Speaker 1: Groovers. Welcome to another installment. It's your favorite podcast and mine,
Speaker 1: you project Melissa, Good morning. How are you? Yeah, I'm
Speaker 1: pretty good at Sunday. I'm up and about, you know,
Speaker 1: doing what I can. Just keep it real. That was
Speaker 1: very presumptuous of me to assume that this is anyone's
Speaker 1: favorite podcast. I should have just gone with everyone. Welcome
Speaker 1: to a podcast doesn't really have the same kind of
Speaker 1: captivating it, does it. Welcome to another one of the
Speaker 1: one point nine million podcasts on the planet vying for
Speaker 1: your attention that you project er. How are you feeling?
Speaker 2: I'm good?
Speaker 1: Thank you. Now, I'm not going to throw you under
Speaker 1: the bus. I'm not going to go the whole hog,
Speaker 1: but I'm just going to say to the masses you
Speaker 1: haven't been your most optimal lately. We're not going to
Speaker 1: open the door too wide, but you've been a bit crooked.
Speaker 1: But you're coming good. I am coming good. Thank you,
Speaker 1: I'm good. Yeah. Do you need a group hug from
Speaker 1: the typ faithful?
Speaker 2: That's lovely, thank you.
Speaker 1: If you could all send flowers, roses and small cash donations.
Speaker 1: What's the address again, you idiot? All large case donations, no,
Speaker 1: no pressure, but you know it would help just gaging.
Speaker 1: So let's jump into it. Let's not do a ten
Speaker 1: minute preamble as is often the way. You know what
Speaker 1: the other day we've been getting. Oh, here I go
Speaker 1: doing a pre amble. Fuck, can't help myself? Feel free
Speaker 1: to fast forward through this bit? No really? So the
Speaker 1: what's that episode four twenty two Becoming ungive Upable? Well,
Speaker 1: today is Sunday as we record this, and that went up,
Speaker 1: but I don't know last Sunday maybe, And today we've
Speaker 1: got Mark randolph On who was an absolute straight up killer.
Speaker 1: I love that episode. Killer means good thing in this jargon.
Speaker 1: And you know when you meet someone even you know
Speaker 1: via the interwebs, but you're face to face with somebody
Speaker 1: in an electronic sense or a cyber sense, and you think, ah,
Speaker 1: you know, this guy's high profile, he's done some amazing stuff.
Speaker 1: He started Netflix. I hope he's not a dick. Now,
Speaker 1: other people don't think that, but that's what I think.
Speaker 1: I think, because you know, like, I've met some pretty
Speaker 1: high profile, famous people who are doing well, and some
Speaker 1: of them are terrific, but some of them nah, like nah,
Speaker 1: you just stayed yourself Champ or Champ Itte and but
Speaker 1: he was a ripper. I so loved his energy, and
Speaker 1: I so loved how normal and practical and you know,
Speaker 1: generous he was with his knowledge and his time and
Speaker 1: his energy. And it's bloody amazing to meet people who
Speaker 1: this sounds wrong, but you know you think, oh, look,
Speaker 1: if he was a bit up himself, I would kind
Speaker 1: of get it. Yeah. Yeah, And he's talking to some
Speaker 1: shitkicker in Australia that he's never going to meet or
Speaker 1: see you again. And you know, it's not like we're
Speaker 1: the Joe Rogan experience and we're going to change the
Speaker 1: trajectory of his life. But we do have a pretty
Speaker 1: big audience now, which is good. But I just love
Speaker 1: the fact that, you know, here's this dude who's done
Speaker 1: some and not just Netflix, but lots of other things,
Speaker 1: and lots of charity stuff and you know, doing lots
Speaker 1: of good for humanity around the world and comes on
Speaker 1: and is very generous and very present. And you know
Speaker 1: what else. I don't know if you noticed this about him,
Speaker 1: but he he'd done a bit of research on really yes,
Speaker 1: because halfway through the show I said something like, you know,
Speaker 1: I haven't heard it yet. Sorry, sorry, sorry, My bad.
Speaker 1: So anyway, sorry, I have multiple producers. Well let's be honest,
Speaker 1: I have to, but I forget who produces her. But anyway,
Speaker 1: half through the thing, and I hadn't given him any background.
Speaker 1: We were just talking and I said, well, maybe I
Speaker 1: can't remember what I said, but I gave him some
Speaker 1: theory on something and he goes, so says the PhD candidate, right,
Speaker 1: And I'm like, what does he know that? So he's
Speaker 1: clearly done a bit of background stuff, and I thought,
Speaker 1: how interesting is it even at someone at that level
Speaker 1: who probably does a million interviews and podcasts, and he's
Speaker 1: still prepped and he's still ready to go, and he's
Speaker 1: still informed. And it's like we spoke to him for
Speaker 1: I can't remember what it was, but like fifty minutes
Speaker 1: or so, and he was just very present. And I
Speaker 1: love talking to people, and they don't have to be
Speaker 1: founders of Netflix. They can be anyone anywhere, but just
Speaker 1: I love talking to interesting, fascinating people who who won
Speaker 1: have done some good stuff, but to want to help
Speaker 1: other people do some good stuff. So that was good.
Speaker 1: But also what I was going to say was last
Speaker 1: week listening to because everyone's going, oh, I love that like,
Speaker 1: we got so much feedback on four twenty two, which
Speaker 1: for me was just it was almost like just an
Speaker 1: add on episode where I went, I want to talk
Speaker 1: about this thing at some stage, you know, essentially being
Speaker 1: ungive upable, which is, you know, not that not that
Speaker 1: anyone's really ungive uppable, as in we're never ever ever
Speaker 1: going to stop anything, or we're always going to persevere
Speaker 1: with every but you know, becoming more resilient and more
Speaker 1: capable and becoming the person who finishes stuff rather than
Speaker 1: throwing it in. You know. It was around that, But
Speaker 1: I thought I might have a listen because you know,
Speaker 1: I've rarely listened to what we do because I heard
Speaker 1: it already. I was there, and I hate listening to
Speaker 1: my home bullshit. But I went, I'll have a listener
Speaker 1: and I'll see what we must have got fifty to
Speaker 1: one hundred comments from people saying that was the best
Speaker 1: podcast I've ever heard, Mike, really, I couldn't even remember.
