4: had a forty four degree temperature swing within twenty four hours.
• 34:26
  Speaker 4: But the thing was my learning in it was whatever
• 34:30
  Speaker 4: the conditions, they're my favorite, because if you complain about
• 34:35
  Speaker 4: the conditions, you're just taking yourself in a downward spiral,
• 34:39
  Speaker 4: you know, in the because you can't change that. All
• 34:42
  Speaker 4: you can do is change how you respond. And it
• 34:45
  Speaker 4: was really interesting. It was an unspoken thing we didn't
• 34:48
  Speaker 4: talk about it. But no one during the month of December,
• 34:52
  Speaker 4: from the crew or myself ever complained about the heat.
• 34:57
  Speaker 4: We never talked about it, and it wasn't something we said,
• 35:00
  Speaker 4: let's not talk about it, but no one talked about it.
• 35:04
  Speaker 4: And I think it was just an acceptance that I
• 35:07
  Speaker 4: chose to run in Thailand. I've been there a few times.
• 35:11
  Speaker 4: I knew it was going to be hot, you know,
• 35:13
  Speaker 4: and that was just part of it. And you know,
• 35:15
  Speaker 4: if I woke up each day or if I came
• 35:17
  Speaker 4: in at lunch and complained about the heat, that didn't
• 35:21
  Speaker 4: serve me.
• 35:22
  Speaker 3: Well, yeah, So I love that that you said that
• 35:26
  Speaker 3: whatever the conditions were, were my favorite condition. And it
• 35:30
  Speaker 3: reminds me of the Stoic philosophers, and you're definitely a
• 35:34
  Speaker 3: modern day Stoic. But but Seneca, you know saying, I
• 35:39
  Speaker 3: pity the man who's not fiercet adversity because he's not
• 35:42
  Speaker 3: he's not fist a worthy opponent, and nobody, not even him,
• 35:46
  Speaker 3: knows what he's capable of. And what really resilient people
• 35:51
  Speaker 3: do in challenges is they they view them as a
• 35:56
  Speaker 3: worthy opponent. And you will often hear like like the
• 36:00
  Speaker 3: best of the best, whether it's a boxer or somebody
• 36:04
  Speaker 3: going I hope my opponent's in their best ship possible,
• 36:08
  Speaker 3: because that's going to bring out the best in me.
• 36:11
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 36:11
  Speaker 3: Yeah, that's the mindset shift that we need rather than oh,
• 36:16
  Speaker 3: this is hard and I don't want to have to
• 36:19
  Speaker 3: do this and I want to have a comfortable life.
• 36:21
  Speaker 3: Is I think, and I'm sure you're on the same
• 36:24
  Speaker 3: bus as me, that we need to embrace all of
• 36:28
  Speaker 3: life with the shit sandwiches as well and actually get
• 36:33
  Speaker 3: excited about the contest.
• 36:35
  Speaker 1: I think there's I think I don't know what you're thinking, is,
• 36:38
  Speaker 1: but I think there's levels to this.
• 36:40
  Speaker 3: There's one level where you go you accept that life
• 36:45
  Speaker 3: is going to be hard and you're going to have
• 36:46
  Speaker 3: to go through challenges. And then for the people who've
• 36:51
  Speaker 3: been through though, some of them go to another level
• 36:54
  Speaker 3: where they actually get excited about the challenges and they
• 36:59
  Speaker 3: view them as a worthy I can see you grinning
• 37:02
  Speaker 3: because I know that that's in you.
• 37:05
  Speaker 1: Do you know it was there a point in your
• 37:10
  Speaker 1: life where you mired that next step because you've obviously
• 37:15
  Speaker 1: mireed the step.
• 37:16
  Speaker 4: Yeah, I don't know, mate, certainly not on a conscious
• 37:20
  Speaker 4: level that I can say, here's the point that was,
• 37:25
  Speaker 4: you know, that brought me to where I am today.
• 37:28
  Speaker 2: I think it was.
• 37:29
  Speaker 4: You know, I'm a pretty simple fellow who you know,
• 37:32
  Speaker 4: comes up with an idea or a thought or you know,
• 37:36
  Speaker 4: and then next thing, you know, I've I'm often doing
• 37:40
  Speaker 4: it and we're without worrying around the you know, the
• 37:43
  Speaker 4: focus on the results and not the excuses. And you know,
• 37:47
  Speaker 4: if I if I thought about what we've achieved in
• 37:50
  Speaker 4: Thailand in twenty years, you know, with the positive impact
• 37:54
  Speaker 4: on the lives of the kids and what we've created.
• 37:56
  Speaker 4: You know, for many years, we've been the largest contributing
• 38:00
  Speaker 4: Australian charity to Thailand. We've raised over forty million dollars.
