Speaker 1: I'll get a champions of taps. Who else would it be?
Speaker 1: Of course it's me. It's typ And when I say
Speaker 1: it's typ it's typ esque today. So recently, a few
Speaker 1: weeks ago, I had a guy called Ian Williams. He's
Speaker 1: a gun, he's an absolute ripper doing great things around
Speaker 1: men and mental health is showing up and stepping up
Speaker 1: and doing beautiful work. God bless his little socks while
Speaker 1: in his case, fucking gigantic socks because he's a big unit.
Speaker 1: Here's a podcast called the Artistry of Humanity, and he
Speaker 1: kindly asked me to go chat with him there. Now,
Speaker 1: what us podcasters do sometimes is we share each other's episodes,
Speaker 1: so they'll record me on theirs and then they put
Speaker 1: it up, and then a few days later I put
Speaker 1: up the same conversation over here at typ Central. So
Speaker 1: for those of you who didn't hear me on him,
Speaker 1: which I'm guessing is most of you of my particular audience,
Speaker 1: that is this is that this is the conversation that
Speaker 1: he and I had a little while ago. And yeah,
Speaker 1: I think, look, some of you are going to hear
Speaker 1: stuff you've heard, so I'm going to give you the
Speaker 1: heads up there might be some because remember, for me
Speaker 1: in this instance, I'm talking to a new audience as
Speaker 1: he's interviewing me. So for some of you you might go,
Speaker 1: I've heard the old bloody Harper tropes and the old
Speaker 1: bloody stories and oh these old chestnuts, so you might
Speaker 1: want to listen. Some of it you won't have heard.
Speaker 1: Some of it you will have heard if you're a regular.
Speaker 1: Either way, I think it was a pretty good chat.
Speaker 1: Here's a good dude and enter at own risk. All right, team, see.
Speaker 2: Yup, Hey Craig, how are you my friends?
Speaker 1: Oh buddy, I'm good. Thanks for having me on your show.
Speaker 1: Thanks for coming on. Mind, it was nice to meet you.
Speaker 1: We are probably a little bit kindred spirits, so I
Speaker 1: don't know what's going to happen in the next hour.
Speaker 2: Probably a lot of swear.
Speaker 1: And you're misrepresenting me. You're misrepresenting me.
Speaker 3: Represent myself. I was like, I'm a big fun I
Speaker 3: have to tell it. I mean, missus keep telling me
Speaker 3: to tone it down.
Speaker 2: I said, I can't help it. I'm from Liverpool. This
Speaker 2: is that we talk.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of there's a fair bit of research
Speaker 1: so that people that swear are more trustworthy. Maybe I'm
Speaker 1: just cherry picking this research, but more trustworthy, some suggests
Speaker 1: more socially and emotionally intelligent. I don't know. I'm going
Speaker 1: to hold onto that.
Speaker 2: So I've just noticed both of those down mates.
Speaker 1: I'm let's just wheel that out whenever we can, because
Speaker 1: also we're both insecure and we both need approval. But
Speaker 1: other than that, we're fucking rock stars, all.
Speaker 2: Right, mate. Look, as I say, appreciate you coming on.
Speaker 3: What I like to do is obviously you're doing some
Speaker 3: really great stuff and I really appreciate the work that
Speaker 3: you're doing, and I love your honesty and author anticity
Speaker 3: it shines through.
Speaker 2: So I'd really like to understand who little Craig was.
Speaker 3: You know what made this man that's sitting in filming
Speaker 3: me today doing the great work that you do. And yeah,
Speaker 3: just if you wouldn't mind take them on a haigh
Speaker 3: level journey of you know what?
Speaker 2: What what made you? My friend?
Speaker 1: Thank you? So I grew up in the country in
Speaker 1: rural Victoria and I was only kid, only child, so
Speaker 1: mum and dad. Mum and dad are still around. God
Speaker 1: blessed hern and Mary. And yeah, I was like a
Speaker 1: really mediocre kid, not a great student, not a great athlete.
Speaker 1: I was fat. I was more. I don't know, you
Speaker 1: can say it when it's about yourself. I think I
Speaker 1: was morbidly obese. I was the fattest kid in my school,
Speaker 1: and at school my nickname was Jumbo, So parents and
Speaker 1: teachers and kids called me that, so very few people
Speaker 1: for quite a few years called me Craig. That was
Speaker 1: obviously pre political correctness, but so kind of yeah, really
Speaker 1: really average and in some ways probably below average kid,
Speaker 1: like not a genius, not a creative talent, not a
Speaker 1: great academic, not physiologically blessed, not genetically blessed, but you know,
Speaker 1: a relatively happy kid. Had good friends, good friendships, good influences.
Speaker 1: And I guess when I was about fourteen, I had
Speaker 1: a I had a moment at the school swimming sports
Speaker 1: the epiphany when I was the fourteen year old kid
Speaker 1: who weighed ninety five kilos at five foot six or
Speaker 1: seven or something like that. Right, So, yeah, I was
Speaker 1: a big kid. Will now put that in context, I'm
Speaker 1: I think I'm five ten now and I'm eighty kilos,
Speaker 1: So I was literally four or five inches shorter and
Speaker 1: fifteen kilos heavier when I was fourteen than I am now.
Speaker 3: I'm six four and ninety seven kilos, so, you know,
Speaker 3: putting that into comparison, meat woe.
Speaker 1: Oh dude, I was a big kid. So and anyway,
Speaker 1: I had a moment and in that moment where I
Speaker 1: was very embarrassed and humiliated and all of the things
Speaker 1: which were creations of my own doing in many ways,
Speaker 1: but again I was a kid. I decided that I
Speaker 1: was going to not look like that, or feel like that,
Speaker 1: or experience that, or have to be that socially anymore.
Speaker 1: And you know, I think a lot of times when
Speaker 1: we create change, or when we do something that is
Speaker 1: life changing, we make a decision, we take an action,
Speaker 1: we change a behavior. I think that is often precipitated
Speaker 1: by an event or an awakening or some kind of
Speaker 1: internal switch. And so for me that I got really
Speaker 1: humiliated at this point in time, just because I had
Speaker 1: to swim in front of all of these people and
Speaker 1: take off my T shirt and be there in my
Speaker 1: big fat body that I really didn't want to do
Speaker 1: this thing, and I tried to avoid it. And I
Speaker 1: went to a private boys college where everyone had to
Speaker 1: do everything, and that's nobody's fault. But so I went
Speaker 1: through this experience and I came. I literally came out
Speaker 1: of the water at the other end of the pool
Speaker 1: after struggling through my fifty meters freestyle and went, I
Speaker 1: didn't I probably didn't say it like this, but essentially
Speaker 1: I went, fuck it, I'm never going to feel that again.
Speaker 1: I'm never going to experience that again. I'm never going
Speaker 1: to put myself in that situation again. And yeah, I
Speaker 1: came out, and I just I just created a new
Speaker 1: operating system. So I lost thirty five kilos in about
Speaker 1: four or five months, and I went down to sixty
Speaker 1: kilos probably within about six months, but maybe a little
Speaker 1: bit less. And so obviously losing weight and not being
Speaker 1: obese anymore and being fitter and being a bit stronger
Speaker 1: and being a bit more healthy and functional and operational.
Speaker 1: All of those things were good, of course from a
Speaker 1: physiological point of view. But interestingly, for me, what kind
Speaker 1: of really was the game changer was me starting to
Speaker 1: realize my own potential, me starting to see the space
Speaker 1: between what was possible and my story about what was possible,
Speaker 1: my story about who I thought I was and the
Speaker 1: reality of who I could become. And so that kind
Speaker 1: of moment in time, and those subsequent months in time
Speaker 1: were for me very cathartic and very influential and very
Speaker 1: formative in terms of how I kind of progressed from
Speaker 1: there and became a young man and started working in
Speaker 1: gyms at eighteen and started you know, you know, honestly
Speaker 1: becoming quite obsessed with it all and probably not in
Speaker 1: a good way at times, with health and fitness and performance.
Speaker 1: And then yeah, eventually going to university and doing a
Speaker 1: degree in excise science and then becoming a university lecturer
Speaker 1: and writing the first course. I wrote the first course
Speaker 1: in Australia for with one of my friends for personal training.
Speaker 1: I opened the first personal training facility in Australia in
Speaker 1: nine ninety. I started pteeing people. So I was born
Speaker 1: in sixty three. I started pteeing people. I started in
Speaker 1: the fitness industry in eighty two. I started pteeing people
Speaker 1: in eighty five, So nobody ever knew what a trainer was.
Speaker 1: I spent my life explaining to people my job, and
Speaker 1: most people thought that's not a real job, and it
Speaker 1: kind of wasn't at that stage because there was no industry,
Speaker 1: there was no regulation, there was no qualification, there was
Speaker 1: no insurance, so I'm literally doing a job that doesn't exist.
