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Rewire Your Mind: Breaking Patterns, Trauma & Leadership with Bernii Godwin · More Than Before

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Fishing water doesn't know it's a water.
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There comes a time where we've got to start questioning the
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airway. Breathing is a bearing fruit.
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Is it real? Is it true?
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Can you test it and see that that's accurate?
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Or do you want to start reflecting and transforming your
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beliefs? Hey everyone, welcome back to
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More Than Before, the podcast about becoming who you were
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created to be by leading with clarity, ownership, and purpose.
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My guest today calls herself a culture optometrist, someone who
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helps leaders see clarity again. She is a social worker, behavior
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education expert, and a member of Maxwell Leadership.
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She has spent over 2 decades helping schools move from
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control to connection, and today I get to call her my friend.
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I am so excited to have her on the podcast.
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Bernie Godwin, welcome to More Than Before.
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Hi, Nathan, thank you so much for having me.
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Tell us a little bit of where you grew up.
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I, I knew you. I know you started your journey
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in South Africa. How how long were you in South
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Africa before you migrated Australia?
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Yeah. So I grew up in South Africa in
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the 80s throughout the whole 80s.
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I moved to Australia in 1991 and we arrived on the Gold Coast and
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slowly made our way to a place called Logan, where I've spent
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probably the last 30 years. Logan has a very low social
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economic, mixed kind of location.
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It's it's at the middle of nowhere between Brisbane and the
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Gold Coast. Any space in between is called
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Logan and it's just a big sprawling space with seven city
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centres or epicentres rather than like a central place.
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So it's an interesting environment to to grow up and to
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to live in. And yeah, so I think like in
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South Africa, you know, in the 80s, many people would have been
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immigrating around that time. I was, I was, you know, under
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10. And yeah, life.
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I didn't see things, I didn't know things that were happening
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at the time that were quite destructive to humanity.
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But I think it had a big bearing on me even choosing my pathway
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to being a social worker and just supporting sustainable life
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for other people and just to speak into other people life
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wherever I can. Yeah, I love that you say that
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too, that, you know, your childhood really did pave the
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way for what you do today and working with a lot of families
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and and helping educators all around the world.
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I'm really curious because so you grew up in South Africa for
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the 1st 10 years of life essentially.
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And you said monkeys I think at one point too, which really
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captured my attention. Tell, tell us a little bit more,
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what was early childhood like? Like, you know, kind of having
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later on you had more of a blended family, but what was
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early childhood life like for you in Africa?
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Yeah, like, yes, monkeys. We had monkeys in our backyard.
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They'd steal our bananas off the trees.
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But I mean, I had a child lens. And so the way I viewed life in
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the 80s during apartheid was a lens that was very childlike and
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I didn't understand the level of discrimination and harm that was
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going on around us at the time. I was born into it like a fish
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and water. That was my normal as a young
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child. It was just my, my parents, my
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mum and dad and my, my older sister.
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And we had, you know, all the extended family were mostly in
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Africa too. But I, from the early, early
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memories, I had this deep injustice that something was
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wrong. And I, I really wrestled with
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that. I used to argue a lot with my
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parents that we should all be forced to leave the country
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because it doesn't belong to us. I had the sense of injustice,
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but I didn't know what to do with it.
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And even these days, I, I don't think I've reconciled some of
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that. But I, I understood that there
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was something happening here that didn't align with a core
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value that seemed inherent in my birth, but also meant that I
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didn't necessarily fit into my very predominantly white English
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environment. The particular place where we
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grew up was very English. It was, it wasn't Afrikaner, it
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wasn't, you know, it was English.
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And so it had its own blend of trauma and harm that it caused
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to other people that I think even as a child, you couldn't
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help but be aware of. What was your relationship like
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with your sister was like between the two of you?
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Were you like, were you the troublemaker?
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Were you the good students? Like, like who was Bernie?
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I was the youngest. I was terrified of getting in
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trouble, getting it wrong. My mom used to always joke and
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tell story to everybody that I used to say when I was little.
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I can't wait till I'm a grown up and have kids so I can hit them.
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So I must have been smacked a lot.
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I would never smack a child. But but yeah, I think I was the
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goody 2 shoes. And I think that was probably
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quite difficult on my sister. She she was, I always thought
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she was good too, but maybe had to work a little bit harder
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academically. And my relationship with my dad
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was strong. Hers was strong.
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With my mom, in hindsight, I they really did separate us as
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competition to each other. And it's only been in the last.
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I think my dad passed away that two years ago.
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And in the journey of walking that out, my sister and I have
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started to really heal a lot of that wounding that came from
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that competition between US. And we used to often be told,
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oh, you hate each other. I was like, as children, you
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just listen to your parents. It seems like an odd thing to
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say, but she is my person I would call right now if
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something crazy happened in my life.
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And she still lives in South Africa.
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She, I was 8, she was 10 when we moved.
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And then she moved back when she was 18.
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So she's still there with her family, her kids, and we are
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working incredibly hard to rebuild and reintroduce
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ourselves to each other. I think that's been it's, it's a
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work in progress. But she has been one of the most
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remarkable stable people in the last couple of months in my life
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that I had never seen coming. And I'm really grateful for
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that. I love that it's, it's so
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powerful. I think there's a lot of people
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that have experienced that of of kind of your parents pitting you
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against each other. And I think there's a lot of
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adult children that are now coming back around and
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rekindling those relationships. I'm curious for you what it
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would have been some of the, maybe some of the key things
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that you've taken away from reestablishing that relationship
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with your sister. What what's been beneficial to
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you in that? Look, I think one of the most
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important journeys I'm on and it's current.
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It's not this is this is raw material, not I'm living it out
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in person, but it's permission to question things that we've
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believed to be true for so long. What if they weren't originally
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our ideas? Or what if people have changed?
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Or what if it was filtered through a naivety or a, a lens
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of a narrow mindset that has actually shifted.
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And so we keep repeating maybe a story that doesn't actually
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exist anymore. And I think for me, a big
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catalyst was when my, my, my dad passed away.
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Because when someone significant in your world dies, structures
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change. And things that used to have
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meaning before don't carry the same meaning.
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But also that person held certain structures in place that
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blinded us from seeing and feeling certain things.
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And when that dynamic changed, there was, there was almost this
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moment. I remember this moment where my
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sister and I, I felt you'd have to ask her side of the story,
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but I felt we spoke truth to each other.
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It was brutal and it wasn't comfortable.
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But it was the first time I could tell her what I needed in
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the relationship. And I feel like her response was
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like, wow, I didn't know that. OK, I can do that.
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And she's the one who's significantly changed her
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behavior towards me and made it really safe and easy for me to
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build trust back with her, even after 40 plus years of doing
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life together. I think staying open minded is
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probably the biggest thing that what we have been told and
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believed to be true. You know, a fish in water
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doesn't know it's a water. And there comes a time where
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we've got to start questioning the airway breathing.