• 38:04
  Speaker 4: We've put Wow, we've put fifty six kids through university.
• 38:09
  Speaker 4: You know, one of them has just completed his PhD.
• 38:12
  Speaker 4: And and you know, we built properties all over We
• 38:14
  Speaker 4: stopped kids dying from HIV because of a lack of
• 38:18
  Speaker 4: access to medicine. And you know, if I thought about
• 38:21
  Speaker 4: all of that is the where I had to get to.
• 38:25
  Speaker 4: I never would have started because I came from a
• 38:27
  Speaker 4: place of I had no experience, no knowledge, no foundations
• 38:31
  Speaker 4: in this area. But I just started and I think,
• 38:35
  Speaker 4: you know, the more action we take, the clearer will become.
• 38:39
  Speaker 4: Because clarity doesn't bring action. Action brings clarity. Oh God,
• 38:43
  Speaker 4: love it love, and you know, and it's and you know,
• 38:47
  Speaker 4: for me, the run it was I guess it was
• 38:51
  Speaker 4: unusual in the amount of planning that I had and
• 38:55
  Speaker 4: that that had to be for obviously for you know,
• 38:58
  Speaker 4: a good reason like a made of mine doctor Shawan Richardson,
• 39:02
  Speaker 4: whose works with high performance athletes and known him for
• 39:07
  Speaker 4: a long time and he was an Olympian himself, And
• 39:10
  Speaker 4: when I put this to him, he said, why do
• 39:12
  Speaker 4: you need to follow this model of twenty six days?
• 39:15
  Speaker 4: You know, in fourteen hundred, Why can't you do just
• 39:18
  Speaker 4: a marathon a day, or why can't you extend the time?
• 39:21
  Speaker 4: And you know, it was it was intimidating as all
• 39:26
  Speaker 4: hell what I took on. But we were having lunch
• 39:30
  Speaker 4: on Christmas Day, which was the penultimate day of the
• 39:34
  Speaker 4: second last day before we finished the run, and my
• 39:38
  Speaker 4: father in law was there and we were enjoying the
• 39:41
  Speaker 4: lunch like we'd done the run in the morning. We
• 39:44
  Speaker 4: were down to twenty five k's because I'd front loaded
• 39:48
  Speaker 4: and having lunch, and he said, Pete, can I ask
• 39:50
  Speaker 4: you a question. He said, when did you think that
• 39:52
  Speaker 4: you'd get this done? And I said to him, never,
• 39:57
  Speaker 4: over the last twenty five days, I ever think I
• 40:00
  Speaker 4: wasn't going to finish, which is really really unusual for me,
• 40:04
  Speaker 4: because I've stood at the start line of a number
• 40:07
  Speaker 4: of ultra marathons and thought, you know, will I finish,
• 40:10
  Speaker 4: will I achieve? Will this be the DNF. I don't
• 40:14
  Speaker 4: have that personal confidence, but for some reason, embarking on
• 40:20
  Speaker 4: running sixty kilometers a day for twenty six days, I
• 40:23
  Speaker 4: never doubted the ability to finish. There was never a
• 40:27
  Speaker 4: moment during those twenty six days where I went I
• 40:30
  Speaker 4: want this to finish, or I want to stop. There
• 40:33
  Speaker 4: were times where I want I want to get to
• 40:35
  Speaker 4: the end of the day, or I want to get
• 40:36
  Speaker 4: to the vehicle, I want to get to the next
• 40:38
  Speaker 4: water stop. But there was never not one moment in
• 40:42
  Speaker 4: those twenty six days where I went, I want to
• 40:45
  Speaker 4: pull out. Never did I have that moment of thinking.
• 40:48
  Speaker 4: And I think a big part of it, Pau was
• 40:50
  Speaker 4: for me, I was so scared of failure, you quitting.
• 40:56
  Speaker 1: Because because of what was on the lane, because of
• 40:58
  Speaker 1: the purpose.
• 41:00
  Speaker 2: This was a one off event, you know, this was
• 41:02
  Speaker 2: I had to arrive on Boxing day, the mark twenty.
• 41:06
  Speaker 1: Years because yeah, gotcha, Yeah, so I couldn't.
• 41:08
  Speaker 2: I couldn't go.
• 41:09
  Speaker 4: I've had this medical episode in the lead up. We'll
• 41:12
  Speaker 4: just put it off to next year. I'd already raised
• 41:16
  Speaker 4: three hundred thousand through donors and supporters before even took
• 41:21
  Speaker 4: one step in Thailand. And I was just driven by
• 41:26
  Speaker 4: this personal fear of failure and knowing that if I quit,
• 41:31
  Speaker 4: it would guarantee failure that would live with me forever.
