Speaker 1: Good, our team, Welcome to another installment of the You Project. Tiffany,
Speaker 1: Are you all right?
Speaker 2: Yes, harps, I am very good, Thank you.
Speaker 3: What's going on over there at fucking cook Central?
Speaker 2: So same old just scooting around in the mood boot
Speaker 2: For most part I get to take it off and
Speaker 2: punch things a little bit now, which is great.
Speaker 3: What's the typical pain barometer?
Speaker 1: Because it was a couple of weeks ago, it was
Speaker 1: about fifteen out of ten and you're crying like a
Speaker 1: four year old?
Speaker 3: What you are? The tears diminished somewhat? Are you okay?
Speaker 3: What's going on?
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 2: Yeah, they're just occasionally rolling down one cheek frustration, but just.
Speaker 1: A pathetic tear, just dribbling down one cheek. Well, you're
Speaker 1: a gangster and so we wish you were speedy recovery.
Speaker 1: So you secured today's guest. You said he wasn't that great,
Speaker 1: but he was available. You didn't say anything like that,
Speaker 1: you said he's fucking awesome. You know, when you're getting
Speaker 1: someone on the show, you go and do a bit
Speaker 1: of research and I'm like, well, what research do I
Speaker 1: need to do?
Speaker 3: Because I've loved him and watched him. I'm afar forever.
Speaker 1: It's not that I know everything, but I feel like
Speaker 1: with some people, like we had Tracy bartramon yesterday or
Speaker 1: the day before, who goes way back, and most people
Speaker 1: love Tracy and know of Tracy and Hughesy. I feel
Speaker 1: you can probably at the moment times that by ten.
Speaker 1: But anyway, for our overseas listeners, I'm going to say this.
Speaker 1: Our Australian listeners know Hughesy, but our overseas listeners, of
Speaker 1: which is about twenty percent of our audience. So Hughesy
Speaker 1: is he's an icon in Australia. He won't say that,
Speaker 1: but I will because he's far too humble and self deprecating.
Speaker 1: But he's a comedian. He's done a little bit of acting.
Speaker 1: It was fucking horrible. I'll give you the tip. He's
Speaker 1: a radio star, he's a TV star, he's a host,
Speaker 1: he's a dad. He is a bogan and we love
Speaker 1: all of that shit. And if you don't know what
Speaker 1: a bogan is, a bogan is kind of he's not
Speaker 1: really a bogan, but he's a bit Boganesque. Like myself.
Speaker 1: I grew up in the bush. He grew up in
Speaker 1: the bush. Tiff grew up in Tasmania. That's the bush.
Speaker 3: So there's a little bit of that about all three
Speaker 3: of us. Husy, thanks for coming on to you.
Speaker 4: Projectif it's great to be here, and yeah, I appreciate
Speaker 4: the intro, and note I will accept the icon status, mate,
Speaker 4: I'm not that humble.
Speaker 5: To be honest, I'm thinking, I argue David William Hughes
Speaker 5: aka a magic hair he told us before Stiff, can
Speaker 5: you get a good screenshot of his hair at some
Speaker 5: stage through the thing, because we need that for the promo.
Speaker 3: He's telling us how awesome his hair was.
Speaker 4: But I'm only saying that because I spent many years
Speaker 4: I look back on photos of me with really short
Speaker 4: hair thinking why aren't I, you know, making the most
Speaker 4: of a natural assets. Like some people, and a lot
Speaker 4: of men lose their hair young, or they lose their
Speaker 4: hair when they're thirty or forty or fifty. I just
Speaker 4: turned fifty and it's as growing, as strong and as
Speaker 4: lustrous as ever, and I'm going to make the most
Speaker 4: of it.
Speaker 1: Well, it's nothing if not fucking vibrant and prolific. I
Speaker 1: don't know how how sexy it is or how styled
Speaker 1: it is, but let's just go with there's a lot
Speaker 1: of it, mate, so good for you. But I know
Speaker 1: I don't look like it. But my hair goes. My
Speaker 1: hair's like yours, except that grows in thirty seven directions.
Speaker 1: So people think I've been bored for twenty years. I'm
Speaker 1: not baled. My old man's eighty one. He's got hair
Speaker 1: like a fucking yetty, and my hair grows like crazy.
Speaker 3: But it's just out of control. But I think with
Speaker 3: a little bit of product shocking.
Speaker 4: I'm actually shocked by that me like everyone else would
Speaker 4: assume that you're.
Speaker 3: Ball, I'm not.
Speaker 4: Well, give it a go, let it hang out, Let's
Speaker 4: see a new you.
Speaker 6: It's you know, let's change it up. Why wouldn't you
Speaker 6: change it up? You don't have to do the same
Speaker 6: thing every day.
Speaker 1: I've been coached by Dave Hughes. I feel kind of privileged.
Speaker 1: Is he going to send me a bill?
Speaker 5: Ah?
Speaker 4: Dear?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I know.
Speaker 1: It's funny though, how we get into I don't know this,
Speaker 1: this groove where I've been shaved my head since I
Speaker 1: used to stand on nightclub doors one hundred years ago
Speaker 1: Hughsey and get punched in the face for ten dollars
Speaker 1: an hour, right, and so it's been a but it's
Speaker 1: just been a standard.
Speaker 3: I reckon.
Speaker 1: I've had twenty pairs of clippers, and probably every Monday
Speaker 1: fortnight I clip in my hair. I put on a
Speaker 1: one or sometimes no blade at all, and it just goes.
Speaker 1: I should have probably been in the military because I'm
Speaker 1: built for it, but I've let it grow out.
Speaker 3: If have you ever seen it long, I've.
Speaker 2: Seen it with a little bit of hair. I mean
Speaker 2: you had a little bit of hair when you yeah
Speaker 2: that photo with your mom.
Speaker 3: I put up this photo. This is terrible, fucking I
Speaker 3: was going to say it's terrible radio. We're not on
Speaker 3: the radio. But just just for Hughes's benefit, can you
Speaker 3: see that or hang on?
Speaker 4: Let me.
Speaker 6: Yeah, you've got like about three mili. Yeah, that's not true.
Speaker 3: Have a look.
Speaker 2: Looks HAPs you look like you get a pan.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 6: It just goes everywhere.
Speaker 3: And I have to think.
Speaker 4: You just put up a photo of you looking like
Speaker 4: Krusty the Clown. Maybe half an inch there.
Speaker 3: I mean, it's like to fucking hell City on Brad Pitt.
Speaker 4: If you have a mirror, you're joint after the town
Speaker 4: Side Joe Bill.
Speaker 6: I'm talking about the hair.
Speaker 4: I'm not talking about the face.
Speaker 1: You're a funny man, So I don't want to ask
Speaker 1: you all the boring shit, But give us a little
Speaker 1: bit about Dave.
Speaker 3: Who's the six year old, eight year old, ten year old?
Speaker 3: Where'd you grow up? What was it like? You don't
Speaker 3: have to give us the cliche stuff.
Speaker 1: I feel like someone like you, who's been interviewed a
Speaker 1: thousand times, I want to not have that conversation. But also,
Speaker 1: most of our audience won't know the answer to these questions.
Speaker 1: So fair enough, let's go where'd you grow up?
Speaker 3: What was it like? What were you good at? What
Speaker 3: did you hate? Were you an athlete?
Speaker 4: Grew up in a country town, a place called Warnable.
Speaker 4: At a time, probably twenty thousand people lived in the town.
Speaker 4: One of the youngest of four children, my oldest. My
Speaker 4: twin sisters are three and a half years older than me.
Speaker 4: My brother is a year and a half older than me.
Speaker 4: So in a commission house, look a humble abode. Dad
Speaker 4: was a factory worker, Mum was a nurse. And yeah,
Speaker 4: so you know, I dreamed of having Nike. You know,
Speaker 4: the cliche. I dreamed of having added ass and Nike
Speaker 4: at runners and didn't have them, you know, I was.
Speaker 4: You know, my kids now just lose their nights and
Speaker 4: don't give a shit, especially my son.
Speaker 6: Unbelievable. So yeah, I went to a.
Speaker 4: Well Catholics, you know back when people went to church,
Speaker 4: and my nana was a full on Catholic, so she
Speaker 4: thought I was going to be a priest.
Speaker 6: I mean she was wrong.
Speaker 4: But so I went to Catholic primary school, you know,
Speaker 4: I did all that stuff, you know, church every Sunday.