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And is it do, is it, is it bearing fruit?
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Is it real? Is it true?
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Can you test it and see that that's accurate?
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Or do you want to start reflecting and transforming your
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beliefs? I say that's a big part of the
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process that's happened for for me at least in my relationships.
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That's pretty amazing, especially someone who studied
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neurology. I mean, even an understanding
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how our brains work and how we function.
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And, and even, you know, if anyone, if you've listened to
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this podcast or a number of other podcasts on in terms of
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like personal growth, there's this understanding that whatever
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you imagine and you believe, your brain can't depict what is
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real and what's fake. Like if you believe that
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something is, is so real, you're actually going to have that
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physiological response. And so it's actually interesting
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like because you study these things now, going back and
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looking at past and relationships, you can actually
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look at the way that you thought and go, Oh, wow, like the
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patterns of thought that led me to this is the reason why.
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And now you start to question everything go.
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So what is reality? What what is the reality that I
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wish to define for my life, which I love that you say, you
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know, right now you're currently in this place of redefining what
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life looks like. What am I going to go through?
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What's true and what's not true like, but that's what we all do,
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especially at the beginning of the year.
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Every single year, for some reason, the first of the year we
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go, who am I going to be this year?
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What am I? What am I going to become?
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What am I going to achieve and what's?
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My way to the year. What is my word for the year?
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What's what's, what's really interesting about that is with
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you talking about this, it, it's not so much as a how am I going
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to redefine and make something brand new?
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It's how do I make sense of the past to discover who I really AM
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and how I'm going to move forward with that, right?
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Well, I guess there's that. Is it Mary Angelou who said if
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you don't know where you've been, you don't know where
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you're going or something like that?
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But, and I think it's right, you know, put the caution on, we
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don't want to overanalyze the past or make sense of things
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that didn't exist. But if we're living in a belief
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and we can't articulate where it came from, then we have to at
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least question, do we even believe it?
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Like, have we thought this through?
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And or has it been a narrative passed down?
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And a lot of like people talk about these early childhood
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experiences pre three years old, you don't have physical, you
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don't have cognitive memory, you have physical memory.
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So if you're carrying around a physical reaction of fear to
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someone from something from pre three years old and you don't
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even realize or a reaction to a smell, for example, that is
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bypassing conscious thought. Like at some point we've got to
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go. Why do I, I get highly alert
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when I smell oranges or, you know, we, I guess the pause in
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question, like where did that come from?
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Do I still believe it? Do I want to believe it?
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And we talked about the applied neuroscience.
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It is impossible to get to that place of I mean, everyone's
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going around the world transformation.
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I prefer the word intimacy when we get to place of intimacy
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within ourselves. And you know someone I know uses
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the phrasing into me. You see, if you break it down,
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that's the place when we are safe enough to question our core
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thoughts. But to get to a place of
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intimacy within ourselves, to question thought and to change
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what we believe to be true requires us to move into what's
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known as the Free State, the dorsal vagel, and activation,
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you know, fight, flight, freeze. So move into freeze state in a
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safe environment. And if you can move into that
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space in a safe environment, that's the environment where we
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can reflect, admit that we're wrong, feel safe in that it's
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intimate and it's vulnerable and say, what do I really want to
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choose to do and to believe and emerge with a new thought
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pattern? And I can't say that I've nailed
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this yet, but I'm certainly working hard to think through
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what I believe to be true and what I want to do with it.
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So you move from South Africa, you find yourself in Logan.
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What? What was immigration like?
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Migrating? What was that like as a child?
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What do you remember from that and what do you like how, how
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does a child experience that? Like what do you remember from
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that? Because it's interesting because
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there's a lot of talk about migration in the world and
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people going here and people going there.
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And I think unless you really speak to someone, it's hard to
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get a good understanding of it. It's not like travel.
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It's not like you get on a plane ticket, you get a plane ticket
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and you travel to another place and boom, there you are and you
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just stay it. It's very different.
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What was that like for you, you know, as a child, you know,
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looking back at that now as an adult?
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Firstly, I love that you asked that question.
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No one asks the children their experience and it's actually
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quite impactful that you would even ask that.
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I, I moved to when I was 8. We had been, we left South
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Africa, we went six weeks through Europe, traveling,
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caravaning, visiting people. We arrived in Australia.
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I thought we were still on holidays and you know, we're
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talking before the Internet, we had a world globe.
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So I think my parents had tried to explain that we're actually
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physically moved, but I'd never moved house before.
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I had no concept. We didn't have access to
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information in the same way. There's no like, let's look up
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Australian, you'll know what it is.
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We just arrived here. We're visiting more family just
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like we did when we were in England and France and
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Switzerland. And I remember that moment when
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I was like, I'm so sad. I'm so sick of traveling.
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When are we going home? Because we had gone on holidays
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before. I had a reference point and that
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was when I found out we're never going home.
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And so that for me was the day I realized I was never seeing my
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dog again and not my friends, my school, but also that my dog
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wasn't just on holidays. He was gone and I was angry.
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I was really angry. It probably took I was about
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grade 6 when I I broke and cried that out.
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So it was a couple of years before I really started to
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accept it. And that was because that day
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they invited a teacher to speak to our class were during South
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Africa as a topic. And she was a South African from
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Peter Maritzburg, where I'm from.
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And she came to our class and she started speaking Afrikaans.
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And I didn't even know Afrikaans, but I understood
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everything she was saying. And it, the familiarity of what
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she shared. It was my hometown.
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I, I, it broke me. And you know, children don't get
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asked. They don't, they're not really
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taken into consideration when, and I'm not saying that I don't
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know to what degree they should be.
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There's certainly better ways to prepare children these days and
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there's a lot of activities that you can work through with your
15:47
kids to, to get them ready. But for me, it caused a lot of
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wounding between me and my parents.
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I The mistrust was deep at that point.
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There was, I believe I'm trying to remember the phrase you you'd
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said that you were, you were forced into uncomfortable
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things, you know, I mean, essentially moving from your
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home like a man. It really impacts me when you
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say that moment when you realize you're never going to see your
16:14
dog again. Like, yeah.
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I can tell you I was walking across the crossing at the
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airport and we call them zebra crossings in South Africa.
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They're like the white stripe lines.
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And my cousins who I never met before, we're jumping The White
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Stripes. And I wasn't playing.
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I was like, what's going on? And I remember asking like, when
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are we going home? Like I'm, I'm over this.
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And that was the day I was like, we're not going back on a plane.
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This is it. This is home now.
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I'm, I'm curious as you've gotten to travel and, and see
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different parts of the world, what what has been your
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experience of experiencing different cultures?
