Reframe of Mind

Episode 33: Adapting to change

Sitting with our emotions

Andy Le Roy & Louise Poole, Reframe of Mind Hosts

You can connect with

Louise & Andy on

Reframe of Mind’s social media directly below:

Change can be triggering in a lot of ways. Whether you’ve made a commitment to change or it came out of the blue, there are things along the way that can jump up to surprise us, or we’ve been happily avoiding. Sometimes we adapt, knowing what was can never be again.

 

Louise and Andy tread through the minefield of grief and major change in this episode and both have a little cry along the way, because adapting to change can be just as difficult as deciding to step into something new.

 

If you’ve ever told yourself the tarot reader wasn’t that good because they told you something you didn’t want to hear, or had that unsteady “what now?” feeling when your world was turned upside down it might be time to unlearn a few things and draw on your strengths to adapt and settle into the, dare we say it, “new normal”.

 

Wisdom in this episode, exploring the psychology of adapting to change, comes courtesy of Associate Professor Kimberley Norris Associate Head of Learning and Teaching in Psychology at the University of Tasmania; Australia’s Dr Happy Tim Sharp, founder of The Happiness Institute; Diversity trans re-lator, speaker, educator and coach, Sally Goldner AM; bestselling small business author, entrepreneur and global presenter, Andrew Grffiths; Professor Alex Maritz from La Trobe Business School, New Zealand Endurance Athlete and Longevity Coach Lisa Tamati and behavioural consultant and Director of Positive Minds Australia Madhavi Nawana-Parker.

 

With so many strong voices around them, Andy and Louise invite you to join them as they work through the tears and continue their healing journey.

You can connect with Louise & Andy on Reframe of Mind’s social media directly below:

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Reframe of Mind contains discussion around mental health that may be disturbing to some listeners.

 

If you are concerned about yourself or someone you know, please seek professional individual advice. 

 

Some of the main crisis lines in Australia are listed on our Mental Health Crisis Resources page, including those that operate 24/7 like Beyond Blue and Lifeline.

Reframe of Mind contains discussion around mental health that may be disturbing to some listeners.

 

If you are concerned about yourself or someone you know, please seek professional individual advice. 

 

Some of the main crisis lines in Australia are listed on our Mental Health Crisis Resources page, including those that operate 24/7 like Beyond Blue and Lifeline.

Follow us now on your podcast app!
Apple PodcastsSpotifyGoogle PodcastsAcastiHeartRadioRSSAmazon MusicCastBoxPodcast AddictStitcherYouTubePocketCasts

Guests this episode:

Diversity trans-relator, educator, life coach, speaker and consultant. 

Best-selling author, entrepreneur and global presenter.

Professor of Entrepreneurship, La Trobe Business School, La Trobe University.

Director of Positive Minds Australia, widely published Author of Resilience, Wellbeing, Confidence & Social Emotional Intelligence.

Associate Head of Learning and Teaching in Psychology, Director of Postgraduate Professional Training Programs in Counselling and Psychology.

Australia’s very own ‘Dr Happy‘, at the forefront of the positive psychology movement and founder of The Happiness Institute.

Ultramarathon runner, Maori Sportswoman of the Year (2008), 2 x best-selling author. 

Gallery

Show Notes

Here’s some extra things you might not know about our guests, as well as some of the things mentioned during the episode.

Alex Maritz

After more than a decade in Executive Directorships for multi-nationals as a corporate entrepreneur, Alex entered academia full-time at La Trobe University as Professor of Entrepreneurship. Roles included Chief Operating Officer of Sony Playstation and Managing Director of Blockbusters Entertainment National Sales Manager at Boots Pharmaceuticals and Glaxo SmithKline.

 

Alex’s research areas include: Entrepreneurship, Innovation, Entrepreneurship Education, Senior Entrepreneurship, Indigenous Entrepreneurship, Startups, & Management.

Check out Professor Alex Maritz’s La Trobe University profile here.

 

Alex features in another of our Reframe of Mind episodes:

Watch Alex Maritz on Youtube discussing starting a business later in life:

Madhavi Nawana-Parker

Madhavi Nawana Parker, Director of Positive Minds Australia is a Published Author, Speaker and Counsellor, who has developed resilience, wellbeing, confidence and social emotional intelligence strategies for children, teenagers, families and schools for over twenty years.

Madhavi completed University studies in Psychology and Counselling, followed by her contribution to Autism SA where she wrote and delivered a broad range of social emotional literacy programs. Madhavi is known for her compassionate, strengths focused approach to improve mental health, confidence, resilience and wellbeing.

 

Madhavi has created a wealth of free resources, including:

 

The Resilience and Wellbeing Toolbox

 

 

 

And The Positive Mindset Curriculum, which is a book about effective handling of sibling rivalry:

 

 

 

Madhavi talks about handling anger and uncomfortable feelings responsibly:

Madhavi shares five tips here to better your wellbeing:

If your child is struggling with the emotions, check out Madhavi’s advice here:

Lisa Tamati

Lisa is a former endurance runner and has pushed her body to the limits, but not without gaining some insight into scientific theory about how our bodies work.

 

Lisa was the first Kiwi woman to finish the Badwater Ultramarathon, which is through hottest desert on earth, running 217km non-stop through Death Valley. She ran the length of New Zealand (2250km) for charity. Amongst other achievements, Lisa walked 250km in 7 days, carrying her entire water and food supply on her back and has run over 140 extreme ultramarathons in places including the Sahara and Gobi deserts as well as the Himalayas.

 

But Lisa’s story is not just about endurance running. She hosts a successful podcast and runs a business to help people optimise their health through the science of epigenetics. She has authored four books including Relentless, in which she tells the story of how she helped her mother defy the odds and make a full recovery from a stroke and brain aneurism.

Lisa tells her story of growth through discomfort in Episode 24:

Who is Lisa Tamati?

Watch the full movie about LIsa’s Himalayan experience here:

Lisa Tamati has authored a number of books, including Relentless, in which she tells the story of beating the odds, never giving up hope, doing whatever it takes, and what it means to go ‘all in’ after her mother Isobel had a an aneurysm and stroke and was left with massive brain damage.

Connect with Lisa on her social media below:

Watch the full movie about LIsa’s Gobi Desert Ultra Marathon Race here:

Watch the full movie about Lisa’s 333km non stop running event across the barren Sahara desert here:

Lisa hosts her own podcast ‘Pushing the limits’ where she interviews world leading experts across many genres from cutting edge scientists and leading doctors to biohackers, elite athletes and high performance experts to anti-ageing and longevity experts.

 

Check out some of her episodes below:

Andrew Griffiths

Andrew Griffiths is Australia number one small business author and has release fourteen books which have been sold on 65 countries and is well respected in 25 countries for his keynote speeches, workshops and presentations (750 and counting!) 

His latest book “Someone Has To Be The Most Expensive, Why Not Make It You?” explores the whys, whats and wherefores of charging a premium for what you do, but don’t be fooled into thinking this is a shallow motivational book that encourages people to charge wild prices without providing substance. This is a book that dares to explore your feeling of self worth as a business owner, because if you don’t sincerely believe you deserve to command a high price, your customers won’t either because as Andrew says, “you can put lipstick on a wombat”

Andrew Griffiths has over 35 years experience as a small business owner and entrepreneur and published his first book “101 Ways To Market Your Business” in 2000. He’s been on quite the adventure since then and took some time out of his hectic schedule to have a chat with Andy and Louise about all things life and business.

Andrew talks about his 14th book:

Listen to Andrew’s story in Episode 18 – Who Is Andrew Griffiths?

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Listen to our conversation with Sally in Episode 10 – Who Is Sally Goldner?

Transcript

Transcript has been auto-generated and may contain errors.

Your support on our patreon would go towards being able to provide a human-edited transcript for accessibility.

Due to the length of this episode, this transcript is split into two sections which has disrupted the time stamp flow. Part two picks up from the 1 hour 7 minute mark.

00:00:00

We acknowledge the Yuggera and Kaurna nations as traditional custodians of the land on which we work, live and learn, and their continuing connection with the land, waters and community.

00:00:09

We pay our respects to them and their elders, past and present.

00:00:12

Is it’s all content related to this program is for general informational purposes only, and contains stories and discussions around mental health that may be disturbing to some listeners.

00:00:21

If you’re concerned about yourself or someone you know, please seek professional, individual advice and support.

00:00:26

More details are contained in our show notes.

00:00:30

Hello fear, thank you for choosing me.

00:00:33

For your tarot reading.

00:00:34

Today, please sit.

00:00:37

Make yourself comfortable.

00:00:40

Thanks honesty.

00:00:41

It’s not too comfortable.

00:00:42

I’m so glad you had an opening.

00:00:44

Honesty, I have heard such good things about you.

00:00:47

Why else would you come?

00:00:49

Oh, I’m well, I’m here for answers, I think so.

00:00:52

How does this work?

00:00:53

You ask me a question, I read the cards.

00:00:56

You ignore my advice.

00:01:01

OK, let’s see.

00:01:02

Can I ask you about?

00:01:03

My job, you’re gonna ask about everything you’re.

00:01:05

Like right?

00:01:06

Well, I want to ask you.

00:01:07

About my job.

00:01:08

Then ask.

00:01:09

OK, what do you see in my?

00:01:12

Future for my career.

00:01:14

Big change.

00:01:16

I see you walking into the void.

00:01:18

Nothing is clear.

00:01:20

Your security is born.

00:01:23

And a bit harsh.

00:01:24

Sure they can’t stop you?

00:01:26

Why do you want me to tell you the truth or some version of what?

00:01:29

You want to hear the truth, but.

00:01:31

It’s just I wasn’t expecting.

00:01:32

I see a.

00:01:33

Big promotion with lots of people celebrating everything you have done and the very big pay increase.

00:01:42

Ah, that sounds better.

00:01:45

I see.

00:01:46

You need to make some hard choices, but the only thing for.

00:01:49

Certain is you won’t have this job for very much longer.

00:01:54

How much longer, though, are we talking here?

00:01:57

What time is it?

00:01:58

Ah, look, maybe we can try something different.

00:02:02

Come so if I’m.

00:02:03

Leaving this job, then what does my?

00:02:05

Financial future look like you want it.

00:02:07

In a better position today when you will be this time next month.

00:02:12

That doesn’t sound very encouraging.

00:02:14

I like telling me that as a life coach.

00:02:16

OK, but on the money though?

00:02:19

How much will that not so encouraging financial period last?

00:02:26

You will stretch it out for as long as is necessary from the void.

00:02:30

So like there’s more money coming though.

00:02:32

There is always money coming in and money going out.

00:02:34

Good, good.

00:02:37

You will adapt to change as you must as you enter the void.

00:02:42

Yeah, I get it. Look.

00:02:44

Up what about?

00:02:45

We look at my love life instead.

00:02:47

Well, there’s a surprise.

00:02:48

A surprise that sounds good.

00:02:50

When will I find the right one for?

00:02:52

Me, I do not see a man.

00:02:54

In your.

00:02:55

Looks like you are civically inclined.

00:03:01

You would do well to visit a local gayborhood.

00:03:05

What are you talking about?

00:03:10

Talking about retaliation.

00:03:13

I don’t know what you’re on about, but I think I.

00:03:15

Have heard enough clearly?

00:03:16

You’re having the off day, so let’s just stop.

00:03:19

What’s up?

00:03:19

As you wish.

00:03:20

Payment do you take.

00:03:21

Cash, yes, but don’t expect change.

00:03:26

I don’t know if.

00:03:26

I’ve said this before Andy but.

00:03:28

I feel attacked by your sketch.

00:03:31

When their cards don’t lie.

00:03:34

Isn’t that every time I?

00:03:35

Leave you to your own devices to write a sketch for us, and I come in and record it.

00:03:39

I’m always.

00:03:39

Being brutally attacked.

00:03:42

I don’t know, but I’m kind of scared to let you write one now.

00:03:47

I think the cards don’t lie, then.

00:03:50

When we consult some.

00:03:51

Thing like tarot cards or woo oracles that we love.

00:03:54

We might see some things that we don’t always like.

00:03:57

Oh, I love maybe the Woo woo.

00:03:58

But you’re right, sometimes what we see makes us uncomfortable because, like it or not, the message often involves change.

00:04:05

This is re frame.

00:04:07

Of mind.

00:04:08

Where we deep dive into discussions about mental health, joined by some of Australia’s leading minds to expand our understanding of the world and ourselves.

00:04:16

Because we don’t exist in a vacuum and the way we talk about.

00:04:18

Mental health shouldn’t either.

00:04:20

Radio hosts Andy Leroy and Louise Pool.

00:04:23

Last episode we spoke to head of High Performance and assistant coach for the London Pulse, Lisa Alexander, who was also formerly the Australian Diamonds netball coach, and she’s adapted to some pretty big changes herself.

00:04:34

Yeah, and she told.

00:04:35

Us about how important it is to build a good support network around yourself.

00:04:40

Lisa had a big change in her life when, after almost a decade as the head coach for the Australian Diamonds netball team, she was replaced in 2020.

00:04:49

It’s something that I need to recognize and understand and try not to get, you know, to to dark about as well or bitter, because I don’t want to behave like that, right?

00:05:01

So it’s very important that I remember that I’m showing away for many people and many people appreciated the.

00:05:09

Dignity and grace that I went with on the day, and that’s the way I wanted to behave.

00:05:14

But yeah, you’re right, you can hear it in my voice.

00:05:16

It’s still emotional.

00:05:18

Yeah, change is something that we all experience, no.

00:05:20

And it’s never going to stop.

00:05:22

So it kind of feels like time to bring some voices from the field of.

00:05:25

Psychology here. Hey.

00:05:26

I thought that you were going to go with.

00:05:28

They rigorously reference in the script here.

00:05:29

You know what it always.

00:05:30

It’s never.

00:05:33

It’s never going to.

00:05:34

It’s never gonna give you up.

00:05:37

Genius, Will Rick roll out again?

00:05:39

So my God.

00:05:40

Except change will let you down and desert you.

00:05:42

I know what to say.

00:05:43

He wills.

00:05:43

It will let you down though.

00:05:46

I don’t know it can also uplift you.

00:05:47

It can be a good change, I suppose.

00:05:50

Or is there such thing as good change?

00:05:51

These are questions to ask our resident psychologist, right?

00:05:54

I would think so.

00:05:55

Look, let’s start by reintroducing associate Professor Kimberly Norris, who is a researcher with the School of Psychological Sciences at the University of Tasmania.

00:06:03

Yeah, she’s helped us to frame up this conversation around mental health way, way, way back in episode 3, understanding anxiety and depression episode.

00:06:11

And she tells us that knowing how we as individuals approached.

00:06:15

Range can actually help us lean into our strings.

00:06:18

Yeah. And at the time of this interview was recorded with Kimberly, you might remember COVID-19 and in particular Melbourne had a lot of lockdowns.

00:06:27

They’re going through a lot and when we recorded this interview, they’re going through another lockdown due.

00:06:32

To the spread.

00:06:33

One thing we might be able to go into is the different individual responses.

00:06:38

That people have to change.

00:06:40

I saw you list them as some observers Survivor navigator, and is there a way that if once you identify where you fit on that spectrum that you can work with your natural inclination to affect change instead of trying to be a completely different person?

00:06:55

Most definitely.

00:06:56

And again, it’s that whole thing of self reflection.

00:06:58

Again, if you understand the way you approach the world, if you understand the way you think about and respond and adapt to change, you are able to maximize your strengths.

00:07:11

So if you are naturally the observe.

00:07:14

Then there’s no problem with being that observer, at least in the early stages, to see exactly what’s happening and to get a fuller understanding of what’s going on before committing to action.

00:07:26

So it’s actually maximizing the strengths of that observer, but then instead of becoming paralyzed by that.

00:07:33

And getting stuck in that loop.

00:07:35

Of continuing to observe and instead acting upon the information.

00:07:40

Available to you.

00:07:41

And although it might seem like the navigator, is that the way we should all aspire to be?

00:07:47

At the end of the day, we won’t all be navigators, at least not all the time.

00:07:52

So understanding that we don’t.

00:07:55

Have to be driving change in.

00:07:58

Order to adapt to.

00:08:00

Change that we can make decisions that.

00:08:04

Suit our needs.

00:08:06

And our approach is even when it feels like we have no control or no choice.

00:08:11

So, for example, how much energy we put into a change process.

00:08:16

We actually do have control over that.

00:08:17

The amount of time we dedicate to a given activity, we often have control over that.

00:08:24

And to a degree and definitely if we have a lot of practice, we can all.

00:08:29

So influence how we think about change.

00:08:33

So rather than being something that is always bad, rather than being something that we are forced to do, we can learn to see it as an opportunity, and that change in and of itself is not.

00:08:48

Actually, good or bad?

00:08:49

It’s simply different.

00:08:50

I think one of the things I’ve noticed this time around on social media with, you know, the current circumstances in Melbourne is I’ve been reading up on your stages of the confusion and panic, the honeymoon resentments.

00:09:05

It might be fair to say that the good people of Melbourne had enough of the honeymoon phase and it went straight from confusion onto resentment phase.

00:09:14

So, you know the I’ve been seeing posts where people are saying there’s still toilet paper on the shelves.

00:09:19

No one is panicking this time around.

00:09:21

And and that kind of thing, is there a sense maybe that here we go again it’s.

00:09:25

We’ll get through.

00:09:26

We’ll just be OK we?

00:09:27

Just need to move on.

00:09:28

Most definitely.

00:09:29

What we do know is that with repeated practice, which essentially Melburnians in.

00:09:34

Particular have become.

00:09:35

Very practiced at this now with repeated practice it seems more predictable and if it seems more predict.

00:09:42

People we feel more in control.

00:09:45

We know what to expect, and as a result, we feel better able to plan a response.

00:09:50

And you are right that what often happens is in subsequent experiences of extreme and unusual environments, which this lockdown essentially is.

00:10:02

You can skip phases because it’s almost a bit of a tick.

00:10:06

Been there, done that.

00:10:07

Let’s move on to the part that’s going to take more energy.

00:10:09

And so, as you say, there can be, you know, kind of a resignation, but it’s one born of.

00:10:16

We know we can do this.

00:10:17

Doesn’t mean we like it, doesn’t mean it’s fun.

00:10:20

But we know we.

00:10:22

Australia is doctor happy.

00:10:23

Team Sharp, director of the Happiness Institute, helped us to understand how we can start to identify positive strength within ourselves.

00:10:30

There’s a couple of different models.

00:10:31

The model that I mostly.

00:10:33

Use is the it’s called.

00:10:35

The VI a signature strength model.

00:10:37

There’s a couple.

00:10:38

Of other ones that are a bit more.

00:10:39

So there’s another another one called the.

00:10:41

Gallup Strengthsfinder, which is a bit more.

00:10:42

A corporate version.

00:10:44

And there’s a.

00:10:44

Couple of other ones, but the VI as being most widely researched and what I like.

00:10:48

Well, what I like a couple of things about it.

00:10:50

One, it’s been very.

00:10:51

Widely researched as thousands upon thousands of.

00:10:53

These millions of people are now in the database or the research, etc.

00:10:57

But also it’s free and so I’ll again, without trying to sell you anything to to your listeners.

00:11:02

If you just search for VI, a signature strengths survey, you get to a website.

00:11:06

You can do a completely free survey, which is really important because we can’t use our strengths if we don’t know what they are.

00:11:12

And most people don’t know what they are.

00:11:13

We don’t have a vocabulary to describe.

00:11:15

So so the 1st 20 or question.

00:11:17

The first step is to actually identify our strengths ’cause we again, we can’t do anything without that.

00:11:21

And the best way to identify them is with that survey, which again is totally free.

00:11:25

Or it takes about 15 or 20 minutes and it will ask you a whole bunch of questions.

00:11:29

What are you good at?

00:11:30

What do you like doing?

00:11:31

When do you experience for window experience or any at the end of that?

00:11:35

It’ll it’ll rank your strengths from top to bottom now in that particular model.

00:11:40

There are 20.

00:11:40

4 strengths and at the end of the survey, it’ll rank their strengths from #1 to #24, and there’s things like that.

00:11:47

Love of learning, curiosity, wisdom, leadership is a strength.

00:11:51

Humility is a strength.

00:11:52

Social intelligence is a strange.

00:11:53

Humor is a string.

00:11:55

There’s a whole bunch of.

00:11:56

Things like that, but the the couple things.

00:11:58

To note though there there’s no good or bad.

00:12:00

Strengths if well.

00:12:01

So they’re all good.

00:12:02

They’re all good strengths and another thing is important is that if you do this server and you do get your results and you look at 1 to 2424 is not a weakness.

00:12:11

This is a a common mistake we make because of how?

00:12:14

We brought up in a lot of ways.

00:12:16

A lot of people go straight to the bottom.

00:12:17

And say oh.

00:12:18

I’m no good at whatever.

00:12:19

It doesn’t mean you’re no good at that.

00:12:21

It’s still a strength.

00:12:22

What it just means is.

00:12:23

That for whatever.

00:12:25

There’s all sorts of reasons that number one, two, and three are things that you just do more often.

00:12:29

They just come more naturally to and.

00:12:31

#2324 just.

00:12:33

Things you don’t do quite as often, and that’s OK.

00:12:35

You know, that’s fine.

00:12:36

We can’t be fantastic at everything.

00:12:38

Yeah, so let’s.

00:12:39

Say to come back to your question that the the best place to start is to do one of those surveys to get your results to look at.

00:12:45

Your top strengths.

00:12:46

I mean, you can look at any of them if you want, but it kind of makes sense to start.

00:12:49

With the things you already.

00:12:50

Best at and to start maybe with your top three or.

00:12:52

Five and then?

00:12:53

To, I guess to ask yourself a couple.

00:12:55

Of questions like, well, where am?

00:12:56

I already using my strengths.

00:12:58

That’s a great place to start and where.

00:13:00

Can I use?

00:13:01

Them more.

00:13:01

One of the things I found a lot in my coaching is that some people might use.

00:13:04

So for example, I come back to the port Meadow.

00:13:07

Maybe you’re using creativity in one of your hobbies.

00:13:10

Could you use creativity more in another aspect of your life?

00:13:14

In, in, in.

00:13:14

Your professional life, or vice versa, are you using a strength?

00:13:17

At work that you.

00:13:18

Could use more in.

00:13:19

Your personal life.

00:13:20

So where am.

00:13:21

I using these things already.

00:13:22

Where can I use?

00:13:23

Them more.

00:13:23

How can I use them?

00:13:25

More often or at different times a day or in different contexts.

00:13:28

Whatever, because the bottom line is we know that people who are more aware of more load their strengths and who utilize their strengths in more ways tend to gain more benefits.

00:13:37

If I’d started an institute at the start of our podcast series, it probably would have been the unhappy institute.

00:13:45

Yeah, one would have been the angry institutes and if you go with some of my journals.

00:13:49

From those very.

00:13:50

Early days this.

00:13:51

Is actually before we started the podcast, but woo ears were burning right off the sides of peoples heads I’m sure.

00:13:58

I I also once would have been director of the passive aggressive Institute.

00:14:02

Oh, I don’t know if.

00:14:03

You’ve got a few shares.

00:14:07

Thank you.

00:14:11

We’ll have, I think we all, you know, we’ve all watched chairs in the passive aggressive issues.

00:14:15

So change though, you know, like we’ve both changed from those states to something a little bit more acceptable for ourselves, which is lovely.

00:14:23

Yeah, yeah.

00:14:24

Acceptable to whom?

00:14:26

Oh, acceptable to me.

00:14:28

Oh well, that’s good.

00:14:29

My mood to me is more acceptable.

00:14:31

Than it was.

00:14:32

Yeah, actually I I I would say that to your mood to.

00:14:33

I can honestly say that, yeah.

00:14:36

Me is more acceptable than it was.

00:14:40

Timing some of those passive aggressive shares and I see.

00:14:43

Thank you.

00:14:44

It’s just.

00:14:47

I mean.

00:14:49

I know.

