Latest / The You Project / #2195 The Bloke Who Held His Heart In His Own Hands - Rhys Thomas

Transcript

#2195 The Bloke Who Held His Heart In His Own Hands - Rhys Thomas · The You Project

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: I get a teram, it's harps, it's the bloody you project.
• 0:03
  Speaker 1: It's a chili. It's a chili six or seven degrees
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: in Melbourne. Somebody said to me, why do you keep
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: giving the bloody temperature update? And I said, I give
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: the bloody temperature update because and the time it's four
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: o two in the PM. Because we go all over
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: the world and some people want to know what temperature
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: it is in Melbourne on a Wednesday at four oh
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: two on a Tuesday, I should say, and that is that?
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: What is the temperature? Are you in South Africa at
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: the moment? Mate?
• 0:33
  Speaker 2: I am Craig.
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: Yeah, okay, what's the temp? What's the temp in Cape
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: Town right now?
• 0:39
  Speaker 2: Twelve twelve DeGreasy?
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: Ah?
• 0:41
  Speaker 3: Really yeah, that's not exactly warm either. Officially, welcome to
• 0:47
  Speaker 3: the show. Rhyes, Thomas, your big bloody stud. You've had
• 0:51
  Speaker 3: an interesting life, an interesting year. I would say, a
• 0:54
  Speaker 3: myriad of consecutive interesting days, to be honest.
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: But how are you? Eight am over there? Are you good?
• 1:03
  Speaker 2: I am very good, Thank you, just settling nicely into
• 1:07
  Speaker 2: my day.
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: What's your morning protocol? What do you do? What time
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: do you get up? Do you go straight to the coffee.
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: Do you do some meditative ritual? Do you stuff your
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: face full of fruit loops?
• 1:18
  Speaker 2: What do you do fruit loops? I haven't had this
• 1:21
  Speaker 2: for some time, but yeah, typically, I mean currently at
• 1:25
  Speaker 2: this moment in time, I'm just kind of a little
• 1:29
  Speaker 2: less frantic about my morning routine and just more about
• 1:32
  Speaker 2: like recovery, some kind of just post op. I'm just
• 1:37
  Speaker 2: going just more gently like waking up. When I wake up,
• 1:42
  Speaker 2: so currently it's like around about six thirty seven ish,
• 1:48
  Speaker 2: then I just start to potter on on my day. Yeah,
• 1:50
  Speaker 2: just I try and try and get some movement, some stillness,
• 1:55
  Speaker 2: a little bit of breath work, and then yeah, just
• 2:00
  Speaker 2: to get on with my day then whatever scheduled, you know,
• 2:02
  Speaker 2: doing a little bit of work at the moment on
• 2:05
  Speaker 2: my public speaking, so putting together bit of that, and
• 2:09
  Speaker 2: I mean, just yeah, slowly integrating myself back into society.
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: Yeah, good for you. Well let's start with a headline,
• 2:17
  Speaker 1: because well, I'm sure everybody read the headline when they
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: read the synopsis or the show notes for what's coming up.
• 2:23
  Speaker 1: But so you've got a brand spanking new teker. How's that?
• 2:28
  Speaker 1: How's that going? What's is it weird? Is it great
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: is it? Weird? And great? Is it? I don't know
• 2:34
  Speaker 1: what is it? How how long have you had your
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: new heart?
• 2:39
  Speaker 2: So I have. I had my heart transplant this year
• 2:44
  Speaker 2: on the sixteenth of April, so I'm almost twelve weeks
• 2:50
  Speaker 2: post off on Thursday.
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: Wow.
• 2:53
  Speaker 2: And yeah, it's been honestly the most insane, miraculous, magical
• 3:04
  Speaker 2: experience I could possibly have imagined. I mean, to be
• 3:08
  Speaker 2: honest with you, I didn't imagine. There were like two
• 3:11
  Speaker 2: different scenarios. There was one where I would not be here,
• 3:14
  Speaker 2: and then they would be the one that I'm here.
• 3:16
  Speaker 2: So I'm on the timeline of being here, and that's beautiful.
• 3:23
  Speaker 2: It's been that because it was such a challenge for
• 3:25
  Speaker 2: so long and with my health in different various ways.
• 3:30
  Speaker 2: You know, that's my third open art surgery and by
• 3:34
  Speaker 2: far the easiest one I'd had, and I was awake
• 3:38
  Speaker 2: in two days, out of hospital in three weeks. And
• 3:43
  Speaker 2: if I could have written a dream script of how
• 3:45
  Speaker 2: my recovery would have gone, I'm in it. And I've
• 3:50
  Speaker 2: had my I've had four biopsies since my op and
• 3:54
  Speaker 2: my last biopsy came back as a zero, which means
• 3:57
  Speaker 2: and there's zero indication of any rejection. So it's as
• 4:01
  Speaker 2: good as it gets really, to be honest with you, Craig,
• 4:03
  Speaker 2: and I feel like a brand new human. Wow.
• 4:08
  Speaker 1: Can you firstly congrat some super bloody happy for you.
• 4:13
  Speaker 1: We're just we're just acquaintances, new acquaintances. But it's a
• 4:17
  Speaker 1: beautiful story, and nothing but respect for you doing that.
• 4:22
  Speaker 1: All the people that worked on you, with you, supported you,
• 4:25
  Speaker 1: loved you through all that and continue to do that.
• 4:29
  Speaker 1: If you compare you from fourteen weeks ago, sitting in
• 4:33
  Speaker 1: the chair you're in with you today, can you remember
• 4:37
  Speaker 1: how you felt versus how you feel now? I'm sure
• 4:40
  Speaker 1: you can. Can you tell us the difference?
• 4:42
  Speaker 2: Oh? Yeah, so I can. I can split it into yeah,
• 4:50
  Speaker 2: like categories. I suppose of like, you know, where was
• 4:52
  Speaker 2: I mentally? Where was I emotionally? Where was I physically?
• 4:57
  Speaker 2: Because I was my health had deteriorated quite drastically. I'd
• 5:02
  Speaker 2: had prior to this heart transplant, I'd actually had a
• 5:07
  Speaker 2: machine implanted into my heart. It's called the left ventricular
• 5:11
  Speaker 2: syst device. It's a machine that literally did the job
• 5:16
  Speaker 2: of the left side of the heart. So they implanted
• 5:19
  Speaker 2: into the actual heart wall and it sucks the blood
• 5:23
  Speaker 2: out the heart through a tube and then it pumps
• 5:27
  Speaker 2: it back through it another tube that they connect to
• 5:30
  Speaker 2: your aorta, and it's run externally. It's actually ran externly
• 5:34
  Speaker 2: by a set of lithium batteries. There's a set of them,
• 5:39
  Speaker 2: and they last eight hours. They last for eight hours,
• 5:42
  Speaker 2: and after eight hours, they'll beap for fifteen minutes. And
• 5:45
  Speaker 2: if you don't, if you don't change them in fifteen minutes,
• 5:49
  Speaker 2: the machine after fifteen minutes can stop and then it's
• 5:53
  Speaker 2: up to your heart where it can carry on. And
• 5:55
  Speaker 2: in my particular case, it wouldn't have been for long.
• 5:58
  Speaker 2: So I kind of lived that way exactly eleven months
• 6:02
  Speaker 2: and eleven years and ten months.
• 6:05
  Speaker 3: Year.
• 6:05
  Speaker 1: Dude, I was going to say that eleven years. I mean,
• 6:09
  Speaker 1: that's twelve years. I mean, so for nearly twelve years
• 6:13
  Speaker 1: you had this external gizmo on you that kept your
• 6:16
  Speaker 1: heart working and kept you alive.
• 6:20
  Speaker 2: I did you.
• 6:21
  Speaker 1: Now I've read a little bit, only a little bit,
• 6:23
  Speaker 1: so I know you didn't wrap yourself in cotton wool.
• 6:26
  Speaker 1: Would it be fair to say that you are a
• 6:30
  Speaker 1: bit loosey goosey, that you were a bit wild at times,
• 6:34
  Speaker 1: that you didn't take all the care you should have.
• 6:38
  Speaker 2: Well, I mean, you know, I was, you know, just
• 6:42
  Speaker 2: I suppose it's good to give context. I was pre
• 6:44
  Speaker 2: pre transplant and what got me to that position, and
• 6:49
  Speaker 2: I can I can revert a little bit to my
• 6:51
  Speaker 2: to my earlier nature, and yeah it was a rugby boy.
• 6:58
  Speaker 2: I was always curious and mischief us from a young man,
• 7:02
  Speaker 2: and yeah, I kind of that nothing changed through through
• 7:07
  Speaker 2: high school. I was. I was in boarding school in
• 7:09
  Speaker 2: quite a prestigious school in joe Burg, and you know,
• 7:14
  Speaker 2: I inevitably got to a lot of trouble and that
• 7:19
  Speaker 2: kind of followed me through life. Shocked kind of followed
• 7:24
  Speaker 2: it followed me through life. I mean, listen, boarding schools
• 7:27
  Speaker 2: no joke, it does you know. They lead, They lead
• 7:30
  Speaker 2: with the with an iron fist, especially through the older boys,
• 7:33
  Speaker 2: and the discipline we received in the school. I mean
• 7:36
  Speaker 2: it kept me on the straight and narrow, I can
• 7:38
  Speaker 2: tell you that from nothing, albeit pushing boundaries at all times.
• 7:42
  Speaker 2: And yeah, that that's that kind of resistance to authority
• 7:49
  Speaker 2: followed me through my rest of my life and through
• 7:55
  Speaker 2: my career. Obviously. I was a professional and international rugby player.
• 7:59
  Speaker 2: Played for ten years a pro in Wales with two
• 8:03
  Speaker 2: different clubs in Wales. One was the Dragons and others
• 8:05
  Speaker 2: than the Scarlets, and I played. I had seven caps
• 8:09
  Speaker 2: for Wales and needless to say, it also impacted in
• 8:12
  Speaker 2: my international and professional career through my resistance to authority
• 8:18
  Speaker 2: and being told what to do, which I was and
• 8:23
  Speaker 2: I could you could say, I was, Yeah, how.
• 8:28
  Speaker 1: Many times did they want you to talk to a
• 8:30
  Speaker 1: shrink about your emotional regulation issues?
• 8:36
  Speaker 2: Yeah? I had some serious issues with coaches over the years,
• 8:41
  Speaker 2: and inevitably it was what ended my Welsh career with
• 8:45
  Speaker 2: Underwarrit Gatland's reign. That and my performances due to my
• 8:50
  Speaker 2: off field endeavors, and that was the kind of a rap.