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Because I, I find that people who have traveled as as young
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adults or even as children, they have a different perspective of
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seeing different cultures of, of experiencing things.
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You know, even even as a young kid, I didn't get to see a lot
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of places. But I remember the first time I
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ever went to Africa, I went to Sierra Leone.
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And in my head, I said to myself, the people that I'm
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going to see there, they don't know anything else.
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This is life. I'm not going to be like, I'm
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not going to have pity on them. I'm just going to love them and
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I'm going to experience their world the way they experience
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it. And it was a beautiful thing to
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me. And you know, there's something
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about being in a culture that you really get to see who people
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are. You get to feel that heartbeat.
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I'm curious, as you've travelled around the world and gotten to
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see so many different cultures, what are some of those similar
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heartbeats that you see from culture to culture with with
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different people? Oh, it's an interesting
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question. I mean, for myself, curiosity is
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I'm always curious about how, why.
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Like I remember being in Europe during that, I guess it would
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have been like 1991 in the punk phase and being fascinated as a
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child with these big multi coloured punk mohawks and like
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they were everywhere. It was quite a big deal.
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And I guess I like, I have a hard time traveling even now.
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I'm a homebody and I think a huge part of it is the bearing
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on Don't take me away from my home.
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So you know, the couches that I have, all the places I have been
18:35
to have always been for work. I don't travel for holidays.
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Interestingly, I'm having this reflection right now.
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Yeah, so but I I mean, even being growing up in the space
18:49
that I was in, we were exposed to so many complex different
18:53
cultures. But how does a child make sense
18:55
of that when theirs is the culture that seems to be the 1
18:58
causing the harm? As I tend to just be as open
19:02
minded as possible. I know so little.
19:06
And when you're going into other places and you're seeing things
19:10
like that don't really make sense.
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I think when the culture is so contrast, it actually makes a
19:15
lot more sense. But when you go into cultures
19:17
like like England or America and you expect that to be quite
19:22
similar, you know, we're, we're all from English speaking
19:24
countries going to English speaking nations and you know,
19:27
we're all the same same. Those are the ones that have, I
19:30
think I find the most culture shock because then they're not
19:33
the same. They're actually quite
19:34
different. And but because we don't
19:38
anticipate that they're different, it can sometimes be a
19:40
bit jarring when we the social faux power and you know, those
19:44
sorts of things. So you're growing up in Logan.
19:48
When did when did you kind of have this bug of education of
19:53
like, I want to, I want to work with people that are from
19:57
different economic backgrounds to be able to help people to
20:01
help with an education. When did you start?
20:03
I mean, it, it's obviously it's obvious that you love education.
20:09
It it wouldn't be that you wouldn't have, you wouldn't be a
20:12
social worker, you wouldn't have a criminology degree, you
20:16
wouldn't be a behavior expert. You wouldn't have gone to school
20:19
for so many years if you didn't love education and you didn't
20:23
love the people that you were wanting to serve.
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What? What was the bug that?
20:26
Bit you that you said, man, I really, I really want to do this
20:29
for the rest of my life. I think we have a really broken
20:34
victim minded culture, at least in Australia, that's built on,
20:40
you know, there's always a bad guy and we're out to get them
20:43
and pull me. And I think that I wanted to
20:47
find ways to explore. Did it have to be this way?
20:52
And I think one of the things that really impacted me on, you
20:55
know, like every young, you know, early uni student goes and
21:00
does like criminology or law because they want to be on SVU
21:03
or some of the, you know, law and order or whatever.
21:05
Like they think, Oh my gosh, this is real.
21:07
Maybe there was a bit of a, you know, influence there, but I did
21:10
a prac in our juvenile detention Center for a couple of weeks and
21:16
we had just been learning about primary crime prevention in our
21:19
subjects at university. And I mean, I was a mature age
21:22
student. I didn't go straight from
21:23
school. I flunked uni and all that.
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But when I saw what was happening in there, I was like,
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it's too late. What we need is primary crime
21:31
prevention that teaches values and character and ethics and
21:35
morals and essentially teaches young people that they can take
21:40
charge of their own lives no matter what the history is.
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And that probably that really drove me to go back and do more
21:46
study, but also into programs outside the prison and even
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working with like I worked with Prep all the way to 12.
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So that's like 4-5 year olds all the way to the 18 year olds.
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And to consider how can we design human adult interactions
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with young people, children, to role model that you can actually
22:07
make different choices regardless of your family or
22:10
your circumstances or your culture, your age, your gender.
22:16
So that's probably I was a driving force.
22:17
And you know, if I could see a transformation in an education
22:20
system towards a paradigm of genuine love and freedom and
22:25
choices that, you know, that would be absolutely remarkable.
22:28
But it's not Most people just want an easy, comfortable,
22:33
punishment driven system. It's it's hard to go against the
22:37
norm. Well, it's really easy to point
22:40
in everything else that has brought you to this place,
22:43
right? It's, it's kind of funny because
22:45
you know, as you and I, we've, we've been studying all this
22:48
kind of stuff for a long time. And so to us it makes sense.
22:51
But every single decision is a choice.
22:54
You know, there's the circumstances around you, yes,
22:57
that we don't always have control over.
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But you know, it's kind of like I was, I reminded of this story.
23:05
I was, I was taught this story a long time ago when I was doing
23:07
martial arts. And then essentially this guy
23:09
gets his black belt and he decides to go down to the worst
23:12
place in the city and he's just going to walk through the worst
23:15
place in the city. And the rule was is that once
23:18
you got your black belt, you never fight anyone outside of
23:21
the school unless you understand that you're going to kill the
23:26
person. And so this person brand new
23:28
black belt gets their black belt, walks out of the school
23:31
and walks down to the worst place, gets in a fight, injuries
23:36
the person and comes back to the school the very next day and
23:39
they get kicked out of the school.
23:41
Well, why did I get kicked out? Well, because you went looking
23:44
for trouble. There's a, there's actually an
23:46
old parable about a, a Japanese master who who had walked down
23:51
the street. And this one specific St.
23:55
It was famous because there was a bull and the bull would always
23:59
charge after people. And this Japanese master walks
24:02
down the street, he sees the bull start to charge, and he
24:06
punches the bull right in the head, kills the bull, and he
24:09
walks on and and that's the end of it.
24:13
That's the end of the story. And the reason for the story is
24:16
this Japanese master was a disgrace because he did not
24:21
honor or respect his environment.
24:23
He put himself in a bad place. And I find this a lot with
24:27
people. And you know, this too, we tend
24:30
to put ourselves in really bad places and then we tend to blame
24:34
everyone else for why we're there.
24:36
Now, that's not always the case. Sometimes we're in those
24:40
different positions, but there's an ownership piece that we
24:43
always have a decision that we can make that will make our
24:47
lives just a little bit better, move us in a little bit better
24:50
of a direction until we can get to a good place.