00:14:50

I agree with that too.

00:14:51

I think you know, from an emotional point of view, where I was a year ago or two years ago is miles away from where I am now.

00:14:57

Yeah, doesn’t mean I’d love.

00:14:58

To say, oh, there’s more that I’m cute.

00:15:00

Yeah, yeah, it’s not quite currently working like that, but it’s also not where it was, so.

00:15:06

Change, yeah.

00:15:07

And it’s a journey, you know, and change can be in my experience, it can be great, or it can be really something that flows spare in the works.

00:15:14

Makes you go.

00:15:14

FCK what’s going on there.

00:15:16

Yeah, change, right?

00:15:17

Like it’s a shame it’s not the music episode still ’cause.

00:15:20

I’ve heard it will do you good.

00:15:21

It’s coming, a change is coming, but I also.

00:15:24

Heard about change?

00:15:24

A cool.

00:15:25

So don’t expect to.

00:15:26

It’s time for a change.

00:15:28

Ah, look, change.

00:15:32

I actually at this point of the trajectory, we talk about our story arc sometimes.

00:15:37

We’re in these in between episodes.

00:15:39

So I had a lot of stuff that I was hanging onto when we started this project.

00:15:43

It and started our business which you well know and you know I’m letting go of things everyday I think.

00:15:49

But one of the things that I was holding onto was a house.

00:15:53

And not a metaphor or analogy of a house.

00:15:56

It was.

00:15:57

A literal house.

00:15:58

A physical house.

00:15:59

There was a little house, so here’s how I came to have a house.

00:16:02

Right when I when I was a young gay.

00:16:05

When I.

00:16:05

She love you gave.

00:16:05

Say young gay.

00:16:07

La da da da da da da da da da da.

00:16:10

And that relationship ended.

00:16:12

Oh, sorry, was I I was supposed to be doing sound?

00:16:15

Effects want one.

00:16:15

No, no, that’s OK.

00:16:17

I’m happy to do my own.

00:16:18

OK.

00:16:19

So that relationship ended and we remain friends and all of that.

00:16:22

But that’s the whole other story in a hole of a thing.

00:16:24

Way ended up with, though, was the house that we purchased together.

00:16:27

I decided to buy him out of that and to live there, right?

00:16:32

So I had this House I was living in and then.

00:16:35

Overtime I was getting lonely.

00:16:37

I was actually finding that I was so removed from.

00:16:41

Really, most of my friends lived a good at least 80 kilometres away.

00:16:45

Yeah, Sidney.

00:16:45

So what, this House was in the mountains, wasn’t it?

00:16:46

I was in Italy now since.

00:16:48

Who’s years in the Blue Mountains?

00:16:49

I loved it.

00:16:50

It was such a great place in such a beautiful place to live.

00:16:52

And I’ve got friends in the Blue Mountains too, don’t get me wrong, but there were just two Mary reminders there for me of the relationship when I was living there.

00:17:00

I had the three cats, I had our dog, you know, all that kind of stuff.

00:17:04

Anyway, time came that I wanted to make a change, so I thought.

00:17:08

OK, I’m gonna have to do something here.

00:17:11

With the House, this is way back there.

00:17:13

Yeah, So what I decided to do, because we were still Co owners for a long time, but you know, he was starting to want to move on with with his things and I definitely wanted to move on as well.

00:17:23

So we talked about selling up at that point and then I got really kind of nervous and didn’t want to sell.

00:17:28

And, you know, all those emotional stuff that goes on with that kind of thing, the friends of mine.

00:17:33

Up there, said, look, why don’t you buy me out?

00:17:35

And I’m like, I don’t know, I mean, it’s a big commitment to have a mortgage by yourself.

00:17:38

So anyway, I ended up buying him out of his chair and I got some roommates in overtime.

00:17:44

Diamond that helped with the mortgage.

00:17:46

And then the unhappiness kept sitting in.

00:17:49

I thought, I I really, I really need to do something here ’cause I was working for the government at the time.

00:17:53

Where I felt I was at that point in my life was I was single.

00:17:57

I was working.

00:17:58

A government job.

00:17:59

I was living in a house that I bought with my ex partner.

00:18:02

It didn’t really feel too happy.

00:18:05

Because we unhappy Institute of the Blue Mountains.

00:18:07

I was it like, it wasn’t exactly a recipe for happiness, so.

00:18:11

It’s yeah it I think that it’s a that’s a really common thing that people can people who have been.

00:18:16

I suppose left behind, if that’s the right way to put it in a relationship can feel, you know, like if you do live somewhere we say the partner moved out and onto something else.

00:18:25

But if you remain in that place.

00:18:27

There are a.

00:18:28

The lungs are lost.

00:18:28

Lot of a lot of triggers and memories of stuff I’m.

00:18:32

I’m still in a process of ’cause.

00:18:34

I’m living in a house that I lived in with my ex.

00:18:37

Now for you know, he lived here for five years.

00:18:40

So I’m, I’m in the, I’m in the place where I go ******* hate that couch that he bought funciton.

00:18:45

I’ve thrown it in the back of the trailer.

00:18:46

And taking it to the dump.

00:18:48

Right, so I think it’s very common that things are changing, but what is around you is still looking the same even though you’re changing as well.

00:18:57

And I didn’t do that.

00:18:59

Yeah, and I didn’t do the the trips to the dump.

00:19:01

You know at that?

00:19:02

You couldn’t throw out the three cats.

00:19:02

Point in my life it was.

00:19:03

More of a I was a horror holding throughout 3 cats.

00:19:06

I mean, Barbara is still going. She’s like 21 now, I think. Oh, she’s 19. Hang on, she’s 20.

00:19:12

Next year she’s living with with makes partner.

00:19:14

Anyway, knowing that I wanted my life to change, I would have to change something.

00:19:18

But I know if I changed one thing, a lot more was gonna change.

00:19:22

As a result of that, what I decided I wanted to do was to actually follow my long held dream of working in.

00:19:27

Radio right, sorry.

00:19:28

Umm oh, I’ve heard about this.

00:19:31

I have.

00:19:31

Yeah, I have heard about it.

00:19:33

Is wrong.

00:19:33

I heard about.

00:19:33

It when it was on your resume that I was looking at all those years ago.

00:19:37

Well, I mean, this is a little bit before that even because I started applying for courses with the film, television and Radio school.

00:19:42

So what I thought I would do is I, you know, I take a year off and study full time.

00:19:46

I’d quit my job with the government.

00:19:48

I’d study full time for a year and then that would back me up with some qualifications to go and find some work.

00:19:52

That didn’t happen, but moving out of the house did.

00:19:55

So I went and I moved in with my parents.

00:19:57

Three-year, which in hindsight was actually a.

00:19:59

Really good thing.

00:20:00

So I had spent 2008 living with them, still working for the government because I didn’t get into the course that I thought I might bring in a short course. And through that short course I met someone that you know.

00:20:11

And then I said on for some work and he said, oh, maybe I know someone who can.

00:20:17

Actually, I don’t even know how the conversation went.

00:20:18

I was going to say maybe it is.

00:20:19

But I said looking for work.

00:20:20

All about who you know.

00:20:21

Even though I didn’t realize that I you know, if if you did know someone that I knew, I forgot that I’ve forgotten all about that.

00:20:22

Maybe it is.

00:20:27

Now that person was running the course, so.

00:20:29

Ah, because you could have.

00:20:30

With with the lecture is.

00:20:31

Just as easily applied for the ad online, I wouldn’t.

00:20:33

Have known the difference?

00:20:33

I probably could have, yeah, but I didn’t.

00:20:35

Or maybe I did.

00:20:36

I don’t know.

00:20:37

I don’t know that anyway, so fast.

00:20:38

That’s fine.

00:20:39

Right.

00:20:39

Tales anyway, I get this call ’cause I had applied for a job.

00:20:42

In South Australia.

00:20:43

At work one afternoon and the phone rings and it’s a no wait number.

00:20:46

I thought ah.

00:20:47

That’s that job for the radio in South Australia.

00:20:50

And then I picked up.

00:20:51

I said hello, and then the voice said hi.

00:20:54

It’s Louise calling from Mix 1.

00:20:56

049 in Darwin. I just thought I’d like to have a chat about a job he got.

00:20:59

Got a few minutes, went online.

00:21:00

Did it?

00:21:01

Did I say it like that?

00:21:02

Or did I say it like this?

00:21:03

Hi, it’s Louise calling from Mix 1.

00:21:07

049.

00:21:08

Darwin, and I’m just wondering if you.

00:21:10

Would like to have a.

00:21:11

Chat about a jump for 5 minutes.

00:21:15

If not, call me now, honey.

00:21:19

Anyhow, we did have a talk and then you offered me a job in Darwin, had said, look, you have to say say yes straight away.

00:21:24

How we think about it.

00:21:25

And you didn’t think?

00:21:26

And then I thought, oh.

00:21:27

My God.

00:21:28

Well, I didn’t think about.

00:21:28

It because he said OK and I went away.

00:21:30

For about, I don’t know, was it a week?

00:21:32

Oh, ******* no, I don’t remember last week.

00:21:34

He knows. Come on.

00:21:35

You’re asking me about something for 15 years ago, no?

00:21:35

All the details queen.

00:21:37

The other details Queen.

00:21:40

Anyway, I took the job.

00:21:43

Thank you. So now I had a mortgage to myself and a job that paid me 20,000.

00:21:48

Dollars a year, less purging, Boo.

00:21:51

But you know that.

00:21:52

In hindsight, was the best change for me because I was loving my job up there.

00:21:56

I loved that job, honestly.

00:21:58

I loved working in commercial radio.

00:22:00

I loved working as a music director when I first started.

00:22:03

Our loved the progression into being assistant program director.

00:22:07

I loved my on air shift.

00:22:09

My mom died, which was as fly in the ointment.

00:22:12

Nine months in, and then I think that particular change sent me.

00:22:16

On another path.

00:22:17

But coming back to the house, that House stayed with me up until you know, the point in the story.

00:22:23

Now that we’re talking about in re frame of mind where last year I’ve been holding on to this.

00:22:27

House for so long.

00:22:28

Yeah. So this is like, what’s 161718 years of house? Yeah.

00:22:29

You know.

00:22:33

Yeah, roughly bought it in 2000 initially.

00:22:36

Together with my.

00:22:37

Bank partners, so, you know, plenty of close to 20 years.

00:22:38

Well, you know, last year was 21.

00:22:41

It was.

00:22:42

So yeah, about 20 years of house.

00:22:44

You know, like I was keeping.

00:22:46

It at that point as a backup plan, even though I’d been in my current relationship at that point for.

00:22:52

1011 years. It was always an investment. I felt it was hanging onto it as an investment, but I was holding onto an old picture of what that investment would mean.

00:23:03

Because, you know, if I sold it number one or just take away that aspect that I had in Sydney, you know, like if anything else happened, then I’d have not that.

00:23:12

Back up at evil.

00:23:13

So, you know, I was starting to change how I was looking.

00:23:16

That why I was keeping that property as a backup, because I wasn’t moving back to Sydney, was the movie after the Blue Mountains.

00:23:23

That was clear.

00:23:24

I’ve got a lovely home here now with my beautiful partner.

00:23:26

Then there was the other picture in my mind of, you know, when I first kept it as an investment.

00:23:32

That OK?

00:23:32

Well, either I can move back into it in future if I choose.

00:23:35

So initial plan gotta look in radio.

00:23:37

Go move around the country, but move back to Sydney, move back into.

00:23:39

The house happy life didn’t happen then I’m thinking, well, you know, it’s something that we hang onto.

00:23:45

Maybe I can pay it off.

00:23:46

I’ll get a good paying job, I’ll pay it off.

00:23:48

It’ll be a nice little holiday house I can go back and visit with my partner.

00:23:51

My family can come and use it to weaken all, you know, happy days, lovely place to stay.

00:23:56

That wasn’t going to happen.

00:23:57

Didn’t happen.

00:23:58

Who the FCK was I kidding?

00:23:59

I mean, if my family couldn’t visit me when I lived there, why the FCK will they come and use it as a holiday place?

00:24:05

Will come and stay with me if I.

00:24:07

Had it as.

00:24:08

A holiday place.

00:24:08

So, you know, I don’t have kids.

00:24:11

I don’t.

00:24:11

Have to think about that kind of estate planning when it comes to, you know, my, my parents were always thinking of the kids.

00:24:18

Always every this is everything for you.

00:24:19

Like we’re doing this for you to invest in you and that rubs off, obviously, but.

00:24:23

Nieces and nephews.

00:24:24

So not having children of my own.

00:24:26

I started to think, well, I it’s all for.

00:24:28

The kids and blah blah blah.

00:24:29

But but you know what?

00:24:30

No, obviously when I die, you know, they’ll get a part of my estate, whatever is there.

00:24:36

But to hold?

00:24:37

Onto a house as an investment and never use it and never have any benefit from it.

00:24:41

Just so you can pass it on to some people in the.

00:24:43

Future after you did started to no it.

00:24:44

Doesn’t make a lot of sense.

00:24:46

Started to kind of feel a bit silly.

00:24:48

It’s like only ever having the good plates and never actually eating off them.

00:24:51

Totally. So you know what?

00:24:53

I did.

00:24:53

You know what I did?

00:24:54

Oh, I know what you did.

00:24:55

You burned.

00:24:56

It to the ground.

00:24:58

I sold the ditch and I say that jokingly now, but you were there when I was going through all of the should.

00:25:04

I shouldn’t I Oh my.

00:25:05

God, what AM?

00:25:06

I doing phase, yes.

00:25:07

Yeah, you were there every.

00:25:09

Oh, I remember.

00:25:10

Talking my minutes.

00:25:12

I remember.

00:25:13

You know, sometimes passed now so I can call you out on your ******** and a tarot reader style thing.

00:25:17

Yeah, yeah.

00:25:17

But there were a lot of things that you were concerned about like which a real estate agent to go with, which review to go with, where the the furniture.

00:25:29

Should be staged, et cetera, et cetera.

00:25:31

I don’t think we’re actually the problem.

00:25:33

I think the problem was letting go of that emotional that that dream that you once held.

00:25:39

Umm yeah.

00:25:40

And so those things kind of manifested as you struggle to make some of those decisions from an emotional point of view.

00:25:46

But I don’t think that was what you were really struggling with the decision about.

00:25:49

I think, yeah, because the magnitude of the decision I was making, I was making all of those other little things, the things and they weren’t the things, so things were.

00:25:58

I was actually, you know, I suppose in clinical terms I was actually disposing of an asset.

00:26:04

It’s a very cold clinical financial kind of term.

00:26:06

For it, you’re just disposing of an asset.

00:26:08

That’s what it will look like on my tax return, but emotionally, that’s a lot of baggage.

00:26:13

There’s a lot of stuff, you know, like the ashes of my dog or.

00:26:16

In the backyard.

00:26:16

Of that house.

00:26:17

Yeah, so I had to go through the whole conversation with myself of my leaving Monte down, leaving behind.

00:26:24

Well, of course I’m not, because he’s he’s returned to the earth.

00:26:26

You know, like he’s with me in my heart, so I’ve got family buried up in, not in the mountains, but in Sydney.

00:26:32

My mums in required my dad to Liverpool, I’m in Adelaide so you know, I’ve had to kind of come to terms with distance in that way, with a lot of things and when it came to disposing of the asset, selling the house, ending that in.

00:26:46

It’s been a lot more beneficial for me to be able to get other things going in my life compared to the discomfort I initially felt pushing through those feelings.

00:26:54

You’re tapping into this idea of, I suppose, this fear of letting go of what could have been.

00:27:00

You know, I’ve got this, yeah.

00:27:02

It’s it’s my jerking.

00:27:04

It’s my joking way of referring to it, but whenever, whenever my friend comes over and helps me do it, like a spring clean, but all the time where we throw stuff out and she’ll find something and she’ll be like, you’ve got five sets of solar lights, like, what are you doing with these?

00:27:18

They’re still in the box, they’ve never been used, and I’m like, just stick it in the cupboard.

00:27:22

In linen cupboard on the shelf of broken dreams.

00:27:24

Place and.

00:27:28

That’s good.

00:27:29

And I started this shelf up the top of the linen cupboard.

00:27:32

And and it’s it is like.

00:27:34

Any time I’ve gone.

00:27:35

You know what I’m gonna do is I’m gonna take my backyard and I’m going to turn into a.

00:27:39

Very light Oasis and there’s going to be like a light up palm tree and there’s going to be a water feature and they’ll be.

00:27:45

Festoon lights swinging.

00:27:46

And I’ll have barbecues out there and I’ll have, you know, people over.

00:27:50

And we’ve got our inflatable little flamingos in the pool and, you know, we’re having drinks somewhere.

00:27:55

Everybody have a jolly old time.

00:27:57

Yeah, anyway, that’s.

00:27:58

All in the cupboard of broken dreams.

00:27:59

She’s amazing.

00:28:00

So there’s lots of yeah, they they’re like.

00:28:03

I know, I know.

00:28:04

That sounded sad when I said that, but that that that shelf is the.

00:28:08

Is there anything that I planned for that I got excited about the idea of maybe doing for the outdoors for that idea of and I don’t know who I was lying too, because I’m never in my life.

00:28:17

Be the kind of person who goes oh, let’s entertain 20.

00:28:20

People, that’ll be fun.

00:28:22

Right, for some reason when I.

00:28:23

You’re turning itself into the.

00:28:25

When I bought.

00:28:26

This House and I thought I have a space in my own I can, you know.

00:28:29

Do these things.

00:28:30

I can set it up the.

00:28:30

Way I want and.

00:28:31

I can have like a little meditation area and then I can have my water feature and everything else and I just, you know, no, it didn’t happen.

00:28:38

And so instead of getting rid of that stuff, I just moved it to the cupboard.

00:28:42

And yeah, so I still, I still can’t get rid of it.

00:28:44

’cause, I still think.

00:28:45

Number one.

00:28:45

One day.

00:28:46

I know I’ve been.

00:28:47

Here for almost 7 years, but one day I might clean up the backyard enough to set it up the way that I want.

00:28:53

It to be anything.

00:28:54

And then you can get your friends into this letter for you.

00:28:57

As a surprise, they can do a backyard blitz for.

00:28:59

I need a backyard blitz is what I need.

00:29:02

I never saw in backyard Blitz though, the part where they pick up dog turds, did they film that or did?

00:29:06

They leave that off camera.

00:29:07

I never saw that filmed, but I’m sure that it would have happened.

00:29:10

It must have.

00:29:12

So you can’t tell.

00:29:12

Me, they did all of those episodes.

00:29:14

Never had to pick up landmines.

00:29:15

They they went around with a shovel and.

00:29:17

Flung him over the fence.

00:29:18

Ha ha.

00:29:22

Yeah, that idea of, I suppose, that fear of of letting go like that was that’s a that’s a small example of that for me.

00:29:29

But like, I’m even thinking of things that I didn’t even realize that I was holding onto as something until they weren’t there, like.

00:29:39

I can remember ending a relationship a long, long time ago and when it ends.

00:29:44

Even though I’ve I don’t have kids and I’ve always been on the fence about would I actually want kids or not?

00:29:51

When that relationship ended, I found myself crying about the unborn children that we’re never going to have and.

00:29:59

Oh God, I’ve made this podcast sad again.

00:30:01

Because because like the end.

00:30:02

Yeah, I’ve cried about unborn children too.

00:30:04

With the end of that relationship meant that that was the end of that particular possibility.

00:30:10

Yeah, when a relationship ends, all of those dreams end with it.

00:30:12

And I wouldn’t even say it was necessarily a dream.

00:30:15

I had for that it was.

00:30:16

Just it it just cut that off as an option.

00:30:18

And so I I suppose I’m I grieved for something that I never even knew that I’d considered in that grief process of the ending of that relationship.

00:30:28

Like where my last relationship ended, I suppose towards the last couple of years I I did actually have a conversation with the doctor A.

00:30:34

Couple of years ago where?

00:30:36

I suppose if I want to have kids.

00:30:38

Then I need to have kids really soon, like I’m 41 now, so I think when I had this conversation with her I was maybe 37 or so, I said.

00:30:48

Do you know, like I need to decide. She’s like, you don’t have to decide straight away, I said. Well, I haven’t been able to decide for 37 years and.

00:30:54

You could probably give yourself a discount of 10 to 15 off that.

00:30:58

And then she’s, she starts to go through planning.

00:31:00

She’s like, OK, well, if you do, you’re going to do this, then let’s get you on these supplements and whatever else.

00:31:05

And then the more I thought about it, the more I thought, like, I don’t think I actually have the capacity to care for somebody else in the way that probably a child deserves.

00:31:15

And and this is going to sound ******* awful.

00:31:19

This is going to sound ******* awful if the only option I have is to have a child with the partner that I have.

00:31:27

Slash had.

00:31:28

That’s terrifying and I don’t want to do that because then I’m stuck with him for the rest of my life.

00:31:33

Umm, I mean, you wouldn’t have been really, but I get where you were going.

00:31:38

With that, so.

00:31:38

Oh no, no, you.

00:31:39

But you would be though, you know.

00:31:40

I know.

00:31:41

Like, even if they’re not.

00:31:41

Ah well you would, because every.

00:31:43

Field of course game.

00:31:44

Yeah, then that person is never out of your life, really.

00:31:47

Sure. Yeah, yeah.

00:31:47

Unless they’re a terrible, terrible father.

00:31:50

Just ’cause the kids 20 doesn’t mean that you don’t still see them personally.

00:31:53

You had the baby with at some point.

00:31:54

Yeah, that’s true.

00:31:56

And so I kind of thought well.

00:31:58

I guess not.

00:32:00

Yeah, you know, after that break up, there was a friend of mine who offered me the opportunity to be the father for her kids.

00:32:09

Because she knew that I would have liked to have been a dad.

00:32:12

But even then I thought, you know, that’s that’s a real commitment and I wouldn’t want to have kids.

00:32:20

And then be the sort of guy that picks up and goes, Oh well, I’m moving Interstate now for my job.

00:32:26

Because that throws everybody into disarray, you know?

00:32:29

And at the point that she made that offer, that suggestion, I really didn’t know where my life otherwise was going and I felt it would be really irresponsible to take her up on that.

00:32:38

I would have loved to have been a dad, but the circumstances just didn’t line up for me, you know?

00:32:43

No, because when we were talking about that, that’s when I was.

00:32:48

Still living in that house?

00:32:50

And so I couldn’t really kind of picture, I couldn’t be true.

00:32:53

I couldn’t picture how that would actually look.

00:32:56

Wonderful friends.

00:32:57

Love, love it.

00:32:58

Death wouldn’t have sex with us.

00:33:01

Turkey basting Turkey basting Turkey baster in your future?

00:33:02

And like.

00:33:04

Fast food.

00:33:06

I see a Turkey baster.

00:33:11

Fill it, fill it.

00:33:13

I see magazines.

00:33:16

It was kind of like that.

00:33:17

The option was available.

00:33:19

But I I something in me said no.

00:33:21

This isn’t for you.

00:33:22

Not now.

00:33:23

Maybe, maybe sometime down the track and you know, I’m way down the track now.

00:33:27

It’s not.

00:33:28

Happen, and I’m OK with that now.

00:33:30

You know, like there was a time where I actually would still think about the potential of, you know, having a, a child.

00:33:37

And yeah, I don’t know if I actually think about that now.

00:33:39

’cause they hear them having tantrums in shopping centers and it takes, you know, to be honest, 17 working in retail I’m.

00:33:44

Thinking, oh, there’s poor parents.

00:33:44

That’s cool.

00:33:46

I know every time I walk past him, he’d screaming.

00:33:48

I think good decision made a good decision there.

00:33:54

But then again, you you meet, you meet someone there.

00:33:54

Yeah, yeah.

00:33:55

Well, I love kids.

00:33:57

Lovely, and I think that would.

00:33:58

Have been fun.

00:33:59

But you know, like it’s a 24 hour commitment for the rest of your body life, you know, like that year that I lived back with Mum and Dad, I’d go out on the weekends.