• 41:34
  Speaker 4: Like I went into this really dark, depressed state within
• 41:38
  Speaker 4: forty hours of finishing the run, and I sat there
• 41:41
  Speaker 4: for weeks in this dark state, and I'd succeeded, and
• 41:47
  Speaker 4: I went, what place would I have been in if
• 41:50
  Speaker 4: I had had quit, if I'd failed the run? You know,
• 41:54
  Speaker 4: it actually scared me to think how dark and deep
• 41:57
  Speaker 4: I would have gone if I wouldn't have finished.
• 41:59
  Speaker 2: So, you know, this.
• 42:02
  Speaker 4: This concept was just you know, I'm dealing with pain.
• 42:06
  Speaker 4: I'm running through pain. It'll stop when you know, an
• 42:10
  Speaker 4: hour after I stopped running, the blisters won't hurt, the
• 42:12
  Speaker 4: chafing won't hurt, you know, my it b the stress,
• 42:16
  Speaker 4: the stress structure, that'll all stop hurting. Once I stop running,
• 42:20
  Speaker 4: and all I got to do is just manage the
• 42:23
  Speaker 4: pain while I run.
• 42:24
  Speaker 1: All I got to do. It's the all epictetius, This
• 42:27
  Speaker 1: too shall pass.
• 42:29
  Speaker 2: That's exactly right.
• 42:30
  Speaker 4: You know the good times, they too shall pass. Ye times,
• 42:34
  Speaker 4: they too shall pass.
• 42:36
  Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, absolutely, It's interesting that you went into it
• 42:39
  Speaker 3: pretty direct place. Afterwards, I've spoken to several people who
• 42:44
  Speaker 3: achieved like ridiculous things like you have, and then afterwards
• 42:49
  Speaker 3: there's that, there's that crash.
• 42:53
  Speaker 1: Did you do you any exploring? Did you talk to
• 42:55
  Speaker 1: a psychologist about that? About what causes that? From doing
• 43:01
  Speaker 1: something so amasing that when it finishes you just crush
• 43:05
  Speaker 1: any insights at all. Yeah.
• 43:08
  Speaker 4: I hooked up with a great sports site from the
• 43:11
  Speaker 4: Sunny Coast in the lead up to the run, and
• 43:17
  Speaker 4: the thing was, I'd been through this, and you would
• 43:19
  Speaker 4: know this from having done deployments. You come home and
• 43:24
  Speaker 4: you go, well, how is everyone just functioning as per normal?
• 43:28
  Speaker 4: You know, when I came home from carrying the bodies
• 43:31
  Speaker 4: of dead children around, you know, walking around thousands of bodies,
• 43:35
  Speaker 4: and then you know, you fly home the next day,
• 43:37
  Speaker 4: you're down at the supermarket and everyone's just living normal life,
• 43:40
  Speaker 4: and you know, how does this occur?
• 43:42
  Speaker 1: Right? Complaining about Mundie and shit?
• 43:45
  Speaker 5: Right?
• 43:45
  Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, yeah right. So I'd gone through that when
• 43:49
  Speaker 4: I'd been on deployment, so I kind of knew that
• 43:52
  Speaker 4: would come and it would pass. And we'd talked about
• 43:57
  Speaker 4: what might happen after the run, and because she deals
• 44:01
  Speaker 4: with high performance athletes, many of whom that was their career,
• 44:05
  Speaker 4: where to me, this was a really small window. We
• 44:09
  Speaker 4: thought that, you know, I'd be I'd be okay. But
• 44:13
  Speaker 4: within two days of finishing the run, I had breakfast
• 44:17
  Speaker 4: at the hotel. I walked back to my room and
• 44:19
  Speaker 4: I sat on the bed and I said to myself,
• 44:22
  Speaker 4: I went, what the fuck was that about? And from
• 44:25
  Speaker 4: that moment on, I just went down and down and down.
• 44:29
  Speaker 4: And then my wife was the same.
• 44:30
  Speaker 2: Like she was up.
• 44:32
  Speaker 4: She was you know, you read the book and listened
• 44:35
  Speaker 4: to her contribution. I couldn't have done it without her
• 44:37
  Speaker 4: or the team, right, And she was instrumental. She ran
• 44:41
  Speaker 4: with me every day and we got off the plane
• 44:45
  Speaker 4: and I drove straight to the farm to leave the
• 44:47
  Speaker 4: people looking after our dogs. And she joined me a
• 44:50
  Speaker 4: couple of days later at the farm and we just
• 44:52
  Speaker 4: wandered around like zombies. You know, and I just went
• 44:56
  Speaker 4: into this really really dark place. I said, like I'd
• 45:01
  Speaker 4: achieved everything I'd set out for. Like the fact I
• 45:04
  Speaker 4: didn't raise a million dollars didn't bother me. You know
• 45:07
  Speaker 4: that the run was it couldn't have gone better. And
• 45:11
  Speaker 4: yet and I think, and.
