00:00:06
Dave Wood. Woodsy, welcome to my
00:00:07
podcast. Woodsy.
00:00:10
Are you still called Woodsy? Uh, yeah.
00:00:12
Woody. Most people call me Woody. Mhm.
00:00:14
Actually, my old man's name, Michael
00:00:16
Wood. He was He's Everyone calls him
00:00:19
Woody, but that's just been now passed
00:00:21
down to me. So, either Dave or Woody.
00:00:23
It's great to have you on the podcast.
00:00:25
This is the first time we met for the
00:00:26
first time maybe like 10 minutes ago.
00:00:28
You pulled into the garage here at Pod
00:00:29
Lab. Um big white van, window down. I
00:00:32
think um it was AC/DC maybe back in
00:00:35
black that I heard screaming out and I
00:00:37
thought I'm going to jail with this guy.
00:00:39
Yeah. Well, I was telling you I was
00:00:41
stuck in the traffic for like an hour on
00:00:43
the Norwegian motorway and so I was just
00:00:45
playing my music playing my playlist the
00:00:47
whole way and I enjoyed that. What was
00:00:49
it? Was it Akada? That song? Yeah, it
00:00:52
was AC/DC back in black. But um yeah,
00:00:55
70s, 80s. Uh but yeah, I I found that
00:00:59
when I jumped on the Noise and motorway,
00:01:01
my mind was just working overtime,
00:01:03
thinking about the business and coming
00:01:05
here to do the podcast and then being
00:01:06
stuck in the traffic and you put your
00:01:07
music on and it's just you get in that
00:01:10
rhythm and it's like it's actually very
00:01:12
relaxing. But even in um bumper to
00:01:15
bumper traffic, are you are you still uh
00:01:16
calm under the pressure?
00:01:20
You know, it's so interesting like
00:01:22
because I'm working in, you know, I have
00:01:23
a workshop, two-day workshop that's
00:01:25
called calm under pressure. Big things
00:01:27
don't I can handle big things. You know,
00:01:29
working for 13, 14 years and as an
00:01:31
intensive care paramedic, you're
00:01:33
confronted with the gnarliest stuff you
00:01:35
could conjure up in your head is you're
00:01:36
repeatedly going to that those, you
00:01:39
know, often big things. It's like little
00:01:40
things that probably agitate me more.
00:01:43
But I've leared to, you know, like in
00:01:45
the traffic today. Yeah. Maybe back in
00:01:47
the day I would have been uptight and
00:01:48
agitated, but like I said, I just turn
00:01:50
the music on, do a bit of breathing, um,
00:01:52
and relax because I don't want to give
00:01:54
that my energy. Like especially running
00:01:55
a business, my energy is so important.
00:01:57
And so having that self-awareness and
00:01:59
self-regulation to be like, hey, you
00:02:01
know, what's the point? It's the same
00:02:04
thing as like I used to be that person
00:02:06
that someone pull in front of me in the
00:02:07
traffic. I was very reactive for a long
00:02:10
time. I had like a lot of anger. someone
00:02:12
to pull pull in front of me in the
00:02:13
traffic and I would get all uptight and
00:02:17
but now I can't even imagine that man. I
00:02:19
literally look back and I cannot imagine
00:02:22
um letting that rattle me.
00:02:25
You know I I was um I was exactly the
00:02:28
same and I've tried to do some sort of
00:02:30
self-examination or self-reflection,
00:02:32
whatever you want to call it, to figure
00:02:33
out why. And I wonder if it was like um
00:02:35
times in my life where I had anger
00:02:37
issues, if it was like mental health
00:02:38
related, you know what I mean? like I
00:02:40
was maybe depressed and I was just like
00:02:41
projecting it onto other people but yeah
00:02:43
now nothing phases me if so if if
00:02:45
someone's rude to me in traffic now I
00:02:47
almost have like a empathetic point of
00:02:49
view where I think [ __ ] they must have
00:02:50
some serious [ __ ] going on in their
00:02:52
lives it brings about well first thing
00:02:55
is I think for a lot of people anger is
00:02:58
a form of anxiety you know like anxiety
00:03:00
is built up tension how do you get rid
00:03:03
of that comes out in lots of different
00:03:04
ways for me I know now looking back that
00:03:06
that anger that I was carrying was
00:03:08
anxiety
00:03:10
um you know things that I'd gone through
00:03:11
in life that I didn't have the skills to
00:03:13
deal with. So I just shoved it right
00:03:14
back there. But it came out in all sorts
00:03:16
of ways and angle was one of them. And
00:03:18
then the other part of like what you're
00:03:20
talking about there is I I have
00:03:24
um my whole thing is now now
00:03:28
is I want to be respectful and kind to
00:03:31
everybody, right? Even if someone's
00:03:33
coming at me with something, I'm going
00:03:35
to I'm not going to react. I'm going to
00:03:37
be like, you know, why is the We never
00:03:39
know what I don't know what you're going
00:03:41
through. I don't know what the And
00:03:42
running this workshop, what you start
00:03:44
learning is that some people are going
00:03:45
through some gnarly stuff, man. And you
00:03:47
just can't see it. You know, I get
00:03:49
people in the workshop come up to me at
00:03:50
the end of the workshop and tell me what
00:03:51
they're going through, and it's full on,
00:03:53
but I can't see that. Um, you know,
00:03:55
we're often very good at masking it. And
00:03:57
so, I just think, [ __ ] you hear it all
00:03:59
the time, just be kind to people, but
00:04:01
it's not even that hard. Um, yeah, it's
00:04:04
so true. you you never know what the um
00:04:06
what the weight anyone is anyone is
00:04:08
carrying, you know, or the or the might
00:04:11
not even be anything. Yeah. It could be
00:04:12
grief or something like that, but you
00:04:14
just don't know what someone's going
00:04:15
through. Compassion is a good way to go.
00:04:18
And you only have to look at it from a
00:04:20
practical standpoint. We all go through
00:04:22
something. We all that's like the part
00:04:25
of life, man, is you we all go through
00:04:27
the fire, right? And it's just we go
00:04:29
through that fire at different times in
00:04:31
our lives. And and and
00:04:34
so the other thing is, you know, when
00:04:36
when a lot of these patterns or or um
00:04:39
behaviors that people are
00:04:41
exhibiting is because they don't know
00:04:42
how to deal with what they've been
00:04:44
through and that and that is like that
00:04:46
outward reflection, whether it be um
00:04:47
yeah, like what we talked about, anger
00:04:49
or confrontation or um whatever it might
00:04:52
be. And it's just understanding that
00:04:54
often just taking a step back and
00:04:56
meeting that person with calm and
00:04:58
understanding can like it's the way to
00:05:01
go. So I thought this podcast today
00:05:04
um a bit of thought goes into how we how
00:05:07
we structure it. So I thought the the
00:05:08
first half could be um yeah what you've
00:05:11
learned and how um people listening to
00:05:13
this or watching this can apply these
00:05:16
tools, tricks, tips, techniques,
00:05:18
whatever you want to call them into
00:05:19
their own life. And then the second bit
00:05:20
we'll um dig into the Dave Wood story.
00:05:23
Who is uh Dave Wood before and what led
00:05:25
you to this um come under pressure
00:05:27
thing? Um but first of all uh what is um
00:05:31
integrated training and what is come
00:05:32
under pressure and what is Woody's
00:05:34
movement workshop? Are they are they all
00:05:37
the same thing? They're all related.
00:05:38
People still it's called my company is
00:05:40
called integrated training. Actually
00:05:42
it's the trade name is WMW integrated
00:05:45
training. But when I first started this
00:05:48
business going back six, seven years
00:05:50
ago, um I was working as an intensive
00:05:52
care paramedic full-time and I'd been
00:05:55
through chronic pain and as part of that
00:05:57
getting myself out of chronic pain was
00:05:58
about learning more about my body, about
00:06:00
what was going on. And that started for
00:06:02
me a deep dive into better understanding
00:06:06
my own physical and mental state. And as
00:06:08
part of that, I went deep into um
00:06:10
strength and conditioning, deep into
00:06:12
trigger point myofascial release, deep
00:06:13
into anti-inflammatory food, uh sleep
00:06:16
hygiene. So I went and uh breathing as
00:06:19
well and going deep into all of these
00:06:22
things, I became like really interested
00:06:24
about human health and performance. And
00:06:27
I already had that background in health
00:06:28
science. And so I started as I was
00:06:31
working full-time on the ambulance, I
00:06:32
started seeing clients who were also
00:06:34
dealing with um pain and uh muscle
00:06:38
imbalance. And um I started building a
00:06:41
little bit of a client base. And then it
00:06:43
got to the point where I was like I'd
00:06:45
built a big enough client base that I
00:06:46
could go part-time on the ambulance um
00:06:48
and work part-time in my business, which
00:06:51
was basically just a shed in my
00:06:53
backyard. And I called my business
00:06:55
Woody's Movement Workshop. That's where
00:06:56
it started. And um you know as the
00:07:00
business evolved um I went down a whole
00:07:04
another a whole different avenue which
00:07:06
is um mental skill development. I became
00:07:10
very interested initially in the clients
00:07:12
that I was working with. I was seeing a
00:07:13
lot of imbalance for example in their
00:07:15
breathing secondary to um stress and I
00:07:19
guess lack of self-awareness and
00:07:21
self-regulation. And so I started
00:07:23
working in that space of actually um
00:07:25
breathing development uh as a tool for
00:07:28
mental skill development and then it's
00:07:30
just I guess elaborated and grown from
00:07:32
there and um and then so yeah changed
00:07:35
the business to integrated training but
00:07:37
everyone still calls it Woody's movement
00:07:38
workshop
00:07:40
and so what's come under pressure? Come
00:07:42
under pressure is like a a a small micro
00:07:45
workshop that you do that comes under
00:07:46
integrated training. Yeah. come under
00:07:48
pressure. So working um in the ambulance
00:07:53
in the health sector I became frustrated
00:07:55
with how we were dealing with mental
00:07:56
health and working in the health sector
00:07:59
you can see I mean you're you're living
00:08:02
in it you can see the flaws and rather
00:08:05
than become I was always like man I can
00:08:07
either
00:08:08
just you know moan about this or I can
00:08:11
do something about it and so I was like
00:08:12
man I'm going to start my own workshop
00:08:15
around mental skill development I'm
00:08:17
going to call it calm under pressure um
00:08:18
the skills of stress. And uh my
00:08:22
challenge was I I guess like the
00:08:24
challenge that I set for myself was I'm
00:08:26
going to make the best mental skill
00:08:28
development workshop in the world. And
00:08:30
I'm going to bring people in and I'm
00:08:31
going to take them through two two days,
00:08:33
a transformative two days where we teach
00:08:35
them the knowledge, the skills, and the
00:08:37
practical applications of um of mental
00:08:41
skill development. Um it's a very
00:08:43
transformative workshop and it delves
00:08:45
deep into your own subconscious patterns
00:08:47
of behavior. So, it's about taking a
00:08:49
step back, getting the mental clarity to
00:08:51
be able to put your thumb on on some of
00:08:52
your own patterns of behavior that are
00:08:54
holding you back. I mean, people hold
00:08:55
these patterns their entire lives. The
00:08:57
beautiful thing about being a human
00:08:58
being is we can change, but you've got
00:09:00
to identify the pattern, right? How do
00:09:02
we create a new pattern and then train
00:09:04
and ingrain that pattern and we use um
00:09:07
um uh uh mindset things to be able to do
00:09:10
that. So, basically developing your
00:09:11
mindset and then you train a new pattern
00:09:13
that becomes the subconscious or
00:09:14
hardwired pattern of behavior. It's not
00:09:16
that difficult. Well, change is
00:09:18
difficult because we tend to tether our
00:09:20
identity to these patterns of behavior.
00:09:22
So, that's one part of the workshop. But
00:09:25
I think that like a key thing to because
00:09:28
we all talk about like me, it's about
00:09:30
the mental game. It's 90 90% metal
00:09:33
mental, 10% physical. It's not it's 100%
00:09:36
physical and 100% mental. And we have to
00:09:37
invest in both. And the mind and the
00:09:39
body are not separate. You know if you
00:09:41
if you are psychologically agitated, if
00:09:42
you have a thought come in that
00:09:44
stimulates thinking, you tie emotion to
00:09:45
it, um and that thought is negative and
00:09:49
that thinking is negative, it will have
00:09:50
a physiological effect in that. It will
00:09:52
activate your body's stress response.
00:09:54
You will get a release of adrenaline.
00:09:55
Adrenaline increases your heart rate,
00:09:57
increases your blood pressure, you're
00:09:59
now in a physiological physiologically
00:10:01
stress state based on what's going on up
00:10:03
here. So they're not separate. And it's
00:10:05
about getting people to understand that
00:10:06
and giving them really simple, easy
00:10:09
skills that can be applied in the heat
00:10:11
of the moment or, you know, under stress
00:10:13
and pressure to give you more control.
00:10:15
But it's also about getting people to
00:10:17
understand that you actually have to
00:10:18
train to be calm under pressure. Um,
00:10:20
yeah. So, yeah, it feels like how long
00:10:22
has been going now? Three years, four
00:10:24
years? Uh, I'm terrible with time.
00:10:27
Honestly, like I was thinking the other
00:10:28
day, we've been doing this workshop for
00:10:30
a couple of years and then my girlfriend
00:10:32
said, "No, you've been doing it for four
00:10:33
years." So yeah, 3 4 years I think we've
00:10:35
been and it feels like um there's this
00:10:38
real sort of like buzz or hype or hum
00:10:41
around it. Maybe that's a result of some
00:10:43
of the high performance you've had on it
00:10:44
who we'll get into but so when someone
00:10:46
comes along to a come under pressure
00:10:48
weekend workshop um what happens run us
00:10:51
through it. Yeah. So,
00:10:53
um, a big part
00:10:56
of our workshop is about being in
00:11:00
nature. And so, we run this workshop out
00:11:02
at Phar Beach on the west coast of New
00:11:03
Zealand, which is this crazy melting pot
00:11:06
of energy. You got the Wit Takari
00:11:07
Ranges. You got the Black Iron Sand,
00:11:09
which is, you know, been deposited along
00:11:11
the along the shores millions of years
00:11:13
ago from volcanic activity in Tanaki.
00:11:15
And then you've got the Tasman Sea. I've
00:11:17
been all over the world. The Tasman Sea
00:11:18
is one of the wildest oceans. and and
00:11:20
that coast is it's just well there's
00:11:23
even a reality show Pa Rescue. Yeah.
00:11:25
Yeah. And
00:11:27
um it's this this but I don't know like
00:11:31
getting people in that environment and
00:11:34
getting them to understand that you can
00:11:36
tap into that energy is a a very
00:11:38
powerful thing especially when you're
00:11:40
getting people that are turned up who
00:11:41
are um at a point in their lives where
00:11:43
they've tried a bunch of things and
00:11:45
they're looking for answers and and
00:11:47
often the answers are right in front of
00:11:48
us and reconnecting with nature is such
00:11:50
an important part of balancing this
00:11:53
entire system. And so we teach them
00:11:54
that. That's the first thing we do in
00:11:55
the morning. And then we get in nature.
00:11:58
Um we take them, we run the sandunes, we
00:12:00
get up into the bush, we jump in the
00:12:01
ocean. And I tell you what, it takes
00:12:03
about 20 30 minutes of being in nature
00:12:06
to just strip away all the noise up
00:12:08
here. And that's when we get them
00:12:09
sharing. We get them in a group and we
00:12:10
get them sharing. And um people want to
00:12:12
talk, man. It's it's we get a lot of
00:12:14
guys in our workshop and people think
00:12:15
the guys don't want to talk. They want
00:12:16
to talk. You just got to create the
00:12:18
right environment. And so um in the
00:12:21
morning in the first morning of the car
00:12:22
under pressure workshop we start
00:12:23
bringing in these important themes
00:12:26
around how to better control your
00:12:28
physical and mental state um and what
00:12:31
that looks like. And then we test them.
00:12:32
We get them to run the dunes. And you
00:12:34
know from the outside looking in it's
00:12:35
just people running up and down the
00:12:36
dunes but we give them very specific
00:12:38
things to work on when they are under
00:12:40
pressure or when it becomes really
00:12:41
uncomfortable in the sandune. That's
00:12:43
about being able to control the thoughts
00:12:45
that are coming in. If you think about
00:12:47
you know thoughts and thinking are
00:12:48
different a thought comes in if you
00:12:49
react on that thought you start thinking
00:12:51
you tie emotion to it that dict takes
00:12:53
action and outcome so it becomes very
00:12:55
important to be able to regulate or
00:12:56
control your thoughts uh when you're
00:12:58
under pressure and there's only one
00:13:00
stress response. So the same stress
00:13:01
response that's activated when you're
00:13:03
under the pump in the sandjune is the
00:13:05
same stress response as when you're
00:13:06
getting in the ice bath at the end of
00:13:07
the first day is the same stress
00:13:09
response as when you're going to talk in
00:13:10
front of a group of people or someone
00:13:11
pulls in front of you in the traffic in
00:13:13
the car and you can get very good at
00:13:15
controlling a p at training a pattern of
00:13:17
control under stress and that's what we
00:13:19
do in the first uh morning of this
00:13:21
workshop and then yeah as as part of
00:13:23
that they'll end up later on in in a
00:13:25
classroom and we're talking about you
00:13:27
know even if I ask you what is like
00:13:31
culturally what is our perception of
00:13:33
stress is do we think stress is good or
00:13:36
bad like if you go and Google stress oh
00:13:38
it's got a yeah it's all bad it's all
00:13:40
bad stress is just your body's natural
00:13:44
response to threat challenge and demand
00:13:46
that's all it is and if you think about
00:13:48
how you create a robust strong body you
00:13:51
you put yourself in stressful situations
00:13:53
you go and exercise you go and lift
00:13:55
weights everybody's system needs stress
00:13:57
to create robustnessm Stress is not bad.
00:14:01
And this is what we teach on on the
00:14:03
workshop and with all of my clients.
00:14:04
Stress is not the problem. The problem
00:14:06
is the absence of disciplined
00:14:08
intermittent recovery. And if you don't
00:14:10
get that right and you're burning it in
00:14:11
the red all the time, that's where we
00:14:13
start to experience signs and symptoms
00:14:15
of chronic stress.
00:14:18
What's the talking thing that you're
00:14:19
talking about early on? So, is it like
00:14:21
um like a vulnerability exchange or what
00:14:24
is it? You know, when you said you got
00:14:25
everyone and they they get talking. Why
00:14:27
do you do that feel early on? It would
00:14:28
make sense, wouldn't it, towards the end
00:14:30
when everyone sort of knows each other
00:14:31
and there's a bit of a connection
00:14:34
because sharing is so important, man.
00:14:36
We're we're um we have all these things
00:14:39
going on with us and we're so scared to
00:14:41
share it because it makes you
00:14:43
vulnerable, right? Or or we think it's
00:14:46
um the stuff that we're experiencing is
00:14:47
a weakness. And when you get in a circle
00:14:49
and you go around and share, I don't
00:14:51
know, maybe one of your weaknesses or
00:14:52
something that you're struggling with,
00:14:54
everyone sitting there is going, "Oh, I
00:14:55
do that. I experienced that." The three
00:14:57
things that we fear most, fear of
00:14:59
failure, fear of letting people down,
00:15:01
and fear of what other people might
00:15:02
think. And those three fears hold us
00:15:04
back our entire lives. Fear of failure.
00:15:07
If you think about these kids that are
00:15:09
growing up now in New Zealand, man, like
00:15:10
the athletes have a lot of the um these
00:15:13
athletes, you know, they have so many of
00:15:15
the um important things we can learn
00:15:19
about mental health in New Zealand
00:15:21
because what happens when an athlete
00:15:22
loses? Oh, we come down on them. Yeah.