24:53
You have experienced a lot of failure in life, especially
24:56
failing. In uni many times before you
25:00
I'm. Surprised I didn't fail.
25:02
I really want to challenge your point a little bit.
25:05
Is that? OK for it.
25:06
Of course I know you cannot. I 100% agree that we're
25:12
responsible for the decisions we make in our life, but I also
25:16
suggest that the is the deed at times we need to use a trauma
25:20
lens. And when you put the trauma lens
25:23
on the, and, you know, the applied neuroscience shows us
25:26
that our conscious thought lags behind our active behaviour most
25:31
of the time. And a lot of the reason we say,
25:33
well, you knew better. So well, conscious thought
25:36
didn't kick in until a microsecond later.
25:38
And now we're back in the same position.
25:41
And yeah, I think I'm in my 40s and I have been repeating the
25:44
same bad mistakes for years and years.
25:47
And it's almost like it's like I couldn't see them.
25:51
And some people call them blind spots, and sometimes they have
25:54
blind spots, but sometimes they're known blind spots.
25:56
And we keep doing and we're like, why do I keep doing this?
25:59
And it's because of these patent behaviors of familiarity that,
26:03
you know, we wrestle to do something different.
26:05
And it's so hard and challenging.
26:07
We fall back into those patterns.
26:09
It's, I guess it's, I'm just saying that to we don't want to
26:12
also victimize those people who do keep repeating, but also we
26:15
want to work towards that self-awareness that we can make
26:18
a different choice. But that process of learning to
26:20
do that we, we say it can like for kids in schools, 1000
26:24
repetitions of a positive experience versus the one
26:28
repetition of a negative experience because the
26:30
relearning process, the brain doesn't care about all the good
26:33
things that happen. But it fets that because that's
26:35
not helpful. It's about survival.
26:37
So it's going to pay attention to the thing that threatens
26:39
survival. And then like the point you made
26:42
earlier about replaying that over and over again, that
26:45
becomes the narrative that we start to think is true and real.
26:49
So I think it's the both stand. We, we are responsible for our
26:52
choices 100%, but we need to have a compassionate trauma lens
26:55
that part of the reason we're not making those different
26:57
choices is because we don't yet see that we can make those
27:01
choices or even that we should because it's our normal.
27:05
And so a lot of people end up in pretty dangerous situations
27:08
because they don't yet realize the control that they have over
27:11
themselves. So the, I like to call it a
27:13
journey and we're going on it. There's no like there because as
27:17
we get to there, there's a new journey.
27:19
It just keeps moving. But we're all on this journey of
27:21
figuring out who we are and that we can control ourselves and
27:25
we're at different places. So I just always cautious, I
27:28
guess, about, you know, there's one school of thought.
27:31
There's there's more than one school of thought.
27:34
Well, I love that because it reminds me of a book that I'm
27:36
currently reading right now. And it it's, I love that you
27:39
talk about pattern. And it's pattern recognition,
27:42
specifically habit. Habit.
27:44
Recognition of what are in your life.
27:47
Yeah. Or familiarity.
27:48
What are those things that you constantly find yourself in that
27:52
puts you in a rut? Essentially, because that's what
27:55
our brain is designed to do. It's designed to get ourselves
27:58
in a nice rut and keep on going in that rut because that rut has
28:01
got us to where we are. We've survived this far and
28:05
sometimes. Things in the rut are actually
28:08
serving a purpose and that they're protecting our survival.
28:12
So if everyday patio routine is stopping to get a coffee and
28:17
yeah, this is this is me. I used to do this every single
28:21
day. And it was the comfort of the
28:23
same place. The people knew me.
28:24
It was routine. And I tried to drive past the
28:26
coffee shop. I couldn't do it.
28:27
I had to go there because it had created this pathway of
28:31
repetition and it felt like this rat.
28:33
I was spending all my money on coffee.
28:35
And in fact, the only thing that really broke it was I moved.
28:38
When I moved from that location, I didn't establish a new coffee
28:42
shop routine. My new location, I don't know,
28:47
that seems like something small, but it's exactly how that
28:48
familiarity kicks in and it starts to serve a purpose.
28:51
And I would get a lot of comfort and soothing from.
28:54
I was so well known there that I got my coffee heaps cheaper than
28:58
anybody else and they would have it ready for me when I walked
29:00
in. I mean, all those things feel
29:01
amazing and you don't realize, but it was actually not a
29:05
helpful thing just to serve my life.
29:09
It wasn't wise with finances and you know, I think a lot of
29:12
patent is just that we it was a pattern that was created out of
29:17
a survival instinct or you know, like a soothing instinct or
29:22
regulation instincts that became unhealthy.
29:26
Well, there's there's a safety within familiarity, right?
29:29
There's that old classic phrase, better the devil you know than
29:33
the devil you don't. And it, it, there's, there is
29:36
some truth to that. Like it's my wife and I, we just
29:39
moved within the last year. And so to me, I'm relearning
29:42
everything. I'm currently walking all around
29:45
my neighborhood and I'm like, oh, that's interesting.
29:46
Oh, this is really interesting. And.
29:49
It really are something. Reorientating but then there's
29:52
there's the thought of well, I can't go to the coffee shops I
29:55
used to go to I there's not the food place that I always like
29:58
you know, you have your places that are there's safety and
30:01
there's comfort in those things because you know what you're
30:03
going to get and so. And they deactivate the way of
30:07
thinking so you're not using your brain as much.
30:09
So it's it's soothing on the brain when you have your regular
30:12
stuff. So I'm, I'm curious for you,
30:15
how, how have you experienced that in your own life, where
30:19
maybe you came to the realization that you were in
30:21
that rut constantly going over because it was safe?
30:25
And what was the thing that maybe pushed you out of the rut
30:28
or allowed you to make a shift in life, whether that was you or
30:32
maybe God did something? What what has helped you in the
30:35
past to make those shifts? Right, back to what you said
30:40
earlier when I interrupted your question.
30:42
Failure. Yeah.
30:46
Failure forces us to look at ourselves and question
30:49
ourselves. And a lot of the time the
30:53
failure was falling forward and it was like the best thing that
30:56
could have possibly happened to me, but it was real and painful
31:00
and it really required a lot of reflection in that process.
31:04
So yeah, I don't know that you're either going to change
31:08
because you know of a big crisis or failure or because you have
31:12
some incredible internal instinct to self-control and
31:15
self reflect, which in small amounts, occasionally some
31:19
people can do. But for most of us, if you read
31:21
any story out there, people want to write books and they will
31:24
want to write books because they want to tell their story of how
31:26
they overcame something. It's that idea that when when we
31:31
failed and there was that big internal break, it was
31:34
breakthrough and and I have to admit, like I fail a lot.
31:42
How do you How do you become OK with failure?