Speaker 4: Went to a CBC Catholic as secondary school. Basically because
Speaker 4: I was I was scared of girls, to be honest,
Speaker 4: so I wanted to stay with boys. Every time I
Speaker 4: saw a group of girls. If I was walking down
Speaker 4: the street and I saw a group of girls laughing,
Speaker 4: I think they were laughing at me.
Speaker 3: I was so.
Speaker 4: And I didn't like being laughed at back then. So yeah,
Speaker 4: but I did dream of being an athlete, and that
Speaker 4: was a big thing for me. I want to be
Speaker 4: an athlete, you know that every night, dreaming about playing
Speaker 4: Test cricket or winning Wimbledon, or you know winning AFL
Speaker 4: Grand finals and footy or you know, just sports, sports, sport.
Speaker 4: I remember Maradonna died the other day, obviously a legend.
Speaker 4: And I clearly remember the nineteen eighty six World Cup
Speaker 4: where Maradonna absolutely lit it up in Mexico and me
Speaker 4: and my cousin just wanted to be Maradonna as fifteen childs.
Speaker 4: I was just sport obsessed as a young person.
Speaker 1: What was the thing that what was the one thing
Speaker 1: that you were good at? I mean you might have
Speaker 1: been good at, but was the thing you were best
Speaker 1: at if you were ever going to make it at anything?
Speaker 3: What might it have been?
Speaker 4: It might have been Aussie rule was Yeah, so I was. Yeah,
Speaker 4: I was a good country footballer, and you know I
Speaker 4: had I remember one guy telling me I could make
Speaker 4: the big league.
Speaker 6: You know that was like one guy who said, but
Speaker 6: it was not for me.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I knew that dream was over at the age
Speaker 4: of twenty four, to be honest, when I was jogging
Speaker 4: around a suburban ground in Melbourne, playing reserves football in
Speaker 4: the suburban league. And you know what, the captain of
Speaker 4: the club jogged a lat with me. I think I
Speaker 4: was twenty four at the time and had terrible hamstring
Speaker 4: problems at the year because I was eating too many burgers.
Speaker 4: Captain of the club jogged a lat with me and said,
Speaker 4: I reckon, you should stick to comedy, and you know,
Speaker 4: and that was the inspiration I needed to give up
Speaker 4: my AFL dream.
Speaker 1: Well, you probably need to thank that guy because he
Speaker 1: probably set you on a trajectory that has served you well.
Speaker 4: He did, and I was I was doing comedy at
Speaker 4: the time. Obviously, I'd done a gig at at the
Speaker 4: local it was Bentley Football Club actually a suburban Melbourne,
Speaker 4: and I did a gig for the players and the
Speaker 4: family and friends during the year and it had gone well,
Speaker 4: so and I was doing some I was getting paid
Speaker 4: a bit doing stand up at that time, so, but
Speaker 4: you know, being getting injured in footy on Saturday was
Speaker 4: probably not good for trying to get on stage on
Speaker 4: a sad day. I've had one injury story involving the
Speaker 4: adrenaline of being on stage.
Speaker 6: This was a Sunday.
Speaker 4: I'd played a game I think on a Sunday and
Speaker 4: injured my shoulder during the day so much so that
Speaker 4: my shoulder was frozen stiff and couldn't I could not
Speaker 4: move it at all, couldn't move, couldn't lift my arm
Speaker 4: above sort of horizontal basically. So I went on stage
Speaker 4: that night and I said, guys, I played footy today
Speaker 4: and I have injured myself so badly.
Speaker 6: Look how far I can lift my arm.
Speaker 4: And I went to lift my arm and went right
Speaker 4: above my head. Adrenaline of being on stage at that
Speaker 4: point made you. I realized how much adrenaline you have
Speaker 4: when you're on stage. It was just the injury had
Speaker 4: gone away. As soon as I got off stage, my
Speaker 4: arm was frozen again.
Speaker 6: That was interesting.
Speaker 3: I fucked my back so badly.
Speaker 1: I've got a history of lower back injuries. But touch wood,
Speaker 1: he says, he touched the table.
Speaker 3: It's all right at the moment.
Speaker 1: But I've had a bunch of you know, injections, underscan
Speaker 1: and all that kind of shit.
Speaker 3: I haven't had surgery, which is good.
Speaker 1: But I had to go to Perth and do two
Speaker 1: gigs on a Friday night and a Saturday night. Workshops
Speaker 1: quite big as in, you know, probably about a thousand people.
Speaker 1: So yeah, and it's not like somebody else. There's three
Speaker 1: other presenters. It's like it's a Craig Harper workshop and
Speaker 1: everyone booked in for that workshop and we can't refund it.
Speaker 1: And I fucked my back horrendously the day before. So
Speaker 1: I had to fly out on a Friday and speak
Speaker 1: Friday night, speak Saturday night, fuck my back, and I
Speaker 1: couldn't like I could. Literally it took me fifteen minutes
Speaker 1: to get out of bed, and I was doing the.
Speaker 3: Tiff Cook tears. There was just there was just a fuck.
Speaker 1: And I wasn't overtly crying, but there were just tears
Speaker 1: coming out of my eyes, like yeah, real, And it
Speaker 1: took me so I had to go and I was
Speaker 1: just in agony the whole way, and yeah, I had
Speaker 1: to do the same.
Speaker 3: Well, I didn't have that experience, but I had to.
Speaker 1: Literally I couldn't sit because once I sat, I couldn't
Speaker 1: get up up and I couldn't stand because the pain
Speaker 1: was too much. So they just gave me a stool
Speaker 1: and I kind of lent like a pissed bloke at
Speaker 1: a bar on a stool for three hours.
Speaker 3: But it's amazing.
Speaker 1: Once you get in that place, I'll flow and you're
Speaker 1: present and you're in the moment, and there's energy in
Speaker 1: the room and there's hundreds of people. I wasn't pain free,
Speaker 1: but I managed to get through it. And then literally
Speaker 1: one minute past ten or whenever it was that I finished.
Speaker 1: There's just this overwhelm of agony, and the same thing
Speaker 1: happened the next day, and I was fucked for about
Speaker 1: two weeks. And I look back a week or two later,
Speaker 1: when I was still in pun I gotta I go.
Speaker 1: I do not know how on earth I got up
Speaker 1: to do that, but I think sometimes when you don't
Speaker 1: have an option, you know, I feel like you don't
Speaker 1: have an option, you go, well, fuck, I can't not go,
Speaker 1: So I just need to figure it out.
Speaker 3: I want to ask you about.
Speaker 4: It's Steven were great to say being on stage keeps
Speaker 4: me in the moment more than anything. So yeah, it's
Speaker 4: That's one of the best things what I've missed this
Speaker 4: year with not being having much stage time because of COVID.
Speaker 6: It is that missing that being in the.
Speaker 4: Moment where you're not you're just right there.
Speaker 1: I love it, which you're I love that. I love
Speaker 1: that that. It's like when so I do a fair
Speaker 1: bit of work with people who want to be speakers,
Speaker 1: and I'm sure you talk to people a lot who
Speaker 1: want to be comics, right and by the way, I
Speaker 1: think being a corporate speaker or doing what I do
Speaker 1: is twenty times easier than what you do. I fucking
Speaker 1: love comedy, and if I had more balls, I would
Speaker 1: have done it.
Speaker 3: But I'm essentially a coward.
Speaker 1: If you said to me, no, really, if you said
Speaker 1: to me, Craig, go and talk to a thousand people
Speaker 1: on changing their life and getting their shit together. My
Speaker 1: overwhelming emotion is excitement. But if they said there's ten
Speaker 1: people out there, you've got to go and make them
Speaker 1: laugh for eight minutes, I.
Speaker 3: Couldn't do it. I don't know why.
Speaker 1: There's there's some anxiety. But if I'm doing my thing
Speaker 1: and I happen to be interesting or funny or telling
Speaker 1: stories or doing my three hour whatever, and people laughing
Speaker 1: just as part.
Speaker 3: Of that, I'm good.
Speaker 1: But if I'm I'm there for the sole reason to
Speaker 1: walk out and be funny, I don't think I could do.
Speaker 6: It well on that topic.
Speaker 4: I before I started comedy, I did like I would
Speaker 4: like accept an award for footy, you know, and I
Speaker 4: get on stage, You're not expected to be funny. So
Speaker 4: I was able to be funny, like because it's like
Speaker 4: a it's a secondary thing and you know, even but
Speaker 4: even you know, I do a speech at school. I
Speaker 4: remember I did a religious education speech which slayed the room.