00:15:25
Well, the media does or social some
00:15:27
idiots on social media break them. We
00:15:28
pull them down. And so these kids, these
00:15:31
young kids are looking at that. Oh, when
00:15:32
you fail, this is what happens. Well, it
00:15:35
subconsciously this creates a pattern of
00:15:38
I don't want to expose myself to
00:15:40
challenge because if I fail, this is
00:15:42
what happens. And so we we breed this
00:15:44
culture of fear of
00:15:46
failure. And um you have fear of
00:15:49
failure. I have fear of failure. We all
00:15:52
have fear of failure. You wouldn't be
00:15:53
human if you didn't. What I've learned,
00:15:55
one of the key things I've learned in
00:15:57
terms of my own self-development um and
00:16:00
and personal growth and investing in
00:16:01
into all of the stuff is
00:16:05
that we all experience anxiety. We all
00:16:09
experience fear, self-doubt, imposttor
00:16:12
syndrome. I used to think that that
00:16:14
stuff you had to push it away. Now I
00:16:15
understand that you embrace it. They're
00:16:17
not bad. It's what you do with it that
00:16:19
matters. You know, the thought you bring
00:16:20
it in. You change your language. You
00:16:22
shift your perspective. you respond
00:16:24
using your creative mind. Um, but I've
00:16:27
had to learn all this stuff. I didn't
00:16:29
have those skills when I was a kid. I
00:16:30
went through stuff when I was a kid that
00:16:32
I didn't have the skills to deal with.
00:16:33
So, I just chucked it all in the back
00:16:35
and I ran away from it. But, but the
00:16:37
problem is that it come we talked about
00:16:39
it starts coming out in all these
00:16:41
patterns of behavior and then we tether
00:16:43
that to our identity and the idea of
00:16:45
change is very difficult.
00:16:47
Yeah. Yeah. out out of all the stuff you
00:16:49
you said there, one thing that um struck
00:16:51
a chord with me is um you the fear of
00:16:53
what other people think. And I think for
00:16:54
me for a large part of my life that's
00:16:56
something that held me back and it's um
00:16:58
only been quite liberating and only in
00:16:59
the recent sort of like past maybe 5
00:17:01
years that you realize other other
00:17:03
people aren't thinking about you as much
00:17:05
as what you think they are. Everyone is
00:17:07
so inward thinking, right? So and it's
00:17:09
quite a liberating thought when you
00:17:10
realize that.
00:17:12
Yeah. People are not thinking about you
00:17:14
as much as what you think they are.
00:17:17
Well, people are judging you. Yeah.
00:17:20
Yeah. And and um you
00:17:23
know, I tell you, it's that whole thing
00:17:26
of um surround yourself by the right
00:17:29
people, right? And and that's been a big
00:17:31
thing for me is um you know, my mates,
00:17:34
uh my family, the the close people
00:17:36
around me. Um they're the people that
00:17:38
really matter. And if you put yourself
00:17:40
out there, like you've had to put
00:17:41
yourself out there. we've had to create
00:17:42
this podcast, you know, and and that
00:17:44
brings about its own challenge cuz
00:17:46
people are going to say stuff and some
00:17:48
people are going to like it, some people
00:17:49
aren't, and you're reading that that
00:17:50
stuff and and so if you you know, and
00:17:53
that's just some random person who's
00:17:55
making a comment and
00:17:57
and if you're going to put yourself out
00:17:59
there, you're going to get, you know,
00:18:01
you're going to get pushed down and
00:18:02
there's going to be people that are
00:18:03
going to um say stuff about you and all
00:18:05
the rest of it. None of it, you know,
00:18:07
none of none of it really matters, does
00:18:09
it? Mhm.
00:18:11
But but it affects us. It affects us.
00:18:13
And if if it didn't affect you, um then
00:18:16
you wouldn't be human. But it's what you
00:18:18
do with it. All of the stuff is what you
00:18:20
do with it. And um you know what you're
00:18:22
talking about is as you've got older and
00:18:24
you've experienced all this stuff,
00:18:25
you've worked it out as you've gone
00:18:26
along. Yeah. But it takes a while. It
00:18:28
takes a while to get to that level of
00:18:30
comfort in yourself. Yeah. And I don't
00:18:32
think you you ever you're never perfect
00:18:35
at it. That's the that's the thing.
00:18:37
There's always that stuff that comes in
00:18:38
that affects you that shouldn't. Um, and
00:18:41
again, that's just human, man. But also,
00:18:44
if one if one of your haters or
00:18:46
detractors says like, "Oh, [ __ ]
00:18:48
Dave's doing this come under pressure
00:18:50
thing. Won't work. I give it six
00:18:51
months." And then you buy into that and
00:18:53
you you cave after 6 months, then they
00:18:55
go, "I knew it." So, the best thing you
00:18:58
can do to flip them the middle finger
00:19:00
and um to make yourself feel good is to
00:19:02
push through and say, "Fuck you." And
00:19:04
make it a success. Yeah. I think the
00:19:06
best thing you can do is not focus on
00:19:08
anyone else but focus on yourself. And
00:19:11
the here's here's the the important
00:19:13
thing, Dom, is
00:19:15
like if you have a clear purpose and you
00:19:20
have a clear vision and you have clear
00:19:22
values and you have set goals, it
00:19:24
doesn't matter what gets in your way.
00:19:25
You either push through it or go around
00:19:27
it. But a lot of people that that's like
00:19:28
mental skill 101, values, vision,
00:19:30
purpose, goal setting. We often just
00:19:33
hear that stuff and we're like, "Oh,
00:19:34
yeah." But but when you actually get it
00:19:36
out of your head and write it down and
00:19:37
and you've established your
00:19:39
values, you know, your vision, your
00:19:41
goals, your purpose, that's like the
00:19:43
guywise. That's the thing that keeps you
00:19:45
keeps you on track and it makes a
00:19:46
massive difference, man. And I didn't do
00:19:48
this stuff until probably about 5 years
00:19:50
ago. Write out my values and my purpose
00:19:53
and my vision and my goals and it has
00:19:55
just been a gamecher, man. Because
00:19:57
because all that stuff all that stuff on
00:19:59
the um peripheries just becomes white
00:20:01
noise. M you what what are they in terms
00:20:04
of your your values and what are the
00:20:06
like cornerstones? Well, I tell you one
00:20:08
of my interesting values is um uh
00:20:12
selfish. I'm selfish. That's one of my
00:20:14
values. And and sounds like a
00:20:15
controversial one. Yeah. Well, again, we
00:20:18
have these words, right? And and we tie
00:20:20
a negative connotation to these words.
00:20:22
What's the opposite of being selfish?
00:20:23
It's people pleasing. And when you're
00:20:25
selfish and you invest in yourself ahead
00:20:28
of everyone else, your physical and
00:20:30
mental health, and you put that ahead of
00:20:31
everyone else, what happens is that
00:20:34
you're way more robust and you're way
00:20:36
more um you're way more capable to help
00:20:40
other people. And life is about helping
00:20:42
other people, right? So this idea of
00:20:43
being selfish is like, oh, it's all
00:20:45
about you. No, it's not. It's about
00:20:47
investing in me so I can help the people
00:20:49
around me. and and and um yes, I have
00:20:53
um you know, one of my values is
00:20:55
courage. You know, the the the courage
00:20:58
to try um even even when I'm lacking
00:21:00
confidence, it's the courage to put
00:21:02
myself there even when I don't feel
00:21:04
ready, when I have um apprehension,
00:21:06
tension, overwhelm, anxiety, the courage
00:21:08
to put myself in the fire because that's
00:21:10
where all the the learning happens, you
00:21:12
know, like I I remember back to giving
00:21:14
my first keynote talk. was in front of
00:21:15
like 3 400 people and for weeks
00:21:17
beforehand, man, I was so overwhelmed by
00:21:20
stress and pressure. It was the fear of
00:21:23
the unknown, the fear of failing. I even
00:21:25
visualized myself getting up there and
00:21:27
[ __ ] it all up. And um you know, even
00:21:29
before I went up to talk, there was a
00:21:31
guy that came out. He was a
00:21:32
neuroscientist from Australia and I
00:21:34
watched his talk. Can you can you think
00:21:35
about imagine what I might have been
00:21:37
thinking? Yeah. His presentation's way
00:21:40
better than mine. Who am I? Dave from P.
00:21:41
This is a neuroscientist. And I'm just
00:21:43
in my head in this moment, right? And um
00:21:46
I I use the skills, right, to be able to
00:21:48
get up there and smash it. But
00:21:53
um but I've lost my train of thought. Um
00:21:57
but it is like that whole um courage to
00:22:01
try, man, just to to put yourself out
00:22:03
there even when you're feeling all that
00:22:04
stuff. And now um having done lots of
00:22:08
keynotes since there, I'm searching for
00:22:09
that same feeling. I want that same
00:22:11
challenge and that same fear,
00:22:13
apprehension, tension. That's what I
00:22:15
want because that's where all the the
00:22:17
the growth happens. You you have the
00:22:19
courage to try and if you keep putting
00:22:21
yourself out there despite failure, you
00:22:23
become competent. And it's the
00:22:24
competence that leads to confidence.
00:22:26
Confidence is a skill you can train.
00:22:28
When I go into these situations, I don't
00:22:29
look for a feeling of confidence. I
00:22:31
understand that what I'm trying to do is
00:22:33
is just put myself there, feel
00:22:35
uncomfortable, and keep going back
00:22:37
there. And over time I create that that
00:22:39
competence which leads to um confidence.
00:22:42
Yeah. And I suppose your your two sort
00:22:44
of previous careers have led you to this
00:22:46
and we'll get to that later but through
00:22:47
your 20s you were like a lifeguard
00:22:49
around the world. Yeah. Um and through
00:22:51
your 30s as you've alluded to um an
00:22:53
intensive care paramedic.
00:22:55
Um what what sort of person comes to
00:22:58
like come under pressure? I I feel like
00:23:00
the people that really really really
00:23:01
really need it the most probably
00:23:03
wouldn't come. You know what I mean?
00:23:05
because of fear or whatever. I feel like
00:23:08
that people that come would they be sort
00:23:09
of a types? Um the people that come on
00:23:13
the
00:23:14
workshop fortunately tend to be
00:23:18
um
00:23:20
really cool high performing people. So
00:23:24
whether that be that they are a business
00:23:26
owner or a mom or a dad or um an athlete
00:23:29
or uh but they tend to be people that
00:23:33
are motivated to invest in their
00:23:35
physical and mental health and that's
00:23:37
the type of person we want and and we
00:23:40
don't I mean we take anybody right but
00:23:42
you got to be you got to be there for
00:23:44
the right reasons and um
00:23:48
yeah well I think we tend to get people
00:23:49
that are on this journey and maybe
00:23:52
they're they've tried tried a bunch of
00:23:54
things uh that haven't worked for
00:23:56
whatever reason and they're searching
00:23:58
for the next thing and then they come
00:23:59
across this workshop and it's like well
00:24:00
2 days of investing in uh mental skill
00:24:03
development I'll do that. Yeah, it's
00:24:05
easy. It's very quick in terms of like
00:24:08
an investment of time, isn't it? And
00:24:10
you've had some um like in incred let's
00:24:12
drop a few names here like um from the
00:24:15
UFC. You've had Israel, Kikarta, France.
00:24:18
Uh who else? Who else from the UFC? Um
00:24:21
yeah, a bunch of the um UFC boys. They
00:24:24
do our um rec recovery training, mental
00:24:28
skill development training during the
00:24:29
fight camps. We work with I work with
00:24:31
athletes across you know uh golf players
00:24:33
uh rugby league rugby uh football um
00:24:36
Peter Berling from team NZ Paul Cole
00:24:38
from one of the world's best squash
00:24:40
players. Yeah and um and uh what what
00:24:44
are they what are they looking for when
00:24:45
they when they reach out to you? uh
00:24:47
they're looking
00:24:49
for I think like this I think a lot of
00:24:53
the work that I am doing are not is not
00:24:56
so much
00:24:58
in the systems that these athletes are
00:25:01
training in and so they're looking um
00:25:04
right on the outskirts maybe um right
00:25:06
how do we get that 1% better uh and yeah
00:25:11
I think they look into it and they're
00:25:13
intrigued by what is this um but at the
00:25:15
end of the day it's actually very basic.
00:25:17
The work that I do is very very basic.
00:25:20
Um it I I I like to say it's it's simple
00:25:23
but it's not easy. And mental skill
00:25:25
development should be simple because the
00:25:28
moments when you have to apply this
00:25:30
stuff can be the difference between
00:25:31
winning and losing. And it's often when
00:25:33
you're cognitively overloaded, you're
00:25:35
physically under the pump and you need
00:25:37
to uh be able to pull on things that
00:25:41
give you more physical and mental
00:25:43
control in the heat of the moment. So
00:25:46
they should be simple but they have to
00:25:48
be practiced every day. Um I I like to I
00:25:51
mean this is like a huge part of this is
00:25:53
meditation. I don't use the word
00:25:54
meditation. I talk about um work that
00:25:57
improves your focus, your uh energy
00:25:59
control, um productivity. Um learn more
00:26:03
about the condition of your body and
00:26:04
mind. But yeah, we work with athletes
00:26:06
across the, you know, all sports and um
00:26:09
but I I don't
00:26:11
like I get just as much out of working
00:26:15
with the guy down the road who's dealing
00:26:16
with stress and pressure and and comes
00:26:18
to me with a challenge.
00:26:20
Um so yeah, but but all those all those
00:26:23
high performers that we mentioned from
00:26:25
different sports, like is there any sort
00:26:26
of one or two or even three things that
00:26:28
you can see they each have in common?
00:26:30
Yeah, man. This has been the great thing
00:26:33
like because I I feel sometimes I'm like
00:26:35
far out I'm learning more from these
00:26:36
guys than than they are from me.
00:26:39
And I think um what I see in the
00:26:43
athletes that are performing at a really
00:26:45
high level is unwavering
00:26:48
self-belief. Um even in the face of of
00:26:51
failure and setback, it's that
00:26:54
unwavering self-belief. Um and it's a
00:26:57
curiosity you have to have. you you know
00:26:59
curiosity is one of the hallmarks of
00:27:01
peak performance and if these athletes
00:27:03
end up in front of me they're curious
00:27:05
they want they want to know about this
00:27:06
stuff um and I think that's what makes
00:27:09
them so great uh you know those those
00:27:11
people that are operating at a really
00:27:12
high level and then they're open to um
00:27:16
the things that I am bringing which is
00:27:19
things like reconnecting with nature
00:27:20
meditation breathing uh development a
00:27:22
lot of these athletes aren't even
00:27:24
training um their respiratory system so
00:27:28
we like to break the body system down
00:27:29
into like really six body systems that
00:27:31
are integral for performance. There's 11
00:27:33
body systems in total. And one of those
00:27:35
body systems is the breathing system. So
00:27:37
if you ask yourself, how much time,
00:27:39
energy, and focus am I putting into
00:27:40
developing my breathing capacity,
00:27:42
strengthening my diaphragm, getting good
00:27:44
breathing mechanics, good rate control,
00:27:46
um being able to use my breathing to
00:27:48
elicit a calm state, uh because your
00:27:50
breathing is indirectly tethered to your
00:27:52
nervous system. When you slow your
00:27:53
breathing down, prolong the exhale, you
00:27:54
create more calming effect in your
00:27:56
nervous system. you can apply that in
00:27:57
really dynamic situations. And then the
00:28:00
other part of the breathing training is
00:28:01
um matching the intensity of your
00:28:04
breathing to the intensity of the
00:28:04
exercise which has a huge effect in
00:28:06
terms of endurance and mental focus. Um
00:28:10
so I like to ask them yeah how much time
00:28:12
and energy you putting into the system
00:28:14
because they often they come to me and
00:28:15
they're like yeah I want the the 1%. And
00:28:17
and most of them aren't training the
00:28:18
system. So there's much you're leaving
00:28:20
much more than 1% on the table. Yeah.
00:28:23
You know and and the other cool thing
00:28:24
about the breathing it is tethered to
00:28:26
every single emotional state. So if you
00:28:28
go into a situation you are feeling
00:28:30
fear, apprehension, tension, anxiety,
00:28:32
your breathing will reflect that. In
00:28:33
that your breathing will be faster, it
00:28:35
will be upper chest and it will be
00:28:37
shallow. By having the self-awareness to
00:28:40
identify that and take conscious control
00:28:41
of it, you are doing the opposite of
00:28:43
your body stress response. You are
00:28:44
sending very clear signals from your
00:28:46
body to your brain that you are in
00:28:47
control. So, man, this this
00:28:50
um probably going off on a tangent here
00:28:52
around the breathing stuff, but this is
00:28:54
this is the work that that we're we're
00:28:56
doing. And when I got into this, I was
00:28:58
like all of these athletes cuz I come
00:29:00
from a um um sporting performance
00:29:02
background. My background is in like you
00:29:04
said surf life saving 13 14 years as an
00:29:07
intensive care paramedic being exposed
00:29:08
to like constant stress and pressure and
00:29:11
having to like um you know make clinical
00:29:15
decisions under pressure and and I'm
00:29:17
bringing that learning over into this
00:29:18
environment and when I came into um
00:29:20
sporting performance I thought all this
00:29:22
stuff was like I thought this was like
00:29:24
101 breathing development meditation um
00:29:27
sleep hygiene all this stuff and then I
00:29:29
realized holy man this is like a lot of
00:29:31
this stuff isn't
00:29:32
A lot of these athletes are building on
00:29:34
top of unstable foundations and they're
00:29:37
getting right to the top based on just
00:29:38
pushing. And but when if you don't have
00:29:40
good foundations, you get to the top and
00:29:41
the cracks start appearing. And then the
00:29:43
idea of going back and getting this
00:29:44
stuff right, self-awareness,
00:29:46
self-regulation, stress control, getting
00:29:47
a better understanding of what's going
00:29:49
on on up here isn't on the radar. It's
00:29:51
like, right, how do we get better? We
00:29:52
push more. Problem is that that that's
00:29:54
what's kind of um Yeah. Well, I reckon
00:29:57
with um with this podcast, there'll be
00:29:59
two sorts of people. There'll be the the
00:30:00
very very slim pointy end that'll be
00:30:02
like, "Fuck, this sounds amazing. I got
00:30:04
to look into come under pressure and
00:30:06
maybe they'll follow through and come to
00:30:07
one of your workshops." Um, then
00:30:09
there'll be the majority of people that
00:30:11
um may like the sound of it, but they
00:30:13
won't do anything about it. But what are
00:30:15
what are some stuff that listeners or
00:30:17
viewers to this can do immediately to
00:30:18
help themselves? You know, you I say if
00:30:20
calm under pressure is like a 1enter or
00:30:22
a 5enter, what are some like bigger
00:30:24
chunks of the pie that they can do
00:30:25
immediately? Take radical ownership of
00:30:27
your own physical and mental health and
00:30:29
don't rely on anyone else. We need the
00:30:30
specialists, we need the doctors, we
00:30:32
need all these people, but never at the
00:30:34
expense of taking radical ownership of
00:30:36
your own physical and mental health and
00:30:38
investing in it every day. This is the
00:30:39
vehicle that's got to get you through
00:30:40
hard times. So what happens is if you
00:30:42
don't look after this thing, if you
00:30:43
don't invest into it, when you go
00:30:45
through the hard hard times, this is
00:30:47
what you reflect back on. And if this
00:30:49
isn't healthy, that's where people get
00:30:51
lost. What's radical ownership? Radical
00:30:53
ownership is
00:30:55
um radical ownership for me is exactly
00:30:59
what I said. Not relying on anyone else.
00:31:02
Understanding that we need people around
00:31:04
around us to support us, but not relying
00:31:07
on that and investing back into your
00:31:10
physical and mental health as a
00:31:11
priority. I like to um explain it as
00:31:14
imagine if you had one car to last a
00:31:16
lifetime. How much you'd look after that
00:31:17
car? Keep the tires pumped up. You'd
00:31:18
keep it waxed and polished. You'd know
00:31:20
everything about the engine. Well, you
00:31:21
only have one body to last a lifetime.
