Automatically transcribed, so expect the odd wrong name or word.
this is the good stuff this is the good stuff james welcome to the podcast thank you it's been a while been asking to come on for a long time i know i know and uh just had to had to make you sweat a little bit i did i left i left for six months you fucked off we had to uh yeah we just had to give you a bit of space bit of time to go find yourself and here we are and i still haven't found myself but yeah i don't know if it's that's doable
first question for you before before we do dive into that good stuff what gets you out of bed in the morning oh i can see internally you're smiling because we've spoken about this already and not allowed to say certain things my favorite question you can say whatever the fuck you want look no i can't i can't say coffee and i can't say my alarm that's true so that's true i've thought about it for a while and the beautiful answer would be to be better every day good good what does that look like how do you
how do you manifest goodness into or better into your daily existence that's a great question thanks have you been doing this for a while had some practice yeah um how do i do that i suppose just constantly wanting to learn having that growth mindset um and it's what i'm 26 now and i feel like i'm a 42 year old with the head that i have and the wisdom that i have and you know when i say this it's not not trying to toot my own horn or anything but i feel like there's a lot of
wisdom there and then a bit of self-praise which we love it's good for you as my dad told me self-praise is no recommendation but yeah it is what it is um thanks dad um but yeah just wanting to learn um just wanting to take in whatever you um see and do and who you speak to doesn't mean you have to act on it you can take it in and you can filter it and then spit out what you want out of your mind or however you spit it out um and take the nuggets of gold
that you get from each conversation or experience have you always been like that have you always been growth orientated no no if you hadn't met me when i was or maybe 18 19 um you'd probably laugh at me um wouldn't have laughed no you wouldn't have laughed we're all different um and i think my mindset when i was that age was to be very conservative very um restrictive and just stick to you know saving money um sacrifice let's get a house let's you know i'm not going out this saturday night um even not to spend
the whole night out yeah not even see friends or just let's just save money and let's just get that house yeah where'd that where'd that conservative nature come from come from um yeah probably parents um and that's yeah a lot of them speaking about what they did when they were my age um and then obviously that's all i knew that's what i was growing up and you not wanting to to repeat that or you wanting to follow what they did yeah i suppose you you idolize your parents and what they've done and you see what
they've built together um and everything they have got um and you go oh wow that looks pretty good doesn't it um maybe i want to do that too yeah um but then i think over a few years sort of that 18 through to 23 maybe um i just went in a sort of downward trajectory in my own mental space um to a point where i was like something needs to change yeah talk talk me through that downward trajectory was there self-awareness around it was there understanding around it or was it kind of like you were
spiraling down you didn't really know what or why i couldn't see it at the time i think it was festering it was bubbling away and there'd been a lot of different experiences in my life whether it was bullying in high school um whether it was the feeling of not feeling good enough which is my whole belief now which i'm working through um so everything links back to that which is quite fascinating when my psychologist i'll talk to her and she'll go remember it links back to this and you're like damn it i didn't think it
did but um there's that there was just a whole bunch of things that had happened and i just pushed it down for so long and it was just bubbling and bubbling and pushing and pushing up and to a point where yeah i think the catalyst was when i ended the relationship with my previous partner and then i put myself into a spiral after that um yeah it's just a pretty bad like depressive state um and i'll always thank my parents in that week that it was christmas week actually great time to do what i did
um and uh they knew i was battling and they just said no you come with us and they'll go into new zealand for a week yeah and they said you're coming so they took me with them and i think i'll always thank them for that um i don't i probably should verbally say it more to them but internally i always thank them for doing that we'll send them the link after the podcast airs yeah don't get me wrong dad will watch this i can guarantee that that shout out your old man yeah um but yeah
i'll always thank them for that for taking me because who knows what could have happened in that way i mean share as much as you want but talk through like your headspace and where you're at at the start of that week compared to the end of that week and like what it did for you poor the start of the week it was you're sort of sitting there going do i what am i going to do because mum and dad are away yeah brothers away i have no one here with me it's just me and i'm
gonna have my thoughts so you poor you're thinking all the things that you can do probably to yourself yeah um because yeah there's those all those things that have happened they're not good enough feeling comes back even though any relationship was my choice and then i still felt not good enough so yeah the start of the week it was that after i came back from new zealand it was a bit of a better space because once i got to the airport in melbourne you see all the um bookstores yeah and i walked in and you
know you're just grumpy sad everything and this bright orange book was glaring at me i know the book and hey i'm sure i know the book oh absolutely you do mark manson you're a great man and um big fan his his book the subtle art of not giving a fuck just grabbed me and i read that in a day and just powered through it and as soon as i read that that that's when the start changed yeah and by the end of the week i'd seen family friends and they'd chatted to me and love them
dearly but you know it was a lot of let's fix this instead of let's listen and have that empathy but there were still some nuggets that you could take away and i think that was the start of that little bit of okay i'm starting to feel better because i wasn't eating like i was eating a meal a day um and mum and dad were like stressed as because like you see me so you're saying you ruined their holiday basically yeah i ruined ruined their week that they were saying their friends that i hadn't seen in
