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Stoicism Meets Authenticity: A Conversation with Dan Munro · The Stoic Handbook with Jon Brooks

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Today I'm gonna be speaking to a guy called Dan Munro.
• 0:05
  SPEAKER_00: Dan is a confidence and authenticity and connections coach.
• 0:13
  SPEAKER_00: I met Dan through a mutual friend to begin with.
• 0:16
  SPEAKER_00: I had a friend who recommended Dan to me as a coach.
• 0:21
  SPEAKER_00: Said that Dan had done some really good work with him on shame and building his own authenticity.
• 0:27
  SPEAKER_00: So I got in touch with Dan just to have a chat with him, see if we connected well.
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_00: And what I discovered is that Dan has some mutual friends.
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_00: One of those is Donald Robertson, who I interviewed a few weeks back.
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_00: Donald Robertson is a stoicism author, and he wrote the preface to Dan's new book, which is all about honesty.
• 0:53
  SPEAKER_00: And in this conversation I have with Dan, it is primarily a conversation about the value of being bold, being authentic, telling the truth, and not just any kind of truth, a truth that comes from within, a truth that is both honest to your own feelings and values, but also accurate.
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_00: Dan has a really good moment in the podcast where he talks about how some people could could say that they're a loser and that would be their truth.
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_00: And while that's a first step to being honest, it's not actually that accurate.
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_00: It's a label, right?
• 1:31
  SPEAKER_00: Being a loser is a label.
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_00: What we actually are, Dan says, is a collection of atoms bouncing around.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_00: The honest, the truthful representation of that feeling is hey, um, I'm labeling myself as a loser right now, and I'm feeling some self-pity that accompanies that label.
• 1:49
  SPEAKER_00: That's honesty, and from that kind of honesty, a lot of confidence and authenticity can spring.
• 1:57
  SPEAKER_00: In this interview with Dan, it's one of my longest yet, and we talk about a lot of things.
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_00: We talk about manipulation, gaslighting, invalidation, how to deal with difficult people, we talk about self-improvement, and we talk about relationships, we cover a lot of things.
• 2:17
  SPEAKER_00: Dan is a is an amazing coach and writer, and he has communities, online communities that have helped many thousands of people.
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_00: So if you're interested in building your confidence, speaking from a more authentic place, and living a legendary life, then I highly recommend you give this interview a listen.
• 2:55
  SPEAKER_00: Is you know, what do you do?
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_00: I really struggle to answer this question.
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_00: So I think for our listeners, that would that would be a a good question to ask you.
• 3:05
  SPEAKER_00: How would you describe what you do to people who ask?
• 3:11
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I'm glad I don't get asked that very much because it's such a bitch of a question, but um I'd say what I'm essentially what I'm trying to do in lots of different ways is help people build confidence.
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_01: And that's why I call myself a confidence coach.
• 3:27
  SPEAKER_01: I couldn't think of a better way to describe what I do, but it's not just coaching that I do.
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_01: I write things, uh, write books, blog posts, I create videos, do podcasts as well, and just talk to people at any chance I get to help them become more confident.
• 3:43
  SPEAKER_01: And say that's what I do most of the time.
• 3:47
  SPEAKER_00: And so out of all the things that you could focus on in in your coaching practice, why does confidence why is there such a focus on confidence for you?
• 4:00
  SPEAKER_01: Well, it's it's like somebody who is sick and trying to help other people recover, because confidence was the one element most obviously missing from my life for a huge portion of it at the beginning.
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_01: Uh particularly, not only do I work with confidence, I work specifically with people who identify as people pleasers or nice guys, nice guy syndrome, um, because that's me.
• 4:27
  SPEAKER_01: I spent most of my life desperately trying to make people like me.
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_01: Uh without even really always being consciously aware that that's what I was doing, but it was in everything that I did.
• 4:39
  SPEAKER_01: If I was ever around other people, then my primary motive was to make them feel good about me, even if I couldn't see it.
• 4:46
  SPEAKER_01: And so it it affected every decision I made, it affected every feeling, every thought I had, you know, it was in everything.
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_01: Uh and once I saw it, I realized how much of life I was missing out on, and just kind of how miserable I'd become in my mid-20s because of this thing.
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_01: And so I asked myself a question, you know, before I even thought about helping anybody else, I asked myself a question like, how could I enjoy my life if other people didn't like me?
• 5:16
  SPEAKER_01: I'm so dependent on it, how could I become independent from that?
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_01: Um and that led me to discover the word confidence, which isn't a word that really had played much in my life up until then.
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_01: But I discovered that word, I started looking at what that word meant because it seemed to represent the thing I was missing.
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, and from there on out I've been constantly exploring what that word means and how it can be practically applied in somebody's life, how their psychology can be modified to be more confident.
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_01: That's kind of I'm I'm helping the the other versions of me out there essentially.
• 5:53
  SPEAKER_00: Hmm.
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I mean I resonate with that.
• 5:56
  SPEAKER_00: I would say that so much of my own suffering in life has come from a lack of confidence and you know, worrying about what people think of me, um like feeling like I've I'm I'm in the spotlight and people are judging me.
• 6:11
  SPEAKER_00: Um so yeah, I mean I think that's that's definitely like a really big issue today is people pleasing and feeling like um we can't speak up and express ourselves.
• 6:25
  SPEAKER_00: Um regarding for you the word confidence, I think I used to have this distorted view of confidence as like this like flashy, loud character kind of you know, um stereotype, but like what how do you see confidence now after you've worked with so many people to help them build it?
• 6:47
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, you know, I used to see it that way as well.
• 6:49
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and when I first got started, there was a lot of fake it till you make it kind of advice, which was basically try to appear to be confident so that you'll feel it later.
• 7:00
  SPEAKER_01: And I found out eventually that that vi advice was really uh counterproductive because it's faking it that got me into this problem in the first place, you know.
• 7:12
  SPEAKER_01: So more faking it wasn't going to help.
• 7:14
  SPEAKER_01: What I've come to realize is that confidence isn't always something that other people can see, and it's not something that you just feel.
• 7:24
  SPEAKER_01: It's an entire belief system about who you are, and it's not you know what, I I've I've been trying for many years to describe confidence as succinctly as possible, and I think the closest I can come is it's where you impress yourself without having to achieve anything in particular.
• 7:45
  SPEAKER_01: And and what I mean by that is like I was trying to think of an example you know, a great example is yesterday uh we were packing up moving house, was it the day before?
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_01: Day before we were packing up moving house, and the door handle to the front door needed to be changed out for an old one.
• 8:03
  SPEAKER_01: And this is well outside of my comfort zone, I don't do many uh sort of handyman things like that.
• 8:09
  SPEAKER_01: And I thought, nah, fuck it, I'll give it a crack, you know, and it took me probably longer than it would take a competent person.
• 8:16
  SPEAKER_01: And I was struggled and baffled by parts of it, but I finally got this door handle back together, and it worked.
• 8:23
  SPEAKER_01: And nobody's watching, nobody's gonna pat me on the back for that.
• 8:26
  SPEAKER_01: It's not a huge accomplishment on paper, but I was so proud of myself uh giving it a go and stepping outside of that like familiarity into something weird and new and challenging.
• 8:39
  SPEAKER_01: And that's the kind of thing that is is what confidence is all about.
• 8:44
  SPEAKER_01: It's these little things you do every day that impress yourself even if no one else is watching, and they're unique to you because of what your particular insecurities or weaknesses or strengths are, you know, and so for me, confidence is a long-term process of living, a way of living, where you're constantly challenging and impressing yourself, and you've been doing it for so long that other people's opinions just are no longer relevant.
• 9:12
  SPEAKER_01: You've already proven yourself to yourself.
• 9:16
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I could go on and on because confidence is like extrapolates out as a definition.
• 9:22
  SPEAKER_01: But ultimately, if you need other people to pat you on the back, if you need to win or beat other people, then you're still not there yet.
• 9:30
  SPEAKER_01: You know, confidence is independent of all those external validations, in my opinion anyway.
• 9:37
  SPEAKER_00: I love that definition.
• 9:39
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so it's a way of of impressing yourself instead of needing to have other people be impressed by you.
• 9:49
  SPEAKER_00: That's sort of is that would you say that's a good summary?
• 9:54
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and and I think it's important as to understand how it is you impress yourself.
• 9:59
  SPEAKER_01: Because I mean you could impress yourself by I don't know, making a million dollars, for example.
• 10:04
  SPEAKER_01: And you only impress yourself because you think that's a good thing for everybody else as well.
• 10:08
  SPEAKER_01: Like everybody else would be impressed by it.
• 10:11
  SPEAKER_01: I think what it came down to for me was discovering the concept of core values and how living by your values creates a sense of integrity.
• 10:21
  SPEAKER_01: So you know what you stand for and you consistently behave in a way that aligns with that.
• 10:27
  SPEAKER_01: And I found that that was really the recipe for inner confidence.
• 10:30
  SPEAKER_01: If I have integrity a lot, if I choose what the right thing is over the easy thing or the fun thing, whenever I'm challenged like that, then I build this sense of worth, like I've prioritized what I value over the petty kind of uh pleasures to be had in life.
• 10:49
  SPEAKER_01: And and I think that was that was a in terms of defining what confidence is in a practical daily living sense, that's what it became for me.
• 10:58
  SPEAKER_01: Discovering my core values, which were like honesty and courage and curiosity and compassion and respect and responsibility, and there's a big list of them, and then every day trying to make sure that what I did uh made sense according to those values, and when I did stuff that was outside of those values, like I'd try and correct that behaviour.
• 11:19
  SPEAKER_01: You know, so if I noticed myself being cowardly, I'd go do something courageous to kind of balance the books, or if I noticed myself be dishonest, I'd go find that person and reveal my dishonesty to them to get back on track with honesty.
• 11:32
  SPEAKER_01: It was that kind of process, which I now call integrity, that was I think the building blocks of why I feel so fucking good about being myself these days.
• 11:44
  SPEAKER_00: Wow.
• 11:46
  SPEAKER_00: So finding your core values and then basically like having the discipline to live by them each day.
• 11:55
  SPEAKER_00: That's that's really powerful.
• 11:57
  SPEAKER_00: It's one of those, like, even though I've been into personal development for quite a long time, I haven't really sat down and worked out exactly you know on paper my my core values, and then um sort of looked at that those values as a way to measure my own uh progress or integrity, but I can totally see how that would be a very powerful exercise to do.
• 12:22
  SPEAKER_00: I'd like to for for a moment just to go back because I'm really curious about your story.
• 12:28
  SPEAKER_00: So um the way you're talking, it sounds like you've had quite a big transformation in the way you you live your life.
• 12:40
  SPEAKER_00: So can you take us back to what you used to be like and the events that that led you to discover this way of improving your confidence and what you did?
• 13:47
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, well I think uh it goes back as far as I can remember, and uh if I could describe it as one word, it would be dishonest.
• 13:56
  SPEAKER_01: And and I remember as a child, uh I was the kid at when I was in primary school, whatever you call that in different countries, that first level of school, um I was like that crybaby kid.
• 14:07
  SPEAKER_01: So I would fall over, I'd cry, if someone hurt my feelings, I would cry.
• 14:11
  SPEAKER_01: I cried a lot as a kid.
• 14:13
  SPEAKER_01: And in New Zealand, like that kid gets bullied, right?
• 14:17
  SPEAKER_01: That kid gets ostracized.
• 14:20
  SPEAKER_01: And nothing too bad happened to me, but I was definitely left out of the group, and then I changed schools and I made a pact with myself, like, no more crying.
• 14:28
  SPEAKER_01: Like I I need to nip this in the bud because I can't make friends if I'm this crybaby kid.
• 14:34
  SPEAKER_01: And that's my earliest memory of me consciously hiding any form of truth about myself, like my emotions, from other people so that they would like me more.
• 14:45
  SPEAKER_01: And that I don't know if that was the first time I did it, it's just the first time I remember doing it, and from there on out it just escalated.
• 14:52
  SPEAKER_01: I started to pay attention to what people liked and disliked and change how I presented myself to match that.
• 15:01
  SPEAKER_01: And by the time I hit high school, I was already starting to master this.
• 15:06
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I could be exactly what you want me to be, no matter who you are.
• 15:12
  SPEAKER_01: So in front of my parents, I'm like this smart academic kid who does really well at school, so that impressed them.
• 15:18
  SPEAKER_01: Around my friends, I was super funny, you know, I was like the witty banter, sarcastic, like Chan La Bing from Friends kind of um uh sense of humor, and that made them laugh.
• 15:30
  SPEAKER_01: And around the tough guys at school, I was the rugby playing jock sort of thing.
• 15:34
  SPEAKER_01: I could be anything for anyone, and I just got better and better at doing that to make people like me.
• 15:40
  SPEAKER_01: And what that led me to do is eventually develop I mean incredible social anxiety.
• 15:46
  SPEAKER_01: I was constantly worrying how people perceive me and constantly adjusting myself to improve that perception.
• 15:54
  SPEAKER_01: So, like on the surface, I would have looked quite laid back and calm and funny, but inside I was all strategy.
• 16:01
  SPEAKER_01: I was burning hard, like I'd be exhausted at the end of each day because of just how much mental effort I put into making people like me.
• 16:09
  SPEAKER_01: It was a huge task every day.
• 16:12
  SPEAKER_01: And it started to unravel, I think, uh, when I went to university because I couldn't make new friends.
• 16:21
  SPEAKER_01: I really struggled to make the university kids like me.
• 16:25
  SPEAKER_01: I couldn't figure out what their kind of their taste was, and I was starting to just get tired of the performing.
• 16:32
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I was getting tired of trying to make people like me.
• 16:34
  SPEAKER_01: I was literally tired physically, and in particular, I was struggling with women because making people like you is not the same as them being attracted to you.
• 16:46
  SPEAKER_01: In fact, it's often quite different, and all I knew how to do was make people like me, which a lot of people would call being nice.
• 16:52
  SPEAKER_01: I was very nice and funny, I was pleasurable to be around, I wouldn't ever provoke any kind of uncomfortable emotions in people like disgust or anger or offense or confusion.
• 17:03
  SPEAKER_01: I was always like, you're always gonna feel good in my presence.
• 17:07
  SPEAKER_01: And because of that, you know, I would be in the friend zone with girls all the time.
• 17:11
  SPEAKER_01: I would uh not there was nothing sexual about me at all.
• 17:14
  SPEAKER_01: There was no masculinity, it was just passivity.
• 17:17
  SPEAKER_01: Um and I didn't realize this at the time.
• 17:19
  SPEAKER_01: I just thought everyone, like, I'm like, why don't girls like me?
• 17:22
  SPEAKER_01: This is so weird.
• 17:23
  SPEAKER_01: They all they all say that, like, oh my god, I wish I could meet a guy like you.