00:31:23
And what I saw in the ambulance service
00:31:25
that really shocked me into action was
00:31:26
people that were trapped in their bodies
00:31:28
for the last 20, 30, 40 years of their
00:31:31
lives because they hadn't looked after
00:31:33
the thing.
00:31:35
So, yeah, that that's um taking radical
00:31:38
ownership for me is just doing the work
00:31:39
like and understanding that
00:31:42
um and it's not even that difficult, you
00:31:44
know, it's just doing doing the small
00:31:45
things every day like um well, eating
00:31:47
better, exercising. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah,
00:31:50
exactly. Like, you know, the physical
00:31:52
side of it, exercising, we know that
00:31:54
like exercise has such a profound effect
00:31:56
on your mental health, you know, getting
00:31:58
in nature, having having a connection
00:31:59
with nature is so important, man. Um,
00:32:02
and we're designed to be in nature all
00:32:04
the time, you know, and and that's being
00:32:06
in nature sets our circadian rhythm. It
00:32:08
balances our nervous system. Um, it
00:32:10
creates mental clarity. All the good
00:32:12
stuff's there. But I talk a lot about
00:32:14
reconnecting with nature. And um a big
00:32:16
part of that for me is I want to raise
00:32:18
the consciousness around looking after
00:32:21
that thing. And when you have a
00:32:22
relationship, a deep connection with
00:32:24
nature, you start being much more aware
00:32:26
about looking after it because if we if
00:32:28
we mess that thing up, we're gone.
00:32:32
Thanks for that's such a boring answer.
00:32:33
I was I was um I don't know. I was
00:32:35
thinking it was going to be like um ice
00:32:36
baths or meditation or box breathing or
00:32:38
something like that, but very simple,
00:32:41
isn't it? It is. And the the um example
00:32:43
you use about a car is a very good one
00:32:45
because I think um a lot of people,
00:32:46
maybe men in particular, I don't know,
00:32:48
probably treat their their car better
00:32:49
than what they do their own their own
00:32:51
body in terms of regular servicing and
00:32:53
things like that. Yeah. Well, you said
00:32:55
there it's simple. It's simple, but it's
00:32:57
not easy. And it's not easy because
00:32:58
we're so busy and we sacrifice our own
00:33:01
physical mental health all the time and
00:33:05
we're um burning it in the red, you
00:33:08
know. How sorry, how do you mean? Well,
00:33:10
you think about when we talk about
00:33:11
stress, don't think of high level
00:33:13
stress. Just think of the busyiness of
00:33:14
your life. You've got to get up in the
00:33:16
morning. You got to get in the car. You
00:33:17
got to sit in traffic. You got to go to
00:33:18
work. You got to meet deadlines. You got
00:33:19
financial stress, psychosocial stress,
00:33:21
physical stress, mental stress, the
00:33:22
chemical load of food. We're not
00:33:23
designed to be doing what we're doing
00:33:24
nowadays. We haven't our brains haven't
00:33:26
evolved much in 5 6 thousand years.
00:33:29
We're still very primal, right? And um
00:33:32
this it's this constant busyness and the
00:33:34
stimulus. Even if you think about the
00:33:36
phone, the constant stimulus, the
00:33:38
multitasking, it's cognitively
00:33:40
overloaded and it's having all of these
00:33:42
um knock-on
00:33:44
effects that I think a lot of people
00:33:46
aren't able to to draw the dots. Mhm.
00:33:50
And
00:33:51
um part of this whole thing I think is
00:33:54
being able to stand back and I think
00:33:59
it's all first of all it's realizing
00:34:00
that we're actually addicted to stress
00:34:03
because you think about in your day when
00:34:05
you find a quiet space in your day what
00:34:06
do you do
00:34:09
I don't know pick up my phone there you
00:34:11
go you pick up the phone because your
00:34:14
brain is craving more stimulus the brain
00:34:16
just recognizes patterns you know and if
00:34:18
the pattern is to burning it in the red
00:34:20
all the time. Adrenaline is addictive.
00:34:23
Don't think of high level stress. So
00:34:24
when we you know back when you're a kid
00:34:26
and you find a quiet space, you know
00:34:28
what did you do? You allowed your mind
00:34:31
to wander off and it would you'd come up
00:34:34
with an idea and you'd bring that idea
00:34:35
and you'd use the creative part of your
00:34:37
brain to come up with a game or
00:34:38
whatever. Nowadays we we don't that that
00:34:40
void that we have that quiet place we
00:34:42
fill it with more stimulus and then in
00:34:44
the evenings what are we doing? We you
00:34:46
know when when our bodies are supposed
00:34:48
to be slowing down and the pineal glands
00:34:50
supposed to be releasing melatonin we
00:34:52
are putting more stimulus into our
00:34:55
brains and that is activating your
00:34:57
body's stress response and that is uh
00:34:59
adrenaline release from your adrenal
00:35:00
glands. So we're going you know 180°
00:35:03
against how we're designed to um to sync
00:35:05
in with our you know natural 24-hour
00:35:08
cycle. And it's a massive problem, man.
00:35:10
Like I was out um checking my mail the
00:35:12
other day and I just looked down the
00:35:14
road and there's this kid that had
00:35:15
jumped off the bus and he was walking up
00:35:16
the road. I was watching him looking at
00:35:18
his phone. He walked into the back of a
00:35:19
parked car and it's like, you know, like
00:35:22
I'm so glad I grew up in a in a time
00:35:25
where we didn't have um phones and we
00:35:27
were like, you know, like growing up out
00:35:29
of
00:35:30
Phanrush, we were in the surf and and we
00:35:33
never had that
00:35:34
um you know, that uh constantly being on
00:35:37
the phone. But even myself, I find that
00:35:39
like I have to have really strict rules
00:35:41
and regulations around that thing
00:35:42
because it can become just an extension
00:35:44
of your arm. I I'm I'm very guilty of
00:35:47
that. I know I've got um an incredibly
00:35:49
toxic relationship with technology. Um
00:35:51
one thing that's maybe worth worth
00:35:52
highlighting which I really like about
00:35:53
you is um you're you're you're not
00:35:55
you're no monk yourself. Like um last
00:35:58
night we were messaging each other and
00:35:59
uh it was Monday night and you were
00:36:01
having a whiskey at home. So you're
00:36:03
you're not one of these people that's
00:36:04
just doing, you know, all this wholesome
00:36:08
stuff and saying, you know, live live a
00:36:10
live a Spartan lifestyle. Like you you
00:36:11
do have good balance in your life. Oh
00:36:14
man, I you eat some [ __ ] food as well,
00:36:17
man. I tell you what, this this is where
00:36:20
we when we get into like holistic
00:36:24
health and self- betterment and personal
00:36:27
growth.
00:36:29
Um we tend to think that it's yeah, you
00:36:33
have to eat healthy and you have to
00:36:34
exercise every day and you got to be
00:36:36
meditating and it's just not the
00:36:38
reality. The reality is like even for
00:36:40
myself, I'm I'm sometimes I just burn it
00:36:42
in the red for a couple of weeks cuz I'm
00:36:43
busy in the business and I eat [ __ ] food
00:36:45
and I'm like, you know, I fall away from
00:36:47
my um you know, my routines. But it
00:36:51
doesn't need to be perfect and it's
00:36:52
never going to be perfect. You're never
00:36:54
going to be get the balance right
00:36:55
between stress and recovery, the red and
00:36:57
the blue. The the way that life designed
00:36:59
now is that we spend much more time in
00:37:00
the red. But that's why these active
00:37:02
recovery rituals that I have in my day
00:37:04
are so important because they improve
00:37:06
your stress tolerance and they um they
00:37:08
improve your energy and they help you
00:37:10
especially when you're going through the
00:37:12
hard times to be able to fall back on a
00:37:13
toolbox that you have to be able to um
00:37:17
you know um balance that stress with the
00:37:20
recovery. But yeah, man, I'm not far
00:37:22
out. I love having a beer. I love
00:37:23
partying.
00:37:25
Um that's I grew up in that environment.
00:37:28
Is it like like an 8020 rule for you? a
00:37:30
9010 rule. No, it's nothing like that.
00:37:32
It's just live life and enjoy yourself,
00:37:34
expose yourself to challenge and most of
00:37:36
the time eat healthy food and and you
00:37:38
know do a little bit of meditation and
00:37:40
exercise and this is like this isn't it
00:37:42
doesn't have to be like it's just
00:37:44
enjoyable, right? This is all this all
00:37:46
this stuff is like it doesn't if we
00:37:47
create too much I have to do this and I
00:37:49
have to do that. It's not sustainable.
00:37:52
Yeah. I think it starts to feel too hard
00:37:53
for some people if you listen to like um
00:37:56
a Huberman podcast or Dr. Peter Artier
00:37:59
and it just feels too hard. It's like I
00:38:01
need to cut everything out. It's too
00:38:02
hard to get from where I am to where to
00:38:04
where they expect me to be. But yeah,
00:38:06
what what you're suggesting seems very
00:38:09
achievable. Yeah, exactly. Well,
00:38:12
um you know, I'll give you an example.
00:38:15
Like I I do strength and conditioning
00:38:16
every day, but I don't I'm not in the
00:38:19
gym for 45 minutes. I do like 20
00:38:22
minutes. And some days I'm really busy.
00:38:24
I just do one exercise, you know? I'll
00:38:25
just do walking lunges. take me five
00:38:27
minutes, but I it keeps me in that
00:38:29
routine. And then I love having a pie.
00:38:31
So what? You know, I love having a beer,
00:38:34
but predominantly I eat food that's um
00:38:37
cuz I understand that the chemical load
00:38:39
of the food that I'm put the digestive
00:38:41
system is one of the body system is the
00:38:42
body system that uses the most amount of
00:38:44
energy. So if I'm shoveling crap into my
00:38:46
mouth, it's got to get from my mouth
00:38:47
through my esophagus, my stomach, my
00:38:49
large intestine, small intestine, and
00:38:50
out my ass. It's going to use a lot of
00:38:51
energy if I'm just shoveling [ __ ] in
00:38:53
there. And so I understand that like if
00:38:55
I want to have good energy, I better put
00:38:57
good food on. And that's just like
00:38:59
everyone understands that. But
00:39:03
um yeah, it's just yeah, I do think that
00:39:06
people feel like everything if they're
00:39:09
going to do this stuff, it's got to be
00:39:10
perfect. And what I'm telling them is it
00:39:12
does not need to be perfect. It's never
00:39:14
going to be perfect. And this whole
00:39:15
thing around radical ownership and
00:39:17
investing back into your physical and
00:39:18
mental health is a lifelong journey. And
00:39:21
it's it's not going to go like that.
00:39:22
It's going to go like this. and you're
00:39:23
going to deviate out there and you're
00:39:24
going to fall off track and it's all
00:39:26
part of it. Do you do you have like a
00:39:27
set morning routine or anything? Yeah.
00:39:30
Yeah. What do you do? How does the day
00:39:31
start? I get up and I go straight to my
00:39:32
coffee machine.
00:39:35
See, see, part of me expected you'd be
00:39:37
like one of these YouTubers where it's
00:39:38
like 5:00 a.m. start gratitude for 20
00:39:41
minutes, ice bath, you know. No,
00:39:45
because like I like to think of this as
00:39:48
just I have a gratitude practice. I have
00:39:50
a practice every day where I I prop
00:39:52
myself up through selft talk. Two
00:39:53
minutes I sit down and I just talk about
00:39:55
myself. I'm disciplined. I'm I tell
00:39:57
myself what I want to be. I'm
00:39:59
disciplined. I'm focused. I'm
00:40:01
courageous. I'm calm. Is that it? Is
00:40:03
that the daily mantra? Is it those four
00:40:05
things? What? No, no, no. just talk I
00:40:08
just talk about man I I talk about
00:40:10
myself and almost like man you've done
00:40:12
really well to get to the why would you
00:40:14
not talk about we have far more negative
00:40:16
thoughts in a day than positive ones and
00:40:18
we tend to react based on those negative
00:40:20
thoughts and so it's really important
00:40:21
cuz don't wait for anyone else to do it
00:40:23
for you prop yourself up so I have these
00:40:26
practices I have a gratitude practice my
00:40:28
gratitude practice is so simple I walk
00:40:29
down the beach for a surf and I just go
00:40:30
man I'm lucky to be able to go for a
00:40:32
surf surfing for me used to be about
00:40:34
catching all the waves and you know and
00:40:36
if I if I didn't get the good wave or to
00:40:38
come out better. But now it's just about
00:40:39
being in the ocean and being like
00:40:41
grateful that I have health to be out
00:40:42
there. And my morning routine is have a
00:40:46
coffee. I I I will often just walk out
00:40:48
onto the balcony and I'll just be like I
00:40:51
don't know just far out, man. Just like
00:40:54
just take it all in for a for a minute.
00:40:56
But I don't I'm not that
00:40:58
structured in in terms of like my
00:41:00
morning routine is this this this and
00:41:02
this. Um I exercise every day. I I
00:41:05
expose myself to challenge. I um I do
00:41:08
some form of meditation every
00:41:10
day, but I'm also busy. I'm also running
00:41:13
a business. Um that can get in the way
00:41:16
of all of this stuff. And and man, it's
00:41:18
hard to get the balance right. It's
00:41:20
really difficult to get the balance
00:41:21
right. And that's why it's so important
00:41:23
with all of this stuff that we keep it
00:41:25
real simple and it should be simple.
00:41:29
Like this stuff's really refreshing to
00:41:30
hear your that um positive selft talk.
00:41:33
Has has it always been like that or is
00:41:36
this something you've had to work
00:41:37
on? I went through a stage in life I I
00:41:40
feel like I've always had
00:41:44
um I've always really deeply believed in
00:41:49
myself but I went through a phase in my
00:41:51
life probably um in my around my sort of
00:41:56
early 30s where um I experienced chronic
00:42:00
pain and I lost I feel like I lost my
00:42:02
identity. I remember thinking man I'm
00:42:04
over the I remember like
00:42:08
thinking of what I used to be like and
00:42:10
I'm over here and I can't bridge that
00:42:12
gap and it was a real feeling of being
00:42:14
lost in my own body and a lot of
00:42:18
negative selft talk started and I
00:42:21
started having some really troubling
00:42:23
thoughts like um you know thoughts like
00:42:26
[Music]
00:42:28
um how am I going to keep doing this
00:42:31
because being in chronic pain and
00:42:32
working on ambulance and at the same
00:42:34
time my my girlfriend was going through
00:42:36
a really difficult time. It was this
00:42:39
culmination of all of this stuff and it
00:42:42
was incredibly overwhelming for me and
00:42:44
that's where um I I think that negative
00:42:48
self-t talk started
00:42:50
um uh dominating this space up here. M
00:42:54
and so as part of this whole journey it
00:42:56
was about you know identifying that and
00:42:58
um again realizing like right we can
00:43:00
change all this you just have to be uh
00:43:04
you know you got to be open to it and
00:43:05
it's got it's all I mean going through
00:43:08
like you will know this you've been
00:43:10
through the fire I'm sure oh no one gets
00:43:14
to I'm I'm 52 no
00:43:16
well some people do get to 52 and have
00:43:18
nothing happen to them some sort of
00:43:20
adversity n [ __ ]
00:43:22
Well, I think that some people live a
00:43:26
pretty um or try to create a life where
00:43:29
because they have a negative
00:43:30
relationship with stress where they put
00:43:32
a bunch of safety barriers up. That's
00:43:34
kind of what I'm talking about. Yeah, we
00:43:35
all go through the fire, but and it's
00:43:37
that negative relationship with stress
00:43:39
and pressure and challenge where you
00:43:41
create a very uh insular environment and
00:43:43
you put all these safety barriers up and
00:43:47
that cuz really happiness to me is about
00:43:50
ripping those barriers down and exposing
00:43:52
yourself to challenge and new
00:43:54
experiences and being okay with setbacks
00:43:56
and all the things that we've talked
00:43:57
about failure. M um that to me is like
00:44:01
in my life, you know, where I felt most
00:44:03
content is where I've really challenged
00:44:05
myself.
00:44:07
Type two fun stuff that's often um Do
00:44:10
you know about type two fun? No. It was
00:44:11
a a previous um podcast guest um Sir
00:44:15
Peter Beck who set up Rocket Lab that
00:44:17
introduced me to it. I'd never heard of
00:44:18
it, but he said it's it's the sort of
00:44:19
fun that's often it's [ __ ] at the time
00:44:21
when you're doing it, but afterwards you
00:44:24
go actually that was that was quite
00:44:25
enjoyable. I've heard you in another
00:44:27
podcast talk about like and we'll get to
00:44:28
this your travel stories like um some
00:44:30
camel trick you went on that sounds like
00:44:32
it was type two fun [ __ ] at the time and
00:44:34
then afterwards you go actually that was
00:44:35
one of the best experiences I I had when
00:44:38
when was the last time you you failed
00:44:39
really badly.
00:44:42
Um I well from being an hour late for
00:44:44
this podcast today.
00:44:50
Um I feel like where I last felt really
00:44:56
confronted
00:44:58
um
00:45:00
was working in the ambulance service and
00:45:02
having a ch couple of jobs go wrong and
00:45:05
the ambulance service is a small place
00:45:06
and people talked and that really
00:45:08
affected my
00:45:09
confidence and that amplified stress for
00:45:13
me and I started noticing that I was
00:45:14
going to these jobs and I was
00:45:17
overwhelmed by stress and pressure. I
00:45:19
could feel my heart rate going, my hands
00:45:20
would be clammy. And for me, how that
00:45:22
played out is I'd get into the job and
00:45:23
I'd get tunnel vision. And in in that
00:45:27
job, if you get tunnel vision, it's very
00:45:30
dangerous because you need to make
00:45:31
clinical decisions under pressure. You
00:45:32
need to have good peripheral awareness
00:45:33
of what's going on. You need to make
00:45:35
decisions about what do we do on scene,
00:45:36
what do what do we do offsecene. You
00:45:38
also need to manage uh and lead a group
00:45:41
of people. And so I started noticing
00:45:43
that I'd get to these jobs and I was
00:45:44
just getting tunnel vision. And um and
00:45:46
that, you know, I I made some um poor
00:45:49
clinical decisions and then that
00:45:51
amplified that um that stress even more.
00:45:54
And I felt like whatever I've ever done
00:45:57
in life, I want to be the best at it. I
00:45:58
think we all do, you know, like you want
00:46:00
to be good at it. And part of like
00:46:02
starting in the ambulance service, I
00:46:03
want to be an intensive care paramedic
00:46:04
and I want to be the best at it. And
00:46:06
when that happened and I had these jobs
00:46:07
that um you know failed, um it really
00:46:10
impacted me.
00:46:12
When you say poor clinical decisions, do
00:46:14
you mean potentially like
00:46:15
um patients that died that didn't need
00:46:18
to or No,
00:46:19
not I'm not.
00:46:22
No, I I So, I'm thinking that's in terms
00:46:25
of stress. That's a that's that's an
00:46:27
extreme job. Yeah. But the reality is
00:46:29
that's what I'm talking about. The
00:46:30
reality is a lot of these jobs are
00:46:33
prehosp jobs. I mean, if you don't
00:46:34
initiate the right care, they don't get
00:46:36
to hospital. And so I was very acutely
00:46:40
aware of that. But having these jobs
00:46:42
that went wrong where I failed and
00:46:44
people were talking about it was really
00:46:45
confronting for me. Yeah. And
00:46:48
um but man, I've failed and so I [ __ ]
00:46:51
I'm failing all the time. I just don't I
00:46:54
don't care that I'm failing because in
00:46:59
each of those and I fail in business. I
00:47:02
fail in the training that I do where I
00:47:03
don't deliver up to the expectation that
00:47:05
I expect of myself. Um, I fail in my
00:47:09
relationship. I fail in all the far out.
00:47:11
It's like, but I'd understand now that
00:47:15
there's learning in all of that, right?