• 45:12
  Speaker 2: To some degree, I still grieve the loss of what
• 45:17
  Speaker 2: we had there.
• 45:18
  Speaker 4: And it was just you know, something that something that
• 45:23
  Speaker 4: it was the best thing either us I've ever done
• 45:26
  Speaker 4: in our lives, you know, and we both talk about it.
• 45:30
  Speaker 4: Hands down, you know, it was the best thing I've
• 45:32
  Speaker 4: ever done in my life. And to achieve it, to
• 45:35
  Speaker 4: work so hard to get there, to achieve it, and
• 45:39
  Speaker 4: you know, you know, taking that on at my age
• 45:42
  Speaker 4: and and you know, and I think to come home,
• 45:46
  Speaker 4: there was just just this emptiness of what we had
• 45:50
  Speaker 4: and what we shared every day. Like you know, if
• 45:53
  Speaker 4: you go to the finish line of an iron Man
• 45:55
  Speaker 4: or a marathon, you know, you see people just break
• 45:58
  Speaker 4: down with emotion. Why had that for twenty six days
• 46:01
  Speaker 4: in a row?
• 46:02
  Speaker 3: Yeah, Yeah, there's there's going to be something in this
• 46:06
  Speaker 3: post extraordinary achievement malaise. And you know there's probably something
• 46:13
  Speaker 3: that the malays afterwards is directly proportional to the size
• 46:17
  Speaker 3: of the achievement.
• 46:18
  Speaker 2: I reckon, I think that's your next master's program.
• 46:21
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I think, Jesus there's something in that.
• 46:24
  Speaker 2: I think there's absolutely there's got to.
• 46:26
  Speaker 1: Be something in that.
• 46:29
  Speaker 3: Look, we talked about purpose and how important purpose is
• 46:33
  Speaker 3: to particularly to get through really difficult things. I mean,
• 46:37
  Speaker 3: Victor Frankel talked about that, ascribing ascribing purpose to hardship,
• 46:43
  Speaker 3: meaning and purpose And in terms of then lessons, because
• 46:47
  Speaker 3: you've been a leader in the police force, and what
• 46:51
  Speaker 3: are some of the lessons that you have gleaned out
• 46:55
  Speaker 3: of this whole experience, your your entire career for leadership, Well.
• 47:03
  Speaker 2: That's a big question. I think there's a couple of things.
• 47:05
  Speaker 4: And you talk about purpose and and for leaders I
• 47:11
  Speaker 4: think you know, the teams that we're leading, people follow
• 47:15
  Speaker 4: your purpose, not your plan, and so it doesn't matter
• 47:18
  Speaker 4: how good your plans, people get behind you when you
• 47:21
  Speaker 4: have purpose. And I think you know, one of the
• 47:26
  Speaker 4: things that I talk about the reasons why the Australians
• 47:30
  Speaker 4: were so successful in the work that we did in Thailand,
• 47:34
  Speaker 4: like there were thirty six countries that were represented, four
• 47:37
  Speaker 4: hundred and fifty forensic staff yet the leaders, the Australians
• 47:41
  Speaker 4: held so many of the leadership positions for a significant
• 47:46
  Speaker 4: period of time, and you go, why was that we
• 47:50
  Speaker 4: didn't arrive first? We didn't have greater skill, experience or expertise,
• 47:54
  Speaker 4: We didn't lose more bodies to give us this right.
• 47:57
  Speaker 4: It was a number of things that we did. It
• 47:59
  Speaker 4: was with speed, sensitivity, structure, and simplicity. But if there's
• 48:04
  Speaker 4: one thing, and I saw it reproduced when I worked
• 48:07
  Speaker 4: in the Awachi Prefecture of Japan after the tsunami of
• 48:11
  Speaker 4: twenty eleven there, it's this concept of presence. And I think,
• 48:17
  Speaker 4: you know, leaders underestimate the significance of their presence when
• 48:21
  Speaker 4: they're leading teams because when you turn up, it says
• 48:24
  Speaker 4: two things. One you care and one you understand. As leaders,
• 48:29
  Speaker 4: we don't have to have all the answers. We don't
• 48:32
  Speaker 4: have to bring about change, but we need to be present.
• 48:35
  Speaker 4: And I think, you know, we over complicate, you know,
• 48:40
  Speaker 4: leadership a lot of the time. I think it's having
• 48:43
  Speaker 4: the courage to make difficult decisions because the wrong decision
• 48:47
  Speaker 4: is better than no decision. And I think being being
• 48:51
  Speaker 4: present and having that real clarity and you know, we've
• 48:55
  Speaker 4: already talked about many of the learnings that I took
• 48:58
  Speaker 4: from the run and you know, reinforce those to me,
• 49:02
  Speaker 4: and you know, equally the learning so I took from
• 49:05
  Speaker 4: you know, taking teams into crisis and disasters owns.