• 17:26
  SPEAKER_01: I'm like, dude, I'm a guy like me.
• 17:27
  SPEAKER_01: What the fuck's going on?
• 17:29
  SPEAKER_01: Um and I think it was about the age of 25 where I had my first, well maybe 24, I had my first crisis where I'm like, I can't do this anymore.
• 17:40
  SPEAKER_01: This just isn't working.
• 17:42
  SPEAKER_01: These sleepless nights, this not liking who I see in this mirror, this constant worry that my friends are going to abandon me if I stop being funny, or that girls will never like me because I'm too funny, or whatever it was, you know, it just got to me and I kind of snapped.
• 17:58
  SPEAKER_01: And I actually went down quite a dark path.
• 18:00
  SPEAKER_01: The next couple of years I got into the whole pickup artist thing because I thought my main problem was with women.
• 18:06
  SPEAKER_01: And that actually made me more fake than anything else.
• 18:10
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, but I started to see why it was that the way I was didn't work for me.
• 18:17
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I started to see just how unattractive my false and inauthentic presentation was to people.
• 18:26
  SPEAKER_01: Um and even though the pickup thing was a step backwards more than anything, it did lead me to one day go up to somebody and just be really honest with them about the way I felt about them.
• 18:40
  SPEAKER_01: I went up and told someone I was attracted to them, which broke all the rules I'd ever followed in my entire life.
• 18:45
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I was I was doing something controversial and risky, and I could upset them.
• 18:50
  SPEAKER_01: It was against everything I'd ever done, and it was just pure honesty.
• 18:54
  SPEAKER_01: I was starting a conversation with the first honest thing that came into my head instead of like building up with deception.
• 19:02
  SPEAKER_01: And their reaction, I was lucky, their reaction was really positive, and that blew my mind.
• 19:08
  SPEAKER_01: It just blew my mind to pieces.
• 19:09
  SPEAKER_01: I'm like, the way I feel naturally actually just made someone's day.
• 19:13
  SPEAKER_01: How is that even possible?
• 19:15
  SPEAKER_01: You know, um and from that step forward, I started exploring honesty, which led me to integrity and values, and you know, letting go of this fake performance that I put on all the time.
• 19:29
  SPEAKER_00: Wow, that's incredible.
• 19:31
  SPEAKER_00: I I I really resonated actually myself with that story.
• 19:35
  SPEAKER_00: I I also at one point in my life dived into the sort of pick-up artistry stuff, and I I actually see quite a lot of really awesome inspirational guys who who kind of like who have that in their history of interests.
• 19:54
  SPEAKER_00: It's like a kind of um a gateway to like, oh, this is really interesting, I'm a bit insecure.
• 19:59
  SPEAKER_00: You know, is there any way I can be the man by reading about this pickup stuff?
• 20:04
  SPEAKER_00: And then they, as you say, they kind of try it, realize that it's inauthentic, but it still like propels them into believing that this this other way of being.
• 20:14
  SPEAKER_00: Um so do you think that there's a way of of like sort of you know, you said that the pickup um the pickup stuff is it made you more inauthentic and more fake?
• 20:25
  SPEAKER_00: Do you think there's a way of combining um um like the stuff you teach now about being more authentic with like talking to to women and improving success with women for any like guys that are listening to this?
• 20:39
  SPEAKER_00: Do you think those two work well together or like what is your view on on like that that whole pickup world now?
• 20:46
  SPEAKER_01: Well, absolutely.
• 20:47
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, once I started coaching guys, I realized I have to find a way to help them bypass the pickup thing because it was more unhelpful than it was helpful, and then it just it was such a long way around to get to a point where essentially what I found was that being really boldly honest with people was really attractive.
• 21:08
  SPEAKER_01: So you got to kind of hit two birds with one stone, you just get to be yourself, you don't have to think of anything clever to say, and you don't have to put on an act, and that's also the most effective way to attract the people who are good for you.
• 21:22
  SPEAKER_01: Not everybody, but the people who are good for you.
• 21:24
  SPEAKER_01: And so what I've started doing is, and essentially when I when I coach a guy to be better with women, all I do is coach him on how to be proudly honest, not awkwardly honest and not apologetic in his honesty, but really like own it.
• 21:39
  SPEAKER_01: Um, to be really bold and proud and kind of unapologetic about who he is or what he believes in, what he thinks and feels, to become vulnerable, to be able to show like your dark side and not pretend that you're positive all the time.
• 21:53
  SPEAKER_01: And what happens is I then get them to practice that on the people they're most scared of, and for most guys, that's attractive women.
• 22:02
  SPEAKER_01: So it's not like we're using this to get attractive women, it's more like you're going to face your fears with attractive women, you know, because for me, like what I realized, my big turning point was realizing that most of my shame was sexual, that the thing I'm most scared of a girl knowing about me is that I'm attracted to her.
• 22:23
  SPEAKER_01: That seemed to be like the highest risk thing for me.
• 22:26
  SPEAKER_01: That's why a pickup appealed to me so much because it was all about deception, it was about hiding the fact that you're attracted to them until you already sort of reeled them in.
• 22:34
  SPEAKER_01: That's why I appealed to like the insecure version of me.
• 22:38
  SPEAKER_01: But what I realized is if I go blast people with my honesty, they're either gonna love me or they're gonna hate me.
• 22:46
  SPEAKER_01: And once I can get okay with people not loving me, when I can get okay with people being polarized into extreme.
• 22:53
  SPEAKER_01: Extremely liking me, or extremely not liking me, then I can be really quite bold in who I am.
• 23:00
  SPEAKER_01: And yeah, I I I remember the like the first few times I just went up and told someone I was attracted to them really bluntly.
• 23:08
  SPEAKER_01: I I it wasn't finessed, you know, I wasn't like charming with the way I did it.
• 23:13
  SPEAKER_01: It was more like I like you, you know.
• 23:15
  SPEAKER_01: It was just it was yeah, pretty would have been funny to watch.
• 23:19
  SPEAKER_01: But because it was so raw and I was anxious while I was doing it, and I'd let them see that I was anxious or nervous.
• 23:26
  SPEAKER_01: I remember I I went up to this one girl, I told her I was attracted to her, and and she said something like, Oh my god, you're so confident.
• 23:33
  SPEAKER_01: I said, No, I'm really not, and I I put her hand on my chest and she could feel my heart like just pounding.
• 23:39
  SPEAKER_01: I said, See, look how scared I am.
• 23:41
  SPEAKER_01: And like that level of honesty just blows people's minds.
• 23:45
  SPEAKER_01: Like they've never had anyone be that honest with them right out of the gate like that before.
• 23:50
  SPEAKER_01: And your brain will tell you that it's wrong because your whole life people have told you that it's wrong to do that.
• 23:56
  SPEAKER_01: But when you go and test it, your your beliefs get shattered.
• 24:00
  SPEAKER_01: You know, there are some people who react badly to you being honest, but you'll quickly realize that those are the people you don't want in your life, so it's win-win.
• 24:08
  SPEAKER_01: You know, you push them away very quickly instead of getting sucked into a long-term connection with them.
• 24:13
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and that leaves space for for people who will love you for being honest, you know, the few that will.
• 24:19
  SPEAKER_01: So when I'm working with guys on on developing their romantic connections, all I focus on is developing their courage to be boldly honest with the women they're attracted to.
• 24:29
  SPEAKER_01: And their own personality does the rest of the work.
• 24:35
  SPEAKER_00: And have you have you seen that that like the results are really powerful when when your clients follow that advice?
• 24:45
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it's it's amazing because what happens is they get the result they want.
• 24:52
  SPEAKER_01: So eventually, uh usually straight out of the gate for a lot of these guys, but maybe it takes them a couple of months to get to the point where being honest happens quite boldly.
• 25:02
  SPEAKER_01: You know, they're not like creeping around it.
• 25:05
  SPEAKER_01: Once they get there, not only do you know they find out that they are attractive to at least a s a niche of women, but by then they're so enjoying the thrill of being honest that that's actually more rewarding.
• 25:21
  SPEAKER_01: And so they kind of get this extra win.
• 25:24
  SPEAKER_01: It's impossible for me to predict with each guy like how long it's gonna take to kind of hit that milestone, but pretty much every guy I've worked with it gets to this point where he just fucking loves being honest because it's so freeing.
• 25:38
  SPEAKER_01: You don't have to think of what to say, you don't have to put on this fucking act all the time, you don't have to pretend to be positive when you're not.
• 25:45
  SPEAKER_01: You can be whatever the fuck you are, and everybody else just kind of has to deal with it.
• 25:49
  SPEAKER_01: And it's just it's just this freedom that they love, and then they realize that a lot of their insecurities around women just came because they felt like they had to put on this perfect performance for for them.
• 26:02
  SPEAKER_01: And once they don't have to do that anymore, suddenly women aren't so scary.
• 26:06
  SPEAKER_01: You know, suddenly women aren't like the judges who decide whether or not you're a good person.
• 26:10
  SPEAKER_01: They're just people.
• 26:12
  SPEAKER_01: And talking to people's easy.
• 26:14
  SPEAKER_01: You know?
• 26:15
  SPEAKER_01: It's talking to attractive women, this alien species that you made up in your head, that's difficult.
• 26:20
  SPEAKER_01: Talking to just another human being is actually pretty straightforward, and what honesty does is it allows you to see women as just other human beings.
• 26:28
  SPEAKER_01: And once you see that, then you can chat to them, you can be blunt with them, you can tell them off if their behavior's like out of line, you can tell them you're attracted to them if it comes up naturally.
• 26:39
  SPEAKER_01: You know, you can tell them anything, and if they're your kind of girl, they're gonna love that.
• 26:45
  SPEAKER_01: And you know what I love about it is the trouble with pickup is that it works temporarily, which is you can make a girl like really attracted to you, but long-term relationships never work out with with pickup, almost never.
• 26:59
  SPEAKER_01: Like every top pickup artist, instructor, guy that I know cannot maintain long-term relationships.
• 27:04
  SPEAKER_01: And I believe the reason is is because eventually the act breaks down, you're like you run out of material and you become kind of one-dimensional.
• 27:13
  SPEAKER_01: Or they see that who you really are after you've put on the big performance, and it's so uh it's kind of off-putting to see this change.
• 27:22
  SPEAKER_01: Like you were one thing and now you're this other thing.
• 27:24
  SPEAKER_01: It's really weird.
• 27:25
  SPEAKER_01: But when you start honest, you never have to worry about that happening because you've had all your cards on the table right from day one.
• 27:32
  SPEAKER_01: You can kind of get away with murder.
• 27:34
  SPEAKER_01: Like with my partner who I'm I'm getting married next year, and which I thought was impossible when I was in my twenties.
• 27:41
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I thought that'd never happen.
• 27:43
  SPEAKER_01: Um, when I first met her, all I did was try to kind of push her away with honesty.
• 27:48
  SPEAKER_01: I was just like, I was dating a few girls at the time.
• 27:51
  SPEAKER_01: I was like, I I I want to decide on one girl to date, so I'm just gonna be really brutally honest with all of them and see which one can handle it.
• 27:58
  SPEAKER_01: And every honest thing I told her just made her like me more.
• 28:02
  SPEAKER_01: It was weird, like I couldn't get rid of this girl, you know.
• 28:04
  SPEAKER_01: Like I was telling her all my dark history, I was telling her all my insecure thoughts, I told her about jealousy, I told her about erectile dysfunction when I'm nervous, I told her about my previous history with drugs, all of these things.
• 28:17
  SPEAKER_01: Like the drug thing, she told me I would never date a drug user, you know, that's a deal breaker for me.
• 28:24
  SPEAKER_01: So I straight away told her that I'd use drugs, you know, and that at the time I still smoked weed.
• 28:29
  SPEAKER_01: But she didn't leave.
• 28:31
  SPEAKER_01: It just blew my mind.
• 28:32
  SPEAKER_01: I'm like, holy shit, like I can say anything to this girl.
• 28:35
  SPEAKER_01: I never have to think through what I'm gonna say.
• 28:38
  SPEAKER_01: I don't have to like moderate my feelings, nothing.
• 28:41
  SPEAKER_01: I just blow it all come out of my mouth, and all she does is reciprocate, you know, all she does is tell me her truth.
• 28:47
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and that's why we're getting married, you know, and that's what I help guys to find.
• 28:53
  SPEAKER_01: Like, they have no idea how good honesty's gonna be until they put some consistent work into it, and that's why I really connect honesty, integrity, and confidence all in this basket together.
• 29:07
  SPEAKER_01: Because honesty, like gets rid of all your shame, basically.
• 29:10
  SPEAKER_01: You've got nothing left to hide, so that makes you feel invincible.
• 29:14
  SPEAKER_01: Um, it creates great connections with good people for you, so that makes you feel invincible.
• 29:19
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and in the really longer term, it creates a lot of self-acceptance, like you stop trying to be perfect and you just be whatever the fuck you are.
• 29:28
  SPEAKER_01: I mean that's kind of like a recipe for confidence in my book.
• 29:31
  SPEAKER_01: At least I've seen very consistent results with that.
• 29:36
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I like in my own journey of of like sort of success with women, I remember like like like the same as you.
• 29:44
  SPEAKER_00: When I was in school, when I was young, I used to feel this incredible shame about people knowing that I liked a girl, you know, like it'd be talked about or something, and then I carried that through with me into adult life to some to some degree where um I would go out and I would start talking to a girl, but like I wouldn't like let her know that I really liked her.
• 30:06
  SPEAKER_00: I wouldn't really let her know my full honest opinion of her, and we'd have a great conversation, but at some point she probably would be thinking like, well, what what does this guy want exactly?
• 30:18
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not quite sure, and then it would sort of end.
• 30:21
  SPEAKER_00: And then I I started practicing this uh the boldness that you prescribe, and it was just like life-changing.
• 30:32
  SPEAKER_00: It's and and you don't like until you do it, you have no idea.
• 30:36
  SPEAKER_00: Like you you can you can hear about it, like you know, people tell the truth, but until you actually practice it, um you have no idea how like like crazy um just telling the truth can be in a positive way, because we're all scientists, we all we all want to try and figure out other people in the world, and what I used to do when I used to not be honest is I used to kind of rationalise, like, oh, it's because of this or it's because of that, when really it was just because I wasn't just laying my full personality on the line, and and when I started to do that more and also talking about like m like vulnerable emotions, like now if I go on a date, I will literally talk about like like kind of like personal and like like things that don't necessarily make me look good, but in a weird way that does make me look good because they are like, oh, this guy is not trying to impress, they're trying to he's actually being real, so yeah, it totally resonate with that.
• 31:40
  SPEAKER_00: But you said um that regarding uh teaching someone to be themselves or helping them to be themselves, what happens if you get a client who is, you know, for example, like quite self-hating, um is um like perhaps like uh you know his life or her life situation is not very good.
