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Conversations With A Vet - Timothy Thomas Australian Special Forces Veteran · Military Broadcast Radio | MBR Talk

• 1:06
  Well, good evening, everybody and happy Sunday.
• 1:09
  My name is Caroline and I'm the host of Conversations with a
• 1:12
  Vet. I want to thank everybody for
• 1:15
  showing up tonight and we will get to my very gracious guest
• 1:19
  waiting in the wings here momentarily.
• 1:21
  But before we do, I did want to say a little bit about the two
• 1:27
  service members that were killed and there is one that remains
• 1:30
  missing after an Iranian missile and drone attack in Jordan on
• 1:35
  Friday. And, and they were evacuated to
• 1:38
  Jordan, but there were several, excuse me, for service members
• 1:42
  that were also medically evacuated to Jordan hospitals
• 1:45
  but have been discharged. So thank goodness.
• 1:48
  And unfortunately, we don't know the names of those who were
• 1:52
  killed. However, please keep them and
• 1:55
  their families in your thoughts. On another note, we have a brand
• 2:02
  new book that has come to us and he is going to be one of my
• 2:07
  upcoming guests as well. The book is called Unshaken
• 2:11
  Resolve and that is by Michael Alexander Payne.
• 2:16
  Super excited to have him come on the show.
• 2:19
  If you haven't already, you can go and pick this book up at
• 2:22
  Amazon and it is a great read. It is about leadership and a lot
• 2:29
  of leading with discipline, courage, integrity.
• 2:34
  So pick up your book today, Unshaken Resolve.
• 2:38
  Again, that's by Michael Alexander Payne.
• 2:41
  All right, without further ado, please help me to introduce and
• 2:48
  welcome Tim Thomas. Good evening and good morning.
• 2:55
  Yes, good morning from Monday in Australia.
• 2:59
  It's really late for you or early, I guess it's early for
• 3:04
  you. It's it's a little later for me
• 3:06
  and. Yeah, no, this isn't studio
• 3:07
  light. This is just the sun coming up.
• 3:10
  Nice, that's very nice. I'm a little jealous because
• 3:13
  ours is starting to go down. So again, thank you very, very
• 3:18
  much for for coming on. I always like to start the
• 3:22
  channel and the show by asking my guests to tell me a little
• 3:27
  bit about who you were as a child.
• 3:32
  As a child I had ADHD and dyslexia, but in the 70's the
• 3:38
  technical term for that was the stupid kid that couldn't sit
• 3:41
  still. I'm sorry.
• 3:45
  I I am. I'm from that era.
• 3:47
  So I got it. I got it.
• 3:49
  I understand. Yeah, yeah.
• 3:50
  And they could, they could belt you back then too, you know, so.
• 3:56
  And was school something that you enjoyed or not at all?
• 4:01
  Well, I just had this acceptance of, well, you have to do it,
• 4:04
  everyone's doing it, you have to do it.
• 4:05
  I never questioned it, but I'm like, well, they keep on telling
• 4:09
  me I'm stupid, so if I can't figure all this stuff out, I
• 4:13
  might as well have as much fun as possible.
• 4:15
  So that's what I did. I was very disruptive in class
• 4:19
  and couldn't sit still. And as much as I was having fun,
• 4:27
  I did notice that when you tell a kid that he's stupid enough,
• 4:31
  he starts believing it. So it wasn't until I was in my
• 4:35
  sort of late teens and I'm doing these IQ tests and I'm doing
• 4:38
  pretty good, right? In fact, in some areas, I was in
• 4:41
  the top percentile. And then it's just this thought
• 4:44
  went through my head. You know, Tim, maybe you're not
• 4:46
  as stupid as everyone tells you. And then I just sort of went
• 4:50
  from there. I started sort of expanding on
• 4:54
  my own boundaries, not the the boundaries other people had sort
• 4:57
  of impressed upon me when I was young.
• 5:01
  Which makes sense. And were you in any sports as
• 5:07
  you got older? Oh, sport was the only thing
• 5:09
  that made sense to me. So, you know, moving my physical
• 5:13
  body became very natural to me. You know, I was sort of in the
• 5:17
  sort of top tier of track and field.
• 5:20
  We played Australian rules football, which is physical like
• 5:26
  your American football, but we don't wear padding.
• 5:32
  And yeah, so, so boxing was also another thing that was, you
• 5:38
  know, made a lot of sense to me. And, and to be honest, it was, I
• 5:45
  noticed early that when I moved my body, it's, it's like somehow
• 5:48
  I became smarter, you know, and, and I felt better about myself.
• 5:53
  So it just became this thing that I naturally gravitated to.
• 6:00
  And what was it that made you decide that you wanted to join
• 6:05
  the military or being in Australia?
• 6:08
  Is that something that you're required to do?
• 6:11
  Well, I initially tried to join when I was 19, but the
• 6:16
  recruiting process was so disorganised.
• 6:20
  I'm like, if this is what it's like trying to get in, you know,
• 6:23
  what's it going to be like on the inside.
• 6:26
  So it wasn't until 2004 the Australian government did
• 6:35
  something they've never done before with the military and
• 6:38
  that is direct recruiting into special forces and two things,
• 6:45
  the maximum age was 30 and I was like 6 months away from being
• 6:51
  30. And so I'm like, well, if I
• 6:54
  don't do it, would I regret not doing it?
• 6:57
  And then the other thing was in we recently had the Bali
• 7:01
  bombings, which is a terrorist bombing in Bali where they blew
• 7:05
  up the Sari nightclub and a mate of mine was in that.
• 7:08
  So I'm like, these guys aren't respecting boundaries.
• 7:11
  If they're allowed to be organized, they're just going to
• 7:13
  keep expanding. So I'd rather keep them
• 7:15
  disorganized because I'm not, I'm not stupid.
• 7:16
  There's no such thing as winning these kinds of things.
• 7:19
  But you can contain it to a certain space, right?
• 7:23
  And I thought, well, it's better to keep them unorganized in
• 7:25
  their own backyard than have them sort of cross the borders.
• 7:29
  So, so with that in mind, I in 2004 was the very first intake
• 7:36
  of this direct recruiting program.
• 7:39
  Wow. And so you made it just by the
• 7:41
  skin of your teeth. As far as age goes, yes.
• 7:46
  And everyone I got to remember, everyone's saying, Tim, you're
• 7:48
  too old. You're too old, you're too old,
• 7:50
  right? But being dyslexic, I see things
• 7:53
  in patterns and I'm like, you know what?
• 7:56
  This is the first time I've ever been 30.
• 8:00
  Shouldn't I be the one deciding what I can and can't do at 30
• 8:05
  because I've never aged before? This is my first go right?
• 8:08
  Right, you'll never be 30 again. And for those of you listening,
• 8:11
  consider this Today is the youngest you'll ever be.
• 8:17
  There you go there. You go.
• 8:19
  So with that in mind, I said, yeah, I'm going to give this a
• 8:25
  go. Of the 80 odd guys that started,
• 8:35
  less than 15 got through. And there was guys younger,
• 8:39
  fitter, faster, stronger than I was.
• 8:41
  But I think there's a certain tenacity, you know, growing up
• 8:45
  in the 70s where, you know, getting beat up at school was
• 8:47
  just a Tuesday. You wouldn't even tell your mom
• 8:49
  and dad. It was just just what happened,
• 8:51
  right? So there was a certain amount of
• 8:54
  inbuilt resilience there. But I also have to say this, we
• 8:59
  faced a lot of resistance first going in because up until that
• 9:03
  point in Australian military history, you had to spend 2
• 9:06
  years in a regular infantry battalion before you could even
• 9:10
  apply for special forces. So consider the whole Army is
• 9:15
  there going what these guys are jumping the queue, these
• 9:19
  civilians are jumping the queue. So we were considered civilian
• 9:22
  queue jumpers and they they deliberately tried to stop the
• 9:25
  scheme. And we still hold a statistic in
• 9:28
  that we call it the School of Cool School of Infantry.
• 9:32
  Our platoon holds a record. We've got 300% more injuries
• 9:37
  than any other platoon that's gone through there.
• 9:40
  Wow, that's quite, quite the record.
• 9:44
  Yeah. Oh, wow.
• 9:46
  So all right, tell me about how it started.
• 9:53
  As far as your they call it boot camp.
• 9:57
  Do they call it they call it boot camp?
• 9:59
  Well. Boot camp is a familiar term.
• 10:02
  It's, you know, basic training. It's.
• 10:06
  I think it's around, it was around 8 weeks where you know,
• 10:09
  you learn how to March, you learn how to stand in line, you
• 10:12
  learn how to make your bed exactly how it's supposed to be.
• 10:14
  You learn how to keep the routine and they're basically,
• 10:23
  if you go in there fit, you lose fitness because all they're
• 10:25
  doing is screening for injuries. You know that they're trying to
• 10:28
  find out if you got any preventable.
• 10:30
  That's what was my impression of the first.
• 10:33
  You know, the boot camp experience and obviously if you
• 10:37
  can handle being yelled at and then you do your basic infantry
• 10:42
  training. But then if you're doing this
• 10:46
  special forces selection, you do what's called your advanced
• 10:50
  infantry training. And if you get, if you get
• 10:54
  through that, then you can do special forces selection.
• 10:57
  So I know, you know, the SEAL team has hell week.
• 11:01
  You know, in Australia we have a hell month.
• 11:07
  And. Quantity has a certain quality
• 11:09
  all of its own. And as any veteran knows, it's
• 11:13
  not just the work you're doing on base, it's having to organize
• 11:17
  your freaking life and all your admin outside of that, you know,
• 11:21
  having a car that works, having the bills paid and, and, and,
• 11:27
  and it's quite, it's quite the balancing discipline, having all
• 11:31
  that happening at once. And, and I will say this in the
• 11:36
  first week of boot camp, Carol Lee, I got a letter when they
• 11:43
  were sending letters saying, you know, hey, honey, my, my, my
• 11:48
  then wife said, hey, I'm pregnant.
• 11:52
  And I did the math and I'm like, she's going to give birth on my
• 11:57
  selection. And I'm, I'm doing all this
• 12:01
  incredibly challenging ass kicking training with this in
• 12:06
  the back of my mind and, and on. And I just thought just keep
• 12:10
  moving forward, keep moving forward.
• 12:13
  And then pre selection when you know, she was, she was due in
• 12:20
  two weeks and we're about to start this month long process.
• 12:23
  They said to me, you know, Tim, this is special forces
• 12:26
  selection. You can either do selection or
• 12:30
  you can see your child being born.
• 12:32
  You can't do both and and I, I don't think I've ever worked so
• 12:39
  hard to get to a point in my life.
• 12:43
  And, and previous to the military.
• 12:45
  I was a professional fighter in the early days of mixed martial
• 12:48
  arts. But back then it was no rules
• 12:50
  fighting. It was semi legal in Australia
• 12:53
  sort of in these biker bars and you could smoke in the pubs back
• 12:57
  then. So I wasn't unused to physical
• 13:01
  discipline or work, but but this was a unique kind of ass kicking
• 13:05
  that only the military can give you.
• 13:07
  And there I was with this decision of do I see my child
• 13:11
  born or do I, you know, do selection?
• 13:15
  And my head was about to melt. But then I'm like, I have to, I
• 13:19
  can't see this from my own perspective.
• 13:22
  If I was looking at this from my child's point of view and I
• 13:26
  didn't know if it was going to be a girl or a boy, If I was
• 13:28
  looking at this from my child's point of view, what would that
• 13:30
  kid want? Would it want me there at its
• 13:34
  birth or would it need a dad with a job?
• 13:39
  Yeah, those are valid points. And so I'm like, as much as all
• 13:45
  my training in, you know, martial arts was, was hard work,
• 13:49
  full time work. It wasn't paying the bills.
• 13:57
  This was the only chance I had to earn above minimum wage to
• 14:00
  give my family, you know what they what they need.
• 14:05
  So I got my then wife, I call her my then wife, not my
• 14:09
  ex-wife, 'cause I stand for a positive future.
• 14:11
  And, and I just noticed if I ever say the word ex-wife, it
• 14:14
  just has all this negative stuff.
• 14:16
  So my stand and you'll just hear me refer to her as my, my then
• 14:20
  wife. I got my then wife.