• 49:09
  Speaker 3: And if you were so given that all of the
• 49:13
  Speaker 3: stuff that you've done in your life and all the
• 49:16
  Speaker 3: stuff that you have achieved, what advice would you give
• 49:22
  Speaker 3: to your eighteen year old self or a bunch of
• 49:25
  Speaker 3: eighteen year olds that you were mentoring? And I see
• 49:28
  Speaker 3: answer both of those questions because the advice that you
• 49:31
  Speaker 3: give to yourself, I find when I reflect on that,
• 49:34
  Speaker 3: I would be harder on myself than I would be
• 49:37
  Speaker 3: on other people. So what advice would you give your
• 49:40
  Speaker 3: eighteen year old self? And what advice would you give
• 49:43
  Speaker 3: to eighteen year olds right now? Around just some life lessons?
• 49:49
  Speaker 4: Yeah, I think like the first part of the question
• 49:52
  Speaker 4: would be to celebrate the moment and celebrate the success
• 49:58
  Speaker 4: more than I ever have, you know. And it's like
• 50:01
  Speaker 4: I've done a number of things in my life, you know,
• 50:06
  Speaker 4: through what we've spoken about, professional achievements and you know,
• 50:10
  Speaker 4: studying law part time where we had you know, three kids,
• 50:13
  Speaker 4: and graduating from that, getting a helicopter pilot's license because
• 50:17
  Speaker 4: I liked, you know, the idea of it, and you know,
• 50:21
  Speaker 4: running and building the biggest charity and all these things.
• 50:25
  Speaker 4: But you know, I never celebrate the success of any
• 50:29
  Speaker 4: of it. And and I think that you know that
• 50:34
  Speaker 4: part of that is keeps us humble. But I guess
• 50:39
  Speaker 4: if you describe yourself as.
• 50:40
  Speaker 2: Humble when you're not humble.
• 50:41
  Speaker 4: But you know, I think part of it keeps us grounded.
• 50:46
  Speaker 4: But I also think that there's a need. And this
• 50:49
  Speaker 4: was something that we did, and it was a last
• 50:52
  Speaker 4: minute inclusion for the run, and what I had made
• 50:55
  Speaker 4: up was this board. It was about a meter and
• 50:57
  Speaker 4: a half by a meter and it was a hard
• 51:00
  Speaker 4: plastic board, and we had the twenty six days of
• 51:04
  Speaker 4: the run printed like a calendar on that board, and
• 51:09
  Speaker 4: every day, one of the eleven of the team that
• 51:13
  Speaker 4: were there crossed off one of the days and we celebrated.
• 51:18
  Speaker 4: We celebrated, and we wrote on the the in the
• 51:20
  Speaker 4: box the distance would run and the cumulative distance, and
• 51:26
  Speaker 4: it just became such a monumental point of every day
• 51:32
  Speaker 4: that I would thank the team, I'd talk about what
• 51:34
  Speaker 4: we'd done and talked about how much I appreciated their efforts,
• 51:37
  Speaker 4: and they'd say, Paul, come on up and cross off
• 51:40
  Speaker 4: a day. Then the whole team would start this year,
• 51:42
  Speaker 4: and it got louder and louder and louder until they
• 51:44
  Speaker 4: crossed off the day. And celebrating each day was so important.
• 51:49
  Speaker 4: So for my eighteen month, I would so adaen year,
• 51:52
  Speaker 4: I'd say my self, I'd say, continue the path you're on.
• 51:55
  Speaker 4: You made some mistakes, but that's who you are. But
• 51:59
  Speaker 4: you know, find find time to celebrate, not just for
• 52:04
  Speaker 4: yourself but also for your team, because I know, I
• 52:08
  Speaker 4: have really high expectations of myself, and then that translates
• 52:12
  Speaker 4: or transfers across to those I work with. And sometimes
• 52:16
  Speaker 4: because I don't celebrate, then I don't celebrate and acknowledge
• 52:21
  Speaker 4: the others. And yeah, it's a portant you know that
• 52:26
  Speaker 4: that work ethic is both probably the good and the
• 52:30
  Speaker 4: negative because I expect others just to do and operate
• 52:35
  Speaker 4: as I do, and that's not the case, you know.
• 52:38
  Speaker 4: So you know, then to eighteen year olds, if I
• 52:41
  Speaker 4: was talking to a group of them, I just say
• 52:44
  Speaker 4: to them to you know, to get amongst it, to
• 52:47
  Speaker 4: you know, to take on scary shit, to you know,
• 52:50
  Speaker 4: do things where there's uncertainty to you know, don't wait
• 52:54
  Speaker 4: for permission, and don't wait until you've got the answers.