Speaker 1: I'm a personal trainer in a country where there are
Speaker 1: no personal trainers. So it was very much, you know,
Speaker 1: trial and error. Yeah, and it just kind of went
Speaker 1: from there. Mate. I realized early that how much I
Speaker 1: knew about bodies and anatomy and physiology and biomechanics and
Speaker 1: nutrition and exercise programming and progressive overload and all of
Speaker 1: these things that you need to know as an exercise
Speaker 1: scientist or exercise professional. I realized that how much I
Speaker 1: knew about that wasn't nearly as important is how much
Speaker 1: I understood the human inside the body. Because I was
Speaker 1: pretty good with bodies, but not brilliant with humans. So
Speaker 1: probably from when I was about and you know, obviously
Speaker 1: I'm an XI scientist, and I've worked with athletes and
Speaker 1: teams and blokes in prison, and you know, tens of
Speaker 1: thousands of the general public, and I employed five hundred trainers,
Speaker 1: and so I did all that. I worked in the
Speaker 1: fitness and strength and high performance space. But the thing
Speaker 1: that I was really fascinated with and have been ever since,
Speaker 1: is how human beings work. So you know, now, as
Speaker 1: I said to you before we started recording. I'm in
Speaker 1: the last four weeks of my PhD in psychology, so
Speaker 1: it's you know, the last thirty five years have really
Speaker 1: been me trying to understand how people work and how
Speaker 1: potential works, and what success is and what failure is,
Speaker 1: and you know, how we self sabotage and yeah, and
Speaker 1: the journey continues.
Speaker 2: That's beautiful.
Speaker 3: I'm just looking back to that fourteen year old who
Speaker 3: you know, was called, as you say, very politically, he
Speaker 3: called jumbo, even by teachers.
Speaker 2: That would have had.
Speaker 3: A massive, massive impact on you, and obviously it would
Speaker 3: have been seems like part of the drive of the person,
Speaker 3: you know, influence of me today. Is that something that
Speaker 3: you've had to kind of on peck and process and
Speaker 3: kind of come to terms with as you've got older,
Speaker 3: as that has there been some kind of trauma that
Speaker 3: you're about to go through.
Speaker 1: That Like, honestly, I try to be really self aware
Speaker 1: around this and I look back and I think, were
Speaker 1: any of the people who called me jumbo, Like my
Speaker 1: best friends called me jumbo, so there was no malice.
Speaker 1: They actually loved me. But I was just this big,
Speaker 1: huge kid, and you know, it didn't it. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: don't think it really traumatized me. But you know, trauma
Speaker 1: is an interesting thing, and being affected emotionally and mentally
Speaker 1: by things is It's complicated. When I look back, I
Speaker 1: don't think that anyone was trying to hurt me. I
Speaker 1: think they're probably I got picked on for being fat,
Speaker 1: and that was very overt and very obvious, you know,
Speaker 1: and there was probably I don't know that trauma is
Speaker 1: the right word, but a bit of I guess sadness
Speaker 1: and or anxiety around being bullied or picked on for
Speaker 1: how I looked and for my weight. But at the
Speaker 1: same time, I think, while I wouldn't suggest that for anyone,
Speaker 1: and I don't think, you know, in an ideal world,
Speaker 1: there'd be no bullying, there'd be no criticism, there'd be
Speaker 1: none of that. But we don't live in that world.
Speaker 1: And I look at my childhood compared to many other childhoods,
Speaker 1: and I'm like, well, Craig, you like your trauma was
Speaker 1: a one out of a hundred. So I don't, on
Speaker 1: no level do I think I had it hard. I
Speaker 1: had a few very minor social challenges, but for the
Speaker 1: most part, I look back with fondness, and you know, gratitude.
Speaker 1: I grew up with great parents, great friends, great time,
Speaker 1: great environment, had all the opportunities. We weren't by any
Speaker 1: means wealthy, Like I don't know how my parents paid
Speaker 1: for me to go to a private school. I feel
Speaker 1: there's a bit of sacrifice in there. But yeah, for
Speaker 1: the most part, yeah, nothing but gratitude. Mate.
Speaker 2: That's beautiful.
Speaker 3: And the thing you touched on there about I think
Speaker 3: in the pain, that's where we get our lessons, that's
Speaker 3: what gives us those drivers. So being that fourteen year old,
Speaker 3: you know, ninety five kilos guy has driven into where
Speaker 3: you are today.
Speaker 2: You've used that, you know, and I think you touched
Speaker 2: on there.
Speaker 3: You know, if people talk at traumas and everybody in school,
Speaker 3: I believe the majority probably would have been bullied at
Speaker 3: some stage.
Speaker 2: I remember being bullied when hours, I don't know about
Speaker 2: fourteen fifteen.
Speaker 3: I came back and I lived in a different area
Speaker 3: and it was the summer holidays, and I was.
Speaker 2: Away from all my friends for a period of time
Speaker 2: from the school.
Speaker 3: And then I came back and for some reason I
Speaker 3: felt a bit shy, thought, oh, they've all been buddies
Speaker 3: together that I've been a bit and I came back
Speaker 3: and I just sat back a little bit more and
Speaker 3: those just kids have very you know, kids a lot
Speaker 3: different than than maybe when you're adults, and me being
Speaker 3: silent must have signaled this weakness that then they came.
Speaker 2: Through and I sensed this bully and it was difficult.
Speaker 3: But you talk about it's a once a hundred because
Speaker 3: this but also everybody's biggest pain is their biggest pain,
Speaker 3: because there's a lot of people have on the podcast
Speaker 3: who've had sexual abuse, you know, physical abuse, real traumatic events.
Speaker 3: But at that moment in time, that was my biggest
Speaker 3: traumatic thing. And I remember thinking to myself, this life, shit,
Speaker 3: it's not worth it, you know, And I was. I
Speaker 3: wasn't genuinely starting to question stuff because I hated going
Speaker 3: to school, so I hated the existence of it.
Speaker 2: Only for a short period of time, but it got
Speaker 2: pretty dark and the think about it.
Speaker 3: But if you put that on the spectrum of somebody
Speaker 3: over there, you know, people I've spoken to nowhere near
Speaker 3: and similar to yourself. I had a mum and dad
Speaker 3: who up until obviously recently, my dad just passed. They
Speaker 3: stayed together fifty six years. But even within those dan
Speaker 3: I've seen things that hang on a minute. There's a
Speaker 3: lot of sometimes there's a lot of argument, there's a
Speaker 3: lot of this. I felt like I was in Fatal
Speaker 3: Flake quite a bit. They had two more others. One
Speaker 3: took a bit of a Roague path. So although it
Speaker 3: was kind of it wasn't as severe as others. I
Speaker 3: do think it's worth Colin ow greg that those dark
Speaker 3: times can't feel very dark when we're.
Speaker 1: In them, right, Oh of course, yeah, yeah, one hundred percent.
Speaker 1: And it's not to devalue anyone's feelings. It's a really
Speaker 1: tricky thing, like you know, grief and trauma and sadness
Speaker 1: and mental health, to try to navigate that and realize,
Speaker 1: you know, it's like a really interesting thing is when
Speaker 1: you see, say three people in the same situation, and
Speaker 1: in that situation, one person is traumatized and one person
Speaker 1: is curious, and one person is unaffected, and you go, oh,
Speaker 1: is that a traumatic situation or not? And you go, well,
Speaker 1: two people are not traumatized, one is. And this is
Speaker 1: not to be critical, this is to try to dig
Speaker 1: into how does trauma work, how does mental health? How
Speaker 1: does anxiety work? You know, you go, oh, that's a
Speaker 1: stressful situation. And you go, well, how come that guy
Speaker 1: or that girl isn't stressed in the middle of that situation.
Speaker 1: Why is that person not stressed? And that's because the
Speaker 1: situation doesn't cause the stress. It might be it might
Speaker 1: create a trigger in an individual, But if a situation
Speaker 1: was let's say, universally categorically stressful, then every person in
Speaker 1: that situation would experience the same emotional state, which is stress,
Speaker 1: which is distress, which is anxiety. And so part of
Speaker 1: navigating trauma and grief and mental health and sadness and
Speaker 1: anxiety is not like you said, it's not to say
Speaker 1: you're good or bad. It's not to say this is
Speaker 1: more traumatic than that. This is it's not that at all.
Speaker 1: It's starting to understand the self, the me, the individual,
Speaker 1: the way that like my stories, and to understand the
Speaker 1: relationship between your stories and your mind and your physiology. So,
Speaker 1: if for example, I am in a situation and you
Speaker 1: are in the same situation next to me, you and
Speaker 1: I are in the same room on the same day,
Speaker 1: being exposed to the same stimulus, and in the middle
Speaker 1: of that moment in time, sitting next to you in
Speaker 1: that room, my story is we are in danger. This
Speaker 1: is terrifying. This is bad, something terrible is going to happen, etc. Etc.
Speaker 1: This is my story. Then the fear response, or the
Speaker 1: emotional response is fear and anxiety and dread and anger perhaps,
Speaker 1: And then the physiological response is my sympathetic nervous system
Speaker 1: kicks in. My blood pressure goes up, my heart rate
Speaker 1: goes up, my body starts producing adrenaline and cortisol, and
Speaker 1: blah blah blah. There is this cascade of physiological consequences
Speaker 1: as a result of my story. And then all of
Speaker 1: a sudden I am legitimately and genuinely in a state
Speaker 1: of stress, and my body will tell you that. Conversely,
Speaker 1: old mate Ian sitting next to me, cool as a cucumber,
Speaker 1: is like, well, this is not stressful at all. This
Speaker 1: is fine, and you're thinking about what you're going to
Speaker 1: have for lunch once we get out of the room. Right,
Speaker 1: So you are next to me in the same place
Speaker 1: on the same day, I'm producing cortisol, adrenaline, Nora Perreefron,
Speaker 1: you're producing dopamine and a bit of serotonin or whatever,
Speaker 1: because you're actually having a bit of a good time.
