She said, it's now never I got fighting in my blood.
I'm tiff This is role with the Punches and we're turning life's hardest hits into wins.
Nobody wants to go to court, and don't.
My friends at test Art Family Lawyers know that they offer all forms of alternative dispute resolution. Their team of Melbourne family lawyers have extensive experience in all areas of family law to facto and same sex couples, custody and children, family violence and intervention orders, property settlements and financial agreements. Test Art is in your corner, so reach out to Mark and the team at www dot test Artfamilylawyers dot com dot au.
Tiffany Cook, Welcome to our show.
Bobby Capuccio. It's so good to see you.
It's so good to see you back on your show. Mine antidote, roll with the punchers, rolling with the antidote. That sounds like that sounds like people who are stuck in a post apocalyptic zombie situation, which I hope it is not the case.
I miss I really miss the days of when we did this every single week, every single week, and there's a there's a fondness I have around the time that we're doing that and it's like COVID times, which is weird to feel fondly about that, But I feel really fondly about some of the really positive things that that I connected with, and you were one of them, and there was real comfort in that, that familiarity that doing
something with somebody every week, and I miss it. I miss our Yeah, how regular we were able to do that When I was pumping out way more episodes.
When you said COVID, I thought you were going to start reminiscing about the times where we would all do professional meetings and podcasts, but like, have no trousers on, Well that's where you were going, but you took it in a completely different direction. But I loved or I just love it. It was also beyond COVID. I mean, we should do a special podcast called beyond COVID. Let's make a note of that. Do we have that? There's no one here to make a note of it, so
maybe we won't do that after all. But I loved our weekly meetings or weekly chats. I look forward to them now I can say something about bi weekly.
Yeah, there's something about the going through things with people that solidifies your your friendship with them, and I think about because I think about that whiteboard brainstorming session that you ran me through in the very beginning, Like I just remember the beginnings of connecting with you and starting to work with you and looking up to you so much, just being so incredibly feeling so incredibly blessed that you would spend all this time with me and help me
with my personal stuff. And it's just it's cool. I don't know why I'm thinking of it right now. I'm obviously feeling nostalgic.
Well, I'm glad you got over it. I'm glad I got rid of that that damn highchair. My feets to dangle. People used to have to like look up at me all the time. It was this weird thing. I was like my first podcast episodes. That's why I never released the videos. It was just like my voice and nipples
the entire time. It's like, what's really sad? It took me six months of episodes before I even noticed for anyone Han said anything like the Rihano sign behind me that Craig Harper doesn't give a shit about.
Clearly, So I want to tell the listeners I logged on and you've got you've got books in your bookcase. Behind You've got a brilliant background. It's got old, beautiful fluorescent lights and things. It's the lighting is beautiful. There's bookshelves on either side of you. There's some can there's a candle in the middle. There's a beautiful like is that real old brick or is that a wallpaper?
That's real old brick? Oh? God, the building?
Oh you did it?
Anyway, there's books, and there's you've got the book behave sitting behind you. And I looked at that, and then I looked up the top at the on air the fluoro on air, which is a very cool lighting sign that you've that you've turned backwards mirror image, so I can't read it. And you you didn't realize that all of your books were facing the right way, but on air was backwards. I'm like, there's so much to be read on this screen, now, could you know?
Because here's what happened. Because I know the listeners dying to know, like why is that sign? Back words? I would imagine eighty percent of them don't even give a shit. But because we don't want the minority to be like overshadowed, I'm going to go into it, and because I have mirror my image or some weird setting on my zoom, so when I look at that, it was backwards, and then when I flipped it the other way around, it's ah on air. I didn't realize that. Everybody else looking
at me sees it and it says Rihano. So now it's my choices are either look like a complete dickhead or change my name to Rihano Capuccio, which is what I'm considering it. So write us in let us know. Do you like the name Rihanno Capuccio. If you do, fantastic. If you don't, I'll just I'll just flip the sign around.