• 8:55
  Speaker 2: And when I was twenty nine then I just was
• 9:00
  Speaker 2: coming to the end of my one contract with the
• 9:02
  Speaker 2: Scarlet as I was moving on to France, I had
• 9:07
  Speaker 2: a heart attack and that was which was the beginning
• 9:10
  Speaker 2: of this huge journey that I've began. As I was
• 9:13
  Speaker 2: twenty nine, I was in training. I was doing an
• 9:17
  Speaker 2: intervalsation on the bike, just an usual Thursday morning after
• 9:21
  Speaker 2: typically we had a Wednesday off Saturday game and I
• 9:24
  Speaker 2: was just in the gym and I was about five
• 9:26
  Speaker 2: minutes from the end of my bike session and just boom,
• 9:31
  Speaker 2: massive gripper in the gym and stumbled across the gym,
• 9:37
  Speaker 2: got to the physier's room, told him I think I'm
• 9:39
  Speaker 2: having a heart attack, because it's the only thing I
• 9:40
  Speaker 2: could think of that I was having. And I clapsed
• 9:44
  Speaker 2: on the floor. Ambulance came, put me on ECG and
• 9:48
  Speaker 2: they were like, yep, You're definitely having a heart attack,
• 9:51
  Speaker 2: and I was saying shock. I couldn't believe it. I rang,
• 9:54
  Speaker 2: I had my phone on me. I rang my ex
• 9:56
  Speaker 2: wife at the time and see it. I'm on the
• 9:59
  Speaker 2: way to the hospital. I have a heart attack. She
• 10:00
  Speaker 2: obviously didn't believe me, so that I was putting in
• 10:02
  Speaker 2: a well. Who thinks a.
• 10:06
  Speaker 1: Twenty nine year old elite athlete is having a bloody
• 10:09
  Speaker 1: heart attack?
• 10:09
  Speaker 2: Nobody, Yeah, exactly, And it was just crazy. The whole
• 10:13
  Speaker 2: thing was crazy. And then I got rush hospital, had
• 10:16
  Speaker 2: an emergency operation bypass, and when I woke up, I
• 10:20
  Speaker 2: had my career was over and I had had a
• 10:22
  Speaker 2: quadruple bypass and I struggled to even walk fifty meters
• 10:26
  Speaker 2: on the flat.
• 10:28
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 10:28
  Speaker 2: So that was really the beginning of this really crazy journey, Mate,
• 10:35
  Speaker 2: And that was in twenty twelve. By twenty thirteen, I
• 10:41
  Speaker 2: got told I had a year to live on the
• 10:44
  Speaker 2: state of my organ and my health. And then in
• 10:48
  Speaker 2: twenty fourteen, that's when I was implanted with the machine
• 10:51
  Speaker 2: I was talking about earlier. Yeah, left in tricular device,
• 10:55
  Speaker 2: which was in itself the biggest, most challenging operation I had.
• 11:02
  Speaker 2: I had the op. It took like nine hours on
• 11:05
  Speaker 2: the slab. I think I was in a I don't
• 11:09
  Speaker 2: think I know. I was in an induced coma for
• 11:12
  Speaker 2: fourteen days post op, and thankfully I did come out
• 11:16
  Speaker 2: of it. And Yeah, and then I lived with that
• 11:20
  Speaker 2: machine for twelve years. And for the first six years
• 11:24
  Speaker 2: I was navigating transformation from the game and the transition
• 11:31
  Speaker 2: from the game and my complete loss of identity, a
• 11:37
  Speaker 2: complete lack of emotional regulation or mental capacity to deal
• 11:44
  Speaker 2: with my life situation which led to me imploding. I
• 11:50
  Speaker 2: was an alcoholic on the heart transport list with a
• 11:52
  Speaker 2: machine that ran my heart in dire straits, put my
• 11:57
  Speaker 2: family through the ringer. I ended up in rehab in
• 12:00
  Speaker 2: South Africa in twenty twenty prior, just prior to COVID,
• 12:07
  Speaker 2: and somehow, thankfully, by the grace of God, I had
• 12:11
  Speaker 2: a bit of a wake up call in rehab and
• 12:16
  Speaker 2: I've been sober now it'll be seven years in September,
• 12:20
  Speaker 2: and you know, that's well done. That's yeah. And the
• 12:27
  Speaker 2: last kind of six and almost seven years now, you know,
• 12:33
  Speaker 2: the majority of that time with the machine was just
• 12:35
  Speaker 2: as leaning into self realization and like what is actually
• 12:43
  Speaker 2: what is this human experience? What the hell has it
• 12:47
  Speaker 2: just happened to me? You know, and navigating like, actually,
• 12:51
  Speaker 2: all the suffering that I experienced was so beneficial to
• 12:54
  Speaker 2: snap me out of the state I was in and
• 12:57
  Speaker 2: allowed me to find these different modalities and medicines and
• 13:02
  Speaker 2: people and different types of work that eventually brought me
• 13:05
  Speaker 2: to the space I was in preop. Which I believe
• 13:07
  Speaker 2: is the reason why I survived and why I'm here today,
• 13:11
  Speaker 2: is that I think in any other circumstance, there's no
• 13:14
  Speaker 2: way I would have survived the three operations, certainly not
• 13:18
  Speaker 2: in the circumstances which which played our post off when
• 13:21
  Speaker 2: I was told about the stay of my heart and
• 13:23
  Speaker 2: how little time I actually had left, when I was
• 13:25
  Speaker 2: offered an organ.
• 13:26
  Speaker 1: I saw, I saw you holding that heart. Mate. There's
• 13:30
  Speaker 1: a photo of Reese holding his heart. Just go on
• 13:33
  Speaker 1: the internet. You'll find it's very easy to find, and
• 13:36
  Speaker 1: I don't want to be hurtful, buddy, but that looked
• 13:39
  Speaker 1: like shit. That was the least healthy looking thing I've
• 13:43
  Speaker 1: ever seen.
• 13:46
  Speaker 2: Well it actually it didn't look like a heart. What
• 13:51
  Speaker 2: is that?
• 13:52
  Speaker 1: It looks like silver side. It looks like a.
• 13:57
  Speaker 2: Really battered brisket. Yeah, yeah, it had obviously the machine
• 14:02
  Speaker 2: that ran me was poking out the side of it
• 14:05
  Speaker 2: for in a which in itself was just the craziest
• 14:08
  Speaker 2: experience holding that heart because I got to hold it
• 14:13
  Speaker 2: before they took it off me. They wouldn't let me
• 14:15
  Speaker 2: keep it. I tried everything to keep it. I begged them,
• 14:17
  Speaker 2: you know, I said cultural reasons and all sorts of
• 14:21
  Speaker 2: things to try, and I was really adamant on one
• 14:23
  Speaker 2: of it. And it was mine anyway, so I still
• 14:26
  Speaker 2: quite the medical fraternity can't explain. They tell you it's waste,
• 14:30
  Speaker 2: but I'm sure they use it for various nefarious reasons.
• 14:34
  Speaker 2: But yeah, anyway, at least I got the privilege of
• 14:37
  Speaker 2: having a photograph and holding it, which in itself was
• 14:41
  Speaker 2: probably one of the most unbelievable experiences. But unsurprisingly, I
• 14:48
  Speaker 2: didn't have any expectation when I got to hold it,
• 14:52
  Speaker 2: But When I did hold it, I had the most
• 14:55
  Speaker 2: strange release. It was like a flashback of an entire
• 15:00
  Speaker 2: life spent together, from my mother's womb, through my childhood,
• 15:04
  Speaker 2: through my through my teen years with the laughter and
• 15:07
  Speaker 2: the fun with friends, to my professional rugby career, through
• 15:13
  Speaker 2: the cornage of my heart attacks, my alcoholism, and you know,
• 15:17
  Speaker 2: my married life, my children and the experiences had good, bad,
• 15:22
  Speaker 2: ugly everything in between. It was like and it was
• 15:25
  Speaker 2: really incredibly moving. Actually I cried for twelve hours post
• 15:30
  Speaker 2: holding my heart and like, just it wasn't aggrieving. It
• 15:34
  Speaker 2: was like a gratitude and yeah, I was just it was.
• 15:39
  Speaker 2: It was insane and I didn't expect that. It really
• 15:41
  Speaker 2: took me by surprise. So, yeah, that photo is really
• 15:44
  Speaker 2: quite mind blowing if you look at it.
• 15:47
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I love that.
• 15:49
  Speaker 2: How many people hold their hearts?
• 15:51
  Speaker 1: Yeah, dude, who nobody? Has anyone ever done that? So
• 15:55
  Speaker 1: many questions? Uh, so I want to I want to
• 15:59
  Speaker 1: go the boring route just momentarily. So was the state
• 16:04
  Speaker 1: of your heart when you were twenty nine when you
• 16:06
  Speaker 1: had your heart attack? Was that because of lifestyle and
• 16:09
  Speaker 1: behavior or was that genetic or was it a bit
• 16:12
  Speaker 1: of both or you don't know or they don't know.
• 16:16
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so yeah, they couldn't. They couldn't say that it
• 16:19
  Speaker 2: was anything. They didn't know if it was deterioration or
• 16:25
  Speaker 2: a birth defect. Because I actually had thin archery walls
• 16:28
  Speaker 2: on the left side of my heart, which was why
• 16:31
  Speaker 2: I had what I had was it's called spontaneous dissection
• 16:35
  Speaker 2: where basically that archery wall on the left side of
• 16:38
  Speaker 2: the heart split in high intensity exercise and then it
• 16:43
  Speaker 2: blocked downstream in the heart. So I had like a
• 16:46
  Speaker 2: plot a blockage in my heart which led to me
• 16:49
  Speaker 2: having the huge cardiac arrested.
• 16:52
  Speaker 1: How long did this this kind of epiphany go for?
• 16:56
  Speaker 1: Sorry I'm jumping around a bit, but like when you
• 16:58
  Speaker 1: were holding the heart and twelve twelve hours post up
• 17:02
  Speaker 1: where you were just crying?
• 17:04
  Speaker 2: Yeah, was that.
• 17:07
  Speaker 1: Emotional? Was that psychological? Was that spiritual? Was that physiological?
• 17:12
  Speaker 2: Was it all of it? To be honest with you,
• 17:15
  Speaker 2: it was so so it was so overwhelming in the
• 17:21
  Speaker 2: sensory experience. I think it was everything. I think it
• 17:24
  Speaker 2: was a spiritual, mental, emotional, physical, like it was all
• 17:30
  Speaker 2: in one. Like I couldn't explain the feeling that I had,
• 17:33
  Speaker 2: because if I couldn't, I have more recently discovered what
• 17:36
  Speaker 2: I believed to that feeling have been. At first, it
• 17:39
  Speaker 2: was just just amazement that I was still there, you know,
• 17:44
  Speaker 2: just absolute gratitude and thanks for being alive, and because
• 17:52
  Speaker 2: it had been such a journey for so long and
• 17:54
  Speaker 2: so much, so many ups and downs, so to actually
• 17:58
  Speaker 2: be alive was just such. I was so grateful and
• 18:02
  Speaker 2: just such a gift, just just so moving to just
• 18:06
  Speaker 2: to breathe, literally, just just my breath would bring me
• 18:09
  Speaker 2: to tears.