Speaker 1: And anyway, so I jumped in you and I spoke
Speaker 1: for fucking twelve minutes about nothing, of course, and I'm like,
Speaker 1: even I was getting sick of me and you, I'm like,
Speaker 1: hurry the fuck up.
Speaker 2: Well, we're currently I don't know, six or seven minutes
Speaker 2: in speaking about nothing.
Speaker 1: Oh big sip of water, excuse me, everyone, I just
Speaker 1: said to well, I said to everyone, feel free to
Speaker 1: fast forward through it, all right. So he was, in
Speaker 1: some ways a very small catalyst or a part of
Speaker 1: the catalyst for this conversation that I want to have
Speaker 1: today and I want to talk about, Well, the title
Speaker 1: is the late Bloomer, but I want to talk about
Speaker 1: stepping into new opportunities or creating new opportunities, or changing
Speaker 1: perhaps the direction of our career or our thinking, or
Speaker 1: our lifestyle or our behavior or our reality whatever that
Speaker 1: means when we're not sixteen or twenty or twenty two,
Speaker 1: but maybe thirty or thirty five or forty or maybe
Speaker 1: sixty or seventy, right, And it doesn't necessarily mean throwing
Speaker 1: out everything we do or everything we've been doing. But
Speaker 1: maybe it means hitting the pause button, no matter what
Speaker 1: our age is, and reassessing and starting to question the
Speaker 1: stories that we tell ourselves about what we can do
Speaker 1: or what's possible or what's likely or what's appropriate for
Speaker 1: me at my age. And I'm not saying this because
Speaker 1: I'm in my fifties. I'm saying this because I've always
Speaker 1: thought this, and I've always been intrigued by the way
Speaker 1: that you know, when I was twenty, I was fascinated
Speaker 1: that I would meet fifty and sixty year olds who
Speaker 1: were not that different to me, like keen and excited
Speaker 1: and enthusiastic, and young in their thinking and young in
Speaker 1: their behavior and learning stuff and doing stuff and being
Speaker 1: adventurous and taking chances. And they were thirty years older
Speaker 1: than me. And then I would meet people who were forty,
Speaker 1: who were like fucking eighty, who were stuck in their ways,
Speaker 1: who were living in a time warp, who were in
Speaker 1: this permanent holding pattern of thinking and behavior, behavior and
Speaker 1: misery and outcome, and then basically, you know, telling themselves
Speaker 1: they've fucking missed the boat.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm like what, and just waiting for retirement.
Speaker 1: Yeah, just sliding into my twilight years and just surviving
Speaker 1: my career so then I can be happy when I'm
Speaker 1: sixty five. Fuck, what a terrible plan. And if they
Speaker 1: were doing something that was monotonous but gave them joy,
Speaker 1: then keep going. And we're not talking about what is
Speaker 1: a good job or what is a bad job, or
Speaker 1: what is a good existence? Or a bad existence, or
Speaker 1: what is a good diet or bad diet, or good
Speaker 1: relationship or bad relationship. We're not talking about that from
Speaker 1: a generic, global, universal point of view. We're talking about
Speaker 1: for you, the individual listener, what works for you. Because
Speaker 1: if you're working in a factory putting labels on cans,
Speaker 1: no disrespect that all to anyone who works in a factory,
Speaker 1: but you fucking love it and you love that you
Speaker 1: start at seven and finish at three, and from three
Speaker 1: on a Friday to seven on a Monday, the world
Speaker 1: is yours and it pays pretty well and it ticks
Speaker 1: the box, then that's what you should do because it's
Speaker 1: meeting your needs on a multitude of levels. Conversely, if
Speaker 1: you're earning a million bucks a year or two million
Speaker 1: bucks a year doing this high profile thing that looks
Speaker 1: to be amazing, and you seem to be successful from
Speaker 1: the outside looking in, but the byproduct of what you
Speaker 1: do is for the most part physical, mental emotional turmoil
Speaker 1: and stress, and when people aren't looking your experience is
Speaker 1: not one of success or happiness or joy, rather anxiety
Speaker 1: and depression and mental fatigue and exhaustion. Then maybe that
Speaker 1: job is not the right job for you, and maybe
Speaker 1: there's time to change. And so I feel like, through
Speaker 1: the countless conversations that I've had over the years, that
Speaker 1: some people settle and some people talk themselves out of
Speaker 1: the potential for more. And it's not about their potential. Actually,
Speaker 1: it's about their story about their potential. And it's not
Speaker 1: about their age. It's about their story about their age.
Speaker 1: And I always wonder what. I wonder what life would
Speaker 1: be like, and I wonder what people would be like,
Speaker 1: and I wonder what relationships would be like. And imagine
Speaker 1: a world where no ages were kept, Melissa, Imagine going
Speaker 1: for an interview and they had no idea how old
Speaker 1: you were, even looking at you, right, Because what we
Speaker 1: do is in our culture, automatically we look at somebody.
Speaker 1: I do it too. I'm not saying this is a
Speaker 1: I'm saying this is a human thing exactly, and we
Speaker 1: might not judge them critically, but we look at people
Speaker 1: and go, oh, so we make certain assumptions because well,
Speaker 1: this lady or this dude is sixty ish, or this
Speaker 1: lady or this dude is twenty ish. It's different, and
Speaker 1: we immediately we all do it. But I don't know
Speaker 1: that it actually is a good thing because more often
Speaker 1: than not, I think we're assuming things which are either
Speaker 1: completely untrue or somewhat untrue, rather than going, let me
Speaker 1: just get to know the person. Not let me get
Speaker 1: to know the person who is sixty, or let me
Speaker 1: know the person who is seventy or twenty, but let
Speaker 1: me just know the person. Because one of the problems
Speaker 1: or challenges for us is we do live in a
Speaker 1: culture and are a mindset and a society, especially in
Speaker 1: First world countries, which is very ageist. Yes we are.
Speaker 1: You know, we are evaluated and judged and labeled, and
Speaker 1: not just sociologically in groups and person to person and
Speaker 1: out on the street, but by the government and by
Speaker 1: media and social media. We are judged and evaluated and
Speaker 1: labeled based on our age. Now for some things that works,
Speaker 1: like for example, okay, you are this age, you get
Speaker 1: a pension, or you get access to these medical resources.