• 32:03
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe they you know they play video games or they they have dysfunctional relationships.
• 32:09
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, how do you like if you to tell them to be themselves, that could be quite a confusing thing because maybe they they think they are being themselves.
• 32:18
  SPEAKER_00: So how do you take someone like who's kind of in a rut or struggling and and help them to be themselves?
• 32:26
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that's an excellent question because I I think the term be yourself implies like however you behave is good enough, and that I don't agree with at all.
• 32:36
  SPEAKER_01: Um I I think the emotion of guilt and regret, you know, I think those are very helpful emotions, they call you out when you drop the ball with integrity.
• 32:45
  SPEAKER_01: And when I say integrity or being yourself, I don't mean anything you want, I mean your behavior lines up with your values.
• 32:52
  SPEAKER_01: And a guy like that, when I explore his life with him, what we find is once we discover what his core values are, we discover that he's just not living by them almost ever.
• 33:03
  SPEAKER_01: You know, a guy who sits around smoking weed and eating chips and playing video games and socially isolating himself, he'll probably still have values of honesty and courage and curiosity, and those activities don't explore any of those values.
• 33:18
  SPEAKER_01: He's but those basically those values have gone stale.
• 33:21
  SPEAKER_01: And you get that with nice guys and people pleasers, they'll have both masculine and feminine values, so a nice guy would value honesty and he'll value compassion, but he's only living by compassion.
• 33:34
  SPEAKER_01: He's only being nice, he's not being honest, he's not being bold, he's not being any of the masculine things that he admires in others.
• 33:41
  SPEAKER_01: You know, quite often I'll do that conversation with a client is I'll ask them, what do you admire in other people?
• 33:47
  SPEAKER_01: You know, when you admire someone, why do you admire them?
• 33:50
  SPEAKER_01: And we look at all the values that come out of that.
• 33:52
  SPEAKER_01: You know, this person was really bold and they stood up, so that's courage, and this person's really clever, figures things out, so that's curiosity, and you know, that person just speaks their mind, they're very honest.
• 34:02
  SPEAKER_01: And I'd be like, Well, how does that compare to what do you do every day?
• 34:06
  SPEAKER_01: So the very things that they admire, they're not doing.
• 34:09
  SPEAKER_01: So that's not being yourself, that's being driven by your fears.
• 34:14
  SPEAKER_01: So I I try to avoid the term be yourself because it's confusing.
• 34:19
  SPEAKER_01: It makes it sound like you should just, you know, when people say accept yourself for what you are, they make it sound like you should tolerate poor behavior from yourself, and that I don't agree with.
• 34:28
  SPEAKER_01: In fact, your life mission should be to correct that poor behavior.
• 34:33
  SPEAKER_01: And you just you have to know what poor behavior is for you, and it's different.
• 34:38
  SPEAKER_01: This is what I love about values and integrity, is most like self-help gurus and stuff out there, they talk about this one way you should live.
• 34:46
  SPEAKER_01: You know, everybody should do this one thing.
• 34:48
  SPEAKER_01: And I just don't believe in that.
• 34:49
  SPEAKER_01: I think you've got your own unique thing you should be doing, and you're the only one who knows what that is.
• 34:54
  SPEAKER_01: So when I coach someone is to try and figure out what that is and how they're not doing it right now.
• 34:59
  SPEAKER_01: You know, if they value honesty, where are they being dishonest?
• 35:03
  SPEAKER_01: They value courage, where are they pussying out?
• 35:06
  SPEAKER_01: And they need to go correct that behaviour one small piece at a time.
• 35:10
  SPEAKER_01: What I love about honesty is it usually it's all the values being lived at once.
• 35:14
  SPEAKER_01: You have to be courageous to be honest, you have to respect yourself to be honest, you have to take responsibility for your life to be honest.
• 35:22
  SPEAKER_01: Which brings up a point that you're that you've kind of hit the nail on.
• 35:26
  SPEAKER_01: What what happens if I get a guy where him being honest is gonna be fucking negative?
• 35:31
  SPEAKER_01: Like if you get a guy, it's just him being honest, he hates himself, so any honest expression is gonna be just the self-loathing that just makes people want to run away, right?
• 35:41
  SPEAKER_01: Well, the element of of honesty that I like to work on with people is accuracy, accurate truthfulness.
• 35:48
  SPEAKER_01: And this is where we'll talk a lot about cognitive biases and how you put things into words.
• 35:53
  SPEAKER_01: So if somebody says, I'm a fucking loser, that's actually a form of dishonesty.
• 35:59
  SPEAKER_01: What you really are is a collection of atoms talking to each other.
• 36:03
  SPEAKER_01: So to say that you're a loser isn't accurately describing yourself, to say right now I'm having a thought that I'm a loser and engaging in some self-pity around that, that's more accurate.
• 36:14
  SPEAKER_01: And the way you express it changes everything.
• 36:17
  SPEAKER_01: Like if I go up to a girl on a date and I say, I'm a fucking loser, you know, she's gonna be like, oh my god, I wish I hadn't swiped right on Tinder, right?
• 36:25
  SPEAKER_01: But if I on that same date say, you know, right now I'm really working on building my social courage because I keep having these thoughts pop into my head that I'm a loser and I'm trying to work on that, it gets received totally differently.
• 36:39
  SPEAKER_01: Here's a guy who's responsible for his problems, here's a guy who's very accurately perceiving what his issues are and isn't blowing them out of proportion.
• 36:47
  SPEAKER_01: I can work with that.
• 36:48
  SPEAKER_01: You know, this is just a normal human being working on his shit.
• 36:52
  SPEAKER_01: It's actually more honest to speak like that than it is to say I'm a loser.
• 36:56
  SPEAKER_01: So a huge part of the work I do is I challenge the language people use, both in their heads and when they express themselves.
• 37:04
  SPEAKER_01: Like someone says I suck with women, I'm like, well, what about when you're eating breakfast?
• 37:09
  SPEAKER_01: Does that still count?
• 37:11
  SPEAKER_01: Because that's a different you know, nothing's happening there with women.
• 37:14
  SPEAKER_01: So how can you suck with women all the time?
• 37:16
  SPEAKER_01: Straight away you're being dishonest with me.
• 37:18
  SPEAKER_01: What you really mean is you've had a few difficult experiences with women and now you've become afraid of them.
• 37:25
  SPEAKER_01: That we can work with.
• 37:27
  SPEAKER_01: Anybody can work with that.
• 37:28
  SPEAKER_01: Saying you suck at women, that's impossible to work with, but it's not true, so we don't need to worry about that.
• 37:33
  SPEAKER_01: You know, so that kind of be yourself, it's actually I think it's a lifelong piece of work.
• 37:39
  SPEAKER_01: Like I'm always challenging the way I express myself.
• 37:43
  SPEAKER_01: I challenge my memories, I challenge what I write in my journal, I challenge what I'm doing to say is that really accurately expressing what's true?
• 37:52
  SPEAKER_01: And if not, how can I improve on it?
• 37:54
  SPEAKER_01: Because it there's always an improvement available, and your confidence goes up, I think, with each improvement you make.
• 38:04
  SPEAKER_00: That's like really, really powerful.
• 38:07
  SPEAKER_00: Like, yeah, because people label themselves so quickly and they they are convinced that it's like an accurate description.
• 38:14
  SPEAKER_00: But I as you said, that the example of um do you sec with women while you eat breakfast is like it's funny because it's true.
• 38:22
  SPEAKER_00: It's like no, clearly not.
• 38:24
  SPEAKER_00: Um I think like when things have a bit of humor, it does point to them being quite true often.
• 38:31
  SPEAKER_00: Um I wanted to ask you about you and your personal integrity.
• 38:35
  SPEAKER_00: Um so like do you like do you ever lie or tell white lies, or like what is your relationship to the truth on a sort of day-to-day basis, and um you know, like what would it take for you to to lie, or would it be just something you just absolutely would not do under any circumstances?
• 39:00
  SPEAKER_01: I think anyone who says they don't lie is lying.
• 39:03
  SPEAKER_01: Um I don't think it's even possible to fully express yourself accurately, you know, so everything that comes out of your mouth could be improved on in terms of accuracy.
• 39:12
  SPEAKER_01: But me personally, the way I look at it is the old me lied or deliberately was misleading like 80% of the time during social interactions.
• 39:23
  SPEAKER_01: And how I am now, it's closer to maybe 20 or 15%.
• 39:28
  SPEAKER_01: So there's just been an improvement in percentage, and I want to keep chipping away at that percentage for the rest of my life.
• 39:34
  SPEAKER_01: What I found is the old me would lie deliberately and it would be planned, and it would actually be a lifestyle.
• 39:40
  SPEAKER_01: I would live a lie, I'd create a persona and act it out.
• 39:44
  SPEAKER_01: So it was kind of everything about it was false.
• 39:47
  SPEAKER_01: Whereas now, when I lie or or misrepresent myself, it kind of gets out before I notice it.
• 39:54
  SPEAKER_01: It kind of gets away from me like I uh missed it.
• 39:57
  SPEAKER_01: It's very rare for me to deliberately and consciously be dishonest now, though that does still happen if I'm really scared.
• 40:05
  SPEAKER_01: But the it's rare now, once, twice a month, maybe, and what I usually I'd say I'm pretty good at doing is later on I'll go and admit to the person that I lied to them and redeem myself.
• 40:19
  SPEAKER_01: This is a huge piece of work that I do with my clients.
• 40:22
  SPEAKER_01: It's not about being perfectly honest, it's about cleaning up your dishonesty.
• 40:26
  SPEAKER_01: The dishonesty will always happen, so you make sure that you go back and you clean it up.
• 40:31
  SPEAKER_01: Dishonesty can happen in behaviour as well.
• 40:34
  SPEAKER_01: Like let's say I want to go and say hi to that beautiful woman, and I pussy out of doing it.
• 40:39
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I wanted to do it, but I didn't do it, so that's kind of a dishonesty in my actions.
• 40:43
  SPEAKER_01: I didn't follow through on what I really wanted.
• 40:45
  SPEAKER_01: And maybe she walks away forever and out of my life.
• 40:49
  SPEAKER_01: Now I can't go chase her down sort of thing, but maybe the next girl I see, I can go say it and like redeem myself.
• 40:57
  SPEAKER_01: You know, the next time I'll make up for this this failure.
• 41:01
  SPEAKER_01: And that way you can constantly like bring yourself back on track.
• 41:05
  SPEAKER_01: I don't think of it like as succeed or fail, in a sense, I think of it like you're either on track with your values or you're not, and you can always get back on.
• 41:14
  SPEAKER_01: So whenever I I lie, like I think an example for me, my biggest example would be when I'm stressed.
• 41:22
  SPEAKER_01: I lie to myself about being stressed to begin with, so I don't even know what's happening because I've kind of talked myself into believing that I'm fine, uh, because I have some shame about being stressed.
• 41:33
  SPEAKER_01: And then my girlfriend will pick up on her because she can see straight through me.
• 41:36
  SPEAKER_01: She'll be like, You're stressed, and I'll say, No, I'm not.
• 41:38
  SPEAKER_01: So there the lie comes out.
• 41:40
  SPEAKER_01: I've lied to myself and now I've lied to her.
• 41:43
  SPEAKER_01: Um and then half an hour later, when I notice myself sort of um cursing at my computer for being slow to load a website or something, I'll be like, okay, maybe I am stressed.
• 41:53
  SPEAKER_01: And then I'll go tell her, I'm like, you know what, you're right, I'm stressed, my bad.
• 41:58
  SPEAKER_01: You know, you got me.
• 41:59
  SPEAKER_01: And I'll just redeem it, you know.
• 42:01
  SPEAKER_01: I was wrong in the first place, but I couldn't stop that from happening in a sense, it kind of got away from me, and then I'll go try and fix it later.
• 42:08
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but absolutely I'm not 100% honest, and I think anyone who says they are is deluding themselves.
• 42:15
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but I think anyone can redeem themselves once you notice you've been dishonest.
• 42:20
  SPEAKER_01: It's actually the funny thing is you get more confidence from redeeming yourself than you do from actually being honest in the first place.
• 42:28
  SPEAKER_01: You know, when you go reveal to someone that you bullshitted them, it's such a courageous act compared to just being honest with them right from the get-go.
• 42:35
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm not saying people should lie and then go fix it so they boost their confidence, but right now anybody listening to this has some big lies hanging over them that they could go redeem within the next week.
• 42:47
  SPEAKER_01: You know, there's some bullshit that some people are hanging on to that they haven't told some people about, some resentments, some hidden um shame, especially with Christmas coming up, family all around you, you know, there's some redemption work that could be done.
• 43:01
  SPEAKER_01: And it doesn't have to be that big for you to just get this weight off your chest and get back on track with honesty.
• 43:06
  SPEAKER_01: You know, and that's kind of what I aim to do.
• 43:08
  SPEAKER_01: I try to get back on track as often as possible.
• 43:11
  SPEAKER_01: Whereas in my old life I quite happily lived miles off track.
• 43:18
  SPEAKER_00: So what what um that's I love that idea of the percentage, by the way, of of sort of yeah, because it we we I think they've done studies, and even people who really claim not to be lie liars actually still clock in like a lot of lies each day, even small ones, so it's like white lies and fibs and and ways to keep to keep things um smooth socially.
• 43:41
  SPEAKER_00: Um have you ever dealt with people or how would you deal with with people who are maybe in like family relationships or intimate relationships where where there is like something pathological, and maybe there's like a history of lies upon lies upon lies upon lies, to the to the point that like I've had an experience, so I'm just curious what you would think about this, where I value honesty and integrity um like really highly.
• 44:07
  SPEAKER_00: But I've been involved with certain types of relationships in the past where I've been lied to a lot, you know, and it what it did for me is it made me kind of think like, well, you know, this person clearly is not interested in in reality and in the truth, and you know, why am I trying so hard to you know have integrity and be honest all the time when all I all I received is lie after lie after lie?
• 44:33
  SPEAKER_00: And then that sort of made me uh brought out the kind of um the uh deceptive side of me.
• 44:39
  SPEAKER_00: And it was it was kind of scary.
• 44:41
  SPEAKER_00: It's like, oh wow, this this is how it works, I guess.
• 44:44
  SPEAKER_00: This is how certain relationships do become lie upon lie upon lie.
• 44:49
  SPEAKER_00: Um it's even worse, I suppose, if it's your like, you know, a parent or something.
• 44:53
  SPEAKER_00: Like this, but like how how do you deal with with that then?
• 44:56
  SPEAKER_00: You know, where it's just this history of lying, and you know, it's it's like if even if you did start telling the truth, you it's almost like you're just talking to a wall.
• 45:09
  SPEAKER_01: Look, there's there's no getting around it.
