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When were you last truly scared? >> Feel it all the time. >> So, you're sleeping at night and then
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>> I heard a whole heap of noises that in my sleepy state I thought were foxes
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barking. Do foxes bark? Do we have foxes here? The foxes barking were a bunch of
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lads. 38 of them counted >> three versus 38. >> Full armed. Yeah. Heavy armed. One of
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the team members basically signaled that they were taking us to make a bad video
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of us. Videos of decapitation were one of those things that had exchanged between waring parties to state
00:00:26
commitment to what the mission is. >> Were you at peace with death that day? I
00:00:29
don't think you can really be at peace with death at any point, can you? Dragged into the minefields that we
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thought were there to protect us. There was a couple of inshallah moments which is like, you know, if it goes, it goes.
00:00:38
The last man, who was the leader of the group, pulled out a camera and said, "I'm just going to ask you a few
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questions." What I imagine there for a second was that's it. They're going to
00:00:46
do that final act in front of all eyes. They've got the camera and they're going
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to >> That must be the most frightening thing that's ever happened in your life
00:00:52
though, right? >> We were held hostage and then released. He said, "Did you follow drill?"
00:00:58
>> Oh, good. you here. Come on. This is the center of performance. Whenever there's
00:01:02
a top performance in New Zealand, it all comes from here. That's Lisa Carrington.
00:01:06
She's been doing that for days. That's the boys who got the hole in one in
00:01:13
it again. Hey Finn, how's the performance going? >> Top tier. >> Nice. This is our generate room. In
00:01:18
here, you'll find our top performers helping Kiwis maximize their Kiwi Saver
00:01:21
investments. Get in here, Finn. >> Maximize. Generate. >> Putting performance first. Dr. B, Dr.
00:01:29
Alia Bojalova, welcome to my podcast. >> Well, thank you, kind sir. Can I just
00:01:33
keep calling you Professor D from now on? >> Yeah. Well, you sent me a text this
00:01:37
morning. I Why I messaged you asking you what coffee you wanted. Um, and you text
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back calling me Professor D, and I was like, "Oh, I I could get used to this.
00:01:44
Do >> you love it? Do you love it? >> I did love it. It played to my ego."
00:01:48
>> You're welcome. You're welcome. >> Um, so it's so wonderful to have you
00:01:51
here on the podcast. You and I um have only met once before. That was briefly at um a mutual friend of ours, James
00:01:57
Lachland. Um he had this >> high performance workshop thing in Christ Church and uh um I was um a
00:02:04
speaker that day. So was um Samuel Whitlock, the famous all black and yourself. And I was suffering severe
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imposter syndrome and rightfully so. I had no no right being there amongst um yourself and Samuel. It was it was
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crazy. I I found I found your session so inspiring. >> Did you? Honestly, that means the world.
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See, this is the trouble of you being popular is that you don't realize I've
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spent so much of my youth watching you, particularly because you interviewed my long-suffering husband, you see. So,
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yeah, that's cool. But no, it's it was an amazing amazing privilege to be
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>> in the same space as you and ponder on some wicked questions. It was awesome.
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>> Yeah. The one thing which I I I wrote this on my hand at the time and then I
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forgot uh when I got to the effort I forgot what it was but it was um something to do with um a tool for
00:02:50
having difficult conversations called the connect five. >> Connect five. Yes. Was that a thing or
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>> that is a thing that is a tool we love this tool. It's a basic tool we started
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playing with some time back. We being the team that I work with. Um and effectively it's an opportunity to shift
00:03:05
perspective on something that you might have accepted as a given. You know, all of us have a plethora of triggers and
00:03:12
things that affect us on a daily basis and our beautiful minds grow attached to that stuff. The story we tell ourselves
00:03:18
around just why we should continue to be miserable. Connect 5 is a really basic tool, one of many, um, that we used to
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help shift minds and at least tempt us into the possibility that there is a different way to view a situation you
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consider fixed. I mean, I can think of million situations, but one I refuse to change
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are some of the triggers I experience at home, you know. So, it's just one of
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those things. It's um it's a Yeah, it's a cool little tool. Good on you for
00:03:44
remembering it. >> Yeah. This is going to be Oh, yeah. Well, for anyone that that is not
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familiar with it, like how would is how would you describe it? How can people that are listening to this implement it
00:03:53
into their everyday life? >> We might have to share it with everyone afterwards. Okay. But effectively, I
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mean, if you imagine, if you imagine yourself, the vast majority of us consciously or otherwise are traversing
00:04:02
our lives and our days, feeling as if we might encounter another wet Wednesday morning. It's that repeated negative
00:04:10
narrative we tell ourselves about our lives because we tend to live relatively predictable lives on a day-to-day basis,
00:04:17
we get to encounter the same triggers often, right? And so you notice something that has become um a familiar
00:04:24
kind of niggle, a trigger. Your job is to acknowledge and recognize how your body thinks, feels and acts when they
00:04:32
encounter it. The repeated narrative that you have given yourself and then to tempt yourself to start with the end in
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mind. So if this thing was a no factor or if it was indeed something that gave you an opportunity to um engage with
00:04:44
your day with sense of joviality, lightness, joyfulness, happiness, excitement, what would it look like? And
00:04:52
as a consequence, how do you need to think, feel, and act? It sounds like a very robotic and far too difficult of an
00:04:59
exercise to conduct, but it's not. Because the more you tempt your mind into reconsidering your pattern of
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thinking, feeling, and action, the more likely you become to get tempted into these spaces of in between, as I like to
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call them. At the very least, if you're not prepared to go from the dark side of
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the continuum, which is I'm just a grumpy beer, to a mega energized individual, at the very least, what you
00:05:21
can do is practice creating kind of resilient neutrality, which is watch this thing, observe it, study it. Study
00:05:29
it without allowing yourself to react. You can respond if you want to, but you don't have to react. And even that is a
00:05:36
big deal. M >> you know I spend so much of my time as a psychologist in the stories that people weave about
00:05:44
stuff about themselves about the world and often times there are so many I mean our narratives look complete because we
00:05:52
keep packing in all sorts of confirmation biases into the lines but they seldom are and it's the hardest
00:05:59
thing to do right I mean how cool is that you can change the story that you tell yourself on a daily trouble is is
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that we are really attached to it you know like there's this big screaming vulnerable ego that all of us have, you
00:06:12
know, under layers and layers of protection. So, >> yeah, >> this is going to be an amazing
00:06:17
conversation. I'm so excited. Um I've put so much thought into like where to
00:06:21
start and how to structure it and where to go because there's um just so many
00:06:25
facets to your story. Reality TV star being one of them. >> Yeah, I know. >> But that feels like the most trivial
00:06:32
part of the um you of your story. >> It's crazy. Um the the first thing I
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wanted to know is um you know your work these days um you you work with elite athletes, CEOs, creatives, all these
00:06:45
different things. Um yeah, what do all these people have in common when they're
00:06:50
struggling? >> The humans. The humans that are experiencing a situation or conditions
00:06:56
they consider to be either intolerable or something that pushes them way past the point of flexibility. Now some of
00:07:03
these individuals, teams and organizations find themselves in these places by the ownition. They seek to
00:07:09
find what we call the spinning edge of possibilities. I work with a lot of entrepreneurial entities and a lot of um
00:07:16
individuals who either haven't realized that there is a predictable cadence of
00:07:20
life to follow or have decided to go completely anti-establishment and do something exceptional as a consequence.
00:07:25
The best kind of a beer you want to work with. But inevitably, you kind of come to this place where like you're on the
00:07:32
edge of something. You don't know what to do with the next step, but you kind
00:07:35
of have to take it. So my job is to help build the confidence and self-efficacy of just what's possible. And sometimes
00:07:42
it basically means that we have to summon a whole heap of minds around the wicked issue and take a very pragmatic,
00:07:48
practical, almost dull-like approach. Sometimes it just basically means that we build it as we fly. Well, actually
00:07:55
always means we build it as we fly because a play in spaces where the script is seldom in existence. So we
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create it as we go. >> And that's and that's the beauty, right? Like so you like you seldom have an
00:08:08
opportunity to do the most pragmatic in the same breath as focusing on stuff we consider fluffy, but it's not
00:08:16
purpose, you know, mission, vision, that kind of stuff. and reorient minds and extend possibilities within their own
00:08:22
perception of just how much better they can be. Yesterday I was with collection of leaders in sports in New Zealand
00:08:30
sports. The same stuff applies to them as it does in my conversation this morning with leaders in venture as it
00:08:37
does in a not for profofit space. And I like I mean you said reality TV star when I left the military my favorite
00:08:45
mentor said to me don't you get stuck in a suit and I spent yons he probably just
00:08:50
said it as like a throwing comment um but I spent ages in a typical fashion like laboring over this statement and I
00:08:58
made it my purpose to ensure that my craft is practiced in every context and then I show up and prepare to be
00:09:05
surprised and shocked by how different humans are. They're not cross-culturally, cross contextually, we
00:09:10
sell same have we have the same needs, you know. >> Yeah. >> With with with what you're doing now.
00:09:16
Um, yeah. You mentioned before your long-suffering husband. Uh, Jamie Panel, serviceman Jay had a great book out.
00:09:22
I've had him on the podcast. So, he's former SAS, your former SAS psychologist.
00:09:27
>> Yeah. >> Does um does life lack excitement now? There were times, do you know only of
00:09:34
recent, it's been what, 5 years since Jamie stepped out as a full-time officer
00:09:37
and probably about 10. So I'm still reservest um but it's probably taken us
00:09:43
the first couple of years to stop pretending that we are good at normal life. You know what I mean? Like we we
00:09:50
took a hot second to kind of go what what is this thing? and then you feel the level of misery and kind of you're a
00:09:55
bit stuck in the mud and you don't know what to do with it >> and you don't entirely know how to have
00:09:59
conversation with epic normal humans. >> Um and it's not in any way a feeling of
00:10:05
being better but it's definitely feeling of being illquipped for normal normal
00:10:11
life like how do you roll with the mundane? >> That was the hardest thing. Now we
00:10:16
realizing we never had to pretend. we could still chase her on edge and do what spins our wheels. But I don't know
00:10:22
why we decided we have to follow someone else's script for a while, the most
00:10:26
miserable stage of life. You know, >> it is so refreshing to hear you say that. Um because I I I did wonder about
00:10:33
that. And I I even wonder like with the sort of conversations and the sort of like I suppose fires that you're putting
00:10:38
out these days if you're like ah deep down for [ __ ] sake this is trivial. >> Yeah.
00:10:44
>> Pull your head in. You know what I mean? >> Yeah. I mean there was a stage where I
00:10:48
thought I'm going to become a good uh civilian citizen and just find myself a
00:10:52
life a job when I stepped out of defense. I found that to be frightening because the kind of issues we are
00:10:59
dabbling in aren't always the most important you know and I can so so with all all the humility attached to this
00:11:06
statement I love where I am now where I can bounce in and out of places that where nothing is trivial. Even the
00:11:14
trivial when you double click on it has profound risk depth opportunity in it and you have to respect it.
00:11:20
>> Um but yeah but you know the other thing that I've noticed is that there is no
00:11:23
average human like for the for a hot second you can imagine that you know the daily life that we observe out there is
00:11:31
something that is normal and predictable. It's not. Everyone has their own epicness. Um and you know all
00:11:37
it takes is a couple of questions and you're right there going you're so
00:11:40
amazing. Yeah. when when were you last truly scared? And is is um fear for you these days something different to what
00:11:48
it was potentially like 10 years ago? >> You please don't think that this is like
00:11:52
I'm I'm a I try not to have too many quotes that I use, but one of the quotes
00:11:57
that appears to have shaped much of what I do is fear is just an indication that
00:12:02
something matters. It doesn't mean you don't have it physiologically, but the
00:12:06
way in which you habituate yourself into reacting to it makes a world of a difference. So, I feel it all the time
00:12:12
because I don't tinker in the spaces that are predictable or safe. That's
00:12:16
just the nature of my work and life at the moment. >> I fear it all the time, but I use it to
00:12:22
help sharpen my focus on what my mind is noticing matters most >> and then it gets exciting. Then you can
00:12:29
play, you know, >> different sort of fear though. E different sort of fear. Like it's not
00:12:34
the fear you have these days is not a matter of life and death whereas once it was.
00:12:38
>> Yeah. But then again, apparently there isn't a different, you know, you can
00:12:41
imagine that it can feel very different to have life and death fear, but a lot of the fear that I observe and
00:12:47
experience these days is almost nastier and more trickier to deal with than life
00:12:52
and death decisions in the moment because you have too many options. Do you know what I mean? In a life and
00:12:57
death situation, your options are typically limited. And so, if you give yourself a chance, you have relatively
00:13:03
easy decisions to make. you know, you don't want to play dead when someone tells you you're about to be made dead,
00:13:07
you know, if if you if you your options are reduced by version of intensity. Um,
00:13:14
but if you are kind of in a blurry in a daily and fear is about whether you're
00:13:18
going to encounter your grumpy boss down a corridor and whether they're going to
00:13:21
make your tummy feel uneasy because they're just a muppet, you know, like that's a different kind of fear that you
00:13:25
can't you can't react as your body wants it. M >> um you know, you can't play dead with
00:13:31
your boss. >> Well, you can. >> You can, but he'll think you're weird.
00:13:36
>> Yeah. >> Um Oh, this is going to be great. I I thought what we'd do is um by the way,
00:13:41
already we've been going 12 minutes. There's um lots of little little, you
00:13:46
know, helpful takeaways that I think anyone can use to make their own lives better. Um so, I thought before we get
00:13:51
into your personal story, um we'll start with the resilience stuff. um and some
00:13:55
lessons that everyone can use cuz you wrote the book the resilience toolkit. >> So um when you think about the most
00:14:02
resilient um person or people you've ever met, who are they and what made them resilient?
00:14:08
>> I mean you'd expect with the rock stars I've met over the last two decades that
00:14:14
count out a whole heap of names. >> Rockstars and SAS guys, >> SAS guys. Um but also civilians,
00:14:20
exceptional people who appear to, you know, we talked about it earlier, that spinning edge of possibilities, people
00:14:26
who are prepared and willing to challenge themselves typically for the achievement of something greater than
00:14:31
themselves, for a benefit that that spends beyond often times the lifetime. Um so yes, there are those rock stars.
00:14:39
Some of them are unnameable. Some of them are easily recognizable. But I think if we are to boil it all down, the
00:14:46
most resilient person I've ever met was my grandmother. and she's the book of
00:14:49
life uh goddess that I kind of ascribe to now later on in life realizing that a lot of the principles we are trying to
00:14:57
learn are things that her generation and herself lived consciously through because those were the this is the
00:15:03
cadence of survival and thriving not just making it through another day but also having a clear sense of purpose
00:15:10
that no one can take away from you no matter your circumstances but you know like see one of the things that I quite
00:15:15
love is if we get ourselves out of the bubble that most of us live in. You get to observe that these superhumans exist
00:15:22
everywhere. You know, there's there's countless places in the world these days
00:15:26
that continues to experience acuity. And you get to observe people who can live with sense of purpose, with capacity for
00:15:32
contribution, with um eye spend and attention span that far surpasses their lifetime and choose how they show up.
00:15:41
That's extremely difficult if you are under extreme pressure or if you were in
00:15:46
a period of time when you have been put under kind of tolerable pressure but for
00:15:50
prolonged period of time and you turn into a bit of a prickled human you know what I mean so yeah so my nana my nana
00:15:57
is the biggest rockstar of them all >> you know >> what made her so resilient
00:16:01
>> uh world wars conflicts um her own upbringing and you know finding necessity necessity absolutely
00:16:08
>> but to do that with grace you know what I mean M are you um is it in your DNA?
00:16:13
Like do you think people are born resilient or can can anyone is it like a muscle that anyone can grow it and train
00:16:19
it? >> I I'm convinced that this is a muscle that everyone has to begin with. It's
00:16:23
just that different conditions, different choices that we make along the way either atrifies it or strengthen it.
00:16:29
>> And so our job our job is to build that thing because you know like we have this
00:16:34
like weird idea that it's about grittiness and absorption and handling more pain. It's none of that stuff. It's
00:16:41
your ability to pause, ask awesome questions, even if it feels like time has been pressurized into just quick
00:16:48
switch decisions. It's it's gold. It's awesome. >> It's the unlock to human potential.