00:47:16
So, it's I I kind of view failing as
00:47:18
it's only failing if you don't learn
00:47:20
something from it and grow from it. And
00:47:23
um I don't look at failing as something
00:47:24
that's negative. I I look at it, you
00:47:26
know, it sounds cliche, but as a
00:47:28
stepping stone to success. Have you I
00:47:31
might get the movie wrong. It's it's a
00:47:32
kids movie. You wouldn't have seen it
00:47:33
called Inside Out. It's a Pixar movie.
00:47:36
What movie? Yeah, Pixar. You know Pixar,
00:47:38
they do animated movies. It's like an
00:47:40
arm of Disney. There's a movie called
00:47:42
Inside Out and um there's a scene in
00:47:44
there where this kid goes, "Oh, no. I
00:47:45
failed." And then all these bells and
00:47:47
whistles goes off and it's like, "Yeah,
00:47:49
yeah, you failed. It's a one step closer
00:47:51
to success." That's it, man. And that's
00:47:53
the message we should be getting across
00:47:54
to these kids and to everyone. And
00:47:56
there's a real culture in New Zealand, I
00:47:58
think, of like the stigma around certain
00:48:00
things. There's a stigma around anxiety.
00:48:02
There's a stigma around mental health.
00:48:03
There is a stigma around imposter
00:48:05
syndrome. You know, have you ever
00:48:07
experienced imposter syndrome? All the
00:48:09
[ __ ] time.
00:48:11
Yeah. My mindset about imposter syndrome
00:48:14
matters. So, my mindset around imposter
00:48:17
syndrome is that it's good. It means
00:48:18
that I'm in a situation where I'm
00:48:20
challenging myself. I'm outside my
00:48:22
comfort zone. I'm in a situation where I
00:48:25
don't know a lot about the subject, but
00:48:26
I'm there anyway. And um imposter
00:48:29
syndrome is good. And when you have that
00:48:30
percept perception of imposter syndrome,
00:48:32
when you find yourself there, you
00:48:34
instantly have more control. You
00:48:37
instantly it dampens the stress
00:48:38
response. It's even like your mindset
00:48:40
around stress. My mindset around stress
00:48:41
is that it's good. Some people have a
00:48:43
stress is debilitating mindset. If my
00:48:45
mindset around like if I'm going through
00:48:47
if I'm navigating a hardship and I feel
00:48:49
like I'm going backwards and in that
00:48:50
moment like it's pretty fullon. If my
00:48:53
mindset around that is this is good,
00:48:55
this is actually where I need to be. I'm
00:48:56
going to navigate through this. I'm
00:48:57
going to come out the other side more
00:48:59
resilient. Um then that's going to um
00:49:02
dampen the amount of stress I experience
00:49:05
going through that event. So mindset
00:49:07
around all of the stuff matters. And
00:49:09
I've just one of the biggest learnings
00:49:11
I've taken away from doing all this
00:49:13
stuff is developing my own mindset and
00:49:16
realizing where I can reshape my
00:49:18
mindset. Realizing where I have a really
00:49:20
fixed mindset around stuff and I maybe
00:49:22
need to change that into more of a
00:49:23
growth mindset. realizing that like you
00:49:26
know I talked about you know for many
00:49:28
years I had a lot of anger I was very
00:49:30
reactive um that became a subconscious
00:49:33
pattern so when I went into stress and
00:49:34
pressure moments that reactive pattern
00:49:37
of anger would come to the forefront I
00:49:38
was consciously aware of it but it was
00:49:40
coming from my subconscious patterns of
00:49:42
behavior you know based on my practical
00:49:44
experiences based on my values based on
00:49:46
the things I've been through in life I
00:49:48
recognize that I can change that pattern
00:49:50
but it requires a different mindset my
00:49:52
mindset is I remain calm and in control
00:49:54
no matter what. I developed that mindset
00:49:58
for myself about seven years ago and
00:50:00
eight years ago and it has changed my
00:50:02
life. And when I developed that mindset,
00:50:04
someone would pull in front of me in the
00:50:05
traffic, I would get all pissed off and
00:50:06
then it' be like, "Hold on, my mindset
00:50:07
is remain calm and in control. I'm going
00:50:09
against the system and protocol I've
00:50:11
made for my mindset." And then so I'd
00:50:12
be, you know, the next time and and it
00:50:14
was just through this repetition. I
00:50:16
can't even imagine, man, even getting in
00:50:18
confrontations now. I got in a
00:50:20
confrontation the other day and back in
00:50:23
the day I would have just it would have
00:50:24
just been like that you know and and I I
00:50:26
would have met that confrontation by
00:50:28
raising my voice. Now I just take a step
00:50:30
back and I just man calmness of mind is
00:50:33
a superpower and being able to regulate
00:50:35
your emotions under pressure is a
00:50:36
superpower. So the real strength I
00:50:38
thought the anger was a strength the
00:50:40
anger is a weakness. Oh yeah any any
00:50:42
interaction when someone loses their
00:50:44
call it's like they've lost the
00:50:45
argument. Hey but but we still only
00:50:48
human though. When was the last time?
00:50:50
Yeah. When was the last time you got
00:50:51
angry? Last time. I remember it so
00:50:53
clearly. Do you I was in the water
00:50:56
surfing and um I won't go into detail,
00:50:59
but I just saw red and
00:51:02
and you know I lost it. What did someone
00:51:04
cut you off? Cut you off, steal your
00:51:06
wave. No. What? Yeah, it was. Yeah.
00:51:08
Something like that. Yeah. Yeah. We
00:51:10
collided. We collided in the surf and
00:51:13
then we come up and he said something to
00:51:15
me and then it's all on. And I went away
00:51:18
from
00:51:19
that experience cuz there's a bunch of
00:51:21
other people in the water and they're
00:51:22
listening to me yelling and and carrying
00:51:24
on. And um I went away from that
00:51:26
experience feeling really back in the
00:51:30
day I would have gone away from that and
00:51:31
being like, "Yep, that's a win." I went
00:51:33
away from that really deflated um
00:51:35
because I'd gone against my mindset and
00:51:37
because I understand that that is a real
00:51:39
sign of um reactivity and weakness and
00:51:43
so you failed to meet your own personal
00:51:45
expectations.
00:51:46
Yep. Yeah. Absolutely. But um you know
00:51:50
emotional
00:51:51
regulation is not only being able to
00:51:54
regulate your own response but what what
00:51:58
happened like I don't know what that guy
00:52:00
is going through. I don't know what like
00:52:02
saying those things I don't know the
00:52:04
effect that potentially could have had
00:52:05
on him. And so
00:52:07
um you know P's a small place. The next
00:52:10
day I went up to him and I I said hey
00:52:12
man that that I really apologize. I'm
00:52:15
I'm that was not okay behavior you know
00:52:18
and
00:52:19
um but very rarely now do um you know do
00:52:25
I lose my temper. Very rarely. That's
00:52:27
probably the last time that was years
00:52:28
ago.
00:52:29
Um
00:52:32
but you know that doesn't mean that
00:52:35
um again like man I'm I'm definitely not
00:52:39
you're human. Yeah. So but do you do you
00:52:42
are you just fairly measured? You don't
00:52:43
get too high, don't get too low. So like
00:52:45
never lower than a three, never higher
00:52:47
than like an eight. Yeah. By to be
00:52:49
honest with you, by nature I'm quite
00:52:51
like a I guess like a
00:52:54
feisty person. You can tell you're you
00:52:57
Westy Westy through and through. That
00:53:00
comes I think that comes with like
00:53:01
growing up out at
00:53:02
Phar man. It was just this constant like
00:53:07
um I would say like peer pressure or um
00:53:10
you know our challenge growing up was
00:53:12
the ocean and it was just like I was
00:53:15
petrified of the ocean but I was
00:53:17
constantly being pushed to go out there
00:53:19
and it was this challenge of going out
00:53:20
when it's bigger and bigger and then we
00:53:21
had this other thing I guess it was like
00:53:24
right how do we show that we're real men
00:53:26
so okay we fight so we go out we drink
00:53:28
and we fight so I grew up in that
00:53:31
environment and I'm not that I'm not
00:53:33
good at fighting And so I carried this
00:53:35
and then you know going through my
00:53:37
teenage years where I had these things
00:53:39
happen I would say they were pretty
00:53:40
traumatic things that I didn't have the
00:53:42
skills to deal with that I just pushed
00:53:44
back here and I ran away. I went
00:53:45
overseas and I stayed overseas for 10
00:53:47
years. I'd be out at the pub 1:00 in the
00:53:48
morning. I don't know. It would just be
00:53:51
like um nothing would happen, but it
00:53:52
would just be like the switch and and I
00:53:54
would just be, you know, want to fight
00:53:57
or be aggressive or and it was it
00:53:59
started coming out all the all the time,
00:54:02
especially when I was um
00:54:04
when I was drinking and looking back
00:54:06
now, I I understand all of it. It's just
00:54:08
uh that that you know, if you push
00:54:10
something back, it's going to come out
00:54:11
one way or another. Yeah. It's like um
00:54:15
Yeah. Yeah. The analogy I like to use is
00:54:16
it's like putting uh dirty gym clothes
00:54:18
in a bag and put in the boot of your
00:54:19
car. Like it the problem is not going to
00:54:21
go away eventually. You're going to have
00:54:22
to zip open that bag and it's not going
00:54:24
to be pretty. Yeah. What's um Yeah. What
00:54:27
were you What's the stuff you were
00:54:28
talking about that you that you buried
00:54:29
when you went overseas? Like were you
00:54:31
trying to run away from your demons or
00:54:32
Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's
00:54:35
[Music]
00:54:37
um I guess
00:54:39
like I'm not ready to like publicly talk
00:54:42
about that stuff
00:54:45
and I probably I've had to do a lot of
00:54:48
deep work, man. I I've had to do like a
00:54:51
lot of self-reflection and a lot of deep
00:54:53
work around um and it's not just that
00:54:56
you know like there's been other things
00:54:57
in life that have been incredibly
00:54:59
challenging.
00:55:02
Um and for so long my way of dealing
00:55:06
with it was just avoidance
00:55:08
relatable whereas like really the way to
00:55:11
deal with it is acceptance and and and
00:55:12
to do the best thing I've found in my
00:55:15
life is um personal growth. M that's the
00:55:19
best thing that I've ever got into in my
00:55:21
life. And learning about all of the
00:55:23
stuff that I now teach has just been an
00:55:25
absolute game changer for me. And I feel
00:55:27
so every day I feel so grateful that um
00:55:32
I uh surrounded
00:55:35
myself by the right with the right group
00:55:38
of people because their
00:55:41
behaviors resonated over to me. And
00:55:43
that's partly like having people around
00:55:45
you that can be like, "Hey man, the way
00:55:47
that you're doing things is not right."
00:55:49
And and having your mates confronting
00:55:51
you about this stuff.
00:55:53
Um but yeah, as I've got into my late
00:55:57
30s and 40s, really surrounding myself
00:56:00
with people that are also into self-
00:56:02
betterment, personal growth has had a
00:56:04
you know, there's a guy that helps me
00:56:05
run the workshop. His name is Jamal. He
00:56:06
runs a um company called Tak uh Tikahi,
00:56:10
which is to mentor. and he comes on this
00:56:12
workshop and he does a talk. This this
00:56:14
45minute talk. I've heard it 20 30
00:56:17
times. Every time I hear it, the hairs
00:56:19
on the back of my neck stand up. And it
00:56:21
took me probably 10 times of listening
00:56:25
to this talk for some of the things that
00:56:26
he said to really sink in. And listening
00:56:29
to that talk has been [ __ ] it's been an
00:56:32
absolute gamecher for me, man. some of
00:56:33
the stuff that he talks around about
00:56:36
around you know his one thing that he
00:56:37
kept saying is like whatever you put out
00:56:40
in the world so whatever thoughts you
00:56:42
have whatever you put out you will find
00:56:45
confirmation of that everywhere
00:56:47
so if I'm putting out negative energy if
00:56:49
I'm thinking negative thoughts I will
00:56:51
find confirmation of that everywhere
00:56:53
that's why gratitude is such an
00:56:54
important practice I'm grateful just
00:56:56
being able to walk down the beach and go
00:56:57
for a surf well you'll go through your
00:56:59
day and you'll start seeing the good in
00:57:01
other things and then you will. It's not
00:57:04
like a practice that you have to sit
00:57:05
down and do. It just happens
00:57:06
autonomically.
00:57:08
And so surrounding being around those
00:57:11
types of people is contagious, man. And
00:57:12
this is why I love working with the
00:57:14
athletes. It is
00:57:18
they're man they are really good people.
00:57:22
And you can I I learn a lot from them
00:57:25
and being around that that type of uh
00:57:27
high achiever. Yeah. You there's a
00:57:29
saying like if you if you hang out with
00:57:31
four smokers, you'll be the fifth. If
00:57:33
you hang out with four obese people,
00:57:34
you'll be the fifth of it. Works the
00:57:35
same the other on the the positive end
00:57:37
of the scale, I guess, as well, eh?
00:57:38
Yeah. I tell you what's um I tell you
00:57:41
what's quite confronting is
00:57:43
like with going through this, you I had
00:57:46
a big mental block around even starting
00:57:49
an Instagram account and putting stuff
00:57:51
out there because when I grew up, if you
00:57:53
put your head up, you got pushed back
00:57:54
down. That was just that was just what
00:57:56
it was. You know, you didn't do that.
00:57:58
that self-promotion, all that sort of
00:57:59
stuff. and they say there's a real
00:58:01
mental block around that. And um but but
00:58:04
obviously we know like that's all
00:58:06
[ __ ] Like if you want to get ahead
00:58:07
in life, you got to put yourself out
00:58:08
there. So how old are you? 43. 43. Yes.
00:58:11
I'm not like 9 years older than you. So
00:58:13
yeah, and there's so many parallels with
00:58:15
what with what you were saying. Like I
00:58:16
can I can relate. Like vulnerability not
00:58:19
a thing at all. Showing any sort of
00:58:20
weakness or be weaponized against you.
00:58:22
Even um when where I went to school like
00:58:25
you'd be called a try hard and you look
00:58:27
back now you what's wrong with trying?
00:58:29
Trying hard is is the most powerful
00:58:31
thing. It was such a common phrase. Oh
00:58:32
yeah, try hard. Yeah. What's wrong with
00:58:34
trying hard? It's a superpower. Yeah.
00:58:36
And um I tell you what, you may have
00:58:38
experienced this, but when you do put
00:58:40
yourself out there, sometimes it's
00:58:42
people that are relatively close to you
00:58:44
that push you down. And that for me was
00:58:46
like a real aha moment. It's
00:58:50
like that really surprised me. I mean
00:58:52
it's that comes back to that thing
00:58:54
where you
00:58:56
know those people I kind of love them
00:58:59
but keep them at a distance and and my
00:59:02
real mates are are are the type of
00:59:03
people that when you put yourself up
00:59:05
there they they prop you up and and you
00:59:07
know what I want for each what I want
00:59:09
for all of my mates is for them to be
00:59:11
successful uh happy to challenge
00:59:14
themselves.
00:59:16
That's what that's what we should all
00:59:17
want for not only our mates but
00:59:19
everyone. And that that's we we talk
00:59:21
about like raise the consciousness.
00:59:23
Raising the consciousness is like let's
00:59:25
all prop each other up. Let's all like
00:59:27
you know like it can be something as
00:59:29
simple as just walking down the road and
00:59:31
and you know we're all busy and we're
00:59:32
all stuck in our heads. It's just
00:59:33
smiling at someone, you know, or or or
00:59:35
just like the interactions that you have
00:59:37
throughout the day. You want to leave
00:59:38
people with a feeling of um feeling a
00:59:41
bit better. Yeah. Yeah. 100%. Um yeah,
00:59:44
what you're saying it's so true. My my
00:59:47
inner circle is so small and so tight
00:59:50
now. It's it's ridiculous because you
00:59:51
just want people there that um
00:59:54
completely have your back
00:59:54
unconditionally. And it's amazing. It's
00:59:56
sort of like um a localized version of
00:59:58
tall poppy in a way, isn't it? People
01:00:00
around you, they they want you to
01:00:02
succeed, but only to a point. Cuz I
01:00:03
think it maybe it it sort of um
01:00:05
highlights their weaknesses or
01:00:07
something. Yeah, I don't know. I think
01:00:08
sometimes like if it can be confronting
01:00:11
maybe and um I think a lot of people
01:00:16
have um are threatened by other people's
01:00:19
success. Yes.
01:00:21
I mean like you you can't say you've
01:00:23
never been through life and be been
01:00:25
threatened by someone else's success.
01:00:26
Whether it's someone that's coming in
01:00:28
and is doing a podcast similar to yours
01:00:30
or or it's someone that's coming into
01:00:32
mental skills where I'm at and and it's
01:00:33
like you feel that is normal human
01:00:36
behavior. Why? cuz this thing's wide for
01:00:38
survival. But but I can just recognize
01:00:40
it now. I'm just able to have that
01:00:42
self-awareness to be like, okay, put my
01:00:44
finger. Okay, that's that. You know, I'm
01:00:46
I'm threatened by this person's success
01:00:48
because of X, Y, and Zed. Hey, man, you
01:00:50
don't need to feel like that. Actually,
01:00:52
you need to be embracing them. the more
01:00:53
people we have and you know it's like um
01:00:56
a guy builds a cafe here and he's got
01:00:58
he's got um you know he's got everyone
01:01:01
coming to his cafe because he's got the
01:01:03
only other cafe and then someone builds
01:01:04
a cafe next to him and he starts
01:01:06
fighting that guy because he's wants to
01:01:07
be the only cafe. The reality is with
01:01:08
two cafes there's going to be more
01:01:10
people there and then you can this guy
01:01:12
here can make the pies and you can buy
01:01:13
the pies off him and you can start
01:01:14
collaborating and that's I'm a
01:01:16
collaborist. I want to collaborate with
01:01:17
people because I recognize that in order
01:01:19
for me to get ahead I don't know
01:01:21
everything. I I want to collaborate with
01:01:23
people that are specialists in their uh
01:01:25
um field and I want to welcome people
01:01:26
and that's how you that's how you get
01:01:29
better, right? You can't do it by
01:01:30
yourself. Yes. I think it's flipping
01:01:33
from like a scarcity mindset. Scarity
01:01:35
mindset. I've got I had a scarcity
01:01:38
mindset around money for so long, man. I
01:01:40
think I still do to be I got I got a
01:01:42
really weird relationship with money,
01:01:43
but that's that's not a conversation for
01:01:45
today. I'll save that for therapy. Yeah.
01:01:47
And I I had to like do some I had to
01:01:49
really like take a step back and be like
01:01:50
right where does the scarcity mindset
01:01:52
come from and I was able to identify
01:01:55
that growing up my old man my old man is
01:01:58
the hardest worker I have ever I mean
01:02:01
everyone's he's a man now I just
01:02:03
watching him growing up from a young age
01:02:06
I identified in ter in terms of getting
01:02:08
money you had to work incredibly hard I
01:02:11
then went traveling for 12 10 years on a
01:02:14
shoestring budget and so it was all
01:02:16
about you know if I wanted to the new
01:02:17
surf, but I'd save up for months and
01:02:18
months and months of like a new pair of
01:02:20
shoes, I'd save up and it was all
01:02:22
traveling on a shoestring. And I think
01:02:24
that for me created this um scarcity
01:02:28
mindset around money and then coming
01:02:29
into now owning my business. You have to
01:02:32
change that mindset because there is an
01:02:33
abundance of opportunity. There's an
01:02:35
abundance of money. Yeah. You know, I I
01:02:37
have a mindset where it's like um money
01:02:40
and money comes to me freely and I have
01:02:42
multiple sources of income.
01:02:44
Well, that's been a game changer because
01:02:46
remember it's what what you put out.
01:02:48
It's what you put out. That's great.
01:02:51
Hey, this has been really good stuff and
01:02:53
um there's been so many takeaways in
01:02:54
here that I think so many people can get
01:02:56
a lot of um uh value out of for
01:02:58
themselves. Should we um focus on your
01:03:00
personal life for a bit now, Dave? Would
01:03:03
Okay. What is um what is something that
01:03:05
Yeah, have a swig of your water. Massive
01:03:07
massive Yeti bottle there. How many What
01:03:09
is that? Like a liter and a half. Two
01:03:10
liters. I don't know. It's probably a
01:03:12
bit more than a liter.