00:34:06

I’m not cheating on keeps shape, not kids that.

00:34:09

No, no, no, no.

00:34:10

We wouldn’t cheat on kids.

00:34:11

I was in my 30s when I had that year back with Mom and Dad in between.

00:34:15

Moving to Darwin and I’d go out on a Friday night or Saturday night, I’d come home and like.

00:34:19

3:00 AM and Mom would still be in the rocking chair waiting.

00:34:21

For me to come home, imagine that.

00:34:24

Like, imagine that she had so much love, obviously.

00:34:26

And parents, too.

00:34:27

That’s, you know, one of the things I’ll tell you is that when you have a child, it just completely changes the way, you know it does something to you biologically.

00:34:35

But, you know, all that aside, didn’t have one, and I’m OK with that.

00:34:39

We just need to kind of figure out in the end what is going to work best for us because, you know, for you, you know, there’s a lot of pressure for women, I think.

00:34:47

To produce their babies and are your kids for kids.

00:34:49

Well, and even even.

00:34:51

Considering that that time pressure that I was feeling at around that time where I was sort of having those, it’s now or never.

00:34:58

Conversations with myself, I mean, men don’t really have that pressure.

00:35:02

Your junk is good to go for as long as you can find a willing vessel.

00:35:06

Well, I mean, Anthony Quinn fathered a child at.

00:35:08

86 Remember that, but yeah.

00:35:09

Yeah, not.

00:35:11

I don’t even know who that is.

00:35:13

He said, well, he’s dead now.

00:35:14

That actor who’s an activity.

00:35:16

Children have come to my mind while we’ve been talking about this because I definitely feared what would change if I did go down that path, that is, that was a fear of the unknown because sometimes I feel like I can’t look after myself and what it would mean to look after somebody else that it would change.

00:35:35

Everything in my life that I.

00:35:36

Couldn’t do things the same anymore that I’d be.

00:35:40

I’d be stuck in situations or, you know, like a lot of decisions I made for my radio career.

00:35:47

You know, I moved everywhere and all those things to be a success in that like to to build 25 odd years in that I I don’t.

00:35:56

Think I could have had kids during that time and done that.

00:35:59

And that’s not to say that people can’t do.

00:36:01

Do that.

00:36:02

Now ’cause people do.

00:36:03

People can and people do.

00:36:05

But just from my perspective and the life that I lived in the the choices, I just, I don’t know.

00:36:11

The things that I saw the the things that I experienced, the treatment for women who were pregnant thinks it got said about women who are pregnant in media, who needed time off or wanted to have maternity leave or were missed for.

00:36:24

Having that career meant more to me than having a family did.

00:36:30

So if I actually followed through, yeah, I know.

00:36:31

And it’s equally as valid a choice, yeah.

00:36:34

But it’s also.

00:36:35

That fear of letting go of that.

00:36:37

Thing that I.

00:36:38

Really really want for something else that.

00:36:41

Maybe I kind of want and then the other fear in there is, you know, if.

00:36:44

I don’t have.

00:36:45

Kids, am I missing out on something?

00:36:47

Am I missing out on a really rewarding experience that everyone tells me that I’m going to love?

00:36:53

Am I giving up something that could be better than what I have for this thing?

00:36:58

Damned if you do, damned if you don’t like.

00:37:00

I can’t just try it and then take them back.

00:37:00

Yeah, yeah.

00:37:02

Right.

00:37:02

No, it’s a bit hard.

00:37:04

Returns policy.

00:37:06

Difficult on that one.

00:37:07

Can’t swap them for another model if they if they won’t stop making noise, no.

00:37:12

Remember one time?

00:37:14

Yeah, it actually was when I was in Darwin or just leaving Darwin, and my period was quite late and I’m terrible at keeping track of these things.

00:37:21

As you well know, Andy, based on when the ******* snark monster comes out and bites your head off.

00:37:27

Well, we know when the boys are coming in to rip down the.

00:37:30

Rip down the group, down the uterine wall.

00:37:31

Carnival carnival’s over. Boys rip it down.

00:37:34

Uhm yeah, one time.

00:37:35

Not this month, boys.

00:37:36

Rip it down.

00:37:36

It was quite.

00:37:37

Late and I was like, I was in Schrodinger’s pregnancy, basically.

00:37:41

I was like, I’ve got to take a test and find out and then I think.

00:37:44

But if I take the test, I’m going to know either way.

00:37:46

What would I do?

00:37:47

Would I keep it?

00:37:48

Would I not keep it?

00:37:49

And anyway, I actually.

00:37:50

I thought, if it’s happened, then it’s happened.

00:37:54

Meant to be and I’ll keep it.

00:37:57

And then I.

00:37:57

Took the test.

00:37:59

It was not pregnant and I was actually.

00:38:01

I was disappointed.

00:38:02

But then life rolled on.

00:38:03

I moved away from Darwin and to that person that.

00:38:06

Didn’t get me.

00:38:07

Pregnant and I probably doubled down on my career.

00:38:09

Didn’t I?

00:38:10

Then I started to see the manifestation of all those things that I felt like I’d been.

00:38:15

Working for for all those years before to build a career to end up like I could be a metro radio announcer in my own home city and.

00:38:24

Something of myself.

00:38:25

Make myself proud or or make people like make my parents.

00:38:29

And it’s funny the parallels that my brain is automatically drawing when we’re doing this episode, because it is about change.

00:38:36

And I know that the story that I actually wanted to tell here was about leaving my radio career in general and that last job.

00:38:43

And and that change and what that felt like.

00:38:45

But actually it’s funny that the memory that is kind of triggered by your story.

00:38:49

Happens at the time that I did the same kind of thing between Darwin and there, because I was.

00:38:55

Unhappy there, and I felt so stuck, like I needed a change and like change wasn’t coming, so **** it, I had to make it and I just intuitively was pushed to just do it.

00:39:05

Like circumstances turned up the house I was living in.

00:39:08

The owner was getting divorced and he needed to sell it and that’s fine, but he needed me to move out and then I had that.

00:39:14

Do I commit to another lease?

00:39:15

In town or do I just?

00:39:16

Leave and I’m just like, I’m just gonna *******

00:39:18

Eat and I had nothing, had nothing lined up.

00:39:19

Stuart sand, dunes.

00:39:22

I had more plan, I had barely any savings and I just went just I’m done.

00:39:29

This isn’t making me happy.

00:39:30

I’m done.

00:39:31

Obviously it worked out.

00:39:33

It was very, very scary and that was a moment where I thought maybe I’m walking away from this career that I’ve created.

00:39:39

And at that point had spent, you know, 15 years building and maybe I’ll never get another opportunity again because in media, you know, you’re only as good as your last.

00:39:47

Gig and all that other kind of ******** Like if you’re if you’re not around making stuff all the time and and are part of that culture, then you just get forgotten about or.

00:39:57

And he is going to.

00:39:57

The last key.

00:39:58

I don’t really want to go into it in this episode, but even if you want to go back if you haven’t heard them, there’s plenty more media trauma in the other ones about what the industry is actually like.

00:40:06

And so I did think at that time that could be giving up on it and I was prepared to.

00:40:12

Take that chance.

00:40:14

And then I came.

00:40:14

To see Neil Diamond with you in.

00:40:16

Adelaide yeah, I.

00:40:16

Are you?

00:40:17

Went on an Outback road trip for.

00:40:19

A couple of weeks and then.

00:40:21

With the cats.

00:40:21

With the cats and a friend of mine and when we were at some weird guru.

00:40:26

And then I gotta find.

00:40:27

This is probably about 3.

00:40:28

Weeks after I left with no plan and.

00:40:30

I actually got a.

00:40:30

Phone call from somebody saying, hey, where are do you wanna come work for me?

00:40:34

I heard you free and and that kind of changed my.

00:40:37

Ah well, I.

00:40:38

Guess I’m not forgotten about and I’m like, no, no, I just want some time to reset and.

00:40:43

Have some time to reset.

00:40:44

I probably had.

00:40:44

Like 3 months off in between things and then I kept getting calls hey can I come work for me from a few different places and then I ended up going to you know, work for someone and.

00:40:54

I hope back on the treadmill I said, well, I don’t want to manage people anymore because I don’t like being the middle manager and I don’t like being stuck in between people making decisions that I can’t control further up and people who are looking to me with wide eyes and optimism that I’m having to crush so.

00:41:10

I can still exist in this industry if I just look after me, myself and my own career.

00:41:16

Like if I just.

00:41:17

Maybe what I should do is because I really want to build my profile and tell my stories.

00:41:21

The way that I want to tell them is if I focus on just being an announcer and just doing one simple thing like being a music director, because I can do that.

00:41:29

That’s easy.

00:41:30

Or it could have been naughty or producer or whatever it was, but I’m like if all I had to do was just do music and then be on air.

00:41:36

Then I could handle that.

00:41:38

I could manage to exist in that.

00:41:40

I didn’t have to have anybody else in my life boat.

00:41:43

Two weather along the waves with me and try to protect.

00:41:46

I could just.

00:41:47

It on my own and eventually, maybe.

00:41:50

Climb to the top.

00:41:51

And from a position of perceived power makes some change and help other people along the way.

00:41:58

And essentially I did do that.

00:42:00

Yeah, you had a slashing career.

00:42:02

So we’re at the start of a.

00:42:03

New story, right?

00:42:04

So like if we say that the end of the Darwin story with the blowing up of of that previous life and then.

00:42:12

Everything else is better.

00:42:13

The end of technically a story arc.

00:42:16

Then I suppose.

00:42:16

Starting a new career at a new place that I always wanted to be at is like Devil Wears Prada start of a a news story arc you know?

00:42:25

So you step in and the the beets plan and you’ve got shiny new eyes and.

00:42:28

It’s playing.

00:42:32

The world is your oyster.

00:42:33

Except the oyster is the same.

00:42:36

It’s just bigger, flashier and all of the dirt compresses and makes a Pearl party.

00:42:46

But it still came from sand and sheep.

00:42:50

Is that where players come from?

00:42:50

The same sand and sheets space.

00:42:52

This site it still came from the same standard ship.

00:42:56

Just more of it.

00:42:58

No, look, so OK, so I spent nine years almost it was about 8 1/2 years in that role and I in my own and pulling tickets off myself kind of way. I was really ******* good at it and.

00:43:11

Think space tickets.

00:43:14

The guts.

00:43:15

And there were so many things that I loved about it.

00:43:17

And The thing is that, I mean, if you followed along the whole journey, every frame of mind, then you know that 14 year old Louise was dreaming of doing something like this, that all she wanted to be was a radio announcer.

00:43:29

She wanted to be in that position where people did recognize her, but also she could be helpful.

00:43:34

And I really enjoyed helping people feel a little bit better about their day. And I, in my mind, I, I convinced myself that. And it’s not that there’s necessarily anything wrong with it, but you know, give someone $1000 cash in a competition and it’s.

00:43:48

It’s fun and and you get to help them out and, you know, or having a chat to someone about something or making some content or doing an interview that’s meaningful, where someone gets benefit out of that.

00:43:48

Yes, please.

00:43:59

Or talking to someone that is promoting an art project or or music or something that you know, ’cause.

00:44:04

I I love the creative arts and I suppose I feel like.

00:44:08

Some of those things were.

00:44:09

Yeah, helpful.

00:44:10

Like there used to be this radio saying that you leave your personal problems at the door.

00:44:14

Do you remember this?

00:44:15

I think I probably told it to you that when you when you go into a studio that people don’t want to hear all the terrible stuff that’s going on in your life.

00:44:22

They just want you to keep them entertained and to be cheerful and happy, and it’s probably why I could never read the funeral announcements.

00:44:30

Without sounding cheaper?

00:44:31

Ha ha ha.

00:44:33

I see.

00:44:34

I mean the.

00:44:34

There will be.

00:44:35

A memorial service for Jim Baxter at 10:00 o’clock.

00:44:38

Really, once I had to do the the.

00:44:41

The pre recorded.

00:44:42

Funeral announcements on 2 ends Ed in the morning before the manager said I will get someone.

00:44:45

Else to do those and then and barrel has.

00:44:46

Ha ha.

00:44:48

Died this morning.

00:44:50

Ah, because I think I just naturally trained myself to speak in a way that sounds kind of uplifting and cheerful and happy, but the longer that you’re in the clan that the sand and ship is.

00:45:03

Forming a Pearl.

00:45:05

It’s actually really hard to condense what is close to 9 years of my life into a 5 or 10 minute story.

00:45:13

For clarity point of view, because so many things are good and then so many other things aren’t good.

00:45:19

So there is a lot of good that I really liked about being that.

00:45:23

Person and.

00:45:25

It did fulfill those things of fulfilling my identity, of getting to tie myself to that of finally, I’m Louise Pool, a radio announcer.

00:45:34

I’m successful.

00:45:36

I’m doing something that I can be proud of, that somebody else can be proud of, that I I feel like I finally made it to something and I’ve achieved something.

00:45:45

And now I must be worthy in some way, because I’ve done this and I’m, you know, helping people feel better.

00:45:52

And then there’s like all the perks that come.

00:45:54

With that I get to see.

00:45:55

All this music that I love and arts that I love and I get to support that.

00:45:59

As well and.

00:46:00

That really ticks a lot of boxes for me.

00:46:02

And then there’s the other parts of being in media.

00:46:06

You know that it’s not that glamorous and it’s a lot of work and it’s a lot of expectation and it felt like a lot of hiding of myself.

00:46:15

On it.

00:46:16

Felt like it is that culture of you know you’re only as good as your last gig and if.

00:46:21

You aren’t this way.

00:46:23

Then there will be someone else to replace you.

00:46:25

That there’s plenty of other people who would kill to do this, that you can’t really speak up and say too many things, or because you won’t get made redundant, but your.

00:46:36

You won’t get off at another contract either.

00:46:38

If you don’t rate well enough, then yeah, well, tough or it doesn’t matter if people like you and if you’re talented and valuable.

00:46:45

If you just don’t perform well enough at this particular time, then we’ll just bring in somebody else.

00:46:50

Who does and?

00:46:51

And don’t be something that’s outside of the norm.

00:46:55

There’s a demographic for something.

00:46:56

Don’t be outside of that.

00:46:58

That’s not what people are.

00:47:00

You’ve got to appeal to the average person.

00:47:03

You need to share the average person values.

00:47:06

You need to reflect their life.

00:47:09

You need to be watching the same TV.

00:47:11

That they watch and leave the same kind of life that they live so that you can understand that.

00:47:16

And if you can’t understand that, then you need to learn how to fake to understand that you know if.

00:47:22

If your listeners are 37 year old woman with 2.5 children, then you need to work out how to act like a 37 year old woman with 2.5 children, even though you don’t have.

00:47:32

Children you’re not.

00:47:33

You got to be reliable, right?

00:47:35

And you’re not married, and deep down, you’re not even straight.

00:47:40

You might see things or hear things that you don’t agree with, and what you really want to do is call out ******** sometimes.

00:47:50

But if you call that ******** you might offend somebody.

00:47:53

You might hurt us.

00:47:54

Sponsors, feelings.

00:47:55

Or you might get bad publicity for yourself.

00:48:00

It might offend the the target demo, or it might offend somebody who’s in charge of you that has different views than you because they’ve been a victim of the same system as well, much like we’ve talked about parental and generational trauma it.

00:48:18

I think in industries as well where there’s a particular culture coming through for a set of managers and then when they were rising up, they tend to replicate the thing that their experience as well and then that’s not necessarily healthy.

00:48:32

If it was a toxic culture to begin with, but people just keep replicating the same patterns.

00:48:38

So I guess you get to a point where you just think this is gonna change, you could actually move.

00:48:41

On from something to something.

00:48:43

Else but what? Because?

00:48:45

I invested my entire life.

00:48:48

All of my eggs were in this basket.

00:48:53

All of my eggs.

00:48:55

We’re in that basket.

00:48:58

I do not have a family.

00:49:00

I don’t really have even that many friends because I’ve been transient my entire career.

00:49:06

I never really had much in the way of hobbies because I couldn’t actually commit to regularly go into them.

00:49:13

I bought a house based on where I worked, then the office moved.

00:49:18

And my house didn’t move, and that added a ******** extra time to my commute everyday, and I’d seen enough of the rest of the industry to know that.

00:49:28

At least what I thought.

00:49:30

I knew that it wasn’t one place, it was everywhere, so it wouldn’t matter if I went somewhere else.

00:49:37

It would be the same.

00:49:39

It wouldn’t change in another job.

00:49:41

I didn’t want to take a a backseat and and I wanted to be upfront and I wanted to be on the Billboard and I didn’t just want to be behind the scenes ’cause I had done behind the scenes more when I was in Darwin.

00:49:54

And so that pathway wasn’t fulfilling either because.

00:49:57

If I went down a pathway where I got promoted and ended up in charge of people, then I would be replicating that again, which was something that I already ripped up earlier in my life, because I know that didn’t bring me joy.

00:50:12

So the.

00:50:13

Or what happens when you achieve the dream is then you launch a new dream, and then the next logical progression of, say, being a successful daytime announcer on a capital city radio station would be maybe I should be a breakfast announcer because the billboards.

00:50:30

They get more.

00:50:31

Of the kudos and I I suppose they get more of the money ’cause.

00:50:34

In all this conversation.

00:50:35

Yeah, the money was fine, but it wasn’t like as exciting as you might think.

00:50:40

It might be as a as a listener looking in.

00:50:43

And then that pathway was cut off for me at.

00:50:47

A point where maybe I should just tell the story that I was led to believe for years that that would be a pathway that was available to me.

00:50:56

And then when that pathway was open and I was told that I would never be good enough for that pathway.

00:51:04

So literally what was left for me to do in the industry besides what I was doing the same thing every day where I’m feeling stuck and I’m feeling like nothing can change and I’m feeling like life is getting smaller and.

00:51:18

Smaller and that I’ve put everything I have into creating this identity and this is where it stops, through no fault of mine.

00:51:31

’cause tickets, but I really am very good.

00:51:34

Here you are.

00:51:38

So having put all the eggs in in all of the eggs in the basket, then where?

00:51:43

And I think.

00:51:44

Do you go with that?

00:51:45

What are you doing?

00:51:46

And that’s probably why that.

00:51:48

Conversation about children was inspired today because I put every eggs in that basket of my career.

00:51:55

So now it’s not that I wish I had children, it’s just that I created something where I had nothing else.

00:52:02

Don’t forget, this is a this is an industry that is shrinking.

00:52:06

I mean, the radio industry won’t want you to know.

00:52:09

This as as a as a listener.

00:52:11

Because they’ll spin the results differently every time.

00:52:14

But yeah, it’s shrinking.

00:52:15

Or core cities, there’s on demand, there’s.

00:52:19

The global world makes content more accessible from everywhere, and no one really wants to listen to 14 minutes of ads in.

00:52:25

A row anymore like.

00:52:27

Of course it is.

00:52:29

So the opportunities shrink the the content gets aggregated out of made dissenters for cost cutting benefits because why have one person or three people in?

00:52:40

A market that might only have, you know, 10,000 people in every market when you can just have one person in one market doing all that work.

00:52:48

Because if they don’t do it, someone else will who wants the opportunity.

00:52:52

So I think when I realized that that pathway of could I grow my career in any way from an on air presentation?

00:53:00

Perspective was closed to me.

00:53:02

I think that’s really when that last round of depression started badly, because I think I was able to.

00:53:10

It wasn’t lighter myself, but I was able to believe that.

00:53:13

All of the compromise and all of the sacrifices will be worth it one day, because then I’ll get this thing.

00:53:18

And when I finally have this thing, then I’ll be happy.

00:53:22

Then it’ll be enough.

00:53:23

But I learned that I was never going to get that thing.

00:53:26

And so all of the compromises of myself, of who I was, of my beliefs.

00:53:33

Of things at my core that I value.

00:53:36

That became very loud.

00:53:38

That became really, really loud.

00:53:42

We had a conversation a couple of episodes ago about how when that Marriage Equality survey came up, that triggered realizing for me that I wasn’t straight.

00:53:52

But I didn’t say it out loud.

00:53:53

I was afraid of what would happen if I did, if people found out.

00:53:57

Certainly wouldn’t be what the listeners were expecting, would it?

00:54:01

So I just wouldn’t be just a childless.

00:54:04

Woman in my late.

00:54:06

30s Now, I’d be a childless queer woman in my late 30s.

00:54:09

How could the demographic relate to that?

00:54:12

As time went on, those voices got louder and louder and louder and louder, and then unhappiness got more.

00:54:22

And then when you throw in things like a.

00:54:25

A pandemic and other people get to work from home because they might catch something, but you gotta go in every day and work even more hours, louder and louder and louder and louder.

00:54:42

Until I think something finally snapped and I said.

00:54:48

I cannot compromise myself.

00:54:53

Anymore, if you don’t think that I’m worth what I am so clearly worth, then I am done with.

00:55:01

Whatever, this is this identity, then I’m done.

00:55:07

And I was stuck.

00:55:10

  1. Yeah.

00:55:12

It’s a very big story, very big.

00:55:15

Big thing.

00:55:18

To share.

00:55:20

Life imitating art.

00:55:23

Imitating life imitating art.

00:55:24

Is this where I’m so upset this week?

00:55:26

Maybe because anytime someone says how did you end up here?

00:55:30

I heard you used to be famous.

00:55:33

Brings it all back.

00:55:35

Brings it all back.

00:55:37

It brings back all the things, like everything on the shelves.

00:55:40

Of broken dreams.

00:55:42

And so up there with the solar lights, you could probably put 25 years of radio career of the shelf of broken dreams.

00:55:52

That’s not the happy story that was going to come.

00:55:54

Out of this episode.

00:55:55

No, you’re not ready for.

00:55:56

That though like you not.

00:55:58

You know there and if you are.

00:56:00

We are, you know, like.

00:56:02

I want.

00:56:02

Can’t, can’t, can’t, can’t go on pretending that you’re living the happy story when clearly you’re not.

00:56:07

I can talk about those things from my past because I’ve moved past those things.

00:56:12

You know, when I was talking earlier about having sold the house, I moved through that emotional pain.

00:56:16

I closed it.

00:56:17

But that’s still an open wound for you.

00:56:20

It’ll take time to to heal your transferring eggs into different.

00:56:24

Baskets now, but it doesn’t stop the fact that what happened happened.

00:56:29

You know who said a few times through this season that life isn’t a Disney movie?

00:56:34

Like you don’t.

00:56:35

Kind of get to act three.

00:56:37

Then suddenly everything is kind of gung ho and and wonderful.

00:56:40

We talk about the trajectory of our story in the context of this, this program and what we’re talking about.

00:56:47

But that’s really just kind of looking at turning points in our own journeys and decisions we’ve made to actually make.

00:56:55

Things different for ourselves, but it’s not always your classic happy ending.

00:57:00

When we put these some this storyboard together with him.

00:57:04

Also October, November last year we’d recorded these interviews and then we said how was our story unfolded over the last year and.

00:57:13

How did these interviews all play a part in that? And by episode 33 of the story arc, I suppose I was trying to get to the point where I’m explaining how I had to, why I had to make the changes that I did, and what it’s been like to let go of identity and embrace change and.

00:57:33

And I’m not saying that the story was that we wrote a lie.

00:57:39

No, but I think that optimistic lawyers when she was writing those storyboards was thinking, well, maybe by the time I get to episode 33, things will be going the way that I really want them to go. You know, I’ll where we’re making lots of money, we’ll have a really successful.

00:57:58

You know, we’ll be doing all these extra things.

00:58:01

I’ll be, I’ll be out and about doing stuff.

00:58:01

You have a billboard.

00:58:05

I’ll be on the way to creating something new, and life isn’t lining up with that.

00:58:10

Not yet.

00:58:12

So I don’t have, I don’t have the optimism at the moment, I don’t think, and not just because the boys are tearing down my uterine wall today, but some, yeah, I suppose.

00:58:22

The the thing that stopped me from making that decision of leaving that identity in that career earlier was this idea that what if I fear of the unknown?