• 14:22
  All the support she needed flew in family flew in my mum and I
• 14:27
  did selection and I told the guys, yeah, this is what I want
• 14:29
  to do. And that's, that's kind of what
• 14:31
  they wanted to hear like and when you're ready to go, it's
• 14:35
  100% in. That's when you know,
• 14:38
  concessions come from the other side.
• 14:40
  So they actually let me have a phone on selection, which is
• 14:44
  highly not supposed to happen, but they let me have a phone so
• 14:48
  I could stay in conversations with, you know, other than wife
• 14:52
  and I, I remember the day like it was, it was what we call fire
• 14:58
  and movement where, you know, you crawl on your belly, you're
• 15:00
  shooting lots of just on your guts moving.
• 15:03
  And, and that where they were crawling us through, there were
• 15:05
  these cactuses and these cactuses had these inch long
• 15:10
  spikes that would, that would go through your boot.
• 15:12
  So at the end of every, you know, fire and movement drill,
• 15:14
  we'd have to take our bayonets and and pluck out these
• 15:19
  cactuses. And you had to be really careful
• 15:21
  because if you because they were quite sometimes they're really
• 15:24
  stuck in you. And if you flicked it out, it
• 15:26
  would often flick out and hit someone else, right?
• 15:30
  So it was, it was a hell of a day, right?
• 15:33
  And and then I get this message saying the water's broken, It's
• 15:37
  all happening. And I just looked up at this
• 15:40
  tree and I'm going to regret this day of the rest of my life.
• 15:51
  So anyway, we're setting up the night Harbour.
• 15:54
  I just laid out the Claymore. I'm walking backwards, unfurling
• 15:57
  the the claymore deadline. And then out of nowhere, this
• 16:00
  officer turns up. And he knew that I made a point
• 16:03
  of introducing my pregnant then wife to this officer.
• 16:08
  And he turns up out of nowhere and goes, oh, hey, Tim, how's it
• 16:12
  going? I'm like, yeah, no worries, Sir.
• 16:15
  And he goes, how's Shannon going?
• 16:16
  And I said, oh, it's all happening, you know, I got the
• 16:18
  message, the water's broke. And then he said, you want to go
• 16:22
  see her. And that's when I position my
• 16:26
  left foot in front of my right and I've got my right hand
• 16:30
  fisted and behind me. And I'm lining up this guy's
• 16:33
  chin because this is what they do on selection.
• 16:36
  They'll say you want to drink of water and I'll tip it out in
• 16:39
  front of it. All we got to do is carry all
• 16:40
  these logs for that truck. And then the truck drives off.
• 16:43
  So I'm like, you know what, fuck this.
• 16:46
  I'm going to prison tonight if this guy's fucking with me on
• 16:48
  this point. And so I'm just ready to knock
• 16:51
  him out. Right.
• 16:54
  And he sort of sensed it. He stepped bases.
• 16:56
  No, no, Tim, I'm serious. Do you want to go see the birth?
• 17:00
  And I'm like, OK, this guy's genuine.
• 17:04
  So I said yeah. And the good thing about the
• 17:07
  Army is if an officer gets on the phone and starts swearing,
• 17:09
  things happen really quickly. So a truck came and grabbed all
• 17:13
  my bombs and bullets. You know, a truck came and
• 17:15
  grabbed me. Fortunately, we're only about a
• 17:17
  2 hour drive from the hospital. And you know, I am, you know,
• 17:21
  I've been in the field for weeks.
• 17:23
  My, my cams are just stinking. I've still got camouflage paint
• 17:28
  on my face. And I'm running through the
• 17:30
  hospital to get to the, to the ward.
• 17:33
  And I and I sort of burst into the reception area of the
• 17:36
  maternity ward and, and everyone sort of steps back as and they
• 17:39
  just point she's that way. Oh goodness.
• 17:47
  So did you make it in time? Yes, yes, I made it in time.
• 17:52
  I, we, my son was born, you know, and it was, it was, you
• 17:59
  know, I don't cry very much, but I cried then.
• 18:02
  And, you know, it was like all the pain I was physically
• 18:06
  feeling turned into joy. Oh, my gosh, the joy and hearing
• 18:11
  that first baby cry. Stop it, right?
• 18:21
  But then there were complications, right?
• 18:23
  There was problems with with the the placenta.
• 18:28
  And so they hauled her out and she was really scared because
• 18:34
  she had this sense that she was going to die even beforehand.
• 18:36
  She said, I think I'm going to die during this, you know, and
• 18:40
  she says, Tim, I'm scared and I'm like, I'm, I'm scared too,
• 18:44
  right? And so there I am with this
• 18:49
  newly born child. Wife's been taken out and I
• 18:56
  didn't know what to do and I didn't know like I'm not in
• 18:58
  control of anything. But I, I was baptized as a, as a
• 19:02
  child and I thought the only thing I'm in control of right
• 19:04
  now is this kid. And I had a bottle of water and
• 19:08
  I performed what was called an emergency baptism, where if the
• 19:12
  circumstance takes, you can do an emergency baptism.
• 19:14
  So that's what I did on this newborn child.
• 19:19
  And then I walk, I managed to see my then wife taken into
• 19:27
  surgery and I go up to the doctor, say, you know, take good
• 19:30
  care of her. And I'm waiting by this door and
• 19:34
  it, I think it, my boy was born at at about 10:00 PM and I'm
• 19:40
  waiting by this door. It's 4:00 AM And I'm and I'm,
• 19:45
  you know, I'm stressed, but then I see the doctor walking out in,
• 19:49
  you know, civilian clothing and his bag to go home.
• 19:52
  I'm like, hey, 'cause you know, dumb old Tim, they go into
• 19:55
  surgery one way, but they don't come out the same door.
• 19:57
  I just thought they'd come out the same door, Right?
• 19:58
  Well. We don't know any better, right?
• 20:01
  OK. And and so and so I run up to
• 20:04
  the doctor and I'm like, what's going on?
• 20:06
  She's not, everything's fine. Everything's fine.
• 20:08
  I managed to see, you know, that she was fine, the bub was fine.
• 20:11
  And then I am straight out into the field and we start what's
• 20:16
  called demarcation, which is 3 days, three nights, no sleep, no
• 20:21
  food and carrying lots of heavy stuff.
• 20:24
  But you know what, even though I got sick because my body was,
• 20:28
  you know, kind of cooked, I did that with a smile on my face
• 20:32
  because I'm like, this is just physical pain.
• 20:34
  I've, I've heard the cry of my first born.
• 20:37
  I am good, you know. Yeah, that's a sweet story, that
• 20:43
  is. Yeah.
• 20:44
  And then we look back as parents, right?
• 20:47
  And we're just in awe of, of all of it.
• 20:51
  So things to, to just cherish. So you're, you make it through
• 20:57
  now. There was a question that when
• 20:59
  you go through advanced training and then you go through special
• 21:06
  infantry training afterward, was that correct?
• 21:10
  So advanced infantry training, and if you get through that,
• 21:14
  then you can apply for the Special Forces selection and
• 21:18
  there's a bunch of tests you've got to pass before you get in.
• 21:21
  And then you get in to the to the selection, which is the 28
• 21:25
  days, yeah. OK.
• 21:27
  All right. Now you, you make it through.
• 21:31
  Yes. And was it like, what was the
• 21:39
  graduation like? Well, after demarcation, where
• 21:46
  you've just had your ass hanging out for three days and three
• 21:49
  nights, they give you this big BBQ.
• 21:56
  But you can, you can daily. Well, you can bet it was good
• 22:00
  not to be carrying heavy shit, but you couldn't eat much of it
• 22:02
  because your stomach had sort of shrunk.
• 22:04
  You'd want to eat and you had this plate full of food, but you
• 22:07
  just couldn't, right? But it's funny you should ask
• 22:12
  about graduation. See.
• 22:13
  So I might have understated it, Carol Lee, when I said they,
• 22:20
  they were resistant to this scheme called the direct
• 22:25
  recruiting into special forces, putting it in soldiers term.
• 22:28
  They fucking hated us. They did not want this to work.
• 22:31
  So when we got our berets, when we finally got our berets, when
• 22:34
  the, when the 15 odd guys that actually got through got their
• 22:38
  berets, getting your, your, your, your Sherwood Beret is no
• 22:41
  small thing, right? But our ceremony was right.
• 22:44
  OK, You, you guys have done your selection.
• 22:47
  You've done your insertion course.
• 22:48
  Cause 'cause to get beret qualified, you need one
• 22:50
  insertion course, which is air land C.
• 22:53
  It goes right out. Throw your, throw your lids on,
• 22:56
  your beret's on. And now go scrub out the
• 22:57
  shitters. So that was our graduation
• 23:00
  ceremony, Yeah. Wow.
• 23:04
  Wow. That was there.
• 23:05
  That's amazing. Yeah, we.
• 23:08
  But the thing was you don't value something until you see
• 23:12
  the value in it, right? And so when Afghanistan kicked
• 23:16
  off 2005 and we went over there and we could do everything that
• 23:20
  all those other jokers could do, then they're like, oh, actually
• 23:23
  this direct recruiting scheme is a really good idea.
• 23:25
  And, and, and they're still sort of running it to this day.
• 23:28
  So, yeah, that that Afghanistan was a turning point for people
• 23:35
  that were in the direct recruiting sort of uptake into
• 23:40
  the into the, yeah. Nice you.
• 23:44
  So, all right, so you've gone through all your training and
• 23:47
  then what happens at that point for you after you finish your
• 23:53
  special inventory training and and that's all done and and you
• 23:58
  graduate, what happens after for you?
• 24:00
  Well, then you go into what's called your Rio cycle.
• 24:03
  So in the commandos where you've got different companies, like 4
• 24:09
  different companies, Alpha, Brava, CD and everyone rotates
• 24:13
  through different roles. So you'll have one company on
• 24:17
  active deployment, one company training the people coming
• 24:20
  through, one company doing specialized, you know, anti
• 24:24
  terrorism stuff, you know, and, and everything sort of rotates.
• 24:28
  So we just went through that cycle, probably no different to
• 24:37
  to any other, you know, infantry platoon super busy, always
• 24:42
  chasing your ass, always having to have your phone on you.
• 24:47
  And obviously things would kick off like East Timor kicked off,
• 24:52
  as you know, that's sort of in our backyard.
• 24:54
  And so that was just like, OK, who's standing around base, get
• 24:57
  them getting on a plane and going.
• 24:59
  That was literally it. So yeah, basically once you're
• 25:06
  in your feet don't hit the ground.
• 25:07
  I'm and and I'm sure that's no different to to anyone else.
• 25:12
  My like in, in, in my specialty was amphibious operations and a
• 25:20
  lot of, a lot of blokes because once you get your beret, you
• 25:25
  need one insertion course to be sorry.
• 25:29
  Once you've done your special forces selection to be beret
• 25:31
  qualified, you need one insertion course.
• 25:34
  And usually they run the anfib course, which is just another
• 25:37
  form of selection on the water. And the ocean can kick your ass
• 25:42
  in such a deeper way than than anything on land.
• 25:45
  And a lot of guys, they're like never doing that again.
• 25:48
  But I really like the water. I grew up in the water.
• 25:51
  I I, I'm a spear fisherman of 30 plus years.
• 25:55
  So I liked it and that was my specialty.
• 25:58
  And so I didn't get as many trips over to Afghanistan with
• 26:02
  that, with that skill set. I had my time in Afghanistan
• 26:06
  2009, yeah, OK. And then I got out in in 2010.
• 26:12
  So let's talk a little bit about your amphibious training.
• 26:21
  Tell me a little bit about what that was like.
• 26:23
  I obviously you you talked about how you enjoyed it etcetera and
• 26:26
  that became your little niche. But what was it like?
• 26:32
  What kind of things did they, you know, train you on?
• 26:36
  Obviously the equipment for one, but do you recall any funny
• 26:43
  stories during these trainings? Oh, look, looking back, it's,
• 26:47
  it's all hilarious, like locking arms and thinning in the middle
• 26:51
  of the ocean with a, with a, with a glow stick on you, you
• 26:56
  know, like if, if, if you're a fisherman, you'll attach a glow
• 26:58
  stick to a, a bait. And that's where the fish go to,
• 27:02
  right. And here's a bunch of, you know,
• 27:04
  men making all this noise with glow sticks attached to them and
• 27:08
  it's pitch black. And you've just got the guy next
• 27:10
  to you and you're like, this is freaking hilarious, you know?
• 27:14
  Did you have? Fear of of a shark.
• 27:17
  Look, yeah, but you just gotta, you know, just keep swimming.