01:03:14
Um, what's something about you about
01:03:16
something that people might be surprised
01:03:18
to learn about you? Oh man, I've got a
01:03:20
couple here if you can't think of
01:03:21
anything. Um, surprised to learn about
01:03:26
me.
01:03:27
Uh, I don't know. You're deaf in your
01:03:30
right ear? Yeah. Completely deaf.
01:03:32
Completely. Yeah. Since birth? No, since
01:03:34
about the age of five. I I got a lot of
01:03:37
stuff going on. I got I'm deaf in that
01:03:38
ear. I have tinitus in this ear, which
01:03:40
is constant ringing. I've not surprised
01:03:41
that you you were listening to AC/DC so
01:03:43
loud on the way in this morning. I have
01:03:45
um bulging disc in my neck. I have um
01:03:48
and as a result of that, I've got this
01:03:50
um this nerve that flares up down my arm
01:03:53
um which causes like intense itching. I
01:03:55
have I've had bilateral failed hip
01:03:57
surgery which has result in chronic
01:03:59
pain. I have bulging discs in my lower
01:04:00
back. I've had bilateral um shoulder
01:04:04
surgeries. I I got a lot going on.
01:04:08
People look at me and they think, "Man,
01:04:10
you're working in this area of mental
01:04:11
skill development. You've got all your
01:04:12
stuff together." I'm on a journey. I'm
01:04:15
on a journey, man. And it's a I love the
01:04:18
journey, but and it but it's
01:04:19
challenging. It's real challenging, man.
01:04:22
And
01:04:23
um I again that comes back to like I'm
01:04:26
just so grateful that I found these
01:04:27
skills because I believe if I didn't
01:04:28
have these skills, it would kind of like
01:04:30
everything that I've been through or am
01:04:32
going through, I feel like it would kind
01:04:33
of be very overwhelming. Yeah. Um,
01:04:37
something else uh that people might not
01:04:38
know about you, you're bros with King
01:04:40
King Charles.
01:04:43
He's so funny. He's one of your boys.
01:04:46
Prince Charles is my mate. King Charles.
01:04:48
Um, so yeah, I was working for a um
01:04:51
catering company in London called the
01:04:52
Admiral Kiteon. They do all the royal
01:04:54
family um charity events and
01:04:58
um you're very much not out the front,
01:05:02
you're in the back and um you know doing
01:05:04
all the prep, food prep and stuff like
01:05:06
that. And one night I was slicing the
01:05:08
salmon and um Charles likes to walk
01:05:11
around in the back scenes and go and
01:05:13
meet everyone which I thought was really
01:05:15
cool. And so you come up to me and he
01:05:16
was like and you get told to um you know
01:05:19
when you meet him to say um your royal
01:05:21
highness which felt really weird for me.
01:05:23
So I was like, "Good evening, your Royal
01:05:24
Highness." And he was like, "Ah, just
01:05:25
call me Charles." And he was like,
01:05:26
"Where did you where where'd you get the
01:05:28
salmon? Where's the salmon from?" And I
01:05:29
was like, "Oh." And my my head's going a
01:05:31
million miles an hour. I was like,
01:05:32
"Ireland." And he's like, "Ireland? I
01:05:34
know where the salmon was from." He was,
01:05:35
"Oh, wonderful." And he was like, "Oh,
01:05:37
you're Kiwi." And I was like, "Yeah, I'm
01:05:38
from Ph." And he's like, "I know Phar."
01:05:40
Which I thought was I mean, Phi's a tiny
01:05:42
place. And then we got chatting and then
01:05:43
he Camila comes over and he introduced
01:05:45
me to Camila. And then the next time
01:05:46
that we're doing a event at Buckingham
01:05:48
Palace, he came over and he remembered
01:05:50
my name. So yeah, we are bros. Unreal.
01:05:53
It's an amazing story, especially now
01:05:54
that he's king. It's amazing. Yeah.
01:05:58
Um uh what was amazing in that job was
01:06:01
just being in those places like
01:06:02
Buckingham Palace and Kingsington
01:06:03
Palace. And was it in what way? Well,
01:06:05
you just never expect like in my wildest
01:06:07
dreams, I never thought I'd be doing,
01:06:09
you know, working in those types of
01:06:12
places. Is that is that almost like an
01:06:13
imposter syndrome moment? Like, [ __ ]
01:06:15
what's a boy from Phar doing? Oh, all
01:06:17
the time. I'm I'm like, man, I'm I'm
01:06:19
Yeah, all the time. But that's not
01:06:21
that's not imposter syndrome. That's
01:06:22
just like, "Holy [ __ ] look what I'm
01:06:24
doing." Like a pinch myself moment.
01:06:25
Yeah. So, um the backstory uh you went
01:06:29
to Oakland Grammar. Yep. And um average
01:06:32
intell this is another thing I could
01:06:34
relate with you. You are being very kind
01:06:35
there. Average. You were going to say
01:06:37
average in I was in the bottom class.
01:06:38
No, they had the streaming system thing.
01:06:40
I don't know if they still have that
01:06:41
now. They still have it. But you Yeah.
01:06:43
you were you you were dumb by school
01:06:44
standards but um it was later sort of
01:06:47
recognized that you had like dyslexia or
01:06:50
unable to learn like a normal sort of
01:06:52
way. Is that fair? Yep. Yeah. So um
01:06:56
third form turned up at Oakland Grammar
01:06:58
sat in the hall while they called out A
01:06:59
B C D and I was like yeah I'm not going
01:07:01
to be in the top classes E FG and I was
01:07:02
like I'll be around about the middle and
01:07:04
it got down to L it goes down to M. uh
01:07:07
they called out and and when it got to K
01:07:09
I remember going up to a teacher cuz
01:07:10
there's only a few people left and I
01:07:11
said, "Hey man, there's something's
01:07:12
going on here. My name hasn't been
01:07:14
called out." And he just told me to sit
01:07:15
down. So I sat down. I was an L. Um and
01:07:19
it went down to him. And that that for
01:07:20
me was from that moment
01:07:22
on my mindset was I am dumb. That means
01:07:26
that I'm not going to try and that means
01:07:29
that I'm never going to expose myself to
01:07:31
any job or anything that requires, you
01:07:34
know, smarts. And um I saw the same
01:07:37
thing in all the kids in my class. We
01:07:38
just didn't
01:07:39
try. And then when I left school, I
01:07:43
never went to university because you
01:07:45
know I'm not intellectual. So I always
01:07:47
took on jobs that didn't require I don't
01:07:50
know like um you know working I'm not
01:07:52
No, I won't even say but I just took on
01:07:54
jobs that
01:07:56
didn't require like me um Yeah. mental
01:07:59
intelligence. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Just
01:08:00
physical jobs. Yeah. Just physical
01:08:02
Exactly.
01:08:03
And it wasn't until I went back to
01:08:06
university at the age of 30 um and I
01:08:10
started getting D's in that first
01:08:12
semester and it was just all that came
01:08:14
back to me man. I was like what am I
01:08:16
doing here? Um and I was again very
01:08:21
confronting and a teacher I forget her
01:08:23
name um I'd like to remember her name
01:08:25
she is a legend man and she identified
01:08:28
that I did have a a learning um a
01:08:32
learning issue and she sent me to um a
01:08:34
part of the university where they can
01:08:36
assess that and they decided that if I
01:08:39
drew diagrams um that would be hugely
01:08:42
beneficial because I was very visual
01:08:43
learner. So I started being even in my
01:08:45
exams they allowed me to do diagrams and
01:08:47
I would draw these incredibly intricate
01:08:49
diagrams and I started getting A's and
01:08:50
A+es right through my degree and then I
01:08:53
was like holy man I'm actually quite
01:08:55
smart that took me you know it's it's
01:08:58
funny isn't it cuz I suppose it's a
01:09:00
story that you you get told and then you
01:09:01
just believe it or you start to tell
01:09:03
yourself that story that you're a person
01:09:04
that you can't do this thing or can't do
01:09:06
that thing. Yeah I tell you like that
01:09:07
whole thing of never trying I failed
01:09:09
fifth form maths I got like 45%. I had
01:09:11
to go back in sixth form. I had to go
01:09:13
back and do fifth form maths again and I
01:09:15
got 43%. And my old man said, you know,
01:09:18
you got me a a um tutor. I'd have the a
01:09:22
math tutor two times a week. I could see
01:09:24
it was like, well, [ __ ] you're going
01:09:25
back a whole another year and you've had
01:09:26
a tutor and you got two less marks. But
01:09:28
at that point, my mindset was it doesn't
01:09:31
matter what I that the fixed mindset.
01:09:34
You are dumb. Doesn't matter what you
01:09:36
do. You will never be smart. You will
01:09:38
never be good at math. You will never be
01:09:40
and that people carry that that type of
01:09:43
mindset their entire lives, you know,
01:09:45
like the the reality is that is a very
01:09:48
fixed way of looking at stuff and I
01:09:49
still have a fixed mindset around
01:09:51
certain things and and I'm very aware of
01:09:53
it.
01:09:55
But when you're aware of these things,
01:09:57
that's when you can sort of pull
01:09:58
yourself up or take a drone like view
01:10:00
and be aware that you're doing it. Yeah.
01:10:02
But some things you Man, I'm very aware
01:10:05
of some of my patterns of behavior that
01:10:06
are holding me back. I'm not ready to
01:10:08
change them. I'm very aware of some of
01:10:10
my patterns of behavior that are um
01:10:12
maybe not healthy patterns, but they are
01:10:14
patterns that are [ __ ] pushing me
01:10:16
forward. Man, there's I tell you high
01:10:18
achievers, all high achievers have three
01:10:20
three things. They have something that's
01:10:24
a chip on their shoulder, something
01:10:25
that's driving them. And for me, there's
01:10:28
a big chip on my shoulder
01:10:29
around there's things that teachers told
01:10:32
me, man, in in in that school. And
01:10:34
there's things that people said to me
01:10:35
and it's always been I've always been
01:10:37
like right I'm going to prove myself.
01:10:39
I'm going to I'm going to be the best.
01:10:40
It comes back to that I'm going to do
01:10:42
this. I'm going to be the best. I'm
01:10:43
going to prove myself. So it's this chip
01:10:44
on my shoulder but that comes from way
01:10:46
back there from and we and then there's
01:10:50
a clear destination, a clear vision, a
01:10:53
clear purpose, a clear goal. And then
01:10:56
the third thing they have is the ability
01:10:57
to center their focus to be present in
01:10:59
what you're doing. Those three things.
01:11:02
Um, and I've identified that as being,
01:11:06
you know, there's these things that are
01:11:07
this chip on my shoulder thing that's,
01:11:09
you know, maybe it's not healthy, but
01:11:10
I'm not ready to remove that. If I do, I
01:11:12
feel like it'll stop that edge that
01:11:14
drive that that thing that's pushing.
01:11:16
Yeah. You're using it as fuel. Yeah.
01:11:18
Yeah. Outside of the classroom though,
01:11:20
you were you were quite capable though,
01:11:22
like you were a captain at PUAB by the
01:11:24
age of 19. Yeah. Which means you're like
01:11:26
the the the lifeguard boss. Is that what
01:11:28
that means? Yeah. The I was the youngest
01:11:30
captain.
01:11:32
um I think in New Zealand at that time
01:11:34
and I had a team of 12 people and man at
01:11:38
that age at 19 your prefrontal cortex
01:11:40
hasn't even fully developed. I I look
01:11:43
back, man, and it was pretty wild, you
01:11:45
know, like it's a lot of responsibility.
01:11:48
Um because you've got thousands and
01:11:50
thousands of people on the beach and
01:11:53
you're responsible for the the team and
01:11:55
the management of the beach and but I
01:11:57
learned a lot through that. you know, I
01:12:00
lifeguarded for um you know,
01:12:02
professional ocean lifeguarded for 10
01:12:04
years and I went overseas and I did that
01:12:06
in Cornwall for for five years and
01:12:09
um I learned a lot just being exposed to
01:12:12
like that um challenge and stress and
01:12:15
pressure doing that job and the same in
01:12:16
the ambulance. Um can you remember the
01:12:19
first time you dealt with a death?
01:12:21
Yeah. So you were a teenager when this
01:12:23
happened? Yeah, I was. And
01:12:25
um this that is something for me that is
01:12:30
very challenging to talk about because
01:12:34
um when you're in charge of the beach
01:12:37
that's on
01:12:39
you and not getting too deep into the
01:12:42
details, but when you're that age, it's
01:12:44
easy to be influenced by outside noise.
01:12:46
And the outside noise was this is how
01:12:48
you set the beach up. This is where you
01:12:51
uh you need to put the flags. this is
01:12:53
now I would just be like I I would um
01:12:56
exercise my autonomy and be like no
01:12:59
that's not the right way to do it but I
01:13:01
was being influenced
01:13:03
and basically a result have you heard of
01:13:05
the Swiss cheese effect no what's that
01:13:08
and so say in any like in surf life
01:13:11
saving or anything any business you have
01:13:13
a whole lot of uh safety layers right
01:13:15
and when there's holes in those defense
01:13:17
layers and those holes line up something
01:13:19
catastrophic happens and that's what
01:13:21
happened on this day those holes lined
01:13:23
Um, you know, one of those holes was me.
01:13:25
Um, you you were you were young though,
01:13:27
like with the benefit of hindsight, you
01:13:28
must real maybe you didn't have the
01:13:29
confidence or the courage. I had the
01:13:31
confidence. I was overly confident. Um,
01:13:34
those holes lined up and and someone
01:13:36
ultimately someone drowned. And it's
01:13:38
easy to be like, well, okay, this is
01:13:40
that person's fault or cuz there's a
01:13:42
whole lot of things like but at the end
01:13:43
of the day, if you're the captain and
01:13:47
you're in charge of that beach, it's on
01:13:48
you. And so that really um that was a
01:13:52
hard one and I don't think of like with
01:13:54
that type of stuff man you don't I don't
01:13:56
know you kind of carry that you always
01:13:58
carry that right
01:14:01
yeah how how do you process that at that
01:14:03
age like
01:14:05
drink party game party and like that's a
01:14:10
sensible way to go around it yeah it's
01:14:11
all just shove it in the back and move
01:14:13
on isn't it yeah moments from the life
01:14:15
saving that um yeah stay with you
01:14:17
forever
01:14:19
Yep. The co the the the the team, the
01:14:21
camaraderie is the most important thing
01:14:23
and and I love that about Surf Life
01:14:26
Saving. I loved that it was I love the
01:14:29
autonomy of you are in charge of the
01:14:32
speech and
01:14:35
um because there's a lot of autonomy in
01:14:37
in um surf life saving. There's a lot of
01:14:39
autonomy that you have working on the
01:14:40
ambulance. love those types of jobs. And
01:14:42
I think that I think it's such a shame
01:14:44
that we have and this is like across the
01:14:47
board that we have brought in so many
01:14:49
rules and regulations and we're so
01:14:51
scared to put a foot out of place and
01:14:53
we're taking away people's autonomy to
01:14:55
make decisions and I saw that in surf
01:14:56
life saving. I could see the transition
01:14:58
very clearly. I saw that in the
01:15:00
ambulance service and it's a damn shame
01:15:01
because um it's that making mistakes,
01:15:04
giving people autonomy, allowing them to
01:15:06
make mistakes, controlled mistakes um
01:15:08
and learning from that which I feel like
01:15:10
we're taken away from people. But um
01:15:14
I forgot your question, but yeah, the
01:15:16
the um just being
01:15:18
around the team and and and people and
01:15:21
being challenged in that job was
01:15:23
fantastic. Yeah, you would have been one
01:15:24
of those lifeguards that was telling
01:15:26
people off. Eh, you would have been Oh,
01:15:27
bro.
01:15:29
I've seen it on PR. You would have been
01:15:31
one of the shouty guys. Get between the
01:15:32
[ __ ] flags. What the [ __ ] are you?
01:15:34
Yeah, I I um I was not the type of
01:15:37
person that if someone stepped the foot
01:15:39
out the flags, I'd be down there
01:15:40
whistling. I like I like Man, I'd almost
01:15:42
let people get in trouble and then you'd
01:15:43
go and But
01:15:47
um I did, man. I had like I don't know
01:15:51
if someone was like I was just [ __ ]
01:15:54
up. I was just ready for confrontation.
01:15:56
I was reactive. Yeah. I was just ready
01:15:58
for and I almost welcomed it, you know,
01:16:00
and and and when it was there, it was um
01:16:03
I enjoyed it. Just like an angry would
01:16:05
you say you're an angry young man?
01:16:08
Not I think um well looking back I
01:16:12
probably was but not I was still I was
01:16:16
still a good bloke man. I was like you
01:16:18
know still kind to people and I cared
01:16:20
deeply about people. I cared about
01:16:21
others. I cared about my mates. I cared
01:16:23
about my family. But I just yeah always
01:16:26
had this um I always welcomed a
01:16:29
confrontation and and but I I want to
01:16:32
make steer down the barrel of the lens.
01:16:34
I was not tough. I was not tough, man.
01:16:37
And and you know I was not a great
01:16:40
fighter or anything like that. I'm not
01:16:41
saying that you know I'm this big tough
01:16:43
guy at all. Um so yeahve I've um I've
01:16:47
had Dan Hooker on the the podcast and
01:16:49
there's a guy that just loves fighting,
01:16:51
right? Loves it. Loves it. He's a guy
01:16:52
that likes loves fighting does doesn't
01:16:55
even but doesn't even mind losing and
01:16:57
being punched as long as it's a good
01:16:59
fight. Just loves fighting. Yeah. And I
01:17:02
grew up, you know, like we would surf
01:17:04
and then our um side thing was going to
01:17:07
kickboxing. We went to um Strikeforce
01:17:09
Gym in New Lin and we were there for
01:17:11
like 10, you know, on and off for like
01:17:13
10 12 years. And so we knew how to
01:17:16
fight. Um but our thing was um you know
01:17:19
you you you'd drink too much and then
01:17:21
you'd want to prove to everyone that you
01:17:24
were tough and so you yeah you'd be a
01:17:26
fight and you'd be jumping in there and
01:17:28
Yeah. So the the lifeguarding stuff
01:17:29
that's um that's what took you around
01:17:31
the world through your 20s. Um so was it
01:17:34
sort of professional? Was it like
01:17:35
semi-professional? You get you get paid
01:17:36
a fee. Yeah. Um lifeguarding you can do
01:17:40
lifeguarding professionally. You can do
01:17:42
it year round. uh you do get paid and
01:17:45
it's not it's definitely not great pay
01:17:47
but the thing about like that job is
01:17:50
when I went overseas and I was
01:17:52
lifeguarding I made enough money to um
01:17:54
cuz I the lifeguard season over there
01:17:56
goes for 6 months I would then have
01:17:57
enough money to travel for 6 months and
01:17:58
I did that for 6 years so it was based
01:18:01
in Cormal bought a van went through
01:18:02
Europe went down took my van down into
01:18:04
Morocco uh went right through central
01:18:06
and south America right through Asia um
01:18:09
and yeah and and then I did lots of
01:18:12
other jobs I worked um for the Admiral
01:18:13
Cryon book. I I worked putting up
01:18:15
marquees all around England. I worked in
01:18:17
Venezuela for a bit. Um I worked for
01:18:20
Club Med for two years in in um
01:18:23
Indonesia and then in in Malaysia um
01:18:26
teaching wind surfing and sailing. Um so
01:18:30
yeah, I I look back on that as probably
01:18:32
the most
01:18:34
important I look back on when I think
01:18:37
about like the most content I've ever
01:18:38
been in my life. It was when I had the
01:18:40
least amount of things or when I was
01:18:41
traveling through Venezuela and I just
01:18:42
had my backpack and or or or I was, you
01:18:45
know, going through Asia and and it just
01:18:48
had the things that it was just life was
01:18:50
just so simple, right? At the time or in
01:18:52
hindsight?