00:58:32

What if I I did it and it didn’t work out and I made a mistake? And what if I ripped up something that I was building for 25 years?

00:58:45

I knew I shouldn’t have done that.

00:58:49

And, you know, sometimes we get a sense that we wrote something happened that there’s no chance of ever going back.

00:58:54

Would you go back at this point?

00:58:58

That that’s the that’s The thing is that no matter the fact that I feel like these and that I feel like two years on, I’m not over it.

00:59:06

Clearly I’m still triggered by this thing.

00:59:09

I there wasn’t much of a choice at that point because with how I was feeling, honestly, I.

00:59:16

Wouldn’t have survived.

00:59:18

So if I didn’t make this change into the unknown where I wasn’t sure if I would regret it, and I’m still not sure if I regret it, but I know that the other way 100% I would not have made it.

00:59:32

’cause, I couldn’t do that anymore.

00:59:34

I do just wish that this way.

00:59:36

Came with more money.

00:59:37

Yeah, you’ll be billed, sister.

00:59:40

And now you gotta find a way to.

00:59:41

Get us selling gold, yeah.

00:59:42

Well, you.

00:59:43

Know, like, I suppose, looking at all of that history and the way you kind of taught yourself to make those choices that you made.

00:59:50

Meet you were living life to your values.

00:59:53

You actually wanted to do something that was meaningful.

00:59:57

And you know all of those conversations we had earlier about children.

01:00:01

And you know what?

01:00:02

You know, I remember when I was younger thinking to myself, you know, I’m probably, I’m probably not going.

01:00:07

To have kids.

01:00:08

This is even before I came out.

01:00:10

Thinking, you know, maybe, maybe I won’t actually have.

01:00:12

Children, what will my life look like?

01:00:15

How will I actually make my life meaningful?

01:00:17

That’s the kind of thing that was running through my mind.

01:00:20

Kind of sounds like it was.

01:00:20

What was running through yours?

01:00:22

I’ve kind of drifted a lot in my life.

01:00:25

I think career wise, I haven’t really kind of invested so much in one thing to actually rise to the very top.

01:00:33

In something.

01:00:33

And you know what?

01:00:34

I’m OK with that because I’ve done a lot of other interesting things along the way and now I’m kind of bringing it all together, you know?

01:00:41

And I can talk very casually about this concern bucket.

01:00:43

I’m alright.

01:00:44

I’m OK with it, but I can see how, like.

01:00:47

We kind of.

01:00:48

Make decisions.

01:00:49

And we teach ourselves to respond certain ways and to strive for certain things.

01:00:55

When we’re younger, we’re taught to go after a career, you know, go for excellence and reach the top.

01:01:02

And, you know, all that kind of ******** really, that comes in with competitive nature, you know?

01:01:08

Yeah, we’ve got a kind of at some point step back and go, OK, well, either this is working out really well for me or you know, I think there’s a lot of us kind of start to feel on the end like that.

01:01:18

Though this is just not what I wanted, is actually not how I want to leave that government job that I had.

01:01:23

I could have progressed further.

01:01:25

In fact, I had opportunities to go higher.

01:01:27

I was a team leader.

01:01:28

There, at one point, I ******* hated it.

01:01:31

I hated it so much.

01:01:32

Not because I hated the people that I was leading or anything like that.

01:01:35

It just wasn’t what I wanted to.

01:01:37

Do with my.

01:01:38

And so I had to learn a different way to actually find the things.

01:01:41

Number one, really think about what it was that I did want because he’s not taking like in staying in that job.

01:01:47

Rob, I actually was was really doing it for other people.

01:01:51

You know, I was kind of thinking, well, I’ve got to have a stable job and I’ve got to have a mortgage and I’ve.

01:01:55

Got to have all of these things ’cause that’s what I’m expected to do.

01:01:58

And maybe I did want the mortgage and all that other stuff, but I didn’t really know, you know?

01:02:03

We kind of.

01:02:04

Drift into these kind of preset things in life preset modes and we can have a whole conversation about the capitalist machine and that kind of stuff and sound like and we do and we say **** the patriarchy and all that kind of stuff.

01:02:13

And we do.

01:02:17

And for good reason because.

01:02:19

We lose ourselves in all.

01:02:20

Of that you know and.

01:02:21

There comes a point where we have to just stop and then start to unlearn what we’ve actually been learning along the way so that we can actually find out what it is we want for ourselves and then go after that instead.

01:02:28

Oh yeah.

01:02:34

Remember our chat with translator Sally Golden AM?

01:02:37

Yeah, I love Sally.

01:02:39

Yeah, really.

01:02:39

Well, she was talking to us about that concept of unlearning things back when we met her in episode 10.

01:02:45

No, yeah, I think it’s fair to say at this stage of our journeys, we’re really just starting to realize just how much of an impact her words on it.

 

TRANSCRIPT PART TWO

 

 

00:00:00 

I think the. 

00:00:01 

Open to different forms of learning and there’s. 

00:00:04 

A few things. 

00:00:04 

That just wait to mind on that question. 

00:00:07 

So I’ve taken from 1995 onwards, somewhat of it will say a mental health approach, which was helpful. 

00:00:14 

However, in 2003 I worked with a life coach and not a RAH rah you could believe. 

00:00:20 

In yourself, life coach. 

00:00:22 

A really sincere, authentic woman who was just wonderful and the thing about. 

00:00:28 

Life coaching and I. 

00:00:29 

Yeah, he’s he’s not. 

00:00:31 

Yes, you set goals, but it’s about your learning along the way, and that was possibly the first bid, unblocking more unlearning that I did. 

00:00:39 

But that wasn’t related to also an attribute or characteristic. 

00:00:42 

It was just a view that I had as a person. 

00:00:44 

And the thing that I learned at that time was that up until that point had taken a very glass half empty. 

00:00:50 

The of the world and well, with reasonable reason, as I say. 

00:00:54 

And the life coach just gently and objectively pointed that out to me. 

00:00:58 

It’s like, oh wow. 

00:00:59 

And the interesting thing was I’ve been experiencing. 

00:01:02 

A form of. 

00:01:03 

Depression called cyclothymia I will always have. 

00:01:06 

It but about 80. 

00:01:07 

Once I’ve decided to change my view and try to find more positives. 

00:01:10 

About 80% of it went away overnight, which was pretty amazing. I’m not saying that will happen for everyone, but that’s the sort of thing, so be open to different forms of learning. So I was taking more of a cerebral. 

00:01:22 

Or abstract form of learning throughout so the 2000 and. 

00:01:26 

Hens. And then in 2014, I got invited by a friend at the time to do a course that combines gentle elements of **** and tantrum. And so that really got me into my body more, and I had not wanted to perhaps get into my body, which was partially a trance thing and partially other things. 

00:01:46 

Being bullied to how I did support at that so-called or boys school really have left me with a like a low sense of, I’ll call it body self-esteem. Not because of its size or its shape or necessarily it’s gender or sex, but. 

00:02:00 

How it funk? 

00:02:01 

And doing that course began to shift a lot of blocked. 

00:02:05 

Energies and made. 

00:02:06 

Me feel more confident in my body and doing other similar work. 

00:02:09 

So be open to different styles of learning. 

00:02:11 

Yes, again, come from a place that is your strength to start with, but then trying to look at other styles so and again, it’s gonna be whatever works for. 

00:02:20 

For each person. 

00:02:22 

And some people like more individual settings, like counseling, and some people love groups too, but you’ve also, you’ve got, uh, if it is wording that you’re doing of some sort, it’s gotta be. 

00:02:32 

In a fire safe process and that’s I think the critical thing you’ve got to feel safe and comfortable and that was the thing about that. 

00:02:39 

2014 ’cause the process that was setup was so safe that I was able to jet to move myself auto gain gently in a way that worked for me. So you know, all or nothing outside there, it’s. 

00:02:53 

About finding out what works for you, and I think finding out what works for you will then help you be more open to learning in itself, and that will become X. 

00:03:00 

In short, selling has got such great wisdom. 

00:03:03 

You know, like that conversation that we had with her. 

00:03:06 

The full interview. 

00:03:07 

She really explored some great territory around, you know, trauma, informed leadership approaches and how we can actually look after each other from a mental health perspective in the workplace as well. 

00:03:18 

You know, she’s got some really great leadership stuff. 

00:03:20 

Going on, I think. 

00:03:21 

Which is probably very handy for you yesterday ’cause. 

00:03:25 

I mean, this is the second day recording, even though it’s all in the one episode of a podcast, but it seems somebody activated their trauma. 

00:03:26 

We record. 

00:03:30 

At least. 

00:03:33 

Yeah, just before. 

00:03:34 

Some would be self triggered 12. 

00:03:36 

Over revisionist story and. 

00:03:38 

But I’m glad. 

00:03:39 

That you’ve actually recovered, you know, because I was actually concerned about you yesterday, because that was a really big set of ideas that you’re exploring, and I think you’re having a few epiphanes along the way as well. 

00:03:51 

And to do that. 

00:03:53 

In situ, while. 

00:03:54 

You’re recording a podcast. 

00:03:56 

And to actually. 

00:03:56 

Keep rolling. 

00:03:57 

I think he’s very brave. 

00:03:58 

But also, you know it. 

00:04:00 

It’s hard work. 

00:04:01 

That’s an interesting experiment, isn’t? 

00:04:03 

It when you. 

00:04:03 

Are producing your own podcast and it has trauma in it, like from a content maker point of view. If it was somebody else’s story, I think, yeah, that’s that’s a really powerful story. 

00:04:14 

Leave it in. 

00:04:15 

People might be able to relate to that and then. 

00:04:17 

From a personal. 

00:04:18 

Point of view. 

00:04:18 

It’s like. 

00:04:19 

Fact, that’s a raw story. 

00:04:21 

Do I? 

00:04:21 

Really wanna put that out? 

00:04:22 

There, I know time. 

00:04:24 

Will tell after the everything is done with you actually deal. 

00:04:26 

Time will tell when we get the reviews on this episode. 

00:04:28 

I wish those fukers would just stop crying every ******* episode. 

00:04:34 

Five stars. 

00:04:34 

Five stars. 

00:04:35 

Give us the five stars, but, you know, interesting as well, like the comment that you made yesterday along the way or one of the comments you made was that when it was storyboarding this particular episode, you kind of thought, Oh yeah, well, let’s say John through that. 

00:04:49 

So that’ll be OK. 

00:04:50 

I’ll talk about. 

00:04:51 

It here like. 

00:04:51 

This it. 

00:04:52 

It kind of glared out of me as an example of something that you’re currently. 

00:04:56 

I’m learning, and that is that trauma isn’t something that you can actually just put a deadline on. 

00:05:02 

You know, like. 

00:05:04 

We move through it in our own time, in our own way. 

00:05:06 

That was a. 

00:05:07 

Really strong example of that yesterday. 

00:05:09 

I think, yeah, the last, I mean it’s it’s such an interesting experience to actually go back and edit your own work talking about trauma because it’s like sometimes we’re a bit like were at the psychologist and you know you you go and you say things and lover bowler, they make you feel better, but you never have to go back and listen to. 

00:05:27 

All the stuff that you said to them because. 

00:05:29 

They were the one listening to it and so. 

00:05:31 

It’s it’s a really, really interesting exercise to record yourself in a moment of blathering about everything that is upsetting you and all those things just kind of come out at the time and actually go back and listen to it and then go, oh, I didn’t realize how much things were still bothering me until I went back and listened to. 

00:05:51 

The way that I was speaking because it. 

00:05:54 

It’s like you need a third perspective and I suppose something that’s come out of these last few episodes that we’ve recorded. 

00:05:59 

I feel like there’s been some huge stories that I’ve heard me saying about how I’ve never. 

00:06:06 

Been able to. 

00:06:06 

Like for a long time express myself emotionally and that that closed off Ness of how I’ve been living and. 

00:06:13 

All that kind of self blame and judgment. 

00:06:18 

And so when you say there’s no timeline on grief, it doesn’t matter if I storyboard it now. 

00:06:24 

I see. 

00:06:24 

That’s how I’ve been living my whole life. 

00:06:26 

It’s like if I can get over that by now, it’s fine. 

00:06:30 

You know? 

00:06:30 

I give myself this amount of. 

00:06:31 

Time and I’ll be over it. 

00:06:32 

Not then, like his ’cause, it doesn’t work because they all those times showing emotion, you know? 

00:06:38 

I wasn’t allowing myself to even express it or trying not to feel it. 

00:06:43 

And then we see what happens when I don’t feel it. 

00:06:46 

It ends up being ******* 

00:06:47 

Shark Week and. 

00:06:50 

You know, like. 

00:06:50 

Well, we record a podcast. 

00:06:51 

When we put. 

00:06:52 

Time limits or, you know, deadlines on that sort of thing. 

00:06:55 

Essentially what we’re kind of telling ourselves is that you’ll be over by this stage and goddamnit, if we’re not over by their stage. 

00:07:01 

We suppress it. 

00:07:02 

Can I blame sex in the city again? 

00:07:04 

Sure, why not? 

00:07:04 

’cause there was that quote from one of the episodes years ago. 

00:07:07 

Just like it should take you half as long. 

00:07:09 

To get over a. 

00:07:09 

Relationship as you were in it. 

00:07:11 

There you go. 

00:07:11 

There their rules. 

00:07:12 

And maybe that’s for entertaining purposes only, and it should be like a little laugh. 

00:07:16 

But we take these things on, don’t we? 

00:07:19 

Yeah, so if that’s the case and I’m talking about a 25 year career relationship, than what I’ve got only got another eight years to go in Greece and then I’m all good, baby. 

00:07:29 

I mean, comparatively, you know, I was talking about my event and like the emotions around selling the house and I’m quite OK talking about that. 

00:07:33 

Make him at the house, yeah. 

00:07:39 

That’s a different type of change. 

00:07:40 

That’s a different type of emotional upheaval. 

00:07:43 

You know, like I I think for me, the act of actually selling the house helped me to actually release a lot of those emotional. 

00:07:49 

Forms that held over so long so. 

00:07:51 

Now I think. 

00:07:52 

And let’s. 

00:07:52 

About, I think yes I would and I’m actually. 

00:07:54 

Be grateful to have had it and I’m. 

00:07:56 

Grateful that I sold it and that I’m able to do things with the funds that I. 

00:08:00 

Got from that? 

00:08:01 

I can really see and hear though how, how you have genuinely changed that perspective over time from the conversations that we had when. 

00:08:08 

You were in the middle. 

00:08:09 

Of it to you know, the way that you’re able to recount that story now, and that’s commendable. 

00:08:14 

’cause, that is, you know, taking something that did have all that emotion attached to it and being able to pivot that and reframe that Azar? 

00:08:21 

The name of the podcast. 

00:08:22 

That’s good. 

00:08:23 

As well and and I. 

00:08:24 

I don’t want to be that person. 

00:08:27 

And all this you do. 

00:08:28 

Because comparison is the thief of joy, he comes up. 

00:08:32 

Hey, you know, I would say well that it’s something that you experienced last year and war over it. 

00:08:39 

So why is something that I experienced before last year not over, right? 

00:08:44 

Yeah, I think it’s context you don’t like. 

00:08:47 

And I think that this is where we can maybe drag a little bit of trouble out of you. 

00:08:52 

Maybe I should go. 

00:08:54 

I’ve spent intimite issue. 

00:08:56 

It’s not really grateful of my face anymore, but. 

00:09:01 

So, you know, time limits and getting on things. 

00:09:04 

We had a conversation before hitting the record button today where you made the. 

00:09:09 

Where I went for the jugular. 

00:09:11 

Well, now you may have really good observation, you know, because, you know, we’re talking about these conceptual things in this podcast and we’re talking to people who are experts in these fields who. 

00:09:20 

Are very highly regarded. 

00:09:21 

In the fields of psychology and scientific research and that kind of stuff and you know. 

00:09:26 

So to some extent, we might use some of those grabs to validate our own opinions. 

00:09:32 

We try not to, obviously, but within that as well, there’s this whole kind of movement towards getting yourself better, getting yourself right, getting yourself whatever, and then things have an actual end and you’re helping with grief taken, that kind of stuff and. 

00:09:45 

You know you made. 

00:09:46 

Reservation about me. 

00:09:48 

And how I? 

00:09:49 

Kind of start to choke up when I start talking. 

00:09:51 

At my mum. 

00:09:52 

Yeah, that’s when I went for the jugular, I said. 

00:09:55 

The rate for the top charts. 

00:09:57 

I said. 

00:09:58 

I said, ***** you watched me cry yesterday. 

00:10:00 

I’m gonna make you cry today. 

00:10:01 

Let’s talk. 

00:10:01 

About your mum. 

00:10:03 

We get to the chocolate cake episode, but. 

00:10:08 

But you know, yeah, you’re right. 

00:10:10 

I like, I would hate to think that I. 

00:10:13 

Ever got to the point where? 

00:10:14 

Not thinking about my mum not being here anymore didn’t make me sad. 

00:10:19 

Yeah, was it a 13? 

00:10:21 

Or so years ago. 

00:10:22 

Yes, 13 years ago now and it was just held myself back to that day because you. 

00:10:27 

Were there on that? 

00:10:29 

Well, you know, I don’t remember. 

00:10:30 

Redacted it but. 

00:10:32 

I have heard about it in our podcast so. 

00:10:35 

Yeah, so it was. 

00:10:36 

A Saturday morning I was actually paddle operating for outside broadcast. 

00:10:40 

That was going on. 

00:10:42 

This is testation up there in Darwin. 

00:10:44 

And everything was going quite OK, quite normal as you’d. 

00:10:47 

Expect and then I saw. 

00:10:49 

The phone ring, and it was. 

00:10:50 

My dad and I. 

00:10:51 

Thought, oh, currently talk to him now, but I’ll just quickly pick. 

00:10:54 

Up and tell. 

00:10:54 

Him that I can’t talk now but. 

00:10:55 

I’ll call him back. 

00:10:56 

But I’m done. 

00:10:57 

So pick up the phone. 

00:10:59 

And I got hit adding someone I. 

00:11:00 

Can’t make her mother up, she’s on. 

00:11:02 

The floor. 

00:11:02 

I can’t wake her up. 

00:11:08 

Yeah, it didn’t really mean to go through the jugular today, I was. 

00:11:12 

Only joking when I said that. 

00:11:14 

See, I’m missing me back there in that moment because, you know, like I’m 3000 kilometers away. This is my worst nightmare that I’d feared and why I’d hold myself back from ever moving away too fast for the family. Because. 

00:11:29 

I didn’t want to be in a. 

00:11:30 

Position where my parents died. 

00:11:32 

Yeah, yeah. 

00:11:32 

Please, I didn’t know at that point that she was, that she was. 

00:11:36 

But you know, I I instantly went to. 

00:11:40 

A mode where I’m like, OK, so call ambulance it. 

00:11:44 

Was panic. 

00:11:44 

It was she panicked. 

00:11:46 

Now he’s packing on the other region. 

00:11:48 

Or something, and he couldn’t wake her up and he’s not. 

00:11:52 

Ignorant, he’s calling out to her. 

00:11:56 

And then I’m trying to remember CPR or trying to instruct him to CPI for noble. 

00:12:00 

Could be an ambulance. 

00:12:01 

And like, OK, just I’ll hang up, I’ll call an ambulance. 

00:12:06 

And you, you just. 

00:12:08 

Do what you can to try and resuscitate it. 

00:12:15 

We really don’t have to talk about this if you don’t want to. 

00:12:17 

It’s light, it’s tablet. 

00:12:24 

And then I’ve got a phone call. 

00:12:26 

Again from from dads number. 

00:12:30 

Alex, my sister. 

00:12:31 

In law. 

00:12:33 

And I felt good. 

00:12:35 

You know, someone said IT support Dad, things will be, obviously they’re not great, but things will be OK and she said she’s gone. 

00:12:43 

That’s that. 

00:12:46 

And in between all of this. 

00:12:50 

The outside broadcast was panel upgrading. 

00:12:53 

I suddenly wasn’t panel operating and I’ve got announcers on the other end of the line going. 

00:12:58 

And even with the bus going on, how come you’re not like we gotta do a break? 

00:13:01 

What’s going on? 

00:13:01 

Speak to it. 

00:13:02 

And I’ve just Phucking learned that my mother stopped. 

00:13:07 

You know, like. 

00:13:07 

The the tech guy, like he was there on the morning and he swung into action, I think. 

00:13:12 

He called you, I he. 

00:13:14 

He booked a flight for me. 

00:13:15 

Back to Sydney, he. 

00:13:17 

Was such a great guy in that moment, no? 

00:13:22 

We have. 

00:13:26 

They have an example of how grief never. 

00:13:29 

Leaves this, you know, like. 

00:13:32 

But other times I can talk about my mum not being here and I’m, I’m fine, as you know, you know, like I’ve accepted, I’ve accepted that she’s not here anymore. 

00:13:40 

But when I go back into that moment, when I go back to that time, that’s where the triggers are, you know, and. 

00:13:49 

You know if I was? 

00:13:50 

If I was acting in a scene. 

00:13:51 

Oh, you would have been a great actor if you use that as your memory to bring up the tiers, right? 

00:13:56 

You would have won the Oscar for your performance in Les Miserables with that one. 

00:14:05 

I I know so. 

00:14:10 

That’s that’s grief, though, you know, and occasionally no one of those babies will come and hit and I’ll have a little tear in my eye or I’ll kind of have a bit. 

00:14:19 

Of a moment. 

00:14:20 

But it’s rare because even though I haven’t, you can’t let go of grief, you know? 

00:14:27 

It’s it creates a space in your life. 

00:14:30 

That somebody wants feels that that nobody else can feel. 

00:14:34 

It’s their space still. 

00:14:35 

So like when we when we talk about change. 

00:14:41 

And grief, I mean, Kimberly said earlier in the episode, wasn’t it? 

00:14:45 

That changes. 

00:14:46 

Just change. 

00:14:47 

It’s neither good nor bad. 

00:14:48 

It’s just. 

00:14:50 

This change is subjectively, objectively, what is the one where you removed from it objectively that makes sense. 

00:14:59 

Lyrics letting go of a house that. 

00:15:01 

You had memories with. 

00:15:02 

And removing that from your life, that’s a life changing moment. 

00:15:07 

Life won’t be the same. 

00:15:08 

After you do that, everything shifts. 

00:15:12 

That’s the same when your mom dies and. 

00:15:16 

And yet, it’s not. 

00:15:18 

Yeah, like you, I don’t know. 

00:15:20 

It’s you can’t really kind of the cortex because, you know, like clearly there are triggers for distress with those things in different ways. 

00:15:30 

For me, I’ve got nice memories about the house now. 

00:15:33 

You know, I don’t have to. 

00:15:36 

I don’t have to worry about it from maintenance. 

00:15:38 

Point of view, it’d have to kind of feel like it’s a burden on me. 

00:15:41 

I don’t have to kind of put all those negative emotions onto it that I was towards the end because it became a ******* pain in the **** and I didn’t want it to be that I. 

00:15:50 

Want us to be something that was just. 

00:15:53 

Something that I did once since. 

00:15:55 

I was able to. 

00:15:56 

Kind of benefit from it, but. 

00:16:00 

You know. 

00:16:05 

Like it seems to put a deadline on something. 

00:16:08 

Like grief, you know you’re in these theories of, you know, after so many weeks, you’ll experience this and so many weeks of experience that. 

00:16:14 

And there is a bit of that. 

00:16:15 

Going on too when somebody. 

00:16:18 

Close to you dies like that, so much happens. 

00:16:21 

We’d go regardless of how close you are to them. 

00:16:25 

It brings up that confrontational thought about your own mortality. 

00:16:30 

Yeah, all that starts to happen at the very minimum, and we learn. 

00:16:34 

Ways to cope. So moving cities, maybe 3000 kilometers, to me that was an adventure. That was that was a deep pain. That was a huge change, but it’s something. 

00:16:40 

Mr wasn’t big change? 