• 27:23
  Just keep swimming. Just that was just the only
• 27:25
  thing in my head. And and you know, as a as a
• 27:28
  spear fisherman, I'm I'm comfortable with sharks.
• 27:34
  I mean, I do have a shark attack story, but that's that's this
• 27:37
  more of a civilian thing, I suppose.
• 27:40
  But the, the, the, and I'm sure this will resonate with a lot of
• 27:45
  veterans. The second you start thinking,
• 27:49
  your mind starts going ahead of your body.
• 27:52
  Like if you think, if you're doing a particular activity and
• 27:55
  you think, oh, after this I've got to do another activity, then
• 27:57
  you're stuffed, right? Right.
• 28:00
  So what I noticed Carolee is the only time I was experiencing the
• 28:06
  negative range of emotions was when my mind left my body and
• 28:10
  started thinking about stuff that hadn't happened yet.
• 28:12
  All right and then I, and then I.
• 28:14
  So this is actually turned into one of my keynote speeches I, I
• 28:16
  talk about how our bodies contain mass.
• 28:20
  You know, in Australia, I'm 87 kilos in your language, I'd be
• 28:24
  about 190 lbs, right? That's a measurement of mash, a
• 28:29
  measurement, a measurement of mass.
• 28:31
  And it right now it's stuck at, you know, my time, 928 in the
• 28:35
  morning, OK, 'cause mass is in this moment, but we all own
• 28:39
  minds, right? They don't contain any mass,
• 28:41
  obvious, but it needs to be said because our minds, my mind could
• 28:45
  go into the future and it could go into the past.
• 28:48
  And the second it started doing that, it started dividing itself
• 28:51
  up and I became weaker in the moment.
• 28:52
  And I sort of explain it where think of your mind, it's
• 28:57
  powerful, but it's, there's a certain processing power it has.
• 29:02
  And so let's allocate 100% of your processing power to your
• 29:04
  mind. If I start thinking about sharks
• 29:07
  and I'm kicking in the water, that's putting 40% of my
• 29:10
  processing power over there. So I'm down to 60%.
• 29:14
  If I'm worried about something in the, you know, that happened
• 29:16
  yesterday, then that's taking away potentially another 40%.
• 29:20
  So I'm down to 20%. And life is really hard when I'm
• 29:24
  at 20% in this moment because life is hard, right?
• 29:28
  So I just, I just noticed there's a certain discipline in
• 29:31
  staying in that moment. Because when you're 100% in this
• 29:35
  moment, there's not a goddamn thing you can't handle.
• 29:38
  And usually when you're at 100%, you start becoming more aware of
• 29:43
  what's around you and becoming caring and generous for people
• 29:47
  next to you. So I couldn't control the
• 29:54
  sharks, but I could control my mind.
• 29:58
  And I noticed that when I'm strong, I'm making sure the
• 30:01
  people next left and right of me are strong.
• 30:04
  And then that made me stronger. You know what I mean?
• 30:06
  Just like absolutely, if just like, you know, there's people
• 30:09
  in the water and they're freaking out in fucking sharks,
• 30:12
  you know, that's freaking out people either side of them.
• 30:13
  So, you know, it's, it's in. I'm, I'm so grateful for those
• 30:17
  experiences to actually understand that sort of that
• 30:23
  deep wiring that we all have. And it's hard to articulate
• 30:26
  unless you're actually in that physical moment.
• 30:28
  And this is where I think a lot of veterans get stuck.
• 30:30
  They, they experience this, this, this deep wiring that
• 30:37
  doesn't, I think it existed before we were speaking or even
• 30:40
  thinking. And then to have that experience
• 30:43
  with brothers and sisters left and right of you, there's a
• 30:47
  certain connection that you have that is unspoken and you can't
• 30:54
  explain it to others because it's an experience.
• 30:58
  And civilians struggle to sort of understand this unspoken
• 31:05
  space that you can only go to if you're in those, you know, ass
• 31:08
  kicking experiences. I hope I explained that without
• 31:11
  tangenting too much Carolee. No, I got it.
• 31:13
  I that made sense to me. And I also feel like in an, in
• 31:20
  another way of putting it is while you're there in your
• 31:22
  linked arms and you're helping because you know the ones on
• 31:28
  either side of you, because you're in your right solid full
• 31:32
  mind and you're helping them to become in touch with their full
• 31:38
  mind. It's strengthening a chain, if
• 31:42
  you will, right? The links in a chain and where,
• 31:48
  you know, you end up with some that become a little bit frail
• 31:55
  if you're not careful. And when that chain breaks, the
• 31:59
  strength dissipates. So I understand.
• 32:04
  Yeah, and, and people might find it a little abrasive in military
• 32:09
  units where you're tested so hard.
• 32:11
  And the reason why you're tested so hard and, and, and you know,
• 32:15
  the guys will test you is because they people don't
• 32:21
  understand that you need to be tested before you get on board.
• 32:26
  Because once you're on board, you're willing to die for the
• 32:30
  person next to you. You know, that's how much skin
• 32:33
  is in the game. And if you if if someone senses
• 32:36
  that you're not 100% in, then you know, right?
• 32:41
  The trust isn't there, Yeah. They're not going to rely on you
• 32:46
  as much be to help them if it came down to it.
• 32:50
  And, and I might say this as well, a lot of veterans struggle
• 32:53
  in the transition period, I know I did, where trust was like our
• 32:57
  superpower. We could do incredible things
• 32:59
  because we trusted the person next to us.
• 33:01
  And I believe as humans, you know, our peace power,
• 33:05
  confidence is relative to how connected we feel, right?
• 33:11
  And often, and I'm just going to say this because when we get out
• 33:18
  of the, you know, our, our, you know, Defence Force Korea, then
• 33:26
  what was the last time, what was the last time I felt power and
• 33:29
  strength and connection? Well, I showed trust and
• 33:31
  loyalty. And so a lot of these veterans
• 33:34
  show loyalty. So trust to people that don't
• 33:36
  deserve it. And then they're, you know, they
• 33:40
  get betrayed and that is such a fracture to the foundation of
• 33:45
  who they are and what they are. It's very, this is where cranky
• 33:49
  veterans are, are born because they've shown loyalty, they've
• 33:53
  shown trust. It's being betrayed, you know,
• 33:56
  and there's a, there's a saying there's a special level of hell
• 33:58
  for betrayers, right? But I, I just want to speak to
• 34:02
  that now because that's where I've seen, I got stuck there for
• 34:07
  a period of time. I saw a lot of other veterans
• 34:09
  stuck in that same space, you know, upholding what they
• 34:13
  believe is the, the absolute right thing to do and the thing
• 34:16
  that worked for them. And then having it not work the
• 34:19
  way it's worked every time in the past, right?
• 34:26
  You end up going to Afghanistan. Are you still with me?
• 34:36
  Oh, OK. You were very still.
• 34:37
  I thought maybe you froze up. Yeah.
• 34:39
  It's it's every now and then US men do this strange thing called
• 34:42
  listening Carol Lee. I.
• 34:44
  Wow, you might not have experienced it before, all
• 34:48
  right. He's frozen.
• 34:50
  There's something wrong here. I was like, there is definitely
• 34:53
  something wrong here. That's hilarious, Tim.
• 34:57
  That is hilarious. All right, you know, you, you
• 35:00
  find yourself being deployed to Afghanistan.
• 35:04
  What's going through your mind when you learn if you're headed
• 35:06
  there? Great.
• 35:09
  Look, if if there was a a war on in my lifetime, I wanted to be a
• 35:12
  part of it. And at the same time I had this
• 35:19
  sense I was going to die. It was it was really weird.
• 35:22
  Like I'm going to go over there and I'm going to die because I
• 35:26
  don't know, man, like, I think it could be, it could be those
• 35:31
  people that are born in that sort of warrior class, They're
• 35:33
  not meant to live long lives. They're just like, well, I'm
• 35:36
  not, you know, this is what I'm here to do, you know, and it's
• 35:39
  kind of comforting to think I'm just on a short timeline, So
• 35:42
  let's just make the most of it. So, you know, I, I was used to
• 35:45
  that, but I'm like, you know, I do have a, a wife and two kids
• 35:47
  at home. So in, in Australia we have
• 35:52
  something called body bits insurance.
• 35:54
  You can insure different body bits, right?
• 35:56
  And you can you can imagine all the guys joking about the stuff
• 35:59
  they want to insure the most, you know?
• 36:05
  That's hilarious. And and so, you know, before I
• 36:09
  left, I got really good body bits insurance.
• 36:12
  I made my, you know, last, you know, will and testament to to
• 36:15
  the people that I cared about. And it was interesting actually,
• 36:18
  some guys had never actually faced their mortality before.
• 36:22
  So to actually write letters like you did, they were like,
• 36:25
  fuck that. No way.
• 36:26
  You know, it was just a bit of a bridge too far.
• 36:31
  And it was really hard leaving the airport.
• 36:35
  And my boy was 2009. He was born about 5, right, So
• 36:39
  just a toddler. And he was so upset that Daddy
• 36:44
  was leaving and I'm, and I'm, I had to sort of pry him off of
• 36:47
  me, put my backpack on my shoulders, walk away.
• 36:52
  And his last words were Daddy, don't go.
• 36:56
  Oh. No.
• 36:58
  Fucking hell, man. That had to be so tough.
• 37:05
  Aw, it is tough when you know you're you've got to go and then
• 37:11
  what? There's nothing you can do, and
• 37:14
  I can only empathize with how you had been feeling at that
• 37:19
  moment. Yeah, it was a a tough Army day,
• 37:23
  that one. Yeah.
• 37:25
  So were you prepared for the scenery and geography of
• 37:33
  Afghanistan? Yeah, this is what no one tells
• 37:36
  you. Afghanistan's really beautiful
• 37:39
  you. Know the in Afghanistan I mean.
• 37:43
  I'm talking about geographical landscape, like the, the actual
• 37:47
  look of the land. I completely understood why that
• 37:49
  was the hippie trail in the 70s, you know, because there's,
• 37:53
  there's these open spaces. And in Australia we're a very
• 37:56
  old country. Everything's very rounded.
• 37:58
  You know, our hills, our mountains aren't that big.
• 38:00
  Everything's kind of flat, but it's such new sort of territory
• 38:05
  over there. These mountains would go up and
• 38:07
  then go up and up and up and, and just when you thought they'd
• 38:10
  stop, it was like they were shooting at the top of their
• 38:12
  heads, you know, these mountains.
• 38:14
  So it was, it was, it was, you know, there were some moments
• 38:18
  I'm like, I can totally see how people could come here and sit
• 38:21
  on top of a mountain and get all Zen and shit, you know?
• 38:29
  That's true. That is very true.
• 38:33
  So, so they had prepared you in advance of what the scenery was
• 38:37
  going to be like. How was it?
• 38:41
  Did you have the opportunity to mingle with the civilians there
• 38:46
  or were you strictly on base? How did that work for you?
• 38:49
  We. We look, the Aussies, we
• 38:51
  interacted probably a bit more like we saw the Yanks going out
• 38:55
  in these big tanks and it just looked like these just a, a tank
• 38:59
  on wheels. No matter what the vehicle our
• 39:01
  vehicles were, we did have like Bushmasters, which were these,
• 39:05
  you know, the heavily armoured vehicles, but most of the
• 39:08
  vehicles in our convoy were these open top vehicles.
• 39:12
  So think of a four wheel drive with a roof cut off and machine
• 39:14
  guns in play. So when we'd go into a local
• 39:17
  area, you know, people would approach us because they could
• 39:20
  see a human there on their level because we're pretty low to the
• 39:22
  ground. And we would, you know, it was
• 39:25
  interesting. We would, you know, say a few
• 39:27
  words back and forth from a few lollies and we had out, you
• 39:34
  know, this the, the local Afghan forces that we worked with.
• 39:43
  I wouldn't really write them as soldiers, though they were.
• 39:51
  See, you have to remember, in Afghanistan, if you were to pick
• 39:57
  a side, it's a matter of time before you're dead, because
• 39:59
  there's always this. Pendulum of power, right?
• 40:03
  So, So what a, what a, what a family will do to survive in
• 40:06
  Afghanistan. If they've got two sons, they'll
• 40:08
  send one to work to the Taliban, the other one to work for the,
• 40:11
  for the, you know, national army because that makes sense to them
• 40:15
  because a, whoever's in power, they're covered and these guys
• 40:18
  will talk to each other and de conflict.