about five years so um but i think i don't think it was real and i think they were grateful that i was with them as a new parent okay i've no doubt that they were grateful that they were able to help in some capacity absolutely couldn't imagine if i have a kid and you're away on a trip and they're battling you'll just you probably feel worse off at least if they they're with you yep you know what they're doing and you can see what's happening yeah and they give you the space to you know enjoy
an aspect of travel the perspective shift that it allows and different part of the world different environment you know yep you know as well as any of the importance of environment um how do you how do you look back and obviously we've got a lot more to talk about but how do you like sitting here today reflecting on that period of your life how do you feel about it what are like the main things that come up in terms of like what you've learned and the you know you talked at the start about wanting to
be better how is that manifested to now oh what i've learned i think yeah as easy as it's said and done stress less about things you know i listened to hamish mclaughlin on the imperfects the other day and like what he's been through and he's always had this mindset there's no problem that's too big or small there'll always be a way to solve it whatever you need we'll find a way um and i think early days i would grab a little thing tiny thing and then blow it up massively in my own head yeah and
stew on it and pros cons and like what's the worst thing what's the best thing and just go through a whole mental episode within myself um just for this tiny thing yeah personally it's like yeah we'll solve it yeah carry on i mean it's maybe a little flippant for me to say but we don't really have any we don't have any real problems like it's trends like for the majority of us and you know um you know i'm reading a book about a guy that 47 fanators having oh he's having he had cancer stomach cancer
and you know the book basically chronicles his demise with any you know lives with an author for six months and he basically kind of says this i want this to be my lasting legacy and anyone that's read tuesdays with mori is a very similar book and one of the lines i've literally read it half an hour before before um before you got here and it was just along the lines of like if only i could if i only i knew then what i know now my problems wouldn't have seen seem so so massive and it's
i don't know death's one of those things that we don't talk about or don't don't confront very often and i carry a memento mori coin in my pocket every now and again just as a little reminder but it's just in the scheme of things is this something i'm going to worry about five ten years and if the answer is no then maybe yeah which is a lot easier said than done that's that's probably the other thing when you talk about death you know i hadn't dealt with the trauma of um my nan passing away when
i was that 16 17 years old yeah because i didn't know how to it never happened in my life yeah and that was buried away and then um my granddad then passed away a few years later and then more recently my pa who was i was incredibly close with had passed away too and like that from looking back to how i handled my nan to how i handled my pa i was like you realize that death's a part of life it's it's gonna happen like yeah it's one thing we all have in common you know
we we get on this earth we do what we want to do and then it's all over and then after that who knows from there whatever you believe you go from there yeah yeah so how how have those experiences shaped how you live your life now um it's still a work in progress for sure don't get me wrong it'll always it'll always be i'm not sitting here trying to preach to people that hey i've i've figured out life um well like sorry to interrupt for you but like this is the thing i love about these
conversations because you you have it and like you have these conversations with skin in the game we're not talking from the finish line like you know you talk to people you look up to mark manson except like those kind of people you go oh thought leader figured it all out knows exactly what's up you're like they're in the thick of it just like we are and i think when as an adult and as a maturing adult when you realize that and you realize fuck everyone's just winging it everyone's just doing their best everyone's you know
has everyone's living through the human experience which is good and bad and suffering and pain and you know and and goodness and happiness and joy and all of the the good and bad and frustrating stuff it's just you kind of i think it allows me to kind of be a little easier on myself yeah do you feel the same it's a good way to put it for sure and that's where i'm at now is being okay with you know if i mapped out a day where okay i'm waking up at five i'm walking the dog
going for a dip going to the gym studying getting my lectures done and then at the end of the day if i look back and go oh actually i didn't walk the dog this morning but hey i walked her this afternoon like previous years i would be so like hard on myself and say you didn't do this why didn't you do this but now it's like you did it at a different time who cares it's done and i like i was like that if you wake up feeling 40 and you you know do 40 of
what you need so you've you've had 100 day you've done as much as you could give and it's the we use it in the gym here is just like manage your resources but don't quit like do the best you can with what you've got and you know show up show up again tomorrow and repeating till you eventually cock it and you've lived a good life tell let's let's go back a little bit talk to me what was james like going through school and how to and what did what pathway did you follow to what you're
doing now which we'll obviously talk about yeah i will i think james now loves trying to think about what primary school james was like because you see photos and he's got this cheeky grin on him and he doesn't really care about everything and he's just a little smart ass and has fun and then high school comes and then you know i would say a lot of people would relate to high school being painful and a lot of not everyone but a lot of people would say that you know there's bullying or there's you know events
that happen in high school because of varying factors but for me personally it was yeah the bullying um and the not fitting in with groups you know i was sporty um so i had there was a sporty group but never felt i could fit in so then i was like okay i'll go try hang out with the people who are interested in computer games or it stuff and then you sit there and go i can't talk about this stuff because i don't do it yeah um and then yeah the bullying was there and even though