00:16:53
>> Yeah. Anyone that um enjoys this conversation today, um I'd urge them to
00:16:57
look up your book, The Resilience Toolkit, and buy a copy from Mighty Apore somewhere. But uh one of the key
00:17:03
things in it is the ABCD. >> Yeah. >> Uh awareness, belonging, curiosity,
00:17:07
drive. What does that mean? I mean the weirdest thing about this ABCD thing um I want to hero up my dear friend Simon
00:17:14
Kuran who uh before this became ABCD it was a PhD uh publication right my PhD research was basically all about the
00:17:22
ABCD and it was in typical PhD fashion clunky loaded in terminology that no one could relate to. Simon was able to flip
00:17:30
it and turn it into something he calls Sesame Street simple. Uh lucky for science, you know, it relates to what
00:17:36
the science was saying. But effectively what he shows us is the cadence of resilience. And I keep saying the word
00:17:42
cadence, but there is a there is a pace to it. There is a rhythm to it. Right? You have to start with awareness,
00:17:49
self-awareness, interpersonal awareness, situational awareness. Then the next step is belonging. And belonging is
00:17:55
critical for resilience because it allows you to see yourself where your feet are in your fullness of your
00:18:00
potential. Uh and it can mean all sorts of different things to different people.
00:18:03
It's not just attachment to your familial origin or um values necessarily. It's also understanding
00:18:10
that all of these things can grow and evolve so that you can be better, contribute better, function more
00:18:16
meaningfully. Um the next one is my favorite my my kind of cue to survival. curiosity
00:18:23
and that means the world uh just in terms of capacity to pivot. You can't be
00:18:28
freaked out and depleted and curious at the same time. So you kind of have to choose when to be what with that stuff.
00:18:36
And the final one is drive. And normally when we're thinking of resilience as a
00:18:39
thing that pushes you past a challenge, we are thinking drive but purpose precedes drive. Now all of that stuff
00:18:48
the ABCD came out of big chunk of research I did when I got sent back to the SS and the
00:18:54
counterterrorist tactics group. So I spent a lot of time asking them what resilience is made of and then the same
00:19:02
principles that these exceptional humans articulated were already in existence just not combined uh crossculturally
00:19:09
crosscontextually um and hence the ABCD is something that very much belongs to big performers the world over
00:19:17
>> and I get to see all the time like that's the frustrating thing. It's been
00:19:19
a decade and I still see exactly the same presentation. Maybe I'm biased but
00:19:24
I don't know. I get to see it all the time, you know, like ah, you skip the queue. A has to be there. You have to
00:19:29
have awareness before you start trying to build a big performing entity. You know, you have to understand yourself
00:19:35
and those around you. Well, >> you know, >> that's so cool. That is so helpful. So,
00:19:41
um, you said C. Curiosity is your favorite. Um, what what's your least favorite or the one that you struggle
00:19:46
with the most? >> Well, perhaps belonging. belonging because it's a it's a it's a kind of a am a
00:19:54
amorphous thing, you know, and so in order for you to crystallize it and to uh make it a functional thing as opposed
00:20:01
to a superficial idea and a fluffy idea, it takes a lot of practice and a lot of
00:20:05
awareness. Um it takes like I I'm it's weird to say it as a psychologist. I'm
00:20:11
not a massive fan of egocentric build of anything, you know, like belonging has to be built in relation to your
00:20:19
interactions with the world. You can't just develop your sense of values and
00:20:23
identity in isolation. You can't do it in a bubble. So, it takes a bit of work.
00:20:28
It takes a bit of testing. You don't do it in a cave. It means that you have to
00:20:31
understand what your potential is and then understand how it is that you what is the stance you have to assume in
00:20:37
order to springboard to better, you know. So, it's a >> it's a kind of squishy morphy thing.
00:20:43
>> And you you use the term um in your book, The Resilience Talk, bouncing
00:20:48
forward versus bouncing back. >> Yeah. >> What does that mean? >> You know how we have um resilience being
00:20:54
typically defined as the bouncing back following an unred event. >> Yeah. You bounce back. It's what people
00:21:00
say. >> I hate it. It's like what if the thing that you are trying to bounce back to is
00:21:03
no longer there. You know what I mean? So, so like what we are missing in this um understanding of resilience is that
00:21:10
most of the time when people encounter significant setback, significant change in their lives or something that signals
00:21:15
to them that they should they should take a different approach, the whole idea of bouncing back reverts them to
00:21:22
what they used to be without any lessons learned gained. And that's just that's
00:21:26
just not cool. You know, the purpose of life is to grow, to evolve, to challenge
00:21:30
yourself, to >> see yourself in some way richer for your experiences, good, bad. Otherwise,
00:21:36
nobody cares. They're there, right? So, your job is to >> better understand them.
00:21:42
>> I when I was when I was starting to get particularly frustrated with this
00:21:46
bouncing back situation is I think like examples like Christ earthquake, you know, like it's missing a whole bunch of
00:21:54
opportunities to learn if you keep simplifying it to that. Yeah. >> With um I'm I'm probably projecting
00:22:00
here, but how how do you have the compassion and empathy to not roll your eyes at some people's version of
00:22:06
adversity? Like when you compare it to what your your nana went through or the stuff that you've been through? Like are
00:22:11
there times where you're like, "Oh, just for crying out loud. Get over yourself."
00:22:16
>> Okay. So, in a spirit of transparency, yes, there are, but they're not the
00:22:20
times you assume, right? And so like for example, you know how when you're lulling around the the times when I roll
00:22:26
my eyes proudly and visibly is when we are like stuck in a gossip and it's like
00:22:30
I get to hear it all the time and then he said and then she said and then I said so anything that signals avoidance
00:22:37
and unwillingness to step into that challenge um makes my eyes roll involuntarily because what's missing in
00:22:46
that is like you're missing the opportunity. you're missing the opportunity to test yourself. Um, but
00:22:51
this is also normal human behavior. Now, most of what we perceive as adversity isn't in itself adversity. It's again
00:22:59
sense of readiness that we have, sense of confidence that we have, um, understanding or assumption about what
00:23:05
resources we currently have to deal with what's in front of us. So, we can never
00:23:10
underestimate what someone perceives as challenging. >> Yeah. The only thing I don't like is
00:23:15
when we get ourselves lost in a white noise. Because one thing that my my life affords me is the opportunity to have a
00:23:22
peak in all sorts of different environments. And all I want to say to us all is like, you know what, there's
00:23:26
so much epicness to be experienced. It's not about testing yourself all the time.
00:23:30
It's just about having fun. Like, you know what I mean? Stop gossiping. Have
00:23:34
have fun is really what that's the only time. Yeah. >> Yeah. Where does where does that come
00:23:38
from? is like that sort of like gratitude or that different perspective that you've got that glass half full
00:23:44
thing. >> Every every place I've been to like I mean I think my upbringing was very much
00:23:50
uh tilted in that way. I grew up in postcomunist Bulgaria. Uh and if you wanted to be like and he said and she
00:23:56
said and like bo through your day, you could totally do it like you had virtually every reason to do it. You
00:24:01
know, I grew up at a time when we had I don't know if you shared this with you
00:24:05
before, but um you know when we had the toilet paper crisis here in in during co
00:24:10
>> Yeah. >> And I felt like epically prepared because I remembered how during my
00:24:15
upbringing we had electricity crisis, toilet paper was a real issue for a period of time and the only reason why
00:24:21
this is an odd fact is right next to our apartment building in Sophia was the toilet paper factory uh where half of my
00:24:28
family was working. You know what I mean? So you had this kind of juxtaposition um of of experiences. But the reason why
00:24:34
I mention it is >> it teaches you these kinds of environments >> that you have abundant choices about how
00:24:42
you feel about what's around you. Not in some way fluffy but in some way practiced every single day. You get an
00:24:48
opportunity to get fully overwhelmed by the minor drama and the white noise and the [ __ ] of it all. Or you have a
00:24:55
choice to go sweet. I'm here you know watch me roar. let me just focus on something that's meaningful. And when
00:25:01
you do that, you notice something epic that you might have otherwise fully missed because you were just like
00:25:05
bobbing about. >> That's what I'm talking about, you know? >> Yeah.
00:25:09
Um, you're a mom. Uh, Jamie and yourself have got a son who's 10, 11. >> Yeah. He's about to turn 11.
00:25:15
>> Yeah. Um, so question for parents like, I don't know, there seems to be a thing
00:25:20
now to like micromanage your kids' lives. Um, but I suppose it's a balancing act cuz you want your kids to
00:25:25
be resilient, but you don't want them to experience anything that's going to need
00:25:29
to be resilient. Do you know what I mean? >> How do you what? Yeah. What do you say
00:25:33
to parents of kids? >> How are you how are you raising your son to be a resilient man?
00:25:37
>> We have we have one rule and that's the hardest thing for Jamie and I to adhere
00:25:41
to. Hopefully, he's listening and hopefully he's sticking by it, but it's
00:25:44
getting out of Alex's way. So our son has got Alex and he you know like what
00:25:49
Jamie and I used to or what we expect him to like want to do and handle could be entirely different for his own script
00:25:56
right and so getting out of his way for us means letting him test himself letting him experiment experience
00:26:02
letting him sense feel here taste the feeling of the challenges that he chooses to set for himself not our own
00:26:10
script of life >> you know >> so yeah that's the most important rule
00:26:14
get out of his way more often. >> Um, yeah. Have you ever met anyone that you
00:26:20
um believed after meeting with them was beyond help? >> No. And I meet a few I meet a few. I
00:26:27
have a portfolio of work that sits under the umbrella of intolerables. >> No. You know, maybe um Yeah. No. There's
00:26:37
there's caveats to that, right? Like who's going to be willing to help that?
00:26:40
But there's always Yeah. >> Does someone need to be willing to help themselves?
00:26:44
>> Of course. makes it so much easier. >> How can someone um I've got a specific
00:26:50
example in mind here. How can someone not let trauma define them is um uh my my girlfriend, a friend of
00:26:58
hers who works in retail in New Market. Um last week um a young woman came in with um a can of deodorant and a lighter
00:27:05
and was like flaming at her and then had a knife and uh you held her up at at knife point and uh as you'd expect it's
00:27:12
a very traumatic event and >> I feel like this is the sort of I don't know if this is going to be the case
00:27:17
here but it could could be the sort of the sort of thing that defines a person's life or causes you to crumble.
00:27:22
>> Um how can how can someone not let um a traumatic event like that define them? I
00:27:27
mean it may feel counterintuitive for some of us. Often times what we do with trauma or anything we consider
00:27:32
potentially traumatic is that we try to avoid thinking about it try to distract ourselves away from that thing and focus
00:27:39
on other aspects of our lives. That's helpful. But one thing that traumatic events call upon us is the opportunity
00:27:46
to better better study ourselves uh resources uh skill sets maybe in situations like that. That's quite a
00:27:52
specific situation right? So how do you let it not affect you is firstly realizing that the the frequency with
00:27:58
which that has happened in terms of the wider scope of your life makes it a null
00:28:02
event in some ways right it's an exceptional event because it's all shocking but it's all shocking because
00:28:08
it's an oddity right and so you kind of stretch your mind and think in a scale
00:28:12
in a scheme of things how likely is this to happen and if it was what are the capabilities the level of awareness
00:28:20
you're going to build in order for this to be something you consider manageable
00:28:23
as opposed to shocking in the future. So I mean this there are systemic things to
00:28:27
be considered here and it it blows my mind that this happened in New Zealand. It blows my mind, right? Because we
00:28:34
don't have that level of preparedness. We don't have like the last thing in the
00:28:37
world you want to imagine is >> a security guard in every shop checking people for lighters. It's just it
00:28:42
doesn't make sense. It doesn't make sense. >> So maybe the So the other side to what
00:28:48
do I need to build? But more importantly, what it is that I did in this moment that helped me survive it.
00:28:55
Like the beauty of having moments like these is that clearly you're on the other side of them looking back at them.
00:29:02
So what it is that allowed you to survive it to endure it to see yourself as someone who is capable of making it
00:29:09
through a moment like that. Often times we ignore it because we make ourselves the victim instantly. We were under
00:29:14
someone else's will. We were in circumstances of duress and we handled them. But there's much more in every
00:29:20
situation that you have seen yourself through that deserves your attention. So what will you build in the future? Can
00:29:27
you give yourself an opportunity to recognize that this is an exceptional event? And if you were to build anything
00:29:32
at all, in what way will it make you more robust, more prepared, more we are stronger? More importantly, looking
00:29:39
back, what did you do that makes you the best total rock star in that moment and
00:29:45
makes you want to high five yourself going, "Wow, I can't believe I did
00:29:48
that." you know, >> thanks so much for that. That's so helpful. >> Yeah, I hope so.
00:29:54
>> Yeah, I think a lot of people listening to that um even though their situation
00:29:57
will be slightly different will be able to like insert themselves into that story and take a lot away from that.
00:30:02
It's a great book by Did the book do well when when did the book come out? The resilience tool kit
00:30:06
>> two couple of years ago. >> Did it go all right? >> I think so. I think so. And by the way,
00:30:10
I was terrible at promoting it. My job was to piece it together and then run. >> Why? Why? Why were you terrible at
00:30:18
promoting it? >> It just feels in it feels entitled and pompous. You know what I mean? Like so
00:30:22
so I'm not uh my publisher probably is preparing to chop my head off right now
00:30:27
as I say that, but I don't like that part at all. >> Yeah. Does that is that from your your
00:30:32
military background in the SAS? Like the the inability to self-promote? >> I mean it's not it's just
00:30:37
>> it's not the it's not the SAS way, is it? >> It's unwillingness to you know because I
00:30:41
mean the other thing is in my defense the book isn't about like I'm not the
00:30:45
the central figure. It's not a biography of my awesomeness, you know what I mean?
00:30:48
It's it's the story of exceptional humans that have >> shared uh unbelievable detail. Um and that that
00:30:56
has allowed a bunch of geeks like myself to piece it all together and go, "Hey
00:31:00
team, let's just roll with it, >> try it out, you know." Um so it would
00:31:04
have felt wildly bumpers and awkward to be like, "Oh, here I am with my book."
00:31:09
You know, probably should have done it. I' I've heard you on um in previous um
00:31:13
interviews and podcasts talk exactly the same way about the military accolades you've got.
00:31:18
>> Oh yeah. >> You're just reluctant to have any sort of um shine on yourself, aren't you?
00:31:22
>> Well, what yeah it never even if you are completely in isolation, you seldom are
00:31:27
you know what I mean? Other people preset the conditions for you. There is someone to catch you on the other side
00:31:31
if you're lucky. You know, there's usually all sorts of unsung heroes in
00:31:36
situations like that. It's just sometimes it so happens that you are the dude or dudes under the spotlight and
00:31:42
then you I don't I think it's the ugliest thing when you kind of get carried away with that and forget
00:31:47
>> the contextual >> um the conditions that got you there, >> you know.
00:31:52
>> But in and in life there's going to be plenty of people that are going to try
00:31:54
and drag you down. So surely you have to be your own cheerleader. No. >> Yeah. You don't have to be a
00:31:59
cheerleader. I think you just have to be I think as Jamie would say and sorry for
00:32:04
my English, but that's what he would say. You just have to know your [ __ ] you know? Like I don't I don't I'm not
00:32:09
trying to prove myself worthy. I am hoping my work >> contributes. That's basically it. And
00:32:15
that makes it super easy, you know what I mean? It makes it extremely easy for me to uh stand along on stage with other
00:32:22
rock stars, communicate science in a way that hopefully is relatable >> uh and stay stay the course of what's
00:32:27
needed. There's so much stuff we have to do in my space that if I bamboozled
00:32:33
myself with a desire to prove myself to someone I've never met before or who
00:32:36
decides to occupy the time criticizing me, then I'll be like a horrible waste
00:32:40
of scientific resource. Do you know what I'm saying? Like it's so much more fun
00:32:44
to just go, "Oh, look what I found." You know? >> So, what's what's your relationship like
00:32:49
with social media? Do you have any social media footprint? >> I'm I'm trying to
00:32:55
>> Sorry. Most of it is not my making. Most of it is um you know stuff I've shared
00:33:00
or things I've done that have been shared by others which I love. >> Um I really am trying to learn to
00:33:06
communicate key messages and learning uh with others through the likes of LinkedIn
00:33:11
>> but I really don't like the the habit I'm supposed to be getting into. I
00:33:15
refuse to do it. Like here am I with these amazing people talking about like who cares? Do you know what I mean? And
00:33:22
it's >> it's the whole it is the whole culture. It is. It is. Hey, social media. But
00:33:27
you've you you'd be unbothered if anyone criticized you in the comments. If there
00:33:31
was any negative comments, you wouldn't you wouldn't give a a [ __ ] would you?
00:33:34
>> I mean, I'd feel I'd feel um concerned if someone is personally attacking me.
00:33:41
I'd be I'd be interested to know if, for example, I have a blind spot in the
00:33:46
evidence I'm playing with or the data I'm I'm serving others with. If there's
00:33:50
a gashing gap in my understanding that causes risk, I'd love to know it. But I
00:33:56
don't I don't love the idea of people. I can see why why people do it, attacking
00:34:01
people's identities, >> but because I'm a psychologist and I have um almost dangerous level of
00:34:07
empathy and interpersonal curiosity. I'd wonder what's what's going on for you,
00:34:11
buddy. And that scares me because imagine if I end up having to reach out to everyone and go, I've got proono
00:34:15
hours. Shall we chat? What's making you bitter? Hey, can we talk about your dramas? Like what gremlin are you
00:34:23
holding on your shoulder that makes you want to critique someone? >> Yeah, that's crazy.