• 18:10
  Speaker 1: The two words that came to me when you were
• 18:12
  Speaker 1: talking were release and relief. Was it like a release
• 18:16
  Speaker 1: from something?
• 18:18
  Speaker 2: Oh absolutely, you know, like I'd been I'd been in
• 18:21
  Speaker 2: this situation for so damn long, you know, and this
• 18:24
  Speaker 2: machine albeit like the first part was it felt like
• 18:28
  Speaker 2: a trap like this like being you know, on a
• 18:32
  Speaker 2: leash and so limiting, you know, because I couldn't swim,
• 18:39
  Speaker 2: I couldn't go for a run, I couldn't go lift weights,
• 18:44
  Speaker 2: all the things that you would expect like from a
• 18:46
  Speaker 2: normal life, I couldn't do it. Took it took it
• 18:50
  Speaker 2: all from me. Everything. So it was just like it
• 18:52
  Speaker 2: was like life was challenging me constantly to it was
• 18:57
  Speaker 2: challenging my identity, it was like, oh, you want to
• 18:59
  Speaker 2: be restarting play, well, I'm going to take that from you.
• 19:02
  Speaker 2: Oh you want to be healthy? Are we going to
• 19:03
  Speaker 2: take that from me too? We're going to take Oh
• 19:06
  Speaker 2: well you want to have that as well. No, we're
• 19:08
  Speaker 2: going to take that and we're going to start stripping
• 19:10
  Speaker 2: you back mate to like you need to just come
• 19:13
  Speaker 2: and come and see home base. And so it broke me.
• 19:17
  Speaker 2: It absolutely destroyed me in every in every way mentally, emotionally,
• 19:22
  Speaker 2: it took my you know, it destroyed my marriage. I
• 19:25
  Speaker 2: traumatized my kids through my behavior. And then I went on,
• 19:30
  Speaker 2: you know, like I said, this this complete journey then
• 19:33
  Speaker 2: of acceptance and yeah, of course I accepted my situation
• 19:39
  Speaker 2: and I was able to That's how I was able
• 19:41
  Speaker 2: to live and through the sobriety. And my situation was
• 19:44
  Speaker 2: you know, I can't do all those things, okay, well
• 19:47
  Speaker 2: I can come to peace with that. And so all
• 19:50
  Speaker 2: these things that I navigated from that period on was
• 19:53
  Speaker 2: about all these things that you hear about, you know,
• 19:56
  Speaker 2: in spiritual practices such as non attachment and accept radical acceptance,
• 20:02
  Speaker 2: and how that can eventually bring you to peace. And yes,
• 20:06
  Speaker 2: that did happen, but it was like layers and layers
• 20:10
  Speaker 2: and layers and layers, and eventually it was a complete
• 20:14
  Speaker 2: and utter letting go of expectation of timelines. And eventually
• 20:20
  Speaker 2: what I got left was was actually the fear of
• 20:23
  Speaker 2: death is mortality. It was mortality was what was my
• 20:27
  Speaker 2: final hurdle to overcome, because even in the last couple
• 20:32
  Speaker 2: of months pre my transplant was what I've had a
• 20:36
  Speaker 2: deep in church of pulling towards making peace with so
• 20:40
  Speaker 2: that I could actually come that day make peace with
• 20:45
  Speaker 2: death and meet death with a smile or have not
• 20:49
  Speaker 2: attachment to the outcome of that of potentially living and
• 20:52
  Speaker 2: experiencing a whole nother part of existence through the lens
• 20:58
  Speaker 2: of a potentially someone else's heart, and because I didn't
• 21:05
  Speaker 2: know how that would look or feel or be, you know,
• 21:07
  Speaker 2: and what kind of stay of health I would because
• 21:09
  Speaker 2: you have so many different stories, and you know people
• 21:13
  Speaker 2: who have rejection infection, the tablets of this, and you
• 21:16
  Speaker 2: have side effects, and so there was so much you know, information,
• 21:21
  Speaker 2: I suppose that it ultimately came down to trust, faith
• 21:26
  Speaker 2: and belief, yeah, and letting go.
• 21:31
  Speaker 1: It's so funny that when we talk about ego, sorry,
• 21:35
  Speaker 1: when we talk about identity. I want to talk about
• 21:37
  Speaker 1: ego in a month, but identity. You know, when someone
• 21:40
  Speaker 1: would say to like when someone would say to me
• 21:43
  Speaker 1: when I was young, right because I I was kind
• 21:46
  Speaker 1: of a want to be bullfed bodybuilder or and I
• 21:49
  Speaker 1: was a business owner and I owned a few gyms,
• 21:51
  Speaker 1: and and you know, people will go tell me about you,
• 21:54
  Speaker 1: and I'd go, oh, well, you know, I own a
• 21:56
  Speaker 1: couple of gyms, and I you know, I do a
• 21:58
  Speaker 1: bit of writing for the newspaper, and I do this,
• 22:01
  Speaker 1: and you would tell them about all the things that
• 22:04
  Speaker 1: you do, you would not tell them about you. And
• 22:08
  Speaker 1: I started to realize that I got my identity and
• 22:11
  Speaker 1: my self worth and you know, my self esteem through things,
• 22:16
  Speaker 1: not through just who I was as a person, who
• 22:19
  Speaker 1: I was, you know, like Eckhart totally talks about this.
• 22:23
  Speaker 1: I actually said this the other day on a podcast.
• 22:25
  Speaker 1: But when he talks about identity, he says, I am
• 22:28
  Speaker 1: the awareness of what I'm not. I'm the awareness of
• 22:32
  Speaker 1: everything that I'm not. And I'm not a body, and
• 22:34
  Speaker 1: I'm not a job, and I'm not a brand, and
• 22:36
  Speaker 1: I'm not a bank balance, and I'm not a rugby player,
• 22:39
  Speaker 1: and they're just things that I do or have done,
• 22:41
  Speaker 1: their capacities, their skills, their bank balances, whatever. How much
• 22:48
  Speaker 1: closer are you now to understanding who you are beyond
• 22:52
  Speaker 1: all your stuff, all those thoughts and ideas and all
• 22:55
  Speaker 1: those stories about you know, the Rhys Thomas.
• 23:02
  Speaker 2: Ah they It's been easily in a The most rewarding
• 23:09
  Speaker 2: part of the journey has been stripping away what I'm
• 23:12
  Speaker 2: not and ultimately going into my heart transplants. The realization
• 23:22
  Speaker 2: was that that I can take nothing with me, Nothing comes,
• 23:27
  Speaker 2: nothing goes to the other side, because that in the
• 23:30
  Speaker 2: moment pre off, when I was getting wheeled into theater,
• 23:33
  Speaker 2: I was in a place of deep, deep peace. I
• 23:38
  Speaker 2: done relentless amounts of work for preparation for that exact
• 23:42
  Speaker 2: moment for almost twelve years, you know, and twelve in
• 23:47
  Speaker 2: half of that time destroyed me. My my my world
• 23:53
  Speaker 2: view of who I am got shattered into a thousand pieces.
• 23:58
  Speaker 2: And then in the six years of working on on
• 24:02
  Speaker 2: myself and stripping through the layers of what was there
• 24:06
  Speaker 2: and beliefs and my limitations and my projections and all
• 24:13
  Speaker 2: these ego based beliefs and who I am just got
• 24:20
  Speaker 2: stripped away. Just multiple ego deaths and not The ego
• 24:23
  Speaker 2: didn't change, you know, not the ego didn't go away.
• 24:26
  Speaker 2: It was more like a revealing and are coming to
• 24:28
  Speaker 2: terms and acceptance of the parts of me and the
• 24:32
  Speaker 2: parts of my ego that were that I was rejecting
• 24:34
  Speaker 2: or they were in my shadow that I hadn't integrated.
• 24:37
  Speaker 2: But ultimately, I feel like all of these experiences were
• 24:40
  Speaker 2: just always leading me in towards the parts of my
• 24:44
  Speaker 2: shadow that were maybe unconscious or subconscious, that were then
• 24:49
  Speaker 2: pushing me towards them through circumstance through lived experience and
• 24:54
  Speaker 2: mostly in part through suffering. And now, I mean what
• 24:57
  Speaker 2: a great teacher suffering has been for me. You know,
• 25:01
  Speaker 2: at every turn it's just been like maybe I start
• 25:04
  Speaker 2: to think differently and slip back into old habits or
• 25:07
  Speaker 2: behaviors or beliefs, and then all of a sudden, bang,
• 25:10
  Speaker 2: it would just strip it away from me, whether it
• 25:12
  Speaker 2: be my health or anything. So yeah, I mean, understanding
• 25:17
  Speaker 2: who I was beneath, you know, who I thought I
• 25:20
  Speaker 2: was at the level of the soul. It was incredibly
• 25:25
  Speaker 2: empowering and pivotal in my survival and for me to
• 25:31
  Speaker 2: be here. The mindset that I had pre off was
• 25:36
  Speaker 2: was one of deep peace actually because I had no
• 25:39
  Speaker 2: attachment to outcome. If I died, I died, if I lived,
• 25:43
  Speaker 2: I would be so blessed as to have another day
• 25:46
  Speaker 2: on this wonderful, spectacular earth, to have an experience love
• 25:52
  Speaker 2: and God and nature and all of these wonderful gifts
• 25:57
  Speaker 2: that we we overlook because of circumstance and success and
• 26:04
  Speaker 2: trauma and yes, the systems that we live in and
• 26:08
  Speaker 2: this matrix so like it's been beautiful me. You know,
• 26:14
  Speaker 2: the whole journey itself is.
• 26:16
  Speaker 1: Just you know, dude, for Bok who is nearly dead,
• 26:21
  Speaker 1: you've got amazing energy. Like if you could see what
• 26:24
  Speaker 1: I'm seeing everyone, he just looks like the happiest, healthiest
• 26:29
  Speaker 1: I just want to say something that's funny. You were
• 26:31
  Speaker 1: talking about this destroyed me. That destroyed me, and maybe
• 26:35
  Speaker 1: it kind of maybe it destroyed the Reese Show. And
• 26:41
  Speaker 1: what it did was it eventually revealed Reese, Like the
• 26:45
  Speaker 1: destruction became the revelation. It's like, this is you. That
• 26:51
  Speaker 1: was you being a dickhead, that was you trapped in
• 26:55
  Speaker 1: all these destructive and unproductive habits and behaviors and thoughts
• 26:59
  Speaker 1: and and that was you kind of almost role playing
• 27:03
  Speaker 1: this character. This larger than life, you know, bulletproof and
• 27:09
  Speaker 1: maybe I mean, I don't know, this sounds a bit
• 27:11
  Speaker 1: woo woo and spiritual web like maybe for you to
• 27:15
  Speaker 1: become what and who you are now, maybe that's where
• 27:19
  Speaker 1: you need it to go. I don't need to go there.
