Automatically transcribed, so expect the odd wrong name or word.
Hey legends, welcome to another week of the Virtus Performance Podcast. First of all I want to thank you all for being beautiful people and spending a little bit of time of your day at this busy time of year listening to me talk rubbish. Fortunately I'm only going to be talking rubbish for the next 90 seconds or so and then we'll get the wonderful guest for today introduced and into your ears so you don't have to listen to me which is a big win. Before we get stuck in though I'd like to thank all of you guys for listening.
If you've been enjoying the podcast please, please, please write a review, take a few minutes out of your day, I really want to spend the next kind of 6-12 months growing this thing and growing the amount of people listening. It's been pretty hectic to see how many people have listened over the last year and a half but I think the conversations we're having and the way we're bringing a lot of these topics into the front of our vision is truly going to help us make the world a better place which is kind of the whole idea of this thing, it's a chance to have a conversation and to connect with each other in a slightly different way.
Today's episode is very much about that, it's about connecting, it's about having a conversation, it's about learning a little bit about yourself, learning a lot about yourself actually. Today's guest is Franks Martin, now I don't want to ruin the surprise, she definitely articulates her why and her hopes and dreams and desires much better than I ever could so rather than me talk about her before we dive into the podcast, I'm going to read one of my favourite poems from her book Anatomy which is available to purchase on her website, you should get around that, I bought two.
Here it goes. "Permission to be who I am is the greatest gift I ever gave myself, it is endless." Now time for Franks. My personal and business goal is to be just a little bit better every day, I believe everyone especially normal people have a story to tell, the Virtus podcast exists to help us all find small ways of consistent improvement by discussing the journey and experiences of each of our guests. Franks. Hello. Welcome to the podcast. Thank you for having me. You're having me I think. I know, thank you for coming to Elwood. Thanks for hosting.
First question for you, what gets you out of bed in the morning? I genuinely love my life and that sounds really cheesy and that is not discounting that the fact that sometimes life is a bit mundane, shitty, this is life, can I swear? Oh you can swear, by all means swear as much as you like. Alright I've got the green light. I genuinely love my life and by that I mean I don't mean to sugarcoat it, I mean there's been good times, there's been bad times, but the people around me, in my community, the people
I have in my daily life, the things that I do, just really fill me up and I get really tired sometimes and I always joke with people that when they say how are you, I'm always, I'm good but I'm tired, you know, and I just think that that is a sign of a good life, it's you know. Because when you're always tired you're always like pushing for that next thing and looking for the next thing and finding that next experience. And I do think there is balance and I am a bugger for burning out but
I burn out doing the things that I love and when I'm tired and my head hits the pillow at the end of the day it's with a smile on my face often and there has been times when it hasn't been this light and I haven't felt as grateful and things haven't been as good and I think that I would like to acknowledge that and honor that and appreciate that because it does mean when you've been through those times that the times when you just wake up in a good mood you are so appreciative of that and I really do try to honor that in my everyday life.
And I'm only human so sometimes I wake up and the honest truth is that it is my alarm that gets me out of bed in the morning and the snooze button but most of the time it's because I genuinely love my life and even the things that I do that aren't quite as exciting as writing and yoga and I do love the people in my life and I think I've worked hard to create a life that I love. I think that's an important way to look at it, you've worked hard to create that life of gratitude.