Speaker 1: Your heart rates low, your blood pressure is low, your
Speaker 1: parasympathetic nervous systems just cruising along because you calm and
Speaker 1: then you go, well, how does that work? Well? That
Speaker 1: works that way because people respond differently to the same thing,
Speaker 1: and the way that we respond, even physiologically, is often
Speaker 1: a byproduct of the story that we tell ourselves about
Speaker 1: what is happening. If my story is I'm in trouble,
Speaker 1: then my body believes it. My nervous system, my cardiovascular system,
Speaker 1: my respiratory system, my endocrime system believes it because my
Speaker 1: body can't distinguish between my bullshit story and the objective truth.
Speaker 1: The subjective story of Craig will be the determinant of
Speaker 1: my physiology in that moment, not the objective reality of
Speaker 1: the room, which is why you're in a good state.
Speaker 1: I'm in a shit state, and understanding how this works
Speaker 1: is really fucking important for people, that's not. And by
Speaker 1: the way, this is not about self loathing. This is
Speaker 1: about self awareness. This is like, oh, oh, you know
Speaker 1: what creates anxiety in my life? I do?
Speaker 2: Oh?
Speaker 3: They again, great kind of overview there with depth and
Speaker 3: simplistically explained, And as you're describing that, I'm kind of
Speaker 3: reverse engineering the way that you use this as a strategy, right,
Speaker 3: because what you're just describing to me is that's why
Speaker 3: I think the importance of gratitude, of the story that
Speaker 3: you're telling yourself on a daily basis. And what am
Speaker 3: I looking at? What's my brain looking at? What am
Speaker 3: I thinking about? Because I become that I often describe
Speaker 3: if I'm having a really shit day, and I've had
Speaker 3: a few shit days recently, that I have this moment
Speaker 3: in time. I love fucking Australia. I always wanted to
Speaker 3: come here. I had something in me when I was younger.
Speaker 3: I came here when I was twenty one. I spent
Speaker 3: six weeks here.
Speaker 2: I thought I'm gonna move there.
Speaker 3: Life events happens, ill fated marriage, this, that and the other,
Speaker 3: and I didn't come up here until I was thirty
Speaker 3: five thirty six. And I remember the moment I landed
Speaker 3: here and I got the job, and it was this
Speaker 3: overwhelming feeling of joy which just consumed the shit.
Speaker 1: Out of me.
Speaker 3: I can remember that moment and it just gets rid
Speaker 3: of all the crap and body and I just remember
Speaker 3: that and it's like, in that moment of high gratitude
Speaker 3: love the highest frequency, nothing else can li They and
Speaker 3: I am. I'll preach it to the day I die.
Speaker 3: That people don't realize there's a strategy to change your
Speaker 3: physiological and mental state that is there for you, and
Speaker 3: it's not as complex and hard as sometimes as people believe.
Speaker 3: And what you've just described here, you know, it's the
Speaker 3: story that we tell ourselves. I've just been back to
Speaker 3: the UK. I've got two brothers. All three of us
Speaker 3: see the world totally differently. And that thing that you're describing,
Speaker 3: I was sitting in the room and what you described happened.
Speaker 3: Three of us were seen reacting differently and three different things.
Speaker 3: And there's a satin person I won't say a brother,
Speaker 3: could be might be who sometimes sits in that victim
Speaker 3: mentality and bloody, all that painful and I'm witnessing it,
Speaker 3: and I'm going, you are creating this crock of shit.
Speaker 3: Whether it's be a relationships that aren't working, whether it
Speaker 3: be this situation that you're sitting in this darkness and
Speaker 3: you're staring at this darkness. Well, is that what this
Speaker 3: life's about?
Speaker 2: Do we'd have to? It's like with grief? Am I do?
Speaker 2: I do?
Speaker 3: I love my dad less if I'm not sitting and
Speaker 3: staying at the grief all day or not?
Speaker 2: Is that is what? What is life about? His life about?
Speaker 3: Is life about learning from that and honoring that? And
Speaker 3: you know, trying to how do I look at grief?
Speaker 3: And that's something I'm trying to explore it.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 3: I'm far, I'm over here, I'm extracted from the situation.
Speaker 3: Sometimes I feel a bit distant from it. And there's
Speaker 3: a question, and I'm asking myself, should I be sitting
Speaker 3: in this more? Should I be more upset because of
Speaker 3: a want?
Speaker 2: Who I can? I can go look at it and.
Speaker 3: Put sad music on with Dad's sad music and staying
Speaker 3: at his face and read the letter that I wrote
Speaker 3: on the eulogy and I'll cry my eyes out?
Speaker 2: What is that? You know?
Speaker 3: And that's another question that I would maybe pose to
Speaker 3: you because that's something that I'm kind of working through.
Speaker 2: With the moment.
Speaker 1: Yeah, It's it's so funny. We have these ideas of
Speaker 1: how things should happen and how we should when they happen,
Speaker 1: and ian you know that there's multiple steps of grieving
Speaker 1: and you need to grieve the right way for the
Speaker 1: right amount of time, in the right chronological you know,
Speaker 1: it's like how about fuck that? How about how do
Speaker 1: you feel? Mate? Well? I feel actually I don't know
Speaker 1: why I feel okay, cool. We're not pretending that dad
Speaker 1: didn't pass away. We're not we don't not love dad.
Speaker 1: We're not being disrespectful. I think you know, there's no
Speaker 1: set It's like, what's the best way to lose weight? Harps?
Speaker 1: I don't know? Who are you? You know?
Speaker 2: How?
Speaker 1: I mean? It's probably involved some food, some exercise, some sleep,
Speaker 1: maybe a supplement maybe not, Maybe some decisions, maybe some
Speaker 1: fucking resilience, maybe some consistency. I can give you forty
Speaker 1: different ingredients to help you lose weight. Oh cool, what's
Speaker 1: the best way to build a business. We'll sit the
Speaker 1: fuck down, let's workshop that. What's the best way to grieve?
Speaker 1: It's the same, Like we have this stupid mentality that
Speaker 1: there is only one way to create this particular outcome.
Speaker 1: And the thing is that you are not me and
Speaker 1: I am not you. What will work for you could
Speaker 1: be a fucking disaster for me. I can eat a
Speaker 1: handful of nuts and I go, that's a healthy snack.
Speaker 1: One of my friends eats one nut, they have a
Speaker 1: fucking anaphylactic reaction. So it's not a nuts good or
Speaker 1: are nuts bad. It's about the individual response to the
Speaker 1: same stimulus. It's like talk therapy. A lot of people
Speaker 1: think talk therapy is the solution to all problems. That's absolutely,
Speaker 1: unequivocally not true. Talk therapy is really good for some
Speaker 1: people and not so great for other people. And it's
Speaker 1: not that talk therapy is categorically good or bad. It's
Speaker 1: just not optimal for everyone. It's just like, hey, should
Speaker 1: I train with dumbbells, barbells and free weights or pinloaded machines? Well,
Speaker 1: let me find out about your body and your background
Speaker 1: and your injuries, and let's have a talk and let
Speaker 1: me see what you can do, and then I will
Speaker 1: help you make it like this idea? Right? So, mate,
Speaker 1: you just fucking grieve, But I also think let's not
Speaker 1: overthink it. Let's not get up and go, oh shit,
Speaker 1: what should I be doing? Read my grief? What should
Speaker 1: I do to fucking just do life? Bro? And if
Speaker 1: you're sad, you're sad. If you're happy, you're happy. Don't
Speaker 1: feel guilty for being happy. Don't feel guilty for being sad. Like,
Speaker 1: we overthink the fuck out of things, and we invest
Speaker 1: our time and emotional energy in things which do not
Speaker 1: give us a good return, like you obsessing about how
Speaker 1: you should grieve is a waste of your time.
Speaker 3: I appreciate doublether and going back to that kind of
Speaker 3: that victim mentality of you know and you know to tear.
Speaker 3: Maybe overused, but I've there's people in and around my
Speaker 3: world who I just watch and I just think that
Speaker 3: the conversation where having now you're talking to me, I'm
Speaker 3: talking to you, there's an awareness I can understand what
Speaker 3: you're saying.
Speaker 2: I grab it and go that makes sense.
Speaker 3: That doesn't obey that, don't buy that, but I can
Speaker 3: take I can consume the language. There's people I think
Speaker 3: cannot consume our language at times. They just haven't got
Speaker 3: the level of consciousness I'm seeing. I always say people
Speaker 3: level conscious one to five and the same people, I
Speaker 3: just think, you can't consume this. And my thing is,
Speaker 3: and I'm witnessing that. I'm witnessing people who like, we're
Speaker 3: just saying you as you were describing stuff to me,
Speaker 3: I'm reading it. It's there's a story coming in place,
Speaker 3: and I can Then we just spoke about gratitude and
Speaker 3: we nod to each other and we explain and we
Speaker 3: go Okay. Now, I might not do all these things
Speaker 3: every day, but it brings it back to the forefront
Speaker 3: of my mind. I'll probably come off this thing, I'll
Speaker 3: get some stuff from it, and I'll do something. But
Speaker 3: there's people, there's other people, and I think there's with
Speaker 3: a lot of large parts of the suffering has come
Speaker 3: from there's a language barrier to a lot of people.