Speaker 1: I get that because obviously there is a practical element
Speaker 1: to aging, which is biology, and things happen. And we're
Speaker 1: not pretending that people don't get old, or I'm not
Speaker 1: pretending that people don't get old, and I'm not pretending
Speaker 1: that age isn't thing. But I don't really want to
Speaker 1: focus on the biology of aging, although will talk about
Speaker 1: it a bit, But I want to talk about the
Speaker 1: psychology of aging, and I want to talk about the
Speaker 1: psychology of behavior at certain ages based on thinking. So,
Speaker 1: you know, when I was thirty six, I went to
Speaker 1: university for the first time, never been to university, never
Speaker 1: did anything post year twelve of any significance anyway, And
Speaker 1: I remember, it's funny and I look back now at
Speaker 1: me at thirty six, and I realized how young I was.
Speaker 1: But I also realized, at thirty six, in an environment
Speaker 1: of eighteen year olds, how old I was. And it's
Speaker 1: so funny over the course of twenty years that, of
Speaker 1: course I was the same dude, it was me, But
Speaker 1: me then was feeling super old because in the contrast
Speaker 1: of the group that I was in the students, I
Speaker 1: were with the people that I was eating lunch with
Speaker 1: my friends who got their pea plates, I was like
Speaker 1: their fucking dad. I was like the old group mascot.
Speaker 1: And I remember, you know, many of them telling me
Speaker 1: as I often get in the second half of the
Speaker 1: first year, we were all fucking terrified of you. In
Speaker 1: the first semester, and I'm like why, and they're like,
Speaker 1: because you're a big scary dad. I'm like, but I
Speaker 1: just wanted to be another one of you, you know.
Speaker 1: But it was funny. But then, and I even look,
Speaker 1: to be honest, I didn't get a whole lot of
Speaker 1: pushback or flack white people going to UNI. It was
Speaker 1: mainly positive. But it's funny. In our culture there are
Speaker 1: look and it is changing, which is good, but it's
Speaker 1: not changing fast enough. I actually think for many people,
Speaker 1: the best time to go to university. I'm not talking
Speaker 1: about all people, but I think for a reasonable percentage
Speaker 1: of university the best time. To a reasonable percentage of people,
Speaker 1: I think the the best time to go to university
Speaker 1: is post thirty because you're different. I don't think for everyone,
Speaker 1: by the way, but I know when I was eighteen,
Speaker 1: if I had to go and choose a tertiary course
Speaker 1: and immerse myself in an undergrad degree for three or
Speaker 1: four years, I would have literally just been fucking throwing
Speaker 1: darts out of board and going, let's see what the
Speaker 1: dart lay. Okay, I'm going to be an engineer, alrighty,
Speaker 1: then off I go engineering for me. Look out, bridges
Speaker 1: of the world. Here, I come fucking hell, you know,
Speaker 1: But I was a fucking idiot till I was thirty five.
Speaker 1: I didn't know what I mean. I kind of knew
Speaker 1: I wanted to list shit and work in gyms, but
Speaker 1: clearly no one's going to make any money out of that, right.
Speaker 1: But then as it turned out, I did it when
Speaker 1: all right. I mean, I didn't become rich, but I
Speaker 1: had some gyms, I had some staff. It worked out
Speaker 1: all right. But for me, I was essentially figuring it
Speaker 1: out as I went. But I think another thing to
Speaker 1: think about this stuff is that not for everyone, but
Speaker 1: for a lot of people, what we're doing, and it
Speaker 1: could be a relationship. It could be owning a business,
Speaker 1: It could be having a career in a particular profession
Speaker 1: or industry. It could even be the way that we
Speaker 1: train our body. Or it could even be, which seems controversial,
Speaker 1: the way that we eat. But a lot of things
Speaker 1: have a used by date. And what might blow your
Speaker 1: socks off and make you happy and fulfilled and excited
Speaker 1: when you're twenty to thirty might be completely different or
Speaker 1: might not be the same. When you're thirty to forty
Speaker 1: might be different again forty to fifty or choose any
Speaker 1: age bracket. I know that for me, the idea of
Speaker 1: doing what I'm doing now would have held zero appeal
Speaker 1: in my twenties. You know, for me to go and
Speaker 1: research psychology at a deep level in the human experience
Speaker 1: and sit in a fucking cubicle and talk to the
Speaker 1: world about the meaning of life, I would have gone,
Speaker 1: fuck off, give me some chicken and a dumbell your fuck.
Speaker 1: We'd get out of my way, right because I just
Speaker 1: you know, I was interested, but I wasn't where I
Speaker 1: am now, not better or worse, just at a different
Speaker 1: state of my journey. And just like back then, I
Speaker 1: was so fascinated with lifting heavy shit and how muscles worked,
Speaker 1: and adaptation and physiology and fucking looking like a freak
Speaker 1: and training athletes and high performance and a physical level
Speaker 1: and getting people to run fast and jump high and
Speaker 1: hit hard and be like ultimate warriors in their sport.
Speaker 1: I loved that and I still find it fascinating, but
Speaker 1: it's not where my attention or my focus or my
Speaker 1: passion is. So I think that you know this notion
Speaker 1: that we need to find out what we want to
Speaker 1: do when we're young, and then that's your calling. Brian
Speaker 1: that's you for the next thirty years, or that's you, Gail.
Speaker 1: There you go, Love, You're going to be a nurse
Speaker 1: until you're dead, or a surgeon til you're dead or whatever,
Speaker 1: or a fucking an astronaut or who cares a barista,
Speaker 1: doesn't matter, right, But it's realizing that, you know, we will,
Speaker 1: like flowers, bloom every year, us late bloomers, we might
Speaker 1: rebloom every five or ten years into a different flower.
Speaker 1: The fucking hell I like that? Yeah, right, where we
Speaker 1: just go? So this is what I do now. Now
Speaker 1: I'm a speaker. Now I'm a coach. Now I'm a
Speaker 1: personal trainer. Now I'm a classroom teacher. Now. I mean,
Speaker 1: we've had several ladies contact us in the last year
Speaker 1: or two who have gone back to nursing, to have
Speaker 1: gone to study nursing in their early fifties and have
Speaker 1: finished and qualified. Mandy that used to work for me,
Speaker 1: Mandy Bolden who Mandy went and did nursing in her
Speaker 1: late forties, mid to late forties. She's now a nurse,
Speaker 1: but she didn't start nursing till she was nearly half
Speaker 1: a century old. She's great at it. And you know,
Speaker 1: here's the thing. There's it's this kind of mindset around
Speaker 1: what we should or what we shouldn't do based on
Speaker 1: how old we are, and it's you know, of course
Speaker 1: we're going to age, of course, but I believe that
Speaker 1: a huge amount of how we age is dependent on choices, behavior, choices,
Speaker 1: behavior and mindset. So you know, I fully believe that.