00:34:27
>> It's it's a really good point. Like if if um if my mental health is in a good
00:34:30
space and someone like um tootses at me in the traffic, um if my mental health is where it should be, I I know to
00:34:36
think, [ __ ] that person must have some [ __ ] going on. Yeah. >> That I don't I'm not aware of. But if my
00:34:41
mental health isn't where it should be, I'm like, who the [ __ ] are they? What
00:34:44
are they? You know, react react badly. Um, >> I'm going to tell you something totally
00:34:49
random though now. So, I'm seldom on the likes of Facebook. I used to have it,
00:34:53
but I and now I'm on it again. And the reason for it is that there is this horrendous reality TV show in Bulgaria
00:35:00
and I love it because it gives me a glimpse of my old world. Not not in the most helpful way for my um pride in my
00:35:07
country, but it's just a silly show and it's got I think it's the Bachelor or
00:35:11
something equivalent of that, right? Um, and so I occasionally look at these shorts and then I look at the commentary
00:35:18
underneath that and all you see is individualized attack like deeply grotesque personal attack on people's
00:35:25
physical appearance, the words they use, the accents they have and it just blows
00:35:29
my mind because meanwhile meanwhile just around the corner from them there are thousands of opportunities for them to
00:35:35
see themselves as worthy humans. everyone in the commentary boxes, you know, and then you have to have this
00:35:41
bruised and and battered identities moving through the daily lives, carrying this crazy white noise in their heads
00:35:49
from someone they've never met, who if they met for a second, they'd be able to
00:35:54
find some element of interest in one another. Forget about compassion, empathy, all that fluffy stuff, right?
00:35:58
Like, forget about being an averely good human. At the very least, some level of
00:36:02
interest. M. >> So that to me is just the the ugliest version of human presentation.
00:36:09
>> Yeah, it's icky. >> Yeah. >> Um you you've mentioned Bulgaria a
00:36:12
couple of times. So now is probably a good time to pivot and uh go into your early years.
00:36:16
>> Yeah. >> Um I've got a little um a present for you, a prop, and I want to um bring it
00:36:21
up and see what comes to mind. Or >> Stop it. >> Or what what don't be so excited. Don't
00:36:26
be so excited. I've got this. I've got this. And uh I just want to see um yeah,
00:36:31
what memories it it brings back. Okay. Okay. What? How do you What do you How do you
00:36:40
know about the Toblerone? Oh my god. >> What's What's significant about the
00:36:46
Toblerone? >> Firstly, this is a this is a like luxury size. So, >> it's an airport size, a duty free size.
00:36:55
>> Am I allowed to keep it afterwards? Am I allowed to keep it after class? You
00:36:59
can't take it. I'm going to wrestle you. I'm going to fight for this thing.
00:37:03
>> You kick my ass. >> Oh my god. I'd be prepared to honestly for this thing. This thing means the
00:37:07
world because um when I was growing up there was one shop that used to sell uh western items and it was called Codiccom
00:37:16
and it was only one of them and it was in uh sorry Oakland in Sophia, the capital of Bulgaria and so you had very
00:37:24
limited supply of items inside of it. Toblerone is one of the things that was there and also Kinder Surprise eggs.
00:37:32
Those were the two things. But you'd get coupons if you were a worthy citizen. Uh
00:37:38
you know, you couldn't just have coupons if you were some random whatever that
00:37:42
means. And so you had to use those coupons. Uh I think there would be once a year for one of these items. So this
00:37:50
whole idea of having a tobleron chocolate basically means you've made it in life. You know what I And you could
00:37:56
you could savor it. We had um I guess it will be around about the time of Christmas or your super special
00:38:02
birthday. You'll have one of these things and then you split the pieces and then you savor them and you and you like
00:38:09
taste I mean this and also um any version of cheese that is not your standard feta cheese is the most common
00:38:16
in Bulgaria. Uh my father went on a hang gliding competition in Switzerland early stages postcommunist times and
00:38:24
imagine the dude like he would have gone there with a whole bunch of delegates from all over Europe and he came back
00:38:30
having gone through the um this he called it the Swiss table didn't realize that this is like a buffet breakfast you
00:38:37
know so he'd go there with servette and station it a whole heap of cheeses from
00:38:42
the from the breakfast table to bring back home for us and we had that in our fridge for, you know, probably unhealthy
00:38:49
period of time just like eating tiny pieces of like what how upset is that? >> From from the perspective of
00:38:56
>> Oh my god, I'm keeping this. I'm just going to take it away from you.
00:38:58
>> It's yours. It's yours. Um, thanks for sharing those those insights. Like from
00:39:02
from the perspective of where I'm sitting, born and raised in New Zealand, >> it's um it seems like an unimaginable
00:39:10
unimaginable upbringing like what you just explained there in and that your brief answer about the Toblone. Yeah,
00:39:16
>> like vouchers and >> rations and I mean you mentioned before that's the closest I suppose in New
00:39:24
Zealand we've come to experience anything like that which is a long way off what you went through in Bulgaria.
00:39:29
And so I've been in New Zealand more than half my life. The best new home anyone could possibly have. The best
00:39:35
place. But it doesn't matter how many ways and how many times I look back. I
00:39:40
can't see these times as unimaginable or difficult. Obviously because I've
00:39:43
experienced them. But also because there's an assumption here that if we don't have access to all of these things
00:39:47
we are accustomed to in some way someone else is lacking. We we weren't starving.
00:39:53
We had quite a significant level of scarcity in all sorts of resources. we consider here to be um normal but the
00:40:00
piece that we had there in abundance that we haven't quite I'm not witnessing
00:40:05
to the same extent here is remarkable level of connection with others um ability to share stuff share insights I
00:40:13
mean here is an example during our kind of harshest crisis periods we would be having uh electricity shortcuts and
00:40:19
it'll be nighttime that they will be unplugged the winter in Sophia in Bulgaria generally is harsh and So you
00:40:26
would have no electricity in the in the coldest hours, but you also didn't have
00:40:31
anything to cook your food on. So you'd have one person with the gas cooker and
00:40:35
we'll make communal meals for, you know, several apartments around us. You don't
00:40:40
have electricity, so you don't have TV, which nobody really had anyway. It had
00:40:43
like one channel or whatever. But we'll have guitars and you'll have stories and
00:40:47
you'll have connection. You have giggles and you have advice and discussions on
00:40:52
the Bible, which was like no one was particularly religious. This is postcomunist time. But the understanding
00:40:57
of deeper philosophical ideas is a gift I don't think we have because we are too
00:41:03
busy with quick switch stuff and like access. So I kind of you know I see it as a as a as an epic gift.
00:41:10
>> Um I've been talking a bit of recent about the best pastime uh activity we
00:41:16
had with my cousins. So we didn't have toys too many toys. I had a carting, so
00:41:21
race car that my father built for me for my birthday, for my 12th birthday with proper engine on the side of it that
00:41:28
burned half of the people's faces that would sit on it. And Mick 21 uh retired
00:41:34
tires on a site, exceptional, super dangerous. Um, hence my son could never experience the level of risk we did. But
00:41:41
we would spend the whole time buzzing around on this thing with borrowed bag and stolen fuel. and we would spend the
00:41:46
rest of our time chasing next to a giant truck tire that someone had acquired uh
00:41:52
up and down this hill. We spend the entire childhood seeing which one of us is going to be faster than the tire and
00:41:59
on you know if you were the smallest member of the family or the visitor at the time you'd be in the tire trying to
00:42:05
keep it like you know I mean this is epic but along the way you have some epic conversations you build lifetime
00:42:11
bonds you understand what you're made of you know you you learn that you you know
00:42:16
you're not going to die if you roll down a hill it's amazing stuff so yeah don't
00:42:20
see it as a Yeah. >> And you were a diver, right? You were a really good diver like a springboard
00:42:26
diver. >> Yeah. Like could have been could have been like Olympic class. >> Yeah. Yeah.
00:42:31
>> But I mean again uh the gift and the and the gnarliness of of communist time is
00:42:36
that you didn't really get to choose that. Um so we we would get chosen uh in
00:42:42
a first year school. So I would have been five from selectors for different teams and they look at your body build
00:42:49
and muscle dexterity and choose what you're fit for and what you're not and
00:42:53
you hope like hell that you chosen for something cuz then you kind of have to be awkward for a few years and try and
00:42:57
become a geek. Um so yeah it was and then you if you're selected then you're
00:43:02
half good you get given the schooling that requires you to be exceptional and you can't like because of the whole the
00:43:10
context is driving you in this direction right it's the standard is um this is
00:43:15
your opportunity to show yourself some level of control and influence that you can perfect something that you can chase
00:43:21
after something you can see yourself executing something with perfection you dream about it you move about it you
00:43:28
talk about about it. I loved it. >> But but even in that, like applying the
00:43:32
New Zealand lens again, it's like um that choice is taken away like you're
00:43:36
being told what to do. >> And and I know I should be bitter about it, but I'm not. You know what I mean?
00:43:42
Because it's like is it a choice taken away or is it uh an opportunity streamlined? I'm not suggesting that
00:43:50
this is a way forward. Like if I told my son or had some gangster trainer telling
00:43:55
my son what to do, they will know about it. you know, like my and I love my son's like I love his um blunt No, I
00:44:04
didn't choose that approach, but it freaks me out still. I'm like, what do
00:44:08
you mean? I can tell you that this is very good for you. Just go for it. >> No. So, I don't know. It's um I
00:44:13
appreciated it. I appreciated it because it gives you an opportunity to see yourself chase perfection, this elusive
00:44:20
thing, >> which my son will never have. I mean, he just switches appetites all the time. we
00:44:25
just put up a different team poster, you know, we move from rugby to soccer to something else and it's like this
00:44:31
flighty thing. It's like, you know, flimsical. Yeah. >> Yeah. It's almost like a like a curse of
00:44:37
choice, isn't it? There's too many options. >> Um, but I I got I suppose when I heard
00:44:42
this about you, I just sort of imagined myself in your shoes and I'm petrified
00:44:46
of heights. >> So, if a selector came around and said, "Oh, Dom, we want you to be a diver."
00:44:51
Yeah. >> There's no way I could jump off a 10- m board. Yeah, like that.
00:44:54
>> Well, I mean, me too. Me too. But then you tell yourself that and then do you
00:44:58
know we had this um epic trainer, Auntie Mary. And Auntie Mary is the harshest woman I've ever met. Like no one. That's
00:45:05
probably why I have no fear because I've I've rolled with her for like 11 years
00:45:08
of my life. And I I know the I know the chick, but she would this is entirely inappropriate and and um unsupported
00:45:15
these days. But if you chickenened out on something or half executed the jump, she knows you have potential to execute.
00:45:22
She she was a bit she was a bit like you know um she'd climb up the steps and you
00:45:26
could hear sorry I've said that story before um and you know the gendle is coming you know people speak of gendles
00:45:33
I reckon the bulan gendle is a way heavier weight than than than the New Zealand one you know what I mean oh and
00:45:41
you can imagine like in your togs or swimsuit the gendle hits different you know like it's you don't even don't even
00:45:48
have a barrier >> that story has not aged particularly well. It's a it's a fabulous
00:45:54
>> story. It is the story, you know. Yeah. >> Yeah. So, um, so you moved to New
00:45:59
Zealand when you were 17. What What do you know about New Zealand or about the English language? Like, were you exposed
00:46:04
to any American TV shows or anything? >> So, it's weird. We didn't have that yet.
00:46:10
Um, what we did have were series of videotapes that were contraband. Um, probably recordings of MTV or some TV
00:46:17
shows that were played in Turkey. And we would all have like truck driver friends
00:46:21
that would go and import export stuff or move content between Turkey and Bulgaria. Turkey was an amazing place at
00:46:28
the time, still is. Um, but we had videotapes of the likes of Thomas the Tank. Uh, and no, it wasn't Thomas the
00:46:35
Tank, it was some other TV show that had very basic English description of Apple
00:46:41
and Pier and color. So, that was the level of English we had, you know, from those videootapes. Bless them. Bless the
00:46:49
contraband video tapes. >> They came in came in hand. >> I'm selling all sorts of propositions
00:46:53
here. That is fully unacceptable. We're talking about different time in human
00:46:57
history here. But when we got here um we knew very little because this was you know this was um some time back now
00:47:05
obviously and my father all that he uh chose to communicate where not not because he was trying to be deceptive.
00:47:11
He was communicating the stuff that interest him which was hills and mountains and you know sheep in pedics
00:47:17
abandoned spaces. >> So we imagine it to be this um endless barn space we had no no it's not there
00:47:26
was a movie there was some kind of movie but I can't remember the name of it um
00:47:30
that had come out that we saw that roughly depicted New Zealand. Now when I look back it was New Zealand in the
00:47:35
1800s so probably not so relevant but we had all sorts of twisted images and then
00:47:40
when we got to New Zealand and this is the thing like you imagine Bulgaria is like I don't know some horrible messy
00:47:46
third world country in the Balkans but to us it was flesh and amazing and full of all sorts of dynamic stories and um
00:47:52
as much as it sounds like it was controlled context I personally had amazing level of freedom you know um you
00:47:59
know music rebellion was up and everyone was up and at it some version of rebellion. We would protest against the
00:48:05
government of the day just like it's happening right now in Bulgaria. >> Um and so I found immense level of
00:48:12
freedom. But we arrived in Christ Church and my father picked us up in this like
00:48:16
pink Mini Cooper that he had acquired for 50 bucks. And he had painted it pink with paint that was not supposed to be
00:48:22
used for cars cuz you know didn't know better, didn't have much more. And we
00:48:26
drove through Christ Church and he was like when is the city going to start? Where are the people? It was just this
00:48:32
quiet low-lying thing full of yeah empty spacesh >> which is kind of scary because you're
00:48:40
like what am I missing? >> The thing that was going on through my mind at least the beginning was what am
00:48:46
I missing? Where is the chaos? You know cuz your brain is wired for it and you're like yeah that's my vibe. I'm I'm
00:48:51
I'm traveling with it and suddenly there is >> nothing. Yeah. you know.
00:48:57
>> Well, um, were you were you mad at your dad at least for a time? >> No.
00:49:02
>> No. So, you're 17 years old. All your friends, all your all your roots, all
00:49:06
your connections are in Bulgaria. Um, you've you've established yourself as
00:49:10
this this really good diver >> and then suddenly you've got to like almost control to start fresh as a
00:49:16
17-year-old. How are you not mad? I mean you sell you again my dad is an amazing
00:49:22
um salesperson um not professionally just in interpersonal relationship. So basically what he sold us is the idea
00:49:28
that we are stepping into New Zealand for a short period of time to learn English and experience a different
00:49:33
culture and it's pretty cool thing like you know everyone in my part of the world at the time would have dreamed of
00:49:38
the west some sort of space where you could be free to move to Rome to explore ideas so that was not a difficult cell.
00:49:46
The other thing is um diving was a thing I loved but it wasn't the thing I was
00:49:50
imagining myself to do for the rest of my life. Law was. >> So I started I I did two years for one
00:49:56
just so I can start at school just so I can start law school early. My mission in life when I got to New Zealand was
00:50:02
when we realized that this is not a short-term thing to dive right into law school here which was a bit of a dumb
00:50:08
idea cuz we didn't have any English you know. So I had to take my mom to university to sign a waiver. My mom
00:50:15
didn't know a word in in English, not even apple, pier, and red and yellow. Um, so yeah, so I can start uni as
00:50:22
quickly as I can. >> So before uni, if I've got the timeline correct, you go to Haggley High School
00:50:28
for a little bit. >> I did. Yeah. >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. >> Their intelligence is amazing.
00:50:32
>> So um, so yeah, what's that like? Like can you remember your first friend?
00:50:37
>> I remember a whole pile of them. Hopefully they consider themselves my friends. I still keep them, you know.
00:50:42
Um, I do. I can imagine how um God I don't know like yeah could you understand what people were saying or
00:50:51
like how did you form connections? Well, I couldn't really understand what people
00:50:54
were saying in full, but I can understand intention and this is the this is the aim. You submerge yourself
00:50:59
as quickly as you can, right? You move around the streets and and the thing I'm
00:51:04
I'm I hope New Zealand never changes in that way. Like the level of acceptance I
00:51:08
felt was extraordinary. I mean there's this thing I'm sure every u person who
00:51:14
has moved from some place to another and has an accent realizes how when you have
00:51:19
an accent or you don't have too many words people think they have to speak to
00:51:22
you extra slow or extra loud that used to piss me off cuz it's like I understand I just don't know how to
00:51:30
articulate it back you know >> but that was the only the only obstacle is like you know these loud slow
00:51:36
speaking people that I realized it was not because of them but because of me which sucks.