31:45
I'm not OK with failure. I hate it.
31:50
I don't wake up every morning. I can't wait to fail today.
31:52
Kids do. Like this is literally how kids
31:55
think they wake up in the morning.
31:56
Like what mistakes am I going to make today?
31:57
Because they know they're going to learn, right?
32:00
It's so simple. And I think we're called to be
32:03
childlike and to return to childlike ways of thinking.
32:05
Because it's partly because of this, you know, if I was giving
32:10
a kid a spelling test, I get 10 words.
32:12
I'm not getting them to, if they got 7 right, I'm not getting
32:14
them to rewrite the words you got right and just focus on
32:18
those. It's ludicrous.
32:20
We do the spelling test so we know which three you they need
32:22
to work on. That's the point of failure.
32:24
Now, do we go, did they fail the test?
32:26
Well, no, but they failed to get those words right.
32:29
And I think that, yeah, I, I hate failure.
32:32
I hate getting a word wrong, but it's necessary.
32:36
And honestly, I think there comes to a point where, you
32:40
know, when it's so bad, you have to laugh at the situation
32:42
because like, this can't get any worse, surely.
32:44
But you know, it's going to. And I haven't been there so many
32:49
times. I'm not that old.
32:50
I feel like I'm only halfway. And, oh, my Lord, like failure.
32:55
Failure is what sharpens us. It's what forces us to do some
32:59
deep introspection and really show us who we are, show us who
33:03
our world is around us, that we're keeping close.
33:08
And and yeah, I keep bailing on a regular basis, not always by
33:12
choice. I could tell you that.
33:14
I wouldn't say it's often by choice.
33:17
Well, but failures feedback, right?
33:19
It's, it's, it's a way to tell that maybe something like
33:23
because we always, we always judge ourself by the result
33:26
versus judging ourselves based off of the process that we're
33:29
going through. I think that if, if we were all
33:32
take a moment and just think about what I just said there
33:34
because I don't know where it came from, but it sounded pretty
33:36
good to me. You focus on the rocess versus
33:39
the result, then you then you have an opportunity to change
33:44
things within the process to get a better result.
33:46
But if you're constantly looking at the result, you can't change
33:48
the result without changing the process.
33:50
But if you're focused on the, on the result, you're never going
33:53
to change the result because you, you have nothing.
33:55
You can't do anything with the result.
33:57
You know, I love that you bring up this idea of, of being
34:00
childlike. You know, Christ talked about
34:02
this. Jesus talked about being
34:03
childlike, having the faith of a child.
34:06
There's, there's something else that's really fascinating to me.
34:09
And I think that you have a lot of knowledge about this is
34:14
Christ talks about people like sheep.
34:18
Sheep are very interesting creatures.
34:21
I know people who have raised sheep and they look really cute.
34:27
But if you've raised them, you have a different feeling, I
34:30
think, about sheep than most people do that look at them as
34:33
these soft, cuddly creatures tell, tell everyone a little bit
34:37
about when did you get to care for a sheep?
34:39
How did how did that come about? And what were some of those
34:42
lessons that as you look back now, you go, man, the people
34:45
that I serve now, they're pretty much like the sheep that I was
34:49
working with a long time ago when I was a kid.
34:53
What a funny question. I have so many metaphors using
34:57
sheep, but largely because I have put intimate lived
35:01
experience. So when I was in high school, I
35:03
was part of a school that had agriculture and I was allocated
35:07
a sheep. His name was Charlie and he was
35:09
the only ram of the fold, or the pen I know we call it.
35:13
But my mum worked at school so I spent a lot of time after
35:16
school. I'd be the one feeding the sheep
35:18
and we used to feed them McDonald's buns.
35:20
McDonald's would give us all their leftover hamburger buns.
35:23
This is sheeplo welfare to McDonald's, but my sheep.
35:29
So we would show them, so we would compete with them.
35:31
We would teach them how to stand properly and we would be given
35:35
the shears to learn how to shear them and and walk them and all
35:39
that. And so Charlie got to know me.
35:40
And I think when I think about that scripture was around that,
35:44
you know, there's the sheep know my name.
35:47
You know, when I call them, they come, they know my name.
35:50
It's so deeply personal because yeah, we had these multi ovals
35:54
are like massive ovals. And then the sheep pen was right
35:57
at the back. And I would call out to my sheep
36:00
to Charlie from long way off. And he'd be at the fence making
36:04
a little cute little noises at me waiting.
36:07
And I'd get him out And I didn't have to have him on a halter
36:10
because he would follow me and we would walk around the Oval
36:13
and hang out and he'd eat the Clover.
36:16
And he was my buddy. And you know, it's he never
36:21
questioned me. He never held me accountable.
36:25
He just followed me. And I think like that's that's
36:30
been a really amazing picture in my mind to my relationship with
36:35
Jesus, Like he is the shepherd and he knows my name and it's
36:40
not for me to question him or to pull them accountable.
36:43
That's it's for me to follow him and to listen out for him and to
36:48
come when he calls and be responsive.
36:52
So, you know, I think that's as a leader, when I'm in a
36:55
leadership role, I think that's a really significant piece of
37:00
the puzzle to be holding and to never let go is honoring the
37:06
people that you're leading. I'm not saying they shouldn't
37:09
question you and they shouldn't hold you accountable.
37:11
That was my metaphor with Jesus. Please don't get that right, but
37:15
that we honor the people that we're leading and lead them into
37:19
safe pastures. It's the I never took Charlie on
37:22
the road. I never took him like down to
37:25
the river where it was so muddy he'd get bogged.
37:28
Like I, I only took him to good healthy life giving places and,
37:34
and cared for him and made sure all his needs were met and made
37:38
sure that he was healthy. And, and you know, once a
37:42
shepherd leaves, it's very hard for a sheep to connect to a new
37:46
shepherd. And Charlie wasn't able to do
37:47
that. They had to actually remove him
37:49
from the school because he was no longer safe for others.
37:53
So yes, maybe I had a codependent sheep.
37:55
But yeah, I think this is, you're getting very, you're
38:01
flirting with my passion topic, which is as a leader, if we're
38:05
talking about connection and how do we connect and have that deep
38:09
intimate connection, then we have to ask what does connection
38:12
mean? And to ask what connections
38:13
mean. Is that, well, for me, it's
38:15
equal measures of relationship responsibility.
38:18
That's what connection means to me.
38:20
So then we've got to think through how would, how does that
38:22
apply to this idea of sheep and to just a brief teaching moment.
38:28
We're talking about polarity, relationship responsibility, or
38:31
two opposing polarities that require each other to exist.
38:34
Much like when you wake up this morning, you breathe in and you
38:38
breathe out and you just have been doing that all day.
38:40
I'm assuming that there wasn't a point.