Speaker 1: And I don't mean this sound on any level arrogant
Speaker 1: or egotistical, because I am the most mediocre person. I know.
Speaker 1: I'm not naturally gifted at anything. I'm not genetically gifted.
Speaker 1: I'm not intellectually gifted. I'm not athletically gifted. I'm like,
Speaker 1: look up, fucking mediocre. You'll see a snapshot of me
Speaker 1: grinning like a stupid motherfucker back off the screen, right.
Speaker 1: That is me. But I know that my brain and
Speaker 1: my body and my health and my energy and my
Speaker 1: mindset and my habits and my behaviors and my lifestyle,
Speaker 1: and I think is not typical for my age. I
Speaker 1: know that, and I know that because I talk to
Speaker 1: lots of people my age, and I see lots of
Speaker 1: people my age, and there's no judgment, there's awareness. And
Speaker 1: I'm not saying better or worse, but what I am
Speaker 1: saying is if I said to you, Okay, whatever age
Speaker 1: you are, now, would you like to have the physical, mental,
Speaker 1: and emotional energy of somebody ten or fifteen or twenty
Speaker 1: years Yes, younger. Everybody would say yes, because who the
Speaker 1: fuck doesn't want to feel function better than they currently do.
Speaker 1: So I know that my brain doesn't work like a
Speaker 1: typical fifty seven year old because I don't drink, I
Speaker 1: don't smoke, I don't ad shit. I sleep great. You
Speaker 1: know how many hours I slept last night? By the way,
Speaker 1: unlessa I'm going to guess ten, yeah, ten and a half.
Speaker 1: Fucking my cells. My cells were giving me a round
Speaker 1: of applause. They're like, you fucking rock right. And what
Speaker 1: I'm saying is that the way that we age and
Speaker 1: the rate at which we age is controllable and manipulatable
Speaker 1: to a point. Of course, there is a genetic element
Speaker 1: and an unavoidable element to physiological aging. Of course, nobody's
Speaker 1: going to live forever. But we've all met seventy year
Speaker 1: olds that are young, and we've all met forty five
Speaker 1: year olds that are old. And so for me, it's
Speaker 1: exciting to talk to people like doctor Ingrid, who became
Speaker 1: a nun. She did five years as a nun. Then
Speaker 1: she became a doctor. Then she became a coroner, a
Speaker 1: medical doctor. Then she became a coroner doing autopsies. I
Speaker 1: think she did like seven thousand autopsies. Then she went
Speaker 1: back to study in her thirties to become a psychiatrist,
Speaker 1: so another five or six years of study on top
Speaker 1: of I don't know ten years of previous. Then she
Speaker 1: became a psychiatrist. Then she figured out how to be
Speaker 1: a single mum with three kids and emigrate to Australia
Speaker 1: and figured out how to do. Then she figured out
Speaker 1: how to become a leading psychiatrist in her field in
Speaker 1: Australia and navigate this new country and this new system
Speaker 1: and this new culture while being a single mum, like
Speaker 1: fucking amazing. And then in her mid sixties she's now
Speaker 1: seventy three. Then in her mid sixties she goes, I
Speaker 1: think I'm going to start to do strength training and
Speaker 1: not just strength training, heavy strength training, and I think
Speaker 1: I'm going to start to run. And so she's now
Speaker 1: run a marathon and continues to run multiple regular half
Speaker 1: marathons in her seventy three year old body. That doesn't
Speaker 1: look all function like a seventy three year old body,
Speaker 1: because her behavior makes it so and her thinking makes
Speaker 1: it so. And so she I think she told us.
Speaker 1: I'm almost positive she told us to her biological age
Speaker 1: was late thirties. Do you remember, I think that was
Speaker 1: the case. Even let's go rock bottom, you know, forty,
Speaker 1: you know, but I'm pretty sure. So give 'll take
Speaker 1: a quarter of a century younger. What does that mean?
Speaker 1: That doesn't mean that if we're going by the calendar,
Speaker 1: of course she's seventy three. But we know that the
Speaker 1: calendar doesn't need to dictate the way that a person feels, functions, thinks,
Speaker 1: or behaves. And so her body from a fitness and
Speaker 1: strength and function and aerobic and muscular endurance and strength
Speaker 1: and power and speed and reaction time and all of
Speaker 1: these measurables, her body is closer to a forty year
Speaker 1: old than a seventy three year old. That's all it means.
Speaker 1: And why is it because she's a genetic freak? She
Speaker 1: said herself, No, she doesn't have great genetics. But why
Speaker 1: it is is because she's decided what's going to be
Speaker 1: her default setting in terms of lifestyle and behaviors. And
Speaker 1: habits and all of those things. And some people would
Speaker 1: say she a late bloomer. Maybe she is, But isn't
Speaker 1: it good that in your mid sixties and in your
Speaker 1: seventies you can be doing things which are unconventional and
Speaker 1: atypical that produce an amazing result. I think that, you know,
Speaker 1: we growing up feel free to interrupting with list. So
Speaker 1: I feel that growing up we kind of get told
Speaker 1: either directly or indirectly, consciously or unconsciously, overtly or subliminally.
Speaker 1: You like how I use all of those things to
Speaker 1: do what's expected, you know, kind of do what's expected
Speaker 1: career wise and lifestyle wise and relationship wise and habits
Speaker 1: and behaviors. And I've told this story once before, but
Speaker 1: this little moment in time I had that was about
Speaker 1: three or four minute encounter. I haven't seen this guy since,
Speaker 1: but a few years ago. I was out in the
Speaker 1: front of my house, just fucking around with my gates
Speaker 1: at the end of my driveway, and I saw this
Speaker 1: dude coming from my street. I was going to say
Speaker 1: south road in people like, where's that? But anyway, heading
Speaker 1: down from what you know to be south road towards
Speaker 1: my place and on a skateboard on what they call
Speaker 1: a long board, and he had long hair, and he
Speaker 1: had on a flannel shirt and he had on jeans
Speaker 1: and sneakers, and I just thought it was a twenty
Speaker 1: year old just out just fucking cruising suburbia and he
Speaker 1: was kind of hammering. Yeah, and it was. And anyway,
Speaker 1: he got he got to the corner just near my house,
Speaker 1: which is on a corner, and he had to stop,
Speaker 1: pick up his board and walk around a car, and
Speaker 1: then literally we kind of intersected, and I went and
Speaker 1: he was about sixty five, right, really yep yep, yep, yep.