• 27:22
  Speaker 1: I'm glad you took the journey and you can tell
• 27:24
  Speaker 1: me about it.
• 27:26
  Speaker 2: Exactly. And when I say me, it's like egoic me,
• 27:29
  Speaker 2: you know, like this, yeah, uh, this Reese the you know,
• 27:34
  Speaker 2: Reesta rugby player, Reesta Pisshead, the clown. Yeah, you know,
• 27:40
  Speaker 2: this this lovable rogue who was you know, transversing his
• 27:45
  Speaker 2: way through life, just breaking everything and causing distress and
• 27:51
  Speaker 2: breaking you know, family units, and yeah, it was it
• 27:58
  Speaker 2: was just this, you know. And I it was all
• 28:00
  Speaker 2: designed for me in the end, you know, It's been
• 28:05
  Speaker 2: ultimately to bring me back to the realization of who
• 28:08
  Speaker 2: I am beyond the skin and bone. I think that
• 28:11
  Speaker 2: was the thing that came through for me really strongly,
• 28:14
  Speaker 2: probably in February pre April up because I got admitted
• 28:18
  Speaker 2: into hospital. I had an episode in my heart of
• 28:22
  Speaker 2: ventricular fibrillation, yeah, which in itself was a miracle. I
• 28:28
  Speaker 2: survived that because it's an electrical fault in the heart
• 28:32
  Speaker 2: of VF and if you don't have a defibrillator, no
• 28:35
  Speaker 2: amount of no amount of CPR is going to bring
• 28:39
  Speaker 2: you back from it. But finally I had an implanted
• 28:41
  Speaker 2: defend in the body and as I was driving to work,
• 28:45
  Speaker 2: it gave me a little hiding, which at the time
• 28:50
  Speaker 2: I thought was I've been resurrected by God and He'd
• 28:53
  Speaker 2: healed my heart and that it wasn't to be and
• 28:57
  Speaker 2: ended up in hospital for a week in my heart
• 28:59
  Speaker 2: cateria quite right belief from that point on, which why
• 29:03
  Speaker 2: when I got my heart, they said I'd probably less
• 29:04
  Speaker 2: than two weeks to live on my organ. And then
• 29:08
  Speaker 2: my sheep, my machine had one hundred and twenty eight
• 29:10
  Speaker 2: faults in it and it was only a matter of
• 29:11
  Speaker 2: time before that stopped. So I was really the amount
• 29:15
  Speaker 2: of miracles that have happened to me to still be
• 29:18
  Speaker 2: here is truly it can only be divine in my opinion,
• 29:23
  Speaker 2: in a yeah, everything, you know. I got offered three
• 29:27
  Speaker 2: hearts on the same morning and from three different like
• 29:32
  Speaker 2: ten or twelve years in the UK, nine and a
• 29:35
  Speaker 2: half years on a list, and I was on eight
• 29:39
  Speaker 2: years in the UK and in the end, because the
• 29:42
  Speaker 2: longest anyone that had survived of the machine that I
• 29:45
  Speaker 2: had was eleven years and I was on eight years,
• 29:47
  Speaker 2: and I thought like, this is not the way that
• 29:49
  Speaker 2: this works in the UK because I lived in Wales
• 29:52
  Speaker 2: for twenty four years. I thought this is not going
• 29:54
  Speaker 2: to work. Like I'm going to have to be a
• 29:56
  Speaker 2: bit proactive here. So I started to fundraise because I
• 29:59
  Speaker 2: wanted to go to the US to get my heart done,
• 30:02
  Speaker 2: and in the end it was too much. Was half
• 30:04
  Speaker 2: a million quid to go to San Diego. I managed
• 30:07
  Speaker 2: to have fundraised one hundred and sixty k pounds, which
• 30:10
  Speaker 2: led me to the decision to explore coming back to
• 30:13
  Speaker 2: South Africa, where I was born, and that's what I did.
• 30:17
  Speaker 2: So in two thousand and twenty four, no halfway through
• 30:25
  Speaker 2: two to four, I came back to Cape Town, came
• 30:28
  Speaker 2: on their heartloting list and I'd been on there for
• 30:30
  Speaker 2: eighteen months and I was elevated last June to the
• 30:35
  Speaker 2: number one priority in South Africa. It was my health
• 30:37
  Speaker 2: deteriorated at that point and the machine started to play
• 30:41
  Speaker 2: up and my breathing was terrible. I actually went to
• 30:46
  Speaker 2: a silent retreat for ten days, and my health improved
• 30:48
  Speaker 2: dramatically on the back end of silent meditation retreat, which
• 30:54
  Speaker 2: I actually got rid of my AF through meditation, my
• 30:57
  Speaker 2: atrial fibrillation for those that where's your heart just lying down? Yeah,
• 31:05
  Speaker 2: it's awful. And I did that through meditation and the
• 31:10
  Speaker 2: hospital didn't believe me. And then I did the same
• 31:13
  Speaker 2: in February lucid dreaming after using Buffor, I got rid
• 31:20
  Speaker 2: of my AF again and they thought I was some
• 31:22
  Speaker 2: sort of weird.
• 31:23
  Speaker 1: But have you heard of me? Have you heard of
• 31:25
  Speaker 1: iber game? Mate?
• 31:27
  Speaker 2: Yes? I have, I have, indeed.
• 31:31
  Speaker 1: I mean, by the way, neither of us are recommending
• 31:34
  Speaker 1: anything everyone, so we're just two blocks having a chat.
• 31:36
  Speaker 1: So so I don't go and try any of this
• 31:39
  Speaker 1: because he's not a doctor and neither am I and
• 31:45
  Speaker 1: our IQ. Our IQ is about seventy five between us.
• 31:48
  Speaker 1: So no, you're quite smart, that's for sure. I was
• 31:51
  Speaker 1: going to ask you. You spoke about you spoke about
• 31:55
  Speaker 1: the damage that you'd done and relationships and you know,
• 31:59
  Speaker 1: like when you were kind of on a intentional or
• 32:03
  Speaker 1: not mission of self destruction or perhaps selfishness and lack
• 32:08
  Speaker 1: of self awareness of others, and then you've come out
• 32:12
  Speaker 1: and you're kind of this. You know, you're different, you're different,
• 32:15
  Speaker 1: you're a different in the same person, but you're not
• 32:18
  Speaker 1: really the same person. Your world viewers change, your beliefs,
• 32:21
  Speaker 1: your values. I guess you're like the way that you
• 32:24
  Speaker 1: are and the right the way that you treat people
• 32:27
  Speaker 1: and yourself, and I guess you're I don't know. Your
• 32:33
  Speaker 1: normal operating system is different. You're not the same when
• 32:36
  Speaker 1: you look back at and I've had to do the
• 32:40
  Speaker 1: same thing in different ways. But where you look back
• 32:43
  Speaker 1: at some of the damage that you may have done
• 32:47
  Speaker 1: to other people or just having been thoughtless or selfish
• 32:50
  Speaker 1: or insensitive, where you've caused pain. So now do you
• 32:55
  Speaker 1: what do you do with that? Do you let that go?
• 32:59
  Speaker 1: Do you try to, as it's the way in some
• 33:02
  Speaker 1: of the programs, make amends. Do you reach out? Do
• 33:05
  Speaker 1: you say nothing? Do you pray about it? Do you
• 33:08
  Speaker 1: because a lot of stuff, most historical stuff, well, we
• 33:11
  Speaker 1: can't change anything historically. We can only change, you know,
• 33:16
  Speaker 1: what we do in the moment and whether or not
• 33:18
  Speaker 1: that might change how someone is regarding something in the
• 33:21
  Speaker 1: past or whatever. But how do you think about that?
• 33:24
  Speaker 1: And you know, with this new kind of spiritual and
• 33:27
  Speaker 1: or religious philosophy. How do you feel about those things
• 33:31
  Speaker 1: that you regret doing in the past.
• 33:36
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so I no longer have. I no longer hold
• 33:40
  Speaker 2: the regrets Craig. They were a process in which by
• 33:45
  Speaker 2: when I started on this journey, which for me was
• 33:51
  Speaker 2: in rehab, was when was when the penny dropped right
• 33:55
  Speaker 2: that Like it was like it was like waking up
• 33:58
  Speaker 2: out of a really bad dream and I was like, oh, like,
• 34:02
  Speaker 2: what the fuck have I been up to? H And
• 34:06
  Speaker 2: then the realization of oh, I have got a lot
• 34:10
  Speaker 2: of making up to do here, and I don't know
• 34:12
  Speaker 2: if I'm going to be able to make it up
• 34:13
  Speaker 2: to everyone, but like, let's just start somewhere. Let's go home.
• 34:18
  Speaker 2: Because I had an intervention whilst on a family holiday.
• 34:21
  Speaker 2: I was in Mauritius. My mates and my dad and
• 34:25
  Speaker 2: my ex wife sent me to rehab while I was
• 34:28
  Speaker 2: on holiday, and I didn't want to go. It wasn't
• 34:31
  Speaker 2: a choice. I didn't choose to go to rehab. I
• 34:34
  Speaker 2: basically got told I had to go or that would
• 34:36
  Speaker 2: be it with everyone. My friends would speak to me,
• 34:40
  Speaker 2: and my ex wife would leave me and we our
• 34:42
  Speaker 2: relationship was already in tatters at this point. So from
• 34:46
  Speaker 2: that point on, it was kind of when I did
• 34:48
  Speaker 2: wake up at the end of rehab, I'd gone home,
• 34:51
  Speaker 2: and it was like wow, like it was everything was different,
• 34:56
  Speaker 2: like like you said, everything changed, but nothing changed, Like
• 35:01
  Speaker 2: I had a new work, like this new view, there's
• 35:03
  Speaker 2: new values, this new sense of life. But also at
• 35:08
  Speaker 2: the same time, I had deep regret, so much shape,
• 35:12
  Speaker 2: so much guilt, and I just needed a channel it.
• 35:15
  Speaker 2: And I was like, how were how do I channel it?