00:51:41
Um, but no, I think feeling accepted and maybe maybe if I wasn't accepted, I
00:51:47
wouldn't have even noticed to be fair and I don't mean it in any weird way,
00:51:51
but I was so determined to give this a good go. Um, and we didn't have much time to to dillydally.
00:51:58
>> I got a job really quickly. we needed to all uh hunker down and try and make
00:52:04
things work because we didn't have what we had proportionately in New Zealand
00:52:08
was >> sweet all um so we all had to work and so working paying attention to something
00:52:15
that pays you the paycheck teaches you English real fast >> you know um >> yeah so you did some waitressing or
00:52:22
catering jobs >> yeah all sorts >> can can you remember um can you remember
00:52:26
um a moment when you realized I belong Yeah. >> So, this may be the weird weirdest thing
00:52:33
to say, but maybe it's because of my dad and his style of upbringing, but the
00:52:37
rule of life was that you belong wherever you choose to be. >> Um, and I've loved the fact that I
00:52:42
haven't in New Zealand, I haven't had to question that. I've never felt like I
00:52:45
had to question it. No one ever made me feel like I have to pause and inquire. And this is a big pain point for me now
00:52:52
observing some of the patterns of behavior we're witnessing globally with people all over the world um
00:52:57
particularly immigrants and refugees. That feeling that they have to somehow earn the right to belong on planet earth
00:53:05
blows my mind because it is a hard yaka. Like my path was, it may seem tricky, but it was easy because we were brought
00:53:13
up or accepted to value principles that make you feel like you could do anything
00:53:17
you want. And all the only measure of your um discomfort is how far you're willing to push yourself. I mean, that's
00:53:24
easy. You just it's a game of you versus you. >> But the fact that there are people all
00:53:28
over the world that feel as if they have to somehow fold themselves into a pretzel to fit in blows my mind. It
00:53:34
annoys me. Do you know what I mean? It makes me angry. This is one thing I'd
00:53:37
post on social media for as soon as I stop using blunt words about it. You know, I was in London uh a couple of six
00:53:45
weeks ago and you know, we know we've been hearing about what's going on with
00:53:50
our sentiments for the longest of time, anti-immigrant sentiments. Everyone who drove me from place to place, everyone
00:53:55
who was in some service industry around the traps clearly had come from somewhere. And the level of unease they
00:54:02
reported around who they were and where they were from made me furious. I just wanted to stop everything I was doing
00:54:08
and become an activist, you know, cuz it's just absurd. It's absurd how we we
00:54:13
Yeah. Anyway, >> so yes, when you come to New Zealand at 17, I'm guessing you don't even know
00:54:18
what the word resilient means, but you you were clearly you you clearly had like bucket loads of it
00:54:23
>> without without even sort of being familiar with what the with what the
00:54:26
word was or what the definition was >> possibly. I mean, >> yeah, challenge gives you that if you
00:54:31
choose to if you choose to accept it. >> Do you know what I mean? Yeah. Yeah.
00:54:36
Mission Impossible. What What parts of Bulgaria still live with you today? >> Uh the best the bless the best place on
00:54:42
earth everyone should visit. Maybe one at a time because it's quite small. There is an epic village called Mirbo
00:54:49
where my family comes from, my father's family comes from. Uh I think six centuries we've come from this place and
00:54:55
it's insane. It's epic. It's in the middle of the mountains. Um, the place I
00:55:00
grew up has is basically where two rivers meet and it's quite a unique cultural flavor about it because it was
00:55:08
never taken over by the Ottomans um, back in, you know, 800 years ago now. And so it has its own unique language
00:55:14
and its own unique customs that are totally bonkers. No one quite believes in them, but everyone does them anyway.
00:55:20
And it's all in good spirit and it's freaking epic. I love it. I love it. It
00:55:24
feels like the kind of place I mean it's not too dissimilar to Cleveland Village
00:55:28
to be fair. Like you move about bare feet in full respect of your environment. No one particularly cares.
00:55:34
>> Uh but everyone cares for you >> if that makes sense. >> It does. Makes perfect sense.
00:55:39
>> Love it. >> So you have this dream of being a lawyer. >> Yeah.
00:55:42
>> Um so you get into university and you do two years of law school before you
00:55:46
realize it's not for you. How how difficult is that? like um trying to get a law degree while having limited grasp
00:55:54
of the English language. >> If I >> did you have to work like so much harder
00:55:58
than everyone else? >> Oh yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. I mean translating every word um was it was
00:56:03
just a silly decision, but I'm also grateful that I did it. Do you know what
00:56:07
I mean? Cuz that would have been the hook I have for who I thought I was and what I was capable of. And so if I had a
00:56:13
um some wise adviser at the time that told me I probably should wait my time and gradually build my capabilities to
00:56:20
match my ambition, I would have just been devastated cuz it's maybe part of it is so one thing I had that I noticed
00:56:27
at the beginning was that whole idea that because you cannot speak clearly enough that you don't
00:56:32
understand the world to the same extent as others do and that used to piss me off, right? So I desperately wanted to
00:56:37
feel free to do this maybe communist upbringing maybe just my mindset but capacity for contribution means the
00:56:44
world >> and there's a proximity to my experiences like Bosnia and some of the
00:56:48
conflicts that I' studied from around the world international law um human rights was an obsession I had and I
00:56:55
still do. It's just that by the time when I spent two years in law school studying every spare minute I had it was
00:57:01
either work or study that was there was nothing nothing else >> uh all times of the day and night. I got
00:57:08
to summer school international law um to realize how impotent it was. And it felt
00:57:16
devastating that I invested two years of my youth and gotten my first wrinkles, you know, doing something that was
00:57:22
useless. And I'm not saying it is, but it felt as if it was to my restless and
00:57:27
immature mind at the time. Um, and at the same time, just literally across the yard was I did law and psych uh
00:57:36
conjoined and psych felt a no-brainer because it's just I mean, who doesn't
00:57:40
know who who doesn't want to know everything about human psychology? It's
00:57:43
epic. So, it was easy, that was smooth, that was just logical and exciting thing
00:57:49
to do. There was an epic professor next door uh at law school called Ming Singer
00:57:54
and she was studying weirdly I mean she was studying um refugee and immigrants um establishment kind of principles of
00:58:03
establishment how did they integrate in a new context and she suggested that to me once she probably didn't even mean it
00:58:09
and I walked out of law school and I was like please take me as a student can be
00:58:13
here and so she had to remember who I was for a minute um yeah and accept and and then you sort of um accidentally
00:58:21
end up in the army. Uh I believe the story goes you had a a male friend who who was going to um interview and you
00:58:28
sort of just tagged along for shits and giggles. >> Well, also for research purposes because
00:58:32
it was an >> what do you mean? >> No one ever says that. >> Yeah, everyone does.
00:58:40
No, also because um so New Zealand Defense Force selection officer selection board is pretty much uh
00:58:47
considered and not just New Zealand defense force. Selection boards of militaries are the mecca of profiling
00:58:54
and behavioral observations and I was an industrial psychologist or at least I'd
00:58:57
studied uh my masters in industrial and organizational psychology at the time and if you want to know anything about
00:59:03
how this stuff is done at scale you'd want to go there and what a better way
00:59:07
of learning it than being in it. I mean that is just the best like it's the best
00:59:11
putri dish of all things mega geeky science. So um yeah rocked on in to support. I had already lined up a job in
00:59:20
a local um >> consultancy place. >> Yes. >> Yeah. Yeah. >> That now back I probably should have
00:59:26
been a wiser person. Do you see how many times we say that to ourselves? It's
00:59:29
like if I was just a little wiser. >> Mhm. Yeah. >> Do you ever do you ever stop to think um
00:59:34
I mean hypotheticals are kind of a waste of time, but do you ever wonder how different life would have looked if you
00:59:38
went that way instead of this way? >> I'm so grateful I didn't cuz the minute
00:59:42
I think of it, I mean, as much as this place is incredible, everyone there is incredible. I have a handful of friends
00:59:48
that are still in that fabric and that are in that town and they are amazing human beings. But maybe there's a
00:59:55
personality, a series of personality flaws in me that make me want to know the world intimately. messily. I want to
01:00:02
roll with I want I want to roll with life. So the thought of going back there and having chosen that safe logical path
01:00:09
frightens the be Jesus out of me >> cuz it just makes me feel like >> nothing would have changed from Monday
01:00:17
to Friday or from year 2000 to 2005. I would have just been the same climbing up some kind of ladder. I don't even
01:00:24
want to be on minding some kind of ooh yuck. No. Surely there were there were moments though where where you're stuck
01:00:30
in Wuru in the middle of winter and you're like, "Oh, an air conditioned
01:00:34
office would be quite nice right now." No, >> no, no. But there were there was a time
01:00:40
when my husband and I decided we were going to be proper grown-ups and like sensible adults and we had a child and a
01:00:45
farm and some chickens or whatever. And I remember being in this thing which became it's a weed garden, but I keep
01:00:51
calling it the meditation garden cuz it's got a platform for meditation that
01:00:55
no one sits on. So I was there and I remember must have been a day when Jamie and I were trying to be normal. Um and
01:01:02
it was freaking frustrating because it was like if you like you this you know pressure cooker environment where you
01:01:09
just try to have some sort of average exchange and we hadn't been in the same
01:01:14
house ever in our relationship when we had but never at the same time. You know we had kind of overlapping deployments
01:01:21
for the first three years of our relationship which is why it flourished. It flourished our relationship from a
01:01:26
distance and then suddenly we were stuck together and I was on the on the platform and I out loud said what the
01:01:33
have I done and it would have been and then poor Jamie heard it and it hurt his feelings
01:01:40
and then it took us three years to have a conversation about that moment. >> I genuinely had this like holy moly it's
01:01:46
gotten to me. How creepy is that? >> Poor men. >> Yeah. How did how did you guys Yeah. How
01:01:53
did you how did you what's the meat cute? How did you get together? >> Um we worked together uh in the unit and
01:01:59
>> is this when was so he was in the SAS and you were the SAS psychologist?
01:02:02
>> Yeah. >> Yeah. >> Yeah. >> This Yeah, this viewing Jamie has a
01:02:06
different report. Jamie thinks that I chased after him. I don't remember him.
01:02:10
>> I didn't notice him. >> I don't remember him at that beginning
01:02:16
point. Um and definitely didn't notice him chasing me. So he must have just been overcrowded in a chase. But um
01:02:22
yeah, poor man. So he we sorry and I've got a bit of a flight thing so I'm I'm coughing on occasion.
01:02:29
We uh relationship I think the attraction between us had been building for some time but uh the
01:02:36
way in which uh work was aligned basically meant that it wasn't a good idea for us to be together. Um and
01:02:42
because we were in the same team it's just a messy messy thing. So I'd moved
01:02:46
out of the team by that stage. We had couple of interactions. Jamie thought that they were romantic. I didn't
01:02:53
recognize them to be that. Then we switched over and Jamie thought that I was not interested and I was very
01:02:59
interested. And then he went to he actually went to Afghanistan. Um, and so he had done this incredible trip by his
01:03:06
lonesome self on his Harley-Davidson from the top of the north to the bottom of the south by himself on a Harley to
01:03:11
set his mind for the next uh chapter and came past my house in Christ Church to give me this collection of stones that
01:03:20
he picked up from um a lake along the way, which is the most romantic thing someone like Jamie would do. um he's
01:03:28
he's an amazing dude, you know, but that's these forming stages of his romantic bone was not a it wasn't a
01:03:36
thing he would, you know, um and so that moment locked in and we became a couple
01:03:41
when he was in Afghanistan. So, uh, via Teams or Zoom or one of those platforms,
01:03:47
we had a moment where in the most uncomfortable way possible, him and I, who would typically be clowns and, uh,
01:03:54
fight with one another for work reasons, all of a sudden locked eyes onto each other and had the most uncomfortable 10
01:03:59
minutes of staring, gazing into each other's eyes from a distance, and that was it. How crazy is that?
01:04:05
>> It's such a cool story. And um it seems like a really good just you know you've
01:04:09
said a few things today sort of teasing him so it seems like a really cool relationship you've got.
01:04:14
>> Um >> yeah so lead psychologist in the SAS like what what does that mean in real
01:04:20
terms? Are you like are they are these guys coming to you when they've got like
01:04:25
issues and they need counseling or are you just sort of observing them from afar and then um passing your findings
01:04:30
on to their superiors? Like what does it mean? I mean the the core function every
01:04:34
psychologist in the team um is kind of quite a crucial part of the cog. This is a very very small team we're talking
01:04:41
about that even if they're not in an operational cycle uh operating under extreme pressure because training has to
01:04:47
match operational context. So they move at quite a high cadence. The core role of the unit psychologist has always been
01:04:53
to help selecting who steps through the gates. So typically historically we would have had army, navy and air force
01:05:00
candidates. So these are people who are experienced in the military service that
01:05:04
volunteer themselves for service with the SS and the psychologists independent from other observers who are members of
01:05:11
the team conduct separate observations based on personality traits that they observe through profiling as well as
01:05:17
what they witness during interviews and during the course of selection. That nasty grueling six day mother of a
01:05:24
challenge that they go through. And then you support candidates through a training cycle that takes a whole year
01:05:30
and it's nasty and it isolates them into a constant state of pain. Sorry for
01:05:34
that. Um you observe them through this process and then of course you stay with the team on every rotation that they do
01:05:42
which is operational rotation or training rotation. Um making sure that they are in the best state possible to
01:05:48
operate effectively. So it's the most difficult challenge to No, it's not the
01:05:52
most difficult. It makes perfect sense. Everyone who is in this space wants to see themselves at the best because if
01:05:59
they aren't they deplete the very thing they believe in, right? They detract
01:06:02
from it. So it's a it's an easier formulation in that way. You don't have
01:06:06
to sell the proposition to someone who feels suboptimal. They need to step aside because they know intimately what
01:06:12
it means to have one component of a critical fabric that doesn't quite function as it as it should. Um but yeah
01:06:20
the job the job goes on and on and on because you form extremely deep uh relationships of extreme trust with
01:06:28
people uh and many of them step away and the nature of who they are and how they
01:06:32
work means that they step away and remove themselves entirely from from the fabric from defense force as well often.
01:06:39
Um so yeah >> and do do they do they I say you but I'm specifically talking about this role the
01:06:45
lead psychologist do they do they like you or do they just tolerate you? Are you a a pain in the ass? You know what I
01:06:51
mean? Are you are you a speed bump on their on their way to reaching their goal?
01:06:55
>> I sincerely hope. I mean, it could be all of these things at the same time for
01:06:58
some people, right? Because it depends on the message that you deliver. Um, but you are an enabler first and foremost
01:07:05
and anyone who cares enough, which they do if they get there and have has enough
01:07:10
cognitive ability to process the function you serve should see you as that. And they do. They see you as an
01:07:15
enabler. It is our job to make sure that everyone with what they've got as they
01:07:20
say words and all feels like they can that white noise can be reduced that they can be the optimal performer in the
01:07:28
context that they've got. >> So the ones that are paying attention which by the way is everyone
01:07:33
>> know it and they use it and they take full advantage of it and it's the
01:07:36
hardest and the most rewarding job on the planet. >> Are they able to trick you? I'm sure
01:07:42
they try but but they trick themselves like you know it kind of you leak you know you leak the truth right you leak
01:07:48
the truth because why because you know if you trick me you trick yourself you get found out this is the thing about
01:07:53
it's not a blurry officy space like you can't hide behind a wall you can't hide
01:07:57
and make yourself an instant coffee around a corner it's an environment that
01:08:01
shows you it fleshes out all your vulnerabilities so tinkering on the edges of fibbing and masking is just
01:08:07
like you just >> it's a long way down to the mice It's like you'd want to pull the pin on
01:08:13
that stuff real quick and just be blunt about it cuz it shows it. It shows all your spikes real quick.
01:08:19
>> So, you mentioned the the the grueling um six day training and the other
01:08:23
training that goes along. So, what sort of conditions are you in during that that time? Are you are you staying in
01:08:28
nice barracks with >> nice barracks and I love how you say sheets barracks. Of course
01:08:34
you get I mean this is cruel thing to say because in comparison to every everyone else they get no sleep
01:08:41
effective or they get enough sleep to uh be physically possible and survivable for them to continue with the selection
01:08:47
course but you know there's the necessity of the process basically means that you get you know minimal two hours
01:08:54
sleep you sleep wherever you can but it's nothing compared to what a candidate would go through on a
01:08:59
selection course you know what I mean it's yeah And and your body your body isn't fussy when you need sleep, you
01:09:06
know, you just >> Oh, sleep sleep deprivation is one of the worst. E I hate it so much.
01:09:11
>> Do you did you work with um Willie Apiata or can you not really say can you
01:09:15
not sort of talk about specifics? >> Well, he was part of our team when I was
01:09:19
in the team. So, yeah, absolutely. >> Yeah. What what's he like? >> Awesome. as the rest of them. Yeah,
01:09:26
>> they're all unique and special in their own way, but yeah, >> I value him immensely.