you know and i've spoken to the guys who were saying the things to me and i've seen them one in particular and like we had a huge chat about it one night and we just like were crying and just hugging it out at the end of it um but we did both the cathartic yeah yeah it was it was good and we both didn't realize because it was coming my way the about being bigger being fat and then he was a redhead so back in high school it was right yeah you're a bloody ranger and
all this stuff and i didn't think it was i was just responding to what i was getting thrown at me yeah and then as he said to me he goes yeah you don't realize what you were saying both just like poking the fire and both poking it and i always felt i was the victim and never thought from his end yeah and then for him to say to me mate you like what you said hurt me i was like oh perspective is a wonderful thing perception's a wonderful thing as well like adolescence is such a
shit show in of itself like because you're trying to figure out how who you are build some awareness understand all this shit that's going on then you're trying to figure out how the world works at the same time and you add other people into that and it's just a it's just a mix it's just like a melting pot of of chaos emotional chaos that's a great way to put it at the end of the day you know you don't know what you don't know like you look back now you go like i look back and
you know i'm not big on regret but i wish i knew this or i wish i was able to do this or i wish i was able to to approach this in a certain way because it would have given me it would have enabled me so much more now but then you look you can also go like like to not being too hard on yourself like i said before you need like you meet life with where you're at so you know you can read you could read saddle art of giving a fuck when you're 18
and you could have been like this book shit or you could read it when you're you know 22 23 and you go all right this is life changing and you know every i like i love rereading books because you're rereading like it's a different book because you're different and you get to experience it a whole another time like this book i'm reading it's a once a year book for me and my relationship with life and death changes as i change yep so how did you like from a like let's go back to that bullying stuff
is like kind of reconciled that with the one of the people what was the what was the immediate feeling maybe not necessarily at the time but kind of in the days and weeks after though that conversation was it a feeling of of kind of peace or was it a feeling of like still still things that were unresolved um i think it was it was nice to speak to me about it and actually iron it out from both ends i suppose there's never a real peace because the only piece you get is having peace within yourself
just because the words were said and you've made peace with the person it doesn't mean that the feelings of oh shit i'm fat or i'm overweight or you know there's still that continually bubbling away and i think now i'm at a point where you know i've just come back and we'll probably get to get to that soon from a six-month hiatus from melbourne great use of hiatus um and you know i've put on six kilos through just all those travels and you know not really committing to exercise but it was a nice break for me
um and i've come back and i'm back here training and i'm like yeah so what like i'm six kilos heavier i don't know i can get back to that it'll take some time but i've i'm a bit more self-compassionate to that stuff i'm a bit more kinder to myself in that regard not saying that it's perfect but oh it's an interesting like i'm gonna use a term balancing act but it's an interesting like um almost like juxtaposition between being kind to yourself and being disciplined it's like they're conflicting thoughts or conflicting ideas and you're like
both are important and and both are necessary to live a fulfilling life i think but you almost kind of need to go all right what do i need right now do i need to cuddle or do i need to kick up the bum and that's something you're getting better you're like you know evidently getting better at that that's built or driven by self-awareness so if you're more aware of what you need you can go you know what i need to cuddle i need to go take six months to um to have a break and chill
out and and it's not escape but remove myself from current environments and you know i'm sure you'll get to a point in next week or a month or two months where you're like all right now i've got to knuckle down and kick up the bum and well the thing that i thought of just then was 2019 i was like 103 kilos biggest i've ever been and i was like i need a kick up the bum and for me it was this program that was happening it was like a six week uh nine kilos in six
week thing and i know health professionals go that is you can't do that that's horrendous but it taught me like all those discipline little bits of discipline that you can do to make a change and that if you really put your mind to it like change can happen pretty quick however in that weight loss sense and sticking to foods and stuff and it's not sustainable what i was doing but there's that point and now and that was very that end goal driven whereas now i'm back and i'm like no this is the journey that i'm
on like yeah there's gonna be a day where you know my oh i don't know what the word is but the the craving that i get is for lollies like a bag of lollies and i'm like there's gonna be days where i just want a big party mix of alan's lollies and just go and get them like and that's okay um yeah as long as i'm not doing that every single day yeah i mean the way i look at health and fitness and well-being is like that um that challenge that you did is an experience
that if properly um if if you allow it to educate and teach you it gives you more tools in your toolbox right so you know if you get back from a six-month trip you know what i need a kick up the bum i need like a short-term um rapid change then you can lean back on that and go i know this isn't a long long-term thing but it almost like kick-starts your engines and it gets it you know i love the idea of like action drives motivation like we're not necessarily motivated inherently motivated like you
have ups and downs you have times where you want to go do the thing but most of the time you need something to kick-start that and if it's a you know a restricted eating plan or a smash yourself in the gym for three weeks and it allows you to get moving and then it's part of that bigger picture brilliant yep it's it's uh yeah it's a it's the tool for the for that particular job at that particular point in time because i think the sustainability side of things is almost almost overrated from a training perspective
is like not overrated i need to be careful how i say this i need to articulate it better but it's it's not overrated but it can be overrated as the only solution yeah um because you have to meet it where you're at give yourself what you need and there sometimes there needs to be times where you just you know balls to the wall and go flat chat at something for a period of time right like you know you're studying masters at the moment and there's going to be a time where you have to go you