Speaker 1: And he moved like I'm used to watching bodies move.
Speaker 1: I know what most sixty five year old bodies move like.
Speaker 1: And I just grabbed. I go, I said, can I
Speaker 1: can I talk to you seck? He goes yeah, sure,
Speaker 1: I go. Can I be really rude? If it was
Speaker 1: a lady, I wouldn't have asked, but I feel like
Speaker 1: with a dude, you can get away with it. I go,
Speaker 1: can I ask you how old you are? And he
Speaker 1: goes sixty five. I go, you're a fucking weapon and
Speaker 1: he laughs. He goes, yeah, I get that. I go,
Speaker 1: how long have you been skateboarding. He goes fifty five
Speaker 1: years and I go, so, it's not like you used
Speaker 1: to skate and you gave it up and you came back.
Speaker 1: He's like, no, I never stopped. I never stopped. And
Speaker 1: he was an executive and he'd finished and he was
Speaker 1: doing new stuff. I didn't go into it too deep.
Speaker 1: But what I loved was, here's this guy out his energy.
Speaker 1: Like I looked at this dude. He had gray hair,
Speaker 1: half gray black hair halfway down his back. He gave
Speaker 1: no fucks about what people thought. But he was a
Speaker 1: nice person. He didn't care if it wasn't. He wasn't
Speaker 1: skating down the street going oh, I wonder what people
Speaker 1: think of me. He wasn't going shit. I don't know
Speaker 1: if skateboarding is age appropriate activity for me. Maybe I
Speaker 1: should check with the vic GUV website recommendations for sixty
Speaker 1: five year olds, because fuck, I hope this is I
Speaker 1: don't know if this is on the band list. He
Speaker 1: gave no facts, right, And the fact was he moved
Speaker 1: like a thirty year old, and you know, he was
Speaker 1: just so good. He'd been doing it so long that
Speaker 1: he just didn't fall off. It was like that was it.
Speaker 1: Was just like he and the board moved as one
Speaker 1: and he kind of skated off into the distance and
Speaker 1: that like one. He was cool and I loved meeting
Speaker 1: with him, But I also thought, I also thought, why
Speaker 1: was I so surprised? Like, well, he's a human, he's skateboarding.
Speaker 1: What's the surprise? And the surprise is you never see
Speaker 1: that exactly, because like, could you imagine rocking up to
Speaker 1: someone's birth a sixty year old someone, and you buy
Speaker 1: him a skateboard? Everyone would be like, what the fuck
Speaker 1: are you doing? I bought him a skateboard for his birthday?
Speaker 2: What four?
Speaker 1: So he can go skate Everyone would think you were
Speaker 1: a moron, right, But I guarantee you given the right
Speaker 1: setting and of course pads and all that. You know.
Speaker 1: You know my favorite saying that I've said a thousand times,
Speaker 1: We don't stop playing because we grow old. We grow
Speaker 1: old because we stop playing, right. It's so true And
Speaker 1: I remember many times as a kind of an echo
Speaker 1: of the story I just told I would I when
Speaker 1: I was a trainer, my second one to my second gym,
Speaker 1: the one. Anyway, you know where Dandy Park in Brighton
Speaker 1: is so Dandy Park's a massive park, it must be luck.
Speaker 1: Three k's around that park. Four k's. I know what
Speaker 1: it is. It's fairly big. And my second gym was
Speaker 1: two hundred meters from there, and I remember one night
Speaker 1: I used to train these three dudes together. They're in
Speaker 1: their fifties and they were like early fifties, fifty one
Speaker 1: to two three at that stage. Train them in the gym.
Speaker 1: And one night, it was a summer night and it
Speaker 1: was warm. There was fair few people in the gym,
Speaker 1: so I grabbed a footy in a frisbee and I said, boys,
Speaker 1: we're going to go to the park. And they're like, what,
Speaker 1: I go, We're going to go the park. So we
Speaker 1: job jogged to the park. So I've got these three
Speaker 1: fifty something blokes and we've left the treadmills, We've left
Speaker 1: the fancy bikes and the steppers and the grinders and
Speaker 1: the elliptical striders and the fucking fancy pinloaded machine and
Speaker 1: now we're standing on grass with a footy worth ten
Speaker 1: bucks and a frisbee and these maniacs. Right. I was
Speaker 1: up one end with the the other with one bloke,
Speaker 1: and the other two boys were up the and I
Speaker 1: say boys because they're fucking boys at this stage, and
Speaker 1: we were doing kick to kick footy, so kicking the footy,
Speaker 1: mark and the footy depending on where you live, catching
Speaker 1: the footy that's called we call it marking in Australian rules, catching, kicking, catching, kicking,
Speaker 1: taking hangars and speckis on each other, calling out, leading bloody,
Speaker 1: doing different drills, handball drills, kicking drills, running around. Then
Speaker 1: we played a kind of a game that I used
Speaker 1: to play with them with the frisbee and they spent
Speaker 1: the best part of an hour running around like forteen
Speaker 1: year olds. Now I've been training these guys for a
Speaker 1: couple of years at this stage, and they all came
Speaker 1: up to me and said in unison, that was the
Speaker 1: best session we have ever had. Now I'm the exercise scientist.
Speaker 1: I've been training them like precision training on the expensive
Speaker 1: equipment that I bought, and you know, ticking all of
Speaker 1: these physiological boxes that I need to tick to make
Speaker 1: sure that we're addressing or you know, fuck all that shit.
Speaker 1: Run around and be a child and kick a footy
Speaker 1: and throw a frisbee and forget the fact that you're
Speaker 1: fifty five or fifty three or whatever you are, and
Speaker 1: have some fun. And the interesting thing was, I would
Speaker 1: say all of them ran over five kilometers, maybe over
Speaker 1: six kilometers right now. If I said to them, we're
Speaker 1: running five or six k's, they'd all tell me to
Speaker 1: get fucked. If I said, and not only that one,
Speaker 1: they wouldn't do it. They'd rebel or if I mean,
Speaker 1: if I, if I, if I turned on Nasty Craig,
Speaker 1: then do it. But I don't need to do that reluctantly.