Has that gratitude always come easily? Absolutely not, no. I think I spent a lot of time growing up that life is happening to me and not for me and you know I'm human so that does happen occasionally too, you know when you get two or three bad things happening one day and you're like oh god what is happening but it's not always come that easy but I believe like with most things it is a practice and it is mindset and we all have a choice and I think I write about that quite a lot and
that's empowerment to me is like we all have a choice to think well not necessarily good and positive but think well and kind of monitor the health of our thoughts and realize is this a situation that I'm honestly grateful for or is this a situation that I need to say oh I'm really pissed off with this right now I don't know what it's teaching me but eventually I will be grateful for it so and those lessons that come from like the pain and suffering and the hard times like they're the ones that when we look
back we can kind of appreciate them for what they are but when we're living them it's so hard to actually out of our bubble yeah I think that's a good word for a bubble I think sometimes you think that you're the only person in the world that these things are happening to and I think that is what I am most passionate about with my writing I really want people to feel less alone I have struggled with mental health issues in my past anxiety depression and I think the key factor of my healing of that not
that not to say that it can be healed fully but I think that knowing that I wasn't alone and just knowing that other people were going through the same things and I think even if people read my words and think oh me too I think that that is such a powerful thing that community and that connection when you are going through when you do go through those times do you have I guess go to in terms of the words that you want to read obviously your expression of your writings a big part of your own
healing but is there other people's writings or other people's words that you write to you absolutely Brené Brown I think everyone knows and loves Brené Brown at the minute but she truly has the most charismatic and honest and authentic way of portraying that giving her knowledge but not saying I'm up here and you're down here she's like we're all in this together and I think that that's all that anyone needs to hear is that you know no one's better than anyone that we're all actually in it together and no one gets out alive yeah I
mean you could look at that as a good or as bad it just means make the most of the time that you've got and in terms of poetry there's so many poets that inspire me Rupi Kaur obviously she's incredible there's a poet called Nikita Gill she is absolutely incredible she writes with fire another poet called Yana Robinson who's based in California they're amazing and they are they just pop up with the words that I need to read and they spark a fire yeah and I am like I hear you girls I hear you strong women
have you always been a writer I always have it's funny somebody asked me about the other day and if you'd have asked me for years ago I would have said no but the truth is I started to write poetry when I was six yeah maybe even earlier I was such a bookworm I would always write poetry but I was a bit of a nerd at school which now I'm proud of but at the time I was very awkward very shy always had my head in a book was always writing something and I think although I
haven't had the title of a job that says writer I've always written whether that's for creativity or to process my thoughts and I think the things that we do when we're a kid are a really really big clue of what we could be doing yeah I was having this conversation with a friend the other day about how much we underestimate what we do and experience as children how much it affects us now and how much it molds and creates who we are and I think what we have to do is look back to what we
did for fun when we were little and that's kind of like our truest expression of who we are absolutely I 100% agree with that and I think we forget I think it's not a case of discovering I think it's more rediscovering because I think that that was probably the question that sparked me into writing poems like in my adult life it was you know what did you do as a kid that you enjoyed and I remember I pulled like a tarot card or something and it had like a pen and a paper on it and
I was like oh I'll draw and then I would draw but then I would get caught in this all of these words would come and then I would end up writing and then I realized oh okay well maybe if it's not drawing it's writing and it's just sometimes that one creative thing can lead to another and you just have to remember or rediscover yeah and just start filling in the string yeah I think creativity is it's not lots of different things I think we are creative by default as humans we create and they speak a
lot about that in my classes that I teach I think you know whether it's creative choices that lead us to writing which is a more traditional form of creativity that we've kind of labeled as traditional creativity or whether it's painting or whether it's just a creative way that you approach your life it could just be a creative way that you get from A to B a creative way that you heal it's not just writing and drawing and dancing it's you know we are all art I really do believe that otherwise we'd be completely symmetrical we'd