• 45:11
  SPEAKER_01: Like being I I did a video once, I think it's called Being Honest in a Dishonest World, and I just acknowledge that if you're trying your best to be as close to 100% honest as you can humanly achieve, you're going to be the exception.
• 45:28
  SPEAKER_01: And you're going to be surrounded by people who are definitely not doing that.
• 45:31
  SPEAKER_01: And people who actually try to sabotage you in doing that and will try to persuade you into dishonesty, they'll try to sort of pull you into a game, not maliciously, not everybody's like a psychopath, but everybody is scared and everybody is socially conditioned.
• 45:46
  SPEAKER_01: And you're going to have to, if you want to have integrity, you're going to have to accept this battle.
• 45:52
  SPEAKER_01: And I think nowhere is it worse than with family.
• 45:56
  SPEAKER_01: Like when I'm coaching someone around, say, a relationship that they chose to be in, like a partner or a friendship.
• 46:04
  SPEAKER_01: I just I I I use a um strategy with them called polarizing honesty, which is basically you just blast people with honesty until they run away.
• 46:13
  SPEAKER_01: You know, you just you're so honest with them, so brutal and raw with them, that if they are like that, if they're a bad fit for you, they just can't stay.
• 46:23
  SPEAKER_01: They won't want to.
• 46:24
  SPEAKER_01: They'll be repulsed by you.
• 46:25
  SPEAKER_01: You'll you'll push them away.
• 46:28
  SPEAKER_01: Um because really manipulative, uh, kind of low energy people, they don't like to hang around integrity.
• 46:37
  SPEAKER_01: They don't spend a lot of time around that.
• 46:39
  SPEAKER_01: I I learned that working with criminal offenders for so many years, criminal offenders like to hang out with other criminal offenders.
• 46:45
  SPEAKER_01: They don't hang out with what they call straight edge people.
• 46:48
  SPEAKER_01: They don't like it.
• 46:49
  SPEAKER_01: They don't they don't like being sort of constantly reminded of of kind of how far off their values they are.
• 46:55
  SPEAKER_01: They like to be around people who who pat them on the back for being dishonest.
• 46:59
  SPEAKER_01: So if I'm with a if uh if I'm working with a guy who's got a toxic partner, I just get him to just blast her with feedback until she either changes or runs away.
• 47:10
  SPEAKER_01: When it comes to family, you know, I think this is my biggest struggle as a coach, is people just are so unwilling to lose family.
• 47:20
  SPEAKER_01: Whereas with enough confidence building, they can be willing to lose a partner or a friendship or a job or anything else that threatens their integrity.
• 47:29
  SPEAKER_01: For some reason, people just have a real blind spot when it comes to family, and that's always been my biggest struggle.
• 47:35
  SPEAKER_01: Like, I've seen people who develop confidence in every area of their life, and then you know they go home for Christmas and they just get torn to pieces and they just take it.
• 47:45
  SPEAKER_01: Because that's the precedent, that's how it's always been.
• 47:47
  SPEAKER_01: You know, mum's always manipulated them with guilt trips, and dad's always been emotionally unavailable, and brother's always been a scheming little bastard or whatever, and they just sit there and take it.
• 47:58
  SPEAKER_01: The closest I've been able to come to developing a way for people to deal with that without losing them, which is the really impossible part for me, because what I discovered with confidence, the reason I called my book Nothing to Lose was because real confidence is where you're willing to lose anything if that's what's required to maintain your integrity.
• 48:20
  SPEAKER_01: Like if I'm gonna get fired for having integrity, then fuck it, I lose my job.
• 48:24
  SPEAKER_01: If my partner's gonna hate me for having integrity, then fuck it, I'll lose that relationship.
• 48:28
  SPEAKER_01: Like that's real confidence, where your your integrity is primary position in your in your motives.
• 48:36
  SPEAKER_01: But people, like so often, they just have family one step above integrity, and it's really hard for me to help someone in that situation when they will not prioritize their integrity.
• 48:47
  SPEAKER_01: But like I was saying, there's there's a little method, what do I call it?
• 48:51
  SPEAKER_01: I I always develop little names for things.
• 48:54
  SPEAKER_01: But I think I call it like a uh respect invitation, and what it is is very strong boundary setting.
• 49:02
  SPEAKER_01: So let's say I'm not willing to lose my family.
• 49:06
  SPEAKER_01: I might moderate, I'm willing to be around them under certain conditions, and if those conditions are broken, I bail, at least for that day, for the next 24 hours or the next week.
• 49:15
  SPEAKER_01: So let's say I'll say, I'll go up to my family that I'm struggling with and say, look, I'll love you guys no matter what, but there's certain behaviors I just can't put up with anymore.
• 49:25
  SPEAKER_01: So if when we're hanging out, I don't want to see you do this, this, or this.
• 49:29
  SPEAKER_01: If you do any of those things, I'm just gonna walk out and we'll see each other next time.
• 49:33
  SPEAKER_01: And then you actually live by that.
• 49:35
  SPEAKER_01: So they've been given an invitation to respect you.
• 49:38
  SPEAKER_01: They know what respecting you is, you made that very clear, you've confronted them, and now it's on them.
• 49:44
  SPEAKER_01: You can't control their decisions, so you just have to leave it with them.
• 49:48
  SPEAKER_01: And if they respect it, great, they get rewards, and if not, they they get a punishment, which is you leave, you take away your presence, and you don't allow yourself to kind of absorb that toxicity in a sense.
• 50:03
  SPEAKER_01: Um and that's the closest I can come so far in my development for a strategy to deal with someone that you refuse to let go of who's threatening your integrity.
• 50:14
  SPEAKER_01: But ultimately, I'd say to someone, just fuck it and bail, like stay away from people where you find it impossible to be honest with them.
• 50:25
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, yeah, for sure.
• 50:27
  SPEAKER_00: Like, um, there's this there's this idea in in stoicism, uh stoic philosophy, um, where like so the idea is that you you do try to turn yourself into someone who can handle any adversity, but even if you do cultivate this attitude, there are still going to be people who will be what they call enemies of tranquility.
• 50:50
  SPEAKER_00: People who just like you know, as you say, like manipulate you or or um punish you for telling the truth.
• 50:57
  SPEAKER_00: That's a big one.
• 50:57
  SPEAKER_00: Because sometimes people can punish you.
• 50:59
  SPEAKER_00: They'll be like, How do you feel?
• 51:00
  SPEAKER_00: And you're like, I'm upset, and they're like, upset?
• 51:03
  SPEAKER_00: And then they start shouting at you for for being upset, so they they train you to to not be honest in a way and to hide your feelings, which is pathological.
• 51:11
  SPEAKER_00: Um and no matter how much you work on yourself, sometimes it's it is the right thing, is just to walk away, you know, just to leave behind relationships, even even family as well, if it's not serving you.
• 51:25
  SPEAKER_00: You you mentioned that you work with criminal offenders.
• 51:29
  SPEAKER_00: I'm really interested in that.
• 51:30
  SPEAKER_00: Like, so what how did that come about and like what was your experience of of that?
• 51:37
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, well that was that they had such a huge impact.
• 51:40
  SPEAKER_01: What what had happened was I got a degree in psychology and I had no idea what to do with it, because as anybody who's got a degree in psychology knows, they're basically worthless.
• 51:49
  SPEAKER_01: And I didn't want to do a master's or any of that stuff.
• 51:52
  SPEAKER_01: I'd had enough of the university, mostly because it was a painful social experience.
• 51:57
  SPEAKER_01: Um so I was floating around, I just kept searching for jobs where a psychology degree was actually, you know, respected, and I found probation officer.
• 52:06
  SPEAKER_01: And I didn't know what a probation officer was, um, but it sounded interesting, like working with criminals, and at that time I was just starting to get into self-development consciously, and I knew that my biggest fear at the time was confrontation, and I knew working with criminals is bound to have confrontation, so I thought maybe this would be really good for me, you know.
• 52:26
  SPEAKER_01: And I was very right about that.
• 52:28
  SPEAKER_01: Like my fear of confrontations over the next seven years was obliterated.
• 52:33
  SPEAKER_01: But you know, I this is what brought me into coachings because being a probation officer is almost being a coach, except the people are forced to see you, so it's much harder to work with them.
• 52:47
  SPEAKER_01: Um but essentially I was trying to rehabilitate criminal offenders, and after years of doing this, I started to realize that criminal offending is just poor behaviour, and we all do poor behaviour.
• 52:59
  SPEAKER_01: And and what started to emerge for me was that I'm not different from these guys.
• 53:04
  SPEAKER_01: It's just my behavioural reactions to my insecurities are different choices.
• 53:09
  SPEAKER_01: So one guy, his reaction to insecurity might be to punch someone in the face, mine is to people please, or mine is to binge on Netflix or whatever was around at the time.
• 53:20
  SPEAKER_01: It's the same thing.
• 53:21
  SPEAKER_01: It's just different choice of behaviour.
• 53:23
  SPEAKER_01: We're both reacting poorly to our insecurities.
• 53:27
  SPEAKER_01: And the more I worked with these guys, the more I realized fuck they are me.
• 53:31
  SPEAKER_01: You know, just with different upbringings.
• 53:34
  SPEAKER_01: You know, this gang member who's six foot tall, made of muscle and tattooed face, he's just a cowardly person like me, you know, he's just reacting to his fears like I do.
• 53:46
  SPEAKER_01: Um and that's when I just started to see the bigger picture with psychology is just how humans react really poorly to shame and insecurity.
• 53:57
  SPEAKER_01: We we engage in behaviors that make it so much worse for us in the long term.
• 54:02
  SPEAKER_01: And as I started to see my similarities with these guys, I started to just become more and more interested in that.
• 54:08
  SPEAKER_01: Like how the the question I was always asking myself was Um it was triggered by a guy I started working with who was like just like me.
• 54:18
  SPEAKER_01: He was the same age, we even looked similar.
• 54:20
  SPEAKER_01: If we had gone to the same school, we almost definitely would have been like best friends, and yet he had been to jail.
• 54:27
  SPEAKER_01: He had been to prison.
• 54:28
  SPEAKER_01: Um for it was he heard something in his house and he got up with a hammer because he thought it might be, you know, someone breaking in.
• 54:35
  SPEAKER_01: It turned out to be a policeman who thought he was gonna hit him with the hammer, so he went to jail for that.
• 54:40
  SPEAKER_01: And as this guy's describing his life, I'm like, fuck this guy is me, he's like a nice guy, people pleaser, he struggles with women, he indulges in drugs a little too often, so on and so on.
• 54:51
  SPEAKER_01: He just happened to like raise a hammer to a policeman, and I've never done that.
• 54:55
  SPEAKER_01: That's the only difference between us.
• 54:57
  SPEAKER_01: And and from there on out I realized, you know, we're all like this.
• 55:05
  SPEAKER_01: We've all got these patterns where we make our life worse by trying to get away from something that's painful for us.
• 55:12
  SPEAKER_01: We just like triple and quadruple our pain and suffering through just poor short-term decision making and instant gratification and shitty strategies that other people have like taught us, and they don't even uh those strategies don't even work for them and so on.
• 55:29
  SPEAKER_01: And that's where I really started to think about coaching.
• 55:33
  SPEAKER_01: Where I was like, I'd love to work with guys who aren't forced to see me, I'd love to work with guys that go fuck you, dick, as soon as they meet me, you know.
• 55:41
  SPEAKER_01: And I was like, that would be nice.
• 55:43
  SPEAKER_01: It'd be nice, because I I'd have a few guys who genuinely appreciated the rehabilitation work, quite a few really.
• 55:51
  SPEAKER_01: I mean by one guy, he was in prison for like seven years for beating up a child while he was high on methamphetamine, and within a year of working with him, he had his own business, he was married, he had totally turned his life around, he treated people with respect, he had discovered his values, and it was just such a thrilling experience for me, and I'm like, if he can do it, like this guy was like at the bottom of society's ladder, and he's picked himself up within 12 months.
• 56:19
  SPEAKER_01: I was like, nobody else has an excuse.
• 56:21
  SPEAKER_01: You know, no matter how much you were bullied or how fucked up your psychology is or how much your family's messed you up or how physically disabled you are, anything, confident living's available to you because everybody can have integrity, everybody has core values, everybody has the ability to decide to live by them, they just need to figure out how to cross that line.
• 56:42
  SPEAKER_01: Um and yeah, that's that's why I think working with when I say I was working with criminal offenders, really I was just coaching people, and now I'm still coaching people, it's just you know they're less likely to be in a gang these days.
• 56:56
  SPEAKER_00: So you you said that your your fear of confrontation was uh obliterated.
• 57:01
  SPEAKER_00: Um so like was that because like the people you were coaching the or like working with, were they uh confrontational to you or aggressive or anything like this?
• 57:15
  SPEAKER_01: It was every day.
• 57:16
  SPEAKER_01: Uh I'd be getting yelled at.
• 57:18
  SPEAKER_01: At least once a week there'd be some form of threat.
• 57:22
  SPEAKER_01: All the stuff I'd been scared of my whole life and more.
• 57:25
  SPEAKER_01: What I got subjected to in working with the Department of Corrections was the most masterful manipulation that exists.
• 57:34
  SPEAKER_01: You know, there's there's people within the criminal world who know more about psychology than the top psychiatrists.
• 57:41
  SPEAKER_01: They've never been trained, but they can make a human being do anything.
• 57:45
  SPEAKER_01: They're they're like animal instincts.
• 57:48
  SPEAKER_01: And to be in a room with this guy as he tries to fuck with your head is it's a mind-blowing experience.
• 57:55
  SPEAKER_01: You know, to think everybody thinks they can't be manipulated, you know.
• 57:58
  SPEAKER_01: Almost everybody does.
• 57:59
  SPEAKER_01: And the the more you believe that, the easier it is to manipulate you.
• 58:03
  SPEAKER_01: Because everyone absolutely can be manipulated.
• 58:06
  SPEAKER_01: Um, any human brain can be influenced.
• 58:09
  SPEAKER_01: Even any if if anybody right now is listening to my voice, no matter what you think of what I'm saying, I've already changed your life in some way.
• 58:16
  SPEAKER_01: I've changed the way your brain is wired.
• 58:18
  SPEAKER_01: You can't help prevent that from happening.
• 58:21
  SPEAKER_01: And there are guys who, you know, I was exposed to especially sex offenders and gang leaders, psychopaths, whose whole life is based on controlling others.
• 58:32
  SPEAKER_01: It's all they care about.
• 58:34
  SPEAKER_01: And they've been practicing it since they were like four years old.
• 58:38
  SPEAKER_01: And you get into a room with them and it's so subtle, it's not like something you see in a movie or the guy with shifty eyes and obviously lying, or like really blatant flattery.