Speaker 1: But I wouldn't. But I wouldn't make them do it
Speaker 1: because why they'd fucking hate it. And I don't want
Speaker 1: to make people do things that they hate. But it's
Speaker 1: actually called cognitive dissociation when you do something. But like so,
Speaker 1: what they're doing is running and expending energy and moving
Speaker 1: their body in a rather intense way. But what they're
Speaker 1: actually doing is playing games. What they're actually doing is
Speaker 1: reliving their childhood. What they're actually doing is having fun
Speaker 1: with their mates. What they're actually doing is fucking around
Speaker 1: than just being in the moment right now, who's going
Speaker 1: to prescribe kicking a footy at Dendy Park. No one.
Speaker 1: But that's exactly what we need to do sometimes. What
Speaker 1: we need to do is stop behaving our age. What
Speaker 1: we need to do is stop telling ourselves self limiting
Speaker 1: stories about our age. So back to me at UNI,
Speaker 1: thirty six, oldest person in the course by far, literally
Speaker 1: twice everyone else's age on average, because nearly everyone was eighteen.
Speaker 1: There were a few older people, but the oldest person
Speaker 1: in exercise science in the first year exercise Science when
Speaker 1: I did it, there was only about ninety people in
Speaker 1: the course. The oldest person other than me was I
Speaker 1: think twenty seven, twenty eight or twenty seven. And then
Speaker 1: obviously I don't know, heading towards eighteen months ago. Now
Speaker 1: I went back to UNI for the second time, literally
Speaker 1: twenty years later. First time thirty six, second time fifty
Speaker 1: six doing a PhD. Nobody's going to recommend anyone's start
Speaker 1: a PhD at fifty six. That's a stupid idea. And
Speaker 1: by the way, Craig, why are you doing it? You
Speaker 1: don't need to. You've done well, you're successful, you've made
Speaker 1: a few bucks, you're doing all right, it's all right.
Speaker 1: What do you do? You know? But if I wasn't
Speaker 1: fifty six, people wouldn't be saying that. Yes, if I
Speaker 1: was thirty nine and I just finished my first degree.
Speaker 1: People would be going, well, that's a natural progression, Craig,
Speaker 1: well done, because you just did your undergrad you're doing
Speaker 1: this and now you've stepped up to that and dah
Speaker 1: da dah. But at fifty six, most people's curiosity is
Speaker 1: not around why am I doing a PhD in europsychology
Speaker 1: or their main fascination is not tell me about your
Speaker 1: research to their main fascination is why are you doing it?
Speaker 1: And what they really mean is why the fuck are
Speaker 1: you doing it? You'll be sixty when you finish, like
Speaker 1: what four? And I go why not? And no one
Speaker 1: wants to go because you're fifty six. But that's kind
Speaker 1: of what they're thinking. And this is one of the
Speaker 1: stories we tell ourselves, is we go, well, yeah, but
Speaker 1: you've done, you know, Like, imagine if fifty or forty five,
Speaker 1: Imagine if that's the time for some people anyway at
Speaker 1: one hundred percent, Imagine if forty five is where you
Speaker 1: start to fucking hit your straps as it possible one
Speaker 1: hundred percent. What if forty five is the time where
Speaker 1: you start to really or thirty five or forty or
Speaker 1: fifty five or whatever is the time where you really
Speaker 1: start to open the door on the exciting shit and
Speaker 1: learning and growing. I know one hundred percent, no, so
Speaker 1: that my brain works better now than when I was
Speaker 1: in my twenties. Yeah, and that's not meant to happen,
Speaker 1: like my ability to do lots of shit, to be productive,
Speaker 1: to be present, to focus, to study, to produce good outcomes,
Speaker 1: to maintain my physical, mental, emotional an academic from one
Speaker 1: of a better word energy, it's better than it's ever been.
Speaker 1: But that's it's not better ever than it's ever been
Speaker 1: because that was predetermined because I'm doing the work.
Speaker 2: That's exactly what I was going to say. It didn't
Speaker 2: just happen that way. It's because you've worked on it.
Speaker 2: You've made that kind of happen, you've been conscious of it,
Speaker 2: and you've taken active steps to make sure that you're
Speaker 2: in that place.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, and look, I think I think that you know,
Speaker 1: the reality is that we do live in an ageis
Speaker 1: paradigm most of us. Where you know, if you if
Speaker 1: you've got certain skills and experience and talent and ability
Speaker 1: and you're twenty eight and you go for a job
Speaker 1: or you're the same person but you're fifty eight. Unfortunately,
Speaker 1: we live in a system that most employers will disadvantage
Speaker 1: you because you're fifty eight. And I don't agree with that,
Speaker 1: but I get it. I understand it because they're interested
Speaker 1: in their welfare, not yours. And I think, you know
Speaker 1: it's it's really you know, so many people that I've
Speaker 1: spoken to, and everyone's spoken to somebody and heard something similar,
Speaker 1: But so many people that I've spoken to have said
Speaker 1: a version of this. Wasn't my plan. This wasn't where
Speaker 1: I meant to end up. I didn't think. I didn't
Speaker 1: think at this age i'd be doing this. I didn't
Speaker 1: think that my life, my experience, my outcomes, my reality
Speaker 1: would be this. And I understand that, completely understand that.
Speaker 1: And then my next question is, Okay, so you aren't
Speaker 1: where you thought or hoped or dreamt you might be. Okay,
Speaker 1: so you've still got you know, you're forty, You've maybe
Speaker 1: got another forty years, maybe got another fifty, who knows.
Speaker 1: We don't know how much time you got, but what
Speaker 1: we know is you're not dead. What we know is
Speaker 1: you live in Australia or you live in a first
Speaker 1: world country. Most people who listen to this anyway, and
Speaker 1: what we know is you know you can still make decisions,
Speaker 1: you can still change behavior, you can still get uncomfortable,
Speaker 1: and even if it's a tiny step in a new direction,
Speaker 1: a tiny step can you take. No, you can't reinvent
Speaker 1: yourself over the next week, or you can't turn your
Speaker 1: life upside down today. We get that. And you can't
Speaker 1: find a brand new career by lunchtime. We get all
Speaker 1: of that, right, But let's get out of all of
Speaker 1: the reasons and all of the things that we can't
Speaker 1: do because we get it. We know it's hard, yep.