Speaker 3: They're not understand so they're suffering that are either suffering
Speaker 3: in silence or the or the you know, telling everybody
Speaker 3: under the son about the about the about the suffering
Speaker 3: and making it worse. But I think there's a language
Speaker 3: barrier to get to these people.
Speaker 2: People.
Speaker 3: And I think, you know, there's so much awareness out there,
Speaker 3: but the suicide rates keep increasing, the mental health crisis
Speaker 3: keeps increasing. There's a as I think we've foken on
Speaker 3: your podcast, I think there's a there's no shortcomings in information,
Speaker 3: you know.
Speaker 2: Anywhere we go. I can tape into it. Now with AI,
Speaker 2: I can tape anything.
Speaker 3: Again, I get battered with everything, right, But I think
Speaker 3: there's a real language barrier. My question to you is,
Speaker 3: you know, is that something that you see and what
Speaker 3: what do you believe? Is an anecdote to an antidote
Speaker 3: to the how how can we tackle that? Because there's
Speaker 3: a huge crisis, but some people just can't understand the language.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's a good question. So I think there's two
Speaker 1: things that come to mind. I'm gonna answer that immediate question. Second,
Speaker 1: but I'm going to speak to something else first. First
Speaker 1: thing I think is, let's say, let's say you recognize
Speaker 1: that I've got a problem, and you're my friend. You're educated,
Speaker 1: you're knowledgeable, you're compassionate, you love me, you care about me,
Speaker 1: you want the best for me. But I might not
Speaker 1: be interested in what you've got to say. So you
Speaker 1: can you can have the right language, you can have
Speaker 1: the right intentions, you can have the metaphors, the stories
Speaker 1: that all of that. And I'm like, hey, Ian, fuck
Speaker 1: off right.
Speaker 3: And I can ask you a question on that point there. Yeah,
Speaker 3: is that ninety percent of the time, ego, do you believe?
Speaker 1: I think it's fear. I think it's fear because if
Speaker 1: you're right, then I'm gonna have to own up and
Speaker 1: step up and listen to you and do something. And
Speaker 1: I'm terrified. I'm a man, and I'm terrified of everything,
Speaker 1: and this this fucking shell, this ego, this bullshit, this
Speaker 1: alpha male fucking thing that I'm wearing. It's all bullshit.
Speaker 1: It's all hiding fear and all of that stuff. Right,
Speaker 1: So that the problem is that sometimes we and I
Speaker 1: mean you and me and people like us, we have
Speaker 1: good intentions because although we're flawed, we try to do
Speaker 1: the right thing and you fuck, I fuck up. Welcome
Speaker 1: to humanity, right, But there have been many times and
Speaker 1: I do it less and less because I've learned my
Speaker 1: lesson where I would, with very good intentions, try to
Speaker 1: help someone who actually needed help, but they didn't want
Speaker 1: the help. And so in the middle of that me
Speaker 1: trying to tell them how it was going to work
Speaker 1: and what they should do, and I go, you know,
Speaker 1: I know you're a bit fucked up, but I've got
Speaker 1: answers and I'm educated and I've been down there, and
Speaker 1: that's cool. All I would do is I would create
Speaker 1: more disconnection than connection, and more problems and solutions. So
Speaker 1: recognizing that somebody needs help is not the same as
Speaker 1: someone asking you for help, and so we need to
Speaker 1: be very careful about one if at all we approach that,
Speaker 1: or two if we do how we approach that now,
Speaker 1: pursuant to your initial question, your honor language really matters, because,
Speaker 1: like if I talk about my research with my doctorate,
Speaker 1: talk about you know, metacognition and theory of mind and
Speaker 1: metap perception and metaaccuracy and all of these fancy fucking
Speaker 1: words and the consensus effect and all of this psychological
Speaker 1: language that is actually relevant for every human that's got
Speaker 1: a brain in a mind. It's broadly universally relevant. But
Speaker 1: if I just start talking like a researcher or a scientist,
Speaker 1: the average person who is not dumber than me, it's
Speaker 1: just a different language. In fact, a lot of people
Speaker 1: are smarter than me that have never set foot in
Speaker 1: a university. Right, you're one of those people. You're a
Speaker 1: very fucking smart human. And I was very impressed with you.
Speaker 1: Your natural intellect, social, emotional and intellectors through the roof, right,
Speaker 1: And I mean genuinely thank you. Yeah. But but then,
Speaker 1: you know, so Craig needs to understand, well, how do
Speaker 1: I share this thought, this idea, this message, this encouragement,
Speaker 1: this insight in a way which resonates within, which resonates
Speaker 1: with this audience, Because in fact, my whole PhD is
Speaker 1: around trying to understand the Craig experience, you know, or
Speaker 1: in your case, trying to understand the the Ean experience
Speaker 1: for an audience, be that an audience of one at
Speaker 1: a coffee table or an audience of fucking ten million
Speaker 1: on the television, right. And so I need to try
Speaker 1: to understand not only how other people perceive me and
Speaker 1: whether or not this message is landing, but I need
Speaker 1: to try to understand what is their language, what is
Speaker 1: their level of knowledge, what is their current psychological, sociological,
Speaker 1: emotional state in this moment. Not what do I want
Speaker 1: to say at them. I need to try to understand
Speaker 1: their present emotional and psychological state so I can build rapport,
Speaker 1: build trust, build respect, build connection. And then once I
Speaker 1: have that level of real world in the moment, interpersonal engagement,
Speaker 1: then I can carefully wheel out some ideas and information.
Speaker 3: What you've just described there is kind of really really
Speaker 3: interesting for me.
Speaker 2: And you know, if I look.
Speaker 3: Back at everything that I've been through over you know,
Speaker 3: my forty forty seven years and all of the work
Speaker 3: I'm doing at the moment, there's not many men who
Speaker 3: are actively going to reach out. They suffer in silence,
Speaker 3: and they don't even know that they need help. And
Speaker 3: they don't even know they need help. Then in this
Speaker 3: I talk about that suicidality risk, you know, and I've
Speaker 3: got this matrix of twenty questions.
Speaker 2: If anybody sits.
Speaker 3: Below fifteen, they're at risk as far as I can say,
Speaker 3: because they've got no things to clamber too. They've got
Speaker 3: no health and fitness, they've got no internal work, they've
Speaker 3: got no safety net, and they don't even know. So
Speaker 3: for me and the work that I'm trying to do
Speaker 3: and scale and talking to you know, incredibly smart people
Speaker 3: yourself can only add value because we're at the early
Speaker 3: stages of what we're trying to achieve is how do
Speaker 3: we bring awareness to the people who aren't aware, who
Speaker 3: aren't looking. It's not even about sometimes you know, it's
Speaker 3: about you know, they might just this language might get
Speaker 3: them in passing. You know, they could be oh, and
Speaker 3: it sticks to someone and they go, oh, I just
Speaker 3: heard something there that resonated with me.
Speaker 2: Now going to come on board.
Speaker 3: And that's why, because of what's happening, there's got to
Speaker 3: be a commonality message and that needs to be getting
Speaker 3: banged out on repeat for humanity right now because it's
Speaker 3: not landing everything that's out there, whether Ian Craig, you know,
Speaker 3: fucking Tony Robbins, fucking whoever, everything else, it ain't landing
Speaker 3: with the people that needs to land with. They're suffering,
Speaker 3: they're in silence, and they're killing themselves. So I'm really
Speaker 3: intrigued and and hell bent on solving this. And my
Speaker 3: one is about number one. I believe we have to
Speaker 3: stay away from the word suicidality because of the stigma.
Speaker 3: We have to have this kind of community brotherhood, you know,
Speaker 3: and you know, the manly side of it. We're coming
Speaker 3: together as men, right because and having this collective thing.
Speaker 3: But then is attractive to people to come in and
Speaker 3: once they come into our safe space, making sure that
Speaker 3: the language is simple, so fucking simplistic that it captures.
Speaker 3: And again I'm not you know, I'm not belittling anyone.
Speaker 3: It might be of the lower intellect or the people
Speaker 3: who haven't been through the skill system to a level
Speaker 3: that you know other people have. And I think that's
Speaker 3: the success equation. The success equation is simplifying the shit
Speaker 3: out of it. And how do we draw people in
Speaker 3: not into an ian you know, into a small community
Speaker 3: or a Craig work short, but it's.
Speaker 2: It's bigger than that. It's do you know what I mean?
Speaker 3: And I'm trying to and I'm almost asking what's your
Speaker 3: opinion or what ideas you have to to pull these
Speaker 3: people through are taking their own lives.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So I think when people I work with a
Speaker 1: lot of people who are struggling, and you know we're
Speaker 1: talking before about you know that my problems, if on
Speaker 1: the one to one hundred minor are one, right, So
Speaker 1: I'm my overwhelming every day. If it's not my default,
Speaker 1: I try to make it that you know, is you know,
Speaker 1: just gratitude. But I think with people who especially blokes,
Speaker 1: because and again I don't I actually think some blokes
Speaker 1: are better than people think. Everyone goes ah, men are
Speaker 1: all fucking idiots. They can't that's not true. It's not true.