know what social life health etc it's going to have to you know be pushed to the side for this week while you get your six assignments done that you're meant to do over the last 12 weeks like this this is how life works we need to swing you know two-way particular thing at times and i think the way i look at the rest of life is about building our capacity to do so do so well and do so in a way that doesn't ruin you that you just fall off the wagon and stop training forever
well that's perfectly how you put it because for me it was okay you had this end goal of nine kilos and then by the end of that six weeks like i lost the nine kilos and you feel great and the next the monday morning you go all right now what do i do now whereas what you've just said is that journey it's like yeah you can have this kick start for three four weeks yeah but then post that let's then continue to like not manipulate or change the eating habits and you know increase your calorie
count slowly or whatever it might be so it's not just a i was eating a thousand calories a day too i'm going back to two and a half thousand yeah it's blowing out of proportion it's let's do the journey side of it not just stop oh what do i do now here's the analogy i've been working on in my head for the last 27 seconds is you play video games before a long time ago right so so you like the video game is a finite game right like it has a clear start clear rules you
know clear parameters clear end life isn't like that life is a is an infinite game so there's no rules outside of societal norms etc there's no clear ending apart from when you die but there's no like place you need to get to um like a video game there's this one big journey right which you know you could chronologically look at anyone's life okay there's a big journey from inception to what's the opposite of inception death outception i just made something up um and whatever happens between point a and point b doesn't you know really matter
but we get to choose which side quests we go on along that journey so if you decide to you know let's go lose ten kilos real quick why the fuck not let's go learn how to play the piano like we get to choose what things we do and ultimately if it you know it might take us a long period of time to get back onto the main path out of that side quest but when we do get back on that path if there's a if there's lessons and clear learning and enjoyment and challenge that come
from it then we're the we're better off for it so now you can look back at those periods of time and go you know maybe it wasn't the best and maybe health professionals will you know kick up stink but at the end of the day it's your side quest it's your life you get to do what you want that's if you want to go fucking eat lollies mate go load up on some allens oh i have don't worry it's happened it's happened but like you said about choice i think i don't know if it was
you prior to me leaving i think we've argued about this the um you know life's about choice you you're the one that's in the power and you have the choices to go and do what you want and now i've said this to numerous people and i love the feedback you get from different people and they're like yeah but what if someone's been born into a a criminal family or they don't have a home their whole life i'm like yeah okay i get that and this could go down a horrendous path for this podcast but and
i i don't know i could be flippant here's a flippant thing great use of flippant could be flippant here it's a good word and if everyone has a choice in life i have a choice i'm a privileged man i'll put my hand up say i've had a privileged life 100 admit that but say if we're using a homeless person on the street do they have the same choice to try and make their life better than i do or is it separate or is it different or are they powerless is that rhetorical you asked me what
i think i'm asking as well so they can they have to meet that choice or i they have to meet the choice with where they're at right so we like i'm very similar very privileged life you know very lucky i'm fucking sitting in a chair talking about shit that doesn't really matter right like like i'm glad that you think i don't matter thanks mate you know what i mean like like we're talking about like the actualization side of life right you know you'd know it you would have studied it but maslow's hierarchy of needs we
have it's actually on the wall over there so i'm gonna shift my gaze so i don't fuck it up but we have our psychological needs you know which is survival right we need to eat we need to sleep we need to hydrate we have our safety needs we need something somewhere to live somewhere to you know to lay ahead at night somewhere to you know keep us dry from the rain and all you know all of nature stuff and then there's the the love and belonging and community and connection side of things and then there's
self-esteem and self-awareness self-compassion you mentioned before and then there's self-actualization which is like all right well i've got everything i need how can i create fulfillment and meaning and and enjoyment and appreciation and challenge and how do i build that into my life and the the homeless guy that is sitting there and going well it's his choice he there's two ways to look at it right you can look at it's not his fault where he is and where he's at 100 believe that but it's his responsibility to do something about it you know like between
stimulus response there's there is a space and in that space is our power to choose our response in our response lies growth and freedom and he and you know this guy as a as a as an example has the opportunity to go all right well do i just go fuck my life this is shit you know i was born into a family that didn't support me whatever or does he go how do i take another take a step forward how do i you know move up the the ladder of maslow's hierarchy of needs how do
i you know and and it's difficult because all these things happen at once but how do i maybe guarantee is a bad word but how do i give myself physiological stability how do i ensure i know where my next meal is coming from how do i do this and and you know a big part of it's asking for help and finding support networks and you know there are lots of people who want to do good i truly believe that and someone in that position there's there's avenues out and i and you know saying this from
a privileged position so i'm not at all trying to understand exactly what it's like i'm trying to understand but i'm not going to know exactly what it's like but you've almost just got to like you know try and connect with other people and try and try and build the physiological needs the safety needs and then you build in the connection needs and then you build in the um the esteem needs and you know obviously we live in a world that it's way harder than it should be for people to get out of those situations um