Speaker 1: We know that life's not fair. Yep. We know people
Speaker 1: picked on you. Yep. We know that ageism exists. Yep,
Speaker 1: we know all the bad shit. We're not pretending the
Speaker 1: bad shit isn't real. But what I'm saying to you
Speaker 1: you now, in this moment in your life, is what
Speaker 1: is possible for you to do to change your life?
Speaker 1: What is possible? What can you do to change the direction,
Speaker 1: to change your operating system, to change your outcomes, to
Speaker 1: live your purpose? Like, here are some questions. So if
Speaker 1: you want to if for some of you this is turning,
Speaker 1: didn't intend it to, but fuck, here we go. If
Speaker 1: this is turning, into something of a coaching session. I'm
Speaker 1: going to give you some questions. My first question is
Speaker 1: this right now, when I say all of this stuff,
Speaker 1: all of you know, I think you know. If you don't,
Speaker 1: you're about to know, because I'm going to tell you.
Speaker 1: I'm not pretending that any of this is quick, easy, fast,
Speaker 1: or painless. I'm not pretending that. But guess what, every
Speaker 1: single one of you, hopefully in five years you're going
Speaker 1: to be five years older. Well, let's be honest, you're
Speaker 1: going to be dead, or you're going to be five
Speaker 1: years older. Let's hope that all of you listening to
Speaker 1: this are just going to be five years older. So
Speaker 1: in twenty twenty six, you're going to be five years older.
Speaker 1: I guess depends on when you listen to this, and
Speaker 1: your life is going to be the same. It's going
Speaker 1: to be a bit better, it's going to be a
Speaker 1: lot better. It's going to be wildly better, or it's
Speaker 1: going to be a bit worse or a lot worse,
Speaker 1: or it's going to be catastrophe. That's the truth. It's
Speaker 1: going to be somewhere on the scale between fucking horrendous
Speaker 1: and fucking amazing. I don't know where it is right now.
Speaker 1: But what I know is that the next five years
Speaker 1: is going to happen anyway. The next year is going
Speaker 1: to happen anyway, the next two years, three four years
Speaker 1: are going to happen anyway, and you're going to be there.
Speaker 1: You're going to be in the middle of those years.
Speaker 1: You're going to be in the middle of that reality.
Speaker 1: You're going to be in the middle of your life.
Speaker 1: Your life is going to continue. Things are going to happen.
Speaker 1: People are going to be shit adds to you. People
Speaker 1: are going to be amazing to you. COVID's going to
Speaker 1: come and go. Things are going to happen, good stuff,
Speaker 1: bad stuff. And then in the middle of all of
Speaker 1: that is you and your questions. Is you and your energy?
Speaker 1: Is you and your thinking and your choices, is you
Speaker 1: and your behaviors? Is you and the reality that you create?
Speaker 1: You and your stories? So here are some questions. So
Speaker 1: my first question is what can I learn? What can
Speaker 1: I learn? Is it possible that my age, whatever your age,
Speaker 1: that I can learn new things? Is it possible that
Speaker 1: I can develop new skills? Number two? What's possible for me?
Speaker 1: What's possible for me, not what's probable, not what's likely,
Speaker 1: not what does my past tell me, but what is possible. See,
Speaker 1: what's possible is that you can do some fucking incredible
Speaker 1: stuff when you get out of your own way. That's possible.
Speaker 1: If we look at most people and we look at
Speaker 1: typical human behavior. It's not likely, it's not common, it's
Speaker 1: not probable, but it's possible. So when I'm working with people,
Speaker 1: I don't care about life. I don't care about probable.
Speaker 1: I care about what could you do? What could you do?
Speaker 1: What could you change? What could you become? What could
Speaker 1: you achieve? What could you conquer? What could you do
Speaker 1: if you were brave? What could you do if you
Speaker 1: did the work? What could you do if you made
Speaker 1: the decisions? What could you do if you didn't do
Speaker 1: what most people do? What could you do? And then
Speaker 1: the next question is will you do it? And we
Speaker 1: always kind of circle back to this, don't we We
Speaker 1: always circle back away from the theory and into the practice,
Speaker 1: into the habit, into the behavior, into the execution. Because,
Speaker 1: as I've said many times on this podcast, and as
Speaker 1: you won't hear lots of programs or in lots of books,
Speaker 1: or although you do hear it, but probably not enough
Speaker 1: is that it isn't about the theory, It isn't about
Speaker 1: what come out of my mouth today on this podcast,
Speaker 1: because all I am is stimulating you. I'm provoking you,
Speaker 1: I'm teaching you. I'm hopefully inspiring you to do something.
Speaker 1: And the reason that I'm doing all of this is
Speaker 1: because I want you to tap into you. I want
Speaker 1: you to get past the shit beliefs and the shit
Speaker 1: self esteem and the shit stories and into the awesomeness
Speaker 1: of what you can do when you let that cognitive
Speaker 1: crap and that emotional crap get out of the way.
Speaker 1: My next question is how can I improve my cognitive function?
Speaker 1: My next question is how can I lower my biological age?
Speaker 1: In other words, how can I make my body function younger?