be robots you know we're all expressions of that I get a go to when we're thinking about creative is writing uh you know entertainment but creativity really is just how we interact with the world around us and with ourselves as well yeah 100% and I think you know we all have problems in our life because we're human beings and it's it's you can look at that with a creative mindset or you can look at it with a negative mindset or all of these different mindsets and I think creativity is not just an act it's a
mindset but that the mindset really comes from consistently like loading up on that action that what you said before about you used to kind of feel as though the world was happening to you instead of for you what were the things was it that creative expression that kind of helped you shift that yeah I think I read um I read a book Rebecca Campbell Rise Sister Rise and she speaks about transmuting what we label as negative emotion or anger or anything like that transmuting it using because it's all just energy right that's what I believe
everyone's got their own beliefs it's all just energy and if you use that and you transmute it into something that can serve you or you know as a way of healing a way of releasing I think that that is such a powerful thing and I think that you can tell when you see a work of art that is like a true transmutation of pain or grief or even joy um not just the negative ones I think yeah I think that was a strong catalyst I would definitely say I think um you know being quite honest
and open I had a string of absolutely car crash relationships one after the other the same pattern I couldn't tell what reason I mean yeah if you read that it's pretty obvious um and I just kept thinking why is this happening to me why am I getting the same pattern again and again you know instead of blaming these men or these people yeah you know that's such a waste of time blaming you've got to honor the emotion I believe but I would be like how can I reframe this like this is happening for me for
a reason and how can I reframe it and here I am years later were you able to I guess take the responsibility for kind of your part yes absolutely this book I speak about it really often actually um it absolutely holds me accountable it takes me fully out of my victim um it allowed me to reflect as I was writing um you know nothing happens in isolation um a good friend told me that nothing happens in isolation and no it's true it's all alchemy and we're all responsible for our own actions and usually I believe
if it feels like something's happening to you it's a lack of boundary or a boundary that hasn't been spoken so that encouraged me to use my voice more and it's just all of these things that I learnt through writing and processing and every situation is completely different so I can't speak for everything but I think that is a really powerful way to live if you acknowledge that we all have a choice and it means it's on you it means it it's not up to us yeah and it's so powerful that's yeah it can be confronting
very confronting because you've got to take responsibility for your own shit and your own triggers and your own patterns but um yeah we all have a choice and it's very powerful it's so powerful because you get to choose whether you're in a situation or not and you know sometimes you're like oh I'm in this situation I'll get like maybe I'll get another book out of it but more often than not it's not worth the pain so and that's an interesting one I was thinking about the question on the way out I was like so I
figured you would have always been a writer but were you always going to write a book I always wanted to it was top of my bucket list um I think everyone's got a book in them I really do believe that um so it's not that I didn't doubt that I had a book in me but I just wondered what it was yeah um and I know when I write poetry I never I never began writing poetry with a book as an end game yeah um it was just it actually it sounds crazy and I say
this because it's true a lot of my book just came to me in meditation like the name the concept everything and I just think that however you believe about meditation or whatever you think I think it's just being still and accessing your own intuition um you can frame it any way you want but maybe meditation just allowed me to be still and access access that if someone came to you um maybe one of your classes first time yogi and you they asked what's the go with meditation how would you not sell it to them but
how would you kind of talk them through and articulate it I think it's just becoming still it's just getting still and still not necessarily physically because I believe that meditation can come in many different um anything but it's something that brings you back to yourself brings you back to your intuition brings you back to your body that's a big one for me yeah um and there's no right or wrong way to do it I think and that's where a lot of people maybe go wrong is that expectation I should be still or I should and
that's such an interesting word I should be able to sit still I should be able to do that and it places a lot of anxiety and I think especially with yoga and meditation it's just like yes you know there's right alignment and there's keeping your body safe I'm sure you'll identify with that but it's there is no right or wrong way because again yoga and meditation they're just expressions of self and how can somebody tell you that's right or that's wrong yeah that's cool I like that it feels like in the yoga world there's that