• 58:49
  SPEAKER_01: It's like these little, really well-timed quips and pieces of information that they throw at you, and they just they they use it to gather information about you, and then they use that information to further manipulate you even more strategically.
• 59:05
  SPEAKER_01: And I remember the first time Um that it really happened to me, I found out like after working with a guy for a year who I thought I'd been helping, he had just been playing me the whole year, and he had been increasing his criminal offending.
• 59:20
  SPEAKER_01: I thought I had rehabilitated him, I was feeling really good about myself, and I was just a puppet to him.
• 59:25
  SPEAKER_01: He had used me completely, and it was such a humbling experience to find that out because I had no fucking idea that that was happening.
• 59:34
  SPEAKER_01: And I came to realize that you know my fear of confrontation, which was mostly a fear of being intimidated or threatened, that was nothing compared to the other types of manipulation that are out there: guilt tripping, invalidation, gaslighting, the kind of stuff that we're exposed to every day by people, um, it can destroy a person's self-worth, you know.
• 59:55
  SPEAKER_01: Like I like one guy, he would always just point out my spelling mistakes.
• 1:00:01
  SPEAKER_01: And it seems like nothing.
• 1:00:02
  SPEAKER_01: He's oh you spelled that wrong.
• 1:00:04
  SPEAKER_01: But what he's doing is he's constantly planting seeds of doubt about my competence, and he's doing this deliberately, he's looking for little errors I've made so that I start to question my own decision making.
• 1:00:15
  SPEAKER_01: So later on, when he does something that's like uh kind of crossing the line of a boundary, I can't be sure of myself to call him out on it, which is exactly what he wanted.
• 1:00:24
  SPEAKER_01: He wants me to be unsure of myself, and you can see people do this to each other all the time.
• 1:00:29
  SPEAKER_01: Parents do that to their kids, they're constantly like pointing out their flaws, so the kid will ask the parent for advice because the kid becomes unsure of himself.
• 1:00:36
  SPEAKER_01: You know, this kind of shit's going on all the time, and so my fear of confrontation was essentially obliterated by learning about the psychology behind manipulation, understanding what's happening and why it's happening, and and understanding something removes your fear of it, you know.
• 1:00:54
  SPEAKER_01: A fear just comes from the unknown.
• 1:00:55
  SPEAKER_01: Once you know you know the mechanics of something, you could see it happening and you understand it.
• 1:01:00
  SPEAKER_01: Like when I saw someone trying to manipulate me, I'm like, holy shit, that's how they do it.
• 1:01:05
  SPEAKER_01: It wasn't scary anymore, even when it was intimidation.
• 1:01:09
  SPEAKER_01: Like I had guys who would just stare at me for 15 minutes without saying a word, and they're like these guys are so big they have to go sideways through a door.
• 1:01:17
  SPEAKER_01: You know, that they're scary, scary guys, guys with histories of like serial murder, um, guys who have beaten up multiple policemen by themselves, you know, these are dangerous men, and they just stare at me, tattoos on their face, and like if you've ever had a psychopath stare at you, it's it's a life-changing experience.
• 1:01:36
  SPEAKER_01: It's like being stared at by a crocodile, there's just no emotion, no feeling.
• 1:01:41
  SPEAKER_01: And then as I as soon as I realised this is a technique, they're doing this deliberately, they're trying to intimidate me.
• 1:01:48
  SPEAKER_01: They're not actually a scary person, they're a person using scariness as a tactic.
• 1:01:53
  SPEAKER_01: And once I saw that, it didn't scare me anymore.
• 1:01:56
  SPEAKER_01: And once especially once I got to the courage to say, hey, I think you're using an intimidation tactic on me right now, which would just neutralize it because it's been called out.
• 1:02:05
  SPEAKER_01: You know, this was it's so funny because we're talking about, you know, expressing attraction to women.
• 1:02:12
  SPEAKER_01: It was actually dealing with confrontational offenders that gave me the balls to express other things to people like attraction.
• 1:02:19
  SPEAKER_01: You know, when I realized that like if a big scary criminal offender is just a human being, then maybe that cute girl at the coffee shop is just a human being as well.
• 1:02:28
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe I don't need to be so worried about what she's thinking all the time, and maybe I can just say what I think and let the kind of cards play out.
• 1:02:36
  SPEAKER_01: So yeah, I think I got off on track that one, but um yeah.
• 1:02:43
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, like it's so I'm so interested in in in like this this history, and it it gives you a really unique background as a coach as well, because um I I have had a taste of the types of of of I've had a small taste of of um interacting with um you know like expert manipulators and people who are like in the criminal underworld, a small taste of it.
• 1:03:10
  SPEAKER_00: And it and it as you say, it is mind-blowing how proficient people can be at at uh manipulating and guilt tripping and and playing you.
• 1:03:21
  SPEAKER_00: Even if you're intelligent, even if you're well versed in psychology, it doesn't matter.
• 1:03:25
  SPEAKER_00: If you have empathy and and emotions, then you are susceptible.
• 1:03:29
  SPEAKER_00: Um could you clarify to our listeners what you mean by gaslighting?
• 1:03:35
  SPEAKER_00: You said the word gaslighting.
• 1:03:37
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, gaslighting is a new term for an old technique, which is gaslighting essentially means you get the person to doubt their own sanity, you know, to doubt their own reality, by constantly questioning what they think is real in a way that kind of invalidates them.
• 1:03:53
  SPEAKER_01: But the technique is really invalidation, often called guilt tripping, there's various other words for it, but it's where you get someone to doubt themselves.
• 1:04:02
  SPEAKER_01: It doesn't really matter what they doubt about themselves as long as doubt is there, you know, and particularly if you do it right, not only do they doubt themselves, but they're guilty about being wrong, even if they're right.
• 1:04:14
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, this technique I think is the single most powerful confidence-destroying technique.
• 1:04:21
  SPEAKER_01: This is how, you know, you you see someone in an abusive relationship, you're like, how do you stay in it?
• 1:04:26
  SPEAKER_01: Like, why don't you just fucking leave?
• 1:04:28
  SPEAKER_01: I don't understand.
• 1:04:29
  SPEAKER_01: I used to work with abused women all the time.
• 1:04:31
  SPEAKER_01: Like, why do you keep going back to a guy who beats you half to death?
• 1:04:35
  SPEAKER_01: I couldn't comprehend how they would go back when they had a choice not to, until I understood what invalidation was as a technique, until I had guys doing it to me, where I s you know it's like when somebody says, Can I speak to the manager?
• 1:04:49
  SPEAKER_01: What they're saying is you're not good enough.
• 1:04:51
  SPEAKER_01: The message is hidden in there, but it's it gets through to you.
• 1:04:55
  SPEAKER_01: Like, even you know, anybody who's worked in retail and someone said, 'I like to speak to the manager,' you can't help but feel like, Oh, I wasn't strong enough to handle this.
• 1:05:04
  SPEAKER_01: Even though this person's just a dick.
• 1:05:07
  SPEAKER_01: So, you know, gaslighting it or being in a relationship where someone uses invalidation a lot is where you get to the point where you can't even trust yourself to you can't even trust your own beliefs.
• 1:05:19
  SPEAKER_01: These little subtle bits and pieces that somebody's been poking at you to just question things, it can be kind of like, oh, you forgot to do the dishes again, even though they did the dishes.
• 1:05:30
  SPEAKER_01: So these little things where the person just starts to go, like, I don't I don't trust myself.
• 1:05:34
  SPEAKER_01: I'm forgetting stuff all the time.
• 1:05:35
  SPEAKER_01: I I seem to get things wrong, like no matter how hard I try, I'm doing it wrong.
• 1:05:40
  SPEAKER_01: And then you get like a bit of the Stockholm syndrome, you're like, well, at least my partner's there to clean up after me.
• 1:05:45
  SPEAKER_01: When really he's like the mastermind of this whole disaster.
• 1:05:49
  SPEAKER_01: So he'll make it look like you're wrong and that he's the hero rescuing you.
• 1:05:53
  SPEAKER_01: And this is how people stay in toxic relationships.
• 1:05:55
  SPEAKER_01: They come to believe that they need the other person, and the other person has actually orchestrated that belief, manufactured it.
• 1:06:03
  SPEAKER_01: Um that's my understanding of the term gaslighting, but I always I prefer to use invalidation.
• 1:06:08
  SPEAKER_01: You have been invalidated as a worthwhile human, you know, and it makes you very susceptible to seek validation, which the other person could then use against you.
• 1:06:17
  SPEAKER_01: So like a great a great criminal offender will invalidate you and then they'll flatter you.
• 1:06:23
  SPEAKER_01: So they'll give you like a negative comment, a very subtle one, and then they'll compliment you.
• 1:06:28
  SPEAKER_01: So you start to see them as a source of self-worth because they take it away and give it back, and take it away and give it back.
• 1:06:34
  SPEAKER_01: And you don't even notice this happening, you just start looking forward to seeing them, even though they make you feel like shit.
• 1:06:39
  SPEAKER_01: It's crazy.
• 1:06:42
  SPEAKER_00: So how do you how do you deal with this then?
• 1:06:45
  SPEAKER_00: Like so, like if you are in a relationship of any kind and you feel like the other person is invalidating you, perhaps like picking false.
• 1:06:54
  SPEAKER_00: Or making you doubt things, you know, like like something that I've had done to me is like I've I've tried to act as well as I could, you know, like as a good person, and then I've had someone like very cleverly try to like reinterpret my behavior as if I have bad intentions, you know.
• 1:07:11
  SPEAKER_00: So it creates doubt, like, huh?
• 1:07:12
  SPEAKER_00: Really?
• 1:07:13
  SPEAKER_00: Am I am I actually a good person?
• 1:07:15
  SPEAKER_00: So how do you how do you cope with that?
• 1:07:18
  SPEAKER_00: How what do you do?
• 1:07:20
  SPEAKER_01: That's the beautiful thing about honesty, is it's basically it's my answer to every question is be more honest.
• 1:07:25
  SPEAKER_01: And in the longer term sense, like working on your integrity, like trying really hard to live by your values and that kind of thing, will get you to a place where when somebody else tries to invalidate you, you're more certain of your interpretation than you are of theirs, so you're kind of protected against it.
• 1:07:41
  SPEAKER_01: But in the short term, it's about it's about the source of honesty.
• 1:07:45
  SPEAKER_01: Like one of the things about being honest with yourself when it comes to friends and partners, any form of relationship, is to ask yourself, is this making my life better or worse?
• 1:07:55
  SPEAKER_01: It's a very simple question, and most people don't ask it.
• 1:08:00
  SPEAKER_01: And as soon as you do, a manipulator is revealed.
• 1:08:04
  SPEAKER_01: You know, if you're like, okay, I'm worse off psychologically now than I was before I met this person, that's all you really need to know.
• 1:08:14
  SPEAKER_01: So whatever it is that they're saying, even if they're right, it doesn't matter, you should not be with them.
• 1:08:20
  SPEAKER_01: You know, even if you aren't good enough for them, well so be it then.
• 1:08:23
  SPEAKER_01: Don't be with someone you're not good enough for.
• 1:08:25
  SPEAKER_01: But people get lost in trying to like catch up to some previous form of confidence that they might have had instead of realizing, fuck, it went away when I met this person.
• 1:08:36
  SPEAKER_01: The thing there's two aspects to dealing with manipulation.
• 1:08:40
  SPEAKER_01: One is really respecting your emotions.
• 1:08:44
  SPEAKER_01: Trusting that what you feel means something.
• 1:08:47
  SPEAKER_01: If you feel constantly guilty in someone's presence, something's up.
• 1:08:51
  SPEAKER_01: If you feel bad about yourself when somebody speaks, something about what they're saying ain't right.
• 1:08:56
  SPEAKER_01: You know, to be able to trust that feeling more than you trust what they're saying.
• 1:09:01
  SPEAKER_01: And then secondly, is to constantly call it out.
• 1:09:04
  SPEAKER_01: There's manipulation requires somebody to hide something.
• 1:09:09
  SPEAKER_01: You know, for me to manipulate you, you have to hide the fact that you feel manipulated, that you feel ashamed of yourself, that you feel like you're not good enough.
• 1:09:17
  SPEAKER_01: You have to hide all that for me to successfully manipulate you.
• 1:09:20
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I found this it works really well with intimidating guys.
• 1:09:24
  SPEAKER_01: This guy would be like staunching me out trying to make me scared.
• 1:09:27
  SPEAKER_01: And I'd say, you know what, when you do that, I actually feel quite scared.
• 1:09:30
  SPEAKER_01: And the funny thing was, it killed it.
• 1:09:33
  SPEAKER_01: Because for it to work, I have to pretend I'm not scared.
• 1:09:36
  SPEAKER_01: That's the only way he can actually maneuver me.
• 1:09:39
  SPEAKER_01: But if I'm like, yeah, I'm honestly quite scared right now and I'm gonna have to like take some steps to protect myself from you, he's like, ah shit, now I'm in more trouble.
• 1:09:46
  SPEAKER_01: That's not what I wanted.
• 1:09:48
  SPEAKER_01: You know, like I do that with guys, if they intimidate me, I'm like, you know what, when people use intimidation, I actually have to increase the conditions of their sentence because I take it as a threat.
• 1:09:57
  SPEAKER_01: And then they're like, fuck, now I'm in like now I've got less freedom.
• 1:10:00
  SPEAKER_01: That wasn't what I wanted.
• 1:10:01
  SPEAKER_01: So they have to like they can't use that when it's called out.
• 1:10:05
  SPEAKER_01: It's the same with invalidation.
• 1:10:07
  SPEAKER_01: If you if someone says to you like, oh, you were just trying to be a dick when you know you're trying to be a good person and you got a lot of doubt, you know.
• 1:10:13
  SPEAKER_01: You can say, like, every time you tell me what my intentions are, I get filled with self-doubt.
• 1:10:18
  SPEAKER_01: Are you trying to do that?
• 1:10:19
  SPEAKER_01: Are you trying to fill me with self-doubt?
• 1:10:22
  SPEAKER_01: It's this kind of thing, like every time it happens, you call it out as manipulation.
• 1:10:27
  SPEAKER_01: You know?
• 1:10:28
  SPEAKER_01: Um it's about the only effective thing, but the problem is, like like your situation that you describe is probably unconsciously you wanted to believe that you can't be manipulated, that it isn't working on you, that therefore it must be some other problem.
• 1:10:45
  SPEAKER_01: Um and and I think that's the tragic thing, is the people who do get manipulated are the ones who aren't willing to lose a relationship.
• 1:10:56
  SPEAKER_01: See if I'm in a relationship now and I wasn't good enough for the person, then I'd end the relationship.
• 1:11:01
  SPEAKER_01: I wouldn't try to be good enough for them.
• 1:11:03
  SPEAKER_01: I'd just bail.