and we probably don't need to sit here and talk about the downfalls of capitalism etc because we'll be here all day but um i don't know i think that person has a choice like we have a choice like you know you've you have we have choices every day to move ourselves closer to the person we want to be or further away and the it's the culmination of all of those choices that determines who we are the life we live um you know how we spend our time all of that kind of stuff and it doesn't
necessarily make it easy it's not easy but it's a for me that's the pathway out to self-actualization to uh i like using the word like transcend and include like we transcend like i'm watching my girls grow up at the moment and like you know 10 minutes ago it feels like they were little potatoes and they were babies and they did nothing and they just cried and pooed and stuff and now now billy's running around saying dada and stuff and it's like as billy develops from a potato to a baby to a um to a toddler
and as she you know lucy's now three or almost three and she's a little kid she transcends that previous version of herself but includes it like she she still was was a toddler at some point and we're just i'm a 30 year old version of that i've had 30 years of transcending and including and you know all the decisions i make from this point out will determine what i become over the next 20 or 30 years so yeah even though some people aren't as lucky and and luck comes down to it way more than we
would like to admit like you know anyone listening to this podcast is immensely fortunate and more fortunate than you know the majority of of the human existence up until this point um and i think with that with that luck comes a responsibility to make your own world a better place a place where you love to be and then the rest of the world a better place yep discuss it oh there's a lot there i think the first the first person that comes to mind was a guy i worked with at homes glenn and he um
did a lot of that social work and he's seen everything from top to bottom and you know i've said some challenging things to him and he's come back at me and said basically in a sense you you've lived a privileged life and you don't really get all of this yeah oh i don't like you said i don't understand it but i will try my hardest yeah and i don't know if there's a lot of utility in that like obviously there's learning that comes from that response but i don't know if there's a lot of utility
from from the like you haven't lived it so you can't understand it's like this person's trying like you're trying to understand and trying to meet him at a point where you can make a difference and you can have some input and you can contribute in some way um it's like yeah it's like there's not i don't know i the way i look at life and decision making is like all right where's the utility in this how can we do something about it and uh and and you know oh you'll never understand it's just not helpful
it's yeah the other thing that i came back to when you explained it better than how i phrased the question was that homeless person has the choice to change like their future or change you know yes it's not their fault that they're there but okay now they have the choice to go and make various choices to what to benefit their life or better their life however they want i think yeah and and sure that and they don't have the safety nets and they don't have they don't have the the fallbacks that we we would or
that we do um but it almost doesn't matter where from where they're at because there's what's the other choice like there's no utility in going ah fuck it like you know and and you know some people that's the sad reality of some people's existence they decide that life's not worth living or they decide that what's the point in trying and that or do they decide that i like people settle for you know wherever they're at um i'm gonna butcher the quote because i haven't written up on my wall but it's like um one of the
saddest things is that everyone has their reasons everyone has their reasons why they didn't quit their job or why they stayed with a partner they didn't love or with why they um you know didn't go and do the training session or why they didn't start the course or whatever it is and it's like again it's not their fault but it's their responsibility what they do with that choice yep 100 and to extend on that uh one of my first mentors post that week in new zealand who i reached out to you might have actually played
against him brad sikes he shout out yes i'll get him on the podcast you should you oh he's a great man very good man um and helped me in that initial phase post that um post me getting the relationship and got me to this point and he uh spoke to me about this little i don't know what you want to call it this diagram or whatever you want whatever you want to picture it if you can imagine the word choice at the top we've all got the choice and then we make that choice and then
you've got kind of three responses that you can do to it you can either play go down the left hand left hand side and play a poor me card and go oh well why does this keep happening to me like yeah you know i've made this choice and then this has happened why does this happen to me like it's not fair life's not fair um or you can take the right hand avenue and say and blame and go that was your fault loki like you caused me to do this or you caused it to end
badly or whatever it was and you blame people or the third option through the middle is that no matter the outcome of the choice you take responsibility for that choice yeah the initial choice take responsibility for it and go okay that didn't work out what can i do better next time and what he preached to me and now i preach to others like you know jess who's now at the gym that was one of the first things i said to her when i started coaching it and she was like whoa that was big like that's
really hit me and if you take that ownership of that choice 100 okay i want to say 100 99.9 of the time good things happen if you take accountability for it yeah well things happen and like 100 of the time things happen and there's utility in one of those responses right and even if bad things happen like i like love the idea that nothing's good or bad it's just it is as we see it you know something something horrible can happen but we can decide we can choose to to look at it and go all
right how did this make me a better person how did i learn from this you know how is this a good thing and it can be something horrible but we can you can look at it and go how how did it make me better or how will it make me better and automatically you're moving towards a person you want to be like we all i would like to think that we all want to experience life more and we want to connect with people on deeper levels and we want to do better things and we want