01:18:54
In hindsight. Yeah. In hindsight because
01:18:57
even like I I've always taken this idea
01:19:02
that I don't want to over complicate my
01:19:04
life. I want my my life to be I don't
01:19:06
want too many things. I want to live a
01:19:08
simple life. But even when you try hard
01:19:11
to do that, it's very difficult to do
01:19:12
because inevitably you're going to have
01:19:13
a house, you're going to have a
01:19:14
mortgage, you're going to buy a car, and
01:19:16
you got all these things that you got to
01:19:17
service. And that you got to be really I
01:19:21
think you have to be really careful to
01:19:23
keep your life simple. Have you seen um
01:19:26
um the minimalism documentary on
01:19:29
Netflix? Yeah. Yeah. I love that. That
01:19:31
was a game changer for me. It was. Yeah.
01:19:33
cuz I I was probably at my most
01:19:34
unhappiest where I had the most um
01:19:36
material possessions. Like um me and my
01:19:38
ex-wife, we bought a bought a villa.
01:19:39
When we moved in, it was there were
01:19:41
empty rooms and by the time we left it
01:19:43
was like just full of clutter. We even
01:19:46
had like a some stairs installed and got
01:19:48
an attic built and I just had
01:19:50
accumulated so much stuff and I thought
01:19:51
I realized all of it just added to sort
01:19:54
of um mental weight in a way and none of
01:19:57
it actually brought me joy anymore.
01:19:58
Temporary joy. That was it. buy buy
01:20:01
something and you be happy for a couple
01:20:02
of days and that's it. We used to like
01:20:05
when you clean your car or you clean
01:20:06
your room, you instantly feel way way
01:20:08
more mental clarity, right? And um I
01:20:11
remember working with an athlete and it
01:20:12
was coming up to the com the time of the
01:20:14
competition. And one of the things that
01:20:16
I said to him was, man, make sure your
01:20:19
house and your room is tidy. just go
01:20:21
back and make sure everything's tidy
01:20:23
because it is that you've instantly when
01:20:25
everything is tidy and everything's in
01:20:26
place and there's no clutter and it's
01:20:27
min you just feel like way better 100%.
01:20:31
M
01:20:33
um so when you came back from these um
01:20:35
extreme travels which
01:20:38
um yeah like you did you talked about
01:20:40
club med for a couple of years but it
01:20:41
seems like you did a lot of really rough
01:20:43
stuff and there was even a couple of
01:20:44
times where your life was in jeopardy
01:20:45
like being um left out at sea in barley.
01:20:48
That sounds [ __ ] harrowing by the
01:20:50
way. What was that? It was like a a surf
01:20:52
trip where the boat takes you out and
01:20:53
the it's like a final destination thing
01:20:55
or something. I'm pretty sure I've seen
01:20:57
a movie with this plot. The boat goes
01:20:59
back in and you were left out there on a
01:21:00
surfboard. Yeah. Long story short, yeah,
01:21:02
I got left out way out to sea and had to
01:21:04
paddle in and it was dark and the all
01:21:06
the water was moving out of the um the
01:21:08
way that the reef passes work out out of
01:21:11
there as you got millions of tons of
01:21:12
water moving out these reef passes and
01:21:14
yes, it took me like about 3 hours to
01:21:17
paddle in and if you weren't a good
01:21:19
paddler, you went you definitely weren't
01:21:20
getting in from that. But um I
01:21:23
terrifying.
01:21:25
Yeah.
01:21:26
Um, I don't know. That was not like
01:21:29
something that was, I guess,
01:21:31
like terrifying. It was just, um, it was
01:21:35
just really uncomfortable. But I have
01:21:38
been in and man, there's situations I've
01:21:40
been in my travels that I've never told
01:21:41
anyone about. I've never shared it, not
01:21:43
even with my family, you know, and I I
01:21:46
probably will take that stuff to my
01:21:47
grave. Now's the opportunity. Yeah. And
01:21:50
there's going to be one I just wouldn't
01:21:52
share it. There's stuff that like is in
01:21:54
the vault, man. And um why why stuff
01:21:57
that stuff that happened to you or stuff
01:21:59
that you did or both or Yeah, both, man.
01:22:02
Just just like the situations that I
01:22:03
ended up in over there and and um you
01:22:06
know, nothing like where I've done
01:22:08
something really bad, but it's the stuff
01:22:10
that I wouldn't I don't know just
01:22:12
wouldn't share it. It's not like you
01:22:13
look back in hindsight, you think,
01:22:14
"Fuck, how did I survive that?" Exactly,
01:22:16
bro. Exactly. And um and putting myself
01:22:18
in situations where I shouldn't have
01:22:20
been. M
01:22:21
um
01:22:23
and doing things that were really I look
01:22:27
back on and we're just like I can't even
01:22:29
imagine doing that stuff now. But but
01:22:30
the thing with all of my travel was like
01:22:32
I really I was in a time in my life I
01:22:34
really wanted to challenge myself. I I
01:22:35
grew up listening to my old man stories
01:22:36
of traveling through the Middle East
01:22:37
when no one was doing that stuff. And I
01:22:40
worked with a guy who really influenced
01:22:41
my travels who said you know he was
01:22:43
constantly getting in my head. He goes
01:22:44
when you go traveling you don't stay at
01:22:46
at host you don't stay at backpackers.
01:22:48
you go and stay with the f that's how
01:22:50
you're going to learn when you're
01:22:51
traveling. You don't go to the um the uh
01:22:53
tourist traps. You go get yourself way
01:22:56
out on the you know and I just listened
01:22:58
to this guy for years. I worked with him
01:23:01
in Cormal and and he was a this guy is
01:23:04
when you talk about a traveler, this guy
01:23:05
is a traveler man. He's been everywhere.
01:23:07
That's all he does his whole life. He's
01:23:09
like I don't know 55 60 years old now.
01:23:11
He's still way out there doing stuff
01:23:13
that most people wouldn't do. and and I
01:23:14
had this guy influencing the way that I
01:23:17
perceived travel. And so when I went
01:23:19
traveling, it was like, man, I really
01:23:20
want to get myself out there and
01:23:22
challenge myself. And and you know, the
01:23:24
the camel track, like most people will
01:23:26
go into the Th Desert for a night and
01:23:27
spend it with a group. A night wasn't
01:23:29
enough. I I went in there for eight
01:23:31
days, you know, tramping through the Th
01:23:33
with a camel and the camel herder and
01:23:35
and he couldn't speak English and it's
01:23:37
40° heat. And you know on the second day
01:23:38
I had a heat stroke and all we ate was
01:23:40
rice and chapati and potatoes and it was
01:23:42
just terribly uncomfortable and I hated
01:23:44
it at the time. I hated it. I I will
01:23:47
remember that for the rest of my life.
01:23:49
There was one night where we spent
01:23:51
because the desert's like very flat,
01:23:52
right? There's nothing to look at. You
01:23:53
just you
01:23:55
just you know I could get off and walk
01:23:57
ahead of the the the camel. It was we
01:24:00
were going that slow and there's you
01:24:02
know after 24 hours what the hell am I
01:24:04
doing here? M one night uh we were 3
01:24:07
days in and there was a um a hill and we
01:24:10
went up to the top and slept on the top
01:24:11
of this hill and in the very far
01:24:14
distance there was a little village and
01:24:15
they were playing this music that was um
01:24:18
echoing through the that you could hear
01:24:21
and I was sitting up the top there and
01:24:22
just looking out like panoramic view
01:24:24
360° like for as far as you your eyes
01:24:26
could see was just desert and I was just
01:24:28
like man there's no more isolating like
01:24:31
look where I am and um I'll never forget
01:24:34
that. I'll never forget, you know, even
01:24:37
after the third day, I was trying to
01:24:38
tell this guy to take me back, you know,
01:24:40
I was drawing diagrams on the ground to
01:24:41
get me get me back to the this place um
01:24:44
where where this little town, you know,
01:24:47
and the whole time I was just it was a
01:24:50
battle. But I look back on that as one
01:24:51
of the best experiences of my life and
01:24:53
all the challenges I've I've gone
01:24:54
through in life, whether it be traveling
01:24:55
or whatever, you navigate, you come out
01:24:57
the other side, and that's what you
01:24:58
remember. That's why I said like if you
01:25:00
want to find true happiness, whatever
01:25:02
that is, I don't even know what true
01:25:04
happiness is, but I know that in order
01:25:07
to be content and happy, you got to
01:25:09
expose yourself to challenge. Cuz that's
01:25:12
how we grow, right? Yeah. Yeah. There's
01:25:14
there's that saying like um something
01:25:16
like the comfort zone. It's a it's a
01:25:18
great place, but nothing grows there.
01:25:20
Yeah. And I love comfort. I love
01:25:22
Everyone does.
01:25:24
I love sitting in my bean bag in the
01:25:25
evening watching an episode having a
01:25:27
little whiskey. Um, you know, I love
01:25:30
comfort, but um I also love like I'm
01:25:34
trying to find things now. I said to you
01:25:37
before where I can get that same feeling
01:25:38
of overwhelm and stress and anxiety
01:25:41
where I feel really uncomfortable. I I
01:25:43
want to find that, man. Like I want to I
01:25:45
want to do things in the next, you know,
01:25:47
with my business and what I'm doing that
01:25:49
really challenge me.
01:25:53
Um yeah, I just want to that's what I
01:25:56
really want. So this um extreme uh
01:26:00
travel and these adventures which went
01:26:02
on for years like with the benefit of
01:26:04
hindsight like were you were you trying
01:26:06
to find yourself or something or were
01:26:08
you trying to pun like torture yourself
01:26:10
for something that you were escaping
01:26:11
from like from a psychoanalysis point of
01:26:14
view?
01:26:17
Um I don't know. I I would say I'm
01:26:20
actually not that deep a thinker to be
01:26:22
honest.
01:26:23
I'm actually pretty I am pretty simple.
01:26:26
And when I look back at it, I think that
01:26:28
I just loved
01:26:31
I just loved being out there, man. I
01:26:33
loved
01:26:34
like, you know, I just I loved the
01:26:39
um adversity and I love the idea that I
01:26:43
was just out there and that it was like
01:26:45
there's not many other people here and
01:26:46
I'm doing something that's, you know,
01:26:48
considered to be
01:26:51
out there. Yeah. That's to me that's
01:26:53
just what I was I I just enjoyed it. So,
01:26:56
I don't try to um But maybe you're
01:26:58
right. Maybe there was something like
01:27:00
deeper there. But I don't think I don't
01:27:02
think we need to work everything out
01:27:03
either. I think like you can go down
01:27:06
with this like personal growth and self-
01:27:09
betterment. I think you can sometimes
01:27:11
dig too deep. Overthink. Yeah. Overthink
01:27:14
it and and and over cookook it. And
01:27:16
sometimes it's like whatever it is, it's
01:27:18
just is, you know. Yeah.
01:27:20
So once you got that out of your system
01:27:22
and you survived, you came back to New
01:27:24
Zealand, then you studied and became um
01:27:26
an intensive care paramedic for St.
01:27:28
John's.
01:27:30
Um anything from that career that still
01:27:32
haunts you?
01:27:35
How long did you do that for? 12 years.
01:27:36
Uh 13 years. 13 years.
01:27:39
I like when you say that like honestly
01:27:41
the hairs on the back of my neck stand
01:27:42
up because people don't understand
01:27:45
um people have a very w perspective of
01:27:48
what um you know they call them
01:27:51
um ambulance drivers.
01:27:54
Being an intensive care paramedic
01:27:55
nowadays is like taking the recess room
01:27:57
from the hospital out into the prehosp
01:27:59
environment. You have a very broad scope
01:28:00
of practice.
01:28:03
um you are confronted. I like to I don't
01:28:06
know
01:28:07
like
01:28:09
imagine anything that you can conjure up
01:28:12
in your head is what we see in the
01:28:13
prehosp environment and you are exposed
01:28:15
to very challenging stressful situations
01:28:18
where if you don't have good situational
01:28:20
awareness, you can really get yourself
01:28:22
messed up. I saw things in that job that
01:28:25
no one should have to see. Um, I saw
01:28:28
things in that job that
01:28:30
[Music]
01:28:31
uh you unless you had the ability to
01:28:35
just um push it back. You couldn't do
01:28:38
your job because one minute you'd be
01:28:40
doing
01:28:41
something that you'd be exposed to
01:28:43
something very horrific and then the
01:28:45
next minute you'd be having your lunch
01:28:46
and then you'd be on to the next job. So
01:28:48
if you didn't compart compartmentalize,
01:28:51
how do you say that? Um
01:28:52
compartmentalize. Yeah.
01:28:54
you couldn't do your job and that's what
01:28:57
and the other thing is like I became
01:29:01
very cynical about human beings doing
01:29:03
that job but that's why I left in the
01:29:04
end I was just like I became very
01:29:06
frustrated
01:29:07
that people were doing what they were
01:29:10
doing like inflicting self misery on
01:29:13
themselves through through through
01:29:14
basically lifestyle choices not looking
01:29:18
after themselves um but yeah I was even
01:29:21
thinking man on the drive in here. I
01:29:23
don't know why, but I started thinking
01:29:24
about a few jobs that I went to that
01:29:26
really I would say now I understand
01:29:29
really had um a profound effect on me.
01:29:33
Um and they wouldn't be the type of jobs
01:29:35
that you would expect like nothing gory.
01:29:37
It was just um the jobs that really
01:29:40
stuck with me was where that human um
01:29:43
side of it came into it. You know, like
01:29:45
where you have to go and tell a family
01:29:46
that you know their loved ones just
01:29:48
passed away. Oh, you do that? My job as
01:29:51
an intensive care paramedic, at one
01:29:53
point I worked in a first response jeep
01:29:55
and my job was to drive around backing
01:29:57
up crews, right? And if you're a junior
01:29:59
crew and you're at a cardiac arrest, um
01:30:02
you can't call uh you can't call time
01:30:05
off until an intensive care paramedic
01:30:07
gets there. So at one point I felt like
01:30:09
the grim reaper. I was going from job to
01:30:11
job, walk in, um have a look at the
01:30:13
monitor, talk to the crew, make a
01:30:15
decision to stop, go and tell the
01:30:16
family, on to the next one. And I I
01:30:19
remember
01:30:20
going to a job and I called the
01:30:22
resuscitation, went up to the family and
01:30:24
I said to the um lady, he's dead. And
01:30:28
then I walked off and I was out in the
01:30:30
um truck filling out the paperwork and
01:30:31
the girl came up to me and she goes,
01:30:32
"Hey, I just want to let you know I
01:30:34
found that that was really um really
01:30:37
blunt." And I sat there and I thought
01:30:39
about it. It was blunt. And um but the
01:30:44
thing was
01:30:47
that at that point, man, if
01:30:51
you it was just
01:30:55
uh I feel
01:30:57
like if you bought too much into the um
01:31:02
emotional element of it, it would just I
01:31:05
don't know. I don't know how to explain
01:31:06
it. You just become
01:31:09
desensitized, man.
01:31:11
Um I have so much respect for um the
01:31:13
emergency services and and and you know
01:31:15
whether it be the police, the fire or
01:31:17
the ambulance because these these guys
01:31:18
and girls are exposed to stuff that it's
01:31:20
just we we don't even realize it, you
01:31:23
know. Um so yeah, it was just that that
01:31:26
dealing with the human element of it.
01:31:28
And I would go to, man, I learned so
01:31:29
much from that job cuz I would go to
01:31:31
elderly people over the age of 90. You
01:31:33
know, whenever I'd go, whenever you go
01:31:34
to someone over the age of 90, you'd be
01:31:36
you'd be driving there and you'd be
01:31:37
reading the notes and you'd be like in
01:31:38
your head, you would conjure up an image
01:31:40
of what this person would look like over
01:31:42
the age of 90. they're going to be, you
01:31:43
know, they're going to be um cognitively
01:31:46
and
01:31:47
physically. And you'd get there and
01:31:49
they'd be spritly they'd be fully
01:31:51
cognitively on point, no arthritis and
01:31:53
and and and they may have just knocked
01:31:55
their leg and had a skin tear and they
01:31:56
needed like some help, right? And I'd
01:31:58
get there and I'd talk to and they they
01:32:00
were war vets and they had these amazing
01:32:02
stories and I would always ask them. So
01:32:05
I did a 12 13 year study when I worked
01:32:07
on the ambulance. Whenever I went to
01:32:08
someone over the age of 90, even
01:32:09
centurans 100 years old, I'd say, "What
01:32:11
is the secret?" And they would always
01:32:13
say the same things. And those things
01:32:16
were they worked until late in life. So
01:32:19
they had purpose and they enjoyed what
01:32:22
they were doing. They were passionate
01:32:23
about what they're doing. That's what
01:32:24
that tells me. Plus, they were staying
01:32:26
cognitively um stimulated.
01:32:30
They all always You'd go in there and
01:32:32
they'd have a veggie patch and they talk
01:32:33
about food. you know, that they were
01:32:35
making their own veggies and they
01:32:36
prioritized like eating healthy food.
01:32:38
They would still go to bingo nights and
01:32:40
they still had close social
01:32:41
interactions. If you're socially
01:32:43
isolated, that's um significantly
01:32:46
affects your mental health, right? They
01:32:48
were active, they were still exercising,
01:32:50
they were still moving
01:32:52
um and they had a really positive
01:32:55
outlook, positive mindset. It was those
01:32:57
five things every time. Mhm. Um so
01:33:01
whilst in that job, you know, you're
01:33:03
exposed to all sorts of gnarly stuff and
01:33:05
it's um can be confronting, you still
01:33:07
there's such a beautiful element to that
01:33:09
job and that is um the h humanistic side
01:33:12
of it and uh yeah and even the team that
01:33:15
you work with, you spend, you know, a
01:33:17
shift goes for 12 hours and on a shift
01:33:19
you might not even get a lunch break and
01:33:20
you might have to work 2 hours overtime.
01:33:22
It's it's full on, man. At night time
01:33:25
you you're going from one job to the
01:33:27
next job. you're clearing a hospital and
01:33:28
you're on to the next one and and you're
01:33:30
leaning on the energy of the person that
01:33:31
you're working with. I miss that
01:33:33
camaraderie of that side of it. Um it's
01:33:36
it is a it's a crazy job, man. Like
01:33:38
you're 3:00 in the morning and you're
01:33:40
going to a job that requires all of your
01:33:43
cognitive focus. You're exhausted.
01:33:45
You've been burning it all night and
01:33:47
you're having to make these clinical
01:33:48
decisions under pressure and it's huge
01:33:50
hugely demanding job which is why I
01:33:52
respect respect them so much. Yeah.
01:33:54
There's and there's heaps of jobs like
01:33:55
that that that we don't even think
01:33:57
about. Like um I think the first the
01:33:58
first and only time I've seen a dead
01:34:00
body in my life is like my 86y old nana
01:34:02
in an open casket and that was quite
01:34:03
confronting and um I was talking to
01:34:05
where where this studio is. We're just
01:34:07
over the road from the police station. I
01:34:08
was talking to a cop a couple of weeks
01:34:10
ago. Um, and we're talking about some of
01:34:12
the aspects of his job and he said like
01:34:14
just recently that they attended a
01:34:15
suicide where uh it had happened like 5
01:34:18
days earlier and then afterwards they
01:34:20
got McDonald's on the way back to the to
01:34:22
the station and he was just reflecting
01:34:24
on the surrealness of it of it all. It's
01:34:26
it's [ __ ] bizarre what emergency
01:34:29
services and you know intensive care
01:34:30
ambos have to go through. Yeah. Yeah.