• 40:20
  Oh, we're doing a patrol here, OK, we're going to be here.
• 40:22
  So it's, it's this kind of crazy living together, which makes
• 40:28
  sense when you're in that survival mode.
• 40:30
  Whereas, you know, in the worsen world, we've got the luxury of
• 40:32
  pick a side, you know. Yeah, yeah.
• 40:37
  And so you got to speak with them, talk to them.
• 40:42
  And was there ever a time where you were nervous about about
• 40:52
  being with those civilians, those same civilians that you
• 40:58
  had conversed with, etcetera? Yeah.
• 41:01
  We had a few green on Blues, not in my unit, but I those guys
• 41:10
  were always at a bit of an arm's distance from from me
• 41:14
  personally. I mean, there was, there's
• 41:15
  plenty of times I was shitting myself in Afghanistan, but it
• 41:20
  wasn't around the the Afghan guys on our side of things.
• 41:29
  I mean, there's some funny stories, you know, you can tell
• 41:34
  about the stuff they did in the field.
• 41:35
  But yeah, I, I never felt nervous around them.
• 41:39
  Not my experience of it, no. What was it like?
• 41:45
  I'm going to assume you had a chow hall.
• 41:48
  Chapel. Yeah, Chow hall.
• 41:51
  Oh, you mean a mess? OK, yes, a mess I thought.
• 41:57
  You said Chapel. I'm like, yeah, we had a Chapel,
• 41:59
  we had a Padre. Yes, a chow hall being, I guess,
• 42:06
  the American term, yeah. I understand what you're saying,
• 42:10
  but yeah, we, we, we don't, we don't call it that.
• 42:12
  Yeah. Cantina no, I know that's that's
• 42:14
  Mexican. So were what was it like for the
• 42:22
  food? That you.
• 42:24
  Had there versus back on base or in in Australia?
• 42:31
  OK, so this was the good thing about being in.
• 42:35
  I mean, I was aware that being a special Forces, you had certain
• 42:38
  privileges and and I didn't take for granted, but our food we're
• 42:44
  always allowed double rations and there was always a big
• 42:47
  budget for food. So our mess hall was amazing to
• 42:55
  the point where I really felt I didn't deserve to be called, you
• 43:01
  know, a veteran where I'm, I'm, I'm in this mess hall chow hall
• 43:10
  and there's this fridge completely filled with every ice
• 43:14
  cream you could get from, you know, your local deli at home,
• 43:17
  your local shop. And I'm like, I do not feel like
• 43:26
  I can compare myself to those veterans of World War 2 and
• 43:31
  World War One because this luxury seems so out of place.
• 43:36
  And it was just that that that polar opposite where, you know,
• 43:42
  there was that kidding me that went, wow, you've got all these
• 43:46
  ice creams. But then I'm like, I'm in this
• 43:48
  fucking war zone, You know, it was just, it was just a moment.
• 43:52
  I'm. And if someone was looking at
• 43:54
  me, they'd be like, why is that guy staring at that freezer for
• 43:59
  like the last five minutes, just staring into space, You know, I
• 44:04
  was just lost in this, in this moment with all these freaking
• 44:07
  ice creams. Yeah.
• 44:10
  Wow, did you ever get to eat with any of the Afghan people?
• 44:17
  Yeah, yeah. No, that's a pretty mean goat
• 44:19
  Stew, I think. I think, I think for my love of
• 44:22
  goat came from them, yeah. Interesting.
• 44:26
  Goat is not something I care to eat.
• 44:30
  I not to say I haven't had. I have goat's milk even.
• 44:36
  And goat cheese. Not for me.
• 44:41
  It does need to be cooked right, I'll say that much.
• 44:44
  Yeah, yeah, 100. Percent.
• 44:49
  So you finish. How long was that deployment
• 44:52
  while you were there? About five months 5.
• 44:55
  Months. And from there, where did you
• 44:58
  go? So this really started my exit
• 45:04
  to the to the from the military. So so prior to my Afghan
• 45:12
  deployment, could be my ADHD, could be my dyslexia, but I
• 45:20
  struggled with soldiering on base, right?
• 45:25
  I was always the one that probably didn't have his shit in
• 45:28
  one sock. And so in soldiers terms in
• 45:38
  Australia, there's one guy in the platoon they call the shit
• 45:41
  cunt, right? I was called the shit cunt
• 45:43
  because from the outside in I didn't look like a good soldier.
• 45:47
  And you know when Afghan happened and they saw that I can
• 45:53
  soldier as good as anybody, if not better.
• 45:56
  In fact there was some stuff I did over there that guys went up
• 45:59
  and actually apologized to me. So Tim, we actually believed all
• 46:03
  the shit talk and everyone else said, and so I'm like, Yep, this
• 46:08
  is a job for life for me. I'm I'm I'm I finally got a
• 46:11
  bunch of brothers around me that see me as I am got my back.
• 46:16
  OK, I'm in for life. But then Bate maybe gets in the
• 46:21
  way. So at the end of this successful
• 46:23
  deployment, we plan this end of deployment piss up, which is
• 46:28
  just like a get together with booze.
• 46:32
  And we were, we were going to hire a boat and go on Sydney
• 46:37
  Harbour and just have our own time drinking.
• 46:41
  I wasn't organizing it, but I paid my money to get on there.
• 46:44
  And then the guys organizing it said, oh, let's have strippers
• 46:46
  on there too. Right now.
• 46:48
  The promise I made to my then wife and she, she always knew
• 46:51
  this is I'd never do anything away from her that I wouldn't do
• 46:54
  with her right next to me. So I, I, you know, strippers
• 46:58
  aren't my thing, but I'm a big boy.
• 47:01
  If they're at one end of the boat, I'm just going to be down
• 47:03
  the other end of the boat. You know, whatever.
• 47:04
  I wasn't, I wasn't that attached to it, right?
• 47:07
  But here's a thing. Some of the wives heard about
• 47:15
  this and then they complained to the the CEO, the big dude on
• 47:22
  base, and that then rolled downhill to this particular
• 47:27
  major. And they said, and he was told
• 47:29
  you can't have strippers on the boat.
• 47:32
  And this made him beyond furious.
• 47:35
  I'm not sure if it was the fact that he couldn't have strippers
• 47:40
  or he felt that his authority was undermined, right?
• 47:45
  But he brought out the whole company, all of us, right?
• 47:49
  And you don't have to give special forces soldiers orders.
• 47:51
  You all you have to do is the commander has to show their
• 47:54
  intent and we fill out on the intention.
• 47:56
  How we do, it's up to us. We know how to do it.
• 47:58
  You just tell us your intent and we'll fulfill on that, right?
• 48:01
  And it was pretty clear this guy's intention was, he was so
• 48:05
  pissed off that he couldn't have strippers and his authority was
• 48:10
  undermined. And then right at the end of
• 48:12
  this big tirade, he said, right, does anyone here have a problem
• 48:16
  with strippers? And then there was this
• 48:19
  existential moment. It was literally another form of
• 48:23
  Tim putting his hand on my shoulder.
• 48:27
  And it's, it's funny because he was laughing.
• 48:30
  The guy with his hand on my shoulder was laughing.
• 48:31
  He says, hey, Tim, you know, there is never a convenient time
• 48:36
  to speak your truth, to be yourself.
• 48:39
  And you got 3 seconds to speak your truth.
• 48:44
  You know and. I'm like, shit.
• 48:46
  And I stick my hand up and it was like Moses through the Red
• 48:50
  Sea. Everyone's heads just turned in.
• 48:53
  And this, this major took a step back and went what you do, you
• 48:57
  know? And I could see that that major
• 49:04
  actually respected me for that and afterwards, but.
• 49:09
  But that didn't stop him transferring my ass 2 weeks
• 49:12
  later, Right. OK, Yeah.
• 49:15
  Yeah, I could see that. And and I had a bunch of guys
• 49:20
  come up to me afterwards saying, oh, you know, good on your tomo.
• 49:23
  I wanted to put my hand up too. And I'm like, yeah, well, you
• 49:26
  fucking didn't, you know. And I I saw something very
• 49:31
  clearly that day that these men had all the courage in the world
• 49:35
  to to go into the breach. You know, that's there was they
• 49:42
  can do. They've got courage to do that.
• 49:45
  But then do you have the courage to actually let your true self
• 49:52
  out, You know, Because I to, for me to actually speak my truth, I
• 49:57
  had to actually had to take my armour off for a second, you
• 50:01
  know, right. Yeah.
• 50:03
  And I go to this new, the new company.
• 50:07
  I went from Bravo to Delta, I believe, and I was happy.
• 50:10
  I look, I'm not, I assuming, you know what, fuck it.
• 50:12
  I'm not unhappy with that because Delta was about to go on
• 50:14
  deployment again. I'm like, that's cool.
• 50:16
  I, I do best to, to, you know, when on deployment, right,
• 50:22
  right. You know, I'm, I'm, you know,
• 50:25
  that's where my, my zone kicks in.
• 50:28
  But then when I get there, the, the officers and all the, you
• 50:33
  know, sergeants gather around me and, and we, and they said these
• 50:38
  words and I quote, we've fucking heard about you cunt.
• 50:42
  Oh no. And I'm.
• 50:43
  Like, fuck, look, I'm not. I know what's going to happen
• 50:48
  next. I'm not scared of dying, but I'm
• 50:51
  going to be the guy that's put through the door 1st every
• 50:54
  fucking time, you know? And and when I get shot to shit,
• 50:58
  they're going to write me a really good note saying, yeah,
• 51:01
  Private Thomas was an awesome soldier.
• 51:02
  We all loved him. Fuck you did.
• 51:04
  So I'm not going to die for a bunch of pricks that don't care
• 51:06
  about me. And so I was stuck.
• 51:11
  Carol Lee. I had a job that I thought I had
• 51:14
  for life. I wanted to have for life.
• 51:17
  And yet, if I was to stay there, it would mean that I would agree
• 51:20
  with their sense of myself worth.
• 51:23
  That's a fair thing, yeah. And literally that night and I
• 51:29
  told my then wife, I said, look, that's it.
• 51:33
  I don't know what we're going to do next, but you know, we can't
• 51:37
  stay. And to her credit, she was
• 51:42
  completely supportive. She could see that, you know,
• 51:45
  her husband had was just in that space, right?
• 51:53
  Little did I know, and this is what people don't tell you.
• 51:57
  Everyone's saying, you know, speak your truth and all that
• 51:59
  sort of shit. But there's a price to that.
• 52:01
  There is an absolutely. Is yes I.
• 52:04
  I freaking, I lost the job that I, I thought I wanted for the
• 52:07
  rest of my life. OK.
• 52:10
  I lost the, you know, connections I had with all these
• 52:13
  brothers. And then and I'm, I'm just going
• 52:16
  to sort of Fast forward a little bit just to sort of, I'm not
• 52:23
  going to tie a pretty bow on this, but there was something I
• 52:26
  wasn't seeing. So when I got out and I went
• 52:29
  through this loop, alcohol, pills, I started working in the
• 52:40
  veteran recovery space and I had no training, but I had a goal.
• 52:47
  And my goal was to save 40 veteran lives from veteran from
• 52:49
  suicide because I chose that number because that's how many
• 52:54
  arson Australia had lost to bombs and bullets in
• 52:57
  Afghanistan. But we've lost 30 to 40 times
• 53:00
  that amount to suicide and it's not really a common statistic.
• 53:03
  So I thought, you know what, I'm going to die happy if I achieve
• 53:06
  that. But with the lessons that I'd
• 53:12
  learnt, that goal was achieved within 12 months.
• 53:18
  Wow, that's incredible. And so, you know, looking back
• 53:27
  on that moment, yes, speaking my truth cost me the job that I
• 53:30
  wanted for life and cost me a bunch of connections, but I
• 53:36
  never would have gone into that space.
• 53:39
  I never would have had that surprising outcome had I not
• 53:45
  spoken my truth back in 2009. It's that old adage of when one
• 53:52
  door closes, another door opens. Yeah.
• 53:59
  And when it closes, sometimes it can close on your fingers.
• 54:02
  It can and it can really sting. There's no doubt it can really
• 54:06
  sting, but it it just sounds like you found that aha moment.
• 54:16
  Yeah, and I think, I mean, look, the way I said to veterans is
• 54:22
  you might not think you're special, but I got 5 bucks
• 54:24
  saying you've been through some shit, all right?