01:09:32
>> Yeah. What what makes these guys stand out from the rest of of the army or
01:09:36
society or the people that try for the SAS and don't make it? >> So, this is the piece behind that
01:09:43
resilience toolkit component. We spent a lot of time wondering um over the years
01:09:47
we would even do benevolent kind of competition between assessors about choosing or basically placing our bets
01:09:54
on who would make it through. And so you'd imagine that there are things like
01:09:57
physical robustness or physical grit and hardiness that makes you capable of passing through selection. But that's
01:10:03
the least important part. Um the starting point, the most consistent point we know matters most is
01:10:09
self-awareness. If you don't understand yourself, like you said, sleep deprivation sucks, right? It's
01:10:14
physically painful. It's agonizing. It does hell with your brain and your thoughts. But if you have self-awareness
01:10:19
and you have the ability and the experience to help you manage yourself in moments of trial and duress, you know
01:10:26
how to endure this moment and how to show up and and let your body catch up with your ambition. And so people who
01:10:33
understand themselves first and foremost, that's a core criteria. If they don't they don't know how to adjust
01:10:38
and adapt themselves to different context. The role itself demands that you are what do they call it? Swiss uh
01:10:46
knife. >> Army knife. Swiss army knife. Yeah. Yeah. >> So you more adjust, adapt in order to
01:10:50
achieve the mission. >> If you can't if you don't know who you are and how to manage yourself, you
01:10:55
know, you you don't have the the capability and robustness to morph and adjust. So self-awareness and
01:11:00
interpersonal awareness, interpersonal curiosity, contextual intelligence. Contextual intelligence means being able
01:11:07
to read the cues and cues in your context and adapt in order to amplify success mission. Um and that in turn
01:11:14
takes ability for access to curiosity which means they have to have high level of stress tolerance because you can be
01:11:22
you know like I was telling you at the beginning you can't be freaked out and
01:11:24
curious at the same time >> but curiosity is critical predictor. So intellect of course is a key thing not
01:11:32
necessarily by on the book but ability to look at things flip them around and see a different perspective or different
01:11:39
way of >> engaging. And for for for the most part, I know everyone's different, but for the
01:11:44
most part, are these guys um sort of like emotionally unavailable or reluctant to, you know, talk about
01:11:51
vulnerability and, you know, deep stuff or or No, >> no. I think maybe the threshold is
01:11:57
different. >> The what the threshold? Yeah, because I mean so yeah, I don't think I don't
01:12:01
think so because it's extremely difficult to be emotionally unavailable um when you have some of the most
01:12:09
complex emotions that you have to logically navigate or emotionally process through your system, right? But
01:12:14
it's more about what is the threshold. Um and and some of the some of the reasons why perhaps some of them might
01:12:20
be perceived as emotionally unavailable is the fact that operationally they cannot disclose a lot of the stuff that
01:12:26
may trigger emotion or has trapped or caused them to experience the most significant emotions in their lives. And
01:12:33
then there's of course a question of um magnitude and relevance like how do you
01:12:39
if you have traveled in a in the same bubble with these same individuals for five to 10 to 20 years suddenly relate
01:12:46
to someone who decides the biggest pain in their existence is how the administrator is stuffing up the coffee
01:12:51
order. It's like what do you know what I mean? >> And choose that instead of addressing
01:12:57
the issue they're going to [ __ ] about it. Like that's I don't think that's
01:13:00
emotionally negative. That's that's basic intellect, right? >> Yeah. That's what I was saying at the
01:13:05
beginning, like how do you not roll your eyes at the the triviality of some of the stuff you deal with these days? Like
01:13:10
the problems must just seem so insignificant. >> Yeah. >> Yeah. >> Um your military career took you um to
01:13:19
deployments all over the place, Afghanistan, Syria, the Middle East, East Teor, Solomon Islands. Um what did
01:13:24
the military unlock that civilian life just couldn't? I mean I I firstly the the idea of
01:13:32
belonging and camaraderie and how much this means like right how you can find yourself at home anywhere how if you
01:13:40
have something to offer you can make it so that you are and feel accepted no matter where you go. The I'm I love I
01:13:47
love the feeling of knowing I'm at home wherever I go. It still stays with me.
01:13:52
Right. I've got my my backpack is in my car. Can you believe it? Normally I have
01:13:55
it with me and is that there's that feeling that you don't need very much to
01:14:00
be effective and to contribute. I know I keep saying the words contribute but that does matter the world to me. Um
01:14:05
also it unlocks immense level of interpersonal curiosity. Normally when we thinking of military we are thinking
01:14:11
about highly regimented and structured environments. That's a part of it for
01:14:15
safety reasons and to develop your skills and capabilities. But past that point you have to be able to earn
01:14:21
respect with everyone. and everyone you might be in charge of, everyone that might be in charge of you. And that
01:14:27
means you show up in the fullness of your range. >> It's amazing. It's amazing experience.
01:14:32
I've loved it. >> I I just can't imagine. Um yes, I've met you twice now. I met you in Christ
01:14:37
Church had a keynote thing about a month ago and um you're in the studio today
01:14:40
and uh on both occasions you've been immaculately presented. I'd even go as
01:14:44
far to say you're the best dressed podcast guest I've had in 300 guests. I
01:14:48
I can't imagine you um yeah roughing up with um with boots on and military over
01:14:54
military over something really embarrassing. Okay, so my my I had I have a boss who probably um uh yeah
01:15:01
Steve I don't know how I didn't destroy him but Steve is amazing guy and when I
01:15:06
got selected and uh was sent to Wudu. So the thing about dressing up is I I I like it because life is extremely
01:15:14
precious and if I'm to show up I like to show up with respect to my physical
01:15:18
space, right? And so it's not I don't obsess over it. I just happen to have a
01:15:22
handful of things I like to I like to pay respect to my day, right? Um but when I joined the army firstly I'm the
01:15:28
one that would iron I didn't realize you shouldn't be ironing your DPMS your um
01:15:33
you know kind of field equip your field uh suit because of course it has lines in it that you could see through
01:15:39
binoculars for the longest of time I'd iron my uniform I was the only one that
01:15:43
would do it took me a hot second to learn it paid my paid my price for it um at the end you see be incognito because
01:15:51
I'd be shining like a bright star in someone's binoculars in the night you
01:15:54
know uh but the next layer to it is that I uh apparently I don't remember that
01:15:58
but I found the DPMS which is your field dress in the military to be quite unfitting for women and so I I asked my
01:16:06
boss one of my first question is can I ask a tailor to shape it >> you're doing alterations
01:16:12
>> what a muppet what a muppet and and the thing is I get to see this same amazing
01:16:17
dude called Steve who I know I know he he values me as the greatest challenge of his career um but also he every here.
01:16:25
He goes, "Oh, Alia asked if she can shape her DPM." I'm like, "Get over it."
01:16:28
You know, still, you know, we can still look good. We don't have to look like
01:16:32
sex of potatoes, but apparently that's operationally functional. >> So, yeah,
01:16:36
>> it's such a great story. We've been going for an hour 15 and we haven't even
01:16:40
talked about the um 2013 Syria incident. Um, >> is it difficult for you to talk about or
01:16:47
when you talk about it, do you just sort of go on autopilot or >> Probably probably the autopilot part. I
01:16:54
don't find it difficult, >> you know. >> Was it difficult to talk about for a
01:16:58
time or no? Has it never been? >> I don't think so. I think the difficult
01:17:03
part was um imagining that it has to be difficult, you know. I I don't find it
01:17:09
>> can you explain that >> like you know so for example the so if you're thinking about being taken
01:17:14
hostage right um it is a difficult thing typically to communicate and to process
01:17:20
but in our situation we had opportunities to gain control of the situation to influence our experience to
01:17:25
the better and more importantly after we were released we requested a period of time and were kept on our observation
01:17:33
post the same place we were taken from and unpacked every little moment of our interaction together as a team.
01:17:40
So for us that was a closed space. Now as a psych it took me ages to realize why is it not difficult for me to talk
01:17:46
about it and in fact because I don't think of it as in any way the most frightening thing in life. It's easy for
01:17:52
me to talk about it but it's not important to the same extent as it might be interesting to someone who hasn't
01:17:58
heard it before. But one of the things that I hesitate as a psych is this temptation we have to look for trauma
01:18:04
where it isn't or to try to imagine that something was um overwhelming or challenging when it was perhaps
01:18:14
interesting more than painful you know so I don't know what I mean what I mean
01:18:19
by that it wasn't difficult um it's not difficult for me to talk about it was
01:18:23
difficult to go through it but not difficult to talk about it >> that that must be the most frightening
01:18:28
thing that's ever happened in your life though, right? >> Top three. >> Not necessarily.
01:18:34
>> Top five. >> No, not necessarily. It was just >> Not necessarily. What what what could
01:18:38
what could top that? >> I mean, there were other situations where we felt we had less control. Uh
01:18:43
and luckily they transpired well. Um I I genuinely think the most frightening far more frightening things have
01:18:54
happened to me or I feel I felt more frightened as a civilian. um you know, navigating the office politics I didn't
01:19:01
realize existed prior to that, you know, and I'm not being I'm not being funny
01:19:05
about it. That seems a whole heap more complex than negotiating your release out of a hostage situation. Again, for
01:19:12
that same reason is that you have fewer options, you know, >> it's you can be crystal clear.
01:19:18
>> Yeah. But it's as I said at the beginning, like one's a matter of
01:19:21
potentially life and death and the other one isn't. >> Yeah. >> Okay. So um before the kidnapping, what
01:19:27
did a normal day look like as a UN military observer? >> Well, see this is the thing. The normal
01:19:32
days were not particularly normal um because at the time 2013 it was operationally intense period. It still
01:19:40
is um in the region. It's just that we have much fewer UN military observers in
01:19:44
the area. And so uh a normal day would basically entailed navigating streets that would be peppered with improvised
01:19:50
explosive device and you don't always have the intel on that. You don't know
01:19:54
where you're going and whether the places you're going are risk or low risk. The overall operational area was
01:20:01
considered high threat. We knew that. But you don't know where that threat will present itself. And because you're
01:20:06
talking about multiple groups fighting against each other as well as against the government forces, military forces,
01:20:13
you simply couldn't predict where the hot spot would be. You can make assumptions. That was our job is to read
01:20:19
the terrain and make assumptions of what area is safe to progress through or not.
01:20:23
Um but it was always kind of appreciating that your intelligence is quite limited and that is very much uh
01:20:30
fickle and subject to a whole heap of changes that >> not even the people initiating them
01:20:35
would know you know so it's extremely messy and volatile environment. >> Um the biggest threat I guess that was
01:20:42
that that was one of them. Another one was increasing um I guess discontent in local populations with UN presence and
01:20:50
what they perceived to be lack of impact or lack of power that we held. Now the UN had been there for many decades. Uh
01:20:59
and there was a different perception of it in the past. People had relied upon it. But as the conflict increased and
01:21:05
this starvation started kicking in and areas were obliterated in conflict, you know, you were perceived as an
01:21:12
imbugance or an entitlement by some. So gestures like the ones we were given when we were taken hostage, which is
01:21:18
this one, we'll chop your heads off, began to pop up as you're patrolling
01:21:21
streets. In the past, you'd have kids waving at you because they expect you to
01:21:24
be some kind of savior, but we hadn't proven proven ourselves in this extreme.
01:21:29
It wasn't our mission. >> Uh so extremely complicated because you also are a human that empathizes and
01:21:36
observes the environment. And it felt the whole way through that we were in a fishbowl with some sort of assumed power
01:21:42
and influence observing extraordinary and unjustifiable human suffering. >> A mess. and we had the power and the
01:21:51
capabilities to move out of that space ourselves. Now, that was the surreal thing. Imagine you're traversing the
01:21:56
streets of a nearby suburb, knowing full well that this suburb is in agony and on
01:22:01
fire physically often, and you have the freedom to pop over through a gate and have a cup of tea and glass of wine next
01:22:09
door on the other side of a fence. That is simply symbolic. And for you, because
01:22:13
you have a UN armored vehicle and a special UN pass, you could step in and out as many times as you fancy without
01:22:20
any repercussions, whereas everyone is locked on the other side. It's just it's
01:22:24
it's insane. It's insane. And you still have to do the good work because if you
01:22:30
remove yourself, it becomes a failed state. Do you know what I mean? It's a nasty catch 22.
01:22:36
>> But did you have any idea that something like this could happen? you know, it's a
01:22:40
possibility, but like do you think it's a 1% possibility, a 10% chance, five?
01:22:44
Yeah. What sort of >> what sort of likelihood what I know you train for this, but what sort of
01:22:48
likelihood is it that something like this is going to happen? >> I mean, there's there's there's so many
01:22:52
if then if then if then in this kind of equation, right? So, if you're stepping
01:22:57
into these places and you're volunteering yourself for a mission of this nature,
01:23:01
>> um you are prepared for the extremes. And if you don't expect that this is
01:23:07
100% possibility, you're not prepared. you're just contemplating an option and
01:23:10
that's not an entertainment u you know service it's a military service so the
01:23:15
point I'm making is you have to be prepared and have considered virtually every eventuality or you are liability
01:23:22
the job is then not to make that possibility the thing that you know I guess masks your judgment or reasoning
01:23:30
and to know that no matter what possibility presents itself at 100% risk you have your wits about you to make the
01:23:38
right response to make the right decision. >> Uh and to get yourself out of a pickle
01:23:42
and others that's the most important part. >> Yeah. >> So you're sleeping at night. It's night
01:23:49
time. >> Yeah. >> And then what? Windows break. >> Windows break. Doors doors get barged
01:23:55
open. What happens? >> Yeah. So middle of the night, May 2013. This was probably uh 5 months into my
01:24:01
deployment cycle. Nearly six in Syria. We'd already been moved out of number of
01:24:06
areas that were considered unsafe and we were in an area that was considered safer than the rest very close to an
01:24:12
area of evacuation into Israel. And so in the middle of the night I um actually woke up in so we had this container
01:24:20
building which was our sleeping quarters or kind of uh observation post living area and in it'll have a small area that
01:24:27
was basically an operational center which is radios and laptops and stuff um and two bedrooms adjacent to it as well
01:24:34
as a bunker on a side of it where our third team member would sleep and we would be on rotation because of the
01:24:39
level of threatening area was um so severe that we had to have someone on observation.
01:24:44
um throughout. So, it was my turn to rest. My colleague was on duty that night and I woke up. Um two weird
01:24:53
things. The first one wasn't too weird. So, I heard Miko making a Mayday call,
01:24:56
which was my colleague. And mayday call basically means, you know, something is seriously wrong. Um and he was making
01:25:03
the Mayday call to a headquarters on the other side of the fence. And at the same
01:25:07
time, I heard a whole heap of noises that in my sleepy state I were I thought were foxes barking. And I don't know, I
01:25:15
mean, I'm sorry I've said that story a couple of times, but it is what it is.
01:25:19
So over the over micros seconds, I caught myself thinking, ah, there are foxes barking. And then my brain went,
01:25:25
well, why would there be foxes barking? Do foxes bark? Do we have foxes here? You know, when you go through this like
01:25:31
weird and all you want to do is just stay asleep because you're wiped out. Um, and then basically I woke up because
01:25:39
I appreciated that maybe I still don't know if foxes bark. I keep meaning to
01:25:42
Google it and I still have no I still don't know. So the foxes barking were a bunch of
01:25:49
lads um, you know. So this was a militia group amalgamation of all sorts of betties jumping over our fences uh, and
01:25:58
issuing out orders to one another um, rapid fire. Miko was observing one particular angle of a observation post
01:26:04
that had limited an vista. Um so limited kind of scope of observation where he was uh and when I uh woke up when I got
01:26:12
up I could see that there's a whole heap of men already surrounding a observation
01:26:15
area. Now, this may not seem too odd that you suddenly have a whole bunch of armed militants, 38 of them counted um
01:26:23
surrounding an observation post, but it was quite uncommon uh because these areas were wrapped by minefields for our
01:26:31
protection. They were also heavily fenced and so they clearly meant more than a sweet coma to have made that
01:26:38
effort. And then you have you for weeks prior to that um we knew that we were being observed. So we were observing
01:26:45
being observed by others. There was an area nearby uh which was a water tower, an abandoned water tower that had been
01:26:51
occupied. We knew that you know it was occupied because there was light on and we could see ourselves being watched. So
01:26:58
we knew they know how many of us there are. They knew our patterns of movement clearly. They weren't too difficult to
01:27:03
decipher. It wasn't anything secret. It was pretty obvious rotation plan. Um
01:27:07
they would have already known that we were unarmed because we had been unarmed for 50 years prior. Um, and so clearly
01:27:15
they meant business. So, >> how many of you guys? Three. >> Three versus 38.
01:27:21
>> 38. Yeah. Yeah. >> That's an intimidating amount of people. >> Yeah.
01:27:25
>> Yeah. You can't um wrestle your way to that. You've got to >> And that they were all armed.