Speaker 1: In inverted commace? How can I get better? Whatever better
Speaker 1: means for you? How can I use more of my potential? So,
Speaker 1: wherever you are, whoever you are, whatever your age are,
Speaker 1: you are you really using If ten out of ten
Speaker 1: is your potential, what's your number? Right now? I know
Speaker 1: that I'm really having a crack with a lot of
Speaker 1: things in my life in terms of my health and
Speaker 1: my wellness and trying to be a good human and
Speaker 1: trying to learn and grow and trying to be of
Speaker 1: value to the world and humanity and my clients and
Speaker 1: my listeners, my audience. I'm really trying, and I'm very
Speaker 1: aware of my bullshit, and I'm very honest about my bullshit,
Speaker 1: of which there is plenty, and my shortcomings, of which
Speaker 1: there are plenty. I'm really having a go, and I
Speaker 1: reconom at five if my potential is ten. I reconom
Speaker 1: at five because I still give myself a get out
Speaker 1: of jail card. I still lie to myself. I still
Speaker 1: take the easy option sometimes. And this is not about
Speaker 1: beating ourself up. This is about sometimes we think, oh fuck,
Speaker 1: I'm doing everything humanly possible. Maybe some people are, but
Speaker 1: not most. Because the problem is to really tap into
Speaker 1: our potential is somewhat terrifying, because we need to open
Speaker 1: doors that we don't like opening. Because in order to
Speaker 1: tap into our potential, and I'm talking about deep into
Speaker 1: our potential, I'm talking about the fucking the amazing shit,
Speaker 1: there's going to be some pain. There's going to be
Speaker 1: some suffering, there's going to be some hardship before we
Speaker 1: start to get the rewards. And sometimes we'd rather stay
Speaker 1: on the metaphoric couch because the couch is comfortable. So
Speaker 1: what we do is we stay on the metaphoric couch
Speaker 1: and we just hope that things work out. We hope
Speaker 1: that the next five years will just present opportunities. My
Speaker 1: question is what opportunity can you create? Not what opportunity
Speaker 1: might in inverted commas come your way, but what could
Speaker 1: you create yourself? How do you practically create opportunities? How
Speaker 1: can you change your default setting? What am I wasting
Speaker 1: time and energy on right now that I can reshift
Speaker 1: into something more positive and proactive for me? One of
Speaker 1: my old man's or not one of my old man's.
Speaker 1: My old man's best friend is a guy called Gil,
Speaker 1: and I've spoken about Gil a bit. Gil's like my
Speaker 1: second dad. Gil is I think he's eighty. He's either
Speaker 1: seventy nine, eighty or eighty one, but let's go with eighty.
Speaker 1: And what I love about what I love about this
Speaker 1: man is he is he is timeless, ageless in that
Speaker 1: it never occurs to him that he's eighty. And I'm
Speaker 1: not talking about you know, he looks eighty and he
Speaker 1: just acts like a juvenile. No, he looks like a healthy, fit,
Speaker 1: strong fifty five sixty year old and every day, pretty
Speaker 1: much of his life, he lives in the bush. He
Speaker 1: or he lives in rural Victoria and he's right next
Speaker 1: to a gigantic forest. He rides his mountain bike and
Speaker 1: I'm not talking about you know, pedals up and down
Speaker 1: a dirt road three time and times and comes home.
Speaker 1: I'm talking about half day rides out in the middle
Speaker 1: of nowhere with his drink bottle and his puncture kit
Speaker 1: and riding one hundred k's or so in the bush
Speaker 1: and then comes home. You know, he's all over tech.
Speaker 1: He's all over computers, he's got drones, he's got this.
Speaker 1: I don't even want to say how much it's worth.
Speaker 1: This ridiculous used to be a truck. It's been converted
Speaker 1: to a mobile home. Like I don't know what do
Speaker 1: you call those things. It's bloody ridiculous. He maintains that
Speaker 1: him and his wife travel all over Australia to the deepest, darkest,
Speaker 1: most remote areas. And you know, one of the things
Speaker 1: that I love is when I meet with him, when
Speaker 1: I sit down with him, he doesn't do a cursory
Speaker 1: how's your life going. He will sit with me and
Speaker 1: grill me on what I'm doing and how I'm doing it,
Speaker 1: and why I'm doing it, because he wants to learn
Speaker 1: like he wanted to when I first started talking about
Speaker 1: my research with my study, he was so fascinated and
Speaker 1: he would just sit me down for an hour and
Speaker 1: ask me questions. And I'm not talking about you know
Speaker 1: how people kind of placate you where they're trying to
Speaker 1: be interested. No, he was absolutely riveted to hear about
Speaker 1: what it is I'm researching, why I'm researching it, why
Speaker 1: it matters, how I'm testing it, about the scale that
Speaker 1: I've developed, about why the world needs it, about the
Speaker 1: whole PhD process. And his questions were bloody unbelievable, and
Speaker 1: I could tell he was literally just learning something. He
Speaker 1: wasn't trying to make me feel good and all take
Speaker 1: an interest in what Craig's doing. Now, yes he was
Speaker 1: doing that, but moreover, Comma your honor. He was learning
Speaker 1: new stuff and I love that. And this is the thing,
Speaker 1: you know, we are We can't do anything about the calendar.
Speaker 1: We can't do anything about chronological aging. I can't wake
Speaker 1: up tomorrow and be fifty seven fifty six, or I
Speaker 1: can't be fifty five or I can't be thirty five
Speaker 1: or twenty five. But what I can do today and
Speaker 1: what I can do tomorrow with my fifty seven year
Speaker 1: old body, I can treat it differently. Fortunately, I treat
Speaker 1: it pretty well, so I probably don't need to make
Speaker 1: a lot of changes. But wherever you are, whoever you are,
Speaker 1: whatever your chronological age, there's no reason why you need
Speaker 1: to live that age. And as I said earlier, we're
Speaker 1: not talking about being deluded or acting young, or being
Speaker 1: immature or silly. We're talking about being fully aware of
Speaker 1: what we've got to work with. Right, I have been
Speaker 1: on the planet fifty seven years. I am an endomorph.
Speaker 1: I do have a few injuries. I'm not pretending that
Speaker 1: I'm twenty years old. But what I'm doing with this
Speaker 1: fifty seven year old thing that I have to work with,
Speaker 1: I'm choosing to optimize it. I'm choosing to optimize my brain.
Speaker 1: I'm choosing to optimize my lifestyle. I'm choosing to optimize
Speaker 1: my choices, my behaviors, and my outcomes. Consciously, I don't
Speaker 1: want to be a passenger in my aging life. I
Speaker 1: don't want to be a passenger of inevitability. Oh well,
Speaker 1: it's inevitable. You know what. There's a bit of inevitability
Speaker 1: to life, of course, but a lot of what people
Speaker 1: call inevitability to me is actually giving up. It's giving
Speaker 1: up before before we've even opened the door on our
Speaker 1: potential and our possibilities. So, boys and girls, I will
Speaker 1: leave it there. Love your guts. I hope you find
Speaker 1: some value in that. More importantly than that, I hope
Speaker 1: you do something with it. Melissa, thank you for your time,
Speaker 1: thank you, thanks to everyone. Going to be awesome, No pressure,
Speaker 1: Bobby Gats see ya,