Speaker 1: And no, culturally we really haven't been historically supported to
Speaker 1: be overly expressive and emotive and conversational around feelings and
Speaker 1: all of that, but that that's slowly becoming a thing
Speaker 1: in the past. But having said that, I think ladies
Speaker 1: are generally better, but I think blokes are improving. So
Speaker 1: well done blokes, But I mean, you're an alpha male, right,
Speaker 1: but you're also a compassionate dude. But you're a blokey bloke,
Speaker 1: and I'm a little bit the same. I think what
Speaker 1: people need is they need to know that you are authentic,
Speaker 1: that you or me, that you are coming from a
Speaker 1: place of love, That this is not a strategy to
Speaker 1: build a business or make dough. Right. I say to
Speaker 1: people all the time, like I've written seven books, I
Speaker 1: reckon in two, I don't know, twenty one hundred episodes
Speaker 1: of a podcast. I have never once advertised any of
Speaker 1: my books. I've never ever encouraged anyone to buy one book.
Speaker 1: I don't talk about it. I never sell anything. I
Speaker 1: never push programs. You can go to my whiteboard my Instagram,
Speaker 1: which is all handwritten whiteboards. There are over six thousand posts,
Speaker 1: and there might be in six thousand, there might be
Speaker 1: ten where I'm letting people know I've got a workshop
Speaker 1: coming up, right, because one I make enough dough talking
Speaker 1: of fat blokes in suits, right, I can just rock
Speaker 1: up do that, and I know you're not allowed to
Speaker 1: say that. I don't care. They know I'm fucking with it, right, right,
Speaker 1: I turn up and I talk to them, and they
Speaker 1: know I love them and the amazing women that are
Speaker 1: part of the crowd as well. Right, I just turn
Speaker 1: up and I do my thing, and I fuck off
Speaker 1: and I get paid well. So it's not like, oh,
Speaker 1: I need money from all of my I don't. I
Speaker 1: don't because I actually money's not a high value for me.
Speaker 1: That's not to say that, you know, it shouldn't be
Speaker 1: for anyone else. Right, I'm just speaking personally, but what
Speaker 1: I try to be, and this is just my philosophy.
Speaker 1: The biggest compliment for me is when people meet me
Speaker 1: and talk to me and go, oh my god, you
Speaker 1: know what I love? I go, what do you love?
Speaker 1: They go, I love that you're exactly the same here
Speaker 1: at the coffee shop as you are on the podcast.
Speaker 1: I love that that is actually how you are. And
Speaker 1: because I don't have a persona, you know, I don't
Speaker 1: get on the podcast. Get everyone, welcome to the You project.
Speaker 1: It's harbs, it is number coming up today. There's none
Speaker 1: of that. It's just like you're a bit of a
Speaker 1: fuck with at times and you're a genius at times.
Speaker 1: Welcome to being you know me too? Do I have
Speaker 1: a fuck up? Yes? Am I smart? Depends on what
Speaker 1: room I'm in sometimes I'm the dumbest in the fucking room, right,
Speaker 1: But I think if people know that you have integrity
Speaker 1: and authenticity and that you are coming from a place
Speaker 1: of love. This is going to sound weird, and I
Speaker 1: probably shouldn't fucking say it, but I'm going to be vulnerable.
Speaker 1: When I was thirty, I was a millionaire when a
Speaker 1: millionaire was a lot, so that's thirty two years ago.
Speaker 1: I owned multiple businesses. I had a beautiful house. I
Speaker 1: had a beach house because I had all kinds of shit.
Speaker 1: I was writing for the Herald Sun, I was making
Speaker 1: lots of dough, and in the middle of all of that,
Speaker 1: I was fuck and miserable. Bro. And I'm not saying
Speaker 1: one caused the other. I'm just saying, oh, so you
Speaker 1: can actually be in inverted commas, successful and simultaneously sad
Speaker 1: and anxious and not sleeping. Oh well, then that idea
Speaker 1: that I had of what success is and what that
Speaker 1: would mean emotionally and mentally, that for me, that was
Speaker 1: a flawed concept. And so you know, that kind of
Speaker 1: exposed me to the truth. My truth anyway early on
Speaker 1: that wealth is about a lot of things that may
Speaker 1: or may not involve money, wealth is about love and
Speaker 1: kindness and connection and belief and truth and gratitude and
Speaker 1: self awareness and compassion and empathy. And that sounds cheesy
Speaker 1: and cliche, but I really don't care. So yeah, I
Speaker 1: think if people.
Speaker 2: Will see that in you, yeah, I love that. And no,
Speaker 2: I don't think it's cliche, and I don't think it's cheesy.
Speaker 2: I think it's absolutely right.
Speaker 3: And I think I said that the two questions that
Speaker 3: I've been I got this from one of the guys
Speaker 3: early in the podcast, this line, and I think that's
Speaker 3: something I try to live by.
Speaker 2: It's that question of are the actions I'm.
Speaker 3: About to take or the words I'm about to speak
Speaker 3: going to intentionally calm harm to others?
Speaker 1: Now?
Speaker 2: If if I if the.
Speaker 3: Answer to that is yes, I am going to do that,
Speaker 3: then I'm not being a good human I'm going against
Speaker 3: the collective of humanity. And that's why I say we
Speaker 3: have collective consciousness. We're all dropped from the same ocean,
Speaker 3: and you know, and I believe that is what we're
Speaker 3: trying to get to. And my thing is, if we're
Speaker 3: all drops of the same ocean, some of these droplets
Speaker 3: aren't hearing this message, and they suffering in silence. They
Speaker 3: haven't got the tips and the tricks and the simple shit,
Speaker 3: the stuff that you've spoken about, you know, which I'm
Speaker 3: thinking gratitude is such a game changer. I don't do
Speaker 3: it enough. When I do do it changes my state
Speaker 3: and all the shit can't live there. And I think
Speaker 3: we get rid of all of these pills and stuff
Speaker 3: that people then get associated to. They're going to go, no,
Speaker 3: I am this and I have to take these pills.
Speaker 3: They then live in vanilla and for the rest of
Speaker 3: the days, the self identify with this fucking illness and
Speaker 3: they're not giving themselves the kind of an opportunity to
Speaker 3: experience life, and they usually decline. I'm witnessing that with
Speaker 3: a couple of friends around me at the moment. So
Speaker 3: I totally agree with you there. And you talked about
Speaker 3: those things within you know, people and emotional intelligence and
Speaker 3: honesty and authenticity, and it does shine from you. I
Speaker 3: said this at the beginning, and I think when you're
Speaker 3: talking about you know, people in suits and stuff, that
Speaker 3: is one of the things. The reason why And again
Speaker 3: I teld you i'd to send you an email with
Speaker 3: you know, the kind of mission that we're on you know,
Speaker 3: I'm already working.
Speaker 2: With companies at the moment.
Speaker 3: And one of the biggest things that I see is
Speaker 3: most people in organizations are wearing a mask. They're just
Speaker 3: wearing this mask more so than even in everyday life
Speaker 3: we all wear masks. But like it's like I want
Speaker 3: to wear a mask and my boss because don't want
Speaker 3: to piss them off, because I want to get that,
Speaker 3: you know, pay increase and I want to get that,
Speaker 3: you know, I need to get to where they need
Speaker 3: to get to. And they're all kind of performing, sometimes
Speaker 3: more so than others. And I believe as leaders, genuine leaders,
Speaker 3: if we can remove our mask and and and actually
Speaker 3: have a conversation with people where you know that that's
Speaker 3: not a mask, and that leads in with the vulnerability
Speaker 3: dissolves the mask.
Speaker 2: It dissolves the mask.
Speaker 3: And if we all it's like the biggest thing I
Speaker 3: say in an organization I've seen a time and time again,
Speaker 3: you get these you know, stereotypical bosses who are you know,
Speaker 3: high performers driving for the business forward. Somebody comes through
Speaker 3: to them with their team and they might have been
Speaker 3: doing something wrong for five years and they identify, oh shit,
Speaker 3: have cocked up and it might have cost a bit
Speaker 3: of money and stuff. That boss then you know, beerates them,
Speaker 3: gives them shit, this, that and the other. What's going
Speaker 3: to happen That person's going to close up, put a
Speaker 3: bigger mask on. They'll never reveal where the problems are
Speaker 3: within an organization and we we we then block you
Speaker 3: know what it is. And I think that happens within society.
Speaker 3: That's like a microcosm within the workplace. And what we're
Speaker 3: talking about is authenticity vulnerability. If we all just drop
Speaker 3: the fucking mask, everybody having relationships with things that are real,
Speaker 3: it's all facade. And it's so important with in business
Speaker 3: because that's how we identify with our best return on
Speaker 3: effort is to improve a business. And I think it's
Speaker 3: so many people talk about it, it's on the walls,
Speaker 3: but it's fucking bullshit. You know, it's it's on the walls,
Speaker 3: it's the it's on the laptop, and they don't realize
Speaker 3: that to connect with somebody, it's not actually that hard.
Speaker 3: You've just got to be real and ask yourself, I'm
Speaker 3: I being real, Do you know what I mean?