Speaker 4: And I wasn't meant to be funny. But even twenty
Speaker 4: first speeches, when you're sort of meant to be funny,
Speaker 4: I could do well. But the first time I walked
Speaker 4: on a stand up comedy stage where the sole intention
Speaker 4: of the person who walks on that stage is to
Speaker 4: make this group of strangers laugh, I dissolved into a
Speaker 4: puddle of anxiety.
Speaker 6: I was hopeless.
Speaker 4: It was the most pressure I've ever It was like
Speaker 4: sixty people there a little bar in Perth, and yeah,
Speaker 4: oh god, I was just it was the worst moment
Speaker 4: of my life because I dreamed of doing it for
Speaker 4: a long time, you know, as a kid at least.
Speaker 4: And I was twenty two when that first gig, And yeah,
Speaker 4: the pressure of they expect you to be funny. You
Speaker 4: said to them, you're funny by getting on this stage,
Speaker 4: and you feel like you're wasting.
Speaker 6: All these people's time. It was horrible.
Speaker 4: There was no backstage either, so I had to walk
Speaker 4: through the crowd. And my gig had been about how
Speaker 4: I got teased at school, and someone as I'm walking
Speaker 4: through the crowd after this silent.
Speaker 6: You know gig I'd done, just said you deserve to
Speaker 6: be teased.
Speaker 3: That's hilarious. What was your what was your What was
Speaker 3: the one joke that just fucking died? Or was all
Speaker 3: all time? It was just a collective death.
Speaker 4: It's just a collective and it's like and it's when,
Speaker 4: especially early on in a stand up comedy career, every
Speaker 4: night for me, possibly especially because the other comedians say,
Speaker 4: you're crazy up there, because I'd never do the same
Speaker 4: joke twice, and so I'd get up and do different
Speaker 4: stories every time I got up on stage, and the
Speaker 4: older comedians would have shaking their head at me, because
Speaker 4: if the first one doesn't go well, you feel like
Speaker 4: you're ruined. Like the crowd just make up their mind
Speaker 4: and they you can't get them back because you don't
Speaker 4: have the skill to do it.
Speaker 6: So it was a real lottery for me earlier on.
Speaker 1: But I think, you know, there's this concept in sport
Speaker 1: and high performance, and I would think in well not
Speaker 1: I would think, I know, also in public speaking, whether
Speaker 1: or not that's to motivate, inspire, educate, or entertain, and
Speaker 1: it's really about how well we can perform under pressure.
Speaker 1: It's not how funny are you with your mates at
Speaker 1: a bar or how funny are you with your family
Speaker 1: at dinner. But how funny can you be? How much
Speaker 1: can you create connection and engagement in that situation which
Speaker 1: is uncomfortable, which is unfamili which is with a bunch
Speaker 1: of strangers who don't know you, and they don't give
Speaker 1: a fuck if you're funny or if you crash and burn.
Speaker 1: If you crash and burn, that's funny for them. If
Speaker 1: you're funny. If you're funny, that's a bonus. But they
Speaker 1: don't care if you're funny or not. And they don't
Speaker 1: care if you go home and fucking don't sleep for
Speaker 1: four days.
Speaker 6: Now, you need their attitude in a way.
Speaker 4: You need to not care.
Speaker 6: You need to go.
Speaker 4: You need to get beyond it and go. I can
Speaker 4: deal with whatever happens here, you know. So in if
Speaker 4: they sense that you're desperate for their affection, they just
Speaker 4: won't give it. So it's like a part of you
Speaker 4: needs to be relaxed. The most tense I get on stage,
Speaker 4: or the most pressure I've felt in the last probably
Speaker 4: ten fifteen years, is doing the opening of the Logans,
Speaker 4: which I've done. I did four years in a row.
Speaker 4: So you're walking on stage to the you know it's
Speaker 4: broadcast it's live on TV. People love getting on the
Speaker 4: internet and just slaughtering whoever's on stage because it's a
Speaker 4: sport to hand shot on the Logans. If you're from overseas,
Speaker 4: it's astral Is Television Awards Night. And so to walk
Speaker 4: on that stage and you know that, you know your
Speaker 4: peers in the audience are half and the want you to.
Speaker 6: Fail at least probably because they don't want to.
Speaker 4: They don't have to laugh at someone else because they
Speaker 4: want to be laughed at themselves. And so yeah, that's
Speaker 4: the most pressure I've felt in a long time. And
Speaker 4: if you've ever been to the Logans Australis Awards Night,
Speaker 4: the crowd do not shut up before the broadcast starts.
Speaker 4: There's just it's a dinner and show. There's a thousand
Speaker 4: or fifteen hundred people just talking really loudly.
Speaker 6: The warm up guy they don't even listen to him.
Speaker 4: He can hardly be heard above the din of people
Speaker 4: just clattering, eating and bloody yelling.
Speaker 6: At each other.
Speaker 4: And so to walk on that stage, which I've done
Speaker 4: a number of times and succeed in that stage has
Speaker 4: been a very satisfying thing for me to do. To
Speaker 4: get that crowd silent and listening and laughing. Is Yeah,
Speaker 4: that's pressure that I've handled through years of doing every gig,
Speaker 4: getting on stage at tiny pubs, getting on stage at
Speaker 4: big theaters, just taking every opportunity, and yeah, and then
Speaker 4: doing the work. If you've done the work, and I
Speaker 4: imagine this is in all fields. If you've done the work,
Speaker 4: you can handle the moment. If you haven't done the work,
Speaker 4: well good luck. But if you've done the work, you've
Speaker 4: got yourself a chance.
Speaker 1: I feel like for you that your natural habitat is spontaneous, unscripted,
Speaker 1: organic raw. Well, I can't see you loving the old
Speaker 1: AUTOQ or.
Speaker 6: No, I'm not ANOQ guy at all.
Speaker 4: I do not. I did a TV show for the project,
Speaker 4: which is on Channel ten or one of these train networks,
Speaker 4: and I was started that show and I was there
Speaker 4: for five years and I never used THEOQ.
Speaker 6: It just did not work for me. So yeah, you go.
Speaker 4: But I am a guy who knows routine, and so
Speaker 4: I do when you say you want to look unscripted
Speaker 4: when you're doing stand up comedy, but you know what
Speaker 4: you need the ammunition of stories. You know the work,
Speaker 4: and I would for doing that opening of the awards night.
Speaker 4: I would go to pubs, you know, and talk to
Speaker 4: backpackers who didn't even know the stars that I was
Speaker 4: talking about, the Australian TV stars. But I would fashion
Speaker 4: jokes that even they could laugh at. And so if
Speaker 4: these you know, backpackers pissed in a pub could get
Speaker 4: the essence of the joke, I knew that joke was bulletproof.
Speaker 4: And when I took it to the stage of people
Speaker 4: who knew who I was talking about, I knew that
Speaker 4: they would really work well.
Speaker 6: But it was that.
Speaker 4: Crafting of stuff in in pubs and in small comedy
Speaker 4: clubs that allowed me for that sort of gig, to
Speaker 4: get it right.
Speaker 3: I'm like you in that I can't.
Speaker 1: I get this constant bit of feedback when I go
Speaker 1: and I'll do something for when you do a corporate
Speaker 1: gig in the space of personal or professional development, generally
Speaker 1: what happens is the speaker will turn up. They'll go,
Speaker 1: here's my USB, here's my presentation, here's my three videos
Speaker 1: I want you to play, here's the debt that I
Speaker 1: don't have anything. I just turn up and I write
Speaker 1: on a whiteboard and I talk, and they go, where
Speaker 1: are your notes or where's your this, or where's your
Speaker 1: timetable or whatever? Or where's your where's the where's your presentation?
Speaker 1: And I say it's in my head. And they they
Speaker 1: panic because they're so used to everything being very scripted
Speaker 1: and planned and choreographed. And I say, how can I
Speaker 1: pre plan a conversation with people I've never met?
Speaker 3: Right? And I know my shit, right, so I know
Speaker 3: what I'm going to tell.
Speaker 1: I don't need to go and learn new stuff for today.
Speaker 1: This is what I talk about all the time.
Speaker 6: So it's inside you.
Speaker 4: So's and you tell them stories that you believe in.
Speaker 4: So you need to read them off a piece of
Speaker 4: paper because there's they're your stories.
Speaker 3: But you can.
Speaker 1: You can read a room, right, You know if something's
Speaker 1: working or not working. You know if you're connecting or disconnecting.