01:27:29
>> They were all armed. Yeah. Heavily armed. >> Um they al also in the um the powerful
01:27:35
position of, you know, waking you guys up and catching you while you're sleeping. before, as you said before
01:27:40
about the foxes, you know, you're confused and wondering what's going on.
01:27:43
It takes a while to process. Um, when do they when do they start making the the motions that you mentioned before about
01:27:49
making a bad video? >> Well, so couple of minutes into the whole kafuffle. So, I uh jumped in my
01:27:56
uniform. I moved to the front of the building and by that stage the windows were being smashed up. So, we were
01:28:01
already losing control largely because we weren't engaging. So I started a conversation um basically articulating
01:28:08
some really basic things that I already knew like we are UN military observers. We're here to help. We're not here to do
01:28:12
any harm. Da da da. Um and very early on in this piece of discussion which became
01:28:19
a discussion luckily for us because we could have been in a world of hurt if he didn't. Um one of the team members
01:28:26
basically signaled that they were taking us to make a bad video of us. Um, and again I I keep saying this because this
01:28:33
is a very important part of the narrative. This was not out of out of sort, out of type. Um, because videos of
01:28:40
decapitation were one of those things that did exchange between waring parties to state commitment to what the mission
01:28:46
is. >> I've I've seen one and I I'll never sorry I'll never I'll Yeah, I'll never
01:28:51
be to um forget it. >> Yeah. >> Yeah. >> It's a horrendous thing. It's it's just
01:28:56
it so the pieces of information or intelligence we were gathering at the time had ample amount of that stuff just
01:29:05
to just to help keep the tension and the level of um kind of you know anxiety proportionately
01:29:12
high. So really yeah blunt blunt message. So at at that moment, yeah, I mean, I'm
01:29:21
just trying to think if I was in that position whether I'd faint or pee myself
01:29:25
or or or like what was what was going through your mind at that point. >> Well, you were in you were locked in,
01:29:32
right? You are in a in a you don't faint when you're in the middle of a discussion, right? Someone has off is
01:29:37
offering you a possibility. You know, your job is to kind of think outside of it a little bit. I'm not saying that
01:29:42
this was a uh some sort of sophisticated approach we took at the time. The first
01:29:46
thing is that initially they basically said to us that they extracting us because someone else is coming to chop
01:29:50
our heads off. But that changed really quickly because as we hesitated they began to present more threat. Uh and at
01:29:57
one point someone pointed um you know kind of an equivalent of bazooka to our to our gate which was really stupid
01:30:03
because we are in a container building. So you know you don't >> necessary should chill out. you got to
01:30:10
do yourself harm, you know, like not the face. And seriously though, it's like okay, so
01:30:14
but clearly they're men business. And so, uh, when you have this switch and desire to control and and dominate, it
01:30:22
becomes quite clear that these are not your buddies. Um, so the job to be done, I think this is the beauty of moments
01:30:28
like that. I don't think you would have fainted. I think most people would be
01:30:33
uh when they see this opportunity and you already have a conversation going, you want to find out a little bit more
01:30:39
or at least b. We tried to b for a little bit. We offered what we had. It wasn't it wasn't interesting to the
01:30:46
parties involved. And then we were off and away. We were dragged into the minefields that we thought were there to
01:30:51
protect us. Um yeah, so it was quite a quite a quick switch from sleep to action. H. So, so you you your marched
01:31:03
through the minefields. Do they know where they're going? >> Well, this is the map. Yeah. I don't
01:31:07
know if they they had a map. I mean, there was a couple of inshallah moments which is like, you know, if it goes, it
01:31:12
goes. Um, but they probably studied them, you know, and this is the thing is we would have these minefields, but
01:31:18
local shepherds would be hopping through those on a daily. Um, now the thing is is that again it's not particularly
01:31:25
planned approach either for the local shepherds because m minds of this age they shift they move with rain with snow
01:31:32
with all of that all of those conditions that are changing they're not fixed in
01:31:35
the same place so they're extremely dangerous for that reason it's an old
01:31:38
minefield that has been put there since in the 60s I think so um we had to just hop about
01:31:46
there's a moment where I signal to them stupidly I said I didn't realize they
01:31:51
have that much English. Um, they hid it from us for a hot second, you know. So, we got to the minefields and were trying
01:31:58
to push us into into them. And I said, "No, no, no. Don't go. No, go, no, go."
01:32:01
Boom, boom, boom. And one of them said, "No." Boom, boom, boom. And started like
01:32:05
jumping through them. And then we had to hop across, which by the way, can I just
01:32:09
share and hear up my mates's um epicness? We were hopping through them and Miko turned back at me because it
01:32:15
was at the end uh of the procession. Uh, and he went, "Dude, we're doing it for
01:32:21
real." Cuz I had my apparently I don't remember being unpretty in this incident, but apparently I look like a
01:32:27
total muppet and I had my I had my teeth clinched, which is actually when you look back at that really dumb cuz
01:32:35
>> just bracing yourself for impact. >> Like trying not to damage my teeth, you
01:32:39
know, in the explosion. like what priorities, you know, like you want to be a really
01:32:45
good-look skull or something. Um, yeah. So, but Miko turned around and said that to me.
01:32:52
We are doing it for real because we had been training for weeks at that time, but on this very day, we were doing
01:32:58
burpee competition between each other, listening to a track by the prodigy with that exact line. We walk through the
01:33:03
minefields and it's just like, yeah, I I I really love military humor and military camaraderie and what surviving
01:33:14
or moving through difficult or seemingly difficult challenges gives you, which is your
01:33:20
ability to recognize that you're not that hard. It's not the end of the world
01:33:23
ever until it is. And you know, you can't do much about the end point, so might as well have fun along the way,
01:33:28
you know. >> So good. Can can can training it like properly or adequately prepare you for
01:33:34
that? I mean like in training you know you're not going to be beheaded at the
01:33:37
end of it. >> Yeah. Yeah. But training is dangerous also, right? So you know you hopefully not
01:33:43
going to be beheaded, at least not by accident. But the the the piece behind it is that you learn that you cannot
01:33:49
fully control another person's will. But you certainly have multiple different
01:33:54
choices along the way. Multi- choice questions everywhere in situations like that, you know. and they present
01:34:00
themselves um you know we imagine that there is too many pressure points and the brain cannot absorb them but
01:34:05
actually in in compressed environment you should also anticipate that you supposed enemy is under pressure as well
01:34:12
it's actually very difficult task to get someone to follow your will even if you
01:34:16
have many guns >> do you know what I mean there's a whole heap of unpredictable elements that they
01:34:20
also have to manage your job is to simplify and to come closer to a point where you can maybe
01:34:27
>> negotiate chat discuss. You know, I think we underestimate the minute we
01:34:32
catch ourselves as subordinate to somebody else, we make some really dumb decisions. If you appreciate that
01:34:37
everyone has some level of challenge and a wicked amount of options running to their mind and it's your job to simplify
01:34:43
that and focus on the pivot points, it becomes easier. You know, >> Jamie and I test this hypothesis in our
01:34:50
daily, you know, family arguments all the time. >> Daily. >> No joking. I'm joking. I just wanted to
01:34:56
bring light to the mix. So the so the um the captors the captors they um they they they march you to where you're
01:35:03
going which is what like a building how far away like a couple of kilometers. >> Yeah. Just down the hill from us there's
01:35:08
a beautiful village uh jam it's called a beautiful beautiful village that was
01:35:12
actually populated for hundreds of years by um particular kind of cultural nuance
01:35:18
of Assyrians. So really colorful really bright abandoned for quite some time um and abandoned in a hurry which is a
01:35:25
thing I will never forget. So, that was probably one of the most frightening things I've ever experienced. Less the
01:35:29
hostage situation and more the impression of walking being walked into a building uh that in in context like
01:35:37
this, I could understand it as as someone who's grown up in old worlds, right? You have countless treasures. The
01:35:43
home itself looked like it was multigenerational just by virtue of what you witness. They had little kids shoes
01:35:49
at the front. I'll never forget. And it was still lined up in a way in a way
01:35:53
oddly but covered in a whole heap of dust because the place had been pummeled by um artillery rounds. You know this
01:36:01
area this village is or town is extremely close to the area of separation between Israel and Syria. And
01:36:07
the area of separation is where military equipment and um personnel would be smuggled through into Syria from Jordan
01:36:14
and from Lebanon. So that unfortunate place was right on the crossroads of it. And so it had huge amount of interest uh
01:36:22
in terms of fire thrown at it for for ages. And inside of it, you have kind of the kind of treasures that you don't
01:36:28
just pick up in that part of the world. You don't go to Costco or whatever shop
01:36:32
we've got here. That new thing I'm not going to mention. Don't even say it.
01:36:38
>> You know that thing, you don't you don't you don't have fast
01:36:43
furniture. You don't have fast stuff. You've got stuff that is passed on from
01:36:46
a generation to generation, all left behind. >> And then actually for the longest of
01:36:50
time, probably been seconds, but it feels like forever, all I could think about is are they there? Where are they?
01:36:57
Are the bodies there? Are they dead? Did they make it out of this village alive?
01:36:59
Did we watch them be slaughtered and didn't do anything? Like, did we miss? What did we miss? What had happened?
01:37:05
Because you don't just up and go like that, you know? You don't leave your
01:37:09
treasured possessions behind. That's everything you've got, >> you know? So anyway, that was that was
01:37:13
way harder to deal with. Um, also what was way harder to deal with was the realization that us trained military
01:37:20
personnel were sitting there. The the place itself was still under attack as in the town that we were held in. And
01:37:28
you know, you have the imminent threat and you have another imminent threat from a different source at the same
01:37:32
time. The imminent threat was gun gun pointed at us. You know, we were kind of squished in one corner unsure about
01:37:38
what's going to happen next. Um, but also the area was under heavy shelling at the same time and you're like, which
01:37:44
way am I going to >> get squashed? Where will this go? But we we were set next to a window on the
01:37:51
bottom floor. The window was barked. Obviously, the family themselves were trying to probably protect themselves
01:37:57
from intrusion before they abandoned the area. But, uh, the building was being bombarded.
01:38:04
Not the building itself, the village, the town. And the three of us were the only ones that were like ducking our
01:38:10
heads in and reacting to every one of these hits, whereas everyone else was just sitting there as if they were
01:38:15
listening to Sunday opera. It was just weird, you know. So, you can imagine how their bodies, their their whole beings,
01:38:21
their brains were soaked in this stuff so frequently that it was no longer >> it's become normal.
01:38:28
>> It's normal. Yeah. >> And are they are they quite kind to you?
01:38:34
Like do they do they give you any water or anything or is it guns at you the entire time?
01:38:38
>> We had we had both. We had guns at us uh at the same time at the whole time but
01:38:42
uh we were also treated with kindness relatively early on uh because we were able to strike a conversation. Yeah.
01:38:50
>> Yeah. What does kindness kindness look like in that environment? >> I kindness looks like being allowed to
01:38:54
use the bathroom for example or being given a glass of water. >> I mean it doesn't seem like much but it
01:39:01
it is it is a lot. You know, >> it's a human connection. I guess >> it's a human connection. Yeah. It means
01:39:06
you you are allowed to be someone of dignity, which you know, means the world. >> Kindness also look like um I should not
01:39:14
come across as being dis uh ungrateful in saying it, but also being offered cigarettes and they were disgusting
01:39:20
cigarettes cuz clearly they had some embargos and they couldn't bring any good stuff. But it was just the worst
01:39:26
thing in the world. And it's one of those things like if you can earn graces, so that's how the training goes.
01:39:31
If you earn graces early, it's an indication that you have some hope. Like if you were, you know, treated bluntly,
01:39:37
if you were asked for something like that, then you're screwed and you have to kind of work a little harder to earn
01:39:43
good graces. >> Interesting. Yeah. >> Were you a smoker? >> Uh, not so much at the time, but that
01:39:49
you know that >> they must have spotted you. Did you start like coughing? They they would
01:39:54
have been like, "She's not even a smoker." >> No, you try not to be. You try not to
01:39:58
be. you handle it like a pro, you know. >> So, so the whole time are you I mean in
01:40:05
in the moments of downtime like are you are you thinking of of your parents or are you thinking of Jamie or are you
01:40:10
just like trying to figure out who's who and what their role is? >> Well, that was the most important part
01:40:15
is actually to here is the thing I really appreciate about our team. Every one of us uh clearly was aware that what
01:40:22
was offered or was suggested was a possibility but the primary interest we had was really understanding our terrain
01:40:28
and this is going to sound weird but you know if you've studied I don't know
01:40:32
volcanoes or some sort of old piece of history and suddenly you walk right into it. We had studied this environment,
01:40:38
this pattern of operation for a very very long time and it was the first opportunity we had to look at it face to
01:40:44
face to be the observed in the positions that we had observed before. So gathering insights was the biggest and
01:40:51
most important thing like you entertain yourself with stuff like which is part of training too.
01:40:56
>> Uh where does the impact come from? Who moves where who's the boss of who? What
01:41:00
pattern of engagement do they have? What escalation emerges based on different trigger points? Um what weapons do they
01:41:06
hold? How do they hold them? What level of readiness do they have? There were moments, for example, where we had
01:41:11
couple of what looked like 13, 14 year olds as our guard, young kids. And I was deeply concerned because they clearly
01:41:19
didn't know how to hold their weapons. And I had this distinct fear that they
01:41:23
will shoot themselves in the foot will be blamed for it and you know it will be horrible for all parties involved. But
01:41:29
then you also had others who were clearly quite experienced and knew precisely what they were doing. And just
01:41:33
that justosition alone can tell you a lot about what a a team is made of, you know.
01:41:38
>> Um, so it's just you kind of try to build a cohesive picture of what it is
01:41:42
that you're dealing with. >> Largely for entertainment if you think that it's
01:41:46
>> entertainment. You you and I have got very different views of >> what are you going to do? What are you
01:41:52
going to do? You can't just say I'm just going to take a little nap here. Thanks.
01:41:54
You know. >> Yeah. >> Were you um were you at peace with death that day?
01:41:59
>> I didn't I didn't contemplate that I had to be. >> Right. I think if you I think you kind
01:42:03
of have to you I don't think you can really be at peace with death at any point can you I think you can imagine
01:42:09
that you might be >> but it can change that level of peace with death based on what is what is
01:42:17
happening around you um what's happening in your day you know who's who's in
01:42:20
front of you in that moment I suspect I think I was at peace with it intellectually before I stepped into
01:42:27
this deployment and any other deployment you have to consider it but I wasn't
01:42:31
making it be a it's it's the wrong time to be having this discussion with
01:42:35
yourself. >> You know, you can't show up and not expect that this is a possible outcome.
01:42:41
>> Yeah. Did the time go fast or slow? >> Both. >> Both. Can you believe it? Both. Like
01:42:47
it's just weird. It is it times there are times where it feels extremely fast
01:42:52
to the point where there are details. I only remember when I read our intelligence briefs and I can't imagine
01:42:58
how we've packed that much in. But then there are times where it felt like moments took forever and those are the
01:43:05
moments of uncertainty and you don't know what lever to pull and if you do it
01:43:09
whether it's going to lead to worse or better consequences and that's the nasty
01:43:12
chess game when you have this huge suspense. I think it's a Yeah, it's a
01:43:17
cluster. >> Yeah. Well, that's someone else's decision, isn't it?
01:43:20
>> Yeah. Yeah. >> I suppose you can just strategically do the best you can at every step of the
01:43:24
every step of the way. How long was it in total? Like seven hours? >> Yeah. Overnight. It's a It's a
01:43:29
sleepover. >> It's a That's a long time. >> That's a long time. It could have been
01:43:33
much longer. It could have been forever time. >> Yeah. >> So, I think that was the biggest win we
01:43:38
had is that it wasn't longer. >> When did it become clear that or or was
01:43:44
there a moment where you thought you're safe or you're going to you're going to
01:43:47
get out of this? >> Do you know what's really really horrible about I think maybe the
01:43:51
nastiest part of the situation is actually appreciating that you aren't safe until there isn't a threat present
01:43:57
in front of you. And so we negotiated our release we thought and then we started moving back to where we started
01:44:04
but we were escorted by the group the whole way through. And the condition of our release is that we had secured
01:44:08
audience with the general the UN general that was um head of mission at the time.
01:44:13
It was a grumpy um individual a two star general who probably couldn't be bothered being there like summoned up
01:44:19
early in the morning for a coffee with bunch of rebels. So they were stationed there. At one
01:44:24
point as we were walking up the hill we came down on the night before, we could see a whole heap of UN vehicles.