Speaker 2: I don't know what you've experienced within the workplace.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, I agree with you. Also, I think
Speaker 1: there's an element of social awareness and social intelligence that
Speaker 1: needs to be injected into that because people are at
Speaker 1: different stages of their developmental journey. Like forty seven year
Speaker 1: old a In. He could rock up and chat to
Speaker 1: twenty three year old ay In and twenty three year
Speaker 1: old ay And would think forty seven year old and
Speaker 1: was a fucking idiot because twenty three year old and
Speaker 1: wasn't ready well right then. So it's like, yeah, that's true.
Speaker 1: What you're saying is true or relevant or appropriate, but
Speaker 1: this person isn't where you are, and you can't make
Speaker 1: them be where you are mentally and emotionally and developmentally.
Speaker 1: So that's where wisdom and judgment and social intelligence and
Speaker 1: situational and awareness come in. Where you go, Ah, even
Speaker 1: though I have some insight and some wisdom and some
Speaker 1: knowledge that could help this person, it is not appropriate
Speaker 1: that I share it. And that's just wisdom.
Speaker 2: No, No, I totally agree.
Speaker 3: But how do you how do you foster the truth
Speaker 3: within an organization? You know, remove the mask to collectively
Speaker 3: the majority of the workforce. We need to hear the truth.
Speaker 3: That's why we identify problems. You understand how people tick
Speaker 3: bring in those ideas because a lot of people who
Speaker 3: sit silent in meetings because they're afraid that they might
Speaker 3: get clipped for something wrong. So we don't get those
Speaker 3: you know, we get those people a bit more silent.
Speaker 3: You might have fantastic ideas and in an organization, we
Speaker 3: might not get them. So what would your kind of
Speaker 3: tip be, then, to foster truth as much as possible
Speaker 3: through organizations considering those social kind of elements.
Speaker 1: Oh that's tricky, dude, I mean they think. I mean,
Speaker 1: depending on which research you look at, you know that
Speaker 1: maybe I'm just saying maybe everyone, maybe twenty percent of
Speaker 1: CEOs a sociopaths. Right, yeah, yeah, right, you've heard that
Speaker 1: or a similar figure. So that's one in five. Well,
Speaker 1: good luck telling that ny or that girl that you
Speaker 1: disagree with them. That is not a great career move.
Speaker 1: Oh no, I was really honest, and now I don't
Speaker 1: have a job. So you know, they like being being
Speaker 1: honest and being truthful and being direct. It seems like
Speaker 1: that's what we should all do.
Speaker 2: But there, but that's that drag. It has to come
Speaker 2: from the top, right.
Speaker 1: Oh, you know, one like I've been a leader of
Speaker 1: sorts my whole life in that I've managed people, led people,
Speaker 1: coach people. I'm not saying I'm a great leader, by
Speaker 1: the way. It just happens to have been my journey.
Speaker 1: But when I employed my first person, like in my company,
Speaker 1: I was twenty six. I had no idea how to
Speaker 1: do that. I didn't know how to be a good
Speaker 1: boss or a good role model or like it. But
Speaker 1: I kind of like you. I think you and I
Speaker 1: are quite similar because you've kind of figured stuff out
Speaker 1: experientially and in the moment, and I figured it out
Speaker 1: as I went along, and I we used to have
Speaker 1: these monthly staff meetings. At this stage. When we had
Speaker 1: these monthly meetings, I had three different gyms, and I
Speaker 1: used to get all of my staff members to one
Speaker 1: of the gyms. It was usually Friday, at midday when
Speaker 1: we were the quietest. I'd get all of them to
Speaker 1: my main gym, which was huge, a huge place in
Speaker 1: Brighton on the Peene Highway and Victoria. I'd get everyone
Speaker 1: there and we'd sit down and I'd try and make
Speaker 1: it pretty productive, pretty light, pretty quick. But the first
Speaker 1: thing that I would say to my group is how
Speaker 1: am I going go? Don't tell me what I want
Speaker 1: to hear, tell me what I need to here, Don't
Speaker 1: be inappropriate, don't be a bit sure you know, don't
Speaker 1: be a prick just for the sake. But if I
Speaker 1: am doing in your eyes, if I'm doing a bad job,
Speaker 1: tell me what it is. I will take it on
Speaker 1: board and I will do my best to address it.
Speaker 1: And so for me realizing that I'm flawed, realizing I'm
Speaker 1: not the best boss, I'm not the best leader, realizing
Speaker 1: that they are going to talk about me anyway, realizing
Speaker 1: that they think that I could do things better anyway,
Speaker 1: as much as my ego didn't want to hear it,
Speaker 1: it was actually it didn't always prove to be fruitful.
Speaker 1: But you can't do much more than that. So, yes,
Speaker 1: you are absolutely right. I think it needs to start
Speaker 1: at the top. I think the boss, the leader, whoever
Speaker 1: she or he is, needs to walk the talk because
Speaker 1: what you do teaches people way more about you than
Speaker 1: what you say. You can say all the words, but
Speaker 1: unless the words are backed up with behavior and consistent behavior,
Speaker 1: people won't trust you or believe you.
Speaker 3: No, I couldn't agree more and I've seen that. I've
Speaker 3: seen that time and time again. I remember in a
Speaker 3: large organization I was working for. As said, I've been
Speaker 3: in senior roles similar to yourself and led large kind
Speaker 3: of companies and whatnot.
Speaker 2: But I've kind of I found the higher upper God.
Speaker 3: The more I was aware of the bullshit, as like,
Speaker 3: because when you're down here, you think when it was
Speaker 3: up there, it must be like they're like God's you
Speaker 3: know what I mean, We've got this philosophy and stuff.
Speaker 3: But then you kind of realize, hang on a minute,
Speaker 3: this is pretty horrendous the way they're talking.
Speaker 2: They really don't give.
Speaker 3: A shit about the people, and it's like they're just
Speaker 3: driving for the dollars. And what I always think is
Speaker 3: they don't understand that you can if you do it
Speaker 3: the right way. It's not like all fluffy, just people.
Speaker 3: There's a business to be run, and we have to
Speaker 3: make big decisions and we have to, you know, coach people.
Speaker 3: Sometimes there's a lot of people have removed out of
Speaker 3: organizations because they were never going to change, and unfortunately
Speaker 3: that happens. But there's an ethought the reason that would
Speaker 3: be done is to protect others within the organization, for example,
Speaker 3: And I think there's a big lack in what I
Speaker 3: saw and I went through my toughest time. I remember
Speaker 3: looking out on Cougie Beach as the manager director of
Speaker 3: a business and achieving my goals living exactly in the
Speaker 3: area I want to live. When I used to be
Speaker 3: in the UK, I used to do in the pits
Speaker 3: and down Liverpool, go for runs, wind Chap that was
Speaker 3: my son town. It was fucking wind and rain and
Speaker 3: I have a red face. Now I've got bronze time,
Speaker 3: running in the sun, fantastic coffee. But I was looking
Speaker 3: at the beach going is this it? In a more
Speaker 3: money than I've ever ends, the job that I always wanted,
Speaker 3: And I'm looking out at the water to go, and
Speaker 3: I couldn't even beans the water and the beats the
Speaker 3: thing that I wanted because I was so frustrated in
Speaker 3: my head with the toxic things I was witnessing from
Speaker 3: the people.
Speaker 2: I was trying to protect my team and I was hearing.
Speaker 3: Such horrendous Then going back to those questions, are the
Speaker 3: actions of the words I'm about to speak or take?
Speaker 3: They were happening in left, right and center, and they
Speaker 3: were they were happening on my watch with people above me,
Speaker 3: and I was trying to protect my team, and it
Speaker 3: was so harsh that over a period of time I
Speaker 3: had to exit. I couldn't exist in this anymore. Because
Speaker 3: that's the thing, if you genuinely are a good human being,
Speaker 3: there's only so long that you can sit in.
Speaker 2: That environment because it's so toxic.
Speaker 3: For you as a human being that you're gonna go
Speaker 3: pop and you have to remove. And you know, so,
Speaker 3: as leaders, we have to look out for underneath us.
Speaker 3: But as a leader, if you've got someone above you,
Speaker 3: you've got to protect your own energy as well. Because
Speaker 3: what I've seen a lot I call them, I've used
Speaker 3: my own little term unhappy journeymen, the people who kind
Speaker 3: of maybe want to aspire for things and they get
Speaker 3: all these clips and they haven't got that role that
Speaker 3: they want to. And then you look at them, thinking,
Speaker 3: you're quite smart, but you've accepted you're in this company.
Speaker 3: It's been there like thirty years and they've just accepted
Speaker 3: that this is it. But you can see life they
Speaker 3: just kicked the shit out of them. They don't put
Speaker 3: the head above the pulpit. They don't defend the team.
Speaker 3: They just go along for the ride and they can
Speaker 3: talk to talk when they need to. For customers and stuff,
Speaker 3: and they just I just look at them and go
Speaker 3: unhappy journeymen. And I used to look at them and think,
Speaker 3: I never want to be one of you. But I
Speaker 3: felt myself getting kicked along at some point like that.
Speaker 3: Does that make sense to you in the corporate environment.