00:16:42 

Then life wouldn’t be the same one. She walked away from your government job and started a career in radio and moved 3000 comma. 

00:16:49 

This way. 

00:16:50 

Exactly, yeah. 

00:16:52 

I didn’t know just how profound that change would end up being. 

00:16:55 

But when I think about that, there was a point towards before I left Sydney, when I was going into new jobs. 

00:17:03 

Because my parents were older than my friends parents. 

00:17:06 

Because I was the youngest of three and we were like five years apart pitch. 

00:17:10 

So Mum was 73 when she died, which is still young in today’s terms, but thoughts? 

00:17:16 

Would run through my head. 

00:17:18 

Is this the job that I’ll be in? 

00:17:19 

When I get the call. 

00:17:22 

Uhm yeah, there’s a lot behind that old. 

00:17:25 

Full pattern as. 

00:17:26 

Well, like the way that I grew. 

00:17:27 

Up with the death, counter birthday time, all that. 

00:17:29 

Kind of stuff. 

00:17:31 

That’s probably gonna refund the time that I’ve become model and I’d start to think, oh, you know, like I wonder if this is the job where I get this phone call to say the dance style or the mums died or but that particular. 

00:17:42 

Change was a. 

00:17:43 

Change, you know Kimberly, right? 

00:17:45 

It was a change what I’ve had to do to alter my life and respond. 

00:17:49 

Different little life. 

00:17:51 

Since that change, and also since Dad passed away a couple of years ago, you know, there’re adjustments. 

00:17:56 

That we make and. 

00:17:58 

Yeah, the way. 

00:17:59 

I reframed that for myself. 

00:18:01 

Was that yes, I’m sad, and yes. 

00:18:06 

I wish you were still here. 

00:18:09 

Also, I’ve got my life to live and I know that they wouldn’t want me to be sitting there depressed every day in and pining after them everyday like they want me to be living a good life. 

00:18:21 

And it’s a life they set me up to live through my years, so it’s it’s kind of honoring them as well to be able to. 

00:18:28 

I don’t know. 

00:18:30 

All the terms seem so trite. 

00:18:32 

Yes, forward. 

00:18:33 

Move on. 

00:18:34 

All that kind of ******** 

00:18:35 

It’s it’s coming to terms with a new reality and being able to move through life in a different way with a different kind of presence. 

00:18:44 

Yeah, This is why I hate toxic positivity so much. 

00:18:48 

Because this is where the toxic positive mindset coach would throw up latitude and you know, say you got to accept the things you can’t change and. 

00:18:58 

And move on. 

00:18:59 

Come on. 

00:19:00 

Yeah, well, you. 

00:19:01 

Know, even things people say, oh, they had winnings, they had a good life for, you know, they were loved or let’s say, well. 

00:19:08 

Chuck off, you know, like they just died. 

00:19:12 

They just they’re not here anymore. 

00:19:14 

Like we’ve just burnt them because they’re dead. 

00:19:17 

People are well. 

00:19:18 

Meaning when they say those things, I don’t doubt that they’re well meaning, but their misplaced and sometimes it’s better really not to say anything at all. 

00:19:27 

It’s just. 

00:19:27 

Better to be there. 

00:19:29 

No words are going to fix the fact that that someone gone just being there and knowing that it’s OK to be me and to act like me and and have those emotions that. 

00:19:42 

I need to have at that time and not be judged for them is plenty sometimes just a little hug, you know, I remember actually on that morning. 

00:19:52 

I was upset, obviously do, and you turned up. 

00:19:56 

And I was. 

00:19:57 

Like I was thinking was walking back from Uncle Sam’s, which was the corner. 

00:19:59 

Shop up the road, ’cause I’ve been I’ve got myself something to eat. 

00:20:00 

For the for the chips from the binary of death. 

00:20:03 

Yeah, yeah, that one. 

00:20:05 

And so, like you like, I’m so sorry, you know, like if you had the bottle of wine, it was morning and I’m like, yeah, you wanna drink so. 

00:20:11 

But then I wish I had. 

00:20:12 

To give you a. 

00:20:13 

Hug and you like you were really awkward and now I understand why. 

00:20:20 

Now I know why. 

00:20:21 

I don’t know. 

00:20:22 

Why you’re not ugly person, and that’s totally. 

00:20:24 

Cool, but like so. 

00:20:26 

My natural response and it is like I just need a. 

00:20:28 

Hug and he’s like. 

00:20:28 

Oh, I don’t know what to do. 

00:20:30 

Have wine? 

00:20:32 

That’s that’s, uh, flighting with bruising. 

00:20:32 

Ha ha. 

00:20:35 

And I had the wine, and that settled my moves. 

00:20:38 

Maybe I should have had the wind, then I would have been up the whole. 

00:20:45 

Yeah, well, I’m going to issue a blanket statement apology right now that anybody who has thought I’ve been rude, I’ve actually just been ******* awkward. 

00:20:55 

And that time that I invited you out for dinner when Dad came out being like, Oh no, I don’t really want to come. 

00:20:59 

That’s right, you just gotta have have a nice time. 

00:21:00 

I’m like, no, come, come on, meeting. 

00:21:02 

I’d like you. 

00:21:02 

To meet him and like obviously you know you had bad things going on and. 

00:21:08 

Anyway, I don’t see. 

00:21:09 

I don’t remember that as well. 

00:21:10 

Now I would have. 

00:21:11 

Felt like I it’s awkward to go to somebody. 

00:21:13 

Else is thing. 

00:21:14 

But it has been a good ’cause then. 

00:21:16 

It kind of felt like it was a date almost, but it wasn’t. 

00:21:18 

It was just like, I want Dad to meet someone who’s like a really good. 

00:21:22 

Friend of mine up here to kind of make that connection. 

00:21:25 

Between Sydney and Darwin kinda thing, but OK. 

00:21:29 

I’m glad I came then. 

00:21:29 

It was. 

00:21:30 

It was nice enough. 

00:21:31 

I I don’t remember going. 

00:21:32 

Did I bring. 

00:21:32 

A bottle of wine. 

00:21:33 

It was a little bit awkward, but it. 

00:21:34 

Was fun and I think he will provide no. 

00:21:38 

Did I give you data hug? 

00:21:40 

Maybe I should. 

00:21:40 

Have I’ve had the wine. 

00:21:41 

I I can’t remember that denying. 

00:21:43 

I didn’t introduce you. 

00:21:44 

To my dad when he came up. 

00:21:45 

And visited did. 

00:21:45 

No, no you didn’t. 

00:21:46 

Oh no, I saved you. 

00:21:48 

Right. 

00:21:50 

Thank you. 

00:21:54 

Well, maybe I. 

00:21:56 

That’s a whole. 

00:21:56 

That’s a whole other other topic other than this episode about change that somehow turned into us about grief again. 

00:22:03 

But if that’s that’s a whole other episode is awkward interactions and family dynamics. 

00:22:08 

And I I like, maybe I picked up that kind of stuff about being awkward because I wouldn’t have wanted to. 

00:22:13 

Put you through a conversation with him, right? 

00:22:16 

I would have been like, doing a protective thing and saying, well, you. 

00:22:19 

I don’t want you to meet him because I know the first thing he’s going to do is starting. 

00:22:23 

With the homophobic language, right, so. 

00:22:25 

Yeah, yeah, yeah. 

00:22:26 

I suppose I maybe just subconsciously think that if I meet anybody else’s parents. 

00:22:31 

Then I’m going to have to be on guard as well. 

00:22:32 

And you know. 

00:22:32 

Like that was in future. 

00:22:33 

Disclose either, you know, like you did all of. 

00:22:36 

That and you know that was, that was. 

00:22:38 

Thank you. 

00:22:39 

I don’t know but but he. 

00:22:40 

No, I mean, I I’m, I’m not saying I did that on. 

00:22:41 

They they they know, know, know, know, know. 

00:22:42 

Purpose? I’m not saying like. 

00:22:44 

Know, but we solve edit, don’t we? 

00:22:45 

We kind of. 

00:22:46 

We put these barricades up in strategic places so that we protect ourselves, but also we shield. 

00:22:52 

Other people as well, because also, you know, if they see that, then what I think of me. 

00:22:57 

Yeah, yeah, that too. 

00:22:59 

We’ve been talking belong on Griffin and big loss, and it doesn’t have to be the magnitude of grieving the loss of a parent or a child or a partner or. 

00:23:10 

Or a cat by their example. 

00:23:12 

The career. 

00:23:13 

It was the career, it was the job, you know? 

00:23:15 

And I’m 50 now, right? 

00:23:17 

Yeah, as he liked to remind. 

00:23:19 

Me beside herself almost couple weeks time, so someone around my age though it’s it’s common if someone loses their job around my age. 

00:23:19 

Who are you 51? 

00:23:21 

Was that in a couple of weeks? 

00:23:29 

It’s really hard. 

00:23:31 

To get a new one because ageism, basically, you know. 

00:23:33 

Because I do some because. 

00:23:35 

People don’t value. 

00:23:36 

Give experience and wisdom. 

00:23:39 

They want someone who they can actually boss around and get them to do what? 

00:23:43 

They want because. 

00:23:44 

Silly old Andy. 

00:23:45 

He thinks he knows better, and he’s. 

00:23:47 

Actually gonna fight back. 

00:23:48 

Yeah, yeah, right. 

00:23:50 

He’s going to have an opinion. 

00:23:50 

The more the older you get, the less sheet you put up with. 

00:23:53 

Tell me about it. 

00:23:54 

So, so maybe we can take it. 

00:23:58 

I suppose a slight rest bite from the grief and trauma for a little bit after the jugular was cracked open. 

00:24:00 

From the. 

00:24:02 

Thank God. 

00:24:05 

Is anybody still listening? 

00:24:06 

That’s the question. 

00:24:09 

It’s anywhere he still there. 

00:24:12 

Because it’s true what you said. 

00:24:13 

People reach a certain point, they might lose their job, for example. 

00:24:17 

And it’s a really. 

00:24:17 

Big life altering change to occur we had a chat to Professor Alex merits, from Latrobe Business School. 

00:24:25 

He studies senior preneurs. 

00:24:28 

And he helped. 

00:24:28 

Us battle some of those early fears that we had ourselves about whether we were a little bit too long in the tooth to. 

00:24:34 

Be starting a business. 

00:24:35 

Well, alert, we know. 

00:24:36 

And whether we could change our ways from. 

00:24:39 

A lifetime of beliefs we held as being employees. 

00:24:44 

Can the lipid changes spots that most certainly came, you know, yes, there are underlying characteristics number, but all these things we’re in such a fluid and such a lifestyle and disrupted world that you’ve actually got no choice. 

00:24:57 

But you have to change. 

00:24:59 

You know, before people didn’t have multiple careers. 

00:25:01 

Now you you don’t often meet a mature age. 

00:25:04 

Firstnet hasn’t had three or four different careers. 

00:25:07 

Different kinds of jobs, in and out of jobs. 

00:25:09 

You don’t get jobs for life, not even in the big corporate companies you’re gonna work for. 

00:25:14 

Telstra, Willis and think, well, that’s my job forever. 

00:25:17 

Or Qantas, it’s actually the opposite. 

00:25:19 

So it’s not a thing that can these people change into something different. 

00:25:24 

You often spinous effort, you don’t have much option and it’s the way that. 

00:25:28 

You can then acquire these new skills, but I’ll make it really clear. 

00:25:31 

Don’t always just believe you have those skills because are successful in corporate for 30 years. 

00:25:37 

Means I’m going to be successful in my own business. 

00:25:39 

You’re talking chalk and cheese and often relates to the difference that a lot of people from the financial provision. 

00:25:45 

Compare accounting and finance. 

00:25:48 

They’re two totally different disciplines. 

00:25:50 

The ones about for keeping, the other ones about forecasting financial strategies for big loans. 

00:25:55 

Let’s just say totally. 

00:25:57 

Different things, different skill sets. 

00:25:59 

And that’s exactly between entrepreneurship and small business. 

00:26:02 

They are totally, totally different skills. 

00:26:05 

Speaking of business and less of trauma and grief, but still of change, Andrew Griffiths. 

00:26:13 

Oh yeah. 

00:26:13 

We spoke to him back in episode 18. 

00:26:16 

If you’re not familiar with this story yet, fantastic story. 

00:26:18 

Not hey, this is like wonderful ’cause some terrible **** happened to him. 

00:26:23 

But, uh, a really interesting man who? 

00:26:25 

Has come so far and through so much and been so good at re framing. 

00:26:30 

Well, yeah, gave some really good examples of that journey of learning. 

00:26:34 

Your own worth. 

00:26:35 

He’s been able to continue that journey very successfully in business and teach others how to value themselves as well. 

00:26:41 

Written a bunch of best selling small business. 

00:26:43 

Books now. So yeah, he’s. 

00:26:45 

It’s got another one coming out soon. 

00:26:47 

I do believe. 

00:26:48 

And much in the way that we. 

00:26:50 

Love talking to our psychologists and researchers? 

00:26:53 

For free therapy for our mental health. 

00:26:56 

We also love talking to people for free advising business and Andrew Griffiths had his own views to add about accepting change. 

00:27:04 

And you’re going to lose those clients that you probably shouldn’t have. 

00:27:07 

You know, you’re going to probably lose some staff members who can’t kind of deal with being able to kind of having a model that’s that’s not a, not a. 

00:27:17 

It’s a little bit more complicated. 

00:27:18 

As in we don’t just sell stuff because we’re the cheapest, we sell stuff because we deliver quality you’re going to. 

00:27:24 

Probably have to battle with your own internal demons and and. 

00:27:28 

The stories that we tell ourselves. 

00:27:30 

My clients can’t afford it, the markets down there, this or that, the other. 

00:27:34 

So I spend half of my time, you know, really kind of trying to help people to navigate through the fact versus the fiction of this, increasing your price model. 

00:27:44 

I had to consciously change my thinking as well because. 

00:27:48 

It it’s kind of stressful to always be freaking out and and not knowing and and not you know uncertainty. 

00:27:56 

Whereas I I think the another part of that kind of shines through is that. 

00:28:00 

You know, I I know how much I’ve turned over every month for the last 1520 years, so it’s pretty unlikely that tomorrow I’m going to turn over 110th of that. 

00:28:10 

So, like we were talking about with confidence and all the rest of it, I’ve got enough evidence behind me to probably give me a sense of security as well. 

00:28:19 

You know that that. 

00:28:20 

I know that. 

00:28:21 

You know, in January I’d probably turn over on a 50 grand or whatever it’s gonna be. 

00:28:25 

And most, most januaries that’s why I turn over. 

00:28:27 

So the overtime in business you, you start to get a little bit more of familiarity and and I guess reassurance. 

00:28:39 

That that probably I didn’t have any earlier days. 

00:28:41 

Just as an aside, can I say I think that two of the worst words that ever get uttered or have ever been uttered to me are ones like they’re gone. 

00:28:52 

Or he’s gone. 

00:28:53 

Or she’s gone. 

00:28:55 

I I just. 

00:28:56 

I’ve had those phone calls too, like I’ve had the call from. 

00:29:00 

Mum when my. 

00:29:01 

Grand Father died, and I knew he wasn’t well. 

00:29:04 

I’d been to visit him in the hospital that day and taking her up some stuff so she could stay there for the day, for the night, ’cause his organs were slowly shutting down. 

00:29:12 

And that coral where she’s at midnight or whatever and she says. 

00:29:18 

And that’s awful. 

00:29:20 

And I think my grandma was probably similar as well, her mom, it was like a oh, she’s going. 

00:29:27 

Oh, when their dog died, it’s a cherubs gone and I just think they’re they’re some of the worst words. 

00:29:36 

They’re really hard to take, really hard here well. 

00:29:38 

And when you said it in. 

00:29:39 

Your story, I’m like, you know. 

00:29:40 

What, like maybe one day we should make a podcast on on the worst words. 

00:29:46 

Or or how to simple words. 

00:29:48 

Wanted by phoenix. 

00:29:49 

How two simple words could carry so much meaning but it. 

00:29:54 

That phrase. 

00:29:55 

Yeah, and it it holds so much weight for obvious reasons. I am heard second hand, I said I’m your sister-in-law, told me that that Mama died. 

00:30:05 

You know, like. 

00:30:06 

I feel like it would have been better to hear from one of my brothers. 

00:30:09 

My dad. 

00:30:10 

Yeah, when Mum mum died, mum couldn’t reach me but she left a message on the machine saying call. 

00:30:19 

But before that message, there was another message on the machine from my best friend saying, I’m really sorry, I’m really sorry about new. 

00:30:26 

Lots of like, giving me the sympathy. 

00:30:28 

It’s like, oh. 

00:30:30 

When you see. 

00:30:30 

Someone broke the news on an answering machine. 

00:30:34 

That you hadn’t even heard yet. 

00:30:36 

Yeah, so with Dad, it was. 

00:30:39 

Different again, because I was there. 

00:30:40 

I was there with you. 

00:30:42 

It was me and the nurse in the palliative care unit with him, so that gave me the immediate sense of, I don’t know, like, it’s it’s weird. 

00:30:51 

It’s like the. 

00:30:52 

Connection thing rumors, but its immediacy I suppose. 

00:30:56 

Or you didn’t read about it? 

00:30:57 

On Facebook. 

00:30:57 

So that’s a positive, yeah. 

00:30:58 

That’s a plus, exactly. 

00:31:00 

You know, like. 

00:31:01 

I can talk about those things now compared to just be for a couple of weeks ago, and I can actually have conversations about loss and grief and all that kind of stuff and relate those stories as well. 

00:31:12 

Without descending into those feelings of trauma around it. 

00:31:16 

Because if I wanted to, I could. 

00:31:18 

I mean, don’t get me wrong, I could actually start talking about that moment that I was there with Dad and when he passed and that kind of stuff. 

00:31:24 

And that brings up exactly. 

00:31:26 

The sort of same tears that I had learned was talking about Mom from 13 years ago. 

00:31:30 

So that’s all still there. 

00:31:32 

But as opposed for me, like, I’ve managed now to reframe things in ways where I can actually relate those stories and actually demonstrate to myself the I am OK. 

00:31:44 

It’s it’s not OK that they did, but I’m OK. 

00:31:47 

And I’m going to be OK. 

00:31:48 

I’m still here and these are things now that I need to adjust these. 

00:31:52 

Are things I need to adapt to. 

00:31:53 

I don’t like that I’m doing it. 

00:31:55 

I don’t like that I have to do it. 

00:31:57 

I don’t have to like it, but I have to do it. 

00:31:59 

If I actually want to have any kind of happy or productive life, then I need to find ways to be able to honor their memory. 

00:32:07 

But not. 

00:32:08 

Wallow in their loss. 

00:32:10 

I see, and I don’t want to shoot on anybody grief process here, it says. 

00:32:15 

Not what it’s about at all, but I see often on Facebook, particularly someone all post happy Heavenly birthday to someone. 

00:32:22 

No, I don’t know. 

00:32:23 

That doesn’t sit well with me. 

00:32:26 

You mean such and such would have been 103 today? 

00:32:29 

Literally saying happy heavenly birthday. 

00:32:33 

Bumble Dad or Grandpa or? 

00:32:35 

It’s as if they’re saying happy birthday to them in person, but it’s. 

00:32:39 

On Facebook and it’s and there’s someone who’s not actually you anymore. 

00:32:43 

And I get it, you know, I I get that it’s a way of remembering and I get that it’s a way of actually making sure that that person is storing image that person is storing. 

00:32:55 

It but but. 

00:32:56 

I don’t know. 

00:32:57 

I I’ve got other ways of remembering. 

00:33:00 

Talked about Mother’s Day. I think you had talked to that mother stage. 

00:33:02 

Yeah, we did. 

00:33:03 

Yeah, we trust that Mother’s Day, like 2 episodes ago. 

00:33:05 

I’m hitting this good Mother’s Day, you know, speak bad. I’m not hidden mist with Father’s Day. I still don’t like Father’s Day at all because that’s still too close to Dad’s death. 

00:33:17 

And I’m not a dad. 

00:33:19 

So you know both. 

00:33:20 

Mother’s Day and father’s. 

00:33:21 

Day and date that really don’t mean anything to me anymore. 

00:33:25 

In the name of commercialism and in the name of capitalism and in the name of social inclusion, I can’t ignore it. 

00:33:33 

So, you know, there have been years, for example, where I’ve bought a plant in those memory and put it in the garden or some bulbs or something. 

00:33:39 

And then other years where I’ve just scrolling all it’s Mother’s Day, I’ll just whatever. Doesn’t matter. There’s no hard and fast. 

00:33:45 

Well, you know, there’s no deadline as we’ve said earlier and there’s there are rules to any of this. 

00:33:48 

We we need to be able to kind of do whatever we need to do to deal with that moment, throws a curveball, then we have to deal with it. 

00:33:56 

But I think. 

00:33:57 

Something really interesting is that you’re talking about grief in terms of. 

00:34:00 

A loss of. 

00:34:02 

A relationship with people that you very much loved and in terms of death. 

00:34:07 

And I think maybe from my perspective, I haven’t been giving my grief a real voice because. 

00:34:16 

It shouldn’t, and that’s. 

00:34:19 

I don’t mean it in, I mean to. 

00:34:21 

Specifically, call out that. 

00:34:23 

Word because I think that it it’s not the same thing. 

00:34:26 

It shouldn’t be the same thing. 

00:34:27 

It’s a career. 

00:34:29 

It’s whatever it was an identity. 

00:34:31 

It’s not a person didn’t die. 

00:34:33 

The world amend like none of those things. 

00:34:38 

But its loss. 

00:34:39 

But its loss, but its loss. 

00:34:43 

It’s lost just the same. 

00:34:44 

I think I I tried to probably minimize it straight away, well as straight away as I could and and then you know, we’re going to start our own thing in our own business and it’s going to be. 

00:34:55 

Of raving success and then ******* the haters and it’s not going to matter. 

00:35:00 

All these things from before that that still hurt because it. 

00:35:04 

Was the right. 

00:35:05 

Choice and everything happens for a reason, and it’s the right path and it’s. 

00:35:09 

All worked out fine and we’re in a storyboard this arc that shows this growth that we experienced in that year between when. 

00:35:17 

I left that. 

00:35:18 

Job and and when the podcast started. 

00:35:20 

And you know, it’s gonna be so inspirational for people that we’ve changed when talking to these people. 

00:35:26 

And we’re going to have a Ted talk and. 

00:35:29 

Except then we get to it. 

00:35:30 

You are dreaming big, little girl. 

00:35:32 

You were dreaming big. 

00:35:33 

And and then we we storyboarder anarch where we go from. 

00:35:33 

They both were. That’s right. 

00:35:38 

Some depressing stuff, too, but. 

00:35:40 

We’ve worked out. 

00:35:41 

Ways to cope with it. 

00:35:41 

And we’ve spoke to all these people and now I’m, you know, not depressed anymore and. 

00:35:46 

And everything working out and we’re making heaps of money and things aren’t hard and, you know, all those mental health issues have gone away and I’m no longer feeling any kind of grief. 

00:35:56 

And everyone knows my name and I’m on a billboard somewhere, or at least in a Ted talk. 

00:36:00 

But we’ve wanted, I think, what we’re going to win. 

00:36:03 

We were going to win an order of Australia for something. 

00:36:05 

God ******* win everything or Australia. 

00:36:07 

And we’re going to win. 

00:36:07 

A wolf floor. 

00:36:08 

Or been. 

00:36:09 

Walkleys we’re going to. 

00:36:09 

And we’re gonna, I think. 

00:36:10 

We’re going to win a Nobel Peace Prize in. 

00:36:12 

One of my vision board. 

00:36:14 

Yeah, yeah. 

00:36:15 

I’m looking forward to that. 

00:36:18 

I think they may. 

00:36:19 

Give it to scientists. 

00:36:20 

I don’t. 

00:36:20 

Even think we were. 

00:36:21 

Eligible for it, but they look they didn’t. 

00:36:22 

Stop the dreaming. 