• 1:11:05
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I'm like, I'm not their cup of tea, this is done.
• 1:11:07
  SPEAKER_01: But the old me would have tried to match their standards because I felt like I needed them.
• 1:11:12
  SPEAKER_01: I wasn't willing to lose them.
• 1:11:15
  SPEAKER_01: Um so if you combine willingness to lose, constant integrity practice, and calling it out, it's basically impossible to manipulate you.
• 1:11:27
  SPEAKER_00: Gotcha.
• 1:11:28
  SPEAKER_00: That's powerful.
• 1:11:29
  SPEAKER_01: It's not easy to point out.
• 1:11:32
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, no.
• 1:11:33
  SPEAKER_00: There's a lot of characters.
• 1:11:35
  SPEAKER_00: So after your work as a probation officer, how did you end up then going into the type of work that you do now with coaching?
• 1:11:44
  SPEAKER_00: What was the transition?
• 1:11:46
  SPEAKER_01: Actually, it all started with me writing my first book.
• 1:11:49
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I just got this burst of kind of inspiration one day.
• 1:11:53
  SPEAKER_01: I was like, I've got to get my ideas out on paper.
• 1:11:55
  SPEAKER_01: I've been doing self-development for quite a while, and it was going quite well for me, you know.
• 1:11:59
  SPEAKER_01: I was really enjoying life, and I thought I really want to share this with someone.
• 1:12:03
  SPEAKER_01: Like I figured this all this stuff out about values and shit.
• 1:12:08
  SPEAKER_01: Um and I was sharing that book around with some people for feedback, and some of them wanted to talk to me about it.
• 1:12:14
  SPEAKER_01: And so I ended up talking to them and having conversations with them as if they were criminal offenders, because I was still doing that work at the time.
• 1:12:23
  SPEAKER_01: And I hadn't really heard the term coaching very much before that, though I had received some what you might call coaching through my work, and I'd really enjoyed that.
• 1:12:33
  SPEAKER_01: And it just blew my mind how different that conversation was with somebody who actually wanted to have the conversation rather than someone who was legally forced to have the conversation.
• 1:12:44
  SPEAKER_01: I was just like, I'd have a conversation with someone, and within a week their life was like twice as good as it had ever been.
• 1:12:51
  SPEAKER_01: I was like, fuck, I I didn't can't believe a conversation can do that.
• 1:12:54
  SPEAKER_01: You know, it's a very simple conversation to have.
• 1:12:57
  SPEAKER_01: But it's just a conversation that nobody in their life has with them, because everybody else has like different agendas, you know.
• 1:13:03
  SPEAKER_01: And from there I I I reached out to some friends and I said, Look, I want to try this coaching thing.
• 1:13:08
  SPEAKER_01: Does anybody want to be coached for free for like six months?
• 1:13:11
  SPEAKER_01: Just so I can see if I'm deluded or this is worth doing.
• 1:13:15
  SPEAKER_01: And uh a couple of people came out, uh a friend of mine and a friend of a friend, and I just coached them both for like six months, and I just fucking loved it.
• 1:13:25
  SPEAKER_01: Like I just love having well, it's like the conversation you and I are having.
• 1:13:29
  SPEAKER_01: I just love having very truthful conversations about psychology where we point out the things that you you know that are hurting your life that don't need to be.
• 1:13:38
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, and then from there I think I started charging a bit of money for a couple of people uh that I met through my dance community to coach them, and it wasn't long before I realized this is like everything I love about being a probation officer with none of the stuff that I don't like.
• 1:13:55
  SPEAKER_01: So then I sort of well, I was I was receiving coaching at that point as well.
• 1:14:00
  SPEAKER_01: I had you know hired my first proper coach outside of my own like employment, and he encouraged me to start my own business, which I was shit scared of doing, but I just thought like I could actually have a life where this is my main, you know, this is the this is what I do every day.
• 1:14:19
  SPEAKER_01: Um it was too much to resist, so then I jumped into it, and that was about five years ago.
• 1:14:24
  SPEAKER_01: Been doing it ever since.
• 1:14:28
  SPEAKER_00: Like the like coaches these days have um like it's a it's a it's an interesting interesting thing because you some of the like the the most inspirational people on the planet are essentially coaches um or and teachers of personal growth, but then you also have this movement of people who aren't or don't don't appear to be very qualified or don't appear to be um they just sort of like there's this movement of like the life coach, it's kind of become like um like a sat a satire or like something um like there's been articles like everyone's a life coach these days and things.
• 1:15:11
  SPEAKER_00: So like what are you what are your like I also do um a little bit of coaching myself as well and I I've received coaching and I think that it's coaching is absolutely like an amazing, amazing tool if you if you work with someone good.
• 1:15:26
  SPEAKER_00: So what what to you is is the difference between a like a good coach and someone who is a bad coach?
• 1:15:34
  SPEAKER_00: Are there any signs that you can look out for?
• 1:15:38
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that's a good question because we're we're witnessing the birth of the coaching industry.
• 1:15:43
  SPEAKER_01: It's a relatively new concept, only a few decades old, and it doesn't have established protocols.
• 1:15:49
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it's not like being a a doctor or a surgeon, you know, there isn't like a recognized qualification for coaching that's internationally um kind of prohibitive.
• 1:16:00
  SPEAKER_01: There isn't like a review board or anything that determines quality.
• 1:16:06
  SPEAKER_01: Um and everybody's got an opinion on how people should live, so everybody thinks they could coach people.
• 1:16:14
  SPEAKER_01: It's really hard to just look at someone and say they'll be a good coach or not, but there are some warning signs.
• 1:16:22
  SPEAKER_01: One is there, I think there are two types of coaches in general.
• 1:16:27
  SPEAKER_01: One is the type of person who really wants to transform people's lives, like they're just obsessed with helping people with their psychology, they just love it because of their own journey with it, um, they just want to pass on the good word sort of thing, and then there's people who think coaching is a good way to make money.
• 1:16:45
  SPEAKER_01: And those aren't good coaches, those are people who have sort of tapped into an industry that they think they can exploit.
• 1:16:53
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I've got nothing for but contempt for those sort of people.
• 1:16:57
  SPEAKER_01: The people who are genuinely interested in helping you, they're going to range in competency.
• 1:17:03
  SPEAKER_01: Some of them will be excellent at doing it, and some of them will be terrible.
• 1:17:08
  SPEAKER_01: The upside is there's in my opinion, there's not really such a thing as a bad coach because even someone who just sat there silently while you talked about your life, it would be helpful.
• 1:17:19
  SPEAKER_01: But there are some people probably out there who you'd be better off just trying to do it on your own than to spend time with them.
• 1:17:27
  SPEAKER_01: I think ultimately what it comes down to is a few factors.
• 1:17:32
  SPEAKER_01: One is recommendations, referrals, testimonials.
• 1:17:35
  SPEAKER_01: What other people think about working with this person, though be wary of like guru complex.
• 1:17:41
  SPEAKER_01: There's some people like if they are overly every single reviewer's overly enthusiastic about how wonderful and amazing an a person is, that can actually be a red flag, you know.
• 1:17:53
  SPEAKER_01: Um how much you resonate with them, like explore their material a bit first.
• 1:17:58
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know, watch their videos, read their blog posts, have an exploratory call before you start paying for anything.
• 1:18:04
  SPEAKER_01: Get a sense of like how much does their philosophy align with what you think is the right way to live, and you know, how good do you feel about talking to them.
• 1:18:14
  SPEAKER_01: Most importantly, like have a session with them, wait for the good feeling to die down, and then see, did that actually motivate you to engage in better behaviour than you were before you talked to them?
• 1:18:25
  SPEAKER_01: You know, it didn't just feel good to talk to them, but you've actually changed the way you behave now and it's improved your life.
• 1:18:33
  SPEAKER_01: Now that doesn't necessarily mean they're a bad coach if you if that hasn't happened, because there are people who aren't currently coachable.
• 1:18:39
  SPEAKER_01: You know, if you're not somebody who will try and take action, then don't even look into coaching.
• 1:18:43
  SPEAKER_01: It's not worthwhile.
• 1:18:45
  SPEAKER_01: Um you have to be somebody who's willing to take some risks with your actual life and do some things differently.
• 1:18:50
  SPEAKER_01: But once you're there, if you find that following their guidance leads your life to feel like the quality has improved, then that's kind of all that really matters.
• 1:19:02
  SPEAKER_01: Like this coach works for you right now, and go with it until that's no longer the case.
• 1:19:08
  SPEAKER_01: Um that being said, I mean, the same principles got me into pickup, and that's some of the coaching I got there.
• 1:19:16
  SPEAKER_01: Well, actually, it wasn't bad necessarily, it was just very pickup flavoured.
• 1:19:20
  SPEAKER_01: But I got some good stuff out of it, and I definitely got some good support, and I definitely believe they were decent people at heart.
• 1:19:26
  SPEAKER_01: They'd just bought the same sort of pickup thing that I had bought.
• 1:19:30
  SPEAKER_01: Um, yeah, that I it's really hard to answer that question, but I have had like trial sessions with people and just been like, nope, that's I don't like that.
• 1:19:41
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and I've had other sessions with people, I'm just like, holy shit, I've never thought about life that way.
• 1:19:47
  SPEAKER_01: That is so fucking helpful.
• 1:19:49
  SPEAKER_01: And if that's how you feel after talking with someone, then explore it further, you know?
• 1:19:53
  SPEAKER_01: And um I think other red flags is be wary of anybody who wants to lock you into a complicated financial contract, anything that looks like scary to sign up to, the kind of person who wouldn't like let you off if you no longer wanted to do the coaching or anything like that, anything where it looks like finances are the top priority for this person.
• 1:20:14
  SPEAKER_01: Be very wary of that.
• 1:20:16
  SPEAKER_01: Because like a real a really good coach will believe in their own services, they'll say, look, you can quit anytime because I know this is good.
• 1:20:24
  SPEAKER_01: So if we're not a good fit for each other, then we'll just end it and we'll both move on with our lives.
• 1:20:29
  SPEAKER_01: Um this way, like like one of the ways I do that like for myself is I give people payment plans.
• 1:20:35
  SPEAKER_01: So if somebody's kind of broke, they can pay me off slowly, which means they'll have to keep paying after the coaching's finished.
• 1:20:41
  SPEAKER_01: Which means if my coaching sucked, they can bail on those payments, and I'm not gonna follow them up legally, you know.
• 1:20:47
  SPEAKER_01: I'm just gonna trust that my coaching was good enough that they'll um they'll feel that paying in full for it is what they should do.
• 1:20:55
  SPEAKER_01: You know, they'll feel that that was valuable, and if anything, I want them to feel like at the end of my coaching that it was a bargain, you know.
• 1:21:02
  SPEAKER_01: So it's it's a tough world out there.
• 1:21:05
  SPEAKER_01: There is a lot of horseshit out there.
• 1:21:07
  SPEAKER_01: There's a lot of wannabe coaches who think just because they like to tell people how to live that they know what they're talking about.
• 1:21:13
  SPEAKER_01: Ultimately, a great coach is not gonna tell you how to live, they're gonna figure out what you already know about how you should live and get you to do it, you know.
• 1:21:22
  SPEAKER_01: Um this is all opinion at this stage.
• 1:21:26
  SPEAKER_01: Um it's it's such a wild industry, it's it's it's rough out there for people looking for a coach.
• 1:21:34
  SPEAKER_00: What so I wanted to ask you, like, there might be people listening who they are you know avid readers, they watch a lot of YouTube and and documentaries, maybe they are practicing good self-care habits like meditation and going to the gym and and things like this.
• 1:21:54
  SPEAKER_00: Um and they might think, oh, I don't need a coach, you know, like yeah, I've I've got struggles, but I don't need a coach.
• 1:22:01
  SPEAKER_00: I don't need someone to to to tell I don't need to give money to someone who's gonna sort of point out things I already know.
• 1:22:07
  SPEAKER_00: So like do you still think there would be value in coaching for this type of individual?
• 1:22:15
  SPEAKER_00: And like what do you think that they could get from coaching that they couldn't get from um like other sources?
• 1:22:26
  SPEAKER_01: I'll start off by saying that nobody needs a coach.
• 1:22:29
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, not like you need a plumber or you need a GP or you need a grocery store.
• 1:22:35
  SPEAKER_01: Everybody can live without a coach.
• 1:22:37
  SPEAKER_01: What I would say is you don't see anybody at the Olympics who doesn't have a coach, and there's a reason for that.
• 1:22:43
  SPEAKER_01: Coaches are there to help you find a level of performance in all areas of your life that you didn't know was possible and you couldn't find by yourself that quickly.
• 1:22:54
  SPEAKER_01: What I often think about is coaching is about accelerated progress.
• 1:22:58
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, you can do it on your own, but do you want to take ten years to figure it out, or do you want to take three months to figure it out?
• 1:23:04
  SPEAKER_01: Because that's the difference between having a coach and not having one.
• 1:23:08
  SPEAKER_01: Like I saw it in my own life.
• 1:23:10
  SPEAKER_01: When I didn't have a coach, I would figure everything out on my own.
• 1:23:13
  SPEAKER_01: I would read the books, I would watch videos, I'd do trial and error experiments, um, which ultimately means you know, if that's what you're doing, you're really coachable.
• 1:23:23
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but I was like, I don't need someone else's help to figure this out, I got this.
• 1:23:27
  SPEAKER_01: And then for whatever reason I changed my mind and decided to get a coach, and that three months I spent with that coach, I made more progress than five years before that, in all the areas that I was working on.
• 1:23:39
  SPEAKER_01: I was just like, holy shit, this is like concentrated wisdom.
• 1:23:42
  SPEAKER_01: And it wasn't because he was telling me anything, it wasn't his information, he wasn't teaching me.
• 1:23:47
  SPEAKER_01: Coaching is not teaching.
• 1:23:49
  SPEAKER_01: He was just helping me wade through all my bullshit and just pull out the best stuff and work with that.
• 1:23:55
  SPEAKER_01: And I was just like, this is so fucking helpful.
• 1:23:59
  SPEAKER_01: Like, I can see it when I work with somebody as well.
• 1:24:03
  SPEAKER_01: Is I can see like somebody say they're trying to find a relationship.
• 1:24:07
  SPEAKER_01: Now, without me, they will find one.
• 1:24:09
  SPEAKER_01: They'll either find a kind of crappy one, but it'll be good enough for them, or they'll take a very, very long time and eventually unravel it, probably.
• 1:24:18
  SPEAKER_01: Um but then I'll have a conversation with them where I'll point out a belief they have um that's faulty, and that belief is completely destroying all their attempts to find a relationship, and once that belief is destroyed, they'd like within a week they're dating and they've got all these options.