• 35:19
  Speaker 2: And everyone was like, right, just at the end of rehab, listen,
• 35:22
  Speaker 2: stick to the twelve steps, work with a sponsor, you know,
• 35:26
  Speaker 2: go and get some support psychologically, and just start navigating
• 35:30
  Speaker 2: your way out the whole. So, you know, that's what
• 35:33
  Speaker 2: I started to do. I started to I never read
• 35:34
  Speaker 2: a book, mate, and I never read a book in
• 35:36
  Speaker 2: my life. I couldn't be asked with it. So the
• 35:39
  Speaker 2: first one, you know, I picked up was the big
• 35:43
  Speaker 2: book in AA. My sponsor made me do it. He
• 35:46
  Speaker 2: made me do it, and actually I got a hell
• 35:48
  Speaker 2: of a lot out of the experience, you know. And
• 35:50
  Speaker 2: my sponsor's name was Adrian, absolutely wonderful, incredible guy. Worked
• 35:54
  Speaker 2: with him for eighteen months. At the end of the
• 35:57
  Speaker 2: eighteen months. You know, I had start to understand things like,
• 36:01
  Speaker 2: you know, I lacked a complete moral compass. I had
• 36:03
  Speaker 2: no values, you know, and in the most part of
• 36:07
  Speaker 2: the rugby environment lends itself to this. You know, absolutely
• 36:13
  Speaker 2: in every way, I.
• 36:13
  Speaker 1: Could be a hedonistic, selfish.
• 36:17
  Speaker 2: Oh my god, yeah, egotistical like asshole, and in most
• 36:23
  Speaker 2: parts I wasn't an arsehole though, you know, that's the
• 36:25
  Speaker 2: reality of the crag. I was actually still the same guy.
• 36:28
  Speaker 2: I just thought I was chocolate in moments, especially when
• 36:31
  Speaker 2: I was.
• 36:32
  Speaker 1: Drunk, I thought I was That could be the title
• 36:36
  Speaker 1: of the show. I fucking love that. That's hilarious.
• 36:40
  Speaker 2: And so that's kind of where the ego led me
• 36:43
  Speaker 2: in those years, especially during my international career. You know,
• 36:46
  Speaker 2: you know when especially in Whales, little goldfish Ball. You know,
• 36:49
  Speaker 2: it's a small place. Everyone loves their raggers, and yeah,
• 36:54
  Speaker 2: you can get ahead of yourself, and but yeah, you know,
• 36:59
  Speaker 2: just that pro was revealing, very revealing. I mean, the
• 37:02
  Speaker 2: tall Steps steps are going to do that, They're gonna
• 37:05
  Speaker 2: I mean, I think what a Carl Jung said, it's
• 37:07
  Speaker 2: it's a great way to have a spiritual experience is
• 37:10
  Speaker 2: to use the twelve steps and that was most certainly
• 37:13
  Speaker 2: my experience, but I also got to eighteen months and
• 37:16
  Speaker 2: then I realized, hang on, and maybe, like, if I
• 37:20
  Speaker 2: don't go to three meetings a week, I feel like
• 37:22
  Speaker 2: I'm gonna self implode. So like, what other way are they?
• 37:26
  Speaker 1: Like?
• 37:26
  Speaker 2: What else is?
• 37:28
  Speaker 1: Like?
• 37:28
  Speaker 2: I started to hear about you know, I read Eckartol's
• 37:31
  Speaker 2: Power of Now and that that was like, oh wow,
• 37:36
  Speaker 2: what presence? You know, what is? What is awareness and consciousness?
• 37:41
  Speaker 2: And that led me to a different line of exploration
• 37:44
  Speaker 2: and I was like, okay, you know, at this point,
• 37:47
  Speaker 2: I'd met my I'd gone through my divorce, I was
• 37:51
  Speaker 2: in the midst of real time watching my children go
• 37:54
  Speaker 2: through their trauma response. They were literally just entering into
• 37:59
  Speaker 2: the teens. And my elder kids because I had two
• 38:03
  Speaker 2: older kids that were from my wife's first marriage. They
• 38:05
  Speaker 2: and my children, but they m you can call them
• 38:07
  Speaker 2: my step kids. Just to make the age relevance work.
• 38:10
  Speaker 2: My eldest daughter is now in this moment thirty one,
• 38:13
  Speaker 2: my son's thirty twenty seven, and then my eldest daughter's
• 38:17
  Speaker 2: twenty and my son's nineteen. At the time, they were
• 38:20
  Speaker 2: all much younger post rehab, and you know, the eighteen
• 38:25
  Speaker 2: months of it was weird for them because they had
• 38:27
  Speaker 2: to like, all of a sudden, you know, this larger
• 38:30
  Speaker 2: than life rogue piss head is now a sober, you know,
• 38:36
  Speaker 2: hippie and trying to navigate. You know, he's talking about
• 38:42
  Speaker 2: you know, he's praying and meditating, and he talks about
• 38:45
  Speaker 2: God and you know, and for me, God was quite
• 38:48
  Speaker 2: a triggering word. So I used good, orderly direction and
• 38:53
  Speaker 2: that was the most incredible advice I ever got given
• 38:56
  Speaker 2: by my sponsor, was to not overthinker and just think
• 38:59
  Speaker 2: of it as that and let myself determine, you know,
• 39:02
  Speaker 2: because I was quite I'm very stubborn, Craig. I need
• 39:05
  Speaker 2: to know. I need to find things out myself. I
• 39:07
  Speaker 2: won't be told. So that led me on an entire
• 39:10
  Speaker 2: journey of no, you know, looking through the human experience
• 39:13
  Speaker 2: to try and find out, you know, where are we from,
• 39:15
  Speaker 2: where's our divinity? And you know, who is the higher
• 39:18
  Speaker 2: partner that I'm that I'm praying too, which led me
• 39:21
  Speaker 2: on entire different journey. But so yeah, I think that
• 39:25
  Speaker 2: whole process was was revealing in itself because it led
• 39:28
  Speaker 2: me down different paths and I was very open minded,
• 39:31
  Speaker 2: and it was through you know, different types of therapies, mate,
• 39:36
  Speaker 2: like you know I did. I worked with a different
• 39:39
  Speaker 2: psychologists and I realized like speaking therapy actually wasn't doing much.
• 39:43
  Speaker 2: Then I used E MDR E F T. Then it
• 39:47
  Speaker 2: was psychedelics. Then it was you know, I came across
• 39:54
  Speaker 2: an NLP practitioner, and you know that NLP practitioner was
• 39:59
  Speaker 2: and any life change and experience for me because after
• 40:03
  Speaker 2: five sessions with him, I never ever went back to AAA.
• 40:06
  Speaker 2: It's been over five years since I've returned back to
• 40:09
  Speaker 2: the rooms because in that moment, I realized I had choice, yes,
• 40:13
  Speaker 2: But all through that experience, Craig, I was navigating shame
• 40:18
  Speaker 2: and guilt and regret. And it took me three and
• 40:21
  Speaker 2: a half years just to move through the regret of
• 40:24
  Speaker 2: how I'd not be able to reciprocate the love that
• 40:27
  Speaker 2: my ex wife had given me. Just one regret took
• 40:31
  Speaker 2: me three and a half years to work through, and
• 40:33
  Speaker 2: that was my marriage. And then it was the regret
• 40:36
  Speaker 2: of watching my children go into this response of how
• 40:40
  Speaker 2: they navigated their teens and they were very different. My
• 40:44
  Speaker 2: daughter went through the very very unsettling period through depression
• 40:49
  Speaker 2: and anxiety and multiple other issues, and then my son
• 40:54
  Speaker 2: went through one of rage and anger and being expelled
• 40:57
  Speaker 2: from multiple schools and ending up in these naughty schools
• 41:00
  Speaker 2: where then it was just it was so hard. And
• 41:04
  Speaker 2: then that in itself taught me then as a dad,
• 41:06
  Speaker 2: that I know, no words are going to change the
• 41:09
  Speaker 2: outcome of where my children are heading, only through behavior
• 41:14
  Speaker 2: and through boundaries and through love for myself where they
• 41:17
  Speaker 2: start to respect me again, because I was so full
• 41:19
  Speaker 2: of guilt and shame and regret that I was parenting
• 41:22
  Speaker 2: from that place, and that in itself led to a
• 41:24
  Speaker 2: whole world of pain for me. Yeah, and my kids
• 41:27
  Speaker 2: were getting away with murder, mate, you know, because I
• 41:30
  Speaker 2: couldn't say no because I had so much shame. So
• 41:33
  Speaker 2: it was just wild. The whole experience, Mate, was just bizarre.
• 41:37
  Speaker 1: That is super interesting, dude. You know what I love
• 41:39
  Speaker 1: about this is, you know, anyone who's in recovery, and
• 41:43
  Speaker 1: I don't necessarily mean drugs or booze or gambling or
• 41:47
  Speaker 1: but anything. It could be even a physical injury, It
• 41:50
  Speaker 1: could be emotional pain from a relationship, or grief from
• 41:54
  Speaker 1: a loved one passing away, or that there's no like
• 41:59
  Speaker 1: if you go talk to a psychotherapist, you'll get certain advice.
• 42:02
  Speaker 1: Maybe you talk to a psychiatrists different you talk to
• 42:07
  Speaker 1: like someone who's done an NLP training, different you you know,
• 42:11
  Speaker 1: or even if you go see ten psychologists with the
• 42:13
  Speaker 1: same issues, you'll get ten strategies or ten different lots
• 42:17
  Speaker 1: of information or advice. But ultimately, while we need to
• 42:22
  Speaker 1: I think, use resources and other people and open the
• 42:25
  Speaker 1: door and you know, kind of be open minded and
• 42:29
  Speaker 1: teachable at the same time, we need to learn what
• 42:34
  Speaker 1: works for me. And as you were talking about talk therapy,
• 42:38
  Speaker 1: it's quite a bit of science around, you know, the
• 42:42
  Speaker 1: effectiveness of talk therapy, and it's surprisingly lower than people think.
• 42:48
  Speaker 1: It's like about sixty percent of people kind of somewhere
• 42:53
  Speaker 1: between get some benefit and a lot, but about forty
• 42:57
  Speaker 1: percent of people either don't and again, don't quote me everyone,
• 43:01
  Speaker 1: I'm recalling this, but it's a significant amount, but quite
• 43:04
  Speaker 1: a large percentage of people, in terms of what you
• 43:07
  Speaker 1: would think, either get no advantage at all or it
• 43:11
  Speaker 1: puts them in a worse place because every Tuesday at
• 43:15
  Speaker 1: three o'clock they go and see. Now I'm not by
• 43:18
  Speaker 1: the way, I'm just finishing a PhD in psychology, so
• 43:21
  Speaker 1: I'm definitely not running down the field. But the bottom
• 43:23
  Speaker 1: line is, you know, like some people talking about it
• 43:28
  Speaker 1: does not It does not help them. It's not the
• 43:33
  Speaker 1: way that they work. I'm one of those people. I'm
• 43:36
  Speaker 1: going through some stuff which is pretty tricky with my
• 43:38
  Speaker 1: parents at the moment, and I can anecdotally talk about
• 43:42
  Speaker 1: it like this where I go, ah, the old man's
• 43:44
  Speaker 1: on the home straight. There's a whole lot of issues
• 43:46
  Speaker 1: going on. Da da dah. But when someone sits down
• 43:49
  Speaker 1: in front of me and looks me deep in the
• 43:50
  Speaker 1: eyes and says, you know, tell me about what's going
• 43:53
  Speaker 1: on and how you know, it just does not work
• 43:56
  Speaker 1: for me. And that's not good or bad. That's just me.