Speaker 1: You know if people are engaged or not. But you
Speaker 1: can't when you go in with something I think that's
Speaker 1: pre set, prescripted, predetermined for me. Anyway, it's the worst
Speaker 1: way to work because I feel like I'm unplugged from
Speaker 1: the humans, you know, I feel like I'm doing this
Speaker 1: choreograph thing that isn't me and I feel like a fraud.
Speaker 1: And it doesn't always work, but it nearly always works.
Speaker 1: If I just go in and I go, well, I'm
Speaker 1: going to talk about resilience. I'm going to talk about metacognition,
Speaker 1: which is thinking about thinking, and talk about a bit
Speaker 1: about physiology, and talk about beliefs, and I'm going to
Speaker 1: talk about these eight things. Reset go and then I go.
Speaker 1: I walk in and I go, put up your hand.
Speaker 1: If you're an overthinker, and every hand goes up, and
Speaker 1: I've got instant engagement.
Speaker 3: Put up your hand.
Speaker 1: If you put up your hand, if you got in
Speaker 1: shape and then got fat, every hand goes you know.
Speaker 1: And so it's if I can get hands up and
Speaker 1: people laughing or nodding, and I've got connection in the
Speaker 1: first thirty seconds, we're good.
Speaker 3: And then you just go from there.
Speaker 4: Yeah, but you know you've done the work. You're not
Speaker 4: a fraud. You've lived it. And so that's and they
Speaker 4: will sense that as well. So that's why you don't
Speaker 4: need the scripts, because you've got it all inside you.
Speaker 4: So yeah, but for me, and again, never a script,
Speaker 4: never read off on autoqu ever. But yeah, but have
Speaker 4: the stories inside me and have them ready because I've
Speaker 4: lived them and I know them.
Speaker 6: And I trust them.
Speaker 1: I did some stuff for a few years on the
Speaker 1: David Kimshell and Channel ten on the Morning Show or
Speaker 1: whatever it was called, and they're like, at the start,
Speaker 1: I got asked to go in and be interviewed about something.
Speaker 1: So I just went and did a gig and then
Speaker 1: they then the executive producer asked me to go see
Speaker 1: her after the show. Anyway, so they said do you
Speaker 1: want to come back next week? Because that was great,
Speaker 1: I went short, came back, and then the next week
Speaker 1: they went, do you want to be a regular? So anyway,
Speaker 1: I ended up being a regular for a few years.
Speaker 1: But what they wanted to do, they wanted to They
Speaker 1: wanted me to send all the questquestions that they wanted
Speaker 1: that I wanted asked about this topic, or they're like,
Speaker 1: do you want us to I go, I don't want
Speaker 1: any of that.
Speaker 3: I go, please don't do that. Let's just sit on
Speaker 3: the couch and have a conversation.
Speaker 1: About like if we're talking about resilience, let's just talk.
Speaker 3: I go because if I have.
Speaker 1: To remember what they're going to ask me, or if
Speaker 1: I have to kind of come up with some pre
Speaker 1: organized answer, it's I'm going to be terrible because I'm
Speaker 1: shit at that. But what I'm good at is just
Speaker 1: talking to humans about whatever. And so they were quite
Speaker 1: and I did a couple of outside broadcasts from a
Speaker 1: few places with people and stuff, and they wanted to
Speaker 1: be scripted and they wanted auto Q and all this,
Speaker 1: and I go.
Speaker 3: I can't, I can't.
Speaker 1: I'm just just let me do it once without it
Speaker 1: and then if I'm terrible, either get rid of me
Speaker 1: or I'll do you know, if I'm shit, get rid
Speaker 1: of me, or I'll do the AUTOQ. And they went, well,
Speaker 1: that was good. So yeah, but I had to fight
Speaker 1: to be so that I could just do my thing. Now,
Speaker 1: this is what I do all the time. It's just
Speaker 1: that there's a camera on at the moment.
Speaker 4: Yeah, absolutely, and it's a look, yeah, I mean that's
Speaker 4: I hear you, and yeah, I'm with you on that.
Speaker 4: So and it can be frustrating being on TV when
Speaker 4: you do have producers wanting you to ask the exact
Speaker 4: questions that they've written or you know, like that's sort
Speaker 4: of yeah, it's a you don't want to be corralled.
Speaker 4: That's part of the reason I left the project, to
Speaker 4: be honest, is that sort of desire to have everything
Speaker 4: in a neat little box, and there's not enough room
Speaker 4: to spread your wings, I suppose.
Speaker 1: So I think that's why one of the reasons that
Speaker 1: one of the reasons that.
Speaker 3: Podcasts have proliferated.
Speaker 1: And of course, like any other product or service, there
Speaker 1: are good podcasts and shit ones and okay ones and
Speaker 1: Joe Rogan at the far end of the scale, but
Speaker 1: rogans or do you.
Speaker 3: Have a listener Rogan?
Speaker 6: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: So he's always talking about as you would know, he's
Speaker 1: talking about comedy and writing and the skill and the
Speaker 1: craft and you know, the organic nature of this and that.
Speaker 1: But he also talks about the freedom that comes with
Speaker 1: you know, you and I don't need to go to
Speaker 1: a break. We don't need to do a station idea
Speaker 1: or a time check or a weather check, or we're
Speaker 1: not throwing to the news or you can and we
Speaker 1: can talk for thirty three minutes or fucking two hours
Speaker 1: and ten minutes, and we could talk about whatever we
Speaker 1: want and nobody's standing in front of you waving hands
Speaker 1: or going we've.
Speaker 3: Got to go to a break or fucking all that shit.
Speaker 6: Right, I went on to TV and say I don't
Speaker 6: want to get back to the project. But that was
Speaker 6: my real.
Speaker 4: Example of you know, you've got producers in your ear
Speaker 4: who are just spending half the time panicking. So you've
Speaker 4: got someone yelling at you, and your like, I've done this.
Speaker 4: I did this joke at the Logans one night.
Speaker 6: I remember that. It was a true story where I'm
Speaker 6: halfway through a sentence.
Speaker 4: And I hear someone in my yell out stop speaking,
Speaker 4: and I'm like, it's going to sound like I've.
Speaker 6: Had a stroke if I stopped speaking.
Speaker 4: Now, I mean, I'm literally halfway through a sentence. But
Speaker 4: I think on the night, my eyes just went crazy.
Speaker 4: You know, I just sort of shut down. People would
Speaker 4: have think I was I was, you know, I had
Speaker 4: a medical condition.
Speaker 1: But only someone who's never been in front of a
Speaker 1: mic or camera would screen that in you.
Speaker 6: But I understand they're panicking.
Speaker 4: Is I think they've got to go to an ad
Speaker 4: break and yeah, so but yeah, no, it's crazy.
Speaker 6: It can me crazy.
Speaker 1: So do you have a Rogan talks all the time
Speaker 1: about his the way that he writes and the way
Speaker 1: that he kind of develops material.
Speaker 3: Do you have a specific process or does shit just.
Speaker 4: You write notes down in my you know, just in
Speaker 4: my phone or in the notes section of my phone.
Speaker 4: I just write stuff down that comes up. You know,
Speaker 4: I have a look now, just what am I reading?
Speaker 4: You know, I was on a plane yesterday.
Speaker 6: This is just so.
Speaker 4: I don't know this will ever become anything, but I
Speaker 4: was on a plane yesterday. I'm happily married and you know,
Speaker 4: not going to ever cheat. But there was an attractive
Speaker 4: flight attendant. You know, it's just but then she spent
Speaker 4: an expended period of time in the bathroom and just
Speaker 4: do all the romance. When goodness she gone before she
Speaker 4: got on the plane.
Speaker 3: Yeah, what's that about? What's that about? Gail?
Speaker 1: So when did you stop eating meat? Tell us a
Speaker 1: little bit about that, because I'm interested in that.
Speaker 6: I stopped eating meat. I became a pescatarian many years ago.
Speaker 4: I think, I, look, I've got a history of bow
Speaker 4: cancer in the family. So my mum's had bow cancer,
Speaker 4: and you know, there's quite a history of it. I
Speaker 4: think I read years ago that meat could be a
Speaker 4: factor in causing bow cancer. So I thought, well, I
Speaker 4: might stop eating meat, you know, and just because I
Speaker 4: don't want to get bow cancer.
Speaker 6: So that was many years ago, and didn't really miss it.
Speaker 6: That much. It was a pescatarian ate a lot of fish.