Speaker 3: Is that something that you've seen or experienced.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, I think zooming backwards from the micro
Speaker 1: of that story, zooming back to the macro of most
Speaker 1: of us are going to work, not all of us,
Speaker 1: but a lot of us are going to work for
Speaker 1: about forty years, right, fifty years, forty five whatever. I
Speaker 1: think it's really important that we think about that, the
Speaker 1: impact of one the impact that we have on those
Speaker 1: that we work with. And you know, if my and
Speaker 1: you've done this, and I've done this, if your work
Speaker 1: and intersect with your passion and your purpose and your
Speaker 1: people skills and your person if you can actually, like
Speaker 1: I realized early on, I wrote about this the other day,
Speaker 1: I didn't want a job. I wanted to work, but
Speaker 1: I didn't want a job. I was shit at having
Speaker 1: a job. I was shit at having a boss. I
Speaker 1: don't like working in that ecosystem. It's like, oh, clock
Speaker 1: on it this time, go home at that time, and
Speaker 1: basically do a version of that for the next ten years.
Speaker 1: Oh fuck, punch me in the face now. And it's
Speaker 1: not good or bad, but it's not good for me.
Speaker 1: So I think trying to recognize where do I flourish
Speaker 1: in what environment, in what situation, in what context, doing
Speaker 1: what job, with what people? Might I flourish Because if
Speaker 1: I'm flourishing, then I'm going to be fucking great to
Speaker 1: be around, or at the very least, I'm going to
Speaker 1: be better to be around. I'm going to be a
Speaker 1: better teacher, better problem solver, a better conflict resolver, a
Speaker 1: better human, a better connector, a better communicator, more compassionate,
Speaker 1: more loving, more empathetic, more aware because I'm doing what
Speaker 1: I'm meant to do, and what I'm not meant to
Speaker 1: do is a job. Fuck that, that's not what I'm
Speaker 1: meant to do. Now. I'm not superior or better, but
Speaker 1: me and a job don't work. I haven't had a
Speaker 1: job since I was twenty six, which was thirty six
Speaker 1: years ago. I don't this sounds melodramatic. I don't even
Speaker 1: know if I'd be alive if I had a job.
Speaker 1: If I had to just rock up and do now
Speaker 1: for other people. Their job equals fulfillment and purpose and growth.
Speaker 1: So jobs aren't bad. As I said before, Arman's aren't bad,
Speaker 1: this workout's not again. I'm not an anti job or career.
Speaker 1: I think for probably the majority of people, having the
Speaker 1: right job with the right organization and the right conditions
Speaker 1: is really smart.
Speaker 2: I love that.
Speaker 3: And I can even dial into a little bit bit
Speaker 3: more and we'll close this out shortly. But like I
Speaker 3: remember being in a in a corporate environment and kind
Speaker 3: of going, what do I really like to do? And
Speaker 3: I found myself one time I created this kind of
Speaker 3: I used to call it the execution of excellence. I
Speaker 3: created my own thing in this organization I used to
Speaker 3: have and it once a week within the I had
Speaker 3: multiple warehous as. I go to these warehouse and bring
Speaker 3: all these managers together and they would kind of talk
Speaker 3: to me about what they had done. And I had
Speaker 3: a segment each week in this thing. And I found
Speaker 3: myself one time, in complete flow, had this unbelievable feeling
Speaker 3: of just you know, when you've got the whole audience
Speaker 3: and they're looking at you, and you've got this collective consciouness.
Speaker 3: I thought and a lot of time and I went,
Speaker 3: what the hell was that? And I was like, I
Speaker 3: think I'm meant to do this, you know, I think
Speaker 3: I'm meant to do this.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 3: If I put that two years later, I've I carried on.
Speaker 2: I started the naxt Own business. I've just exited that.
Speaker 3: You know that that that I now do this and
Speaker 3: and folcas and I've worked with in organizations, work for
Speaker 3: another leadership company. I've done workshops. But the workshop wasn't mine.
Speaker 3: And I was standing there talking, I didn't get the
Speaker 3: flow state. It felt like a job. I wasn't as
Speaker 3: passionate about the thing I was talking about, if that
Speaker 3: makes sense, because I was talking about something else now,
Speaker 3: So it's not up. Sometimes the job can actually be
Speaker 3: what are you passionate about? What are you feeling?
Speaker 1: Do you know?
Speaker 3: And that's something that I think a lot of people
Speaker 3: in their job and what they do, there'll be aspects
Speaker 3: of the way they'll go, and it's be conscious and
Speaker 3: think about what it is that you really really enjoy.
Speaker 3: Because people ask how do you find your passion? How
Speaker 3: do you find your purpose? It's that excitement sometimes that
Speaker 3: comes across. But if you're not a word of it.
Speaker 3: It can scape pasture, and I think it doesn't almost
Speaker 3: have this overwhelming feeling. And not everybody's going to get
Speaker 3: the Craig thing or even where hopefully I'm going to
Speaker 3: get to with Dean thing. But you can improve your job.
Speaker 3: You can improve the enjoyment of your job. It could
Speaker 3: be a sixty forty. You could be a sixty enjoyful
Speaker 3: grind rather than an eighty grind ten percent and enjoy
Speaker 3: you know what I mean. And I'm just thinking think
Speaker 3: about those exciting things. Where did you get a bit
Speaker 3: of a flow and where'd you get that enjoyment? And
Speaker 3: it really really resonated with me that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, man, Look, I think a really good question for
Speaker 1: all of us to ask is how do I manage me?
Speaker 1: How do I manage my mind and my body and
Speaker 1: my emotions and my choices and my relationships and my
Speaker 1: money and my career? And where do I work best?
Speaker 1: How do I work best? Like? What? What lights me up?
Speaker 1: You know? It's like right now I'm in my office
Speaker 1: at home. I have a recording studio downstairs, a beautiful,
Speaker 1: commercial quality recording studio right outside my window. I've got
Speaker 1: a whole garden full of forty foot tall bamboo trees.
Speaker 1: I've got a gym in the front garden, which is
Speaker 1: fucking beautiful. I've got all this, and I'm not that.
Speaker 1: If that sounds braggy, I apologize. What I've done is
Speaker 1: I've built an environment where I work best. You know,
Speaker 1: right now, I'm wearing shorts and bare feet. I never
Speaker 1: wear shoes ever, unless I have to wear shoes. I
Speaker 1: never wear long pants. Fuck long pants. Like you know,
Speaker 1: I almost resent having to put on long pants, right,
Speaker 1: And it's not, you know, Like every day I get up,
Speaker 1: I put on a pair of cargo shorts and a
Speaker 1: black T shirt usually, and I walk down the road
Speaker 1: and I get some coffee and I sit there and
Speaker 1: I think about shit, and I go, how good's my life?
Speaker 1: And by the way I can walk, How lucky am I?
Speaker 1: By the way, I don't live in poverty? How lucky
Speaker 1: am I? By the way my life's not under threat,
Speaker 1: I don't live in a war zone. How blessed am I?
Speaker 1: By the way, somebody loves me, at least a few people,
Speaker 1: God knows why. Like when you navigate, when you do
Speaker 1: a treasure hunt on your life, when you go not
Speaker 1: what's wrong, But what's right, what's fucking great. You know,
Speaker 1: one of my best friends got blown up eight years
Speaker 1: ago the other day, December one, So yesterday you got
Speaker 1: blown up in an industrial accident by gas bottles. And
Speaker 1: he was meant to die in inverted commas. Then he
Speaker 1: was meant to be a paraplegic, and he was meant
Speaker 1: to be essentially brain dead, and so on and so on.
Speaker 1: I used to go visit him in the hospital. He
Speaker 1: was in a coma for a long time. Then he
Speaker 1: came out of a coma. They couldn't believe that he
Speaker 1: didn't die. Then they couldn't believe he's got a traumatic
Speaker 1: brain injury and a spinal cord injury, and they didn't
Speaker 1: believe that he didn't die. And then they were saying
Speaker 1: to everyone who would listen, and he'll never walk, he'll
Speaker 1: never talk, he'll never have any quality of life. And
Speaker 1: I used to go and just talk to him and go, mate,
Speaker 1: that's all bullshit. You know it's bullshit. I know it's bullshit.
Speaker 1: Stop fucking around. Let's get you in the gym and
Speaker 1: let's rehab you. And six months after he was meant
Speaker 1: to be dead, I started rehabbing him in the gym
Speaker 1: in a wheelchair, and now he walks, and now he talks,
Speaker 1: and now he's operational and functional. He's in pain and
Speaker 1: he's not brand new, but he drives himself to the gym.
Speaker 1: I see him three days a week. He's one million
Speaker 1: times more inspirational than I will ever be. And because
Speaker 1: he's in my life, I just thank God that I
Speaker 1: can walk, can open a fridge and there's food, I
Speaker 1: can get out of this chair. I can stand up
Speaker 1: and give you a fucking hug. I can like, can
Speaker 1: you do that? Can you? You know? For somebody who's
Speaker 1: in a wheelchair, like my friend Joel Sardi, who's a quadriplegic,
Speaker 1: Joel can't say, oh, I'm not doing quadriplegia today, fuck it,
Speaker 1: I'll start Monday. Like he doesn't have a choice, So
Speaker 1: he's just got to navigate life from a wheelchair, you know.