• 44:00
  Speaker 1: You try to figure out what is the best protocol,
• 44:03
  Speaker 1: What is the best therapy, What is the best weight
• 44:05
  Speaker 1: training program for you? What is the best diet for eese?
• 44:08
  Speaker 1: What is the best amount of sleep for ese? What
• 44:11
  Speaker 1: is the best way to have this conversation, to lead
• 44:14
  Speaker 1: this team, to do this presentation in this corporate like
• 44:19
  Speaker 1: there's you know, my other job is corporate speaking, all right,
• 44:22
  Speaker 1: So well, there are a million different ways to do
• 44:25
  Speaker 1: that job. There are a million different ways to be
• 44:28
  Speaker 1: an excise physiologist or scientists like I also am right
• 44:31
  Speaker 1: where you. It's not like, oh, there's a threat, here's
• 44:34
  Speaker 1: the problem, here's the solution. It does not work like that.
• 44:38
  Speaker 1: There's got to be self discovery and a thing I
• 44:41
  Speaker 1: over talk about which my audience is probably sick of.
• 44:43
  Speaker 1: But this idea of n equals one, you know, and
• 44:47
  Speaker 1: you're the one. You're the one in your own research.
• 44:49
  Speaker 1: So you're doing all the research. You're asking the questions,
• 44:52
  Speaker 1: you're using and relying on others to an extent, but
• 44:56
  Speaker 1: you're gathering the data, you're interpreting the data, and you'll
• 44:59
  Speaker 1: figure out, oh, when I do this, I feel much better.
• 45:02
  Speaker 1: When I do that thing that everybody else does or
• 45:05
  Speaker 1: people recommend I do, I feel like dogshit. So that's
• 45:08
  Speaker 1: not for me. And that's just using your own problem
• 45:12
  Speaker 1: solving brain, which is super important. Rather like I think
• 45:18
  Speaker 1: in a lot of microcosms, a lot of groups, whether
• 45:23
  Speaker 1: it's the psychiatry group or the psychology group, or the
• 45:27
  Speaker 1: Catholic group, or the Buddhist group, or the atheist group,
• 45:30
  Speaker 1: or the vegan group or the Liverpool FC group, you know,
• 45:34
  Speaker 1: whatever it is, we're trained how to think. Oh no, sorry,
• 45:39
  Speaker 1: we're taught what to think rather than taught how to think,
• 45:44
  Speaker 1: and so to bump up against other people's opinions and
• 45:47
  Speaker 1: ideas and philosophies and ideologies matters. But it also matters
• 45:51
  Speaker 1: that in the middle of all of that you figure
• 45:53
  Speaker 1: out what's up for yourself because you develop your own ideas,
• 45:57
  Speaker 1: your own philosophy, and because as nobody lives in your
• 46:01
  Speaker 1: body or your brain, or your energy or your emotions,
• 46:04
  Speaker 1: and so you're trying to figure out how does this like?
• 46:09
  Speaker 1: You're one of eight billions, so you're common, but you're unique. Yeah,
• 46:14
  Speaker 1: you know, you're one of one. You're one of eight
• 46:16
  Speaker 1: billion collectively, but there is no one who is identical
• 46:21
  Speaker 1: even close to identical to you, and so that impacts everything.
• 46:27
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I think ultimately it's about critical thinking, right, Craig,
• 46:30
  Speaker 2: And I think there's so much resistance to it. And
• 46:33
  Speaker 2: when I actually the one of the biggest penny drops
• 46:35
  Speaker 2: was why am I keep asking other people what should
• 46:38
  Speaker 2: I do? What would you do?
• 46:41
  Speaker 1: Yeah?
• 46:41
  Speaker 2: And then when I when I realized, how stupid is
• 46:43
  Speaker 2: that question? Because I'm asking someone about they have a
• 46:47
  Speaker 2: completely different perception of life, you know, they have a
• 46:51
  Speaker 2: completely different worldview, a different experience, a different upbringing, So
• 46:55
  Speaker 2: why am I asking someone about such a huge And
• 46:57
  Speaker 2: that really for me became really clear, maybe because of
• 47:00
  Speaker 2: my circumstance, because how do I ask someone in my
• 47:03
  Speaker 2: medical situation about what would they do if they had
• 47:06
  Speaker 2: to choose between having a machine implanted or just seeing
• 47:09
  Speaker 2: other rest their days? And a lot of people candn't
• 47:12
  Speaker 2: answer me. They said, sorry, I'm not qualified to answer
• 47:16
  Speaker 2: this question. And then ultimately I had to sit with myself,
• 47:19
  Speaker 2: which was so uncomfortable because I'd never done it before,
• 47:22
  Speaker 2: because like, what do we do as human beings? We're
• 47:25
  Speaker 2: not used to sitting with ourselves. We're not even used
• 47:27
  Speaker 2: to sitting in stillness or silence or you know, we've
• 47:30
  Speaker 2: become sick in that way. You know, we're disconnected from nature.
• 47:33
  Speaker 2: We live in these high, high speed, highly chaotic environments
• 47:39
  Speaker 2: that are distressing at the level of the nervous system,
• 47:43
  Speaker 2: and we're so just regulated as a species now that
• 47:46
  Speaker 2: you know, we don't even think clearly. We know we're
• 47:49
  Speaker 2: so ill in many ways psychological think about physical.
• 47:55
  Speaker 1: Diets, sorry mate, but think about you know, so depending
• 47:59
  Speaker 1: on which timeline the timeline of human history, whether or
• 48:05
  Speaker 1: not it's the biblical one, six thousand years or the
• 48:08
  Speaker 1: evolutionary one, which is a hundred thousand years or thereabouts.
• 48:12
  Speaker 1: But you think about how humankind has lived for most
• 48:19
  Speaker 1: of the existence of this species on this planet compared
• 48:24
  Speaker 1: to right now. It's a fucking chaos. So we have
• 48:30
  Speaker 1: just we have gone from X stimulus to a million
• 48:36
  Speaker 1: X stimulus with all these inbound stimuli. And I'm not
• 48:41
  Speaker 1: going to be the person who bangs on about the
• 48:43
  Speaker 1: phone and social media, but the reality is we can
• 48:49
  Speaker 1: focus on something twenty four hours a day so we
• 48:53
  Speaker 1: don't have to deal with the thing that we really
• 48:55
  Speaker 1: should deal with. We can distract, we can delay, we
• 48:58
  Speaker 1: can avoid, we can nigh because I'm over here doing
• 49:01
  Speaker 1: this very important thing and that thing that you speak
• 49:06
  Speaker 1: of Grasshopper o wise one, you know of just being
• 49:10
  Speaker 1: fucking still do nothing. Here's an idea, what you what
• 49:13
  Speaker 1: are you up to today? Imagine if we went nothing?
• 49:17
  Speaker 1: What do you mean nothing? Because you've got to be
• 49:19
  Speaker 1: up to something, mate? What's on you to do? List?
• 49:21
  Speaker 3: Bro?
• 49:21
  Speaker 1: What are you doing? I'm doing fuck all. I've got
• 49:25
  Speaker 1: a whole day of fuck all. I'm not going to think.
• 49:28
  Speaker 1: I'm not gonna I'm going to get into that space
• 49:32
  Speaker 1: beyond thought, because thinking itself can be productive or destructive
• 49:36
  Speaker 1: depending on where your mind's at. Because you know, the
• 49:40
  Speaker 1: other thing that you know, and my audience have heard
• 49:43
  Speaker 1: too much, is that your body believes your mind. So
• 49:46
  Speaker 1: if you're if you're telling yourself negative, toxic, untrue, bullshit,
• 49:52
  Speaker 1: well that becomes a cellular result. Now you've got, you know,
• 49:57
  Speaker 1: your heart rates up, your adrenalines through the roof, your
• 49:59
  Speaker 1: blood pressures up, your breathings up, and all those things,
• 50:03
  Speaker 1: all those physical responses, and now you're in stress state
• 50:06
  Speaker 1: that you created with your fucking mind.
• 50:11
  Speaker 2: I know. So, I mean, it sounds so out there,
• 50:14
  Speaker 2: but it's so simple, right, and it is that. My
• 50:16
  Speaker 2: biggest takeaway from my heart transplant was how much that
• 50:21
  Speaker 2: even in the hermetic ways of their belief around, the
• 50:24
  Speaker 2: mind is all right? Yes? Is that understanding that obviously
• 50:28
  Speaker 2: we are not we create our reality. We master creators.
• 50:33
  Speaker 2: There's a part of us that is divine. We are creators.
• 50:38
  Speaker 2: We are a miniature of God. But our minds are
• 50:42
  Speaker 2: so potent that we we can dictate any outcome. And
• 50:47
  Speaker 2: even for me that I used a visualization for my operation,
• 50:51
  Speaker 2: and like I said, there was a few things that
• 50:53
  Speaker 2: there was peace coming to peace with death. So the
• 50:56
  Speaker 2: mortality piece created a sense of freedom and peace within
• 51:01
  Speaker 2: me and then the non attachment, non attachment to outcome.
• 51:06
  Speaker 2: So whether that be death or life, I was at
• 51:08
  Speaker 2: peace with both. And then I still wanted to survive.
• 51:13
  Speaker 2: So I still had created a visualization of what I
• 51:17
  Speaker 2: would be like post off. So I created that vision
• 51:21
  Speaker 2: in my head very clear. I knew what the I
• 51:23
  Speaker 2: kind of knew what the hospital ward. I was familiar
• 51:26
  Speaker 2: with the sounds, the beeps, where the leads would be
• 51:28
  Speaker 2: coming out my neck, so very clear, in a robe,
• 51:31
  Speaker 2: in a bed, single bed, isolation, two nurses, you know, medication,
• 51:36
  Speaker 2: drugged up. And then I could visualize my four children
• 51:41
  Speaker 2: at the end of my bed, and my wife, you know.