Speaker 4: I'd have fish with every meal, basically a lot of
Speaker 4: dairy about a year, just over a year ago. I
Speaker 4: mean you might have watched it, and I'm not saying
Speaker 4: it's perfect, but the game changes doco that was on Netflix,
Speaker 4: and that made me think about how store I was getting.
Speaker 4: I love exercising, I said, just turned fifty the other day,
Speaker 4: and I love running and I have for many years,
Speaker 4: but I get so sore the last fifteen years or
Speaker 4: I can you go for a run and then put
Speaker 4: hardly walk the next day, struggling to get down the
Speaker 4: stairs as when you wake up and on the dock.
Speaker 4: I was saying that, you know you don't get a sore,
Speaker 4: and you know what, I'm going to give that a go,
Speaker 4: and I swear to god, I'm a year later and
Speaker 4: I do not get sought at.
Speaker 6: All when I exercised crazy. I can.
Speaker 4: Around the tan the other day, which is just under
Speaker 4: four k run in fifteen forty seven and just don't get.
Speaker 6: Sore at all. It's not at all. It's unbelievable.
Speaker 1: That's pretty quick, dude. That's four minute k's. That's averaging
Speaker 1: fifteen kilometers an hour. That's for your fifty year old self. Congratulations,
Speaker 1: I'm making fifty.
Speaker 3: That's awesome.
Speaker 1: So, without being too boring, but give us a and
Speaker 1: I know it probably varies, but give us a typical
Speaker 1: day of what goes in your god from when you
Speaker 1: get up to when you go to bed, or just
Speaker 1: just a version because people right now are going, I'm
Speaker 1: sore too.
Speaker 6: What is Hughes the well Birchu musical? This morning?
Speaker 4: With coconut milk, you know, with fruits like you know,
Speaker 4: blueberries and strawberries and.
Speaker 6: Rock melon.
Speaker 4: That's we say breakfast, you know, Lunch might have avocado
Speaker 4: on toast or something like that. And dinner try to
Speaker 4: get a salad in. And you know, I am you know,
Speaker 4: I'm probably eating too much of that sort of process
Speaker 4: and meat meat sort of thing, you know what I mean,
Speaker 4: that's not processed non meat. I wonder about it. I
Speaker 4: know it's a lot. It's everywhere now, you know, fake meat,
Speaker 4: if you know what I mean. So I wonder whether
Speaker 4: that's any good for me. I ate quite a bit
Speaker 4: of that, but yeah, so is.
Speaker 3: That where you get? Is that where you get?
Speaker 1: Because all the buffheads listening all my bullfed bodybuild a.
Speaker 3: Weightlifter powerlifter mates. So listening going, what do you get
Speaker 3: your protein from? Husey?
Speaker 4: Yeah, well, I mean that's probably your point. I don't
Speaker 4: know where I get my pate hand from. You know,
Speaker 4: I ate a lot of nuts. But am I getting
Speaker 4: enough protein? I don't know.
Speaker 6: I'm not lifting many weights.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 6: My upper body strength is poor, there's no about that, and.
Speaker 4: I would like to improve that so that my daughters
Speaker 4: don't mock my man moobs as they do. So that
Speaker 4: is yeah, But you know, am I gigging up bread?
Speaker 4: And I don't know, mate, But I tell you what,
Speaker 4: I'm just not getting sore. And as a fifty year
Speaker 4: old to not get sore around ten kill me eleven
Speaker 4: kill minutes the other day, you know, I'm just over
Speaker 4: four minute case and not sought at all. I swear
Speaker 4: to God from the age of thirty, I reckon, I've
Speaker 4: been sore after exercise and I'm now fifty running that
Speaker 4: sort of distance and we're at speed and not for
Speaker 4: a second getting sore.
Speaker 6: That's unbelievable.
Speaker 3: How are those once very chalky, vulnerable hamstrings?
Speaker 6: They're fine. I tell you what.
Speaker 4: My calf muscles, which I was probably from the age
Speaker 4: of forty, I was getting real bad calf or just
Speaker 4: constant calf injuries.
Speaker 6: So I never get any momentum with my running.
Speaker 4: So because I would just pull a calf, take a month,
Speaker 4: get over it, pull a calf again, and I was like,
Speaker 4: that was really basically shut down my running. And I'm
Speaker 4: not getting any touchwood. I'm just not getting any calf injuries.
Speaker 4: A physicist, I'd say that's the old man injury. There's
Speaker 4: nothing you can do about it. You've got to accept it.
Speaker 4: Well I don't. Well, this appears that I don't have
Speaker 4: to accept it.
Speaker 1: You know, there's this I mean, all my listeners are
Speaker 1: board of all the shit that comes out of my
Speaker 1: mouth with this stuff. But you might not have heard
Speaker 1: of this term. It's just called biofeedback, and all it
Speaker 1: means is that your body's always telling you stuff. And
Speaker 1: I believe that we should all I'm not talking about
Speaker 1: with medicine and drugs, but I'm talking about with food
Speaker 1: and exercise and sleep and lifestyle and hydration and coffee
Speaker 1: and tea and booze or whatever. I think we should
Speaker 1: all do some self experimenting to see what works well
Speaker 1: for your body, because you know, there's a lot of
Speaker 1: people who would not advise you to do what you did,
Speaker 1: a lot of people who would advise you to do
Speaker 1: what you did, which just basically tells us there's no
Speaker 1: universal right. So it's trying to find what's the best
Speaker 1: food strategy, exercise strategy. You know, how much sleep do
Speaker 1: I need? How do I hydrate my body optimally? And
Speaker 1: how much recovery time do I need between you know,
Speaker 1: sets and reps and runs and all that kind of stuff.
Speaker 3: And it's really individual.
Speaker 1: But people think there's this one best program or this
Speaker 1: one best eating philosophy.
Speaker 3: And so I always encourage people.
Speaker 1: If you're listening to Hughesy and you go, I wouldn't
Speaker 1: mind giving that a go. I would say, go, give
Speaker 1: it a go. Do like twenty eight days. Do it
Speaker 1: to the latter though, don't half do it, don't kind
Speaker 1: of do it. Don't do it for four days and
Speaker 1: then get shit faced on the weekend. Do it for
Speaker 1: twenty eight days, or do it for fifty six days
Speaker 1: or whatever timeframe you want, and then literally just see
Speaker 1: how your body responds. Because this is you know, you
Speaker 1: can't get another one, the one that you've got the
Speaker 1: only one.
Speaker 3: You can get. You can't replace it. It's not renewable.
Speaker 1: And so I think that the idea of you know,
Speaker 1: stepping out of doing what doesn't work, and most of
Speaker 1: us are doing what doesn't work. And when you can
Speaker 1: go through fifteen or so years of constant pain and
Speaker 1: exhaustion and post exercise muscle soreness, and then you change
Speaker 1: one thing, which is not an insignificant thing, but you
Speaker 1: change one variable, and then all of a sudden, your
Speaker 1: physiology is different, your energy is different, your performance is different.
Speaker 3: It's amazing.
Speaker 4: Yeah. Look, I'm I've got mates who work in the
Speaker 4: dairy industry and they get angry at me for saying this,
Speaker 4: and I'm like to say it too loadly.
Speaker 6: Listenership. But you know, I wonder about dairy. I really do.
Speaker 4: My brother works at warm Wool Cheese and butter factory,
Speaker 4: and it's really angry when I questioned dairy. But I
Speaker 4: wonder whether I wonder whether because I was a pescatarian,
Speaker 4: you got a member for a long time, so I
Speaker 4: didn't need any red made eat each chick for a
Speaker 4: long time and I was still getting sore. But go on,
Speaker 4: the vegan is the difference so you got rid of
Speaker 4: the fish. Is it the fish or is it the dairy.
Speaker 6: I don't know one of those two.
Speaker 4: I reckon getting rid of one of those two, or
Speaker 4: maybe both. But yeah, I wonder whether it's a dairy.
Speaker 1: But I think this is that that's just a great question.
Speaker 1: I'm always saying to people. Don't believe me because I
Speaker 1: say something, or you like me or you trust me.
Speaker 1: Believe me when you take something for a test drive
Speaker 1: and see what happens. And this is the thing when
Speaker 1: and no disrespect to people in the dairy because my
Speaker 1: old man used to marry marry manager joint called the
Speaker 1: Muey Dairying Cooperative Rights. And I grew up in the
Speaker 1: middle of farms and my mum literally grew up on
Speaker 1: a dairy farm.