• 52:58
  Speaker 4: Don't look for certainty, don't look for safe options. And
• 53:02
  Speaker 4: you know, and and and you know, we're if we
• 53:05
  Speaker 4: put our dreams out there, we're judged, and people judges
• 53:10
  Speaker 4: and say, you know, we're too big, we're too small,
• 53:14
  Speaker 4: we're too we're not fit enough, we're too big, you know,
• 53:17
  Speaker 4: all these judgments. But and then they define, they seek
• 53:21
  Speaker 4: to define what we should do. But truly we're the
• 53:23
  Speaker 4: ones who should find out what we're capable of. And
• 53:28
  Speaker 4: the only way we can do that is by trying it,
• 53:31
  Speaker 4: getting to the edge, as you've spoken about getting to
• 53:34
  Speaker 4: the abyss, looking over the edge, you know, and and
• 53:38
  Speaker 4: you know, as you and I both recognize that's where
• 53:41
  Speaker 4: growth comes from. And you know, it's such an exciting place,
• 53:45
  Speaker 4: you know, to think that you can't go further, and
• 53:49
  Speaker 4: then to go further.
• 53:50
  Speaker 3: Yeah, there was a meal of mine actually that I
• 53:53
  Speaker 3: joined the Enforces with is done. And he's as mad
• 53:56
  Speaker 3: as a cut snack smator, boats and all sorts of
• 53:59
  Speaker 3: crazy stuff. I remember said to me one dext I
• 54:02
  Speaker 3: think we both got in a bit of ship in
• 54:04
  Speaker 3: the in the navy together and he just turned and
• 54:08
  Speaker 3: he looked at me and he said, if you're not
• 54:10
  Speaker 3: right on the edge, you're taking up too much space.
• 54:15
  Speaker 1: Yeah, which is a cracker.
• 54:17
  Speaker 3: So what's for somebody who's achieved something so amazing, right
• 54:23
  Speaker 3: in terms of building that whole charity, all the ship
• 54:25
  Speaker 3: you've done in your life? What does the future look
• 54:31
  Speaker 3: like like? Do you sit and wonder about the future
• 54:34
  Speaker 3: and is there a little part of your brain that goes,
• 54:37
  Speaker 3: how you going to top that? Are you have you
• 54:41
  Speaker 3: reached the point of contentment of the path that you're on?
• 54:45
  Speaker 2: What do you reckon?
• 54:47
  Speaker 1: I reckon? I reckon.
• 54:48
  Speaker 3: There's there's that little voice that just pops up every
• 54:52
  Speaker 3: now and then it goes, come on, motherfucker, what's next? Yeah?
• 54:55
  Speaker 2: Well, here's the thing.
• 54:56
  Speaker 4: Right when I when I write the book, uh, I
• 55:00
  Speaker 4: can finishing the run, Lots of people say, so, what's next?
• 55:04
  Speaker 4: And it's a really interesting question, isn't it? Because no
• 55:07
  Speaker 4: one asked me that before I'd done the run, and
• 55:10
  Speaker 4: you know, and it's like, well, I don't know whether
• 55:13
  Speaker 4: it's their assessment that, Well, you can't be happy with that.
• 55:16
  Speaker 2: You've got to do more.
• 55:17
  Speaker 4: But you know, I've never been asked the question before
• 55:20
  Speaker 4: I did the run, as so what's next? And you
• 55:22
  Speaker 4: do the run and then people go, that's fantastic. So Peter,
• 55:26
  Speaker 4: what what's next for you? And you go, well, holy funk,
• 55:28
  Speaker 4: I've just done this run. Perhaps I might sit in
• 55:30
  Speaker 4: the glow of that for a while, but you.
• 55:32
  Speaker 2: Go and run it.
• 55:33
  Speaker 1: Now ask yourself what's next.
• 55:35
  Speaker 2: So I wrote the book, and I and that was
• 55:39
  Speaker 2: where big achievement.
• 55:40
  Speaker 1: Writing a book is a big achievement.
• 55:41
  Speaker 4: Yeah, I've written. This was my fourth and I really enjoyed,
• 55:44
  Speaker 4: really enjoyed writing it. But but you know, your question
• 55:48
  Speaker 4: is to is there something else? And you know, I've
• 55:52
  Speaker 4: spoken about the importance of sharing this journey with my
• 55:55
  Speaker 4: wife and and we're in New Zealand only a few
• 55:58
  Speaker 4: weeks ago, and for my son's wedding, and we're laying
• 56:03
  Speaker 4: in bed at night and she was finishing the book
• 56:06
  Speaker 4: and she was getting towards the end of it, and
• 56:10
  Speaker 4: we're just about to go to sleep, and she said,
• 56:13
  Speaker 4: you know, I'm really sad that this is coming to
• 56:17
  Speaker 4: the end. She said, you know, is that the biggest
• 56:20
  Speaker 4: thing you think we'll ever do? And it's a bit
• 56:22
  Speaker 4: sad that we might not do anything as big as that,
• 56:25
  Speaker 4: and you know, and she said, I'm getting to the
• 56:28
  Speaker 4: end of the book and it feels like the whole
• 56:29
  Speaker 4: journey's over.