• 54:27
  And us veterans, we tend to think that just handling the
• 54:32
  shit each day is an admirable thing to do because we, we, you
• 54:39
  know, there's a certain value we can have by enduring without
• 54:46
  flinching, right? But the way I talk about it,
• 54:50
  especially post service, is we're not supposed to live in
• 54:53
  that shit. We're supposed to transform that
• 54:55
  into fertilizer, All right? That shit is actually there to
• 54:59
  help everything grow, but it can't stay in that form.
• 55:01
  It's actually got to be turned into fertilizer.
• 55:04
  And it might take you, you know, a week, a month, a decade to
• 55:07
  turn that shit into fertilizer. But guess what?
• 55:09
  That's the amount of time you're going to save other people.
• 55:14
  So the the question I always ask everybody, and this isn't just a
• 55:19
  veteran centric question. This is everybody, right?
• 55:22
  Think about what you're up against.
• 55:24
  Everyone's up against something, you know, not just veterans.
• 55:28
  It could be cancer, it could be a relationship, could be a work
• 55:30
  thing. Like think about what you're
• 55:32
  really genuinely up against. Then ask this golden question.
• 55:38
  How many other people do you think are up against what you're
• 55:42
  up against right now and don't say a lot?
• 55:46
  Give it a number. You know, it could be 10, could
• 55:49
  be 20 when I was going through the medical system and, and they
• 55:53
  didn't seem to want to make me better.
• 55:54
  I'm like, there's at least 4 million people in this same
• 55:58
  situation. So take whatever number you give
• 56:00
  it and really give it a number. Like think about it, give it a
• 56:02
  number because those people exist.
• 56:04
  They're in the world. And I, and in my case, I'm like,
• 56:06
  well, at least 4 million. And that's being conservative,
• 56:09
  right? And when you give it a number, I
• 56:15
  invite you to put half of that number on your right and half of
• 56:18
  that number on your left. And they're all looking in and
• 56:22
  they're willing you on, They're feeling your pain.
• 56:26
  And they're saying if you can find a way forward for you, you
• 56:30
  can find a way forward for us. And breaking your isolation is
• 56:40
  probably the most powerful thing you can do as a first step in
• 56:45
  your recovery. Too many times people go, oh,
• 56:48
  I've got to do this, this, this, this, this to recover.
• 56:50
  No, first thing we've got to break our isolation.
• 56:53
  We've got to, we've got to go fuck, I'm not the only one.
• 56:57
  And, and, and conversely, there's a lot of power in naming
• 57:01
  the number of how many other people are going through it
• 57:03
  because making progress in the, in the first stages of getting
• 57:07
  healing it, it, it, it's really difficult.
• 57:12
  It might to make an inch of progress.
• 57:14
  It might take you 6 months, right?
• 57:17
  But consider if there's the way I thought about it, if there's 4
• 57:21
  million other people up against what I'm up against, if I can
• 57:24
  make an inch, that's not just one inch, that's 4 million
• 57:26
  inches, right? And you've opened that.
• 57:29
  Door that much for? All of them, yeah.
• 57:33
  And, and I, I figured those 4 million people, a lot of them
• 57:36
  haven't met yet, but they're going to be saying, you know
• 57:39
  what, Tim? We're so glad that when you're
• 57:40
  up against it, you chose to move forward because that inch that
• 57:43
  took you 10 years to make, you've helped us do it in far
• 57:46
  less time. And, and you really, once you
• 57:50
  see those people and you feel they're willing intention, it's
• 57:55
  a, it's a very natural thing to want to find a way forward.
• 58:01
  You don't have to know how, you just have to know that if you
• 58:03
  can do it for you, you, you can do it for all those others.
• 58:08
  And I, and only, I'm going to say this now, only you are
• 58:11
  qualified to break their isolation.
• 58:14
  So, so like I said, if someone's going through cancer, they're
• 58:20
  qualified to break the isolation of other people going through
• 58:23
  cancer. I can't, I haven't experienced
• 58:25
  cancer right in, in my work as a veteran, I was able to break the
• 58:31
  isolation of other veterans. And, and, and I'll give you the,
• 58:38
  the reason why I could be so effective, the reason why I
• 58:41
  could have those 40 veteran lives saved within 12 months is
• 58:46
  because I saw something no one else saw.
• 58:51
  And that was the way pain actually works.
• 58:58
  And it doesn't matter if the pain's emotional or physical,
• 59:02
  Carol Lee, it'll get to a certain duration or intensity
• 59:04
  where it transforms not just to to regular physical pain, but
• 59:08
  into loneliness, isolation. I'm the only one going through
• 59:11
  this, OK? Cause 'cause that's the point
• 59:14
  where your intelligence gets tourniqueted off and you get
• 59:17
  into this fight or flight mode. Because if I'm the only one
• 59:20
  that's got my back, I can't drop my guard for a second because if
• 59:24
  I do something bad, it's going to happen.
• 59:26
  It's going to be my fault. And so guess what?
• 59:28
  You're not sleeping as well. So, so I saw two things, a
• 59:36
  breaking the isolation that the pain causes, because that's the
• 59:39
  that's the most damaging thing of the pain.
• 59:41
  And then two, restoring people out of a state of fatigue
• 59:45
  because if you can't drop your guard, you're not sleeping.
• 59:47
  And and sleep is an act of dropping your guard and, and,
• 59:53
  and people, once they had their isolation broken, once they had
• 59:57
  their sleep restored, it's like this golden compass turned on
• 1:00:00
  inside of them and they knew exactly where to go.
• 1:00:02
  It's like the rest of their brain came online right it?
• 1:00:05
  Was a reset. Yeah, technically, if I could
• 1:00:09
  really be neurologically precise here, when you're in your
• 1:00:13
  fighter flight, you're in a part of your brain called your
• 1:00:15
  amygdala, OK? And it's, it's basically got
• 1:00:18
  control of your body before your thoughts do.
• 1:00:20
  So you can, you can, and it's there to react quick.
• 1:00:23
  So you, your body reacts without even, you know, thinking.
• 1:00:27
  But then and, and the other part of your brain, your executive
• 1:00:32
  function is your prefrontal cortex.
• 1:00:36
  And compared to your amygdala, your amygdala is 1 exhausted
• 1:00:40
  person just trying to get through the day.
• 1:00:42
  Your prefrontal cortex, your executive function is like a
• 1:00:44
  team of 100 completely united, knowing exactly what to do next
• 1:00:48
  and it and they have each other's back and and the blocks
• 1:00:53
  as I saw between amygdala prefrontal cortex fight or
• 1:00:56
  flight to executive function was loneliness and fatigue.
• 1:01:03
  And once you just saw that as the main thing, then people
• 1:01:11
  recovered in such a rapid period of time with far less resources.
• 1:01:17
  Because if you do not see that, if you do not address the
• 1:01:21
  isolation, if you do not address the fatigue, there's all these
• 1:01:23
  downstream problems, you know, and, and you can get years lost
• 1:01:28
  to trying to fix all these downstream problems from
• 1:01:31
  loneliness and fatigue. So with no training, with just,
• 1:01:39
  you know, dyslexia, seeing things in patterns, and with
• 1:01:42
  having a what I saw as a dishonorable discharge that was
• 1:01:53
  there to give me skin in the game.
• 1:01:55
  Because when someone's nervous system is cooked, they don't
• 1:02:00
  need more words. They need to sense and they will
• 1:02:05
  sense from your nervous system that you'd been there before in
• 1:02:08
  that unspoken place. You can you can break their
• 1:02:11
  isolation. You can turn on their inner
• 1:02:14
  compass just turns back on and, and this is where, you know, I,
• 1:02:20
  I got 6 pages of weapons I'm qualified in right?
• 1:02:23
  But the most powerful thing I have isn't a weapon.
• 1:02:27
  It's a conversation, an authentic conversation with a
• 1:02:33
  capital A, you know, really speaking your truth because I've
• 1:02:39
  just seen it time and time again.
• 1:02:41
  Authentic words have an ability to reach the unseen parts of a
• 1:02:49
  person and the the the picture I have in my head is when people
• 1:02:56
  are hurting, when they're all alone, there's words they want
• 1:02:58
  to say, they can't say it and they become like rocks around
• 1:03:03
  their heart. And and the world we live in is
• 1:03:06
  really good at giving you short term fixes, though.
• 1:03:09
  You know, I for years I poured alcohol and pills over those
• 1:03:11
  rocks, right? But if you can be that one that
• 1:03:15
  articulates what it's like to be in that situation and speak the
• 1:03:19
  words that other people want to say in that genuine, authentic
• 1:03:22
  way, those rocks dissolve, you know, and it's a it's a whole
• 1:03:27
  other level of connection once we actually, you know, tap into
• 1:03:31
  that space. Right, right.
• 1:03:36
  And that makes perfect sense to me.
• 1:03:39
  So when you were getting out, you said a dishonorable.
• 1:03:43
  Well, I called it dishonorable. I got, I just, it was just a
• 1:03:46
  regular discharge, but I, I, the way I classed it was I left
• 1:03:54
  defeated because I'm like, I, I can't, I, I want this job, but
• 1:03:58
  I, I can't fight the whole army if these guys are, you know,
• 1:04:02
  committed to put me through the door first.
• 1:04:06
  I just can't. I just can't agree with that.
• 1:04:09
  Yeah. So it felt dishonorable,
• 1:04:11
  considering I wanted to serve my whole life in that, in that
• 1:04:15
  particular role. Yeah.
• 1:04:16
  Yeah. But on paper it was Oh no.
• 1:04:19
  On paper, it was just. A discharge, Yeah.
• 1:04:22
  Just me putting my discharge in, yeah.
• 1:04:25
  And when that occurred, did the military, Australian military,
• 1:04:30
  did they provide any resources for re entry into civilian life?
• 1:04:38
  There's a cut and paste transition seminar that they do,
• 1:04:43
  but it was like, OK, I'm sure it's improved, right?
• 1:04:46
  I'm sure it's improved. I'm hoping it's improved.
• 1:04:48
  But it was like all these great organizations there to help
• 1:04:53
  veterans. It's like they sent their
• 1:04:54
  youngest freaking intern up to give the presentation, you know?
• 1:05:00
  So there's this freaking 18 year old talking about how to live in
• 1:05:05
  the real world and we're like, fuck that, you know, I'm sure
• 1:05:09
  they had great resources, but it wasn't in a way that anything
• 1:05:12
  could be uptaken from, right? I think from my injuries, they
• 1:05:22
  allowed maybe $6 a fortnight so I could buy pain relief.
• 1:05:32
  But other than that, you just, I, I, I just thought I was one
• 1:05:37
  of those guys. I'm just like, I'm out.
• 1:05:39
  I'm going to just work really hard.
• 1:05:42
  I'll get a job and it'll all go away, you know?
• 1:05:48
  And I thought I was fine, but I couldn't not drink 6 to 10 beers
• 1:05:59
  at the end of each day. I couldn't not.
• 1:06:01
  I had to. There was some part of me
• 1:06:03
  imbalanced that the alcohol temporarily made me feel
• 1:06:07
  balanced with. Does that make sense?
• 1:06:11
  Right. And it's probably the same with
• 1:06:15
  any other addiction, if you will, right.
• 1:06:18
  You have that sense of level levelling off and then it
• 1:06:27
  grounds you a little more and yeah, I understand it.
• 1:06:31
  Wasn't the alcohol that was the problem, it was my sense of
• 1:06:34
  imbalance or sense of, you know, I was out of alignment somehow
• 1:06:40
  or I wasn't healed. You know, imbalance comes in
• 1:06:43
  many forms, but my commitment to getting people options away from
• 1:06:52
  what was easily available because the second I stuck my
• 1:06:55
  hand up for help, they just threw a pharmacy at me.
• 1:07:02
  And if you think about this, like if you're in your amygdala,
• 1:07:12
  if you're given stuff to sleep, your amygdala is still firing
• 1:07:16
  and it doesn't push you into your, into your executive
• 1:07:21
  function. It just, it just slows
• 1:07:22
  everything down and, and allows you to, you know, potentially
• 1:07:26
  interact better with others. Now I'm going to say this now,
• 1:07:29
  I'm not against pills. There's a time and a place for
• 1:07:31
  everything, right? But what no one's talking about
• 1:07:34
  is a the cost of taking these pills.