You just mentioned before that you're rereading Man Search for Meaning. What has made you return to that book.
I'm in a course and it was assigned to us, so I thought, yeah, I've read this before. But it's so amazing how you could read a book like that, because I think I've read through it once. I gave it a proper read, and then I gave it an improper read. I just went through and read the highlights. But I guess that's a proper read. Right. You go back, you read the highlights and then reading it now it's a completely different book.
Tell me more.
Well, I first read it, I thought, and I was going through that thing in my life where everything that has happened to me, And I'm not comparing anything I've ever struggled with with being in a concentration camp. That is absolutely absurd, Like I think I would trade my entire childhood like to avoid a day there. But I was very much in a place where I wanted to read a story, or I didn't know I wanted to
read that story. But what I got from it was a human being who was the most desperate situation anyone can ever imagine, where everything had been taken from him. What doctor Victor Frankel called the last of the human freedoms is what he retained to choose his own attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose his own way. And I thought, Wow, how meaning can triumph over the
greatest levels of adversity. This is such an inspiring book, And now reading it, it just filled me with disgust, like how human beings could be so deeply depraved and sedistic with no self reflection to stop them in their tracks. And it still arrives at the same conclusion that in the best of circumstances, meaning makes life worth living rather
than just empty and hedonistic. Not taking anything away from hedonism, I'm a fan, but in microduces or in the worst possible scenario that you can imagine, meaning is so much more fortifying than apathy. And you know, there's a couple of things that really catch me in the second read. Have you ever read the book?
Yeah, ages ago, and I want to reread it because, much like you're describing now, I feel like we we take a lot out of what we read, and then when we revisit it later, there's it's like reading a whole.
New, new book.
Because you're a different person, you have different ideas. Some of that knowledge got embedded forever, some of it might have slipped away from the conscious mind. And yeah, so I'm going to I'm probably going to read it straight after talking to you. Now.
Yeah, now that you've seen like how cynical I've become from one read to the next, I wonder how far they fallen. I don't know. I think I don't think I'm cynical. I don't think I'm a cynical personal skeptical, definitely not cynical. That doesn't make any sense to me, and I think cynicism's bullshit anyway. Like most people who are cynical, I don't believe them. If you tell me you're a skeptic, I believe you, And I think skepticism
has a lot of advantages. If you tell me you're a cynic, I think for some people it's just truly where they've arrived. But for most people, it's like, oh, you are a deeply disappointed idealist. You're someone who at one point was highly empathetic and sensitive to the world around you, and basically this is a mask for your disappointment. I don't even know if I'm right on that, but I'm pretty sure that that fits a lot of people. And I think I'm just in a different space right
now where I'm reading it. And it's one thing we hear when we hear about any holocaust and rightfully say never again. But it wasn't never again. It has happened to groups of people since, and I just think there's just something and I hate to arrive at this, especially on such an inspiring podcast, but sometimes I'm just like, what the fuck is wrong with us. Not us as in me and you and our listeners, we're amazing, but us as as human beings do we not learn from?
Like what does it take? Like what is the case study in episodes of human history that suck that are depraved and dark and terrifying. I mean, I think it's worse than like watching a horror film imagining these things. One because it actually happened, two because it goes places is that's even more terrifying. But what's the example we need before it's like, we need to get better because it's always like, oh those people over there, evil evil people.
It's never like I never have any of that in me. Right, it's not us, it's not our society, you know, it's it's the Germans. But you know it's not actually because Germany was the most civilized country in the world, which probably led pave the way to allowing that to happen. And here in the United States, straight after the Nuremberg Trials, we had Stanley Milgrim in his experiments, and you know, he was testing the can never happen here kind of a god. I don't know how how well that aged,
but he proved in his experiments. Yeah, you know, what it can. It's not it's not a German thing, it's not a thing with the Yanks, It's a human thing. I think we have to take that quite seriously, like how could something let this happen and we not learn from it and we repeat it in other parts of the world over and over.