superiority complex for certain areas of it in terms of being able to allow anyone to to come into it because I think it's something that from someone's come from a complete non-yogi background and have loved lots of different areas of it there's definitely that feeling of I don't know what I'm looking for it's inability to kind of be vulnerable and dive into it without feeling being judged by people that have been doing it for long periods of time yeah they do it really well I guess I guess but then I to be quite honest which
I'll always be there was a period of my life that I did think that it was very confronting coming from England where the you see it's okay to Melbourne where it's everywhere and it's wow it's incredible it's like you know kid in a candy shop kind of thing but I think that there is definitely an element of that but I guess it's all the way that you look at it and I think it definitely things like that definitely brings anytime you put yourself in a large community large circles of people it brings up your triggers
and brings out your inner-striver like am I doing it this right and you know we all have projections on each other I do believe that but I think I think maybe there could be that but I think I'm just very passionate about bringing or letting the ogre and meditation just become so accessible because I think it's becoming more I feel I feel as though it's becoming more accessible it completely is Melbourne is so incredible and there's so many amazing teachers and amazing trainings and yeah I'm definitely learning that is the way that you look at
things you think you can either see it is that and be like oh my god I'm not very good at this and I'm really intimidated by all these in crazy crazy incredible people or you can just kind of be like do you know what really vulnerable my practice might feel a bit shit to me but that's my level and I love the anisys all the time I love talking about being in the four corners of your mat and it doesn't really matter what's happening outside of it if you if you get a glimpse of someone
else doing something awesome like you look at it appreciate it process it and then just back to the football because that's a practice right you could be triggered to hell with everyone in every situation but that is the yoga isn't it it's not about you know that you can kind of stand on one hand or your head or whatever that's awesome that's incredible but the practice is responding not reacting and that's something that I I'm still learning so yeah no I would definitely say um I'm very passionate about making yoga accessible and and just comforting
and and yeah just making it lovely and a pleasant experience because at the end of the day it's bringing your home to yourself like that's what it is yeah it's a practice what makes a good yoga teacher oh that's a question I somebody who is just able to hold space and I know that that's a bit of a buzz phrase at the minute but just allow me to be who I am in that moment and I'm gonna name drop unashamedly Amelia who runs axis is one of the most amazing people and just allowing people to
be exactly who they are and I think that's incredible and I also really appreciate a teacher who is just consistently learning and just acknowledges that like yoga is a practice and we're all not going to know everything and not only that but life is a practice as well and I think it's just I almost can't put words to what a good teacher is it's just a feeling and it's also very personal I think everyone's that I don't think there are any bad teachers I think everyone just connects with everyone differently I like that I think
we could take the word yoga out of that question yeah exactly the same answer exactly yeah someone who has a feeling in the whole space oh my god it's it's you can't put words to it I think it's it's amazing and just that feeling of just being like I'm having the worst day everything's gone wrong but right now in this practice I'm accepting me and I feel safe to accept me as well I think that is probably the closest thing I can or the closest experience I can explain to what a good teacher is how
did you come to be one of the old space how is that oh that's a story so primarily I guess I pied a lot when I was in England if you've ever been to England particularly the north of England we know how to pie or I did don't party anymore and through that I realized I was kind of numbing myself and I was going through intense periods of depression and anxiety and yeah a really low point to my life and the more I would go out and the more I would party it would kind of
numb it for the night or the weekend and then these periods of anxiety and depression would get closer and closer together and then all of a sudden I was just looking under this black cloud and I was just like something's got to give and I think a lot of people kind of come to yoga through this as well so that's a kind of why it's got a special place in my heart the community and it was just like something's got to give and I just googled yoga and I was terrified it took me about six