01:44:30
Everyone was there waiting to, you know, scoop us back up. Um but the because the
01:44:37
the guard group was moving with us and began to peel off gradually. This meant could have meant both, you know, safety
01:44:45
is imminent, but it could have also meant staging for much worse. And there was a point right at the end and I
01:44:50
remember just going I actually said it out loud. There's a number of things I
01:44:53
say out loud, right? Sleep deprivation. Mik was laughing his head off at me because apparently I said that's enough
01:44:58
now. That's enough to myself like a like a pro, you know. And what I meant by
01:45:02
that I think I think in my head I was actually talking about seeking extreme challenges that I genuinely meant it. I
01:45:09
remember saying it and I thinking I was thinking to myself, I've done enough
01:45:12
now. I've ticked that box. I'm good now to become a retired old lady. Um but but
01:45:19
and when we we got just before we got into our observation post, the last man who was the leader of the group uh
01:45:26
pulled out a camera and said, "I'm just going to ask you a few questions on
01:45:29
camera." Not in those exact words. Uh and I thought, you know, I can't believe
01:45:34
we went through all this and it deceived us into thinking that we're walking back
01:45:37
to safety cuz what do you imagine? What I imagined there for a second was that's
01:45:42
it. They're going to do that final act in front of all eyes. All eyes are on us
01:45:46
right now. They've got the camera and they're going to chop our heads off in
01:45:52
front of the UN. They've summoned the highest possible authority. This was the
01:45:56
group that they had the biggest disgruntlement with. So, you know, but of course it didn't happen. Now, you can
01:46:02
you can roll with that moment of fear and it was a search. It was a sudden surge because it was probable if they
01:46:09
meant to do what they intended to do at the beginning. Um, but no, they were actually, yeah, they stuck to the word.
01:46:18
>> And once you're finally safe, um, yeah, what happens first? Are you are you
01:46:22
laughing? Are you crying? Are you shaking? You know, when when when it's when the
01:46:27
ordeal is finally over. >> It took us a long time to actually have any reaction because we were bracing for
01:46:32
the initial stage. In typical fashion, what kind of rightfully happens is that you get um sent off. We got sent off to
01:46:38
the medical center. We got examined. We uh were queried all sorts of people were
01:46:44
asking us questions to better understand the terrain. And then it was not until that night that we could sit back. We
01:46:51
requested to be back in our observation post and make peace with what had happened. Um we actually cleaned our
01:46:57
observation post ourselves. The difference was that we weren't there by ourselves. We now had security guards
01:47:02
all over us and security guards because we we thought it's really important to
01:47:06
close the loop as you would with any critical incident. just don't let the mind wander, understand it, complete the
01:47:13
picture, and then move on. Um, but then we all had this extreme level of energy,
01:47:19
which was utterly weird cuz we hadn't slept for like several days by that stage,
01:47:23
>> and we were still buzzing and sharing ideas and laughing our heads off and
01:47:27
yeah, so laughing was the thing. That was basically it. We were making fun of one another and ridiculing each other on
01:47:33
our ridiculous reactions, >> but they're actually genuinely funny. We weren't being we weren't being strange
01:47:38
individuals. We genuinely had a whole heap of funny reactions, which is, you know,
01:47:44
>> it's interesting, isn't it? You never know how you're going to react. Yeah.
01:47:46
>> Unless you're in that situation, which thankfully most of us will never find
01:47:50
ourselves in. When when when do you tell your parents? >> I think they had been informed that we
01:47:57
were taken. We were taken. Uh which is I don't know if it's a good idea, right?
01:48:01
Um so they already knew that we had been taken. Uh, sorry, I shouldn't be commenting on on who announces what
01:48:07
when, but they already knew that we were safe. So, I didn't speak to my parents
01:48:11
up until much later that night because there were more important things to do. They were they knew that we were, you
01:48:16
know, we had a bit of an adventure. Um, we will return back. And the most important thing is kind of try to
01:48:22
minimize so that they don't worry about things that you know are past or could
01:48:28
have happened but didn't happen. You know how people do that and then hypotheticals and then they kind of try
01:48:33
to infuse the situation with their own fears and worries and >> so yeah it was important to not do that
01:48:39
until the picture is clear and shared. >> So if anything you downplay to protect
01:48:44
other people. >> Yeah of course. >> Yeah. Yeah. >> Why um why didn't you just jump on why
01:48:49
did you stay? Why didn't you jump on the next plane home? >> Because there's a really important job
01:48:53
to be done. You are you have a privilege of intimate observation of intimate understanding of a context. you know,
01:48:59
it's just this is a known threat in the area. You still are moving about like an
01:49:04
absolute princess in my case, you know, in a UN armored vehicle when everyone else really needs attention and the
01:49:09
stories that you observe needed to be reported. The second layer to that is that as the threat was increasing in the
01:49:15
area, a number of nationalities that previously were part of our contingent were being withdrawn by their own
01:49:20
countries and we begged them and begged and pleaded with New Zealand Defense Force to keep us because it mattered to
01:49:26
us like this is important. You don't you don't if you when you seize observation
01:49:31
on on areas like this, there are moments of history that perish. You quickly realize that you can't make fundamental
01:49:37
change in people's lives. Not in this current generation at least. Maybe one
01:49:40
or two, maybe a handful a day. But pieces of history wasted in that way because no one objectively observes and
01:49:48
reports on them is one of the biggest atrocities because it perpetuates a narrative for life that neglects an
01:49:54
entire population, an entire segment of of the world. So that that it didn't
01:49:59
even it didn't even cross my mind >> that you should be doing that >> again. This is just a like a Yeah. Do do
01:50:05
you need to pause for a drink or are you okay? >> No, I'm I'm good. I'm good.
01:50:09
>> Um you can't still be going on that miniature coffee. I am. Watch me. I'm savoring it. It's
01:50:16
like a toddler on piece, right? You spent like 3 hours licking it. >> Do another one. I can get the gang to
01:50:20
bring in another one if you want. That's okay. >> Um yeah, I mean it's a hypothetical, but
01:50:24
you you weren't a mom then. Um you became a mom shortly after if you were in that situation as a mom? Like would
01:50:30
you have reacted any differently? I mean everything worked out. >> It seems like textbook everything worked
01:50:35
out fine. But would it have been different for you being there had you been a mom?
01:50:39
>> I mean I think I don't know. I don't know. I can't I can't I can't imagine
01:50:43
that. >> Yeah. >> Um when I was there, I was a wife and and Jamie was on the other side of the
01:50:48
fence. He was in Israel. I did actually one of the worries that I did have and it sounds funny but we do have obviously
01:50:54
kind of um our relationship is amazing and has a lot of humor infused in it but I genuinely did worry rightfully whether
01:51:01
he's going to judge my performance to be and and funny enough I have it on you
01:51:10
know the authority of my local commander that when Jamie was informed that we were held hostage and then released
01:51:16
because by the time when they informed him we were we were we' already would
01:51:19
talk their way out of it in the middle of the night. He said, "Did you follow
01:51:23
drill?" That was the first thing he said. And the guy who is from Slovenia, the
01:51:29
colonel who's from Slovenian colonel loved the man. Uh he was actually visiting New Zealand in our house. He
01:51:35
stayed with us uh several months ago. He couldn't understand the drill Jamie was
01:51:40
talking about. He's like, "What kind of man is that?" They didn't Jamie was
01:51:43
there on a on a on a on leave. No one really knew what his background was. But um yeah, so I was I was obsessing over
01:51:49
that. I don't know as a mom. >> Yeah. I don't know. You never know. I
01:51:54
don't think. >> Yeah. Did you I I suspect as a mom maybe you wouldn't even put yourself in that
01:51:57
situation where that could happen, but who knows? Did Did you have any um PTSD or nightmares after that?
01:52:04
>> I don't think so. I don't think so. I did have memories of experiences of my
01:52:09
my colleagues. I don't know. as a as a psychologist I can confidently say so
01:52:14
far I haven't had any symptomatology to suggest >> trauma but because we ended up with such
01:52:20
an epic outcome and then several months later a professor at uh Watu University that I started my PhD with asked was it
01:52:29
curiosity that helped you it became an intellectual thing so I actually had an epic vehicle to unpack the whole
01:52:35
experience study it discovered that there are gazillions of people who deal with much worse and here is how they
01:52:42
manage it and we so happen to accidentally stumble upon the same principles. It was I'm not saying the
01:52:47
experience was exciting but reflecting on it was because you're like poof I can't believe our brains are wired so
01:52:54
well that if we get out of their ways they help you solve stuff. >> So that to me became like epic high
01:52:59
five. Thanks for giving me this opportunity. Like if you're a geek >> and you get like there's nothing better.
01:53:05
I love my data. I love my science. I love the field I practice in. Every field of psychology spins my world. But
01:53:11
then to be privileged enough to be thrown in the mix like in the muddy stuff of life and go, this theory proves
01:53:18
itself. Like that's the best. So, I mean, you're you're so intriguing. Um,
01:53:26
it'd be great if we could bottle up what you've got and share it with people. I
01:53:30
I've got friends that have had had their houses burgled before and uh there's
01:53:34
there's been occasions where they've been in it, but most of the occasions
01:53:37
they've been at work or whatever and they they find the invasion of their personal space so much that they have to
01:53:42
sell the house and move out. >> Sure. >> So, I'm I'm I'm just intrigued as to as
01:53:46
to how a human being can go through this and experience it and just it's sort of
01:53:50
like >> water off a duck's back for you in a way. >> Well, no, it's it's it's um better than
01:53:56
that. It's it's grow from it. It's learn from it, gift from it, >> like use. And I'm not saying that this
01:54:02
is necessarily like a uh daily purpose of life kind of thing that I adhere to like, you know, it's not. But in this
01:54:09
instance, you have a choice of kind of brushing it off. >> You have a choice of potentially being
01:54:15
impacted by not solving for some of the open spaces or dilemmas or fears that have emerged and you you haven't
01:54:21
attended to effectively. And there's an even better choice than all of those
01:54:25
which is just go nuts on understanding it and see if this can in some way be useful like being in a position that we
01:54:31
were in automatically or in the state where every experience you have is supposed to serve the rest of the team
01:54:36
for the betterment. You don't like it was our job to collect data and information to protect the rest of our
01:54:42
team the whole way through. So you conditioned in this like let me study this thing. How can I pick this up and
01:54:47
share it? In fact, when we came out of this experience, I got given um the blessing from the UN to do uh an all
01:54:56
mission development of resilience capabilities. So, we started this thing called the Anmore resilience project and
01:55:02
we got shipped across for a quick study to the Netherlands um to share our experiences and then I had this epic
01:55:09
dude called Dr. Hani Murat who was who was assigned to the mission and I got to study every one of our military
01:55:16
observers record their stories so that they can share with others what it is that it feels like to be in the face of
01:55:23
a cute we never had that before. >> Yeah. >> I mean so like it's a whole lot better
01:55:27
than just doing this right you can go okay an opportunity that showed us a thing or two we didn't know before
01:55:32
>> let's go crazy on seeing what it could look like how it can serve us all. And
01:55:36
it's amazing. We had so many parties around that data gathering thing. It's
01:55:40
good to be a geek, you know? I just don't see what else you do. Why Why would you miss the opportunity?
01:55:46
>> Well, it's inspiring stuff. It's like what we talked about before with your
01:55:49
book, The Resilience Toolkit. It's like you you you are a living example of like
01:55:53
bouncing forward as you talk about in the book. >> Yeah. >> Yeah. How how um how do you reflect on
01:55:59
the rebels that were involved with this now? How do you how do you reflect on them? Is it like it um indifference,
01:56:05
disdain? Is there a level of compassion? >> I I I have no uh indifference or disdain
01:56:10
because and again it's it's you you cannot be in this environment and be
01:56:15
ignorant to the human pressures and drivers like there's no universe in which I could feel anything other than
01:56:21
understanding as much as I don't appreciate the vehicle they wanted to choose to to do what they tried to do.
01:56:27
um the the pressures they were under and the severity of experiences they have had under the watchful eye of every
01:56:35
international community is incomprehensible. >> I don't understand how we can expect
01:56:39
people to conduct themselves in acute pain with a level of self-control that is disproportionate to the discomfort.
01:56:46
So I yeah I can't hold judgment. I can hold curiosity and I can hold compassion
01:56:51
and I can hold um a lifelong desire to want to somehow support the human that sits inside the story. Not so much the
01:57:01
ways in which they choose to communicate disdain or dislike of conditions, but certainly the human it humbles you like
01:57:08
nobody's business that stuff, >> you know. >> How how often do you think about it now?
01:57:12
Is it just when you're forced to talk about it like in podcasts or keynote speeches or like when you you had a big
01:57:18
drive in to the studio this morning >> like do you do you ever just have flashes or moments where you're thinking
01:57:24
about it? >> No. >> No. >> No. But I do think of the region often
01:57:26
because we sponsor a school for girls in the region. >> Um and that has helped us actually
01:57:31
unlock much of our capabilities beyond that and actually start contributing. You know how we all we all have all
01:57:37
these ideas about how we can make the world a better place. Meanwhile, we missed the boat completely because
01:57:42
there's like thousands of little offers you get given every day, but you miss
01:57:46
them. >> So, it's front of mind for me because we have this epic women that we support in
01:57:51
the area. >> Um, but not in the way that that situation is just an opening. It's an
01:57:56
opening to, >> you know, worldview that we wouldn't have had otherwise.
01:58:01
>> And you got a couple of um awards, a very um awarded family. Um, yeah. Jamie,
01:58:08
your husband, what's he got? He's got the one just below the Victoria Cross,
01:58:11
right? >> Yeah. >> What What's the one that he's got? >> I knew you going to ask me. I have no
01:58:14
idea. >> It's huge. It's huge. What is it? We should really think about it. It's the
01:58:20
one below Victoria Cross. >> Okay. After this, we're going to have to Google. Do foxes do foxes bark?
01:58:26
>> What is Jamie has as a medal? >> But you got um the New Zealand Defense
01:58:30
Force uh >> what is it? Merritorious Service Medal and the United Nations com compendium.
01:58:38
Commenation. >> Commenation. >> Commenation. Yeah. >> Yeah. What do they mean now?
01:58:43
>> So the uh meritorious service medal was the ingro New Zealand defense force
01:58:48
service medal. It hadn't been issued out to people for like I don't know 20 30
01:58:52
years or something like that. So they unlocked it. Um and and and I always laugh this is you should probably you'd
01:58:59
know that this is a healthy coping response and also a normal part of our fabric humanity, right? But both of
01:59:05
these, so the the UN accommodation was given to me for negotiating um critical incidences in the in the Middle East or
01:59:13
in the region that we were posted in because that one was the one that was um most visible. Um there were there were
01:59:19
many others prior and after that, but um the that that was the commenation for good conduct in extreme situations and
01:59:27
leadership. Uh but the meritorious service medal uh was people were interviewed from the mission area before
01:59:35
behind behind my back unbeknown to me. Um and my team was saying that they're
01:59:40
about to give me a really important medal and it's the medal for talking too
01:59:44
much cuz yeah know like I believe it. I believe it, you know, cuz they basically
01:59:53
said that they just wouldn't shut up and constantly was asking but why and like
01:59:58
what what is your actual motivation behind that? And in what way could we make it? And so the rebels apparently
02:00:03
were like bought out of the brains from >> Let it go. Let it go. >> Were you really?
02:00:09
>> Oh yeah. >> Yeah. You were talking the whole way through it. >> It was genuinely interested. Well, not I
02:00:14
don't think it felt disproportionate to my general level of curiosity, but >> Yeah. Do what what do you think you were
02:00:20
doing? Was it were you trying to charm them? Were you trying to like win them over so they liked you or what was it?
02:00:26
>> No, I genuinely wanted to understand I mean because here is the here is the
02:00:30
reality we all knew is that if they did what they said they will do, they'll all
02:00:34
get blasted out of life. They'll all get obliterated, right? And so they were
02:00:38
giving an an ample opportunity for retaliation that everyone would suffer. That'd be the reason why they'd violate
02:00:44
the peace agreement between Israel and Syria. Israel already knew where we were because they had an observation post
02:00:49
placed two kilometers away from where we were observing us observing the peace on
02:00:54
Israel and Syria because we weren't trusted. So our entire ordeal, the reason why we know there were 38 of them
02:01:00
is because Israel was filming that but they couldn't communicate with us. Was
02:01:04
just weird. Mhm. >> So if they did what they said they'd do, they'd cause immense pain to not just
02:01:12
themselves but everyone they pretend or >> purport to have supported. uh so I
02:01:17
genuinely wanted to understand what are they trying to achieve and there's a
02:01:21
there's a gnarly piece inside of it which is coming to a point where we wanted to acknowledge not for any other
02:01:27
reason but because we felt it for so long that the situation that triggered this patternness of behavior in them the
02:01:34
endless human suffering um it was something we ourselves didn't tolerate the word impotent was used and we were
02:01:41
like we agree >> because we felt it we felt the burden of it like you can't hide that stuff
02:01:45
>> you you Um, yeah. By the way, gallantry star, no one should be able to forget that. Oh my
02:01:51
lord. New Zealand gallantry star Jamie Panel. >> Rockstar from way back when. Yeah.