• 56:31
  Speaker 1: And she.
• 56:33
  Speaker 4: Closed her eyes, turned the light off and went to sleep.
• 56:35
  Speaker 4: And I'm laying there with my eyes staring at the ceiling.
• 56:38
  Speaker 4: Are you fuck her? I'm not going to be able
• 56:40
  Speaker 4: to sleep now. So I spent hours awake staring at
• 56:43
  Speaker 4: the ceiling, going, what does that mean? We've got to
• 56:45
  Speaker 4: do something more?
• 56:46
  Speaker 2: But you know, I hadn't.
• 56:50
  Speaker 4: It wasn't something that I lined up and went, well,
• 56:52
  Speaker 4: this is what we'll do. I have to run further
• 56:54
  Speaker 4: or I've got to now do some swim or something
• 56:57
  Speaker 4: like that, like I did the run becaurse of the
• 57:01
  Speaker 4: twenty year anniversary, you know. And there's never through this year,
• 57:05
  Speaker 4: there hasn't been a time where I've gone, I need
• 57:09
  Speaker 4: to do something. But I share a bit of a
• 57:12
  Speaker 4: secret just between you and me, that there's something brewing and.
• 57:21
  Speaker 2: It's actually it's bigger, and.
• 57:26
  Speaker 4: It's taken It's taken me twelve months. But again there's
• 57:30
  Speaker 4: reason for it.
• 57:31
  Speaker 1: You know.
• 57:31
  Speaker 4: When I look at it, it's not bigger in days
• 57:35
  Speaker 4: or kilometers or kind of giving it away, but just
• 57:39
  Speaker 4: to make it bigger. It's just you know, what I'm planning,
• 57:44
  Speaker 4: and I feel excited for that again. And and I think,
• 57:48
  Speaker 4: you know, at my age, you can't let the old
• 57:53
  Speaker 4: man in, you know, like that as soon as you stop,
• 57:58
  Speaker 4: you know, as soon as I stop. And I know
• 58:00
  Speaker 4: that when I started, like I was running like not
• 58:05
  Speaker 4: big distances, but I was training through twenty eighteen and
• 58:09
  Speaker 4: was running like four thirty kilometers four minute thirty kilometers.
• 58:14
  Speaker 4: And then you know, for whatever reason, you know, I
• 58:19
  Speaker 4: wasn't running much and went for a number of years
• 58:21
  Speaker 4: where there was no real regular running. And then when
• 58:25
  Speaker 4: I started training for the Thailand Run, I couldn't get
• 58:30
  Speaker 4: back to those the speeds that I was running. And
• 58:34
  Speaker 4: admittedly I was training for something different, but and it
• 58:37
  Speaker 4: took me so much longer to regain the fitness. And
• 58:41
  Speaker 4: that's one of the things I know that if I
• 58:43
  Speaker 4: stop now and then think I'll pick it up in
• 58:46
  Speaker 4: a couple of years again, it's not going to happen,
• 58:48
  Speaker 4: you know. And I think, you know, to keep yourself,
• 58:52
  Speaker 4: you know, healthy and happy and mentally strong and all
• 58:56
  Speaker 4: those different reasons, you've got to keep moving. You've got
• 58:58
  Speaker 4: to keep using that shit, you know, And you talked about,
• 59:02
  Speaker 4: you know, a little while ago, going through the work
• 59:05
  Speaker 4: I did without PTSD. And I know that I'm the
• 59:10
  Speaker 4: best version of myself when I've got a good base
• 59:14
  Speaker 4: of fitness and I'm doing something, whether it's running or writing,
• 59:18
  Speaker 4: whatever it is, that's the best version of me. So
• 59:23
  Speaker 4: and I think I also need something to work towards,
• 59:26
  Speaker 4: like you know, like I was running training load got
• 59:29
  Speaker 4: me up to a couple of hundred kilometers a week,
• 59:32
  Speaker 4: and I won't get back to that, you know, unless
• 59:35
  Speaker 4: something else happens.
• 59:36
  Speaker 2: But just to continue moving.