Speaker 1: For Johnny, who my friend that I was just talking about,
Speaker 1: he has constant pain twenty four hours a day, and
Speaker 1: I've trained him for seven and a half years. He
Speaker 1: had his accident eight years ago. Three days a week
Speaker 1: we see each other, and in seven and a half
Speaker 1: years he has complained to me zero times. Every time
Speaker 1: I see him, I hug him. Every time I tell
Speaker 1: him I love him, he tells me the same. And
Speaker 1: it is a privilege to spend time with him, and
Speaker 1: a privilege to be able to just get out of
Speaker 1: this chair and go for a walk and turn on
Speaker 1: a tap and there's cold water, push a baton and
Speaker 1: there's air, there's warmth. Fuck, you know, I am the
Speaker 1: luckiest person I know.
Speaker 3: May First of all, thank you for sharing those stories.
Speaker 3: I could feel like emotion coming through there. I really
Speaker 3: love that those powerhouses of men that you know, they
Speaker 3: are a kind of a blessing to humanity, that they
Speaker 3: are a message folders out there who are struggling.
Speaker 2: If they can fucking do that, we can all fucking
Speaker 2: do that, right.
Speaker 3: And I also want to touch on the fact that
Speaker 3: you said that you love them and they said they
Speaker 3: love you too, because something that I got through, you know,
Speaker 3: one of the most beautiful things and it kind of
Speaker 3: gets me emotion when I think about it, grieving in
Speaker 3: the UK, going through what I was going through, and
Speaker 3: there were several moments when I realized, fu me, there's
Speaker 3: a lot of people messaging me, and I've got a
Speaker 3: lot of men telling me I love you and I
Speaker 3: haven't hit a lot before. And there was friends who
Speaker 3: turned up I han't seen for twenty five years and
Speaker 3: they were there at the funeral and they were talking
Speaker 3: to me saying I miss you, and we were talking
Speaker 3: about the times it spent together and it was unbelievable.
Speaker 3: And I was like, when we need it, it's there.
Speaker 3: And I think something you've picked up on before. You said,
Speaker 3: men aren't as bad as what we make out with
Speaker 3: stuff when we you know, men, when when the shit
Speaker 3: hits the fan, men step up. And I felt that
Speaker 3: and it was beautiful. And I also think if more
Speaker 3: men would take it on a daily basis, Hey, I
Speaker 3: love you brother. It means a lot because it's hard
Speaker 3: to say sometimes. And yeah, I just thought i'd pause
Speaker 3: on that. It's something that I've felt and I could
Speaker 3: feel it coming through from you there too, Craig.
Speaker 1: Yeah, mate, it's that you know, there are things happen
Speaker 1: in your life. I'll tell you one more brief story
Speaker 1: if you want to. I think you'll like it. It's
Speaker 1: a fucking belter rise. So six years ago, I was
Speaker 1: at the gym with one of my best mates in
Speaker 1: the world. We've been training partners for twenty years. His
Speaker 1: name is Mark Lampard. He was a pro bodybuilder. He
Speaker 1: looks and walks like a crab, right, so I call
Speaker 1: him the crab. So he gets called he gets called yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: So we just called him the crab. Anyway, we're at
Speaker 1: the gym. It was a Friday night, I think it
Speaker 1: was November seventeen, Friday night, seventeen oh five. He was
Speaker 1: doing so five oh five pm. He was doing a
Speaker 1: set of chins. He did twenty chins. He came down
Speaker 1: because he's a genius. He held his breath the whole time,
Speaker 1: which is clearly not a good idea had I don't
Speaker 1: know about a million milligrams of coffee that day. He'd
Speaker 1: been working outside, he was dehydrated, and all of that
Speaker 1: culminated in a cardiac arrest.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 1: So so he died in front of me at five
Speaker 1: minutes past five, in between the cable crossovers, the cable crossovers,
Speaker 1: and he fell on the floor and five kilos face down,
Speaker 1: smashed his face, blood coming out of his mouth. I
Speaker 1: won't get too graphic, but and within a very short
Speaker 1: period and no heart rate like dead, like dead, flat
Speaker 1: lined cardiac arrest. So I started working on him straight away.
Speaker 1: He was face down, and it's funny what happens in
Speaker 1: moments like that. So he was probably twenty twenty five
Speaker 1: kilos heavier than me. I turned him over like he
Speaker 1: was a toddler. I flipped him over. I don't know
Speaker 1: how my lower back did that, because my lower back's
Speaker 1: a bit dodgy. No pain, no anything. Flipped him over,
Speaker 1: started working on him for straight away. Within twenty seconds.
Speaker 1: He was dead for seventeen minutes. So he went off
Speaker 1: line at seventeen oh five, came back online at seventeen
Speaker 1: twenty two. I worked on him for eleven minutes before
Speaker 1: the paramedics got there. They worked on him for another
Speaker 1: six before he took a breath. Wow, And I know
Speaker 1: this sounds dramatic, but this is just a story as
Speaker 1: part of my life. Probably the best thing I've ever
Speaker 1: done in my life, and I've done some cool things, right,
Speaker 1: And I don't mean an no great I'm not saying
Speaker 1: that at all. Because you get in a situation like
Speaker 1: that where your best mate is fucking dead, and there's
Speaker 1: some interesting conversations that go on in your head and
Speaker 1: you're like Oh, if anything is ever going to give
Speaker 1: me perspective about what actually matters in the context of
Speaker 1: being a human, in the context of my life, Craig,
Speaker 1: this is the fucking ultimate teaching moment. And I've done
Speaker 1: lots of great things. I've spoken all over the world.
Speaker 1: I've built businesses and money and blah blah blah blah.
Speaker 1: Fucking none of it even comes close to being able
Speaker 1: to be part of helping him live, you know. And
Speaker 1: he's we still train. We're training together at four o'clock,
Speaker 1: which is three and a half hours from now. It's
Speaker 1: got a pacemaker, thankfully hasn't died lately. He is healthy
Speaker 1: as fuck, you know. But it's just that's what it's about, mate.
Speaker 1: It's about love. It's about looking after each other. It's
Speaker 1: about being there. Like, to me, one of the greatest
Speaker 1: gifts of my life, not his mine, is that I
Speaker 1: could do that.
Speaker 3: For him, brother, that's beautiful, and tell him alone from me,
Speaker 3: I feel like I know him after that story. Yeah, wow,
Speaker 3: it is. You've given him the greatest gift. But it's
Speaker 3: almost selfish for you because you would have felt so
Speaker 3: fucking good after doing that.
Speaker 2: You know, mate. That's rough.
Speaker 3: Tears to my eyes, beautiful story and thank you for sharing.
Speaker 2: Just to close, I mean.
Speaker 3: You've given us heaps of golden snippets there to help
Speaker 3: people as it is. But for anybody out there who's
Speaker 3: struggling in any form of mental you know, health crisis
Speaker 3: at the moment, what would you what would you recommend,
Speaker 3: what would you say? You know it would be a
Speaker 3: priority that maybe could assist them in their dark times.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, firstly, I know you don't know me whoever's
Speaker 1: listening to this and struggling, but I'm sending you love.
Speaker 1: I think, you know, I think sometimes it's about starting
Speaker 1: when you're not ready. You know, we have this story
Speaker 1: in our head. It's not the right time, it's not
Speaker 1: the right moment. I'm this, I'm that, And it's like,
Speaker 1: you know, sometimes it's in the middle of the discomfort
Speaker 1: and the uncertainty and the unfamiliarity and the unknown that
Speaker 1: we have to be brave. And as I say to
Speaker 1: people all of the time, you know, courage can't operate
Speaker 1: in the absence of fear, like courage only operates when
Speaker 1: we're scared. And so if you're scared, I get it.
Speaker 1: I'm scared too, and I'm not saying that to make
Speaker 1: you feel good. I have fear about things constantly. I
Speaker 1: worry about things. I don't over worry. But do I
Speaker 1: ever worry? Yes? Do I ever get anxious? Yes? And
Speaker 1: I just think, you know, if you're depressed, if you're sad,
Speaker 1: if you're anxious, if you're lonely, if you feel like
Speaker 1: no one cares, you're not broken, You're normal. Like that's human,
Speaker 1: that's human, and you know, reach out to someone and
Speaker 1: do something. I know it's hard, because you know, sometimes
Speaker 1: it's what we do when no one's looking and no
Speaker 1: one's cheering, and no one's helping. Sometimes it's what we
Speaker 1: do in those moments that are truly transformative.
Speaker 3: Right, great, great way to finish some real gold.
Speaker 2: Look.
Speaker 3: I really enjoy speaking to you. I really enjoy I
Speaker 3: could converse with you all day. Let's let's continue, you know, talking.
Speaker 3: I'm going to say, I'm going to hit you up
Speaker 3: whether it's there, with an email after this, because I
Speaker 3: definitely could do with some guidance on a few things
Speaker 3: from somebody who's been there, done it, you know. And Yeah,
Speaker 3: I think it was a beautiful conversation and hopefully some men,
Speaker 3: some women, some people will get some real value from that,
Speaker 3: So thank you, Craig.
Speaker 1: Pleasure mate. We're friends now, so giddy up butter Cup.
Speaker 2: Thanks mate. I have a great day you.
Speaker 1: Too, buddy. Alrighty, team, there you have it. Me and
Speaker 1: the young boy just having a chat around the peaks
Speaker 1: and troughs and the ins and outs of the human experience.
Speaker 1: I really enjoyed my time with him, young Ian. His
Speaker 1: podcast is the Artistry of humanity. Good Man, I hope
Speaker 1: you enjoyed it. I'll see you tomorrow at t YP Central.