months to work my way up to get into a studio because I never had the strongest body I'm pretty petite I was in hospital with operations on my feet for a lot when I was you know when I was a lot younger and that kind of affects you know your feet are you grounding your legs and your hips you know you know they're your stability so I always felt a little unsteady and you know I still do now sometimes but I was so intimidated so I kind of set about doing home practice for about six
months and then finally I picked up the courage to go to the local yoga studio and I'm so glad I did because I got addicted fully addicted I did it every day for a few months I started it off once or twice a week and then every day. What were you afraid of between going from the home practice to the studio practice? What will they think about me I can't hold a tree pose I'm going to be the wobbliest person in the room I'm going to fall over I'm going to make an idiot out of
myself I'm not flexible I'm not strong all of the self-sabotaging thoughts that anyone who's ever decided to try yoga is definitely hard I can't do these I'm too weak everything. What would your advice be to someone that feels that way right now? Just do it get out of your head get out of your head just do it because there's always going to be someone else that is feeling like that you might connect with them or you know it's the four corners of the mat thing when you first start you don't really know that but most
of the people in yoga classroom they're so consumed in their stuff their body their breathing but we go through that in the gym a lot people are so like people worry about whatever everyone else is thinking like everyone is so worried about what's going on in like their own space and their own body too like they don't give a fuck about you as a person but in terms of like the way you look or the way you act like the way you're doing something it doesn't matter each to their own completely and I think that's
a really good way of looking at if you are self-conscious in life it's like everybody's so bothered about themselves that they're not you know bothered about you and yeah yeah it's it's definitely get out of your head and just do it I yeah that was a very intimidating experience for me but now I'm here and same as starting to teach in this lovely city where it's incredible a very supportive community but it's big and it's scary sometimes so yeah just do it why did you move over or how did that like I know there's a
big question big question how did that all come about I very just intuitively had done yoga for about six months so I think it was probably about a year actually maybe longer and I was just like I think I want to be a yoga teacher and I had a lot of people in my life saying be a yoga teacher and I was like you're crazy at this point I think I'd done it for a year and a half maybe two years and I was like I can't even I still can't do tree paws like I
don't know why I'm so hung up on that pause I still struggle now but I was like I can't do tree paws why wouldn't anybody want to be a yoga teacher my balance is terrible and people were just saying do it do it and I felt it and I was like you know what why not and I don't like running from things that I'm scared of I don't like to be scared of things I like to just do them like evenly enough feel the fear and do it anyway it was that so I thought all
right where next and so I felt intuitively drawn to Bali so I did my teacher training in Bali I lived there for a few months that was what an experience from the north of England Leeds to Bali yeah that was interesting experience it was amazing got my heart broken there that's when the string started that's where the book started and yeah but I really enjoyed my teacher training I loved it and then I came to Melbourne and I was like I'm gonna teach yoga got to Melbourne and oh my god I've never lived anywhere like
this it's crazy it is amazing incredible magical everyone does yoga it's not really like that in the north of England it's awesome to hear someone saying that but for everyone from Melbourne why is it so magical it's just you can just talk about how you feel quite openly within the yoga community specifically and fitness is just such a normal thing people it's okay to say I don't drink and I want a green smoothie and actually please can I have that dairy free without judgment people are just like yeah cool and when I left it wasn't
really like that in the UK and I think it was more like I say we all have choices and it was more to do with the situation I put myself in with the partying and I just needed a break from that and so I just felt intuitively drawn to come over to the side of the world and it all kind of panned out as it did so I'm very grateful for that what is it like living your life in the other side on the other side of the world that is a good question because I
think my friends back home like oh my god she's living the dream and I am yeah most of the time I'm very very very grateful for my life here but oh my goodness it is I wasn't emotionally prepared for living life away from my family away from my friends away from my community on a visa which I still am on it takes your grounding away so if you're the kind of person that doesn't really need grounding or is quite grounded by nature I think that's very exciting but I need grounding and I need my center