to contribute more there's only one of those three options that allows you to do that and i think being aware self-aware enough to be able to know that you're not going to make the right decision every time and you're going to fuck up and you're going to choose to blame or choose to or choose to throw the poor me card out if we understand that which we're all going to we're all going to do it if we understand that you're all going to do it then you can catch yourself when you do and you go
you know like as a really you know as a really front of mind example lucy got bitten by a dog the other day and we can respond and go fuck them it's their fault etc etc but the only real utility is how do we support and help lucy overcome this and to move forward and you know i have no doubt that it'll in the wash up it'll help us be better parents it'll help us you know have a better connection with lucy and it'll help her understand that you know occasionally the world kind of doesn't
work out the way you want it to work and that's okay what the thing that happens isn't the most important thing it's what you do with it and you know again it's the kind of caveat to this is like it's easier to say it from a place of privilege from a place where you can't really fail but this is the only like this lens is the only one in which i can experience the world and you're the same and everyone can only experience the world through their own experience and their own their own lens so
i think it's it almost comes back to the question of like what can i do about it where's what choice do i have and if we understand what's within our control and what's outside of our control then there's one path and you know there's like four or five things that are inside of our control and everything else is outside of it so let's just focus on that don't get me wrong like we all fall into you know the other brackets sometimes we all true i am perfect and fucked up ever that's true um lock is
perfect vertice is the greatest place please come to vertice shout out but you're like we all end up in that those those left and right columns all the time it's just a part of life but the difference is being aware sooner or later hopefully within yeah a short period of time that you reflect and go oh yeah okay maybe i was like blaming um kp for the dog biting lucy's face for example like it's your fault kp but that's just an example but it's um yeah and then we i know it's like again on the
responsibility front our responsibility to build frameworks within our lives whether it be the environments we spend our time in the people the people we spend our time with how we think about things how we reflect on things what our belief systems are what actions we take it's to build those things up so that when you know when we something throws us off kilter we have these frameworks to lean back into to get us back on track um i'm sure you can you can um talk or think about you know the james that went to new
zealand's versus the james now like how much more capable you're now overcoming you know hypothetically if you were to separate from someone the way you did like your coping mechanisms are significantly more improved now right well yeah i'd hope so i hope it doesn't get to that point since i am now in a relationship i hope it doesn't get to that point yeah but the thing if it does and it might then you do the best you can yeah and i think that's ultimately what what life's all about is to know that you're gonna fuck
up and know that things aren't gonna work but all you can do is what you can do in that that moment yeah 100 talk me through your education you've uh you've done some things oh yeah i've done a few things i've started some things and not finished them too um nothing wrong with that but yeah i think post high school i i left year end of year 11 and went to cedar um and did the sport program there um and then finished that and then had no idea what i'd want to do um so i
just jumped into a sport management degree like every uh person that loves sport that's my off-the-cuff remark for xi science it's like everyone likes sport just does xi science pretty much and i was like well dad worked in business whole life i love sport maybe i could do both yeah i got a semester in really didn't like it um i think failed my accounting unit and i think that was like the catalyst to go yeah you got to get out of this so i got out then tried to do a teaching degree um and i
got a couple of semesters in and i just wasn't enjoying it so i jumped out of that tried to work full-time internal sales that was horrendous um post that degree yeah um at a timber yard so i had no idea about any of the products got out of that and then what my heart had always wanted to do for a long time was to do the sports media course degree and i'd seen it you know i probably post my sport management degree i saw it pop up and i made the choice to go teaching yeah
and i just sort of said no i just want to do this like i really want to and i inquired off my own bat and yeah they were taking students so i went to mum and dad and i was like hey guys um i think i want to try my third course third degree and they sort of sat me down at the table and eyeballed me and said this is your last not your last chance but you need to finish this how's that hextet going oh don't get me started um don't get me started um
i'm glad that i don't see it yeah for now um but yeah they just said you need to finish this so i did a sports major degree for three years um and i had so much fun so much fun doing that met some wonderful people had incredible support from the uh the course manager um the lecturers um it was great you'd rock up tuesday morning for a lecture and shout out to sammy duncan who does a lot of um sports stuff we'd just talk footy for the first 45 minutes about the s and then losing
on the weekend and how calling would have great and yes it was so much fun but i learned so much met heaps of people did some really good assignments um and it just gave me a grounding that i knew i could apply myself to do a degree yeah but um yeah finished that 2018 and then had a choice to either um work for table tennis victoria which was they were fantastic i did my internship there um and for a state body if you compare afl victoria to table tennis victoria afl vic's got who knows hundreds
of employees thousand yeah table tennis victoria a state body had three yeah wow ceo the like just a general intern internal manager and like a participation officer that was it that's fascinating for a state body the largest you know largest sport going around no but for a state body and that if you see if you look at all the competitions and all the places around victoria that have um clubs it's actually really big but for a state body to have three it was small so i had a great time i just did what it not