I love that you've brought this into the conversation because when I was getting ready to come and chat to you, I was thinking wondering what we might talk about, and I was there's always something on my mind. There's always a million things in my mind. But the thing that I've was that I've been churning on recently was the idea of context, of how everything can polarize itself given
the context that you look at it. So, like, what's an example, opening up and sharing is gives us connection and vulnerability and healing in one context, but another person opening up can open up and overshare and the nuances are very small, but the impact is very different. It can be very traumatizing. A pick can be trauma bonding, it can be opening wounds.
Does that make Do you make sense from that?
So? Like you read this time, Yeah, so you read this book and in one whatever frame of mind and current understanding that you're in in the moment and it has a meaning to you, and then you come back and you read it at another time when there's other stuff going on, and the context shifts in what is taking your attention and the book is holding a completely
different place for you now. And that feels related to me thinking of that, because I'm always thinking of the things that I believe and talk about and the things that I feel like I'm learning or that might be of value to share, are they or how much bias do I have? How much am I just how much self indulgence am I practicing in the middle of what I think is just generously sharing stuff. It's interesting how much am I blinked?
Well, unpack that from me, like what not with you? In just in general? What would be an example of an over indulgent sharing.
I guess I'm just thinking about it. I'm doing a course at the moment around speaking, and we're looking at content and putting our content together and looking at stories and what we're sharing and getting quite focused in a particular area on that, And I guess that's where I've started stepping right back and thinking about not just what I'm doing, but what the other people in the group are doing and how they see it and what they're putting together, And.
I don't know. It's just made me really observe that I don't know.
I don't know if I can explain it very well, that idea of context. Does this matter? Is this valuable? Is it really valuable? And is the way that I share it valuable? Or is it valuable in a specific context?
And if it is?
Am I aware of that?
So I've seen people from the stage at conferences get up and they both tell very personal stories, and I've heard the audience around me say with you know, speaker A, oh my goodness, I was so inspired by that. That was like such an amazing session. And they're talking about something that's very personal from their story, and then speaker BE will do the same thing. I'm like, oh my god, all he did was fucking talk about himself the whole time. And they're almost angry, like I want I want that
hour back. What's the difference? What's the difference between two people that tell their story and they get two totally different responses. I mean, it's who's in the audience and where they are, Like whenever you're sharing something, you're going to impact some people like I'm offended for whatever reason, or I don't know, maybe no reason. You're going to impact other people like I'm deeply contributed to right now.
I think that was meaningful. I'm grateful I was here for that, and there's gonna be everywhere else in between. Doctor Victor Frankel had some insights because we're talking about man search for me. You know what's curious, a little sidebar talk about self indulgence. I have to always be hesitant that my ideas are in any way original, because I've always believed that to really discover yourself where and you know, again the self help antidote, you know, love
self help, but also constructive criticism. You have to go inside yourself and soul search and understand you. And it's like, my whole my whole identity and the whole conception of who I am is based on how I interact with the world, how the world interacts back. And I feel like, to really discover yourself and to refine yourself, yes there's things that I need to look at in here, but a lot of it's out there, and I think that is kind of a litmus test. You tell when you're
telling your story, where is it aimed? Who is it aimed at? Like if there was a spotlight to indicate the direction that story is going. Is it over your head? Is it on you? Or is it on your audience? Or is it on you know, mom, dad, your spouse? Like who is the intended target beneficiary of that story? And doesn't mean you're going to get it right all the time. And I think getting it right is a really stupid expectation. It's it's it's almost like a recipe
for stagnation in and of itself. But you'll get it right more of the time by just being really clear, where is this aiming, Who is this story about? Who is this sharing about? Is it about me? Or am I using it as a medium to to conceptualize something for someone other than me.