38:43
You didn't be like, you know what, like at 2:00, I'm just
38:46
going to breathe out from now on, right?
38:50
Yeah. OK, so polarity is like think of
38:53
an Infinity loop going round and round, breathe in, that's really
38:56
good. But now it's bad.
38:58
So you down the loop because my my lungs are empty, this is bad.
39:01
So I breathe out, that feels really good.
39:04
Now I need more air, so that's bad.
39:07
And you go back and forth. This is the same with
39:09
responsibility relationship. There's good levels of
39:11
responsibility, good levels of relationship and unhealthy,
39:14
harmful levels of both relationship and responsibility.
39:18
And the picture is the, the shepherd is there to guide the
39:21
sheep through a picture, the same Infinity loop, recognizing
39:26
the people you're leading. Do they need responsibility
39:28
right now or do they need leadership?
39:30
And do they need healthy levels of it or are you giving them
39:33
unhealthy levels? And if you picture, you know,
39:36
once you're in one side of that Infinity loop, let's say it's
39:39
the field for the sheep and it's depleted off all the grass and
39:41
there's no life left in it. You've got to move the sheep to
39:44
the other pasture. You don't keep them in that past
39:46
that paddock and be like, well, the what is over there, but
39:48
we're staying here. It's so too many schools of
39:52
thought and particularly in leadership theory, but I see
39:56
this in education with kids all the time is you have to pick one
39:58
or the other. It's either high rules, high
40:01
standards, high expectations, policy accountability, or.
40:05
High relationship, high connection.
40:08
You know we must be best friends or even family.
40:10
The person in charge is, you know, our father and we.
40:15
Those two schools of thought are super dangerous.
40:17
High responsibility leads to rebellion and high relationship
40:20
leads to chaos. Either one can't exist.
40:23
Those polarities need each other to exist.
40:26
And so, you know, when I think of the shepherd and the Good
40:29
Shepherd, they are paying attention to the field and
40:32
they're moving the sheep back and forth into the pasture so
40:36
that they're getting nourished and so that they're in a healthy
40:38
place and they're getting access to what they need.
40:41
They're taking ownership, they're caring and they're
40:44
responsible. And you know, but I could go on
40:47
and on. This is my pet topic, but we
40:51
need to start shifting from one pole or the other.
40:54
Well, what I love about this, though, is you can't get a sheep
40:58
to lie down unless it feels safe.
41:01
You know, he leads me by still waters.
41:05
He makes me lie down by still waters.
41:07
There's there's something really powerful about that.
41:10
And I know that you can talk about this, that with the people
41:14
that you lead with an education, any kind of education, no matter
41:18
what industry you're in. If you want to learn something,
41:20
you have to be in a safe space that you feel, your brain can
41:25
feel like it can take away the mechanism of fight or flight and
41:30
start to actually learn things, right?
41:32
How important is it to create a safe space when you are trying
41:38
to create change in your life? Oh, Nathan, this is the it's
41:42
you're nailing the most important message of the only
41:49
way transformation can happen because I mean, essentially, if
41:51
you look at the neural circuitry that is required for fight
41:55
flight freeze, those parts of the brain that are lighting up
41:59
is just a physiological reaction to a fear environment.
42:03
So fight flight freeze in a safe environment is play learning
42:07
intimacy. You only you know, the vagal
42:10
break of intimacy, which is the dorsal vagal reaction where you
42:14
would lie down and feel safe enough to be still is happening
42:17
in that third layer, which is a safe freeze.
42:20
And most people who talk about fight flight freeze don't ever
42:24
add that this is not a this is not about our physiological
42:28
reaction doing something wrong. It's about our physiological
42:32
reaction reacting to the environment, whether it's fear
42:35
based or love and safety based. But then we come back to the
42:40
trauma lens and say, well, some people have a physiological
42:43
reaction that says they're in danger when they're actually
42:46
safe. So a student, let's say a child
42:50
who has been abused in a home, you know, abusers are incredibly
42:55
smart, they're incredibly manipulative.
42:58
And let's say they had essential oils.
43:00
This is a common one that people don't think about.
43:02
And they've got the lavender because they've got the calming
43:04
sense and they, they, and so then the student goes to school
43:07
and of course all the teachers want have essential oils burning
43:09
in their classroom. And I'm like, Oh my Lord, like,
43:11
don't you think that other people haven't given this
43:13
thought as well? And so these kids are reacting
43:15
because olfactory reactions bypass neural logic and they're
43:19
the fastest reaction you'll get. And then with these kids
43:22
misbehaving, but we don't know what's happened.
43:24
They can't tell us. Often they don't know why
43:28
they're reacting. And you go down to the classroom
43:30
and it's got some sort of strong smell and you know, you often we
43:35
think we have a safe environment, but it's not the
43:38
same as if a child grows up in a home where there's lots of
43:40
screaming and yelling and anger. They come to school with a
43:43
teacher with a soft sing song voice, you know, like Miss Honey
43:46
on Matilda. And you go into that classroom.
43:49
That's not love because love to them is being yelled at and to
43:52
be an aggressive. And so they come into this
43:55
environment. It's so far and they don't they
43:57
can't make sense of it. They can also repel what is
44:01
genuinely safe because the brain has learned to compute what is
44:05
safe based on a historical experience.
44:08
So the brain lies to us all the time and but it's essential that
44:12
we know we to create those safe environments.
44:15
It takes time, takes repetition, takes intentionality.
44:19
And like, you have to like the phrase, can you do who you say
44:22
you are? Like, whether it's a child who
44:25
sees through the fact that their teachers smiling and says, says
44:28
that they like them, but they know they don't.
44:30
Children are not stupid. But same with a, you know, if
44:33
you're working for a boss and you're like, Gee, I'm pretty
44:35
sure they hate me. Like we've had enough
44:38
interactions now that their behavior and their words are not
44:40
matching up. There's an intuition we all have
44:43
through neuroception that says something's off.
44:46
I'm not. What I'm hearing is not a lying
44:48
lining with what I'm feeling. And so as leaders, it is vital
44:53
that we protect our relationships by creating
44:56
environments of safety and recognize if someone's not
44:59
acting like they feel safe, what's going on for them?
45:02
And how do we, I love the phrase, slow down to the speed
45:05
of relationship and meet them where they're at and again, walk
45:08
the journey. They don't have to be where I'm
45:10
at. I just walk the journey with
45:11
them. That's so good.
45:14
There's by the way, if you're listening to this right now, you
45:16
need to go back and listen to what she just said for like the
45:19
last two minutes and just put it on repeat over and over and over
45:24
and over because there's so much gold in what she just said.
45:26
It is so good. I, I am curious because we've
45:30
talked about faith and I love getting into faith because I
45:33
don't know why a lot of people just shy away from faith when it
45:36
comes to podcasts and, and pretty much every aspect of
45:39
business and faith is huge to me and I think to a lot of people.