Speaker 3: So and I drink milk.
Speaker 1: But you know, I think the thing is that everybody,
Speaker 1: especially when it comes to things like food or religion
Speaker 1: or sport or politics or exercise, everybody lives in an
Speaker 1: echo chamber and people are just, you know, immersed in
Speaker 1: this thing called confirmation bias, which means I'm not going
Speaker 1: to listen to Dave Hughes because he doesn't fucking think.
Speaker 3: Like I think. Hugh Hughes doesn't agree with.
Speaker 1: Me, so he's on Twitter knows all no, But that's
Speaker 1: what I'm saying.
Speaker 6: You can't like.
Speaker 3: This is this is the part of personal growth and
Speaker 3: consciousness and self awareness is to recognize your own prejudice
Speaker 3: and bias and go, look, this is what I think.
Speaker 3: But I could be wrong. The problem is that but
Speaker 3: I could be wrong. Is never there. Everybody everybody is one.
Speaker 3: I was talking to a guy the other.
Speaker 1: Day about such an issue and he was saying, emphatically,
Speaker 1: this is how it is.
Speaker 3: And I said, so, what you're telling me.
Speaker 1: Is that everybody in the world that doesn't agree with
Speaker 1: you on this, everybody is wrong. Everybody who doesn't think
Speaker 1: like you in the.
Speaker 3: World is wrong.
Speaker 1: And he didn't want to own up to that, but
Speaker 1: that's what he's saying. And I'm saying, you know, like
Speaker 1: even with me, and I've seen a lot, done a lot,
Speaker 1: worked with tens of thousands of humans, educated myself a lot,
Speaker 1: worked in the space. You know, I owned multiple gyms,
Speaker 1: all that shit, there's still way more that I don't
Speaker 1: know than I do. And everything's an evolution and some
Speaker 1: of the things I used to firmly hold on to
Speaker 1: as truth or belief or knowledge or science. Ten years
Speaker 1: ago I've now let go of because I realized that
Speaker 1: my thinking or my belief was flawed.
Speaker 3: So if there's no kind of.
Speaker 1: Flexibility in our ideology or our beliefs, we make ourselves unteachable.
Speaker 1: And if you're unteachable, that's fucking terrifying.
Speaker 4: Yeah, open minded. We've got to be open minded. We yes,
Speaker 4: we've got to. You've got to be able to listen
Speaker 4: to other opinions and not just just just just dismiss
Speaker 4: them straight away out of hand and then go, I'm
Speaker 4: never listening to that person again because they had that opinion.
Speaker 4: It's just no one is going to learn that way.
Speaker 4: He just yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 1: I want to take a left turn, as I do.
Speaker 1: And so you get an opportunity to sit one on
Speaker 1: one with the Deli Alama, one of two or three
Speaker 1: people in Australia at the time. I think that got
Speaker 1: that opportunity. And your big fucking question is whether or
Speaker 1: not i'll bless your football club.
Speaker 4: But his answer was great because he said I would,
Speaker 4: I will, and bet it won't help. That's what he said,
Speaker 4: and he was right, he did, and it didn't help.
Speaker 4: It still hadn't come good.
Speaker 3: How long did you get to sit with him?
Speaker 6: I've made have.
Speaker 4: Been ten minutes maybe, but you know, I did feel
Speaker 4: a connection and I love, you know what, I'm the
Speaker 4: Buddhist way, I think generally is a good way because
Speaker 4: just to see the smile and the laugh on their
Speaker 4: leader makes that sort of part.
Speaker 6: That's part of my philosophy as well.
Speaker 4: It's like, you know, you feel like he sees the
Speaker 4: ridiculousness of life life and he's able to laugh at it,
Speaker 4: and that's always what I want to be able to do.
Speaker 6: So yeah, I'm getting deeper. I really am starting.
Speaker 4: I'm annoying people about this, but I've gone into meditation
Speaker 4: twice a day now and that's only a recent thing.
Speaker 4: But I'm absolutely loving it. I'm just morning and night
Speaker 4: set it in twenty minutes a time. It's a again.
Speaker 4: You know, I want to go back to the Netflix,
Speaker 4: I go, but this is I think this is a
Speaker 4: game changer for me. I've banned on about it. I
Speaker 4: was band interest in Buddhis philosophy since I was at
Speaker 4: in my early twenties, you know, over almost three decades ago.
Speaker 4: But I'm really starting to invest in it now. Just
Speaker 4: with myself and I'm feeling the benefits.
Speaker 6: I really am.
Speaker 4: I just quiet, Just find the quiet, get behind the noise,
Speaker 4: and it's all noise in your head, is all noise.
Speaker 3: If you can manage your mind, I think you can
Speaker 3: manage your life, you know, because it's it's such or
Speaker 3: it can be such. As I said before, when I
Speaker 3: ask an audience, you know, to put up your hand.
Speaker 3: If you're an overthinker, every hand goes.
Speaker 1: Up, and then go, well, let's talk about that, and
Speaker 1: who wants to be an overthinker?
Speaker 3: Will nobody? Who is everybody?
Speaker 1: So you know, generally the root of overthinking, the underlying
Speaker 1: causes fear.
Speaker 3: So let's talk about the fear of what he is
Speaker 3: scared of. I want to be loved and valued, needed.
Speaker 1: Accepted, popular, sexy, desirable, and all of that shit is temporary. Anyway,
Speaker 1: I think part of this, let's go deep, husy. Part
Speaker 1: of this is really where does where does Hughesy finish?
Speaker 1: And where does Dave hughes start. You know, there's there's
Speaker 1: the not that you're disingenuous, but there's the Huesy persona.
Speaker 1: There's the public, funny, lovable, fucking alarican. And then there's
Speaker 1: Dave Hughes, the human being, the conscious entity, trying to
Speaker 1: figure out what the fuck life is about and what
Speaker 1: the fuck you're about in the middle of that life.
Speaker 1: You know, when we live in this duality of existence,
Speaker 1: which is the external world, situation, circumstance, environment, are the
Speaker 1: humans Telly Radio stand up all these extern all stimuli
Speaker 1: and experiences, But where we live is internally. Where we
Speaker 1: live is in our thoughts and our values and our
Speaker 1: beliefs and our love and our compassion. And so there's
Speaker 1: this concurrent existence, this duality, and trying to figure out
Speaker 1: where does the external stop and where does my internal
Speaker 1: world start?
Speaker 3: And what does that look like?
Speaker 1: And where does where does Dave's stuff finish? Where does
Speaker 1: day's brand and business and reputation and house and money
Speaker 1: and all that stuff which is not bad or good,
Speaker 1: it's just stuff. Where does that finish? And where does
Speaker 1: Dave start? And where does Dave get his sense of
Speaker 1: self from?
Speaker 4: Well, I mean I've got to the point where, you know,
Speaker 4: I know what you're talking about external internal, but actually
Speaker 4: it is all internal.
Speaker 6: Like there's no external.
Speaker 4: We create our all, We create everything. There's nothing created
Speaker 4: outside our own brains. It's all inside there, and everything
Speaker 4: else is an illusional insides, an illusionble. I know I'm
Speaker 4: certainly getting a bit, but it's like it is all noise.
Speaker 4: Everything is noise created by ourselves. No one else creates
Speaker 4: the noise. We create every single moment of our reality.
Speaker 4: No one else creates it. No one creates my reality
Speaker 4: I do. No one creates anyone's reality except themselves.
Speaker 6: And that is what. Once you realize that, you go, wow,
Speaker 6: it's everything. It's all up to me.
Speaker 3: That's right.
Speaker 4: No no other entity makes and it makes a choice.
Speaker 6: I make every choice, and that's it.
Speaker 4: And what I want to do is get beyond even that,
Speaker 4: in which I've started to do through this focus of
Speaker 4: just living in the moment and realizing it's all noise in.
Speaker 6: My head, created by no one else.
Speaker 4: I decide how loud the volume is or how low
Speaker 4: the volume is. No one else can decide for me.
Speaker 4: No one else can do it for me. I have
Speaker 4: to do it for myself. And I'm turning down the
Speaker 4: volume and enjoying life much more by doing that. And
Speaker 4: it's like I'm not worrying. I'm worrying much less about
Speaker 4: the bullshit, which is comparing yourself to others the whole time.
Speaker 6: The ego I've been.
Speaker 4: I've been a prisoner of my own ego for a
Speaker 4: long time. And maybe it's it's meant that I've got
Speaker 4: to where I'm at.