00:36:24 

Oh no. 

00:36:24 

You know someone going to turn out lives into a movie or TV series. 

00:36:29 

So we gotta. 

00:36:30 

Who’s going to? 

00:36:30 

Play you. 

00:36:31 

Who’s the one from Hairspray? 

00:36:32 

Nikki blonsky. 

00:36:33 

Only ever like three factors. 

00:36:35 

So they they don’t diversity cast for many fat child actors, so yeah. 

00:36:43 

You know, and so there’s this, this idea that there will be a happy ending that. 

00:36:48 

Because it’s not the same, because. 

00:36:51 

It was. 

00:36:52 

It was just a job. 

00:36:53 

It was just a job. 

00:36:56 

But it wasn’t just a joke. 

00:36:58 

It wasn’t. 

00:36:59 

So that’s very clear from where you go with that. 

00:37:02 

When you actually think about that when you said yesterday about just bring it up on the shelf of broken dreams, well, that was ******* heartbreaking. 

00:37:10 

With my soul alerts. 

00:37:12 

With this solar lights, yeah, take it off the shelf because he careers not over. 

00:37:17 

But that particular thing you did as a part of your career is in the past, but your career still strong. 

00:37:23 

You haven’t lost any of those skills. 

00:37:25 

You haven’t lost any of that connection to people. 

00:37:28 

I lost my ability to feed my breaks down to 30 seconds. 

00:37:31 

You did. You did. 

00:37:33 

It was always going to happen. 

00:37:38 

And I know. 

00:37:39 

There’s that sense. 

00:37:40 

Also, that you feel like you might have been a significant amount of bridges. 

00:37:44 

In fact, you might have actually detonated entire towns and villages. 

00:37:48 

I think I’m on. 

00:37:50 

As he departed. 

00:37:51 

But people don’t really think like that. 

00:37:53 

Well, I know that you could actually ponder returning to a radio gig somewhere and you’ll be welcomed with open arms because. 

00:38:01 

You’re ******* good. 

00:38:02 

But I don’t think I could. 

00:38:04 

So for me though I. 

00:38:06 

You don’t feel like you could. 

00:38:08 

Because who I changed, who I am changed. 

00:38:11 

And it’s like. 

00:38:12 

Do you know that feeling of when you when you first go to university? 

00:38:18 

And then you go back on your first holiday back home and it seems really small. 

00:38:23 

And is not that the place has changed places the same. 

00:38:27 

House is the same, suburb is the same, people are the same. 

00:38:31 

But you changed and now it feels too small. 

00:38:37 

The emotional and life changes and everything else of my last two years, I couldn’t go back to being a music director and an announcer somewhere because all I want to do is just. 

00:38:50 

What did I say yesterday? 

00:38:51 

I could just weather the storm and and put myself, you know, not have to. 

00:38:57 

Look after anybody else, work, work to getting on the Billboard, I could, I could put up with the the compromise in the attitudes and and all those things that ate it my soul for so long, or the inequity and all that kind of stuff. 

00:39:13 

Because I I can’t go back into that box like that’s that old house. 

00:39:18 

That’s the that I’ve changed so much that I I I currently believe I could never. 

00:39:26 

Be in that. 

00:39:27 

Box again, which doesn’t mean that there couldn’t be another opportunity that was different. 

00:39:33 

But it would come from where I was now and I don’t think I can ever go back into a box where. 

00:39:41 

I package up. 

00:39:42 

My emotions and thoughts and curiosity and vulnerability. 

00:39:48 

And core beliefs and values into a 30 seconds to one minute acceptable. 

00:39:53 

Break that. 

00:39:55 

Never gets to anything real. 

00:39:58 

I think a part of this as well is that we need to allow ourselves to see ourselves somewhere different. 

00:40:05 

I have been living in Adelaide now for 12 years. 

00:40:10 

I still get people I’ve known all my life saying. 

00:40:13 

You think you’ll ever get back to Sydney? 

00:40:16 

And I’m like, no, no, I live in Adelaide. 

00:40:17 

I live in Adelaide, if anything you’re going to. 

00:40:20 

Come live here with me. 

00:40:21 

Yeah, exactly. Got that right. 

00:40:24 

We’re gonna leave. We’re going to buy a once we’ve got our Nobel Prize, we’re going to buy like a multi $1,000,000 mansion overlooking the ocean. 

00:40:33 

Maybe on the the southern end of the Gold Coast or at the Suncoast or something, that’s where we’re gonna go. 

00:40:38 

Oh, look, I’ll buy. 

00:40:39 

I’ll buy my harbor mansion, you know, somewhere for clues or rosebay or something, you know, I’m happy with that. 

00:40:42 

Yeah, yeah, yeah. 

00:40:43 

But, you know, but like it’s sort of aspiration of mine to move back to my. 

00:40:48 

My place where I grew up. 

00:40:49 

I really love visiting Sydney. 

00:40:51 

I love Sidney, but I love it as a visitor now because I get to do the things that I wouldn’t have done as a resident. 

00:40:57 

When you live somewhere, you take things for granted. 

00:41:00 

You don’t actually, you know, like I lived in the Blue Mountains for seven years and I could probably count on one hand the number of times. 

00:41:05 

They went from Bushwalk because they’re looting it. 

00:41:08 

And we live in something. 

00:41:09 

You take it for granted. 

00:41:09 

And we. 

00:41:10 

Couldn’t, but my point is coming back to why I actually started that thought. 

00:41:15 

My point, and I do have one, is that. 

00:41:18 

If we like, we if we. 

00:41:20 

Don’t actually allow ourselves to have a different picture of ourselves doing something differently then we’ll never move on from it. 

00:41:26 

And those people who are asking me do you think you’ll ever move back to Sydney? 

00:41:30 

Haven’t seen me living a happy life here in Adelaide and how much I love living here and the life that I’ve built here with Chris so. 

00:41:37 

You know, #1, there’s that odd thing that gay people get up. Are you still with Chris? 

00:41:42 

Moving the other 12 years and you still with your husband for 20 years like? 

00:41:46 

Yeah, no, no one spilling. 

00:41:48 

Yeah, asking that. 

00:41:48 

Yeah, ridiculous. 

00:41:50 

But here we are. 

00:41:51 

But, you know, similarly, you know, like, where does that question even come from? 

00:41:54 

Would you ever move back to Sydney? 

00:41:55 

Yeah, like Chris and I as couples do, have a conversation about, you know, if one of us died, what would happen? 

00:42:01 

And he said to me once I. 

00:42:02 

You know, would you? 

00:42:02 

Move back to Sydney I’m. 

00:42:03 

Like I don’t know number one, I don’t really want to kind of project forward and. 

00:42:07 

Think of your death, but #2, I don’t know what I would choose to do in this moment here. 

00:42:13 

I think I’d stay in Adelaide. 

00:42:14 

I’ve got a life here, I’ve got friends here. 

00:42:16 

I I can keep living a happy life or be it without. 

00:42:20 

But we don’t wanna be thinking about that. 

00:42:22 

But you know what I mean. 

00:42:23 

Like whatever happens, happen if I go first, then I suppose that question doesn’t come up for him, because he. 

00:42:29 

Grew up here. 

00:42:30 

But do I go back to Sydney if he if he passes away, or do I stay in Adelaide? 

00:42:35 

Or do I move somewhere else that interests me? 

00:42:37 

I don’t know. 

00:42:38 

Who knows? 

00:42:39 

You know, we don’t know these things. 

00:42:40 

Until life throws change at us sometimes, and options, whatever they might be, crop up for us to make a choice. 

00:42:48 

So when a change happens. 

00:42:49 

It’s we don’t really know how we’re going to adapt until we’re adapting, do we? 

00:42:54 

No, we don’t. 

00:42:55 

We can’t really plan. 

00:42:56 

For it as much as we try to. 

00:42:58 

Storyboard a happy ending. 

00:43:00 

Well, you know, people kind of go. 

00:43:02 

With assumptions as well, like one of the big assumptions around the death of someone in families. 

00:43:07 

The family comes together and they support each other and as long as I have to say it, that doesn’t feel. 

00:43:13 

Like how it? 

00:43:13 

Was in a lot of ways for me, the people that helped me emotionally at the time of my. 

00:43:18 

Dad’s. 

00:43:18 

What blood relatives? 

00:43:20 

There are other family? 

00:43:21 

There were my sisters from other misters. 

00:43:23 

Did they bring you a bottle of wine? 

00:43:23 

This is you. 

00:43:24 

But not offer you a hug. 

00:43:25 

Uh, they took me lunch and one of them had me over her place for. 

00:43:29 

Dinner one night and. 

00:43:30 

Yes, but was there an awkward hug? 

00:43:34 

No, there’s no awkward hug. 

00:43:36 

That’s reserved for my special friends. 

00:43:38 

Ha ha. 

00:43:39 

Ah, this whole thing about change. 

00:43:42 

And you know the toxic positivity will say change. 

00:43:45 

You know it’s. 

00:43:45 

An opportunity for adventure and new new. 

00:43:48 

Things and look Fak, off like. 

00:43:50 

If someone has died, that’s a change, and that is not an adventure. 

00:43:54 

Until you unless you are extremely no, I’m gonna sound judgmental, but, you know, it’s a way to think that you can. 

00:44:00 

You bring lunch? 

00:44:03 

Actually, you can actually talk yourself out of something as big as losing someone very, very close to. 

00:44:10 

You it’s not something that you just have a mindset. 

00:44:13 

Shift on. They’re gone. 

00:44:14 

They’re not going to be back and your life is changed forever in comparison, moving 3000 kilometres to the other into the country for a new career. 

00:44:23 

That’s an adventure. 

00:44:24 

That’s a big change. 

00:44:24 

That’s scary, but that is an adventure. 

00:44:27 

But it’s an opportunity to explore new things. 

00:44:29 

Wait is leaving a. 

00:44:30 

Job fit into that then because it didn’t have to be gone forever, but. 

00:44:35 

I killed it off. 

00:44:36 

I may want to change. 

00:44:38 

’cause I wanted change and then I got my ******* change, and now here I am crying about my ******* change. 

00:44:45 

Even though other good things are happening for us but there’s still a a morning and uh griefing of. 

00:44:52 

Opportunities that. 

00:44:54 

It’s the dead babies. 

00:44:56 

It’s the thing with the X and the crying. 

00:44:58 

For the dead. 

00:44:59 

Babies that I. 

00:45:00 

It’s crying for the babies that we never would have had. 

00:45:02 

Yeah, it’s those dreams that we held that will no longer be. 

00:45:06 

And letting go of things that we probably didn’t even know that we needed to. 

00:45:10 

Let go of. 

00:45:11 

Being out we’ve got. 

00:45:13 

With Kimberly. 

00:45:13 

Oh God, we’ve got bristle aid. 

00:45:17 

There’s global worthy material. 

00:45:19 

There’s billboard worthy material coming in our future. 

00:45:23 

You bet. 

00:45:26 

I I thought we were going to say we’ve got. 

00:45:27 

Kimberly Norris. 

00:45:28 

We have got Kimberly notes. 

00:45:29 

Because, you know, she’s got lots of answers, so maybe we. 

00:45:33 

Could listen to some of them. 

00:45:34 

Yeah, look, you know Kimberly, words resonated with me. 

00:45:36 

In relation to that whole part of our life around the loss and you know, when it came to the fractured relationships. 

00:45:42 

After my dad passed away, there is no opportunity to act quickly and until myself like toxic positivity, you know they they will get back to normal soon and that’s OK. 

00:45:51 

You just kind. 

00:45:52 

Of push through it because no, no. 

00:45:54 

Like if I. 

00:45:54 

Actually, if I was being honest with myself. 

00:45:57 

And I didn’t want it to return to the normal that I’d known, because the normal wasn’t. 

00:46:00 

For me, you know, it wasn’t acceptable anymore. 

00:46:02 

So yeah, Kimberly, words really resonated amongst all of that, and I had to sit with it. 

00:46:09 

I won’t have sometimes as individuals we try and jump too quickly from one state to the next and maybe whether they’re as stages that might be more beneficial to reach for on a journey towards Wellness or feeling better. 

00:46:21 

The reality is, and I myself am definitely guilty of this, we love a quick fix, yes. 

00:46:27 

We will have a quick peek. 

00:46:28 

Bring the band aids. 

00:46:29 

With that exactly is exactly right and. 

00:46:29 

It’s a miracle. 

00:46:32 

And, you know, myself and my clients will often joke about, you know, as soon as I find that magic wand, everything is going to be fine. 

00:46:39 

But, and it makes sense, particularly when things are really hard, particularly when we’re really distressed, we just want that feeling to be gone. 

00:46:47 

We just want everything to be OK. 

00:46:49 

But as you say, if we try and essentially skip stages, what we know is that any gains are likely to be short lived because essentially. 

00:46:59 

We haven’t built the the mechanisms, the thinking, the feeling and the behavior that are needed to sustain the change. 

00:47:07 

So essentially, when change is more gradual, we have more time to think about the change, practice the change and really start to own it. 

00:47:16 

And again, give more time for those neural pathways to grow, be activated and insulated. 

00:47:22 

And when we do that process, the change is much more likely to be effective. 

00:47:27 

And sustainable. 

00:47:28 

When we try and go from one stage to the end stage, we literally don’t have those foundations either psychologically or neurologically. 

00:47:38 

To support long term change, it doesn’t mean we can’t build them once we’re there, but it’s actually harder to do so because it’s so much that has to change in one go rather than small steps along the way. 

00:47:49 

So what does the? 

00:47:50 

Upward positive emotion spiral look like what are the steps we should be reaching for? 

00:47:55 

Essentially the biggest part, and again, it sounds really simple, but it’s amazing how rarely we do this. 

00:48:02 

The first part is actually acknowledge. 

00:48:04 

When things go well, actually. 

00:48:06 

We recognize when things have got even if they’ve gone OK. 

00:48:11 

Because again, remember, our brains are generally hard wired to protect us from danger, and good things can’t hurt us. 

00:48:17 

So why? 

00:48:17 

Would we think about those? 

00:48:18 

Yes, yeah. 

00:48:19 

So instead we need to deliberately focus on what has gone well, what is going well, or have I achieved? 

00:48:29 

What have I enjoyed? 

00:48:30 

Because not only does focusing on that actually reactivate those chemicals in the brain, those feel good chemicals. 

00:48:35 

So we get them all over again, but in turn it further strengthens the memory network. 

00:48:40 

Because when you think about. 

00:48:41 

Of things you’re more likely to think about are the good things. 

00:48:45 

And so over. 

00:48:46 

What happens is that becomes your default. 

00:48:49 

You think about the good things first rather than going to the negative. 

00:48:54 

And so when you hear about people who talk about gratitude journals or journaling, that’s essentially built on a broaden and build theory. 

00:49:01 

Of positive emotions. 

00:49:03 

Take the time to focus on things that are working well rather than directing all your energy to things that are not working well so that that’s a huge part in actually the biggest part, and it’s also the hardest. 

00:49:17 

The other thing, though, too, is surround yourself with people who also are able to recognize and celebrate positive things. 

00:49:25 

Because again, we have these mirror neurons and mood is contagious. 

00:49:30 

How many times have we been in a situation where there’s someone giggling and after a while we find ourselves laughing? 

00:49:35 

Too, and we don’t even know why. 

00:49:37 

It’s the same idea, so round ourselves with the space we want to be in. 

00:49:42 

And we will be there. 

00:49:44 

I understand that the brain, from the conversations I’ve had with some people recently, doesn’t really know the difference between reality and what you’re remembering. 

00:49:52 

So memory, if it’s good and you’re seeing there reflecting on that list exactly the same feelings as though it was. 

00:49:59 

Happening right now. 

00:50:00 

Absolutely, absolutely the brain, although it’s incredible. 

00:50:05 

It actually isn’t very good at teasing out those differences, so as you say, reflecting on a positive memory can be just as good. 

00:50:13 

If you can’t do the thing so particularly again, if we think about people who are in isolation for any reason, then you might not be able to do those things you really love. 

00:50:22 

Maybe it’s not possible right now too. 

00:50:25 

To go to that place you love or or to see that person you really enjoy. 

00:50:28 

Spending time with. 

00:50:29 

It doesn’t mean you can’t think about it, but. 

00:50:31 

Instead of thinking about. 

00:50:32 

It and thinking, oh gosh, I’m missing. 

00:50:34 

Out on this. 

00:50:35 

Think about what you love about it. 

00:50:37 

Think about what brings you that joy, that excite. 

00:50:40 

Treatment and then you can start planning for the next time you do that. 

00:50:43 

So that’s that you started with a positive memory experience, a positive motion, then you build. 

00:50:48 

On top of. 

00:50:49 

That to plan the next opportunity for some similar experience. 

00:50:53 

I feel like you’ve hit on the the ultimate freedom, isn’t it, that actually nothing ever has to change in our circumstances because we can feel differently, just absolutely. 

00:51:03 

By controlling how we think. 

00:51:05 

Absolutely. And again as we’ve. 

00:51:07 

Spoken about before. 

00:51:08 

So that doesn’t mean it’s easy. 

00:51:10 

It doesn’t mean. 

00:51:10 

It’s easy by any stretch. 

00:51:11 

It takes practice. 

00:51:12 

It does. 

00:51:13 

It takes a lot of practice, but when you do it, you are correct. 

00:51:15 

You are completely free to shape your own experience then. 

00:51:20 

How do we avoid getting into a situation where we are so engrossed in those wonderful feelings that were listening for ourselves that maybe we’re doing ourselves a disservice and not actually moving ourselves forward? 

00:51:32 

I think that’s part of that idea of self reflection, because as you say, it’s lovely to be in that happy place and we all want to be there as much as Poss. 

00:51:40 

But actually, part of being happy, part of being fulfilled, is involving a degree of change. 

00:51:45 

What we do know from research studies is that even if people are doing the things they love, they get to a point where they don’t have the same impact anymore. 

00:51:52 

If nothing ever changes, so it’s about instead of seeing this as the end point that I’m, you know, I’m happy. 

00:51:59 

This thing right now. 

00:52:00 

It’s how can I capitalize upon my energy, upon my motivation, my hope, my excitement, my happiness, to take it to another level, to take a positive risk, to try new things. 

00:52:13 

So the idea is that you don’t always have to be trying everything new all the time, but that part of fulfillment and part of that broaden and build. 

00:52:20 

Theory of positive emotion means you actually need. 

00:52:23 

To build and to build. 

00:52:24 

It does involve a degree of change. 

00:52:27 

Being fulfilled involves a degree of change. 

00:52:30 

Well, **** you too, Kimberly notes. 

00:52:35 

Ah, yes. 

00:52:36 

No, look, I know, I. 

00:52:38 

Kimberly bombs. 

00:52:39 

A Kimberly bombs no. 

00:52:42 

I love Kimberly. 

00:52:43 

I don’t mean it, but the idea that, you know, we need change to make us. 

00:52:47 

Happy it’s like. 

00:52:49 

Stop calling out my ******** Kimberly. 

00:52:52 

Stop it. 

00:52:53 

Stop that. 

00:52:53 

Just is right. 

00:52:54 

Because being happy involves change. 

00:52:57 

It’s just that sometimes navigating changes. 

00:53:01 

You know, I’ve lived in, I think 8 different cities. 

00:53:03 

I I know we did this song at some point. 

00:53:05 

It was like it was Brisbane forgot now, Brisbane, Wagga Wagga, Ballarat, Canberra, Inverell, Newcastle, Muscle Brook, Darwin, Ipswich and Brisbane no. 

00:53:11 

You can see. 

00:53:13 

Muscle mass also was thinking of, yeah. 

00:53:16 

Fear in every anyway. 

00:53:19 

Thing is, like almost all of those changing, completely uprooting my life, doing 3000 kilometre moves. 

00:53:26 

Easy, easy changes. 

00:53:28 

Something to. 

00:53:28 

Look forward to. 

00:53:29 

It’s an adventure, so what’s the difference? 

00:53:31 

Between an easy change in a hard change. 

00:53:34 

If changes, just change. 

00:53:36 

The context isn’t it. 

00:53:37 

When you walk away from something that you want it you no longer want, it’s hard, isn’t it? 

00:53:42 

It’s the the devil you know. 

00:53:44 

So you’re afraid to try and see if there’s a new devil or an Angel instead. 

00:53:47 

I guess it’s also that element of choice. 

00:53:49 

When you walk away from something, you know you’ve made a choice. 

00:53:52 

Well, I suppose, but was there a choice though? 

00:53:55 

Might sound like there was a choice, but was there a choice as? 

00:53:59 

You turned yourself. 

00:53:59 

Far as they was. 

00:54:00 

He chose himself. 

00:54:01 

I could have stayed, yeah, but I wouldn’t have survived. 

00:54:05 

So I suppose I made a choice to try something new and find a. 

00:54:09 

Way to live. 

00:54:11 

What do you do if you’re not happy? 

00:54:13 

Like what if you leave and you find it as something worse? 

00:54:16 

Not that I’m saying this is worse, but. 

00:54:19 

Thank you. Thank you too. 

00:54:24 

These these are things. 

00:54:26 

I think these are things that make it a hard change, like when I was sitting there going, can I really keep doing this? 

00:54:32 

Am I really prepared to walk away from something I? 

00:54:35 

Invested so much. 

00:54:36 

Time and care and effort into if I stand up for myself in this moment, I know that. 

00:54:41 

The possibility is that this. 

00:54:43 

Will be the end of it, and if that is the end of it. 

00:54:46 

Then what if that’s a mistake? 

00:54:48 

Can I live with that thinking that I have those regrets? 

00:54:53 

I don’t regret it, though, which is probably an interesting statement considering the emotional mess of. 

00:55:02 

Of this episode has been, so far like I I don’t regret taking the chance on standing up for what I believe in and setting essentially a a boundary, a healthy boundary. 

00:55:16 

I think you’re kind of reaching a point there where you’re. 

00:55:20 

Getting a bit of. 

00:55:21 

A meta position or all this? 

00:55:23 

Now what happened when we were recording the break yesterday was you revisited in a very real way those emotions and those raw emotions that you experience. 

00:55:33 

You’re right back there. 

00:55:34 

And yet talking about that just now, you you’re saying, yeah, I don’t regret it, so. 

00:55:42 

Yeah, I. 

00:55:44 

Because the alternative fear was to stay in. 

00:55:46 

That hurt. 

00:55:47 

At least that I got to change into a new kind of hurt changes as good as. 

00:55:52 

A holiday I’ve heard. 

00:55:54 

It’s not. It’s not. 

00:55:54 

Depends on where you go. 

00:56:00 

What’s the destination before I sign up for the? 

00:56:03 

Change or the whole day like is. 

00:56:04 

It is it the money or the car? 

00:56:06 

Like do I get to choose? 

00:56:07 

And how much baggage can I bring? 

00:56:09 

Because I’m bringing all of. 

00:56:10 

It it’s like when I see on those those ******* dating sites, and it’s like drama free, no baggage. 

00:56:17 

And like Bich, everyone got baggage. 

00:56:19 

Just at least admit there’s baggage. 

00:56:22 

I’m worth to admit it, but you know, some years ago that was me writing that kind of stuff and someone said and someone said everyone got baggage and they’re. 

00:56:26 

Oh no, it was me too. 

00:56:30 

Like, oh, and then I thought, Oh yeah. 

00:56:34 

We’re channeling our own inner toxic positivity back then. 

00:56:37 

I know this totally. 

00:56:37 

It’s like drum drama free, and I get that, but like, they’re never going to be drama free. 

00:56:42 

You just going to create more drama like it’s just human where humans there’s gonna be drama that I would. 

00:56:47 

I would rather someone that said plenty of baggage but I’m in therapy. 

00:56:52 

That’s on the side. 

00:56:53 

Who I am, who I? 

00:56:54 

Am if you can’t deal with someone. 

00:56:56 

Being human then. 

00:56:58 

Who’s fault is that? 

00:56:59 

Where does that lie? 

00:57:00 

You know, like I I suppose I’m thinking about that what you said. 