01:34:35
Um, I remember going to a job working in
01:34:38
Helensville and at the time you would
01:34:40
work single crude and I was asleep and
01:34:42
the tones went off at 2:00 in the
01:34:44
morning. It was just down the road and I
01:34:45
ended up down this long driveway, drove
01:34:47
nose down, which you never do. You
01:34:48
always reverse down in case you you
01:34:50
know, you don't know what you're going
01:34:51
into at 2:00 on a Saturday night. And um
01:34:54
I ended up down this long driveway. And
01:34:56
I won't go into I won't go into heaps of
01:34:58
detail, but I knew straight away when I
01:35:01
walked into the scene that I was in a
01:35:04
place where I shouldn't be. And
01:35:05
especially working by yourself and I
01:35:07
didn't have my radio on me. I left it in
01:35:08
the in the truck. And I arrived there
01:35:11
and there was a person on the ground
01:35:13
unconscious and um and in a pool of
01:35:16
blood and there was a whole bunch of
01:35:17
people standing around. And um so you
01:35:19
know, you walk in, you want to get a
01:35:20
little bit of history of what's going
01:35:21
on. No one would talk. And uh one guy
01:35:24
one guy said um you know they've fallen
01:35:26
down the stairs. There was no stairs
01:35:27
anywhere so you can read between the
01:35:28
lines and
01:35:32
um this is you know 100 kgs of dead
01:35:36
weight on the ground. This patient was
01:35:38
critically unwell and needed to be in
01:35:40
hospital but I couldn't get the patient
01:35:41
off the ground onto the stretcher
01:35:43
without the help of someone
01:35:45
you know without the help of someone g
01:35:47
giving me a lift. And so then this guy
01:35:49
turned on me and he said well where's
01:35:50
your the person you're working with? And
01:35:51
it became this um very
01:35:56
um this basic guy basically shadowing me
01:35:59
and he said, "Man, if you don't get this
01:36:00
this person out of here, we're basically
01:36:02
going to [ __ ] you up type thing, you
01:36:04
know." And so in the end, I just had to
01:36:07
bend down and like just wrestle this
01:36:09
this um person onto the stretcher and
01:36:11
then getting the stretcher up and into
01:36:13
the back of the the truck and I had this
01:36:15
person following me the whole way. And
01:36:16
if you don't, there was certain things,
01:36:19
you know, like if you don't have
01:36:21
good self-awareness and self-regulation
01:36:23
in those moments on those jobs, man, you
01:36:25
can literally Yeah, you can get really
01:36:28
um you can find yourself in a really bad
01:36:30
situation.
01:36:32
Um is there any bizarre call outs that
01:36:34
you remember? Oh, lots of bizarre call
01:36:36
outs, man. What was some of the funny
01:36:37
funnier ones? H I don't know, man. You
01:36:39
go to
01:36:43
like Oh, man. I I don't know. There's so
01:36:46
there's so many like butt stuff. There's
01:36:48
so many. I mean, I remember going to a
01:36:50
guy who basically
01:36:51
like got home from town, walking down
01:36:54
his just normal person walking down his
01:36:56
driveway and um was so intoxicated that
01:36:58
he fell into the ditch and called the
01:36:59
ambulance cuz he couldn't get himself
01:37:00
out of the ditch and then and all I turn
01:37:02
up is like, you know, bend down, get him
01:37:05
up, knock on the door. The wife comes to
01:37:08
the door and here's your here's your
01:37:09
husband, you know, like that kind of
01:37:11
stuff was just routine. Are you angry?
01:37:13
Are you pissed at that point? Like you
01:37:15
can laugh about it now, but you know,
01:37:17
you're this high stress, high pressure
01:37:18
job. I just tr you can like some of the
01:37:21
jobs are so like just out there that
01:37:24
yeah, you just you have to just laugh at
01:37:25
it. But you do you do get like you do
01:37:28
get annoyed at like Yeah. getting woken
01:37:31
up going to jobs where they don't
01:37:32
actually need an ambulance. What about
01:37:35
um smells that you'll never forget from
01:37:36
that job?
01:37:39
Oh, the smells was the worst. That was
01:37:42
the worst thing that like I could see
01:37:44
anything you know like the the blood the
01:37:46
open wound all that stuff didn't affect
01:37:47
me but the smells were
01:37:50
um you know um overwhelming and that's I
01:37:54
I find it difficult to go into too much
01:37:56
detail cuz I want to be respectful of
01:37:57
like but you know you're talking about
01:38:00
jobs where you're going into a house and
01:38:02
someone has been passed away for like
01:38:04
you know a week and they're decomposing
01:38:06
and and you know you're in there and
01:38:08
yeah it's pretty pretty gnarly. But in
01:38:10
that job, man, you get you get spat on,
01:38:12
you get vomited on, you get, you know,
01:38:14
you get [ __ ] on you, you get pissed on.
01:38:16
It's like that's not that uncommon. Do
01:38:20
do you think like um all these things
01:38:22
that you've been through, they they led
01:38:24
you to um integrated training and come
01:38:26
under pressure. Um but do you think like
01:38:29
now if you if something like come under
01:38:30
pressure existed and you did that and
01:38:32
then you started becoming a um intensive
01:38:34
care paramedic you would have been
01:38:36
better at the job
01:38:39
or I suppose another way of framing it
01:38:40
if someone's just just getting into that
01:38:42
sort of like field of work now if they
01:38:44
came and saw you for a weekend would it
01:38:46
equip them better for the job definitely
01:38:48
man I didn't I went right through school
01:38:51
and I didn't learn the skills of stress
01:38:54
no one does right I I didn't learn how
01:38:56
to develop my mindset. I didn't learn
01:38:58
how to shift my perspective. I didn't
01:38:59
learn how thoughts, thinking, emotion,
01:39:01
action, outcome. I didn't know about
01:39:03
thought control and reframing. I didn't
01:39:05
know about cognitive reappraisal. I
01:39:06
didn't know about um acceptance or any
01:39:08
of this stuff. Then I went to
01:39:10
university. For four years, I studied a
01:39:11
degree in health science. Not once, I'm
01:39:14
telling you, man, not once did we learn
01:39:17
about how to control our physical and
01:39:19
mental state under pressure. Now, that
01:39:21
to me is mad. And then you and then
01:39:24
you're thrust out into the prehosp
01:39:26
environment where you are exposed with
01:39:28
everything you can imagine and you have
01:39:29
to be calm under pressure otherwise you
01:39:31
can't execute. So you learn that you
01:39:32
just learn it on the job. But these are
01:39:34
young kids 19 20 that are coming through
01:39:36
into this job now. And I I just want to
01:39:38
make it very clear that job is a
01:39:39
beautiful job. If like if there are
01:39:41
people out there listening to this I
01:39:42
don't want to be a par. It is a
01:39:44
wonderful job. You're helping other
01:39:45
people and you're learning you know
01:39:47
incredible skills that will set you up
01:39:49
for for life. I feel Did did you have
01:39:53
um on a on an occasion or numerous
01:39:56
occasions where you were dealing with a
01:39:57
patient and they thought they were fine
01:39:59
but you know you knew you were saving
01:40:00
their life? Oh, 100%. Really? Yeah.
01:40:03
Absolutely. Because
01:40:08
um man, I went to I remember going to a
01:40:10
28-year-old um guy in Glenn Eden who was
01:40:13
having a um myocardial inffection. So, a
01:40:15
heart attack and and all he experienced
01:40:18
was so so an occlusion in his coronary
01:40:20
artery in his heart, which by the way is
01:40:21
not that uncommon in people of that age.
01:40:24
Um you would think would be very
01:40:26
uncommon, but it's not. and um all he
01:40:28
was experiencing was some shortness of
01:40:30
breath and some chest discomfort and so
01:40:32
he didn't want to go to the you know
01:40:34
didn't want to go to um hospital. I was
01:40:35
having to explain to him and show him
01:40:37
the ECG you are having an evolving event
01:40:41
here where you're basically having a
01:40:42
heart attack and this guy was refusing
01:40:44
to go to the hospital. So yeah lots of
01:40:48
times. Wow. Um what were the biggest
01:40:51
lessons about um first of all about
01:40:53
yourself but also about the human psyche
01:40:54
during this period in that job?
01:41:01
Um sorry we're getting really deep here
01:41:04
today. No, I think what surprised me
01:41:07
most is
01:41:08
that
01:41:11
how we can willingly
01:41:15
um do the stuff that we do to ourselves
01:41:18
physically and mentally and and the
01:41:20
punishment we put our bodies through.
01:41:22
You know, like I don't think that we are
01:41:24
a very well um nation of
01:41:29
people. You only have to go to the mall,
01:41:31
go look around the mall.
01:41:33
every second people person's morbidly
01:41:35
obese. Yeah. See, I know that I will get
01:41:38
um for saying these types of things. I
01:41:39
know that I'll get, you know, I get some
01:41:41
backlash, but that's the reality. Let's
01:41:44
just be honest. There is a physical
01:41:46
health crisis and a mental health crisis
01:41:48
in New Zealand. I came on a podcast when
01:41:49
I said this. We're talking about a
01:41:51
mental health crisis. There is a
01:41:52
physical health crisis. And then
01:41:54
everyone's saying to me, oh, how dare
01:41:56
you say it's a physical health crisis
01:41:57
and and and not give the respect to the
01:42:00
fact that it's a, you know, mental
01:42:02
health crisis. That we have one body. If
01:42:05
you are not physically healthy, it
01:42:07
affects you mentally. Physical health is
01:42:09
mental health. Mental health is physical
01:42:12
health. It is we got to get away from
01:42:14
this like
01:42:16
um this like huge, you know, the mental
01:42:21
and the physical is just it's one. And
01:42:23
how do we improve our mental health? We
01:42:24
invest in our physical health. How do we
01:42:27
improve our physical health? We invest
01:42:28
in our mental health. So yeah, it was um
01:42:31
I think your question was just I can't
01:42:35
even remember what your question was. Um
01:42:36
oh biggest yeah biggest things you
01:42:38
learned about yourselves and um and you
01:42:40
know other people during this time and I
01:42:42
think that's that's really good. Um yeah
01:42:44
there's there's another quote I really
01:42:46
like. It's like um a man who has good
01:42:48
physical health can have many wishes. A
01:42:50
man who has bad physical health can only
01:42:52
has one wish to be healthy. Yeah. 100%.
01:42:55
Because it's like you think even if you
01:42:56
got like a infected like toenail or
01:42:59
something, it's all you can think about.
01:43:01
When you have had your health taken away
01:43:03
from you, I I I my purpose like I feel
01:43:07
like one one of my deep purposes in life
01:43:10
is when I'm 60 I want to be health when
01:43:14
I'm 50 I want to be healthier than what
01:43:15
I am now. when I'm 60, I want to be
01:43:16
stronger, more
01:43:17
resilient than what I am when I'm 50.
01:43:21
And I believe that I can do that. And
01:43:23
so, part of my purpose for that is that
01:43:25
I've had my health taken away from me.
01:43:28
Um, I've been in a very lost place where
01:43:30
um, you know, with chronic pain and and
01:43:32
and
01:43:34
feeling the effects of that.
01:43:37
And this part of that is like that's
01:43:41
what drives me to like I don't know go
01:43:43
to the gym every day, do my mobility
01:43:45
work, do my my meditation and
01:43:48
and I don't understand I don't
01:43:50
understand
01:43:52
like I don't understand it when I want
01:43:54
everyone to
01:43:56
be my wish would be be for everyone to
01:43:58
invest into their physical and mental
01:44:00
health and to be constantly working on
01:44:03
themselves because that raises the
01:44:05
consciousness of everyone.
01:44:06
you know that that raises the bar for
01:44:09
for everything.
01:44:10
And so I I that's like part of that was
01:44:12
I got frustrated just seeing like the
01:44:14
effect of what but also the burden that
01:44:16
had on the um on the public health
01:44:18
system. Huge burden man on the on the
01:44:20
public health system from people that
01:44:21
weren't looking after themselves. So
01:44:23
it's not just you you're affecting
01:44:25
you're affecting everybody. You know the
01:44:28
the waiting rooms are full up. um you
01:44:30
know a routine u um procedure now like
01:44:33
an um you know um appendix removal or
01:44:36
whatever it might be have now become
01:44:38
very complicated procedures. So that is
01:44:40
putting a lot of pressure on the
01:44:42
aniththetist that's putting a lot of
01:44:44
pressure on the on the doctor because
01:44:46
they're now having to work in an
01:44:47
environment where the stakes are so much
01:44:48
higher because these people are so are
01:44:50
such high risk. M we don't we don't see
01:44:53
that and we don't see that like you know
01:44:55
when when you're taking the old person
01:44:57
who's um you know served our country and
01:45:01
they need help and you're taking them
01:45:02
into the um into the hospital and all
01:45:05
the rooms are full of people that
01:45:06
haven't looked after themselves and
01:45:08
they're waiting out in the foyer and
01:45:10
they're not getting the help that they
01:45:11
deserve. Yeah. Yeah. I I think um one of
01:45:16
the worst things in the world would be
01:45:17
like spending the last 10 or 15 20 years
01:45:19
of your life trapped in a body that
01:45:21
doesn't work anymore. That would suck so
01:45:23
much, wouldn't it? Yeah, it would. And
01:45:26
um man, we're in our old age. We're
01:45:27
supposed to thrive, man. We're supposed
01:45:28
to be healthy. Look at look at like
01:45:30
those countries where um you know, they
01:45:32
call them the blue zones, but you're
01:45:33
looking at like people in their 90s that
01:45:36
are just humming, man. But that starts
01:45:38
now. That that starts right now. And
01:45:40
it's um the other thing is like you have
01:45:43
a
01:45:45
responsibility. You have a
01:45:46
responsibility to um because all these
01:45:49
kids are looking at us. So what are they
01:45:50
looking at when we get into our 50s,
01:45:52
60s, 70s, 80s? Are they seeing what are
01:45:54
they seeing? You know, are they seeing
01:45:56
people that are high functioning and
01:45:57
still exercising and vibrant and eating
01:46:00
good food and you know so we all have
01:46:03
for for this uh mental health crisis
01:46:06
that they're talking about where it
01:46:07
starts is with each one of us, you and
01:46:09
me. M yeah just doing doing our job. And
01:46:12
again like this thing doesn't need to be
01:46:14
perfect, right? It's just it's just
01:46:15
understanding that like that is the
01:46:17
journey. It's like we're all on a health
01:46:18
journey. If you're not on a health
01:46:19
journey, you're wasting your time here.
01:46:20
Yeah. Surely. Yeah. There's there's um
01:46:23
there's there's a book that I started
01:46:24
read. It's a very long book, so I
01:46:25
haven't got through it, but the um the
01:46:27
book's called Outlive. And the gist of
01:46:28
it is gist of it is basically reverse
01:46:30
engineering your aging. So if at the age
01:46:32
of 70 you want to be able to you travel
01:46:34
around Europe by rail and be able to put
01:46:37
a 20 kilo suitcase in an overhead locker
01:46:39
then at 50 you need to be able to you do
01:46:41
overhead a lot more than that. I love
01:46:42
that. Um if if you can barely walk 5 km
01:46:45
at 50 then you're not going to be able
01:46:47
to walk briskly enough to get around a
01:46:48
train station at 70. Um so I kind of
01:46:51
like that. Hey home stretch now. You're
01:46:53
doing great by the way. How's how's this
01:46:54
been? Is it all right? Bloody good mate.
01:46:56
Yeah. Okay. They're kind of like, you
01:47:00
know, like I've I've
01:47:02
um you asking me that question just
01:47:05
pings something in my brain and it's
01:47:06
like um I'm not saying this is um but
01:47:12
we talked about earlier on the podcast
01:47:14
that we're all very similar. We all have
01:47:16
the same insecurities. Um you know, we
01:47:18
all have the same worries, the same
01:47:20
fears. And I have people come in, you
01:47:22
know, example is I have people come in
01:47:24
and talk on our workshop. And these are
01:47:26
people that are operating at a very high
01:47:28
level in what they do. And afterwards
01:47:30
they come up to me and and they say to
01:47:32
me, "Was that all right?" You know, how
01:47:35
did that go? Do you do you think I' and
01:47:38
you can see the level
01:47:40
of that that whole thing around the
01:47:42
insecurity and the fear of failure or
01:47:45
the fear of what other people might
01:47:47
think. And it's um I don't know why I
01:47:49
brought that up, but when you ask me is
01:47:51
this going good? I know. I have that
01:47:54
with the podcast. you've done like 220
01:47:56
episodes now. I I I have some people
01:47:57
like High Performers that will message
01:47:59
me the week it comes out saying, "Oh,
01:48:00
how have the numbers been? How have the
01:48:01
how the downloads? What what episodes
01:48:03
have gone better?" And it's a real it's
01:48:05
a it's it's been a fascinating insight
01:48:07
for me like um Yeah. Yeah. Just how how
01:48:09
these people want everything to do well
01:48:11
or I don't know if it's a
01:48:12
micromanagement thing or an insecurity
01:48:14
thing or what it is, but it's
01:48:15
fascinating. Yeah. Well, I think it
01:48:18
comes back to those three fears. Fear of
01:48:19
failure, fear of letting people down,
01:48:21
fear of what other people might think.
01:48:22
Yeah. and and even coming on to this
01:48:24
podcast, every everyone that comes on
01:48:26
your podcast will have some level of um
01:48:29
feeling and emotion, whether that's
01:48:31
excitement or stress and anxiety or a
01:48:34
bit of overwhelm or [ __ ] you know, I'm
01:48:36
going on Dom Harvey's podcast. What if I
01:48:38
[ __ ] it up? And everyone that comes in
01:48:40
here has that. Um and it comes back to
01:48:43
that thing that sometimes we can't see
01:48:44
it. I could have been incredibly anxious
01:48:46
coming in in here today, but I would
01:48:47
have just mastered it. M and and that
01:48:50
draws back around to like just you don't
01:48:53
know just be kind there. Yeah,
01:48:55
100%. What are your best and worst
01:48:57
habits?
01:48:59
My best habit I think is
01:49:03
uh I am okay. What is my best and worst
01:49:08
habit?
01:49:11
My best habit I think is that I am very
01:49:18
determined.
01:49:20
Um I care deeply about other
01:49:25
people.
01:49:28
Um
01:49:34
I I love
01:49:36
um man I just love life. I think that's
01:49:39
like I just love I love what I'm doing.
01:49:43
I love life and that's you know it's not
01:49:47
with obviously without its challenges. I
01:49:49
love going through it. Now I even like
01:49:50
going through adversity cuz I know I
01:49:53
know there's a clear you know I know I'm
01:49:55
going to come out the other end more
01:49:56
resilient. What is it that what was the
01:49:58
other your best and worst habits? My
01:50:00
worst habit is probably like I and I've
01:50:01
had to really put my thumb on this one
01:50:03
the last couple of years but I
01:50:04
procrastinate.
01:50:06
And so common right? Yep. I
01:50:08
procrastinate
01:50:10
and I know why I do it.
01:50:14
Was it a fear? So I used to think that
01:50:17
that was just wow just I'm just a
01:50:19
procrastinator,
01:50:20
right? Um I procrastinate
01:50:24
because and a little bit of
01:50:26
self-sabotage.
01:50:29
Um and the reason for it especially in
01:50:32
my business is like right if we get to
01:50:33
this level there's there's a chance it's
01:50:36
going to fail. you're really putting
01:50:37
yourself out there, right? And so
01:50:39
there's certain things that my business
01:50:41
management will get me to do and I just
01:50:42
won't do them. And it's been like a
01:50:44
little bit of an issue the last couple
01:50:46
of years and and you're a procrastinator
01:50:48
and you're putting this stuff off and
01:50:49
you're self-sabotaging some of the
01:50:50
stuff. Why? Fear of failure. I'm not
01:50:52
even afraid to talk about it, man. I
01:50:54
don't care about any of the stuff
01:50:55
anymore like when talking about this
01:50:57
stuff cuz it's just the reality. But if
01:50:59
I if I have the self-awareness to say
01:51:01
that's why I'm procrastinating, well,
01:51:02
now I can change it. Yeah.
01:51:04
And that that's um I think that's
01:51:06
important that like we can talk about
01:51:08
any of the stuff like I'm not afraid.