• 1:07:37
  It's a, it's a short term loan. They'll give you 100 bucks this
• 1:07:40
  week, but you got to pay back 200 next week and then you got
• 1:07:43
  to get another loan to cover the debt, right?
• 1:07:45
  And the cost isn't just in your own energy.
• 1:07:49
  It's there's a whole lot of unseen stuff.
• 1:07:53
  I believe with all the pharmaceuticals I took, there
• 1:07:56
  was a bunch of memories washed out of my head.
• 1:07:58
  It was quite scary for me in that time when I went around a
• 1:08:01
  mate's place and I said, oh, this place looks familiar.
• 1:08:05
  And he looked at me like I was stupid.
• 1:08:07
  And he goes, Tim, you help me move in here and I'm like, oh
• 1:08:11
  shit, how much other stuff had I forgotten?
• 1:08:16
  You know, Jeez, I hope I was a good person.
• 1:08:18
  Right. So there's all these costs to
• 1:08:23
  taking pharmaceuticals that they don't tell you about.
• 1:08:25
  But also no one's talking about the natural alternatives that
• 1:08:29
  are, in my experience, just as good, if not better.
• 1:08:33
  And these natural alternatives you don't hear about so much
• 1:08:36
  because they're they're free, right?
• 1:08:39
  Yeah. Yeah.
• 1:08:42
  So tell me about what, if anything, you had lined up for
• 1:08:49
  work when you came back. Well, I did what most confused
• 1:08:55
  commandos did, and that's open up a outdoor boot camp training
• 1:08:59
  session, right? Civilians like being yelled at,
• 1:09:03
  right? They.
• 1:09:04
  Think they do until they're in the heat of it.
• 1:09:09
  But no, I, I ran a, a successful outdoor training camp and that
• 1:09:14
  worked in well with me because as long as I was on for those,
• 1:09:18
  you know, 2 to 4 hours of training, you know, each day,
• 1:09:25
  everything was fine. As long as my work was going
• 1:09:28
  well, then I was telling myself I was fine.
• 1:09:32
  The way I describe Wellness to other guys is think of Wellness
• 1:09:35
  like the roof of your house and it's supported by 4 walls.
• 1:09:40
  And us guys, we tend to have this show wall where we have all
• 1:09:43
  our trophies on, right? And if anyone points out a
• 1:09:48
  structural fault in any area of our life, we go, don't you see
• 1:09:52
  my show? Well, don't you see how awesome
• 1:09:54
  I am at this? Everyone values me for this.
• 1:09:57
  So it's this, this, this big redirect.
• 1:09:59
  As long as we've got 1 area of our life that's working, we'll
• 1:10:01
  just keep redirecting there, right?
• 1:10:04
  Anyway, I couldn't ignore the fact that my family life was
• 1:10:09
  breaking down, you know, because I thought I'd get a job.
• 1:10:13
  I'll try and be successful. I'll be right, you know.
• 1:10:17
  No, I wasn't. So and I discovered then that
• 1:10:25
  not all healers, and when I say healers, I'm talking, you know,
• 1:10:28
  doctors, psychologists, psychiatrists, counselors, men's
• 1:10:32
  groups. They're not all born equal.
• 1:10:35
  They're kind of like coffee shops.
• 1:10:37
  They're everywhere. But it's really hard to find a
• 1:10:38
  good one and it probably took me 6 years to find a psychologist
• 1:10:48
  that actually could do for me in far less time what everyone else
• 1:10:57
  couldn't do in a lifetime. So they they are out there And
• 1:11:01
  look, I'll just flag this little pattern that I've found to be
• 1:11:07
  universal with veterans. There's good news and bad news
• 1:11:10
  when it comes to healing. The good news is when you find
• 1:11:13
  the right healer. Holy shit, healing takes far
• 1:11:15
  less time than you think. The bad news is finding the
• 1:11:19
  right healer is probably going to be your full time job.
• 1:11:22
  So your job isn't actually to get healing.
• 1:11:24
  Your job is to search for a good healer.
• 1:11:27
  That's the hardest part. The hardest part is the search
• 1:11:29
  part. No one told me that.
• 1:11:30
  So I'm, I'm like nearly going to jail when I've told this
• 1:11:37
  psychologist everything that I didn't want to talk about.
• 1:11:43
  And then he kind of sniffs and goes, oh, you think it was a
• 1:11:45
  problem with your mum and dad, You know, like, so, so a lot of
• 1:11:54
  veterans say, look, I tried to get help.
• 1:11:55
  The help didn't help. In fact, I made it worse.
• 1:11:57
  And I've really got a heart for those guys.
• 1:11:59
  But what you need to understand is the good healers are out
• 1:12:03
  there and you usually get them from a referred network of
• 1:12:08
  people you trust. So, so don't go flicking through
• 1:12:12
  the, you know, Google, go into your network and say, look, who
• 1:12:16
  do you, who do you guys recommend?
• 1:12:18
  What's worked? Because in Australia we have
• 1:12:20
  what's called the digger net, right?
• 1:12:22
  Australian soldiers are often referred to as diggers.
• 1:12:24
  And the digger net is quicker than the Internet.
• 1:12:27
  And you know, I would encourage anybody who's thinking, oh,
• 1:12:30
  maybe I should talk to a mate. And if he doesn't know, he'll
• 1:12:34
  have a mate that knows and and through that you'll have a
• 1:12:40
  higher likelihood, not 100% guaranteed, but a higher
• 1:12:43
  likelihood of getting a a healer that will be able to do for you
• 1:12:48
  in in far less time what anyone else when any other so-called
• 1:12:51
  healer could do. Yeah, right.
• 1:12:53
  Right. Well, yeah.
• 1:12:56
  So tell me about after you have gone through the process of
• 1:13:01
  healing, what happens next in your life?
• 1:13:11
  Learning how to do generosity right.
• 1:13:15
  OK, so the way I've experienced energy is it's never static.
• 1:13:25
  Good energy wants to connect with more good energy and more
• 1:13:28
  good energy, you know, disconnected energy wants to
• 1:13:31
  disconnect, disconnect, disconnect.
• 1:13:33
  And when I was doing all that good work in the veteran space,
• 1:13:41
  you know, 40 veteran lifesaver within a year, what nobody knew
• 1:13:44
  Carolee was every six or seven weeks I used to have to write
• 1:13:48
  myself off drunk for like 3 days because I was getting a kick out
• 1:13:55
  of helping others. And it was good to be generous,
• 1:13:58
  but I was doing it wrong. And I'll just explain that.
• 1:14:00
  So if I'm just at 100% and I give somebody not 10%, there's a
• 1:14:08
  part of me that goes, you know what, you better do something
• 1:14:11
  with that because I'm down to 90% here, right?
• 1:14:13
  So I haven't, I had attachments to what my expectations of my
• 1:14:18
  output, right? And I was giving of myself.
• 1:14:25
  I wasn't giving of my abundance. I was using helping others as an
• 1:14:29
  opiate to my own problems, right.
• 1:14:32
  And it's a it's a very common thing in the veteran space.
• 1:14:35
  Like you ask a veteran, oh, you need help now you want to help
• 1:14:38
  others. Yeah, right.
• 1:14:39
  And it's, it's like I said, I was using helping others as a
• 1:14:43
  analgesic, if you would say that.
• 1:14:47
  And so now it's what I've learnt is I don't give of myself
• 1:14:51
  anymore. I give of my abundance.
• 1:14:54
  And for me, that makes sense because if I'm at 100% and I
• 1:14:57
  give 10%, I'm down to 90% and you better do something with it.
• 1:15:02
  But if I invest in me and I'm at 500 percent, 500% more than what
• 1:15:06
  I need, then I can give 20% away a day.
• 1:15:10
  People can love it, hate it, it can fail, it can work.
• 1:15:12
  They can tell me to F off, don't matter.
• 1:15:14
  You know, I'm in touch with something so much greater.
• 1:15:16
  So every every day now I ask people to consider to see energy
• 1:15:23
  like money, how you invest it is how you get it back, right,
• 1:15:26
  right. So it doesn't matter how much
• 1:15:28
  you have, it's how you invest it.
• 1:15:30
  And if you can invest in you at the start of the day, and I'll
• 1:15:36
  say this, the 1st 5 minutes of the day, the most important, if
• 1:15:38
  you can win the 1st 5 minutes, you've won the day.
• 1:15:41
  You lose the 1st 5 minutes, the rest of the day is really
• 1:15:43
  freaking hard, right? So I'm all about, you know,
• 1:15:49
  mornings are mine. I, I create that energetic
• 1:15:52
  portfolio, I get 500% more than what I need and then I can then
• 1:15:57
  I can give freely. So, so knowing that I was going
• 1:16:00
  to be on your podcast today, I got up really early.
• 1:16:04
  I did my breath working in bed, I did my morning workout, I did
• 1:16:09
  my barefoot walking, I did a sauna time in the sun.
• 1:16:13
  And so, so you know, that gives the version of me that can, you
• 1:16:20
  know, confidently give and not have any attachment to what
• 1:16:23
  people get or don't get. I'm not trying to control any
• 1:16:27
  outcomes here, but I also am aware that, and this is the
• 1:16:35
  killer here, energy has a shelf life of, you know, 24 to 36
• 1:16:40
  hours if we don't take the first part of the day to invest in
• 1:16:46
  ourselves. Before I learnt this, I had a
• 1:16:51
  lot of people say to me, we never know what version of Tim's
• 1:16:54
  going to turn up today, right? Because 2 completely different
• 1:17:02
  people in this world and they're both me, they're both you.
• 1:17:06
  There's the version of you that sleeps well.
• 1:17:09
  Invest in the 1st 5 minutes of the day, invest in themselves so
• 1:17:12
  they create that abundance. And the way they move through
• 1:17:14
  the world is what I call an energetic millionaire.
• 1:17:17
  OK. And life occurs very differently
• 1:17:19
  when you've got a, you know, a couple of $1,000,000 in your
• 1:17:21
  back pocket. Then if you're walking down the
• 1:17:23
  street and you've only got a couple of cents.
• 1:17:25
  Right, right. And yeah, so so that that sort
• 1:17:28
  of catchy term energetic millionaire is what I try and
• 1:17:32
  help people to become. But also I know that I can't
• 1:17:37
  really have that reach the depths it's it's supposed to
• 1:17:43
  reach inside others. If I'm not embodying that, you
• 1:17:46
  know, very deep part of me. Right, so let's talk a little
• 1:17:52
  bit. You you briefly broached the
• 1:17:55
  subject of breath work in bed and and you have your banner
• 1:18:00
  there behind you. Tell me about that and and what
• 1:18:07
  was it that caused you to create this?
• 1:18:13
  OK, so I didn't know what breath work was, but I remember being
• 1:18:17
  beyond fatigue in the dirt of Afghanistan.
• 1:18:20
  And you know, we train for fatigue.
• 1:18:22
  We know what pain is, right? But outside the wire, there's,
• 1:18:25
  there's a whole other level of fatigue.
• 1:18:26
  You know, you've, you've lost mates, you've had bits blown off
• 1:18:30
  others. And I'm like, what's the fucking
• 1:18:31
  point? I'm going to die in this shit
• 1:18:33
  hole. You know, it's like you've only
• 1:18:35
  got $0.02 worth of energy. And then it was like, well, Tim,
• 1:18:41
  if you've only got $0.02 worth of energy, you better invest
• 1:18:43
  that wisely, right? And without being shown or
• 1:18:46
  prompted whenever I was horizontal in the dirt and we
• 1:18:50
  never got anything that you'd call 8 hours of sleep.
• 1:18:54
  But when I was horizontal in the dirt, I took that two cents.
• 1:18:57
  And I this is where it gets a bit weird.
• 1:18:59
  I felt led to picture a pinhole in the tip of my thumb and I
• 1:19:07
  sucked air through it, like through my nose.
• 1:19:11
  OK. And I'm like, that's feeling
• 1:19:13
  really good. And eventually my thumb turned
• 1:19:15
  into white light in, in my mind's eye, right.
• 1:19:18
  And I'm like, that feels really good.
• 1:19:19
  And I, I breathe through the tip of my thumb, down my thumb and
• 1:19:22
  then I breathe through my finger.
• 1:19:25
  And then I went to sleep and that two cents turned into
• 1:19:27
  $2.00. Now I didn't know what it was,
• 1:19:30
  but I saw that there was a return.