00:57:03 

Like, do I regret it? 

00:57:05 

I really don’t. 

00:57:06 

I don’t. 

00:57:07 

I don’t. 

00:57:08 

I don’t regret leaving. 

00:57:10 

I I miss. 

00:57:12 

Sometimes I miss not having not. 

00:57:14 

Feeling like I have. 

00:57:17 

It’s not even value it some. 

00:57:20 

I miss being validated. 

00:57:23 

That’s probably true. 

00:57:25 

And and there were a lot of things that were very validating. 

00:57:29 

I certainly missed the perks of it or being invited to lots of things for free. 

00:57:32 

’cause I that was fun. 

00:57:35 

The Old John concert was a lot of fun. 

00:57:37 

Oh, you know what I miss? 

00:57:40 

I miss being able to. 

00:57:43 

Tell people. 

00:57:45 

That I was someone like wear it as a badge or worst. 

00:57:54 

Because yeah, I don’t. 

00:57:55 

Really feel like I have anything to wear. 

00:57:57 

As a badge at the moment and. 

00:58:00 

In our in our Happy story arc, a member that will you remember, but our listeners won’t know because it never made the podcast. 

00:58:04 

Well, we’re or. 

00:58:08 

’cause we’re going to get to the end and then Louise is decided to study again for the first time in ages because she was saying for years how she wanted to study science and be a scientist and and now she’s taken on study. 

00:58:22 

And you know, she’s moved on to these things, but you know what happened. 

00:58:25 

Well, you know what happens. 

00:58:26 

But what what happened is I did. 

00:58:26 

I’m not happy. 

00:58:29 

I enrolled in a Masters in astrophysics at the start of the year. 

00:58:35 

And I enjoyed the content and I could not keep up with life in running a business and going through personal stuff like a break up and getting extra work on top of running a business so that I could continue to pay my mortgage while we wait for clients. 

00:58:54 

To be consistent. 

00:58:56 

And also teaching myself complicated maths that I had signed up for. 

00:59:00 

And I haven’t done complicated maths if ever. 

00:59:03 

Can I just say, though, you ******* blitz that first? 

00:59:07 

I did blips that first assessment, but also can I just say two glitch that I had to spend a weekend on YouTube based doing doing high school tutorials on algebra and calculus and things that I never even did in high school and I was so anxiety filled that I just. 

00:59:13 

Oh, I know it. 

00:59:26 

I was. 

00:59:27 

Formatting from it and. 

00:59:29 

And my. 

00:59:30 

I really wanted to keep going with this masters of astrophysics, and then I I dropped one submission, pulled it back down to just one if I could just focus on one. 

00:59:38 

And then it still was too hard and it wasn’t feeling like fun and I wanted to study for. 

00:59:43 

I said I wanted to study for joy and then my psychologist said to me, she said, why are you doing this? 

00:59:48 

You want to be an astrophysicist, I said. 

00:59:51 

I just wanted to study for fun. 

00:59:52 

I wanted the knowledge, he said. 

00:59:54 

You can get knowledge without a degree, so why do you want a degree? 

00:59:59 

Why this degree? 

01:00:00 

You could have got a degree of something else. 

01:00:01 

You would have made a great psychologist. 

01:00:04 

You could have done something that was easier than trying to relearn math that you didn’t know. 

01:00:09 

You could have done something that was aligned with what you were doing. 

01:00:12 

There’s other things. 

01:00:12 

You like like, you know, graphic design you could have. 

01:00:15 

Done something in that. 

01:00:19 

And then ***** recycling. 

01:00:23 

Because I. 

01:00:23 

You know she listens. 

01:00:28 

Unpack this one then. 

01:00:32 

Uhm because it sounds cool? 

01:00:34 

Because I was interested in science. 

01:00:37 

Yeah, and I am really, really interested in things like astronomy and in physics. 

01:00:42 

But why did I want to get a masters in astrophysics? 

01:00:47 

Because it’s a badge that I could wear? 

01:00:49 

Because I don’t have a badge anymore? 

01:00:49 

Sounds probably impressive. 

01:00:51 

Because I can’t say I’m. 

01:00:53 

Lawyers poo Lima. 

01:00:55 

Radio announcer and. 

01:00:58 

That’s something to be proud of. 

01:01:00 

I could be unloading fool I have an astrophysicist. 

01:01:04 

Because I need the badge and so I regret not having something to pin my identity on. 

01:01:13 

It’s not. 

01:01:14 

It’s not, it’s not the job. 

01:01:16 

I don’t regret leaving. 

01:01:18 

I don’t regret leaving that career. 

01:01:21 

What I miss is having something to hinge myself worth on. 

01:01:25 

This book. 

01:01:28 

Because when it’s. 

01:01:29 

You and me in my pajamas in a room. 

01:01:32 

I’m holding your pajamas by the value in your pajamas. 

01:01:34 

I am in my pajamas. 

01:01:37 

So my pajamas. 

01:01:37 

And it gets dressed like a real human I. 

01:01:39 

Sit here with my pajamas. 

01:01:43 

What a sad ******* episode this is turned into. 

01:01:49 

So when I had to give up study ’cause I couldn’t keep up with. 

01:01:51 

It yeah, it really. 

01:01:52 

Bothered me because I. 

01:01:53 

Thought I was. 

01:01:54 

Failing, but I I think I could have done it as a person. 

01:01:57 

I think I could still go back. 

01:01:58 

To it I. 

01:01:59 

Only deferred it, yeah. 

01:02:00 

I also think that I don’t need it because what I really need is to stop doing something else to validate me. 

01:02:09 

Yeah, yes. 

01:02:12 

I think, you know, when we kind of stopped walking outside for a sense of self in our sense of identity, and we start to realize that we are who we are and we’re valid and we’re valuable regardless of what we do, we are intrinsically valuable as people. 

01:02:30 

I’m person, you know, like, hi, I’m Andy Lerma person. 

01:02:34 

That sounds trite, doesn’t it? 

01:02:36 

Try it as FCK. 

01:02:37 

But here I’m saying, though, like I yeah. 

01:02:39 

That I know, I know. 

01:02:41 

Oh, I know what you’re saying because I would say this to someone else. 

01:02:44 

I would say this. 

01:02:45 

That there is immense value in you just because you’re you. 

01:02:48 

Also, you spent a long time in that career and that can’t not become a big part of your identity. 

01:02:58 

I’ve never spent that long year job. 

01:03:01 

I’ve never even kind of worked in the same industry for, I don’t know, more than maybe seven years. 

01:03:07 

And that was really ’cause. 

01:03:08 

I was just too lazy to look for something else. 

01:03:11 

But also within that job I moved between different types of role within that job. 

01:03:16 

So that’s kind of where I kept my my interest piqued because I get bored. 

01:03:20 

You know, if I had to think about spending 20 or 30 years doing something. 

01:03:29 

No thanks. 

01:03:30 

And and I’m at the stage of my life now, but I’ve done all these things and now I’m actually just starting to kind of pull all of those different skills. 

01:03:37 

Into in together. 

01:03:39 

You know, I’m starting to integrate all that, so thankfully I’m still alive to be able to do it. 

01:03:43 

But even if I died 10 years ago, you know, like I would have lived my life. 

01:03:49 

I don’t know. 

01:03:49 

I can’t regret that. 

01:03:51 

I can’t regret the choices I’ve made because their choices that I made that were right for me at the time and they’ve looked at some pretty interesting. 

01:03:59 

So at the point where we spoke to doctor happy, Tim Sharp from the Happiness Institute. 

01:04:05 

In this interview, I think this was at a time where we were, we were shaking up a lot of these things, these these changes. 

01:04:12 

For ourselves, for better or worse. 

01:04:15 

Because we wanted things to be different, which lead to us having a conversation about what it’s like. 

01:04:20 

To reinvent ourselves. 

01:04:22 

So how do we move through that process? 

01:04:24 

’cause I’ve kind of done. 

01:04:25 

That myself, where you go. 

01:04:26 

This is this thing. 

01:04:27 

And then when I have this thing, this is this is all I ever want. 

01:04:31 

And then once you’re in it, you’re like. 

01:04:33 

What next? 

01:04:33 

Yeah, well I think that goes towards another important part of goal setting innocence, which a lot of people overlook, which is the almost post goal setting bit which is constantly reviewing. 

01:04:43 

It sounds pretty. 

01:04:44 

Obvious it, well, hopefully the sound obvious. 

01:04:45 

When I say this, but you know, we’re. 

01:04:47 

Constantly changing, we we get older and we mature in our circumstances change and we, you know, we finish school. 

01:04:53 

We finished university. 

01:04:54 

And we get a job, we get established, then we get a house. 

01:04:58 

Or you get a mortgage over have children, whatever. 

01:05:00 

Might be and, and so if we’re constantly changing, but if we don’t change our goals, then that’s when people will get stale as words. 

01:05:08 

And that can actually be when people, you know, get in a rush and you get miserable. 

01:05:12 

So I think one thing I’ve done reasonably well is constantly review, constantly ask myself, yeah, is is I’m happy with this is it’s what I want it to be. 

01:05:21 

If it is great, let’s do more of it, but certainly at certain stages in my life. 

01:05:26 

But my answer to those questions have. 

01:05:27 

Been well, hold on hold. 

01:05:28 

No, this isn’t necessarily meeting my needs anymore or irony change. 

01:05:34 

So so for example, when I made that big shift from being a well established clinical academic with a good reputation and a very successful practice, when I establish the happiness shoot, there was quite a risk. 

01:05:46 

Because again, at that stage, positive psychology was very. 

01:05:49 

New no one? Really. 

01:05:49 

Knew what it. 

01:05:50 

Was and people actually thought I was. 

01:05:52 

Well, I was taking a risk there, but I I just knew I needed a change and it wasn’t necessarily that I was unhappy with what I was doing. 

01:06:00 

I again, I was very satisfied and I was very successful and not so wet. 

01:06:03 

But I just. 

01:06:04 

Knew that if I kept doing that forever, I wouldn’t necessarily be happy in the future. 

01:06:08 

So again, I think it comes back to a really, really important principle that it gets setting and working towards meaningful goals is really important. 

01:06:16 

But we shouldn’t stop when we achieve those goals. 

01:06:19 

We can’t stop us. 

01:06:20 

We do get stolen. 

01:06:21 

Most of us need, you know, we need change. 

01:06:23 

We need variety. 

01:06:24 

Change is often seen as a negative stressful thing, but it can be very positive thing, and I suppose that’s what I’ve tried to do, is try to harness the positivity within change too. 

01:06:34 

Create new MIS at different stages of my life. 

01:06:37 

Where does that feeling of feeling like you want to help people, you want to contribute, you want to connect? 

01:06:44 

Where does that fit on that emotional scale? 

01:06:46 

Like, how important is that? 

01:06:47 

Well, for me. 

01:06:48 

Personally, that’s pretty much been the most important aspect. 

01:06:51 

Of my life. 

01:06:52 

I I think, you know, I I didn’t know it at the time, but when I look back, I probably had that somewhere within me as a teenager, if not younger. 

01:07:01 

I’m probably not younger, but certainly as a as a teenage. 

01:07:04 

Yeah, I didn’t know it at the time. 

01:07:07 

And you? 

01:07:07 

Know being a. 

01:07:08 

Young boy, I was pretty stupid, so he didn’t really have the very carefully, certainly didn’t have the emotional vocabulary to really understand it. 

01:07:14 

But when I look back, certainly from teenage years and definitely in my early adult hood, that was very much a part of who I was or wanted to be. 

01:07:23 

It’s just that I didn’t. 

01:07:24 

It took me awhile to workout. 

01:07:25 

How to do it? 

01:07:26 

I suppose not really, yeah. 

01:07:28 

I had a lot of stumbles along the way and I was quite directionless early on. 

01:07:31 

But this that’s why when I discovered clinical psychology. 

01:07:34 

Which is really so. 

01:07:35 

That was even after I did my undergrad. 

01:07:37 

I I did my whole undergrad and honours in psychology. 

01:07:39 

Without having a clue and I want. 

01:07:40 

To do. 

01:07:41 

But I was lucky enough to stumble into the Clinical Masters program, and that’s when I got my first big light bulb moment. 

01:07:47 

That’s when I thought, wow, I can. 

01:07:48 

I can help people and I can be good at this. 

01:07:51 

It’s the first time in my life. 

01:07:52 

I thought it. 

01:07:52 

Could be really good at something. 

01:07:54 

So that’s very. 

01:07:55 

And since then that’s been my number one primary motivator, I suppose. 

01:07:58 

I I don’t know where it came from before that, but. 

01:08:01 

But definitely for me, and you know, we’re all different. 

01:08:03 

So I’m I’m not suggesting that everyone should or would want to have the same motivated motivation. 

01:08:08 

But but wanting to help others has been for several decades and continues to be even to this day, my my #1 driving force. 

01:08:15 

Do we? 

01:08:16 

Tend to place too much emphasis on an economic outcome in what we do, Louise. 

01:08:20 

Now we’re having a conversation earlier about the value of hobbies and how we very commonly hear people say they have a hobby, but it’s something that. 

01:08:29 

They aim to monetize. 

01:08:31 

Whereas, you know, I’ve taken a couple of hobbies in the last couple of years where my only goal is to be good at it and to enjoy it. 

01:08:38 

And I actually get better satisfaction out of that thinking that I’m gonna get. 

01:08:41 

That rather than trying. 

01:08:42 

To push myself. 

01:08:43 

To get so good that I can actually turn a profit from it like are we putting? 

01:08:46 

Too much pressure. 

01:08:47 

On ourselves from an economic point of view. 

01:08:49 

Oh, very much so. 

01:08:51 

And again, you know, that’s it’s one of the that that can detract a lot from our happiness. 

01:08:55 

Now I want to be careful how. 

01:08:57 

I answer this because. 

01:08:59 

Because I don’t want to downplay the importance of money. 

01:09:02 

I mean, it is important that we can’t deny that we live in a capitalist society. 

01:09:06 

And that’s, again, that’s neither good or bad. 

01:09:08 

It is what it is, or like anything. 

01:09:11 

There’s good and bad. 

01:09:11 

There’s pros and cons to it, but there’s definitely you know. 

01:09:14 

It’s definitely a lot. 

01:09:15 

Of pros to living in a capitalist society and so. 

01:09:17 

But but what that means is. 

01:09:18 

We do need a certain that. 

01:09:19 

We we have to have money to pay. 

01:09:20 

Rent to, buy food to. 

01:09:22 

To do thing, I mean even to do hobbies. 

01:09:24 

I suppose in some of the cases. 

01:09:25 

You know you need to. 

01:09:26 

Buy materials or resources or so. 

01:09:28 

So money again, money is. 

01:09:30 

Not inherently good or bad. 

01:09:32 

It’s what we do. 

01:09:32 

With it or how we? 

01:09:33 

Think about it. 

01:09:34 

That can make it could have. 

01:09:35 

That and the the idea about whether. 

01:09:37 

Money buys happiness or not. 

01:09:38 

Is far more complicated than. 

01:09:39 

A lot of people think. 

01:09:40 

You know, the simple answer is no, you can’t buy happiness. 

01:09:43 

But it’s actually much more complex than that because you can if you’re, especially if you’re in the very lower level. 

01:09:48 

So if you’re on the. 

01:09:50 

Below the poverty line or in. 

01:09:51 

The very lower socioeconomic. 

01:09:53 

Levels, which some people are obviously. 

01:09:56 

Then money will buy you more happiness. 

01:09:57 

There’s no doubt about it. 

01:09:58 

If you can, you know, if you can barely put food on the table, you don’t know where your next. 

01:10:02 

Meal is coming from. 

01:10:03 

You don’t have a roof over your. 

01:10:05 

Then giving that person more money will undoubtedly reduce stress, reduce worry, and improve their quality. 

01:10:10 

Of life. We know that. 

01:10:11 

For a fact. 

01:10:12 

But where people get it a bit wrong, I think, is that they then think. 

01:10:14 

Well, OK, more money. 

01:10:16 

Will make me happy so I. 

01:10:17 

Want more, more, more, more, more? 

01:10:18 

Well, this thing will make me happy. 

01:10:20 

I want more and more, more things. 

01:10:21 

And that’s undoubtedly not true. 

01:10:24 

We know it’s. 

01:10:24 

Only true up into a point. 

01:10:26 

So more money, more things will improve. 

01:10:28 

Our quality of life or make us. 

01:10:30 

Happier up to a certain point, but then it. 

01:10:32 

Basically levels off. 

01:10:33 

Now, there’s a lot of debate about where that point is, but so here here in Australia, you know, we most people agree it’s somewhere around the average household income or the average rate, which depending on which economists you talked to will be anywhere from $70,000 to maybe $100,000. And also depends on which city live in because obviously costs of living and more expensive, but. 

01:10:54 

There’s no debate about that now. 

01:10:56 

The the the fact is we we know for a fact that up to that point, more money and more stuff will actually improve. 

01:11:04 

Your life. But once you get to quote UN quote enough, that’s when the question becomes well. 

01:11:09 

More and more. 

01:11:10 

Won’t necessarily add significantly greater to the quality of your life or to your happiness. 

01:11:15 

And so if you spend more and more hours in the office or more hours in your business, that sounds that you’re not spending on other things that we do know will lead to happiness. 

01:11:24 

Things like our physical health and well-being, things particularly like our relationships. You know, again, if you’re in the office till 910, eleven o’clock at night. 

01:11:32 

At that time, you’re not with your husband or wife or boyfriend or girlfriend or children or friends or whoever. 

01:11:38 

So yeah, and that’s saying that’s where also things like hobbies and recreation activities. 

01:11:42 

I I totally agree that significantly underestimated. 

01:11:45 

I I definitely agree with you there that our society doesn’t value recreational pursuits and yet there is a lot of research. 

01:11:52 

That supports their benefits. 

01:11:53 

There really is. 

01:11:54 

And I mean just play play for no reason at all is vitally important. 

01:11:59 

And yet, you know, it’s almost like once we get older than 10, you. 

01:12:03 

Know you’re not. 

01:12:03 

Planning or well, it’s not value their. 

01:12:06 

Kids are allowed to play. 

01:12:07 

Why can’t we play? 

01:12:09 

You have to play with the. 

01:12:10 

Kids, obviously, but not as adults. 

01:12:12 

And not as that. 

01:12:13 

And you’re right, you. 

01:12:13 

Know so that so I’m not sure. 

01:12:15 

What your hobbies are but a lot of hobbies. 

01:12:17 

I mean people will sort of talk about them and they’ll say that’s cool, but but we often really. 

01:12:21 

Don’t appreciate the. 

01:12:21 

Value as much as we should, and and. 

01:12:23 

They do have a lot of value, a lot about you. 

01:12:27 

Man, this is like the razor blade in the shower. 

01:12:29 

Episode magnifiers now. 

01:12:29 

Oh **** me, isn’t it? 

01:12:34 

What is the moral of this story? 

01:12:36 

Stop recording podcasts when the lease has a period? 

01:12:38 

I think so. 

01:12:39 

Is that it? Is that? 

01:12:40 

I think so, Yep, that could be that could be stop recording such heavy themed episode. 

01:12:46 

Totally savvy period. 

01:12:48 

Maybe when Louise is having a period we can record a few of the single guest episodes ’cause they have no emotional attachment. 

01:12:56 

And get those in the can ready to roll. 

01:12:58 

You know, if those people that found out about my secret identity at that place that I’m doing some casual work at hadn’t said to me this week. 

01:13:07 

So I who used to be famous, maybe this these conversations wouldn’t have happened as well ’cause FCK me that was triggering. 

01:13:14 

Yeah, yeah, yeah, that was yeah. 

01:13:18 

It’s really triggering. 

01:13:20 

So yes, hanging onto stuff that doesn’t. 

01:13:23 

Serve us anymore. 

01:13:24 

Basically, yeah, ’cause. 

01:13:26 

I’d like to let go of some things that don’t serve me, that haven’t been serving me throughout this episode. 

01:13:32 

Is it here that says, you know if we’re going to lose something if we move on, if we let go of it, or do we limit ourselves from having something different, better? 

01:13:41 

We don’t know, do we? 

01:13:42 

It’s that kind of shrugging his life choice. 

01:13:44 

Reading his finger. 

01:13:47 

It’s both. It’s both. 

01:13:47 

Trading his life choice. 

01:13:49 

Ship and amazing at the same time. 

01:13:53 

I suppose you know when you create change, you take yourself with you. 

01:13:57 

Well, yeah, I mean, you know, like we can, OK. 

01:13:59 

So if we look at, if we’re particularly unhappy somewhere and we go, OK, look, I’m just going to change everything up, reinvent myself and go and do this instead. 

01:14:07 

Good on you for actually changing your environment, but you’re still taking yourself with you. 

01:14:12 

I’ve done that plenty of times, so. 

01:14:14 

I thought I’ll. 

01:14:14 

Look, the grass is greener at this job. 

01:14:16 

I’ll just go to this job and. 

01:14:17 

I’ll be fine. 

01:14:18 

I won’t have these challenges. 

01:14:20 

At that job, and that was true, but those challenges presented with different people in different ways. 

01:14:25 

So there was still me at the center of that and wherever you go, there you are. 

01:14:30 

I think for a positive re framing of that as well. 

01:14:34 

You always start from where you are, so just ’cause I am no longer a radio announcer anymore doesn’t mean that those skills all evaporated overnight. 

01:14:42 

I don’t have to re learn any of the stuff that I’ve already learned like I I start from where I am. 

01:14:48 

You know, when we started this podcast, we started our business. 

01:14:51 

Welcome Change Media it were at that point of. 

01:14:54 

We’ve got 20 years of media and leadership experience and all the skills we already have we can bring to that so we don’t have to start again from nothing. 

01:15:01 

Also, is it? 

01:15:03 

Also, how exciting was it to learn those new things that we did their own? 

01:15:06 

Well, we’re starting the business. 

01:15:07 

Yeah, I’ve actually really enjoyed a lot of those. 

01:15:09 

Things and I’m a I’m a really good graphic designer now for someone who’s not a graphic designer. 

01:15:10 

Yeah, me too. 

01:15:14 

I know that. 

01:15:15 

A national study that. 

01:15:16 

Maybe you can call this off a. 

01:15:17 

Graphic designer now. 

01:15:20 

I think starting the business actually inevitably brought up a lot of the stuff that drives us. 

01:15:26 

And not just because Andrew Group has told us to look at the stuff that draws us. 

01:15:30 

No, but you know, like that stuff around the house, for example, me selling the house, that all bubbled up because of my own insecurities around. 

01:15:40 

Am I good enough to start a business? 

01:15:42 

And then. 

01:15:43 

Not going to, uh, atypical, full time job every day and whatever officer was working in over however many years like we had a lot of time to actually develop the business. 

01:15:53 

But also we had a lot of time to actually relate to people as or relate to each other as people. 

01:15:58 

You know, we we had a lot of very thorough conversations. 

01:16:01 

We had a lot of very honest. 

01:16:04 

And we got to know each other really well, quite intimately, you know, not in that instance. 

01:16:09 

But quietly listen mentally. 

01:16:09 

But, you know, like. 

01:16:10 

We know each other really well and what we’ve been through and and stuff so. 

01:16:14 

Right. 

01:16:14 

Well enough to know that you shouldn’t approach me for a hug on the street. 

01:16:17 

Yeah, absolutely. 

01:16:20 

Yeah, just just know that too. 

01:16:23 

It all kind of came to a head around that side of the house for me, because selling that house meant that I could then let go of the memories attached to the House that weren’t serving me anymore. 

01:16:35 

The sadness that I was carrying around, not living there anymore or what have you. 

01:16:40 

You know, like all. 

01:16:40 

Of those things that I had. 

01:16:41 

Put into this box called House in the Blue Mountains a solder and none of that’s there anymore. 

01:16:48 

Houllier that’s coming from a very different place of. 

01:16:52 

Walking away from your career in 25 years as well. But having said that, neither of us in each of our contexts started from nothing. 