whatever i wanted like i was free to express various marketing abilities basically yeah um and then they offered me a part-time job but also homes glen tafe offered me a full-time job so i had a choice again do i take the full-time job which probably wasn't what i wanted to do or loved or go part-time and then try and find a couple of days work somewhere else now this james wasn't aware yet who's self and he's talking about yourself in third person we got to that part we got to happens later than 45 minutes in
he took the the full-time job path and after two years of working there i had another basically a mental breakdown um because i'd clashed with my manager and she basically got i and i'm playing the blame game but i was treated in a way that i just felt horrendous about working there and just said dad sat with him and he's like mate just resign like we're here to support you and yeah it was that little tick of i'm here i love you i support you just gave you the permission to do what you wanted to
do anyway basically yeah um so i quit that and then i initially i took like another six months off just this is covered had just about hit um so we're locked down so it's not like we were doing a heat anyway and by this point psyche had handled me off to a beautiful man called james harding um at hard cuddles and um he introduced me doing morning swims um and just essentially we became mates like he could have easily said all this time we're spending together like i could charge you yeah 200 bucks for a
session but i think he put that aside and you know we did so much in that covid period where we enjoyed our time we would go for rides we would swim um spend time with his family and look at his life and how he um teaches his kids and loves his children and um that took me on that next progression so psyche took me from here to here yeah psyche was so aware that he said no time to handball to james james took me from here to here if you want to put it like that
yeah um and then yeah i was away basically of that so what was the what were the main shifts in terms of like how you were thinking or what you were doing that you feel as i allowed that growth to to happen oh i think i was for me it felt like i was at that rock bottom in that post that breakup um and that's very easy to say because i probably had another rock bottom when i was away recently um so it's interesting when people say i hit rock bottom it's like i've had a
few rock bottoms like in my own head yeah um well and then like that that's an important important part of it is like that's an it's a perception it's like yeah i mean maybe not qualified to ask you these questions but maybe there's like maybe you can change that language of the rock bottom it's like you know i went through i went through a tough time or i you know i had to i got to the bottom of the valley and i had to figure myself out before i started climbing the next mountain i don't
know whatever it is yeah but it's almost like each and i guess what's the i love my life is you know is um bookmarked by quotes but it's like um upon reflection the times of struggle are often seen as the most beautiful like do you look back on those rock bottom times now as pivotal important wonderful you know even though they were difficult yeah 100 um yeah without them i wouldn't have flicked the switch to to change whatever i was doing or change my mindset so 100 probably sounds bad but those rock bottoms like were
needed or those struggles were needed um yeah suffering is part of the human human experience and if we don't suffer we don't we don't get to enjoy the flip side because we you don't you don't feel the the yin and yang or the good and bad of it all so i think i think pretty much and this is probably goes this is like a nice little little uh um visual cuddle for everyone watching and audio cuddle for everyone listening is like know that the time you're if you're struggling at the moment or you're in a
tough space know that it gets better and know that when it does get better you'll look back on now and almost look back fondly because of what it taught you and because of what it enabled you to do yeah 100 and it's you see so many videos or the cliche term of just reach out just reach out and it's easier said than done because you know i've been in the space where you just don't want to reach out to people you don't want to ask people with help um yeah and i suppose the word is
yet you don't ask yet yep and for me it took yeah a little bit of time to ask or to say it but you know the second um bottom of the valley hit that i had if you want to call it that um we'll work on it was more workshop later was more recently and like i was and this is when i was on a kentiki so you're constantly with 50 people so i was kind of forced to reach out very quickly um and that was a good thing you know because they're all asking me
what's wrong why'd you why'd you leave like what's going on and you know i think that was a good thing straight away that i had those those people there even though i was only going to know them for a month and then now we just become instagram friends that like each other's stories for the next 15 20 years but it's fascinating um you know they were there in that moment and like i was grateful for that and um yeah you need that struggle yeah talk me talk me through the the last the six last six
months um what you did why you did it what was the um my brain's not thinking it was today what was the reason why you you made the took the leap to get out of melbourne six months i think yeah so that covered two years i had got into the habit of swimming every morning um i bought a dog um my beautiful labrador dearly um shout out every if you're gonna watch this later um i'll show it to you later that got me um yeah like i got into this routine and then i kept getting
older and i was like i really wanted to move out but then wasn't earning enough money to rent on my own try to do a um sharehouse with a couple of girls that i'd never met and that failed um and then after my pa passed i lived alone for six months and his house loved it greatest experience in my life but obviously because it was mum's house now i wasn't paying anything it was just i was sitting in it yeah and then she sold it so i had to move back home and when you're 25
at the time and living with mum and dad yeah things especially when you've experienced the other side of it you start to clash a bit and you want those freedoms and i wasn't great at communicating what i wanted to them um so it was just a bit of a butting of heads and i'd felt trapped basically it was how i was feeling yeah so my ingenious idea was i can get out by driving all the way across the country to perth and let's start a life in perth as you do um that was my greatest