• 59:39
  Speaker 4: And you know, with the travel that we do through
• 59:42
  Speaker 4: different time zones and airports and all the rest, it's
• 59:46
  Speaker 4: it's easy to eat ship food to to you know,
• 59:49
  Speaker 4: forgo on good sleep and your health hygiene goes down
• 59:53
  Speaker 4: and exercise falls out, and that just becomes a choice.
• 59:57
  Speaker 4: And so for as long as I can make, I choose,
• 1:00:01
  Speaker 4: I choose to keep doing something.
• 1:00:04
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I love that You've got to keep the old man.
• 1:00:07
  Speaker 3: I've written on my bathroom or I'm a big fan
• 1:00:09
  Speaker 3: of writing on my bathroom mirror, and something that's been
• 1:00:11
  Speaker 3: on there for.
• 1:00:12
  Speaker 1: A while is getting old is a privilege denied to many.
• 1:00:16
  Speaker 2: Mm hmm.
• 1:00:18
  Speaker 1: You know, we've just got to remember that.
• 1:00:23
  Speaker 3: This has been freaking awesome and inspirational in equal measure.
• 1:00:28
  Speaker 1: You actually have.
• 1:00:29
  Speaker 3: Reminded me of a of a quote from Seneca, and
• 1:00:32
  Speaker 3: it's a paraphras quote because his language is a bit different,
• 1:00:35
  Speaker 3: but it's around these lines. It's like every individual burst
• 1:00:40
  Speaker 3: of responsibility to be of value to humanity. I possible
• 1:00:44
  Speaker 3: to benefit a large number, if not to benefit a
• 1:00:48
  Speaker 3: smaller group, If that too seems unattainable, then to benefit
• 1:00:52
  Speaker 3: their immediate community. But above all else they must prioritize
• 1:00:56
  Speaker 3: self growth and personal well being. Could have been writing
• 1:01:01
  Speaker 3: about you and right the forward of your book and
• 1:01:05
  Speaker 3: and me it you have been of value to humanity
• 1:01:08
  Speaker 3: and you're fucking carrying half of Australia on your shoulders,
• 1:01:12
  Speaker 3: so that the outside benefit that you have been So
• 1:01:17
  Speaker 3: I just salute you and then and I wish you
• 1:01:22
  Speaker 3: all the best in your future endeavors and and just
• 1:01:26
  Speaker 3: hope that that those challenges are are matched in your
• 1:01:30
  Speaker 3: later years with a deep sense of contentment.
• 1:01:33
  Speaker 2: No good on your paul, Thank you mate, that's very
• 1:01:35
  Speaker 2: kind of you.
• 1:01:37
  Speaker 3: So wor can people go to buy the book to
• 1:01:41
  Speaker 3: find out more about you can we still donate to
• 1:01:43
  Speaker 3: the charity and and you know, nudge that up a
• 1:01:46
  Speaker 3: little bit more towards that million years.
• 1:01:48
  Speaker 2: Sure mate. Yeah.
• 1:01:49
  Speaker 4: So firstly, the book available everywhere, you know, through your
• 1:01:54
  Speaker 4: ratails or book type here or or through l Hands
• 1:01:59
  Speaker 4: across the Water. So I've done an audiobook as well
• 1:02:01
  Speaker 4: and writing this book, I gave all the profits for
• 1:02:06
  Speaker 4: the life of the book up to the charity, and
• 1:02:09
  Speaker 4: if you buy it through our website at Hands across
• 1:02:13
  Speaker 4: the Water dott org dot au, all the profits come
• 1:02:16
  Speaker 4: back in to support the kids. Or if your audiobooks
• 1:02:19
  Speaker 4: you go, you can get that one through there as well.
• 1:02:22
  Speaker 4: My personal staff is either through people can follow along
• 1:02:26
  Speaker 4: on what we're doing through Instagram or it's just through
• 1:02:29
  Speaker 4: my website, which is Peter Bains dot com dot au. Yeah,
• 1:02:33
  Speaker 4: like there's always we're always raising money, you know, like
• 1:02:36
  Speaker 4: there's we sent six kids off to UNI this year,
• 1:02:41
  Speaker 4: you know, one of them studying one of the young
• 1:02:43
  Speaker 4: girls is studying engineering, which I just love, you know,
• 1:02:46
  Speaker 4: because you know that type of you know thing for
• 1:02:49
  Speaker 4: the girls in Thailand. I love it that they're doing that.
• 1:02:52
  Speaker 4: One studying marine biology and other studying law, so we're
• 1:02:56
  Speaker 4: always you know, looking to support there so anyway wants
• 1:03:00
  Speaker 4: to learn more about the charity or potentially join us
• 1:03:03
  Speaker 4: on a bike ride hands across the water as a
• 1:03:06
  Speaker 4: placed ahead.
• 1:03:07
  Speaker 1: Awesome, good stuff, excellent, Thank you buddy. Cheers