and my home comforts and I do have an adventurous streak absolutely otherwise I wouldn't be here but it is a little scary you feel very vulnerable it's things like you can't just go home to your mum and dad at the weekend you've got to create your own family but it's kind of cool because you get to choose the people that you want in your life and you get to explore different personalities and figure out what works for you and you build your own community and I think that's been really lovely and really comforting but it
is you know it's not as easy as it looks as just flying across the world saying all her life and I thought it was going to take me six weeks to settle in but it took me probably six months to a year now two and a half years yeah that's incredible yeah has it flown by it hasn't it hasn't I feel like this is my home it's interesting this is probably the first place that I've lived that feels like home yeah which is pretty powerful it is it is it does it's particularly Elwood it's um
I feel very held by Melbourne and Elwood um I do need to be near the sea though near the ocean well we can see the ocean yeah yes possibly here yeah I'm very very lucky yeah it does that's what I like I like the smell of the sea um I'm usually always got at least my feet in the sea every day even through winter the storms everything it just really grounds me I think some people like the jungle or they like grass and trees I'm just like give me the sun to between my toes yeah
there's most of that book was kind of written between floating around in Elwood yeah like you mentioned community a lot and I love that I think creating your own community kind of come with two two sides of the coin one you get to choose who you want to hang out with and who you want to be like who you want to be around and I think that's the most amazing part about coming to a new city is you can kind of go well okay I just need to dive into it the other side of the
coin is you have to be so vulnerable to actually let people in oh my god yes talk me through that like what was that experience like to be at because you don't just walk into a community and go hey guys I'm your friend now like yeah love me um honestly um I was in a very bad place when I first got to Melbourne for that reason I felt very isolated I think I'd been floating around on Bali for a few months um which is amazing and magical but it's kind of a bubble too so I
landed with both of my feet on the ground in the middle of a Melbourne winter in Fitzroy and I just didn't know what to do I was like where do I start but I'm a very big believer in synchronicity and on the second day that I was in Melbourne I took myself a coffee took myself a brunch and I met someone and she was like I'm a yoga teacher too do you want to come and do yoga at my house and I met all of my friends there some of which I'm still very good friends
with some of which we've kind of floated away from each other which is lovely the cycles reason a season or a lifetime and through that I've just met these people incredible people some new people come into my life some have kind of floated away but it's all quite organic and natural and but you're right I have to you have to be very very vulnerable and just be like actually like do you want to go and get coffee it's so daunting asking people on friend dates can I can I tell you that like nobody nobody talks
about like everyone's so um aware of like romantic dates like oh I'm gonna ask this person to go for a drink but if you've ever been in a situation where you want like I really like you please be my friend and then you're like do you want to get a coffee because I also don't drink so that coming to a city yeah so coming to a city and moving I moved to a hostel first and they were all just like let's go out and get pissed and old me like would be like yes let's go
I'll drink you under the table but I was trying to kind of foster the things that were good for me and so that was challenging but it means that now if I go to bed at 9 30 my friends are like yeah see you in the morning for brunch yeah and that's it and I think making or having those friendship dates as coffee dates yes means that like you can't be free drinks either and and and need that for your inhibitions to be low and to be vulnerable right exactly you have to just please out
that this is me what's and all this is me yeah and sometimes this is me before coffee like we've all been there exactly plus you've come to the best place to live coffee well that is true I have um yes I never really drank coffee before I came to Melbourne so I wouldn't say addiction but I think actually yeah let's just be real real brutal about that yeah I'm addicted so coffee doesn't count as an addiction I know it's a way of life it's part of my blood now I need to drink water I need
to drink coffee yeah that's it nothing else yeah I love that what's I want to talk about your book yes where did the name come from to start with because it's obviously the first thing anyone sees your book will see yes so I guess I've always been really passionate about feeling into my body because I haven't always felt connected to my body I've always been I found it very easy to meditate or you know access the kind of you know I could meditate for an hour or whatever but in terms of feeling into my body
and being fully present in the moment and grounded both feet on the floor I am here I am safe that has been a challenge and when I feel things I feel quite deeply I'm very passionate human and it's taken me a long time to honor that in myself to acknowledge it and to be proud of it as well and I think when we feel we feel in our body and so the reason there's a few reasons to be honest but the main reason that the book is called anatomy is because cycles that we go through