idea adult version of running away yeah basically um so i'd was and i stood on it for a long time and then um i finally uh finished up in my job and then got my car built up in the period before it got the rooftop tent got the awning got all the cars set yeah um and june 1st this year i'd uh drove off and planned the whole trip 15 days drive across across to perth see some sites um by myself which was great because you a lot of thinking time a lot of self-reflection a
lot of um you know thinking about the wires and what's going on in my life what do i want um so it was that was a good part of it for sure and then yeah got to perth had about a month before um i was flying to the uk for originally i just needed to go for a wedding so it was it turned from a week or two trip to you know what let's just make this a big huge trip um what's the point just flying 24 hours and not seeing some stuff so booked the
contiki um saw family as well in the uk and then yeah by i went went on the contiki tour um and that was just go go go and um i think the age gap was a bit of an issue in my own head um you know you there's a lot of there was what 52 people 43 were girls nine were guys so um i was trying to deal with that and then the age gap and the go go go nature and a lot of alcohol was involved in contiki and emotions fly and then a lot
of i think high school behavior came out and i didn't like that and then yeah i just got to a point during the trip probably towards the back end and i made a pretty poor choice on the trip um and then after that choice i just went into uh this a spiral essentially and hating myself what i'd done because it just wasn't me didn't reflect my values or what i believed in and what i'd worked so hard in the two years prior to become and i'd gone back in my head and yeah it was real
tough time because it didn't affect me like it was my now partner actually that i'd um it's funny how that works but the choice that i made affected her but you know we're now in a in a great relationship and love her dearly so yeah and then got back to Perth and just felt an ick um post trip and an ick that just wouldn't go away that this didn't feel right um so i just thought about it for a while and like spoke to my brother um about it and he just said mate you're not
a failure if you come back yeah i'm saying you tried so what come back we love you so made the call and yeah it was great advice made the call and drove back in five days and got back melbourne cup a day and surprised mom and dad um and dad pulled his eyes out and love that now i'm here that's brilliant it's and it's it's the six month like you you know that initial like this is a failure but it's a six month adventure or six month experience that you know potentially the lessons that it's
going to teach you are lessons that you might not have learned or might not have learned for years so yeah um like looking like obviously you've only been back a couple of weeks but looking back now do you like what do you feel about that period of your life um don't get me wrong loved the whole six months overall loved it um but yeah those those peaks and those troughs teach you so much stuff as we've spoken about those struggles learned i learned so much that hey you know the things you took for granted like
your morning dips and um the gym that you were coming to regularly and the dog the walks with your dog um or just getting a cuddle from your dog and you had didn't have all those things you kind of took those for granted and you thought that you could go um when you really need those things to help your own well-being in every single day of your life and you know since i've come back it's been all right let's let's start to build those habits back up again that you were doing like waking up at
five and walking the dog and then go for a dip at quarter past six and then from there i'm still learning what i need you know i'm literally was sitting in my lecture before and going i think i need to go to gym at three o'clock in the arvo because that's when i'm starting to really dip in terms of my focus with study whereas my morning is when i'm most productive so maybe instead of using all your physical energy in the morning let's go in the afternoon yeah so i'm still learning that and that self-awareness
is something you need to continually build because your wants and needs and priorities and things shift right like like like we mentioned before you're doing a master's now so it's going to take some take some um resources over the next few years um and you've just got to be able to just and i think this is a skill within itself as a you know functioning human you've got to be able to redistribute your resources to whatever is needed because you know you can decide to distribute into something that's not going to help and you end
up not having them when you need them yep 100 and the reason you know we all do those things talking about you know filling your cup up that old analogy that you know i wasn't feeling my cup up yeah um and i knew coming back here i'd be able to fill my cup up properly to be able to focus on the study and doing my masters of counseling and putting the effort into that and being fully invested in that to be able to give myself to that also invested in my partner which that's a whole
nother kettle of fish the fact that she lives in brisbane so we're going through that stuff at the moment too trying to work out soccer for punishment how the hell do we do this um so that's exciting that's another adventure that you get to go on oh huge adventure don't we've you know we've got the next four months booked of flights to see each other so that's all sorted for sure but we're sitting here going it's gonna cost a lot of money to do this um all good things do absolutely but i wouldn't change it
i wouldn't change it all right what is the what does the future looks like look like for you or um are we talking in this next intentionally ambiguous question who knows who knows what the future holds because i could wake up tomorrow and just want to do something totally different um but i will say for my partner's sake i'm not going to wake up tomorrow and leave you don't worry um that's you know nothing to do with my future um but i don't know oh what are you what are you most excited for um for
the sun to shine in melbourne for once because i've just heard that it's been horrendous it's been good last couple days um i don't know i'm excited that i'm seeing a psychologist and she's helping me understand my shit um and helping me bring that inner child back out i'm excited to see that child again that primary school james that is has been pushed away for so long i'm excited to build my dream essentially to have my own business counseling business to be in the same place as my partner where wherever that's going to be i
don't know i'm just excited for for all those things good from you any more to add any more for any more oh man i can sit here for ages i just love talking about myself today um i'm sure we'll do another episode at some point um my story's just so great no kidding it's not i love your work mate keep doing good things you too man thanks for having me