02:01:57
>> Yeah. Oh, you both are. You're a couple of couple of rock stars. Where where are
02:02:01
they are they are they something you reflect on much these accolades or are they hidden in a drawer somewhere?
02:02:06
>> No. I mean, you have to accept them on behalf of others, right? But you don't
02:02:11
just sit there around the dinner table and go, "Look at my model." No. No. We
02:02:15
don't do that. That Not framed. Not framed like my New Zealand podcast awards.
02:02:19
>> No. And and I don't know where. Yeah. >> Really? >> Well, I mean, should I Okay, but do you
02:02:24
have your podcast awards on the wall? >> Yeah. Yeah. >> Okay. Well, that's that's appropriate.
02:02:28
>> Do you want some medals? >> No. No. No. I don't. >> Sorry.
02:02:32
>> Um, thanks for sharing that in such um great detail. Do you get like a like an
02:02:38
oversharing hangover like later on today after after revisiting it in such vivid
02:02:42
color? like will the rest of the day feel like a a drain for you or anything or >> occasionally? Occasionally I just worry
02:02:49
about this one situation being the the thing. I mean I know nobody really knows about the situation but if I was to
02:02:55
repeat it uh it feels indulgent to be honest because I worry the only thing that I get a hangover is it's my story
02:03:02
versus the opportunity for others to learn. Um, and I'm not saying I have something to teach, but I get exposed to
02:03:08
a whole heap of awesome insights and philosophies of life that are far more interesting than my hostage situation.
02:03:16
But I appreciate that it's rare, unique, and that it has offered us great lessons. So,
02:03:20
>> well, I'm I'm mainly curious about it from the aspect that if you can go
02:03:24
through something like this and um and um not bounce back, bounce forward, >> um then any one of us with our little um
02:03:31
situations in life can do the same. the human spirit's capable of much more than what we think we are.
02:03:37
>> Absolutely. >> Um I've got a card here about the reality TV stuff, but it just seems it
02:03:42
just seems so irrelevant now. But you have done a little bit of reality TV. There was a TV show called Tracked
02:03:47
>> with Vinnie Jones in the South Island. >> Um is that the one a previous podcast
02:03:52
guest Simone Mayer? Was she on that one? >> Yes. >> Coast to coast legend.
02:03:57
>> Yeah. She's legend in every way, not just coast to coast. Yeah. I think she's
02:04:01
an exceptional woman. Yeah, >> there's another example. Yeah, if anyone
02:04:05
hasn't listened to that podcast with Simone Mayer, it's well worth um going
02:04:08
back and um digging it out. Um yeah, she's a resilient woman. >> My god,
02:04:13
>> she's been through so much. >> Amazing. >> And thrived.
02:04:16
>> Yeah. >> Um and there was another TV show. Um Oh, did you have much to do with Vinnie
02:04:21
Jones on that one? >> Yeah. >> Yeah, of course. >> What was he like?
02:04:23
>> He's the dude. He's the dude. He's got an >> He's got an amazing sense of humor. Um
02:04:29
it's it's unfortunate. I think it took him a hot second to get used to our
02:04:32
queueiness cuz we know how we don't we don't particularly care for celebrity.
02:04:36
Um thankfully as much as some some other environments he might be accustomed to but he was cruising along I think
02:04:42
expecting us to be a bit a bit kind of >> worship >> didn't happen for a hot second so then
02:04:47
he adapted thankfully. Um yeah he was he was the dude. He was yeah he was awesome
02:04:52
and loved his sense of humor. Love the way he projected his voice. Um had to kind of caution him to be a bit quieter
02:04:59
cuz it's New Zealand. We don't shout around the streets in New Zealand too
02:05:02
much. Anyway, you know, people are people. Yeah. He's just this every other lad just needing a pie and a beer and
02:05:09
and a bit of a chat and then he's good. >> Yeah. >> Yeah. And there was another show. I
02:05:13
think this was last year or the year before, SAS celebrity who deers wins UK. >> Yeah.
02:05:19
>> Um and while researching this podcast, I looked that up. I because they're UK
02:05:23
celebrities, I didn't really recognize any names apart from Lani Daniels. >> Lani Daniels, the New Zealand boxer.
02:05:28
God, what a woman and winning it all. And so she was So the S TV show has been going for like a thousand years. She's
02:05:35
like one of the original legendary ones. >> Um I did it because I deeply believe
02:05:40
that psychology belongs everywhere. Um so so that was amazing. But Lonnie, uh amazing New Zealand incredible goddess
02:05:49
was pulled in last minute by the production company here. um showed up, smashed it, was shot herself. Like the
02:05:57
level of integrity and the humility that she displayed the whole way through, particularly amongst this loud,
02:06:03
obnoxious caffan that the set for stage to be and people were selected to be kind of, you know, pressuring each other
02:06:12
uh consciously or otherwise. Exceptional woman and took it the whole way to the end like a pro.
02:06:18
>> Mhm. >> Oh my god. So proud. I I've not been in tears too many times. She was one of
02:06:23
them. Yeah. Yeah. She was one of the two girls that won. >> Oh [ __ ] >> We had two women that won the show.
02:06:28
>> One of them was a woman that had just had a baby 6 months six weeks prior. How
02:06:32
crazy is that? So we had nothing. This is not one of those um woman versus men thing, but we did had top athletes, male
02:06:40
and female, and a mom and Lonnie won the show. So yeah, >> I I haven't seen that particular series,
02:06:47
but I've seen some of those series before. And uh I I think I'd be out on
02:06:50
day one when when they make you like jump backwards off the helicopter. I'd be like, "Oh no, I'm good."
02:06:57
>> You would though for funsies for >> funies. You and I have got very
02:07:01
different ideas of fun. Um >> yeah. Is the one you were in the same sort of thing as the Australian one
02:07:06
where you know the the contestants put bags over their head and they get marched into the staff area and
02:07:12
>> Yeah. >> That's the one. Yeah. How did how did you handle that sort of like [ __ ]
02:07:15
the [ __ ] back end of reality TV where you know you've been in this real military environment and then suddenly
02:07:20
you're in this sort of manufactured environment >> yeah I mean you kind of want to study it
02:07:25
that's the that's the piece right that whole principle of never get stuck in
02:07:28
your suit means you have to get out of your head a little bit and not be too precious and my biggest worry about
02:07:33
anything TV was is it going to be some sort of cheesy nonsense and how do I integrate it with my own personal
02:07:39
integrity you know but the truth is these things serve a powerful purpose. They they demonstrate to the world
02:07:45
principles that most people don't get to witness. >> They see fellow humans, some of which
02:07:50
they recognize, you know, overcome complex challenges. Um, it may look like [ __ ] when you
02:07:56
know that there is a staged approach to this and it's a controlled environment,
02:08:00
but it never fuels it on behalf of the participant. Do you know what I mean? It's it sucks. And all of these people
02:08:06
get yanked out of the comfort and the comfort is very prescribed and controlled by a whole heap of assistance
02:08:11
normally for some of them in particular, not all. Um, so it's a hard yaka, >> you know, and you see it in their
02:08:17
emotion, you know, it doesn't it feels fake for a minute and then it stops feeling fake because it's your life, you
02:08:23
know, you're living it. >> So yeah, I had immense level of compassion >> for them.
02:08:28
>> Are you keen to look for more TV opportunities? >> Not so much. I didn't really go looking
02:08:32
for them, by the way. It just so happened that the first one we did tracked uh we basically packaged
02:08:37
ourselves as a team. We had uh three of our team members on the show as well four in with me uh and we decided that
02:08:43
it's all in or all out and it was a New Zealand production. Um so we really wanted to support that
02:08:50
>> and it was showcasing the skills of New Zealand trackers. The SAS UK thing felt
02:08:55
a good challenge because they were coming to my teroora and in the UKS they have no psychologist. So was the pain in
02:09:02
the butt item. I was the unique unique spin-off. >> So yeah, I I took real pleasure being an
02:09:10
annoying element around the discussion table. >> So it was gold. >> God, it's been a hell of a life, eh?
02:09:18
>> And it's only just begun. >> Yeah. Yeah. Can I ask how old you are?
02:09:21
>> I'm 45. >> 45. >> Yeah. >> Yeah. What do you What do you see the
02:09:23
future bringing? Like the next 5 years, 15 years? >> Not sure. >> No.
02:09:28
>> Yeah. But it's going to be a life of challenge and service and excitement and
02:09:33
exploration. >> Yeah. >> I think the job to be done is to really continue to focus on human potential and
02:09:38
keep on building capabilities in that space for anyone that needs them. Yeah. H >> how's your mental health been through
02:09:46
your life with everything that you've gone through and everything you've
02:09:48
experienced? >> I I the only thing I perhaps suffer is excessive amount of energy and
02:09:53
enthusiasm for life. So, if there's something that has happened, I may have missed it because there's too many
02:09:58
exciting things on the outside. Um, but you know, I mean, it's it's if you if
02:10:03
you pay attention and leave life well, it's not always a, you know, skipping
02:10:07
through daisy fields with butterflies. It's, >> you know, but you just have to know. You
02:10:11
have to mind where your mind goes. You have to know when to stop and when to replenish. So,
02:10:15
>> yeah. Of of everything you've achieved, what makes you the proudest?
02:10:18
>> My son >> and my husband make me the proudest. Yeah. The amazing humans. And I don't
02:10:23
think I've achieved that. I've achieved I've not achieved them if that makes
02:10:28
sense. >> But having these um awesome characters in my life and actually having a
02:10:35
ridiculously stable and enormously rich pool of amazing friends. I have no idea why they keep keep me, but I've got an
02:10:42
incredible group of friends and I'm the most unpredictable uh satellite dish
02:10:47
ever. Like I pop in and out of their lives all the time. So I'm insanely proud of that. Why why do you why do you
02:10:53
say self-deprecating things like that? Is that your Kiwi side or is that the Bulgarian side saying things like I have
02:10:58
no no idea why they keep me? >> I mean like you know normally if you have amazing people and friends, they
02:11:03
kind of want you to be to consistently display commitment and availability and I'm I I I'd like to. It's in my mind but
02:11:10
I'm physically unable to do it because I've just been all over the show.
02:11:13
>> You're busy. A certain chapter of your life right now. >> Yeah. Yeah.
02:11:17
>> What would you say your best and worst habits are? probably the same thing.
02:11:22
>> Um the habit of thinking there's there's more there's more in my tank is the best
02:11:28
thing and my worst thing. I don't >> Wow. >> Do you know what I mean?
02:11:32
>> It's funny. I you know you know Sir Steve Hansen, you know the former I had
02:11:36
him on the podcast and he's he's got a theory uh that someone's um greatest
02:11:40
strength is usually their greatest weakness as well. >> Ah okay. >> Yeah. Which is exactly what you just
02:11:44
said. >> Oh yeah. Okay. I feel validated then because >> Oh, don't feel he's a rugby coach. He's
02:11:49
not a psychologist. >> Well, I mean, you know, we could swap. >> You You probably just validated him if
02:11:55
anything. >> Yeah. >> Yeah. >> When was the last time you cried?
02:11:59
>> Uh, let me think. I mean, I I love a good cry. >> I sometimes when is it? I don't see this
02:12:08
is the thing. I don't watch too much TV. Um typically it will be that kind of
02:12:13
situation you know >> but it will be cry of compassion or sometimes fury especially as I observe.
02:12:21
So my thing is anything that squashes human potential or reduces the ability of an individual to live life to the
02:12:27
fullness of the capabilities and if I can't do anything about it infuriates me
02:12:30
and it makes me sad and so that's my thing that's my trigger. If I see anything that suppresses or reduces
02:12:37
any to be fair, animals, uh, humans, anything that causes undue pain, >> it's my trigger. And then I get
02:12:46
>> compassion. >> Compassion. >> Yeah. >> What are you most afraid of?
02:12:51
>> Uh, life life of meaningless uh meandering. >> That's what I'm most afraid of. You know
02:12:58
what I mean? Because there's quite a lot of good stuff to be done. >> And not just to be done. And I'm not I'm
02:13:03
not saying that I'm in some way useful in trying to do stuff, but to be done,
02:13:07
to be to be to be witnessed, to be experienced. >> That's my worst fear is
02:13:12
>> being lost in white noise. >> Well, you're certainly not getting lost
02:13:16
in the white noise, are you? You're getting [ __ ] done. >> You better be right about that.
02:13:21
>> Otherwise, I'll be miserable. >> Um, do you have any regrets?
02:13:25
>> Not yet. >> Not yet. >> Yeah. >> Touchwood. >> Touchwood.
02:13:30
>> Yeah. >> Yeah. Um, and say say um Jamie and Alex were in the next room.
02:13:36
>> What what three words would you like them to say behind your back? >> She rocks. Can it be two?
02:13:43
>> Yeah, you have to. Why use three when you only need two? >> Yeah.
02:13:47
>> Um, and are you proud of yourself? >> No. >> Come on. >> Why? I don't mean it in a humble way. I
02:13:53
mean, I genuinely have always felt like I've only just begun. I mean, what is
02:13:57
the right thing to do? I feel content with myself. I really love myself. I love that I uh I I get excited about
02:14:05
spending time in my company which is a great sign I reckon because I'm >> in your in your own company.
02:14:11
>> In my own company. Yeah. I'm I'm a massive extrovert but I really love my
02:14:14
thoughts as well. So to this morning when I was delayed with the beck traveling the canoes um I just realized
02:14:21
this is probably why I wasn't losing my mind being late that I um quite like my
02:14:26
thoughts and I was like oh how cool is that >> listening to music or just in silence.
02:14:31
>> Yeah definitely it was a lot of drum and bass involved that was matching my frustration. Yeah.
02:14:37
So, you mentioned um at the very beginning of the podcast, you talked about Jamie in the early days of your
02:14:41
courtship about him doing a motorcycle trip around Afghanistan and bringing you some stones. So, he's obviously like a
02:14:47
has the sort of loner gene as well. >> Yes. Yes, he does. >> How do you how do you navigate that as a
02:14:52
couple? >> From a distance. >> Oh, yeah. >> Is that the key to a successful
02:14:56
marriage? just avoiding it. No, >> we we do. Do do you know you know how you kind of go I can't believe it took
02:15:02
us so long, but you know how sometimes you're like you you think you're going
02:15:06
to you're going to have to be always together and have every dinner together
02:15:10
and go to sleep together at 9:30. We've got completely different circadian cycles and preferences for life. I get
02:15:16
mega excited in the evening. I love to do my research at night. I read some of the best articles, you know, research
02:15:21
articles at night. Jamie likes to conqu at 9:30 like a little old lady. And it's
02:15:25
okay. And it took us ages to go why don't we who said that we have to be like holding hands and be all bobbing
02:15:32
together through life. It's but it's the best. We give each other um incredible
02:15:36
level of support. We have profound level of trust. Jamie has incredible passion for skydiving. That's his space to be.
02:15:44
My stuff is travel. I dread the thought of being stopped or worrying about doing
02:15:48
some of the work I do because my husband might want me home. >> And that's not a common thing. But
02:15:53
everyone should afford each other if you have the privilege of love and partnership to see the other person as
02:16:02
someone who supports you in chasing your madness. I I think it's the greatest
02:16:06
thing. So we give each other space and that makes us want one another even more.
02:16:11
>> When when situations arrive as they do in all relationships, are you good at
02:16:15
yeah facing them front on or do you tend to like I'll deal with that another day?
02:16:19
>> Oh, it just depends. I mean, wouldn't it be great if we followed the book? No, we
02:16:22
we smash the book. We smash the book. We tear every page apart and then we stick
02:16:25
it back together. >> We're like, "Ah, that mattered. Let's try it again."
02:16:29
>> Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We're horrendously rebellious when it comes to the
02:16:32
recommendations. You know, Jamie rejects the stuff I offer and then he finds it in some sort of, I don't know, podcast.
02:16:37
He listens and he's like, "Oh, that thing is sad." You know, five years later, and he might
02:16:45
he may or may not give me credit and and that's the thing that kills me. And then
02:16:48
I have to get over my ego and then we talk about it. Yeah. I mean, come on. >> Is that right? He tries to [ __ ] on your
02:16:53
research, does he? >> He doesn't even hear it. He's like, as if you'd know. I'm like, yes, I do.
02:16:57
>> 25 years. There's a lot of degrees behind that thing, you know? But yeah.
02:17:02
>> Hey, this has been so great. I'm so pleased we connected to make this um
02:17:05
podcast happened. Uh this is one that's going to stick with me for a long time,
02:17:09
and I'm sure it's going to stick with anyone that listens to it or watches it
02:17:11
for a long time as well. You're so inspiring. >> Stop it. >> You're not good at it.
02:17:17
>> So you No, it's I think Yeah. Thank you so much. That genuinely means the world.
02:17:22
>> Yeah. Well, thank you so much for being a guest on my podcast and uh yeah, I
02:17:25
hope we remain friends after this. >> Yes, please. >> Love it. Thank you. Thank you. Thank
02:17:29
you.