• 1:19:33
  And then the next time I was horizontal, I invested $2.00,
• 1:19:36
  you know, across all my fingers, down my hand, up my arm, went to
• 1:19:40
  sleep, woke up with $20. And as I was massaging this
• 1:19:46
  investment, I noticed my awareness opened up and I become
• 1:19:53
  aware of others around me. Whereas before, when I only had
• 1:19:56
  two cents. Fuck everybody, I'm going to
• 1:19:57
  die. It's all about me.
• 1:19:58
  Boo Hoo. OK.
• 1:20:00
  And that's real though. And that's, that's a nervous
• 1:20:02
  system protecting itself. That's that's.
• 1:20:04
  I'm not making that wrong because it's a natural.
• 1:20:11
  Perspective when you're really low, you can't see too much, but
• 1:20:13
  when you're higher up you can see more.
• 1:20:15
  So when I started to see more, I started seeing that, hey, the
• 1:20:19
  team I'm in, if they're having a bad, it doesn't matter if I'm
• 1:20:22
  having a good day. If they're having a bad day, I'm
• 1:20:23
  having a bad day. So then I said, well, I need to
• 1:20:26
  invest in me so I can invest in them, right?
• 1:20:30
  And, and I started doing that and I, it got me through
• 1:20:36
  Afghanistan. I didn't know what breath work
• 1:20:38
  was, but then when I was going through my divorce in during
• 1:20:44
  COVID and this is sort of story as old as time, you know, lost
• 1:20:50
  house, home, everything. I just had a car and a dog lost
• 1:20:54
  regular access to kids sleeping on the couch to my parents place
• 1:20:58
  and you can bed at 2 AMI ain't sleeping.
• 1:21:03
  And the irony was I knew about breath work.
• 1:21:09
  I knew that if I did breath work, it would give me the peace
• 1:21:11
  I was wanting. But in that moment, I needed it
• 1:21:14
  the most. When my head was getting, you
• 1:21:15
  know, attacked. It's like I couldn't, it's like
• 1:21:19
  I physically couldn't. And I, and I realized that, you
• 1:21:22
  know, your brains a bit like a garden, whatever your water
• 1:21:25
  grows. And I was watering the weeds of
• 1:21:27
  stress and they'd taken over the garden.
• 1:21:29
  And these frickers, they become sentient eyeballs pop out of
• 1:21:33
  these weeds and they know the things that you do that feed
• 1:21:35
  them and they're hyper, hyper aware of the things that you do
• 1:21:39
  that starve them, right. And they knew that if I
• 1:21:43
  breathed, they'd get kicked out. So they're like, fuck that.
• 1:21:47
  And two, AMI, get out of bed. I'm about to do drugs, alcohol,
• 1:21:54
  self harm, maybe all three. And I look at my left thumb
• 1:21:57
  again and I say, Tim, you can take one breath.
• 1:22:01
  Take one fucking breath. And I drove it into my chest and
• 1:22:04
  went this is working, this is working.
• 1:22:07
  Take two. And I drove a second finger in
• 1:22:09
  with a second breath, OK, I get to 5 finger after finger, breath
• 1:22:14
  after breath. And then somewhere between
• 1:22:17
  breath 15 and breath 25, those stress weeds got kicked out.
• 1:22:22
  The rest of my brain came online said Tim, this is working.
• 1:22:25
  Don't stop. OK.
• 1:22:28
  And I and I, I realized there the power of breath work, but
• 1:22:36
  also the power of the things that stop us using our breath,
• 1:22:40
  using those things. And so I started creating these
• 1:22:46
  stupid ass recordings of my own voice going ho to him, breathe
• 1:22:51
  in, breathe out. And and and you know, if it's
• 1:22:55
  stupid and at work, it's not stupid, I guess.
• 1:22:57
  And exactly. So I just, I just noticed that
• 1:23:01
  as much as we can all breathe, it does need a form of
• 1:23:03
  prompting, especially when we really, really need it, right.
• 1:23:06
  And so I, I started these tapes and, and they were working and
• 1:23:11
  then I shared them with my friends and they worked for
• 1:23:12
  them. And I'm like, well, I can't do
• 1:23:17
  what other people do. But if I was to look at the best
• 1:23:19
  thing I could do for someone else, that would have to be to
• 1:23:23
  improve their sleep. Because in war, if you want to
• 1:23:27
  destroy somebody, you destroy their sleep.
• 1:23:29
  Like a lot of our operations in Afghanistan was able to attack
• 1:23:32
  the enemy's sleep. We didn't know about the, you
• 1:23:34
  know, the science of it, but we knew if we could take it out for
• 1:23:37
  three nights, it would mess them up better than a bullet.
• 1:23:40
  So, you know, if you can consider if you really want to
• 1:23:42
  fuck someone up, you fuck with their sleep.
• 1:23:44
  If you want to build someone up, well, let's build up their
• 1:23:47
  sleep, you know? And so that's, that's where I'm
• 1:23:52
  like, OK, I see this stuff work. It actually works.
• 1:23:55
  I started doing, you know, workshops on Army bases, and it
• 1:23:58
  was working. I got this e-mail from a Louis
• 1:24:00
  Colonel saying, hey, Tim, after your workshop, we had guys
• 1:24:06
  coming up saying that was the first good night's sleep they
• 1:24:08
  had in three years, four years, five years.
• 1:24:12
  And I'm like, well, that was easy.
• 1:24:13
  Why didn't you Get Me Out five years ago?
• 1:24:14
  But what he said next made me withdraw from public life for
• 1:24:19
  two years because when I was, you know, going through my
• 1:24:27
  shitty time, there was a lot of people with powerful and
• 1:24:32
  positive stuff that would work for a little bit, but then
• 1:24:35
  wouldn't work, you know, a week later, right?
• 1:24:40
  And so the promise I made myself is I called it my an acronym 3
• 1:24:45
  PS, I call it my P test. And so the three PS I I promised
• 1:24:48
  I would fulfil on is everything I do has to be powerful.
• 1:24:51
  It has to be positive. But the third PS, most
• 1:24:53
  important, it's got to be permanent.
• 1:24:57
  If we say we care about people, we've got to care about them
• 1:25:00
  tomorrow, next week, next year. And So what this Louis Colonel
• 1:25:05
  pointed out was I wasn't permanent because he said it's
• 1:25:10
  good when you're there, but what have you got when you're not
• 1:25:12
  there? OK, Wow.
• 1:25:15
  A challenge, actually, yeah. Yeah, and I'm like, I am not
• 1:25:18
  permanent. So I dropped out of public life.
• 1:25:22
  I created breath working bed and breath Working bed is is there
• 1:25:28
  to help people see that the two most powerful investments you
• 1:25:33
  can make in yourself is the 5 minutes going to sleep and the 5
• 1:25:37
  minutes waking up. Most people unconsciously poison
• 1:25:44
  those moments. This is where veterans, they
• 1:25:49
  talk about the vultures on the bed head, negative thoughts
• 1:25:52
  ready to dive into your head the second you become conscious,
• 1:25:56
  right? So I'm like, if we can just have
• 1:25:58
  an easy breath work prompt at the exact moment that it's
• 1:26:02
  supposed to be, then that's going to make all the
• 1:26:05
  difference, right? Because I see so many people
• 1:26:11
  just trying to ring the freaking life out of the daytime hours,
• 1:26:14
  right? Do more, do more, do more,
• 1:26:16
  right? First thing I say is don't do
• 1:26:17
  anything more. OK, Let's do the things that
• 1:26:21
  that are aligned with you. And it's hard to figure out
• 1:26:24
  what's aligned for you when you, when the quality of your sleep
• 1:26:27
  is low, when your nervous system's cooked, when you can't
• 1:26:29
  drop your guard. So if you can gift yourself that
• 1:26:33
  breath, 5 minutes going to sleep, 5 minutes waking up, then
• 1:26:39
  as much as it's not spectacular and it's not seen by anybody, it
• 1:26:44
  shows up in everything you do. Right.
• 1:26:48
  Yeah, with all of this throughout this conversation,
• 1:26:57
  and I'm based off of the conversation that we had.
• 1:27:02
  And, and you Speaking of your son is, and I don't know if he
• 1:27:08
  has or has not joined the military, but if somebody came
• 1:27:14
  to you and said I'm looking to join the military, what would be
• 1:27:21
  your words of wisdom for them? I want to ask why you want to
• 1:27:34
  join. I don't want to assume that you
• 1:27:37
  join because I wanted to join. You know, my mate got messed up.
• 1:27:42
  I'm going to mess a bunch of guys up or and and there is a
• 1:27:45
  part of me that does want to serve this country, right?
• 1:27:48
  I don't I don't think we can let it be someone else's son,
• 1:27:52
  brother, husband serving the country.
• 1:27:55
  So I always ask so why do you want to join and if it's service
• 1:28:02
  related? If it's if they want to serve, I
• 1:28:22
  would just say move forward with your eyes open and go towards
• 1:28:27
  the people that agree with that, not the guys that take advantage
• 1:28:29
  of it. Right, because in any human
• 1:28:34
  heavy workspace, there is imperfections.
• 1:28:39
  Like everyone knows that humans aren't perfect, right?
• 1:28:41
  But what they haven't quite put together, Cara Lee, is you, you
• 1:28:46
  get enough humans together, those imperfections get to
• 1:28:49
  critical mass and in and inside a human heavy resource like, you
• 1:28:55
  know, the army, there's a lot of imperfections reaching critical
• 1:28:58
  mass. So I would advise the person you
• 1:29:02
  know, to go in there, you know, if you're going to go in, go in
• 1:29:06
  100%, but be discerning because a lot of people talk a big game
• 1:29:13
  and then they don't have the integrity to back it up.
• 1:29:17
  And there's also people in the army that are quite willing to
• 1:29:29
  attack you if you're some kind of if you don't fit quite, quite
• 1:29:34
  fit the mold. So you also have to understand
• 1:29:40
  that in those situations, they kind of own you and they can
• 1:29:47
  make life really hard, you know, more than hard, practically
• 1:29:53
  impossible. So I feel pulled between my
• 1:30:06
  sense of duty, my sense of serving for this country.
• 1:30:09
  But also I'm not stupid. I'm fully aware that there's
• 1:30:12
  people wanting to take advantage of those good intentions and
• 1:30:16
  there's people in the system that are fucking vampires, you
• 1:30:20
  know, they're pieces of shit with rank that know how to fuck
• 1:30:23
  others over. They don't have anything to
• 1:30:25
  contribute. They're just really good at
• 1:30:26
  taking, you know. So the life lessons I learnt
• 1:30:31
  from those people that just knew how to take was so powerful.
• 1:30:36
  So, and, and I'm of the opinion now that, you know, just because
• 1:30:43
  something bad happened doesn't mean that good things can't come
• 1:30:46
  from it. OK, So if good can come from
• 1:30:48
  bad, was that bad thing actually bad?
• 1:30:51
  Right. That's a fair question.
• 1:30:53
  So so that sort of reduced my desire for like outright revenge
• 1:30:58
  on some of these these vampires rank types, you know, and it's
• 1:31:02
  helped me understand it. It took the veil off my eyes
• 1:31:05
  that, you know, if I do the right thing with the right
• 1:31:07
  intentions, the right things going to happen.
• 1:31:11
  You know, there's, there's OK, here's the here's the advice I
• 1:31:17
  would give somebody consider the Army ages you in dog years,
• 1:31:24
  everyone year in is like 7 years out, OK.
• 1:31:28
  And your uptake of wisdom, you have to match that with that
• 1:31:34
  accelerated exposure. If if that makes sense, you
• 1:31:37
  know? Yeah, yeah.
• 1:31:40
  What doesn't kill it? Makes you strong thumbs up if
• 1:31:42
  you agree with the you know the service made with you and
• 1:31:44
  doggies. Yep, that makes a lot of sense
• 1:31:49
  to me. And I, I want to say thank you
• 1:31:53
  very, very much for taking the time to come out.
• 1:31:57
  And while we have a moment, I'm going to go ahead and share your
• 1:32:01
  website for those interested to take a look and let's see, make
• 1:32:10
  sure we all can see that. There we go.
• 1:32:18
  OK. So and then if they want to know
• 1:32:22
  more now granted, the best way probably to get a hold of you is
• 1:32:27
  going to be by e-mail, yes. Well, LinkedIn e-mail, OK, but
• 1:32:33
  look in, in the promise I made to myself about permanency.