45:42
I'm curious, how has your relationship with, with Christ,
45:46
with Jesus? How has that shifted over the
45:48
years from, you know, being a, maybe a young child?
45:50
I don't know if you're grown, if you grew up, you know, Catholic
45:54
or, or anything like that, but how has your relationship with
45:56
Christ evolved over time and where is it right now?
46:00
How does? How does that lead and inform
46:02
the way that you currently navigate your world?
46:06
Yeah, I mean, I'm someone who shies away from talking about my
46:11
faith on podcasts. I even in myself.
46:15
Yeah, I don't I don't talk about it because I work with schools
46:19
and you know, I work with faith-based schools and non
46:21
faith-based schools and you know, but I am a person of
46:24
faith. I grew up just general Christian
46:27
believer of Jesus, but and I was exposed as a child.
46:30
I've always had my own intimate experience of faith.
46:34
I think the the reason I shy away from it is just to stay
46:37
neutral. And I guess I don't realize, I
46:44
think everybody in every culture there's a higher power because
46:49
everyone gets to a place in their life through mistake
46:52
making usually where they are. Like, I don't have all the
46:55
answers. And if I don't have the all the
46:59
answers and this is it, this can't be it.
47:01
There's got to be something bigger than me and so I think
47:04
I've been on that journey in different layers many times.
47:07
My experience with my faith journey personally is I do
47:12
ballroom dancing. It's my greatest joy is my.
47:17
OK, you can't you can't just say you do ballroom dancing.
47:20
You're a gold level ballroom dancer.
47:23
Like that's that's like. I I went my first gold step last
47:27
week. I'm just touching into gold.
47:30
Well, can consider like the majority people that are
47:33
probably listening to this right now that are going what's
47:35
ballroom dancing? I mean, I would say that you're
47:39
probably in the upper echelon of people that do ballroom dancing.
47:43
Yeah, I don't think you're probably.
47:45
You know one of them now. Completely useless because
47:47
unless I take my teacher with me to that wedding, I still can't
47:51
dance because I'm a follower, not a leader.
47:53
This all comes back to the sheep, right?
47:55
So I'm boring dancing and you hear the metaphor run around all
47:59
the time at the two people in It Takes 2 to tango or two people
48:02
in partnership. Unless you've done dance, you
48:07
need to just give it a go for it to really come alive.
48:10
Once I got on the dance floor and I started to learn.
48:12
So I I'm a follower being you don't have to take a follower
48:16
just because you're female, but I choose follower.
48:18
The leader is my my teacher, and so his job is to show me the
48:23
steps, to help me refine the steps.
48:26
It's to lead, it's to navigate the dance floor like so that we
48:29
don't hit the wall. It's to choose what steps where
48:33
we do freestyle, which means it's none of us like that learnt
48:37
performances. We're actually genuinely dancing
48:39
to the music. My job is to know how to listen
48:42
to the music, to learn my steps, to listen to the very subtle
48:46
signals of what my teacher's given me and to to constantly
48:51
perfect my own posture, my own presentation.
48:56
So what does it have to do with with Jesus, if he's our leader,
49:01
or if for me, it's my relationship with God and, and
49:05
you know, the trying the Trinity.
49:07
My job is to learn my steps at, at increasing measure, slowly
49:12
but steady, to practice them, to come back and ask questions and
49:16
to, you know, work on my posture and my, my, my form and to pay
49:22
attention to timing. But his job is to navigate and
49:26
to anticipate and to give me the signal of which move we're going
49:30
to use next. Now he can't signal for me to do
49:34
whatever that step is if I haven't learned it and if I
49:37
haven't remembered it. And so once I started dance, my,
49:43
my relationship with God changed significantly because I forced
49:47
myself into the role of follower like every week.
49:51
And then when I started thinking, well, how's that
49:53
reply? Applying leadership.
49:55
Yeah, I make myself the sheep, essentially.
49:57
And in in leadership, it's the same.
49:59
My job is to navigate. My job is to anticipate.
50:03
You know, there's an obstruction in the way.
50:04
There's another couple we need to move around.
50:06
Like my job is to set the timing for the dance, like to signal
50:13
the move we need to make. My team's job is to learn the
50:17
steps and increasing measure that I'm teaching them and to be
50:22
able to listen to the music and to anticipate the dance and to
50:25
recognize my signals so that we both have a part to play.
50:29
But I think there's a lot of parallel between that.
50:33
But for me, learning to dance was about learning to be a
50:35
follower, and it changed the entire way that I operate with
50:41
God. It doesn't mean I don't try to
50:42
take the lead. Sometimes back leading is a real
50:44
thing. Or you get off timing and you're
50:48
like, Oh my word, what have I done?
50:49
Or your misstep and you guys collapse.
50:52
Yeah, that's that's a real things.
50:55
I love it because there's so many similarities between like
50:59
dance, like martial arts, so martial arts.
51:02
I have a have a deep background in martial arts and you know,
51:05
even with Kato, the Japanese forms, you know, they used to
51:08
call it was, it was a dance, you know, doing dancing with these
51:12
moves. But it's interesting because
51:15
some of the best people that you look at they're not rigid.
51:19
They they're relaxed. Now, it doesn't mean that they
51:22
don't have structure, right? And, and Bernie, you understand
51:25
this because when you're dancing in a ballroom dance, like there
51:29
is structure that your body needs to be in to move, but you
51:33
can't be so rigid that you can't be moved, But there has to be.
51:37
Oh, they're. The worst people to dance with.
51:39
You cannot dance with someone who's rigid equally, someone
51:43
whose body is like water and you're dancing with like, I
51:47
don't know, like those things in the car parks that blow up and
51:50
down like you're like that. You can't get a signal from that
51:53
either either. But it's it's such a beautiful
52:01
metaphor for life and even a relationship with the creator of
52:04
like there's there is a structure that you've been given
52:08
of how to operate in the world that we live in.
52:11
And God gave you a specific structure how to show up and to
52:15
hold that structure. And then there's this other
52:17
aspect. You know, you don't want to be
52:19
loosey goosey. You don't want to just, you
52:20
know, be the be the, you know, floater thing.
52:23
I don't even know what they're called.
52:24
There's a name for it. I can't think of what they're
52:26
called. But I don't know.
52:29
You don't want to be that, but you also don't want to be a
52:31
rock. Like you want to be able to
52:33
move. And I think that's one of the
52:36
things that I think a lot of what we're talking about right
52:38
now is that there is a structure of who you're created to be.
52:43
And then there's a point where you have to say, OK, I know the
52:45
structure. And now I have to allow God to
52:48
lead me. Now I need the Good Shepherd to
52:50
lead me. And there's also this piece of,
52:53
of realizing that you're in a safe space with God.