• 51:44
  Speaker 2: And when my first conscious memory, Craig and I knew
• 51:49
  Speaker 2: and I always said to everyone, if I wake up,
• 51:51
  Speaker 2: I know I'll be fine. If I wake up, I
• 51:54
  Speaker 2: know I'll be fine. Otherwise you know, I'm pass on
• 51:57
  Speaker 2: and I'll move on to the next life. It's part
• 51:59
  Speaker 2: of the soul journey. And I woke up and my
• 52:04
  Speaker 2: first conscious memory is my four children at the end
• 52:07
  Speaker 2: of my bed with my wife, and I've got a
• 52:12
  Speaker 2: video of it. It's on my social media where you
• 52:14
  Speaker 2: see me. I've got oxygen mask on my face. I've
• 52:17
  Speaker 2: just woken up and I'm pumping my fist, crying and
• 52:21
  Speaker 2: throwing my head back because I'm looking at my kids
• 52:24
  Speaker 2: in disbelief. Because it's the exact fucking vision that I
• 52:27
  Speaker 2: had worked on, the almost identical visualization that I use
• 52:32
  Speaker 2: so that I knew that's what I wished to see
• 52:35
  Speaker 2: upon arising from my operation. And unlike my other two
• 52:39
  Speaker 2: operations prior to my heart transplant, this one I was
• 52:42
  Speaker 2: up in two days and I've been like it. Things
• 52:47
  Speaker 2: could not have gone any better, mate, And I'm telling
• 52:49
  Speaker 2: you now, it was purely about letting go. I had
• 52:55
  Speaker 2: to let go of everything, and I mean everything, beliefs,
• 53:01
  Speaker 2: my you know, attachment to any particular outcome, and just
• 53:07
  Speaker 2: be at peace and just you know, like me and
• 53:09
  Speaker 2: my partner just pre up like two hours before we
• 53:12
  Speaker 2: went to the beach and we just sat with each other.
• 53:14
  Speaker 2: We prayed, we meditated. There wasn't a lot of conversation.
• 53:18
  Speaker 2: We embraced each other. Then I asked for help. I
• 53:20
  Speaker 2: asked for help. I went onto my social media and said, guys,
• 53:23
  Speaker 2: I'm going in for my operation. Please can you all
• 53:26
  Speaker 2: send me your intentional prayer, meditation, a career, whatever you
• 53:30
  Speaker 2: want to do, like, yeah, you know, just send me.
• 53:34
  Speaker 2: And I could feel it, Craig, it was the craziest thing.
• 53:37
  Speaker 2: I had this, like I called it, I felt really
• 53:40
  Speaker 2: close to spirit when I woke up. But I think
• 53:43
  Speaker 2: it was everyone's love and support that I could have this.
• 53:46
  Speaker 2: I had this extra like like almost like a guardian angel,
• 53:52
  Speaker 2: like all these people's energies that was was sent to me,
• 53:56
  Speaker 2: and I could feel it like it was the strong
• 53:58
  Speaker 2: sense of love and support. And I genuinely also think
• 54:01
  Speaker 2: without all of that, I don't know would it be
• 54:04
  Speaker 2: a would it have been able to be accomplished. I
• 54:06
  Speaker 2: don't know. Wow, But I can tell you I'm here
• 54:09
  Speaker 2: to tell the story. And you know that in my
• 54:15
  Speaker 2: eyes is what I've the realization and the big realization.
• 54:21
  Speaker 2: And I found in this quote just yesterday because I
• 54:24
  Speaker 2: too work in the corporate speaking space and I'm building
• 54:27
  Speaker 2: a talk at the moment to try and get this
• 54:29
  Speaker 2: across in the most potent way. But it was the
• 54:33
  Speaker 2: feeling that I felt most in the days after my ARP.
• 54:36
  Speaker 2: I couldn't put a finger on it because it was
• 54:37
  Speaker 2: just so just so rich, It was so deep, it
• 54:40
  Speaker 2: was so it was like overwhelming almost, And it wasn't
• 54:47
  Speaker 2: quite love or joy or gratitude. It was a lot
• 54:50
  Speaker 2: of gratitude, of course, but thanks and all these multiple
• 54:53
  Speaker 2: feelings that were very intense. But it was freedom, just freedom.
• 55:00
  Speaker 2: I was like, oh my god, I'm free. I'm free
• 55:02
  Speaker 2: to to to live in an entire life with endless possibility.
• 55:09
  Speaker 2: I am free to be me, but not like my
• 55:12
  Speaker 2: egoic me, to be the real me without having to
• 55:16
  Speaker 2: try and be liked or people please or you know.
• 55:21
  Speaker 2: And and with their realization at the time was also
• 55:23
  Speaker 2: about like, you know, fear is not the opposite of freedom,
• 55:29
  Speaker 2: but fear is the gatekeeper to it. Yeah. And when
• 55:33
  Speaker 2: I when I relinquished my fear of death, it was
• 55:36
  Speaker 2: almost as if the universe was like, yes, you know,
• 55:43
  Speaker 2: play go play.
• 55:46
  Speaker 1: That's incredible when you kind of step out of that
• 55:51
  Speaker 1: version of I think you and I were maybe in
• 55:54
  Speaker 1: some ways similar. When I was young, I was I
• 55:57
  Speaker 1: was super insecure. I was just Morbiley be'st kid who
• 56:00
  Speaker 1: got in shape. And then I was all about my
• 56:02
  Speaker 1: body and I was all about wanting, you know, try
• 56:04
  Speaker 1: and look amazing because that's what I thought would give
• 56:08
  Speaker 1: me acceptance and love and belonging and connection. Because it
• 56:12
  Speaker 1: did for a while, right, And that's a problem when
• 56:15
  Speaker 1: when all of a sudden you look for you anyway,
• 56:17
  Speaker 1: For me, I looked good. Like I went from being
• 56:21
  Speaker 1: socially invisible and invisible to girls to being you know,
• 56:26
  Speaker 1: less invisible and more popular and not more noticed and
• 56:29
  Speaker 1: more attention. And that teaches you that, oh, well, how
• 56:33
  Speaker 1: well that taught me bad lesson. But like, the better
• 56:37
  Speaker 1: I look, the better things are going to go for me.
• 56:40
  Speaker 1: So then you learn this terrible lesson, then all of
• 56:42
  Speaker 1: a sudden you associate your body, your appearance, your biceps,
• 56:47
  Speaker 1: your fucking big whatever shoulders back with success and with
• 56:52
  Speaker 1: love and with right, which clearly isn't actually the case.
• 56:57
  Speaker 1: It got me attention, but it didn't get me loved,
• 57:00
  Speaker 1: you know. But I was kind of you know, I
• 57:04
  Speaker 1: think I was like you still, like I was a happy,
• 57:07
  Speaker 1: go lucky guy. I helped people in my work, I
• 57:10
  Speaker 1: did good things, but I think I was still essentially
• 57:13
  Speaker 1: selfish and insecure, and a lot of my behavior came
• 57:17
  Speaker 1: from that. And I'm still a work in progress. And
• 57:21
  Speaker 1: it's not like I've been through what you're doing. But
• 57:26
  Speaker 1: you know, it's like I had a revelation ish when
• 57:29
  Speaker 1: I was about in my early thirties and everything was
• 57:32
  Speaker 1: actually going great. I owned three gyms and a couple
• 57:36
  Speaker 1: of other businesses, and I had one hundred staff, and
• 57:38
  Speaker 1: from the outside looking in, my life was a success story,
• 57:42
  Speaker 1: a moderate success story. But in the middle of it,
• 57:46
  Speaker 1: I still was full of self doubt and self loathing
• 57:49
  Speaker 1: and insecurity and all those things. Right, so outside the
• 57:53
  Speaker 1: appearance of success, inside the experience of the opposite, right
• 57:59
  Speaker 1: where not never good enough, never anything enough. And then
• 58:03
  Speaker 1: over time I started to have a purpose bigger than
• 58:07
  Speaker 1: me and bigger than my bullshit, and bigger than my body,
• 58:10
  Speaker 1: and bigger than my looks, and bigger than my bank
• 58:12
  Speaker 1: balance and bigger than all the fucking Craig stuff. That
• 58:16
  Speaker 1: It's like I was trying to fill an internal void
• 58:19
  Speaker 1: with an external thing. It's like, if I do something
• 58:23
  Speaker 1: out here in the world where everyone can see, that's
• 58:26
  Speaker 1: going to fix some illness that's happening inside of me, emotional, psychological,
• 58:31
  Speaker 1: spiritual illness. And it's Yeah, over the years, and I
• 58:36
  Speaker 1: still do what I do, and I make okay money
• 58:39
  Speaker 1: and I'm very grateful for all of that, but it's
• 58:42
  Speaker 1: in the service of others. And I know this sounds
• 58:45
  Speaker 1: a bit cheesy, I apologize, but for me it is
• 58:47
  Speaker 1: actually true. When I do things for people and with people,
• 58:52
  Speaker 1: I cannot get the same I just don't have the
• 58:56
  Speaker 1: same internal outcome as when I go buy something or
• 58:59
  Speaker 1: get a new think or you know, even whatever, like
• 59:04
  Speaker 1: achieve something. You know. So my long winded, fucking question
• 59:08
  Speaker 1: is what does purpose look like for you? What is
• 59:11
  Speaker 1: your purpose moving forward? Or is that not a concept
• 59:15
  Speaker 1: you think about?
• 59:17
  Speaker 2: Yeah? And I think I think before if you had
• 59:26
  Speaker 2: asked me this pre pre transplant, I would say, like
• 59:29
  Speaker 2: my purpose was to support others through transformation and be
• 59:36
  Speaker 2: of service in some way, you know. But I think
• 59:42
  Speaker 2: on the back end of of what my experience has
• 59:44
  Speaker 2: been in the most recent months is that I think,
• 59:49
  Speaker 2: like you are alluding to, you know, as human beings,
• 59:51
  Speaker 2: very often nowadays we place success before happiness, or we
• 59:55
  Speaker 2: believe that successful creates happiness. Yeah, And in fact it's
• 59:59
  Speaker 2: the comp fleet opposite is that once we are internally happy,
• 1:00:05
  Speaker 2: which may not look as you wish it to look
• 1:00:07
  Speaker 2: in your mind, that in itself is a success. So
• 1:00:12
  Speaker 2: then when you're coming from a place of happiness, success
• 1:00:15
  Speaker 2: is easily achieved, and the gold post will if you
• 1:00:18
  Speaker 2: put success before happiness, the golf post will forever change
• 1:00:21
  Speaker 2: because eventually, when you succeed, then well it's onto the
• 1:00:25
  Speaker 2: next thing, because then you want more, and it's you
• 1:00:27
  Speaker 2: want the bigger thing, the shining thing, the new the
• 1:00:29
  Speaker 2: newer thing, you know, because that's how consumerism and capitalism works.