in our life when I wrote the book I wrote it about the cycle of relationships but when I thought about it more deeply is that whatever we do in our life anything whether it is a job a project a relationship with a person a romantic relationship a friendship anything the cycle of plan anything it's a cycle and it's it's not yeah it's just we feel so the anatomy is broken into hips heart knees and spine so the cycle is we lust so that exciting phase that exciting part of a relationship or a project or anything
that you get so fired up and passionate about and then the next part of the cycle I feel is that you fall in love with it so that excitement all of those heady feelings they we settle into your heart and you really feel things in your heart and then more often than not in whatever way you look at it sometimes we fall however you want to phrase that and that's the knees but then the beautiful part of that is that there's always gonna be the rising which is the spine and so I guess it came
from feeling everything so deeply in my body and I would feel these emotions these breakups this disappointment this love this like crazy lust I would feel it all in different parts of my body and I just thought this has to be it because each of those poems just falls into these chapters so you can tell that that's the place that I wrote from and I do it's we've got to honor those cycles of life we can push them away you know it's similarly that I believe that we all live through seasons as well so you
could look at it through that kind of cycle as well so yeah I just believe that we're cyclical creatures and nothing is forever you know I think the the main thing when I kind of like obviously seen bits and pieces of it Anna talks about it all the time but when I finally sat there and kind of I just sat there at the back to front the one thing that kind of kept coming up for me that you were expressing was impermanence and how important it is that whether you're feeling a certain way or you're
doing something or something's happening it'll last for a period of time and then the next thing will come along yeah that was the main kind of it was a rollercoaster yes I'm glad but the that just importance of understanding that things don't last forever and the impermanence of it yeah even feeling like emotions are obviously really short but then relationships and friendships everything yeah exactly exactly and I think I'm glad that you picked up on that because that was a big intention of mine it was you know sometimes especially when you're moving countries you just
cling on to stability you're like oh my god this person this thing this routine I've got I need it to stay the same please just give me that and it's the reality is nothing you know we're all nature we're all energy energy doesn't stay the same it moves it flows and I think if you expect it to stay where you're trying to control something it becomes stagnant and I think that relationships they fluctuate speaking from my experience the people around me and you know it's not to say that everybody's gonna break up yeah but it's
like you do go through the cycles where you feel those things about someone then you love them and then they piss you off a little bit and then you're like you grow together and it's not just about relationships it's just honoring you know saying you just lost your job like that's it that was a big part of the book as well for me something I was very passionate about kind of fell apart and it wasn't a person it was connected to a person but it was a project of mine a business and I looked at
it with the anatomy eyes and I was like it helped me heal from it because I was like I I've talked the talk I've got to walk the walk now and honor that and heal this experience it's almost like an accountability piece right like yeah if no one ever read it it'd still be an overwhelmingly successful part of your life because it 100% and I say this this book holds me accountable for every single thought that comes into my mind every word that comes out of my mouth everything I do every decision I make I
take a breath what would the book do I like that what would the book do and it means you know it means a lot of things it means that if I'm ever grumpy haven't had my coffee and I go to open my mouth and get impatient which doesn't happen a lot but you know human if I stop and I think and I respond if I'm ever going to get really angry with something situation if I'm stuck in traffic it's like I stop I think and I respond patience impermanence I'm not going to be stuck in
traffic forever and it also stops me from playing small that was a big part of the book I was like I want to write poems and words or I have written these poems and words that are so fierce so powerful that encouraging other people to be empowered and stand in their power and speak fire and you know be thunder and make waves I want to write those words and I want to live that and I want other people to live that too and if I can encourage other people or if I am to encourage other
people to live like that then I've got to do that too it stops me from shrinking away yeah that must be empowering writing those words feeling those words and then having such a wide community of people resonate with it it's been incredible yeah it is been humbling I actually can't put words to it it blows me away and I think for the first kind of month or two even now I still get tears in my eyes when I see people shout because I wrote the things that I did it came so naturally to me but