• 1:32:37
  Like we've had a really good conversation right now and I'm
• 1:32:39
  and I'm I feel confident that the most powerful thing
• 1:32:43
  authentic conversation you can do is break isolation where
• 1:32:46
  people go. Oh, and now I see clearly with
• 1:32:48
  this right, that permanency for me would actually be giving
• 1:32:53
  people a breath work technique that they could have potentially
• 1:32:56
  for the rest of their life. Do we?
• 1:32:58
  Do we? I'm going to maybe push my luck
• 1:33:00
  here, but can we have 5 minutes so I can show people a little
• 1:33:03
  something that they could use? Absolutely.
• 1:33:06
  Let's move that. OK all.
• 1:33:11
  Right, So what I'm going to show you right now is how to
• 1:33:16
  completely relax your body in less than 3 breaths, all right?
• 1:33:22
  And to do this, everything's an invitation.
• 1:33:26
  Nothing's for us. This is just an offering.
• 1:33:28
  So I always ask Carol Lee for permission to let the breath do
• 1:33:35
  what it's supposed to do. So for everyone listening and
• 1:33:38
  yourself, Carol Lee, do you give permission for your own breath
• 1:33:42
  to make every single part of your body feel really, really
• 1:33:45
  good? Awesome.
• 1:33:48
  And if you're listening in the comments, just put in a yes.
• 1:33:51
  I'd love to see that. And the second one just as easy.
• 1:33:59
  Carolee, do you give permission to your very own breath to make
• 1:34:02
  every part of your conscious thinking mind feel really,
• 1:34:05
  really good? Yes.
• 1:34:08
  Awesome, last one's just as easy.
• 1:34:11
  Do you give permission to your very own breath to make your
• 1:34:14
  unconscious mind feel really, really good?
• 1:34:17
  Yes. Yes, takes a little bit more
• 1:34:20
  thought that one, but I know I. Had it unconscious.
• 1:34:22
  We got to. Let it in.
• 1:34:24
  We got to let it in. OK all.
• 1:34:29
  Right, so this is really easy. All I'm going to get you to do
• 1:34:32
  is breathe in, but then breathe in more.
• 1:34:35
  More, more, more, more, more, more, more, more.
• 1:34:37
  Just do that. Breathe in more, more, more,
• 1:34:38
  more, more, more, more, more, more, more, more.
• 1:34:40
  Now hold it and just wriggle your shoulders, wriggle your
• 1:34:43
  arms, wriggle your spine, wriggle, wriggle, wriggle,
• 1:34:45
  wriggle, wiggle. Feel it opening up.
• 1:34:47
  Feel it opening up and if you're brave, let out a really big
• 1:34:51
  sigh. Out, out, out, out, out, out,
• 1:34:54
  out, out and just let that go through your system.
• 1:35:01
  That's your energy. I didn't do anything for you.
• 1:35:03
  This is you doing this for you and you're going to be able to
• 1:35:07
  access this whenever. Right now, what I'm going to
• 1:35:11
  show you next is when you breathe in more, more, more.
• 1:35:13
  Did you notice that your top third kind of filled up a bit
• 1:35:16
  more? Yes, right.
• 1:35:18
  So I'm going to show you how to boost that top third rather in a
• 1:35:22
  surprising way. Hold up two fingers like that.
• 1:35:26
  OK, Now put out your thumb and I want you to pinch down as hard
• 1:35:31
  as you can on that thumb. That's it.
• 1:35:34
  All right, so this thing here, this motion, this is a turbo
• 1:35:37
  boost for your top third. So what we're going to do is
• 1:35:42
  blow it out, and halfway through our inhale, we're going to hit
• 1:35:46
  those power buttons and just notice the effect it has on our
• 1:35:50
  top third. All right, OK, so exhale with
• 1:35:54
  me, blow it out, round out, out, out, out.
• 1:35:58
  Start breathing in, and then hit those power buttons and then
• 1:36:03
  hold and wriggle, wriggle, wriggle, wriggle, let it open
• 1:36:07
  up, check out the day. And then again, let out a nice
• 1:36:11
  loud sigh. And again, just let that into
• 1:36:20
  your body, let it into your mind.
• 1:36:22
  This Is Us letting it in when we're receiving here, we're not
• 1:36:26
  doing anything. We're just letting it in now.
• 1:36:30
  Did you notice when you hit those buttons that you could
• 1:36:34
  boost that top third a little bit?
• 1:36:40
  I think I felt a little more increase, but it was not
• 1:36:47
  anything that I, I guess it would be the subconscious
• 1:36:50
  thinking about. Yeah, just like I felt a little
• 1:36:55
  bit more of an increase, but I was also very low on breath at
• 1:37:01
  that stage, right. So you're, you're exhaling and
• 1:37:04
  then all of a sudden you're intake quickly.
• 1:37:09
  So it was one of those. It is The funny thing.
• 1:37:12
  Breath work isn't hard, but it's our oldest habit, so doing
• 1:37:18
  anything new can be a little funny, right?
• 1:37:23
  So we're going to do the same thing again, but this time when
• 1:37:27
  we blow it out, we're going to double the speed of inhale
• 1:37:31
  through our nose. We're really going to snort it,
• 1:37:34
  right, OK. Because when I was a
• 1:37:36
  professional fighter, my coach used to say, Tim, before you do
• 1:37:39
  a combination, do a big snort through your nose, and that
• 1:37:42
  sucks the air over your sinuses straight into your brain.
• 1:37:45
  Now, whether that worked in science or not, I don't know,
• 1:37:48
  but it worked in combat. So what we're gonna do is we're
• 1:37:52
  gonna exhale, and then we're gonna pinch our fingers and
• 1:37:56
  snort as much as we can as we look up.
• 1:37:59
  Like, like that. Cool, cool all.
• 1:38:02
  Right, nobody look up my nose. OK, go ahead.
• 1:38:05
  You wanna go off camera? No, no, it's.
• 1:38:07
  All good. Let's do this, everybody.
• 1:38:09
  Let's. Do this.
• 1:38:10
  Have your power buttons ready. Just blow it out and shake it
• 1:38:12
  out. Blow it out, shake it out.
• 1:38:13
  Out, out, out, out, out, out, out, out, out, out, out, out,
• 1:38:16
  out, and then wrap it. Inhale through the nose.
• 1:38:20
  Look up, look up, look up, look up.
• 1:38:22
  Now again, hold it and just wriggle and stretch.
• 1:38:26
  Wriggle and stretch, wriggle and stretch.
• 1:38:29
  Relax everything and wriggle. And when you're ready, let out a
• 1:38:33
  really big sigh. Out, out, out, out, out.
• 1:38:38
  Out. Out, out, out, out, out.
• 1:38:43
  Interesting. Just checking in, Carol Lee,
• 1:38:48
  how's your body feeling it? Actually feels pretty good and
• 1:38:52
  OK funny thing I I have sinuses. I mean I live in the nursery
• 1:38:58
  capital of the world is where I live.
• 1:39:01
  And so my allergies get really bad, especially when it rains.
• 1:39:06
  And with that, I think there might be something with that
• 1:39:09
  where it does go up over, you know, and because I was able to
• 1:39:17
  breathe a little better when you're like opening that up,
• 1:39:23
  consciously opening. Do you want to take that to the
• 1:39:26
  next level? I don't know.
• 1:39:28
  I'm sure. OK.
• 1:39:31
  So there's a gas that our nose produces and our mouth does not
• 1:39:39
  produce. It's called nitric oxide.
• 1:39:43
  It helps with physical performance, with physical
• 1:39:48
  recovery, boost your immune system, heart health, mood,
• 1:39:54
  brain function. If we went to the chemist and
• 1:39:56
  said give me something that gives me all those benefits, you
• 1:40:00
  wouldn't get any change out of $500.00.
• 1:40:03
  But this nitric oxide is produced when we breathe through
• 1:40:06
  our nose and the uptake of that is increased by 200% if we hum
• 1:40:14
  right. Interesting.
• 1:40:17
  Humming is a sound, a frequency of vibration, so it increases
• 1:40:22
  the uptake of this nitric oxide. So all we're going to do now,
• 1:40:27
  and I'm doing this exercise for people with sinus problems
• 1:40:30
  because this targets the Eustachian tubes that go from
• 1:40:33
  your nose to your ears. All right, So what it's going to
• 1:40:36
  look like is this, we're going to do that deep breath in where
• 1:40:39
  we, OK, we're going to hold it. We're going to put one thumb
• 1:40:45
  over our nose and we're going to hum and then we're going to
• 1:40:49
  gently restrict the air. We're not going to stop it.
• 1:40:51
  We're going to restrict the airway and we hum through a
• 1:40:56
  restricted airway on that side. And you'll just give that a try,
• 1:41:02
  humming and hum for as long as you can.
• 1:41:08
  OK, OK, I'll walk you through it.
• 1:41:09
  I'll be here the whole time. But if you can crack, if you can
• 1:41:11
  crack this then and you know, I'd feel confident that you'd
• 1:41:15
  have something permanent post, you know, this experience all.
• 1:41:19
  Right. You're doing this with me,
• 1:41:20
  right? Absolutely.
• 1:41:22
  I walk OK. I'm following it OK so.
• 1:41:25
  Blow it out, shake it out, blow it out, shake it out.
• 1:41:27
  Out, out, out, out, out, out, out, out.
• 1:41:29
  And then rapid snort through the nose.
• 1:41:32
  Look to the ceiling, pinch the power buttons.
• 1:41:37
  OK, now hold it, hold it. Put one thumb over 1 nostril,
• 1:41:42
  start humming and restrict it with the other finger.
• 1:41:47
  Restrict it, restrict it, restrict it, keep restricting
• 1:41:50
  it. Now put your jaw forward.
• 1:41:52
  Push your jaw forward. As you do this, push your jaw
• 1:41:54
  forward and the hum will go further back, humming as your
• 1:41:59
  jaws forward. As long as you can, as long as
• 1:42:01
  you can, as long as you can. Keep going.
• 1:42:02
  Keep going, keep going, keep going.
• 1:42:06
  Let that vibration go through it all.
• 1:42:13
  Did. You stop it.
• 1:42:18
  My sorry, now I need a Kleenex, yeah.
• 1:42:32
  Yeah. Take take one from Australia.
• 1:42:36
  Thank you very much. That's been wonderful.
• 1:42:38
  That's great. And some things that I'm
• 1:42:40
  definitely going to be working on and will the most definitely
• 1:42:44
  need to be in continued contact because I think that there's a
• 1:42:49
  lot that you can help with for me as far as breathing through
• 1:42:55
  those stressful moments. And again, if anybody is
• 1:43:01
  interested, they can go out to your website and take a look
• 1:43:05
  there. And I think I might have, I
• 1:43:11
  don't know where I put you. Oh, wait, hang on there it is.
• 1:43:15
  OK. So yeah, a little bit of
• 1:43:18
  information that is there about you and their personal, personal
• 1:43:24
  growth. Oh, the ice baths.
• 1:43:26
  Those are always. Good and look, if people just
• 1:43:29
  going to go, you know what, I just want a good night's sleep
• 1:43:31
  tonight, you know, take your phone out and just look up the
• 1:43:34
  breath working bed app that will guide you to sleep.
• 1:43:38
  That that will. I made the app to target
• 1:43:40
  people's golden windows. The 5 minutes going to sleep, 5
• 1:43:43
  minutes waking up. And it's just basically just
• 1:43:45
  once you tell it when you want to sleep, when you want to wake
• 1:43:47
  up, you just tap the button when it falls out.
• 1:43:49
  Yeah, yeah. And you still have a 28 day free
• 1:43:53
  trial to that app. Yeah, yeah.
• 1:43:55
  There you go. All righty.
• 1:43:59
  Well, again I want to say a very huge thank you.
• 1:44:04
  It has been an honor and a privilege to have you on the
• 1:44:08
  channel and I hope that we will be seeing each other again here
• 1:44:15
  and being in contact before too long.
• 1:44:18
  So again, thank you and thank you to everyone who's come out
• 1:44:21
  today and joined us. And for those of you who will be
• 1:44:26
  listening on the pre record. So Tim, if you want to hold
• 1:44:30
  tight for me, I am going to go ahead and wrap this up.
• 1:44:36
  So thank you again everybody. Have a wonderful evening and we
• 1:44:41
  will see you again next Sunday, 6:00 PM Central Time.
• 1:44:47
  Hi, I'm Beaker with Military Broadcast Radio TV.
• 1:44:51
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• 1:44:56
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• 1:45:00
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