52:56
There's this, there's a space that you have to come to that
52:59
you say, OK, God is going to lead me.
53:02
He wants good for my life and and I'm going going to trust him
53:05
in this. And as a sheep, Yeah, it's
53:10
intimate. But if you don't have the
53:12
intimacy, all of a sudden it just looks like this person in
53:15
the sky that's trying to beat you down.
53:17
You know, he's he's trying to make me move from this beautiful
53:21
grassy. Well, it's not really grassy
53:23
anymore. This muddy place that used to
53:25
be, you know, grassy. But why is he moving for me from
53:28
this? This is so familiar.
53:29
This is so good. And I think it's a beautiful
53:32
testimony of kind of where we are as a society and world that
53:38
are we looking around us to say, OK, where is the safety to
53:42
explore, to really discover who we are created to be and are we
53:47
allowed to move in that are we? We're desperate for intimacy
53:51
that that's what the world's crying out for.
53:54
But let's add that. Let's layer up what you're
53:56
sharing there. When you go to dance, I don't
53:59
know if it's the same in martial arts.
54:00
When I did bronze and I did all that level, I was like, yeah,
54:03
sign and nail it. I've got all my steps.
54:05
And then I go to learn like the next thing in silver and
54:09
suddenly my teachers like, so everything that we learned about
54:11
the structure and bronze, we need to unlearn that.
54:15
And it's a whole new step pattern.
54:17
I'm like, what, what are you talking about?
54:19
Like I've just nailed that. He's like, Oh yeah.
54:20
So we don't do, you know, when you're a beginner, you just kind
54:23
of step, then you would do bronze and you kind of started
54:26
to have some fluid, but now we're going to do this.
54:28
Like, I can't remember what they call some smooth step.
54:31
And I was like, Oh my Lord, like you're telling me I've got to
54:34
relearn every single thing through a new paradigm.
54:36
He's like, yes, we need to unlearn everything.
54:38
You learn to relearn. And then you get to level 4,
54:40
whatever. And it's like, oh, my word, we
54:42
got to do this again. How many times he's like, oh, we
54:44
keep doing this. This is how we learn.
54:46
So you learn and I used to think, oh, how in the world, why
54:51
don't they just teach us the right step from the beginning?
54:54
And it's kind of like because at school, like they do what space
54:57
every single year. And you think like, why do they
54:59
do space and prep and you're 1 and you're 2 and you're 3
55:02
because they're layering up the concepts and they're broadening
55:05
their understanding. And it's where we, and we don't
55:09
pivot and we don't unlearn what we've learned and relearn right
55:13
now. The neuroscience is a great
55:16
example because it's transitioning from the triune
55:19
brain and the three parts and the flip the lid and, you know,
55:21
the limbic system and all those things that are no longer
55:24
accurate. And so all the, you know, new
55:27
sciences coming out, we're being asked to unlearn what we learned
55:30
as and recognize and honored as something helpful that's got us
55:33
to where we are, but now relearn a new way of thinking.
55:36
And, you know, it's going to take years for people to catch
55:38
up with that because like you said, we want to stay in the
55:42
muddy field. That's familiar.
55:44
And I think part of the journey is coming to a place where, you
55:48
know, we could be ready when we're when, well, you know, life
55:51
says to us, it's time to unlearn what you learn and time to
55:55
relearn a whole new dance. And you're like, oh, word, like,
55:59
OK, let's do it again. Let's start from the beginning.
56:04
I love that because it it really shows who who the really smart
56:09
people are in the world, those who are willing to unlearn
56:12
everything, to relearn it the right way because, well, no.
56:15
No, it's not the right way. It's it's the next level.
56:18
It's a it wasn't low. It's yeah, yeah, it's, yeah.
56:22
And I love that you bring that up too because it's it's it's an
56:25
it's just a different way to do things.
56:27
It's a better way. It's a more advanced way than
56:30
what we knew. But we in order to get to where
56:32
we are today, we had to go through those steps similar to
56:36
what you're talking about with dance, similar within martial
56:38
arts, you know, you and the upper levels.
56:42
You don't see people chambering, which is essentially like
56:45
preparing to do a block. People just block.
56:48
Like you don't have to go. OK.
56:49
It reminds me of it. I don't know if you ever saw the
56:51
Napoleon Dynamite movie. It was a horrible movie.
56:54
Don't go and see it. But there was this point where
56:57
like there, there, there. He's across from his teacher and
57:01
his his teacher begins or he's in a fight or something like
57:05
that. And the guy kicks him and he
57:06
says, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.
57:07
We didn't bow first. You have to bow before you
57:09
start. And, and there is there is a
57:13
flow to learn, but then you also have to graduate to the next
57:18
level. You have to constantly progress.
57:20
And I love that you bring that up.
57:22
There has been so many amazing things that we've talked about
57:27
before We kind of wrap up though, I do want to ask you,
57:29
I've been asking this question a lot recently and I think it's a
57:32
good question. Maybe it's not.
57:34
I think it's good when you hear the phrase more than before.
57:37
What does that mean to you? I'm immediately taken to the
57:41
metaphor of levelling up in In dance.
57:47
It's to me, it's the idea that, you know, today I was here and
57:52
tomorrow I know a little bit more and that I have been
57:56
intentional to pursue that. I think about when I did my
58:01
first competition when I was a bronze student.
58:04
Could you imagine if I still dance like that, Like, Oh my
58:06
word, how humiliating. The goal isn't to stay there,
58:10
right? They got that.
58:12
That's how a lot of people think.
58:13
They want to stay, and they want to fix mindset and comfort.
58:18
And more than before, to me is embracing mystery over
58:23
certainty. And look, I'm the first to say
58:25
if I could make everything certain, I'd love control.
58:29
Love it. But you know what?
58:31
There's no living in control. And yes, more than before to me
58:35
is yesterday. I'm not the same person today,
58:40
and I won't be the same person tomorrow.
58:42
And that's OK. That's what comes to mind.
58:45
Yeah. I love that.
58:47
It's so good, Bernie. I have absolutely loved our time
58:52
together. For all of you guys listening,
58:53
if you want to find out more about Bernie and all the great
58:57
work that she's doing, learning about education, how to how to
59:00
use some of the concepts that we've talked, you can obviously
59:03
tell that she's not passionate about any of these things that
59:06
we talked about. But if you want to connect with
59:08
her, if you want to learn more about her work and how you can
59:11
get involved with some of the things that she's doing, it'll
59:13
be in the show notes. You can go check that out.
59:15
And for all of you guys listening, make sure that you
59:17
like subscribe, share this episode with some of that.
59:19
You know that maybe it's going through some change.
59:22
Maybe they need to understand that there's some safety that
59:26
needs to be in place, but there's also good things that
59:28
are around the corner. Until next time, be more, see
59:31
more, and experience more than before.