I think I wrote them I think something in me wrote them because that's what I needed to hear when I was going through this shit and I think I just don't want anyone to feel alone because let's be real we all go through shit times we all go through good times but like you say it's impermanence everything's a cycle I think I think that whatever advice we give other people we're just giving it to ourselves a previous version ourselves I could not agree more I could not agree more and yeah it's it's if I am
to empower other people I've got to walk the walk I've got a I can't shrink I can't be disempowered or a victim you know it's all a practice and it still is and it will always be a practice but yeah it holds me accountable exactly and yeah I just think if one person reads one poem and it brightens the day or they just feel connected or they go me too that's all I care about yeah and there's gonna be times where you come full circle when you come back to that thing and like you read
it and you're like I can't believe I wrote that I read a poem the other day I read my own poem and was like oh I really needed to read that I was having such a shit day the other day I was feeling sorry for myself I was having a pity party and I read the I will create waves with my body poem it was so powerful that's probably my favorite poem in the whole book and I was like I am here to be heard I was like I wrote this I will not shrink I
will not shrink I will not shrink I will not shrink I will not shrink I will not shrink I will not shrink I will not shrink I will not shrink I will not shrink I will not shrink I will not shrink I will not shrink I will not shrink I will not shrink I will not shrink I will not shrink I will not shrink I will not shrink I will not shrink I will not shrink I will not shrink I will not shrink I will not shrink I will not shrink I will not shrink I
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will not shrink I will not shrink I will not shrink I will not shrink I will not shrink I will not shrink I will not shrink I will not shrink I will not shrink I will not shrink I will not shrink I will not shrink I will not shrink I will not shrink I will not shrink I will not shrink I will not shrink I will not shrink I will not shrink I will not shrink I will not shrink I will not shrink I will not shrink I will not shrink I will not shrink I
will not shrink I will not shrink I will not shrink I will not shrink I will not shrink I will not shrink I will not shrink I will not shrink I will not shrink I will not shrink I will not shrink I will not shrink I will not shrink I will not shrink I will not shrink I will not shrink I will not shrink I will not shrink I will not shrink I will not shrink I will not shrink I will not shrink I will not shrink I will not shrink I will not shrink I
will not shrink I will not shrink I will not shrink I will not shrink I will not shrink I will not shrink I will not shrink I will not shrink I will not shrink I will not shrink I will not shrink I will not shrink I will not shrink I will not shrink I will not shrink I will not shrink I will not shrink I will not shrink I will not shrink I will not shrink I will not shrink I will not shrink I will not shrink I will not shrink I will not shrink I
will not shrink I will not shrink I will not shrink I will not shrink I will not shrink I will not shrink I will not shrink I will not shrink I will not shrink I will not shrink I will not shrink I will not shrink I will not shrink I will not shrink I will not shrink I will not shrink I will not shrink I will not shrink I will not shrink I will not shrink I will not shrink I will not shrink I will not shrink I will not shrink I will not shrink I
will not shrink I will not shrink I will not shrink I will not shrink I will not shrink I will not shrink I will not shrink I will not shrink I will not shrink I will not shrink I will not shrink I will not shrink I will not shrink I will not shrink I will not shrink I will not shrink I will not shrink I will not shrink I will not shrink I will not shrink I will not shrink I will not shrink I will not shrink I will not shrink I will not shrink I
will not shrink I will not shrink I will not shrink I will not shrink I will not shrink I will not shrink I will not shrink I will not shrink I will not shrink I will not shrink I will not shrink I will not shrink I will not shrink I will not shrink I will not shrink I will not shrink I will not shrink I will not shrink I will not shrink I will not shrink I will not shrink I will not shrink I will not shrink I will not shrink I will not shrink I
will not shrink I will not shrink I will not shrink I will not shrink I will not shrink I will not shrink I will not shrink I will not shrink I will not shrink I will not shrink I will not shrink I will not shrink I will not shrink I will not shrink they can find me on instagram i am @franksmartin they can buy my book if you're in australia or new zealand it's on www.franksmartin.com if you're in the uk listening or america um i'm on amazon.co.uk or amazon.com and actually in europe as well if
anyone's in italy or spain that's ace thank you so much for giving me your time thank you so much it has been an absolute pleasure