Speaker 6: I don't know. But it's not enjoyable to do that.
Speaker 6: I much prefer just to look at.
Speaker 4: A tree and go, Wow, that's amazing. And when you're
Speaker 4: quiet in your mind and you work on it constantly,
Speaker 4: and you've got to make it a practice, and I
Speaker 4: think it's going to make it a lifetime of practice.
Speaker 6: Life becomes so much more enjoyable, you know.
Speaker 4: Even just making the school lunches every morning, which I
Speaker 4: do because my wife is a teacher and she goes
Speaker 4: to school and I make the lunches, which is just
Speaker 4: a tedious job of just drudgery of day after day.
Speaker 4: Once you turn your attitude around and go quiet, it
Speaker 4: becomes a nice moment and it's yeah, I'm really into
Speaker 4: this at the moment, and I hope I continue.
Speaker 3: Yeah, No, I love it. It's the.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the separation of the internal and the external. And
Speaker 1: like one of the challenges for us is that we
Speaker 1: grow up in a collective culture and message that says
Speaker 1: to an extent, success is about what you have and
Speaker 1: what you earn, and what you own and what you
Speaker 1: do and what you drive and where you live. And
Speaker 1: that's how people are and it shouldn't be that, but
Speaker 1: that is how people are evaluated. And as you I
Speaker 1: talk about the subjective nature of being human, and one
Speaker 1: of the really easy to understand explanations is, you know,
Speaker 1: we might have ten thousand people listen to this episode,
Speaker 1: and although they're all getting the exact same message, with
Speaker 1: the same intent from the same people, probably no one
Speaker 1: is having an identical experience of this moment in time,
Speaker 1: or this podcast or this Dave Hughes experience. No one's
Speaker 1: having an identical experience to anyone else because we are
Speaker 1: the creators of our experience. We are the creators of
Speaker 1: our reality.
Speaker 4: We created all, We created all. And that's that's the
Speaker 4: powerful message that I've sort of realized recently. There's no
Speaker 4: one else creating my reality. I'm doing it myself, and
Speaker 4: it's my decisions, my decisions.
Speaker 6: Every moment of the day.
Speaker 4: I make the decision as to what I'm going to
Speaker 4: think and what I'm going to dwell on or not
Speaker 4: dwell on. No one else is making them for me,
Speaker 4: and it's yeah, it's but I mean, I'm not even
Speaker 4: trying to consciously now make say I'm good or I'm great,
Speaker 4: or I'm funny or I'm you know whatever, just.
Speaker 6: Go beyond that. I don't even need to. And it's funny.
Speaker 4: The more that I quieten down, the more other people
Speaker 4: are saying nice things to me. It's because I'm not
Speaker 4: walking around desperate for attention. But it doesn't matter that
Speaker 4: they're saying nice things because I think I don't even
Speaker 4: need them to say nice things anymore. I really, you know,
Speaker 4: I'm not perfect, but I'm getting better at it, you know,
Speaker 4: and it's lovely.
Speaker 3: I think.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it really comes down to awareness of self. And
Speaker 1: I talk about my numerous shortcomings, but you know, ego
Speaker 1: and self esteem stuff and the need for approval. And
Speaker 1: you know, when I was a kid, I was this Morbley.
Speaker 1: I was the fattest kid in my school. My name
Speaker 1: at school was Jumbo. You know, all this bullshit that
Speaker 1: you carry with you and and even even when you
Speaker 1: succeed in inverted commas to a degree, it took a
Speaker 1: long time for me. Like I owned, I had five
Speaker 1: different businesses and one hundred staff when I was thirty
Speaker 1: years old and I was making lots of dough in.
Speaker 3: Life was good.
Speaker 1: But in the middle of all of that, I was
Speaker 1: still a fuck with I was still anxious, I was
Speaker 1: still had low self esteem. I still couldn't get enough,
Speaker 1: or have enough, or get enough. Attentional, We'll never.
Speaker 4: Get We'll never get enough. When you need to get enough,
Speaker 4: You'll never get enough. There'll always be people better than you,
Speaker 4: richer than you, stronger than you, farther than you. You know,
Speaker 4: just there's never going to be enough.
Speaker 1: Do you think part of the awareness or part of
Speaker 1: the trigger for this for you, because it was for me,
Speaker 1: was being around people who are successful in inverted commas,
Speaker 1: who in the middle of all of their shiny existence,
Speaker 1: their Hollywood like existence, which from the outside looking and
Speaker 1: they were killing it. But when you get to know
Speaker 1: them beyond that. So many of my clients over the
Speaker 1: years that I work with were super duper wealthy and successful,
Speaker 1: but simultaneously anxious and depressed and insecure and exhausted and physically, mentally,
Speaker 1: emotionally and spiritually bankrupt. And you go from the outside
Speaker 1: like what you would see externally was not at all
Speaker 1: any indication of what was happening internally.
Speaker 4: Absolutely, you'd see very successful people who were bitter and
Speaker 4: jowous and just aren'nhappy.
Speaker 6: And it's like, what is the point.
Speaker 4: Honestly, I look at some of the big example that
Speaker 4: is James Packer, who's, like you know, was Australia's richest men.
Speaker 4: But if you if you met James, I did a
Speaker 4: few times, you just came across as so insecure and
Speaker 4: so just you could see how fragile his ego was.
Speaker 4: And you could, you know, you could from my brief
Speaker 4: and caounters with James Packer, I to hear that he
Speaker 4: had problems, you know, down the track was just so
Speaker 4: evident because of the ego that was just constantly needed
Speaker 4: to be fed, and it's just it was never going
Speaker 4: to end well. So it's just to get beyond that ego.
Speaker 4: And I've had it, don't get me wrong, still to.
Speaker 6: This day, I you know, to that.
Speaker 4: This morning, I pick up Twitter and someone says something
Speaker 4: that triggers me. I want to respond, I don't. I
Speaker 4: look at it again. And a friend of mine selling
Speaker 4: out the Sydney Opera house. I'm triggered, and I'm like,
Speaker 4: what is the point.
Speaker 1: Well, if you listen to Rogan, you know, he would
Speaker 1: tell you, don't pay attention to that ship mate, don't
Speaker 1: read it.
Speaker 4: I know, I agree, I'm one hundred percent on that.
Speaker 4: And it's just but the more we quite in the mind,
Speaker 4: the more we just you know what, just this sounds
Speaker 4: very deep, but just to just for us to realize
Speaker 4: how amazing it is to be alive and just to
Speaker 4: be able to breathe, and just what gifts were given,
Speaker 4: The gift of life is just there's nothing else you need.
Speaker 3: You have had a spiritual liking.
Speaker 6: I even Jonko now.
Speaker 3: No, but I like it.
Speaker 1: But you know, you think about this, how many people
Speaker 1: have a moment in their life where something goes horrendous,
Speaker 1: you know, an accident or a tragedy, or a death,
Speaker 1: or an illness or you know whatever bushfires or COVID
Speaker 1: even for some people just the stuff, just the really
Speaker 1: hard shit in life.
Speaker 3: And all they want. All those people want, understandably, is
Speaker 3: all they want is what they had yesterday before all
Speaker 3: this shit started. Yeah, if only I could.
Speaker 1: So what they want is the life that they didn't
Speaker 1: really appreciate value. They desperately want that back because now
Speaker 1: they have a new regard and a new attitude and
Speaker 1: new psychology around it. And I always say to people
Speaker 1: with two on two fronts. One, you know, don't wait
Speaker 1: for the tragedy before you step into your potential and
Speaker 1: your possibilities. But also don't wait for the tragedy before
Speaker 1: you have gratitude and awareness of how fucking amazing your
Speaker 1: existence is.
Speaker 3: Yes, like I go in.
Speaker 4: Your existence is every moment we should be going, My god,
Speaker 4: look at this, I am spinning around through space on
Speaker 4: a rock. Look around me. This is amazing. And that
Speaker 4: appreciation is what you're saying. They're the gratitude of that.
Speaker 4: Everything else falls away, all the bulls, it falls away.
Speaker 3: You're like this.
Speaker 1: One of my mentors used to say to me, Hughes,
Speaker 1: you do it. Do a treasure hunt on your life. Yeah,
Speaker 1: go and do a treasure hunt. Find all the good things,
Speaker 1: because you know, most people, if there's one hundred things
Speaker 1: in their life and one's not so great, but ninety
Speaker 1: nine are pretty good, too, amazing, they'll focus on the one.