• 1:24:38
  SPEAKER_01: Because there's just this one thing holding them back that they couldn't see because it was in the don't know that you don't know category.
• 1:24:44
  SPEAKER_01: You know, and so there are like the way I think about coaching is I think about athletes with their coaches.
• 1:24:52
  SPEAKER_01: There are plenty of people who are very athletic on their own, there's plenty of people who can shoot basketball really well, or um who are really good at playing pool, or you know, can run really fast, but none of them will get to the Olympics without a coach because they're not even going near the kind of human potential that's available to them because of that massive blind spot.
• 1:25:11
  SPEAKER_01: A coach is there to show you all the the wealth of resources that you have in your brain that's currently that you're currently unaware of.
• 1:25:21
  SPEAKER_01: Um and that's why it's I mean talking about how to choose a coach, you want to make sure you get a coach who gets coaching.
• 1:25:28
  SPEAKER_01: You know, there are a lot of coaches out there who won't even pay for their own coaching.
• 1:25:32
  SPEAKER_01: That's a huge red flag.
• 1:25:34
  SPEAKER_01: You know?
• 1:25:35
  SPEAKER_01: So if I'm if I'm investigating coaches, you know, my one of my questions would be like, Who have you been coached by?
• 1:25:41
  SPEAKER_01: If the answer is no one, like, what the fuck am I doing with this person?
• 1:25:44
  SPEAKER_01: They don't even believe in their own product.
• 1:25:46
  SPEAKER_01: Uh they wouldn't even invest in themselves.
• 1:25:49
  SPEAKER_01: You know, but um, yeah, I think of it like the Olympics.
• 1:25:52
  SPEAKER_01: Like there's like think of you saying Bolt.
• 1:25:54
  SPEAKER_01: Like there's no coach he's gonna find in the world who can run faster than him.
• 1:25:58
  SPEAKER_01: That's not what a coach does, they're not better than you.
• 1:26:01
  SPEAKER_01: But there'll be a coach who can watch the way he runs and be like, oh, you know what, you're landing on your back heel a bit too much, it slows you down by a fraction of a second.
• 1:26:09
  SPEAKER_01: And he can be like, oh, I didn't realise I was doing that, and now he's a fraction of a second faster.
• 1:26:13
  SPEAKER_01: And that's that's how I feel like when I'm a coach, I'm like, you know, I can see that you're trying to talk to girls, but you keep doing this thing based on the shitty belief, and they're like, oh, I didn't realise I was doing that.
• 1:26:22
  SPEAKER_01: Suddenly, you know, they speed up a little bit.
• 1:26:25
  SPEAKER_01: It would have taken them a year to figure that out on their own from all the bits of muddled feedback they get from their experiments.
• 1:26:32
  SPEAKER_01: Um So, yeah, that's that's kind of how I view coaching.
• 1:26:35
  SPEAKER_01: No, you don't need it, but if you don't want this shit to go really slowly, why why not get a coach?
• 1:26:41
  SPEAKER_01: I I've never heard of someone I've heard of people not have good experiences with coaching, but I've never never heard of someone regretting that they spent money on a good coach.
• 1:26:54
  SPEAKER_01: Never.
• 1:26:55
  SPEAKER_01: You know, when somebody gets a coach to help them, there's like thank fuck I did that.
• 1:26:58
  SPEAKER_01: No matter how scary it was to invest in them or whatever.
• 1:27:01
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm I'm the same.
• 1:27:03
  SPEAKER_01: I've like broken my bank account to get coaches before and been like so nervous I was almost vomiting because of how much of an investment I made.
• 1:27:10
  SPEAKER_01: And then afterwards I'm like, fuck, I'm glad I had the courage to do that.
• 1:27:13
  SPEAKER_01: That was so helpful.
• 1:27:15
  SPEAKER_01: Um I don't miss that money at all, kind of thing.
• 1:27:17
  SPEAKER_01: So yeah.
• 1:27:20
  SPEAKER_01: That being said, if someone's really like on the borderline of arrogance, where they're like, nobody can help me, I'm perfect the way I am, then yeah, don't get a coach because you'll just be a nightmare for that coach.
• 1:27:30
  SPEAKER_01: Just do it on your own.
• 1:27:33
  SPEAKER_00: Right, yeah.
• 1:27:34
  SPEAKER_00: That's a that's a really good analogy because yeah, like the best boxers and fighters um have coaches, like even Conor McGregor, like he's um like I I really like him as a mixed martial artist, and he has a coach who is uh you know indispensable in his team.
• 1:27:55
  SPEAKER_00: Like in like um actors have voice coaches, and it's as you say, it's not about being better.
• 1:28:02
  SPEAKER_00: I think that's another misperception, is like people might be thinking, like, well, if I have a coach, they need to be like richer than me.
• 1:28:07
  SPEAKER_00: I think that's like one way of if you're if you have a certain goal, then yeah, fair enough, you can find someone who's like a m mentor figure who's achieved that goal and learn from them for sure.
• 1:28:18
  SPEAKER_00: But um um there is so much of our personality and uh life that is blind that we are blind to.
• 1:28:24
  SPEAKER_00: No matter how much we read, we can't see certain patterns.
• 1:28:28
  SPEAKER_00: And like you said, like you as a c a good coach will point things out and you told me before as well that uh that w when you work with people that you are not really changing them, but you are just creating uh the right conditions for them to change themselves.
• 1:28:48
  SPEAKER_00: Is that right?
• 1:28:49
  SPEAKER_01: Oh absolutely.
• 1:28:50
  SPEAKER_01: I I don't believe there's anything I need to add to a person.
• 1:28:53
  SPEAKER_01: If anything, I'm deducting.
• 1:28:55
  SPEAKER_01: I take away the bullshit that's in the way of of what they've already got.
• 1:28:59
  SPEAKER_01: You know, like that's one of the things I love about coaching, is it's given me such an optimism and individual humans and what they're capable of because I've seen like a coaching conversation is just me talking to someone, usually via the internet.
• 1:29:15
  SPEAKER_01: There's no real value in that by itself.
• 1:29:19
  SPEAKER_01: If their life's gonna change, it'll be because of what they do after that conversation.
• 1:29:24
  SPEAKER_01: And that's what blows my mind when I'm coaching with someone.
• 1:29:26
  SPEAKER_01: Like I have a conversation with someone, to me, I'm just pointing out obvious strengths that they have.
• 1:29:31
  SPEAKER_01: I'm like, well, you're able to do this in one situation, why not try it in another?
• 1:29:35
  SPEAKER_01: Like they've already got this thing.
• 1:29:37
  SPEAKER_01: I know I'm not adding anything, I'm just suggesting a transference of strength.
• 1:29:42
  SPEAKER_01: And then the next week they have the balls to actually go and do it and raise all sorts of hell in their life, and they come back and they're like, mission accomplished.
• 1:29:50
  SPEAKER_01: It's like holy shit, you know, the guy I talked to last week was incapable of that, and now you're a beast.
• 1:29:56
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, that was already in them.
• 1:30:00
  SPEAKER_01: Like, we landed on the moon, we built bridges, we fucking dominate the planet.
• 1:30:05
  SPEAKER_01: Human beings are incredible animals.
• 1:30:08
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, and our psychology is what makes us so incredible, and our social community is what makes us so powerful.
• 1:30:14
  SPEAKER_01: All of us have, you know, a brain that can that can work with that.
• 1:30:19
  SPEAKER_01: I even like I've had quite a few clients that other people have written off, say people with autism, uh, people with various uh diagnosed mental illness, that others have basically just said, you know, you're a weaker version of a human being, you're just gonna have to work with that.
• 1:30:37
  SPEAKER_01: And I've been able to even find strengths in that.
• 1:30:40
  SPEAKER_01: Like I I love working with somebody who has asperges and being able to use that to make social connections happen when it's actually supposed to make social connections worse, you know, or take someone with depression and turn that into art, you know, like no matter what you've got going on, there's huge strength in it.
• 1:30:56
  SPEAKER_01: And what a coach will do is help you figure out how to exploit that strength instead of being solely focused on the downside of it, which is only a downside because you're not using it properly, you know.
• 1:31:08
  SPEAKER_01: Um yeah, I'm I'm constantly surprised by how how amazing people really are, and and that's what I love about my job.
• 1:31:17
  SPEAKER_01: All I have to do is talk to them, and that amazing shit can come out, you know, and it's already in them.
• 1:31:24
  SPEAKER_01: One of the things that I've noticed, uh I'll work with somebody who has Asperges, which everybody will tell them uh means that socializing is going to be difficult for them and that they can't do it.
• 1:31:36
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but I've been able to find like if you combine it, like the great the great strength in Asperges is honesty.
• 1:31:43
  SPEAKER_01: Like these are some of the most honest people you're ever gonna meet.
• 1:31:46
  SPEAKER_01: So with a bit of refinement, they can become really interesting in their honesty.
• 1:31:51
  SPEAKER_01: So if they go from being bluntly blurting things out to just kind of moderating um with a bit of fluency and a bit of language to make their their honesty just a bit more palatable, they become some of the most sort of powerful, open, upfront people there ever is.
• 1:32:06
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and it's the same with I was even thinking of I've worked with people with depression, with bipolar, who everybody else wrote off as being kind of like sick for life.
• 1:32:16
  SPEAKER_01: And depression can easily be turned into art, it can easily be turned into a deep and meaningful connection with somebody else.
• 1:32:23
  SPEAKER_01: Um, bipolar can become an interesting story that you tell people that allows them to connect with you.
• 1:32:29
  SPEAKER_01: You know, everybody's got something in them that they think is a weakness right now, but with the right coaching and the right support is absolutely a strength.
• 1:32:39
  SPEAKER_01: And I mean that's yeah, that's one of the things I just I love about my job is you're just exploring what somebody's had trouble with their whole life, and they just haven't realized how good that thing could be with just a couple of tweaks.
• 1:32:53
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I I often when I first got into coaching, I used to be really focused on the whole improvement side of self-improvement, like you're not good enough yet, and you need to change who you are.
• 1:33:04
  SPEAKER_01: And now I think less about improvement and more about revealing.
• 1:33:09
  SPEAKER_01: So you've already got everything you need, nothing needs to improve, you just need to reveal it more.
• 1:33:14
  SPEAKER_01: You know, that artistic side, you need to be more artistic.
• 1:33:17
  SPEAKER_01: If you've got a leadership bug in you, you need to go lead.
• 1:33:21
  SPEAKER_01: Uh if you're if you're a really caring person, you need to find some way to like care on a big scale and and fix problems.
• 1:33:29
  SPEAKER_01: You know, people already have these tendencies.
• 1:33:31
  SPEAKER_01: I was actually talking about this the other day with a friend of mine, we both had nice guy syndrome, we're both extroverted, and we're just talking about how that played out as we grew up.
• 1:33:42
  SPEAKER_01: And one of the things we realized is that within our nice guy performance was real elements of our personality.
• 1:33:48
  SPEAKER_01: Like I was always the funny guy, but that's because I have a sense of humor that was real.
• 1:33:53
  SPEAKER_01: He was always quite contrarian and like getting attention by causing, you know, provoking kind of arguments, but that's because he's able to see like flaws and faults in in arguments.
• 1:34:05
  SPEAKER_01: He's he's now a scientist.
• 1:34:07
  SPEAKER_01: So there were strengths in our weakness.
• 1:34:10
  SPEAKER_01: That very thing that was holding us back our whole lives was actually had elements of what's great about us, and I see that in everybody I work with.
• 1:34:18
  SPEAKER_01: Like they'll be really struggling, but within that struggle is something that could go really, really well for them in life if they just learned how to use it properly.
• 1:34:27
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 1:34:27
  SPEAKER_01: And that's why I always say, like, a coach isn't a teacher, they're not giving you something you don't have, at least a good coach isn't.
• 1:34:34
  SPEAKER_01: They're just helping you unleash what you've got to use it properly, to play your cards properly.
• 1:34:40
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and yeah, like you and I have both experienced, the difference before and after a coach, like who I was before coaching versus after.
• 1:34:52
  SPEAKER_01: It was just such a such a better version.
• 1:34:54
  SPEAKER_01: I just I didn't know I could do all of this stuff that I actually had been capable of doing my entire life.
• 1:35:01
  SPEAKER_01: Just no one had said, like, go for it, give it a go, try be honest, try start a business, you know.
• 1:35:07
  SPEAKER_01: Uh try go play a gig in front of strangers like you've always wanted.
• 1:35:11
  SPEAKER_01: Just go do it.
• 1:35:12
  SPEAKER_01: Uh and and find absolutely blissful happiness in that.
• 1:35:16
  SPEAKER_01: And yeah, I just that's why I do what I do is I I think of confidence as being the cure to pretty much all all suffering.
• 1:35:28
  SPEAKER_01: It's it's not about being happy.
• 1:35:30
  SPEAKER_01: I I shouldn't have used the word happiness before because I don't actually agree with that use of that word of the idea of feeling good all the time.
• 1:35:37
  SPEAKER_01: I'm much more stoic in believing like whatever you're feeling is what you are right now and you've got to work with it.
• 1:35:44
  SPEAKER_01: But confidence is kind of enjoying whatever you are.
• 1:35:47
  SPEAKER_01: Like I can even enjoy I can enjoy being angry now.
• 1:35:51
  SPEAKER_01: I can enjoy even being stressed, I can even enjoy the little bouts of depression I get twice a year, because I've found a way to use them, like in a way that's valuable.
• 1:36:01
  SPEAKER_01: I've just tweaked them, I haven't changed them, I haven't stopped them from happening.
• 1:36:05
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I used to get chronic anxiety all the time because I was worried about what people think.
• 1:36:11
  SPEAKER_01: Now I get anxiety when I'm about to do something really important and meaningful.
• 1:36:15
  SPEAKER_01: So the anxiety hasn't gone anywhere, it's just now it's in the right place, sort of thing, and I can enjoy it.
• 1:36:21
  SPEAKER_01: It it I got a lot of anxiety before I proposed to my you know my girlfriend.
• 1:36:26
  SPEAKER_01: It made the whole event much more memorable.
• 1:36:28
  SPEAKER_01: You know, if I'd been bored doing it, it would have been painful, but I was shitting myself.
• 1:36:32
  SPEAKER_01: Um and because of that, that that memory is like sealed in my in my brain, and I appreciate that now.
• 1:36:39
  SPEAKER_01: So everything about you can be a strength.
• 1:36:43
  SPEAKER_01: Coaches or whoever can just help you like use it as a strength rather than like thrashing against it in the wrong areas or whatever.