01:51:11
Obviously there's certain things I hold
01:51:12
back from talking about which we've come
01:51:14
up in this podcast. Oh, I respect that
01:51:15
too. I'm not afraid to talk about my
01:51:18
insecurities and my weaknesses and
01:51:20
there's lots of other men. I have lots
01:51:21
of other weaknesses and things that I
01:51:23
got to work on. Um but procrastinating
01:51:26
has been a big one for me and because
01:51:27
I've identified the why now I can start
01:51:29
creating the change around it. When when
01:51:31
was the last time you cried?
01:51:34
Um, the last time I cried was in
01:51:39
um probably in the workshop, not in
01:51:42
front of everyone.
01:51:45
um listening to Jamal's talk and there's
01:51:49
a there's this bit at the end of his
01:51:50
talk where um he he works with these
01:51:53
young kids that
01:51:55
um are struggling like and he gets them
01:51:58
in nature and he takes them through
01:52:01
breath work, gets them um you know up
01:52:04
into
01:52:05
the into the nahi and uh there's this
01:52:08
part in this video that he plays and
01:52:10
it's got these kids walking along the
01:52:11
sand in their bare feet and then they're
01:52:13
up in the bush and there's a um Kofi
01:52:15
tree and they're surrounded by the Kofi
01:52:17
tree and they're locked like that and
01:52:19
and he's shooting up and the trees are
01:52:21
up like that. That gets me that really
01:52:24
hits me, man. And and I I I sort of so I
01:52:27
had a few tears and and I realized like
01:52:29
um I wasn't sitting there sobbing. It
01:52:32
just was very emotional for me and I
01:52:33
realized I sort of reflected on that
01:52:36
and I think it is because nature um
01:52:40
going through like challenging times
01:52:42
that's been always the constant for me
01:52:44
has been getting in the ocean and up
01:52:45
into the bush and I just have such a
01:52:47
deep connection with that and and it's
01:52:49
been um such an important integral part
01:52:52
of my life. M um plus seeing those kids,
01:52:56
man, like
01:53:00
just seeing like those kids struggling
01:53:02
and
01:53:03
um just feeling so fortunate that you
01:53:06
know we we are lucky to have access to
01:53:08
the stuff and we should be incredibly
01:53:10
grateful cuz some people man are are
01:53:12
really struggling out there and they
01:53:13
don't have access to the stuff. Did that
01:53:15
come with a sense of pride as well in
01:53:17
that it's this um it's this uh thing
01:53:19
that you have created?
01:53:22
What? Like the the the kids with their
01:53:25
arms linked around the Kofi tree. Um
01:53:27
like this is this workshop that you've
01:53:29
created that they're on.
01:53:33
Yeah.
01:53:34
Um I don't know. But um
01:53:39
I mean it's pretty cool. Yeah. But they
01:53:41
wouldn't have been there in that
01:53:42
situation in that video had you not
01:53:44
created this thing. You procrastinator.
01:53:47
Yeah.
01:53:49
Yeah. Far out, man. when I go away from
01:53:51
the workshop and I'm just like, man,
01:53:52
what can we do better? And and we we
01:53:54
haven't done enough or we haven't It's
01:53:57
uh it's it's the blessing and a curse of
01:53:59
having a growth mindset, right? Never
01:54:01
never satisfied. You got to Yeah. You
01:54:03
got to like sometimes I do just take a
01:54:05
step back and I'm like, man, it's
01:54:06
incredible what we've created here.
01:54:08
We've created a workshop. We've run
01:54:10
we've run hundreds and hundreds of
01:54:12
people through our workshop. And people
01:54:13
message us, man. And I had a message
01:54:16
from a guy yesterday who came on the
01:54:17
workshop two years ago and he he said to
01:54:18
me that that that workshop has been
01:54:20
absolutely life-changing for him. And he
01:54:22
came on a workshop at a time where he
01:54:23
was really struggling and
01:54:25
and oh man, I've had a guy come up to me
01:54:27
at a keynote and and tell me that um he
01:54:30
listened to a podcast and and if it
01:54:33
wasn't for he man, he basically told me
01:54:35
that he was going to top himself and he
01:54:36
listened to the podcast and he said that
01:54:38
um listening to your podcast changed
01:54:41
everything for me.
01:54:43
Man, that was like
01:54:45
saving lives. Yeah, I grabbed that guy
01:54:46
and gave him a hug and um I I don't post
01:54:50
any like we get feedback from from the
01:54:52
workshop all the time and I very rarely
01:54:54
post it up. But it's when we get that
01:54:56
feedback that I just kind of stop and
01:54:58
reflect and it's like, man, yeah, it's
01:54:59
pretty but but the that whole thing of
01:55:03
like you never make it, you know, always
01:55:07
more to be done. Yeah. You get to this
01:55:09
level where you're doing all this cool
01:55:10
stuff and it's like, okay, what's the
01:55:11
next thing? what's the next thing? You
01:55:13
never make it. You never make it in life
01:55:15
ever. And when you think you have,
01:55:16
that's where you the wheels fall off.
01:55:18
Yeah. And that's that whole thing of
01:55:19
it's just a journey, man. It's like
01:55:21
constantly evolving. And I suppose
01:55:23
that's where you get stagnant. Like um I
01:55:25
had um Anna Moberry on the podcast last
01:55:27
year, like super successful
01:55:29
businesswoman, a billionaire, um set up
01:55:32
the uh the company Zuro with her
01:55:34
brothers and she she set up a new
01:55:36
company now and she's involved with
01:55:37
Oakland FC. And I said to her, "Why
01:55:39
don't you just like kick back and relax
01:55:40
and go on a couple of cushy boards or,
01:55:43
you know, get on the kids school
01:55:45
committee or something with your billion
01:55:46
dollars?" And she she was like, "That
01:55:48
was just a mountain to climb and there's
01:55:49
plenty more mountains to climb."
01:55:50
Exactly. I thought, "Wow, that's cool."
01:55:52
Yeah. And I've worked with people that
01:55:54
um I I remember a client saying to me,
01:55:55
he goes, "You know, I um the happiest I
01:55:59
ever was or the most content I ever was
01:56:00
was when I went from $200,000 to
01:56:03
$300,000. This is a multi
01:56:06
multi-millionaire." He he goes, "The
01:56:07
more money I I made, I never got
01:56:09
happier. The less things I had, you
01:56:11
know, the the the time in my life where
01:56:14
it was the simplest and I had less
01:56:16
things was the happiest I was." And that
01:56:17
really resonated with me. Um before we
01:56:20
do finish, I'd like to take you through
01:56:23
um this two-minute breathing exercise.
01:56:25
Oh, who said we're finishing? Oh, sorry.
01:56:28
Next question. No, no, you're right. Um
01:56:32
okay. Um your last couple, do you have
01:56:34
any regrets?
01:56:36
Do I have any regrets? Yeah, I think
01:56:39
everyone has regrets, man. Like, how can
01:56:40
you
01:56:41
not people? What are the big ones for
01:56:44
you? Um, what are these things you're
01:56:46
not ready to talk about on a podcast
01:56:47
yet? I I'd have to think like what is
01:56:49
something I regret? Um,
01:56:53
I regret the way I've treated some
01:56:55
people. I definitely look back and I
01:56:56
regret the way that I've treated people.
01:56:59
Um, I regret not taking some
01:57:02
opportunities. Um, I regret doing some
01:57:06
things that I shouldn't have done. But
01:57:09
people like to say like, you know, you
01:57:10
should never regret anything in life. Of
01:57:12
course you do. I know. No. Especially
01:57:14
like the version of um, you know, you
01:57:17
that's sitting in front of me now is
01:57:18
probably completely different to who you
01:57:19
were when you were 20 or 30. And I think
01:57:21
it's okay to look back and have like toe
01:57:23
curling moments where you think, "What
01:57:24
the [ __ ] was I thinking?" Yeah. If you
01:57:26
don't, that means you haven't grown at
01:57:28
all. Yeah. Oh man, I probably regret
01:57:30
things I did last week. And it's like,
01:57:32
you know how sometimes you have friends
01:57:33
that say, "Oh, you've you've changed."
01:57:35
And I think it's a good thing because if
01:57:37
if you're not changing, then you know,
01:57:38
it means you're not growing. Yeah. You
01:57:40
change, but then you stick to your um
01:57:42
I've always felt like I've stuck to who
01:57:44
I really am. And that is embedded in
01:57:48
growing up at Phiha. um you know,
01:57:51
surfing um
01:57:54
uh I don't know, my practical
01:57:56
experiences of life and and I feel like
01:57:58
I've got a deep understanding of who I
01:57:59
am and I will never there's part there's
01:58:02
part of that is like yeah you want to
01:58:03
change and you want to evolve but
01:58:05
there's a big part of that that I'm very
01:58:07
stubborn around and I won't change. I'm
01:58:09
me. Uh and and there's yeah I can I can
01:58:13
tell there's a definite stubborn streak
01:58:15
that streak in there. I can't can't
01:58:17
imagine your it was your partner that
01:58:18
that's been going backwards and forwards
01:58:19
with me to set this podcast up. Um and I
01:58:22
can't imagine how frustrating it would
01:58:23
be to be in a relationship with you.
01:58:27
No, no, no. Um I've enjoyed this today.
01:58:30
Are you proud of yourself? Hugely proud
01:58:32
of myself, man. Have you always been
01:58:34
able to say that? Yeah, I think so. I I
01:58:37
don't think there's ever been a moment
01:58:38
in life where I've sat down and been
01:58:39
like, I'm really not proud of you. M.
01:58:43
No, no, but I I wonder like um you know
01:58:45
how we talk about it in the school in
01:58:46
school when you being called a tryhard
01:58:48
is a bad thing and you don't want to
01:58:50
sort of stand out. I feel like saying
01:58:52
you're proud of yourself at that stage
01:58:53
in life in your 20s or whatever like
01:58:54
people would think [ __ ] this guy's a
01:58:56
this guy's a dick. Yeah. But
01:58:59
um
01:59:01
uh I don't know, man. It's like, okay,
01:59:04
that's one thing, but then there's
01:59:06
there's the um the relationship you have
01:59:09
with yourself and that constant um noise
01:59:12
up here, that constant thinking and
01:59:15
thoughts that are coming in. And I've
01:59:16
always I feel like I've always been in
01:59:19
that respect, like the relationship that
01:59:21
I have with myself and the time I spend
01:59:23
up here, I've always I've never felt
01:59:26
like um man, I'm not I don't feel like
01:59:29
I've ever had a time where I've been
01:59:30
like, man, I'm not proud of you. M I've
01:59:32
never had that talk with myself. That's
01:59:34
cool. Yeah, that's great. That's great.
01:59:38
I think that's a great way to to end it.
01:59:40
Uh do you want Oh, what's the breathing
01:59:41
thing? Is this something that obviously
01:59:43
if people are driving and listening to
01:59:44
this, they won't be able to partake, but
01:59:46
anyone that's listening or watching to
01:59:47
this, can they join in? Well, what I
01:59:49
wanted to do was um cuz you I think it's
01:59:52
about I I would like to um for anyone
01:59:55
listening to go away and be able to um
01:59:57
implement this into their busy day. Like
01:59:59
if some I don't know someone might be
02:00:01
listening who's struggling with stress
02:00:03
or they may have some anxiety or they
02:00:05
may be having difficulty sleeping um or
02:00:07
they may just be instant interested in
02:00:09
regulating their physical and mental
02:00:11
state. Um so this exercise is real easy
02:00:14
and the beautiful thing about this
02:00:17
exercise dom is that you don't need
02:00:19
anything. So we can do it sitting right
02:00:20
here. It it relies on internal control.
02:00:23
So when I say internal control tapping
02:00:25
into some of these body systems are
02:00:26
designed to regulate stress and pressure
02:00:28
and it's your breathing. Now how this
02:00:30
exercise will work I want to do it for
02:00:32
just one minute so people listening and
02:00:34
you can do it yourself but all you do is
02:00:37
you start off by doing a body scan. Find
02:00:39
where you're holding tension and let it
02:00:40
go. So if you start off in your face you
02:00:43
move all the way down your body. Find
02:00:45
where you're holding tension chest jaw
02:00:47
shoulders and release it. Did you find
02:00:50
any tension? Everywhere. all through all
02:00:53
through my face. Yeah, definitely in the
02:00:55
in the jawline. And that's another whole
02:00:58
conversation. But release that release
02:00:59
that tension and on the count of five,
02:01:02
you're going to get flow into your first
02:01:04
inhale through your nose. And when you
02:01:06
get to the top of the inhale, you're
02:01:07
going to hold your breath. And I'll give
02:01:08
you some other cues when you get there.
02:01:09
5 4 3 2 1. Inhale slowly. Fill up space.
02:01:15
Get to the top. Hold your breath. And
02:01:17
once you hold your breath, I want you to
02:01:18
tap out. Lack of awareness of time. and
02:01:20
relax every single muscle. And you're
02:01:22
going to continue to sit there until you
02:01:24
feel an urge to breathe out. If you
02:01:26
don't feel an urge, just enjoy the
02:01:28
stillness. As soon as you feel an urge,
02:01:30
I want you to drop it out. Melt into
02:01:32
your chair and flow back into the next
02:01:34
inhale. Hold. It's not how long you can
02:01:36
hold your breath. Just whenever you feel
02:01:38
like it, drop it out. Literally melt
02:01:41
into the
02:01:41
chair. Drop it out, man. Don't control
02:01:44
it. Drop it out.
02:01:47
Yeah. Mean. and then flow into the next
02:01:49
inhale.
02:01:54
Hold. Cool. Hold your breath. Relax
02:01:56
every single
02:01:57
muscle. Lack of awareness of time. Get
02:02:00
rid of
02:02:01
expectations. Bring a sense of calmness
02:02:03
over your entire
02:02:05
body. Soon as you feel an urge to
02:02:08
breathe, you're going to drop it out.
02:02:10
Melt into the chair. The key is in the
02:02:12
exhale here. Use the exhale to get real
02:02:15
calm.
02:02:20
Two more cycles,
02:02:21
Dom. Go deeper with this, man. Two more
02:02:24
cycles. Take your time. Imagine you're
02:02:27
the only one in the
02:02:32
room. And on this next breathold, I'm
02:02:35
just going to tell you a few of the
02:02:36
things that are happening while you do
02:02:37
this. The signals your body send your
02:02:40
sends your brain is very important. And
02:02:42
and those signals need to be that you
02:02:44
are in an alert, calm, and focused
02:02:47
state. And by slowing your breathing
02:02:48
down and focusing on prolonging the
02:02:51
exhale, you're sending very clear
02:02:53
signals to your brain that you're calm
02:02:55
and you're in control. With this
02:02:57
breathing cycle that you're doing,
02:02:58
you're also activating the
02:03:00
parasympathetic division of your nervous
02:03:02
system. So that's the calming division
02:03:04
of your nervous system. And that is
02:03:06
because when you slow your breathing
02:03:07
down and prolong the exhale, it
02:03:09
stimulates something called the veagal
02:03:11
nerve, which is the main nerve of the
02:03:13
parasympathetic nervous system. So, how
02:03:15
did that feel, Dom? You're calm, man.
02:03:19
Look at him. Look how calm he is.
02:03:22
Good. Yeah. Very relaxed. That's a very
02:03:25
easy technique, isn't it? Yeah. And the
02:03:27
key thing is here, man. I know we're
02:03:28
going to wrap this up, but I challenge
02:03:31
you, Dom. I challenge you for the next
02:03:33
month, I'm going to send you this
02:03:34
breathing flow. I'm going to send you a
02:03:35
couple five minute ones. I challenge you
02:03:37
to do it twice a day. So, two times a
02:03:39
day, two lots of five minutes for the
02:03:41
next month. You will not I could sit
02:03:44
here and talk about all the benefits of
02:03:46
doing this, but it's that practical
02:03:48
experience of doing it. You will see
02:03:50
unquantifiable changes because it's just
02:03:53
5 minutes, but you carry that
02:03:55
self-awareness, that self-regulation,
02:03:57
that calmness into the rest of your day.
02:03:59
And then you carry it that level of
02:04:01
control where you're able to shift your
02:04:04
state from whatever physical and mental
02:04:05
state you're in into a calm state. You
02:04:07
carry that into situations in life where
02:04:09
you need more self-control. That's
02:04:12
powerful tool, man. And all it is is
02:04:14
your breathing and and that body scan.
02:04:16
My leg stopped shaking. I think my leg's
02:04:18
been shaking for the last two hours.
02:04:20
Yeah. So that um that shaking of your
02:04:22
leg is neural tension. And the What does
02:04:25
that mean? It's just like if you're um
02:04:27
in the red all the time, so in that
02:04:30
sympathetic part of your nervous system,
02:04:32
which is not bad, it's just that you're
02:04:34
a busy guy, you got stuff to do. Um that
02:04:37
is stress and we store that stress in
02:04:39
our body and that is adrenaline and
02:04:41
adrenaline agitates us to move, but
02:04:42
you're sitting here. So you're you're
02:04:44
going like that with your leg and then
02:04:46
the tension when you know when we go
02:04:48
through do the body scan. Yeah. Release
02:04:50
the tension. We store stress in our
02:04:52
muscular system and we store this as
02:04:54
this constant um muscle contraction.
02:04:58
This isn't just you, man. It's it's like
02:05:00
me. It's a lot of people. And
02:05:02
self-awareness is being aware of this
02:05:04
stuff. So when you go into stress and
02:05:06
pressure moments, you have the skill of
02:05:08
right relax my body. Because if you're
02:05:09
holding tensions constantly, you are
02:05:12
sending clear signals to your brain.
02:05:13
Fight, flight, or freeze. You're in that
02:05:15
freeze stress state. That one minute of
02:05:18
breathing. Um, obviously your uh
02:05:21
commentary was very helpful, but even
02:05:22
without that, like someone could do that
02:05:24
in their car before they go into a
02:05:25
meeting at work or before you go on a
02:05:27
Zoom call or you after driving home in
02:05:30
traffic and going into, you know,
02:05:33
reconnect with your family. Um, yeah.
02:05:35
Well, you you don't actually want all
02:05:36
those cues. That was just, you know, the
02:05:37
first time you do it, you give those
02:05:39
cues so that when people go and do it
02:05:40
again, then they've got those important
02:05:42
cues um to to sort of help get them into
02:05:45
a calmer state. But hey, here's a bit of
02:05:48
self-promotion, man. I've built a um
02:05:49
performance breathing course. It's got
02:05:51
all the stuff in it. It's got over 30
02:05:52
videos and it runs right through the
02:05:54
breathing mechanics, breathing to elicit
02:05:55
calm, the stuff that you've just done
02:05:57
here. There's like 10 videos in there,
02:05:59
breathing flows, how to use the exhale
02:06:01
to activate that calming division of
02:06:02
your nervous system, and then there's a
02:06:04
whole other part in there around dynamic
02:06:05
breathing training. And um yesterday I
02:06:08
just finished um filming a course in how
02:06:11
to use the ice bath for mental skill
02:06:13
development. It's a beautiful course,
02:06:14
man. I'm I am proud of that course cuz
02:06:16
that's like um taking all of this um uh
02:06:20
knowledge and wrapping it into a course
02:06:22
that gives people better self-awareness
02:06:24
and self-regulation, stress control and
02:06:26
skills of stress and stress resilience
02:06:28
and uses the ice bath to test um that
02:06:31
level of control in a very stressful
02:06:33
environment.
02:06:34
Well, you're doing great work and um
02:06:36
yeah, we'll put everything in everything
02:06:37
in the show notes that everyone could
02:06:38
need to know about Dave Wood or
02:06:40
integrated training or the come under
02:06:42
pressure workshops. But um thanks mate.
02:06:45
This has been really awesome today.
02:06:47
Really nice to connect. I can't believe
02:06:48
we only met like uh two hours ago.
02:06:51
Cheers, mate. Uh yeah. Yeah, sure that
02:06:54
we'll stay in contact, man. And um I
02:06:56
thank you very much for having me on.
02:06:57
100%. Thanks for coming and being so
02:06:59
open.