Speaker 1: And it's really about where the fuck is your attention,
Speaker 1: Because where your attention is, your mind is, your emotion is,
Speaker 1: your body is, and if your attention is on that
Speaker 1: bad thing, that happened four and a half years ago.
Speaker 1: That's where you are. You know, you're not present, you're
Speaker 1: not here, You're not in the moment.
Speaker 6: Absolutely.
Speaker 4: So for me to a small example to do, I've
Speaker 4: got a TV show, Us We have a Problem, which
Speaker 4: is on its fourth season, coming back in February. But
Speaker 4: the ratings will come out every Tuesday whatever, and I
Speaker 4: won't look at the people who are watching.
Speaker 6: I'll look at the people who aren't watching.
Speaker 4: I won't go, Wow, maybe four hundred thousand people watch that.
Speaker 4: I'll go, oh, look at all the people who didn't watch.
Speaker 6: You know what the fuck?
Speaker 4: I'm a little kid who grew up in a commission
Speaker 4: house and I've got a TV show on you know,
Speaker 4: a network, and it's making me miserable.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, when that's the case, you know the problems
Speaker 1: not the TV show or the network.
Speaker 3: You know, you're the fucking problem. But we're all the problem,
Speaker 3: aren't we. So we've got to go.
Speaker 1: But I want to ask you a quick few questions
Speaker 1: before we go, So just one, give me, give Tiff
Speaker 1: and I and the listeners one minute on Hughes's parenting style.
Speaker 6: I am, I am. You know it sounds corny, but
Speaker 6: I want my children to be happy.
Speaker 4: And you know, my son's playing basketball under under thirteen's.
Speaker 6: He's freaking out, you know, and.
Speaker 4: It's the corny thing to save. He's doing rep training.
Speaker 4: And you make sure you enjoy that. You enjoy it.
Speaker 4: You're out in court, you take those shots. You don't
Speaker 4: worry about it. You know, we're in the backyard. He's
Speaker 4: cracking the ships because he's missing free throws. And I say, mate,
Speaker 4: the real winners are the ones who stay.
Speaker 6: In the moment.
Speaker 4: They haven't even they don't even think about the ones
Speaker 4: they've missed. They just they're right there.
Speaker 6: So that's one thing.
Speaker 4: But and just love comedy in my house. And the
Speaker 4: kids are really into it as well. My daughter eight
Speaker 4: year old nine year old daughter. I went to get
Speaker 4: it some toothpastes out of their bathroom yesterday and there's
Speaker 4: a note on its on the door saying this is
Speaker 4: kids toothpaste only not to be touched by adults. I
Speaker 4: just love that she's taking the time to write these
Speaker 4: notes out. And yeah, so I just I want a
Speaker 4: lot of laughter in my house, and I just want
Speaker 4: the kids to have a good time. And you know what,
Speaker 4: they're watching friends at the moment. God, they love Friends
Speaker 4: and I love Friends.
Speaker 3: That's hilarious.
Speaker 1: I think I watched all ten seasons of Friends in
Speaker 1: about three months, about ten years ago, which is not
Speaker 1: a good admission, but I fucking i'd never like. It
Speaker 1: was already done by the time I started watching it,
Speaker 1: and somebody bought me the DVD series.
Speaker 3: Have you watched Friends Tied?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 3: And I found it quite addictive.
Speaker 1: But it's good to know that the kids in your
Speaker 1: house are creating boundaries for.
Speaker 4: You, Hughsy They there's very little respect going on, but
Speaker 4: in a way, there's a lot of joy in the here.
Speaker 6: They look.
Speaker 4: If I could all the drugs that my kids appear
Speaker 4: to be on because they're so happy that, you know,
Speaker 4: I'd make a lot of money. Obviously want that to continue,
Speaker 4: their joy to continue.
Speaker 1: And did you did you marry Holly because you needed
Speaker 1: a grown up influence in your life or.
Speaker 4: She sees she was someone who is Actually she's obviously
Speaker 4: very attractive. And I did do get a lot of
Speaker 4: comments about how bat and above my origin.
Speaker 6: I do appreciate that.
Speaker 4: And there was the famous time my son, at the
Speaker 4: age of seven, said, Dad, did you meet mamake?
Speaker 6: He got famous, and it was hurtful at the time,
Speaker 6: and I.
Speaker 3: No, is it though, or is it just insightful?
Speaker 6: What's insightful?
Speaker 4: I said, mate, you worked that out, but you still
Speaker 4: can't you still take you half an hour? But to
Speaker 4: jump on mate, exactly. So yeah, she's very grounded and
Speaker 4: very she's school teacher. Now, she was a journ up
Speaker 4: the Herald Son, but she she didn't like chasing ambulances
Speaker 4: and she wasn't that keen on, you know, getting a
Speaker 4: chad opportunity to be TV and stuff. But she never
Speaker 4: really went for it. I didn't understand at the time,
Speaker 4: how do you not want that attention?
Speaker 6: So she didn't.
Speaker 4: So and she's teaching grade one and she's very happy
Speaker 4: doing that. So yeah, she's very doesn't seek the limelight.
Speaker 4: And it's very, very grounded. And it's always trying to
Speaker 4: tell me to be grateful when I get a bad review,
Speaker 4: you know, or someone someone says something hurtful about me
Speaker 4: in the newspaper, and she goes, look, you've got a
Speaker 4: pretty good life.
Speaker 6: You need to stop winging. So I appreciate that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you're doing all right, you get you're going all right.
Speaker 1: Get over at housing commission. Boy just fucking get some perspective.
Speaker 1: If everything last question, if everything goes great on planet Hughsy,
Speaker 1: everything goes awesome, things work out, you go where you
Speaker 1: want to go, Things unfolded beautifully.
Speaker 3: What's happening in five years?
Speaker 6: Mate?
Speaker 4: You know what if I'm going to dream the dream
Speaker 4: I'm you know, I don't know. I do a TV
Speaker 4: or a comedy special which somehow gets picked up internationally
Speaker 4: and all of a sudden, you know, people we don't
Speaker 4: have to explain well overseas listeners who they have huses,
Speaker 4: you know they already know. So it's happened to the occasion,
Speaker 4: it happens. You know, Hannah Gadsby and Usie Comic had
Speaker 4: a special that went international and then she was talking
Speaker 4: some very serious subjects in that special. But it does
Speaker 4: happen occasionally. So I look for anyone here from Netflix
Speaker 4: is watching. You know, I'm happy to give you a special,
Speaker 4: real cheap, put it on your platforms, and who knows
Speaker 4: who could go We could go international.
Speaker 6: That would be fun.
Speaker 4: But otherwise, zen as mate, and you see me in
Speaker 4: the street, you'll see me smiling.
Speaker 6: You know it.
Speaker 4: From too many years people have seen me in the
Speaker 4: street and yelled out, what's wrong here?
Speaker 2: Is it?
Speaker 4: You know? It will probably never happen because obviously I'm
Speaker 4: thinking about you know, those tickets I haven't sold, or
Speaker 4: those those ratings I didn't get on the TV.
Speaker 6: So no more.
Speaker 4: From now on, we're just going to walk around, smell
Speaker 4: on the flowers, appreciating the birds, singing and enjoying life.
Speaker 3: We're going to get you.
Speaker 1: We're going to send you a caftan, some Jesus sandals,
Speaker 1: a couple of a couple of dream catches, a fucking tambourine.
Speaker 4: My kids, my kids actually say enough of this, Guru, Guru,
Speaker 4: bullshit Dad.
Speaker 3: Well, mate, we really appreciate you being on the project.
Speaker 3: You're a ripper. Thanks for taking an hour out of
Speaker 3: your day.
Speaker 1: I know you're busy, and you genuinely are busy, and
Speaker 1: I know you get a lot of requests and we're nobody,
Speaker 1: but I appreciate you talking to us nobody's and taking
Speaker 1: the effort and bringing bringing the energy to this moment
Speaker 1: for everyone to listen to.
Speaker 6: So thanks a lot yours. I really enjoyed it.
Speaker 3: Thanks mate, Thanks, thanks everyone to stay there.
Speaker 1: Huge, Thanks everyone, tip anything else if if I forgotten
Speaker 1: any housekeeping.
Speaker 2: You never forget the housekeeping. You've done well, Heart's well done,
Speaker 2: gold Staff for you all right, I
Speaker 3: Do my best, Love your guts everyone, See you next time.