• 1:00:33
  Speaker 2: It's never ending, you know. So it's like you're not
• 1:00:39
  Speaker 2: going to find happiness through success in my opinion. You
• 1:00:42
  Speaker 2: may you make it may be short winded, and you
• 1:00:44
  Speaker 2: might feel better after a little bit. But for me,
• 1:00:47
  Speaker 2: I think, for now, my purpose is more about like
• 1:00:50
  Speaker 2: living a full life and being present through that. That's more.
• 1:00:55
  Speaker 2: You know, I've got a child in coming, incoming.
• 1:01:02
  Speaker 1: It sounds like I'm coming a jet coming landing on
• 1:01:05
  Speaker 1: a bloody carrier. When when is the when is? What's
• 1:01:09
  Speaker 1: the ata of the incoming?
• 1:01:13
  Speaker 2: I've got another six weeks eight weeks baby? Wow? Wow.
• 1:01:18
  Speaker 2: So and I think like my purpose is to be
• 1:01:22
  Speaker 2: a very present father and to to all my children,
• 1:01:27
  Speaker 2: including my new one, but also to make the most
• 1:01:29
  Speaker 2: of life. Brother, because you know, before you know it
• 1:01:32
  Speaker 2: it's going to be gone, and you know, we get
• 1:01:36
  Speaker 2: all caught up and in all our messiness and the
• 1:01:40
  Speaker 2: craziness of this world, and the truth of the matter
• 1:01:43
  Speaker 2: is is that life is just so incredible and if
• 1:01:48
  Speaker 2: we can just slow down long enough to just witness
• 1:01:50
  Speaker 2: how just beautiful, just being in connection with another human
• 1:01:54
  Speaker 2: and being in nature and the beauty that surrounds us
• 1:01:58
  Speaker 2: at every turn, you know that what more do we
• 1:02:01
  Speaker 2: actually need? So yeah, that question for me is not
• 1:02:06
  Speaker 2: so much about like trying to prove something or be something.
• 1:02:09
  Speaker 2: But you know, obviously I feel like there's a strong
• 1:02:11
  Speaker 2: message I can carry in you can I suppose you
• 1:02:13
  Speaker 2: could say in some way that is like a purpose
• 1:02:16
  Speaker 2: for me is to is to continue to do what
• 1:02:19
  Speaker 2: I do. I'm a breathwork practitioner. I support others through
• 1:02:21
  Speaker 2: you know, transformational and also functional techniques. But which is
• 1:02:28
  Speaker 2: a passion probably my greatest passion, but speaking is to
• 1:02:31
  Speaker 2: my other So yeah, I suppose in those in those ways,
• 1:02:35
  Speaker 2: that's that's what enriches my life. But it's not the
• 1:02:37
  Speaker 2: driving force behind it. I think the driving force is
• 1:02:40
  Speaker 2: more about sharing experience with others and living life to
• 1:02:44
  Speaker 2: the fullest and spreading love and being there for others,
• 1:02:50
  Speaker 2: especially the ones that mean the most to me.
• 1:02:53
  Speaker 1: I wonder if twenty five year old bullfhead you met
• 1:02:57
  Speaker 1: current you, what the buffhead would think?
• 1:03:01
  Speaker 2: I would have turned off? Like Autiel, guys full of shits,
• 1:03:05
  Speaker 2: some sort of weird hippie guy.
• 1:03:08
  Speaker 1: Fucking hippie bull.
• 1:03:11
  Speaker 2: What's he talking about?
• 1:03:13
  Speaker 1: Yeah?
• 1:03:14
  Speaker 2: Go get go, get person and get over yourself one.
• 1:03:18
  Speaker 1: All right, now, let's wind up. But as we finish,
• 1:03:20
  Speaker 1: I want to talk about your body and your health
• 1:03:23
  Speaker 1: and you. So you've got a big background in sport.
• 1:03:26
  Speaker 1: I've got a big background in training athletes. Tell me
• 1:03:31
  Speaker 1: about your body, tell me about are you what can
• 1:03:34
  Speaker 1: you do now? If you like to have a plan
• 1:03:37
  Speaker 1: to run a ten k or to get back in
• 1:03:39
  Speaker 1: the gym and not jacked, but fit and strong and
• 1:03:43
  Speaker 1: and what can you do that you couldn't do? Tell
• 1:03:45
  Speaker 1: us all about the training and the fitness and if
• 1:03:47
  Speaker 1: anything's going on.
• 1:03:49
  Speaker 2: Yeah, mate, Honestly, how I feel now compared to how
• 1:03:53
  Speaker 2: I felt the last fourteen years is just and I'm
• 1:03:56
  Speaker 2: only eleven weeks almost twelve weeks post off is just
• 1:04:00
  Speaker 2: chalk and cheese. Mate. It's like it's my brain's had
• 1:04:03
  Speaker 2: to go back to remembering, Oh my god, yeah, this
• 1:04:06
  Speaker 2: is what it was like to be a normal guy
• 1:04:08
  Speaker 2: like I can actually I can walk without being knaked.
• 1:04:12
  Speaker 2: I can. I went for my first swim in twelve
• 1:04:14
  Speaker 2: and a half years last Thursday. Twelve and a half years. Mate,
• 1:04:17
  Speaker 2: I haven't been in the water, so I've got I
• 1:04:20
  Speaker 2: think there's so much I want to do. I'm not
• 1:04:23
  Speaker 2: getting ahead of myself right now, but i can see
• 1:04:25
  Speaker 2: myself doing a few challenges, you know, like you know,
• 1:04:29
  Speaker 2: walking up a few are really into hiking. I want
• 1:04:31
  Speaker 2: to be in nature a lot, so I'm definitely going
• 1:04:34
  Speaker 2: to do some form of challenges. I'm not like one
• 1:04:36
  Speaker 2: of these mad ultra freaks who wants to go and
• 1:04:39
  Speaker 2: kill himself running a hundred plus k's and all this
• 1:04:41
  Speaker 2: kind of stuff. My body is on that backside of
• 1:04:45
  Speaker 2: professional career, so that's I would say probably not in
• 1:04:50
  Speaker 2: for i'me condition. It's it needs a bit of love.
• 1:04:56
  Speaker 2: But yeah, I'm definitely going to I'm going to definitely
• 1:05:00
  Speaker 2: be leaning into some some some challenges and some suffering too,
• 1:05:08
  Speaker 2: to support certain charities and organizations that I'm that I'm
• 1:05:15
  Speaker 2: quite passionate about that have been supported to me over
• 1:05:18
  Speaker 2: my years to give back in that way, but also
• 1:05:21
  Speaker 2: to also I'm all about community Craig connection, and that's
• 1:05:27
  Speaker 2: what really really makes me tick. So yeah, definitely going
• 1:05:32
  Speaker 2: to be up to some of that, and my cardiac
• 1:05:34
  Speaker 2: rehab started last week and some of your Olympian Apple
• 1:05:38
  Speaker 2: now over the next few weeks. As my immune system is,
• 1:05:43
  Speaker 2: they've they're weaning me onto my new tabs. So I'm
• 1:05:47
  Speaker 2: just in the transition between my older and my new
• 1:05:49
  Speaker 2: and then I'll just be on that long term. So
• 1:05:52
  Speaker 2: hopefully everything will continue as is, and I'll even come
• 1:05:57
  Speaker 2: down to OZ and say Hi, one of these days, come.
• 1:05:59
  Speaker 1: On, we would love that you and Mail hit the gym,
• 1:06:01
  Speaker 1: will be careful and then we'll go out and you know,
• 1:06:04
  Speaker 1: have a bloody smoothie or something crazy like that. Hey,
• 1:06:08
  Speaker 1: this is only I would ask this or some but
• 1:06:10
  Speaker 1: not many. What's your height and what was your playing weight?
• 1:06:16
  Speaker 2: I'm six foot and my playing weight was I don't
• 1:06:19
  Speaker 2: know in kilo had by one hundred and between one
• 1:06:22
  Speaker 2: hundred and twenty four one hundred and thirty kilos was
• 1:06:24
  Speaker 2: my playing weight?
• 1:06:25
  Speaker 1: Oh my god, you were a truck. You were a
• 1:06:30
  Speaker 1: Giand do you and what you watch your weight now?
• 1:06:33
  Speaker 2: Give or take ninety eight KOs.
• 1:06:36
  Speaker 1: Wow, wow, good for you. Yeah, mate, it's it's I
• 1:06:43
  Speaker 1: loved it. I love meeting you. I loved it. I
• 1:06:46
  Speaker 1: love chatting with you. I love where you're at, I
• 1:06:49
  Speaker 1: love your story. I love how you think you're infectious.
• 1:06:54
  Speaker 1: I'm so happy. Only a guy would say this. I'm
• 1:06:57
  Speaker 1: so happy you're not dead. I like, you know, I'm
• 1:07:00
  Speaker 1: glad you're not dead. I mean, it's good. It's good
• 1:07:03
  Speaker 1: to still here. You know. Tell people how they can
• 1:07:07
  Speaker 1: find you or connect with you, or learn about you,
• 1:07:10
  Speaker 1: or support you or know what's coming up for you.
• 1:07:15
  Speaker 2: Yeah, they can catch me on my socials. So I'm
• 1:07:18
  Speaker 2: on LinkedIn, Reese Thomas spot the Welsh Way r H
• 1:07:21
  Speaker 2: y s and on Instagram I'm Real Reese Thomas r
• 1:07:26
  Speaker 2: E A L r h y S t h O
• 1:07:29
  Speaker 2: m A S or. I mean, if you'd like, I'm
• 1:07:33
  Speaker 2: on my emails Real Reese at Real Reese Thomas dot
• 1:07:37
  Speaker 2: com and yeah, catch me through those channels. As I said,
• 1:07:43
  Speaker 2: I do breath work. I'm I'm a corporate speaker and
• 1:07:47
  Speaker 2: I will be traveling. I can travel internationally from the
• 1:07:50
  Speaker 2: beginning part of next year, so I intend on traveling
• 1:07:53
  Speaker 2: quite extensively as I've got a lot of catching up
• 1:07:55
  Speaker 2: to do.
• 1:07:56
  Speaker 1: Come in here, bro, we'll hang out, use you to
• 1:08:00
  Speaker 1: some cool people if you come out.
• 1:08:03
  Speaker 2: I also want to come see Anna. She's a legend.
• 1:08:05
  Speaker 1: Yeah she is Anna. Oh yeah, shout out Anna. She
• 1:08:08
  Speaker 1: put us together.
• 1:08:10
  Speaker 2: Well big shout out.
• 1:08:12
  Speaker 1: Yeah she's she's a so mate. We'll say goodbye affair,
• 1:08:15
  Speaker 1: but for now, it's been a pleasure having you on
• 1:08:18
  Speaker 1: the You project.
• 1:08:19
  Speaker 2: Appreciate you. Thank you too, brother very much. Have a
• 1:08:22
  Speaker 2: good day.