• 1:36:53
  SPEAKER_00: The other thing, as well, that I think is really powerful about coaching is like we talked earlier about invalidation, and I know in abusive relationships this this is taken to the extreme, but I think I've spoken to many people who read the blog High Existence, and I'm sure you've spoken to many people who read your blog and who've read your books and who who you've coached who come from environments where they are they are quite invalidated with their interests and their passions and their beliefs, and uh they so many people feel a bit isolated, even if they have friends, and to s to sit down with a coach who has done a lot of work on themselves, you know, has has been on themselves a transformational journey and is operating from that frequency, and to sit down and just to feel the presence of that coach and to feel validated and to feel like listened to fully is um is so healing.
• 1:37:52
  SPEAKER_00: Um and that's without any of the strategy and the pattern changing that that goes on in the session, and and um like I think I think just like that's you you can't get that from a book, you know.
• 1:38:07
  SPEAKER_00: It's it it is something to just have a human connection, like what we're having now.
• 1:38:11
  SPEAKER_00: This is this conversation with you.
• 1:38:13
  SPEAKER_00: I'm feeling some of your energy, your groundedness, your presence, um, your honesty that I'm obviously gonna take with me now for the rest of the day.
• 1:38:22
  SPEAKER_00: It's gonna be really weird for me now.
• 1:38:23
  SPEAKER_00: If as soon as we stop talking, I I just I I I left this conversation, I started lying to someone.
• 1:38:29
  SPEAKER_00: It just went like that, just wouldn't happen.
• 1:38:31
  SPEAKER_00: It just doesn't make sense for me to do that.
• 1:38:33
  SPEAKER_01: So absolutely, you know, and uh that's what I love about I mean, great coaching or even conversations like we're having is just connection between two humans where you realize oh we're not alone, we're actually all pretty fucking similar, we're all in the same boat, kind of struggling around together, and it's you know, for people who've been invalidated their whole lives and had awful support.
• 1:38:57
  SPEAKER_01: And I've had a couple of clients like that where they haven't even had a friend in their entire life, you know, just like awful, like terrible family, bullied all through school, can't connect with anybody.
• 1:39:09
  SPEAKER_01: You know, the a coach, I remember the first time I received a coaching session, I'm like, holy shit, all this guy cares about is my success.
• 1:39:17
  SPEAKER_01: That's all he cares about right now.
• 1:39:18
  SPEAKER_01: In this hour, I've never had that before in my life, where the person opposite me is 100% focused on what's best for me.
• 1:39:29
  SPEAKER_01: You know, whereas, like quite often people ask, well, why not just go talk to your smart friends or your family for advice?
• 1:39:36
  SPEAKER_01: Why hire somebody to help you?
• 1:39:38
  SPEAKER_01: It's because your friends and your family are never going to be a hundred percent in your corner, they're always going to have their own agenda because they're emotionally connected to you.
• 1:39:46
  SPEAKER_01: They've got a kind of uh they've got a dog in the race or whatever you say, that they've got an investment in their relationship with you that goes beyond just helping you, and that doesn't make them bad people or it doesn't even make them necessarily unhelpful.
• 1:40:00
  SPEAKER_01: It just means they'll never be what a coach can be, which is just a hundred percent about what's best for you, even if it means fuck everybody else.
• 1:40:08
  SPEAKER_01: That's where a coach will still be like, Well, I don't care if everyone else gets hurt by that, it's best for you, go for it.
• 1:40:14
  SPEAKER_01: You know, your family and friends, they just can't get to that level of kind of objectivity.
• 1:40:21
  SPEAKER_01: Um, it's it's quite often I talk about fearless coaching, which is I'll say things to my clients that make them hate me, but I'm doing it because I know from what I've my experience working with them that this is what is best for them.
• 1:40:33
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm even willing for them to hate me in order to have what's best for them.
• 1:40:39
  SPEAKER_01: Their friends and family just very rarely are able to do that without you know massively a selfish agenda.
• 1:40:47
  SPEAKER_01: And this is what helped me with like investing financially in a coach, which was a huge stretch for me actually almost every time I've done it.
• 1:40:55
  SPEAKER_01: It's been really difficult on me financially to do it.
• 1:40:58
  SPEAKER_01: But I realized this gets uh the objectivity in the room, you know, they've got their money, that's they've they've been paid, there's nothing else for them to gain but to work on me now, you know.
• 1:41:09
  SPEAKER_01: Now the only objective is is to help me.
• 1:41:12
  SPEAKER_01: Whereas your friends and family, they've got long-term plans for their relationship with you that goes beyond just helping you, and that's going to affect them.
• 1:41:20
  SPEAKER_01: So my friends and family are very helpful, don't get me wrong.
• 1:41:23
  SPEAKER_01: I've got a few people that I connect with that uh give me great advice and they're really helpful, but none of them have been able to impact me like my coaches have.
• 1:41:33
  SPEAKER_01: You know, they just haven't been able to get to that level of want to help me so much they're willing to hurt me.
• 1:41:39
  SPEAKER_01: You know?
• 1:41:40
  SPEAKER_01: That's that's that's real coaching.
• 1:41:42
  SPEAKER_01: And and I've had conversations with my coaches that were so deeply uncomfortable that none of my family would have been able to handle going there.
• 1:41:50
  SPEAKER_01: You know, they wouldn't have been able to make me that upset uh without feeling too bad for me.
• 1:41:55
  SPEAKER_01: But my coaches are like, this is exactly what you need to be talking about, so let's do it.
• 1:42:00
  SPEAKER_01: Um and it was life-changing.
• 1:42:02
  SPEAKER_01: There's that there's a few conversations I can remember that you know I um I walked away like my whole identity had been wiped clean and I was starting over again, but it was absolutely helpful.
• 1:42:14
  SPEAKER_01: It's what I needed at the time, you know.
• 1:42:16
  SPEAKER_01: And you obviously I'm gonna be biased and saying I think coaching is awesome, but I just keep coming back to it.
• 1:42:23
  SPEAKER_01: Like the reason I do this work is because I think it's the best way to kind of help the human race, you know.
• 1:42:29
  SPEAKER_01: I think confidence is the biggest issue most people have, it leads to the most harmful behavior.
• 1:42:34
  SPEAKER_01: The more people are helped to make confident, the less harmful shit there happens in the world.
• 1:42:37
  SPEAKER_01: It's like a simple equation to me.
• 1:42:42
  SPEAKER_00: I love it.
• 1:42:43
  SPEAKER_00: I love it.
• 1:42:44
  SPEAKER_00: Um, like one of the things, um, I just want to switch topics for a moment.
• 1:42:47
  SPEAKER_00: Um, one of the things we've covered a lot of ground that has been really awesome, and I feel like we could actually keep talking for ages.
• 1:42:55
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and hopefully we can pick it up again.
• 1:42:57
  SPEAKER_00: Um one of the things the high existence uh uh readers really enjoy and what we like to do is like 30-day challenges.
• 1:43:07
  SPEAKER_00: So if someone is listening to this podcast and they want to get the ball rolling with their confidence and authenticity, what can they do over the next 30 days?
• 1:43:19
  SPEAKER_00: Any do you have any sort of daily practice they can do just to get things going with with improving their confidence?
• 1:43:26
  SPEAKER_00: Anything that you could recommend that they they try out for 30 days and experiment or some kind of challenge?
• 1:43:34
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, there's a whole bunch of things.
• 1:43:35
  SPEAKER_01: It depends on the person, but uh we can do a general one with honesty.
• 1:43:39
  SPEAKER_01: It's actually a really simple one.
• 1:43:40
  SPEAKER_01: It can go for just 30 days as a trial, but you can do it for the rest of your life.
• 1:43:44
  SPEAKER_01: And that is each day you try to find one thing to be a little bit more honest about.
• 1:43:49
  SPEAKER_01: That's it.
• 1:43:49
  SPEAKER_01: One thing and just a little bit more honest.
• 1:43:53
  SPEAKER_01: One way you can do this is you can write a list of 30 things that you hide from people.
• 1:43:57
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe you don't hide it from all people, but certain people.
• 1:44:00
  SPEAKER_01: Like maybe you um hide your sick sense of humour from your boss, or maybe you hide your anger from everybody or whatever.
• 1:44:08
  SPEAKER_01: There'll be things you hide.
• 1:44:09
  SPEAKER_01: And each day see if you can scratch one of those things off your list.
• 1:44:13
  SPEAKER_01: See if you can show it to the person you're scared to show it to, even just a touch of it.
• 1:44:18
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I I I always recommend like the minimum possible so that A, you don't like get into something you can't handle too quickly, but also B, so that you can't your fear can't talk you out of it as being too much.
• 1:44:32
  SPEAKER_01: You know, so like if I was going to I I I have actually done this sort of challenge with with many clients.
• 1:44:40
  SPEAKER_01: I ran a program actually called the Honesty Effect, and each day they just had to try and be a bit more honest, and that was kind of the whole program.
• 1:44:46
  SPEAKER_01: Um but you get like somebody just like tell a friend, like, uh you know, I you know, last week when uh you didn't invite me to the dinner and I felt a bit bummed out.
• 1:44:56
  SPEAKER_01: Like it sounds like nothing, but for them that was something you usually wouldn't say, and now you've said it.
• 1:45:02
  SPEAKER_01: You know, and you do this not just 30 days, you do it for a year, and you're a different person at the end of that year, uh, in terms of courage, in terms of integrity, in terms of like what you believe is possible.
• 1:45:15
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you know, like what we talked about before, how you can't really believe in how awesome bold honesty is until you practice it.
• 1:45:22
  SPEAKER_01: Well, this is a way to build up to that.
• 1:45:24
  SPEAKER_01: You know, you can find something every day that you've been holding back, hiding.
• 1:45:29
  SPEAKER_01: Um, it may even be just something you're hiding from yourself.
• 1:45:31
  SPEAKER_01: Like maybe you're not facing the truth about your binge eating, or um, maybe you're not facing the truth about your relationship, or you're facing the truth about how much you hate your job.
• 1:45:40
  SPEAKER_01: Just being honest with yourself about how you feel about those things could count.
• 1:45:43
  SPEAKER_01: You know, just write down how do I really feel about my job.
• 1:45:46
  SPEAKER_01: For the first time, just put it into words and see how that affects you.
• 1:45:51
  SPEAKER_01: Um and then go tell someone else about it, and then you've got two ticked off, you know.
• 1:45:56
  SPEAKER_01: And you just keep doing that until essentially I think that's the formula for confidence.
• 1:46:02
  SPEAKER_01: You keep doing that until you can't think of anything you'd be ashamed to say to anyone, which might take you the rest of your life to get there, but every single thing you tick off that list makes you a more confident person, in my book, anyway, with some exceptions.
• 1:46:17
  SPEAKER_00: I love that challenge.
• 1:46:18
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that's um I think we can perhaps put together some kind of kind of article around that challenge.
• 1:46:25
  SPEAKER_00: I think that would be really, really useful for people.
• 1:46:27
  SPEAKER_00: Definitely.
• 1:46:28
  SPEAKER_00: Um, yeah, that's a really great one.
• 1:46:31
  SPEAKER_00: Um, yeah, awesome.
• 1:46:33
  SPEAKER_00: So if people want to learn more about you, um, I know you've got some books and you've got a blog, and like like what exactly do you have available for people who want to learn more about your work?
• 1:46:45
  SPEAKER_01: All sorts of stuff.
• 1:46:47
  SPEAKER_01: Um I think the favorite thing I want to direct people towards at the moment is my YouTube channel.
• 1:46:53
  SPEAKER_01: Um I'm really big on creating like short videos and answering people's questions.
• 1:46:58
  SPEAKER_01: So you can actually send me questions and I'll I'll answer them by creating videos.
• 1:47:02
  SPEAKER_01: It's my new favorite thing to do.
• 1:47:04
  SPEAKER_01: And that's actually all done through the self-development community I run called Brojo.
• 1:47:10
  SPEAKER_01: So if you go to brojo.org slash ask, you'll be able to send your questions through to me, and that'll also lead you to the other questions I've answered through YouTube and everything.
• 1:47:21
  SPEAKER_01: So Brojo.org slash ask um is a good place to get started if you're interested in hearing me rant about more shit, basically.
• 1:47:31
  SPEAKER_00: Awesome.
• 1:47:32
  SPEAKER_00: So that's the main place you wanna you wanna um people to go to ask you questions.
• 1:47:37
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I mean, even if if someone's interested in coaching with me or talking with me personally, I like to start there.
• 1:47:42
  SPEAKER_01: Um because I get uh I get a lot of people coming through with questions and stuff, and um I can start sort of filtering who's really interested versus who's just kicking the tires um from there.
• 1:47:54
  SPEAKER_00: Awesome.
• 1:47:55
  SPEAKER_00: I kind of want to go there myself and ask you a question.
• 1:47:59
  SPEAKER_00: So I think I'll do that.
• 1:48:03
  SPEAKER_00: Um awesome.
• 1:48:05
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 1:48:05
  SPEAKER_00: Um is there anywhere else like that you that you'd like people to like check you out on social media, or is that really like the the only the the main source that people can get to know you?
• 1:48:16
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, they can also um join my my Facebook group again.
• 1:48:20
  SPEAKER_01: Uh that's a Brojo one.
• 1:48:21
  SPEAKER_01: I can send you the link for that.
• 1:48:23
  SPEAKER_01: So Brojo community on Facebook.
• 1:48:25
  SPEAKER_01: So not only is it me and the other Brojo coaches, but uh you can connect with all the Brojo members from around the world as well.
• 1:48:31
  SPEAKER_01: So heaps of very like-minded people working on self-development and integrity, all talking about their strains and struggles and triumphs with it.
• 1:48:42
  SPEAKER_00: Excellent.
• 1:48:43
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, I'll include the link to that in the podcast article for anyone listening.
• 1:48:48
  SPEAKER_00: Um okay, well, excellent.
• 1:48:50
  SPEAKER_00: I've learned a lot.
• 1:48:51
  SPEAKER_00: I've really enjoyed talking to you, and it's it's been uh actually a very validating conversation.
• 1:48:59
  SPEAKER_00: I feel like um a lot of the things that you that you discussed, um I kind of had as background ideas, and you've helped clarify those, and um yeah, I'm I'm excited.
• 1:49:14
  SPEAKER_00: I'm I'm excited to to grow my confidence more as well from talking to you.
• 1:49:19
  SPEAKER_00: So thank you very much for having this conversation with me.
• 1:49:23
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, thank you, bro.
• 1:49:24
  SPEAKER_01: I I thoroughly enjoyed it, and I think you and I are on uh very similar wavelengths about these topics.
• 1:49:30
  SPEAKER_01: So I always enjoy talking about that with uh someone like yourself who's you know a uh an advocate for for integrity.
• 1:49:38
  SPEAKER_01: Um we need more people like yourself in this world, that's for sure.
• 1:49:41
  SPEAKER_01: So my absolute pleasure, bro.
• 1:49:43
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you.
• 1:49:44
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you.
• 1:49:45
  SPEAKER_00: Until next time.