01:17:00 

No, I was just thinking about something that you said in there about, you know, getting. 

01:17:05 

Getting to know ourselves intimately, just. 

01:17:08 

Oxidizing Andy and Louise, but also Louise and Louise or Andy and. 

01:17:14 

And I know that I had us scripted to do our Ted talk and we now awards and, you know, do our public speaking circuit and have the films made about our lives. 

01:17:28 

But it’s not an exaggeration to say that these conversations that we had with all 32 of these guests in the series truly did change our lives because to actually open up and be vulnerable, at least for the first time in my life, genuinely in interviews with some of these people. 

01:17:46 

From a place where it wasn’t always good. 

01:17:51 

It’s not a show, it’s it’s real. 

01:17:54 

And to actually have real connections and real conversations with people and and truly listen to what other people are saying and in their lived experiences and through their research, I think I have developed so much compassion. 

01:18:11 

Percy and understanding of other humans in these last couple of years that I never would have got sitting in a little padded booth broadcasting to Brisbane and that. 

01:18:21 

Makes me a. 

01:18:23 

I don’t know if that makes me a better person, but it makes me a more fulfilled person to actually be able to sit with someone in the way that we’ve sat with each other. 

01:18:31 

In our discomfort and emotion, I I wouldn’t offer you a bottle of wine now and shirt from a hug on a street. 

01:18:37 

If I saw you now, I would offer you a listening area and. 

01:18:42 

A compassion and maybe a hug if you really needed it. 

01:18:47 

I mean, you can still bring the wine. 

01:18:52 

And I would do. 

01:18:52 

It without feeling like I have to run away from that because that emotion that you were displaying probably made me uncomfortable because I didn’t display emotion. 

01:19:02 

So not only do we not start from nothing, but no. 

01:19:06 

Is it a cliche that we can’t really get it wrong? 

01:19:09 

Because we’re going to gain something any. 

01:19:12 

Yeah, exactly. 

01:19:13 

You know, and we’ll get into our comfort zones and when we spoke to Derek Manis episode in episode episodes ago, he was in the star for standing here in South Australia and got shot forwarding times in under under a minute. 

01:19:25 

And you know we had some really good conversations with him around durability and resilience and. 

01:19:32 

Comfort zones and getting out of your comfort zone and there is real risk that will lose more than we gain. 

01:19:39 

Sometimes we make certain choices, but how comfortable are you in that comfort zone? 

01:19:43 

How long do you want to stay in that? 

01:19:44 

’cause, you can’t stay in it, there’s no doubt. 

01:19:46 

About it, you know, if you were truly comfortable where you were or, you know, any changes that I’ve made in my life is like being truly comfortable. 

01:19:53 

We stay there for as long as we’re comfortable, but that doesn’t last forever. 

01:19:56 

We we do crave change. 

01:19:58 

We do want things to be different. 

01:20:00 

We also spoke to New Zealand Ultramarathon Runner and mindset expert Lisa Tamati along our journey and which. 

01:20:06 

Plenty about what happens when you. 

01:20:08 

Step or are pushed. 

01:20:10 

Rather out of your comfort zone. 

01:20:12 

If I’m talking to a room full of people, and I asked them, you know how, how many of you want to live your full potential and be the best you can be, and you know, everyone puts their hands up. 

01:20:22 

And if I say OK and how many you you want to change in to go through hardship and sacrifice and. 

01:20:30 

Nobody puts their hand up right because they don’t want the result, they don’t want the hard part, but we have to understand. 

01:20:36 

When we when we risk and we push outside that place where we’re comfortable, that’s when we’re going to find out lots and lots of things about ourselves and we’re going to change and we’re going to develop. 

01:20:48 

We might fall on their. 

01:20:49 

That happens as well, and I’ve. 

01:20:50 

Certainly failed on. 

01:20:51 

Many occasion but in. 

01:20:54 

Any case, you’re always gonna be. 

01:20:56 

More you’re going to have more experience, more confidence, more, more things to learn and take away. 

01:21:03 

And even from the failures that I’ve had, those have been well, well, you know, horrible in the moment. 

01:21:09 

In the immediate aftermath, often when you look back over time and you. 

01:21:13 

Have the the. 

01:21:14 

Advantage of perspective, you look back and you go. 

01:21:17 

Wow, that was the biggest learning curve in my life, you know, or that was just incredible what I actually developed from that. 

01:21:26 

So I think it’s very important that. 

01:21:27 

We no matter. 

01:21:28 

No matter what our age. 

01:21:29 

Is and this is very important I think, for older people. 

01:21:33 

That they never stop. 

01:21:35 

Pushing the boundaries that they never they never given to just being comfortable and wanting comfort. 

01:21:41 

Because from a biological standpoint, we are wired for comfort because we had very harsh, rough lives back in the caveman days if you like. 

01:21:51 

And so of course we were going to search out comfort. 

01:21:55 

And food and easy time. 

01:21:57 

But we would never actually like in in in our modern world. 

01:22:02 

Now we have comfort all around us, you know, we have, you know, comfortable houses and comfortable. 

01:22:07 

We have food on every street corner. 

01:22:08 

We’re not starving, we have clothes and we have all these things and if we don’t push outside then we’re just going to shrink, really. 

01:22:16 

We know we’re going to. 

01:22:17 

You know, not developers. 

01:22:18 

Our full potential. 

01:22:19 

That’s that’s my opinion to it anyway. 

01:22:22 

Look, this is going to be a. 

01:22:23 

Long and laborious episode. 

01:22:27 

If you’ve stuck with this this far. 

01:22:29 

I apologize. 

01:22:32 

Hello, we’re now entering our eight. 

01:22:36 

Of the podcast. 

01:22:39 

In this hour we will be discussing all of our childhood traumas. 

01:22:45 

Clearly when we story boarded this we thought, yeah, yeah, we can just do a quick recap on these things ’cause we’ve dealt with this really fun haven’t? 

01:22:50 

Just re cracked that tool. 

01:22:51 

Or traumas? 

01:22:53 

Break up. 

01:22:53 

Last time in trauma to stage. 

01:22:57 

Doesn’t quite happen that way, yeah, but anyway. 

01:23:01 

Like, you know, we’ve kind of gone the whole gamut. 

01:23:03 

Heaven, we’ve gone to death, we’ve gone to career last, we’ve gone through. 

01:23:04 

If we move. 

01:23:07 

This was an episode about adapting to change. 

01:23:10 

It doesn’t sound like we’ve adapted. 

01:23:11 

At all, it sounds like. 

01:23:13 

Well, I think we had. 

01:23:14 

Some you know, like. 

01:23:15 

We’ve we’ve unadapted. 

01:23:16 

You coming out and saying that you don’t regret leaving that job is a massive change and that is like a massive turn around compared to when you actually take yourself back into those traumatic. 

01:23:30 

Events and those feeling. 

01:23:31 

And those judgments on yourself about what that meant or means or, you know, however you want to kind of frame that up, but to actually sit here and say, I don’t regret it. 

01:23:42 

’cause I could look at a path where, you know, I could look at a fantasy path, couldn’t I? 

01:23:46 

So let’s say I stayed in media doing what I was doing, and suddenly everything changed. 

01:23:52 

And all the all the stars aligned and I got the opportunities and I got the Billboard and I was able to feel like I could live freely and express myself and everything all worked out. 

01:24:03 

And that was that’s the reality of something that I regret that that I missed down on that, but it was never going to change. 

01:24:11 

And if it did change, it changed because I changed because. 

01:24:15 

I made a change that forced to change. 

01:24:19 

I don’t know. 

01:24:19 

It was like a huge packet Domino’s, really. 

01:24:22 

Yeah, maybe that did cause positive change for somebody else in the future, but it’s not me that benefited from that specific instance of it. 

01:24:29 

But to to think that I suppose that regret that I do regret. 

01:24:33 

From if I stayed doing that thing that I was doing, what if it’s finally turned around and it finally went the way that I wanted it, and I could finally take it off the shelf of broken dreams and. 

01:24:47 

It’s it’s the it’s going to be the macabre death conversation here again because it’s it’s a similar thing that happened when my dad died, right? 

01:24:55 

So, you know, he’s 65. He’s had 65 years to be the person that I could have a better relationship with. He’s had 65 years to tell me that he loves me. 

01:25:06 

Had 65 years to find another way to break any old habits, generational traumas that he might have had. 

01:25:14 

So when it gets to the end and and nothing has changed, even when he knew he had cancer for a number of years, it didn’t change his personality. 

01:25:24 

He didn’t suddenly go I’m, I’m gonna. 

01:25:27 

It’s not, it’s not the movie. 

01:25:28 

You know, the the Hollywood movie once again lies to us because they’re on their deathbed. 

01:25:34 

And then they’re like, oh, come here I want. 

01:25:35 

To tell you I was probably the. 

01:25:36 

Whole time and I’ve. 

01:25:38 

Always loved you. 

01:25:38 

And I’ve always been proud of you and blah, blah, blah, blah, you know, didn’t happen. 

01:25:42 

It didn’t happen. 

01:25:43 

He died as he lived. 

01:25:45 

And the worst of the grief for me after he died wasn’t that he died. 

01:25:50 

It was grieving that the relationship would. 

01:25:54 

Could never change. 

01:25:55 

Because it had been cut off, that was it. 

01:25:58 

That was the end there. 

01:25:59 

Was no more potential for change it. 

01:26:01 

It couldn’t get to a point where maybe I’d finally feel comfortable in expressing myself after years of learning not to express myself. 

01:26:10 

Maybe I’d I’d finally be able to say the thing that would turn him around. 

01:26:14 

And we’d have that relationship that I always wanted and I’d find he was supportive and. 

01:26:21 

It’s the regret that because the time ended that could not change, but the reality is it never would have changed. 

01:26:28 

Because if he could go through cancer for a number of years and that still wasn’t enough to facilitate a change, where you could tell your daughter that you loved her even though you knew it was going to be your last week alive, but wouldn’t it mattered? 30 more years, 10 more years, 100 more years wouldn’t have mattered. 

01:26:45 

So I can’t regret a reality that never would have been. 

01:26:49 

And that’s the same as leaving a career and identity, because. 

01:26:54 

The reality that would have, I would have lived, the real reality would have been. 

01:26:59 

The same thing that I was living day after day after day after day after day that was sending me further and further down the dark hole that was repressing me further and further it would it changed. 

01:27:13 

Or got worse because the the fantasy where? 

01:27:18 

Suddenly things start to work out. 

01:27:20 

Doesn’t exist. 

01:27:21 

So how can you regret that? 

01:27:22 

Because you’re regretting a fantasy that was never going to happen. 

01:27:26 

But by making actual change as. 

01:27:30 

Terrifying and. 

01:27:33 

Uncertain as it is. 

01:27:36 

At least things can be different. 

01:27:39 

So one thing that I suppose we can say is a common thread through change, whatever the changes, whether it’s joyful or whether it’s harrowing, is that there are big emotions, you know? 

01:27:52 

All big emotions being emotions and. 

01:27:57 

And someone that we spoke to, who knows? 

01:27:58 

Last episode probably ever said before. 

01:28:00 

It was said before his. 

01:28:01 

When we had big emotion, you thought those motions were. 

01:28:04 

Big then madhavi? 

01:28:06 

Listen to us today. 

01:28:07 

I know Martin female runner Parker. 

01:28:10 

Knows a lot about big. 

01:28:11 

She’s the director of Positive Minds Australia and the conversation we were talking to. 

01:28:16 

It turned towards being able to access com states. 

01:28:21 

So you know, it kind of makes sense to practice being calm. 

01:28:25 

When we come so we can access that state more quickly, when we feel things are starting to kind of head in the other direction. 

01:28:32 

And we also talked about how as learners we can actually give ourselves the best chance of success. 

01:28:38 

In order to really teach this well and for the learners to be able to take it on quicker is practicing it every day. 

01:28:46 

So engaging in palm states every day, throughout the day, whenever you remember, whenever someone reminds you and and and it’s those micro moments that we really start to change. 

01:28:59 

Our brains and exercise that part of the brain and why that part of the brain to be comma. 

01:29:06 

So yes it’s hard to teach Andy and it takes, I think. 

01:29:11 

A real, genuine interest and care in peoples emotional well-being to stick with it because you don’t see change in some children and some adults who happily difficult lives or for many of the young people with whom I work, you know, then you’re a diversity. 

01:29:31 

The learning differences mean that that part of the brain needs a lot more exercise in order for it to really start to see some change. 

01:29:41 

I feel like. 

01:29:42 

Had I done the homework that Martavius signed us, maybe this episode wouldn’t happen. 

01:29:48 

And maybe in another universe it didn’t spot. 

01:29:50 

I can’t regret the reality of that. 

01:29:52 

Now it’s too late. 

01:29:53 

Model view, it’s too late. 

01:29:53 

Nearly off. 

01:29:54 

I was not comma. 

01:29:57 

But, you know, someone else can learn from my mistake. 

01:29:59 

I suppose that’s the benefit of podcasts. 

01:30:02 

That’s right, Evergreen content. 

01:30:06 

By the. 

01:30:06 

Yeah, listen to this. 

01:30:07 

My trauma might not even be drama anymore. 

01:30:09 

No deadlines. 

01:30:10 

No deadlines. 

01:30:11 

There’s one thing we’ve learned. 

01:30:12 

You can’t put a deadline on trauma. 

01:30:14 

I know, look, we’ve been talking about some really big changes, but it doesn’t have to apply to big change. 

01:30:19 

We just, we just. 

01:30:20 

Extremists that like to we just drama Queens and the the Oscar goes to Louise Bulanan Delevoye today for best drama. 

01:30:22 

We just drama Queens. 

01:30:30 

Thank you very much. 

01:30:31 

I just like to dedicate this award to my teammates and my relatives, past and present. 

01:30:31 

This performance? 

01:30:38 

You know who you are. 

01:30:39 

You know what you do. 

01:30:40 

Thank you very much. 

01:30:44 

So we don’t have to always talk about big changes. 

01:30:46 

It doesn’t. 

01:30:47 

That much like I say, trauma is trauma if. 

01:30:47 

Thing is. 

01:30:50 

It feels bad. 

01:30:51 

It feels bad. 

01:30:52 

It doesn’t matter. 

01:30:52 

What it is? 

01:30:53 

It’s personally you and if it feels like the ******* worst trauma that you’ve experienced, and it’s probably the ******* worst trauma of experience, regardless of what it is in comparison to somebody else. 

01:31:02 

Yeah, absolutely. 

01:31:03 

Change is kind of like that. 

01:31:04 

To change doesn’t have. 

01:31:06 

To be major. 

01:31:07 

For it to be disruptive, it doesn’t. 

01:31:09 

Have to be death for it to feel like death. 

01:31:12 

What matters is how we work through it and how we think about it. 

01:31:17 

I suppose I don’t. 

01:31:18 

I don’t know if all change can be reframed, even though that’s the name of the show. 

01:31:23 

Well, let’s say, you know, like I I mentioned earlier and you know, I don’t want to kind of downplay anything that I’ve felt or said or anything. 

01:31:30 

But, you know, I was saying that I don’t feel like that I got the support I needed from my family around the time of my parents death, but sometimes we can’t be available and that applies just as much to them as it does to me. 

01:31:43 

We lost a parent, all three of us. 

01:31:45 

Boys, we lost. 

01:31:46 

We lost our father that day and we each. 

01:31:49 

Went through our own grief process in our own way and for me, having people around me that were able to be with me and support me and allow me to actually work through some very fruity language. 

01:32:04 

And some very difficult emotions that made all the difference to me and in the end. 

01:32:11 

It doesn’t matter. 

01:32:12 

I thought you were going to quote Lincoln Park there, but I wasn’t. 

01:32:15 

Sure, if that’s where it was going. 

01:32:17 

What did Lincoln? 

01:32:18 

Parks in the. 

01:32:21 

Yeah, right. 

01:32:22 

Maybe intuitively I did, because I wouldn’t have. 

01:32:24 

Known that lyrics. 

01:32:26 

You know, like. 

01:32:29 

It doesn’t. 

01:32:30 

Matter like they it. 

01:32:31 

Does at the time. 

01:32:32 

It absolutely did at the time. 

01:32:33 

But now sitting. 

01:32:34 

Here today talking on this podcast with you. 

01:32:37 

It doesn’t matter. 

01:32:38 

I love them just the same. 

01:32:40 

I I wish our relationship could be different. 

01:32:43 

I feel like I’m in a different place. 

01:32:45 

To them in a lot of ways, and that’s just how it is. 

01:32:49 

I can’t change then I can’t change the situation. 

01:32:54 

Can only be myself and. 

01:32:58 

Surround myself with the people who know and love me, and sometimes even that’s hard. 

01:33:03 

You know, like. 

01:33:04 

I know that I’m not always the easiest person to be around or two. 

01:33:09 

To get along without. 

01:33:10 

You you may be surprised if that’s. 

01:33:11 

Yeah, but I still love you, even if you do roll. 

01:33:13 

You know, shut up. 

01:33:15 

Your eyes at me. 

01:33:18 

Yeah, right. 

01:33:22 

Invokana sheet with or without sheet. 

01:33:26 

I think particularly stuff that’s come out in the in the conversation that we’ve had here is that you’re right, we have become more. 

01:33:36 

You know, in, in. 

01:33:37 

Well, I get to see you in your pajamas everyday. 

01:33:40 

In even in less in my pajamas, if I forget that I haven’t got the, haven’t got pants on when the cameras turned on and I stand up to close the window. 

01:33:45 

Oh yes. 

01:33:50 

And that’s what turned him gay. 

01:33:53 

No, but OK. 

01:33:54 

So our relationship in starting this business in, in doing this podcast has strengthened and I would say as well the relationships that I’ve had with people just in general in the last couple of years have strengthened and deepened as I have actively put that effort into it. 

01:34:13 

Because once I took that focus off careers identity and started to go well, who am I? 

01:34:22 

What do I want then? 

01:34:24 

Making those connections with people? 

01:34:26 

That is it. 

01:34:27 

I realized it was really important to my happiness and so I think that building a network and network is such a business way of putting it. 

01:34:38 

But building a team of people, a a group of people around you that can support you when? 

01:34:48 

That you can ask for help from, and that you can help that you can go up to and ask for a hug when they don’t. 

01:34:56 

Throw you a bottle of. 

01:34:59 

That connection with people that can help give you support to be your whole self and live the life that you want, I think that’s really, really, really important. 

01:35:10 

Yeah, and next time I’m re frame of mind. 

01:35:13 

I’m glad you picked that what I was putting down. 

01:35:16 

We chat about the importance of community with your big order now and Jerry Man Keenan Muir and he’s the creator of Indigenous, which is as faces celebrates. 

01:35:24 

It’s very cool, very cool. 

01:35:26 

I know it is so cool. 

01:35:27 

I I’ve been looking forward to. 

01:35:29 

Actually playing this interview for a long time, Keenan is a great guy indigena. 

01:35:33 

It’s actually a space and celebrate indigenous creativity and highlighting the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander narrative and. 

01:35:40 

Ongoing contribution to the world. 

01:35:42 

When you were talking about creating safe spaces, were talking about creating a platform where you don’t have to, even spying yourself. 

01:35:53 

You don’t need to explain your background, because the same people who are in those places. 

01:36:00 

Have gone through similar journeys to here. 

01:36:05 

If you are concerned about yourself or someone you know, please seek professional advice and support. You didn’t contact beyondblue on 1/3 hundred 224636 or at beyondblue.org dot AU. 

01:36:16 

Or you can. 

01:36:16 

Contact Lifeline on 131114 or at lifeline.org dot AU. 

01:36:23 

You’ve been hearing our story and now we really want to. 

01:36:25 

Hear yours? 

01:36:26 

Connect with battery frame of mind on Instagram, Facebook, Tik T.O.K and Twitter. 

01:36:31 

Or connect with at welcome Change Media on LinkedIn. 

01:36:34 

Can also contact us via re frame of mind.com dot AU with your stories or suggestions. 

01:36:39 

For future topics. 

01:36:41 

We’d like to thank today’s guests for sharing their personal stories and insights. For more information on any of the subjects, guests, or references used in this episode, please see our show notes or re frame of mind.com dot AU. 

01:36:52 

Re frame of mind is a welcome change media production. 

01:36:58 

I I thought they made it through this episode. 

01:37:00 

I didn’t think it was. 

01:37:01 

Ever going to end now we’re at our 11. 

01:37:02 

I know. 

01:37:04 

Go on. 

01:37:05 

Should we issue our post credits? 

01:37:07 

Ha ha ha. 

01:37:09 

This is our this is our post credits. 

01:37:13 

We just like to apologize for the episode you just heard. 

01:37:15 

That is, in fact, if he did. 

01:37:16 

Stick with it. 

01:37:18 

He promised not to get so emotionally in future. 

01:37:21 

Also, knowing that it’s not a promise, we can actually. 

01:37:23 

Yeah, we don’t think that we’re. 

01:37:24 

Ever think we can? 

01:37:24 

Not keeping our promises. 

01:37:24 

Keep we can’t. 

01:37:26 

Keep that we can’t. 

01:37:31 

Well here, man. 

01:37:33 

It’s like an election promise. 

01:37:35 

Don’t take it seriously. 

01:37:37 

Exactly terms and conditions apply. 

 

 

Download transcript at this link:

Coming soon

Check out all the guests who appear this season:

Former Australian Diamonds Head Coach, now head of high performance and assistant coach for the London Pulse

Award-winning inspirational speaker, consulting CEO and author.

Board Director, Mentor. Mother, Entrepreneurial thinker and innovative strategist. Empowerer of women.

World-leading Australian neuroscientist in occupational therapy and stroke rehabilitation and recovery research.

Co-founder and Managing Director of Thankyou.

Australian social psychologist, currently Scientia Professor at the University of New South Wales, Sydney.

Diversity trans-relator, educator, life coach, speaker and consultant. 

Best-selling author, entrepreneur and global presenter.

Wellbeing Educator specialising in prevention of burnout and empathy fatigue.

Business expert, best-selling author and international keynote speaker on mastering the power of mindsets.

Highly-awarded cognitive neuropsychologist at the Brain and Mind Centre at the University of Sydney.

Founder and CEO of LAJOIE SKIN, qualified and experienced chemist, marketer with a passion for sustainability and the dance floor.

Internationally recognised public speaker, educator and researcher on high performance.

Experienced senior executive and board director with an international track record of leading teams to address complex challenges.

Professor of Entrepreneurship, La Trobe Business School, La Trobe University.

Inspirational speaker & performance coach turning near death into durability model of strength, self-esteem, overcoming adversity.

Highly experienced strategist, leadership champion and expert in the area of human potential.

Yorta Yorta/Ngarrindjeri man, Australian Indigenous Comic Con Director, Founder of Indiginerd popculture company.

Director of Positive Minds Australia, widely published Author of Resilience, Wellbeing, Confidence & Social Emotional Intelligence.

Associate Head of Learning and Teaching in Psychology, Director of Postgraduate Professional Training Programs in Counselling and Psychology.

Australian doctor, lawyer, scientist and disability advocate.

Pilot, mentor and motivational speaker with an inspiring story and message of resilience.

Author and coach on resilience in the face of stress, anxiety and fear created by a life changing diagnosis.

Senior Lecturer and Deputy Clinical Director with the School of Psychological Science at UWA.

Australia’s very own ‘Dr Happy‘, at the forefront of the positive psychology movement and founder of The Happiness Institute.

Ultramarathon runner, Maori Sportswoman of the Year (2008), 2 x best-selling author. 

Australian expert on mental health, Director of The Matilda Centre for Research in Mental Health and Substance Use, Principal Research Fellow at the University of Sydney.

Award-winning performer, comedian, author, educator and broadcaster.

Professor of the Department of Psychology, Director of the Music, Sound and Performance Lab at Macquarie University.

New Zealnad explorer, public speaker and best-selling author.

Queer, non-binary, Jewish writer, performer, activist and public speaker based in Naarm/ Birraranga / Melbourne.

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