I went into to this course identifying that there was that I was able to do that excuse me. I think what's really interesting is understanding the mechanics of what you do. And I've never looked at because I've never done courses in speaking before. I've just I've just found myself in spaces. I started sharing stories I was in networking groups and it grew from there. So there was I just adapted to the environment. I knew what I wanted to share, and I took on feedback and I
tried to keep my eyes open to giving value. And so there was some boxes being ticked and I'm like, awesome, I'm cool, I'm ticking those boxes. And then we're going into kind of the mechanics of why and how people connect and why and how you know how people do that, and I I think it's really interesting because as I'm learning that, it's trying to identify where I was naturally doing it and how when it was just happening. And it's kind of when I think about I always talk
about it in coaching boxing. I was not a natural, naturally talented boxer. It took me. I wasn't coordinated to understand how to move my body and do things correctly.
Took a lot of bloody work.
It took a lot of cognitive understanding and learning how to feel my body and understand which part of my body I was focusing on and what has to move and what has to fire, and how I hold myself.
It's really quite complex, and I just persevered at it and now I like to teach that, and it feels like the same thing as I always tell people, you can be a great boxer, or someone can be a great boxer and not necessarily a great coach, because they were so natural at the art of boxing that they'd never had to understand how it feels and how to describe it to all the range of other people that wouldn't understand why it's not just naturally happening. Why doesn't
my punch naturally do that? I don't know what you mean when you say this, whereas I didn't get that, so I had to break down the mechanics of it.
And this I almost not that I'm.
Saying that I'm a great speaker or a great but I there was components of the speaking process that obviously came naturally, and now I'm reverse engineering and going, oh, I don't know how. I don't know if I did that.
I can't remember. I just did it. I feel like that boxing coach.
Yeah, I think there's a lot of value. But to get there, you had to go through different stages of motor learning, and the first stage of motor learning is cognitive. It's like, okay, I'm like driving a car ten and two ten in two okay, foot on the brake or shift second cure, and you've got all this stuff going on, like what's going on? Both my legs moving and it's a lot, but you have to go through that to get to the point where you're relying a bit more appropriate,
receptive for acuity, and then it's it's automated automatic. So I think that's the same thing with speaking. So you could just turn that on because you have to learn what you do. Not only that could be correct and improved upon, but when you're at your very best, what does that look like? I think that's equally important. So you walk into an auditorium and it's the worst day of your life, right you. Let's say you overslapt you didn't sleep well the night before, you're exhausted, you just
have tons of brain fog. You're running on caffeine fumes. I don't mean, is there such a thing as caffeine fumes. There's got to be it now if there's anything that they're doing with coffee, technology is happening in Melbourne. So you're running on caffeine fumes and it's like you can still have a great presentation because you've gone through so many reps to create on demand, but you're not really going through reps until you know what it is that
you're repeating. You're now if you get up there and you wing one hundred presentations, that's not one hundred times at that. That's kind of like one hundred random things that you can't put together. So it's that deliberate intension, letting go progressively and then being able to go, Okay, what's this about? Oh that topic? Yeah, I could talk on that. Wait how much time to wait? You're changing the topic. It's five minutes before I go. Can I talk about Yeah? I could do that, and you just go.
I hijacked the conversation away from the mentor's remaining though, And I want to go back there because I want to know more about what drew you to the current context of it.
I'm not even sure I know. Maybe I just got old and cantankerously. I was young, hopeful and optimistic and now after so many like business ventures failed and broken hearts, and who knows, I don't know what the story is behind that, Or maybe I just have a sobering, more balanced perspective. I don't think it's necessarily a bad thing. I know that. When I was in my twenties, I was just because I felt like I needed so much momentum, almost like almost like a you know, I'm flying quantus.
You got to put that throttle all the way down and hold it down if you're ever going to get off the runway, and once you get off the runway you can pull back on that. I think that's how flying goes. But I needed to have that throttle down fall on. So for me, everything was about how do I use this? Everything's about what's optimistic about this? Where now I'm kind of more balanced. I'm like, no, there's not only one type of person that you need to be.
There's not only you know, one type of thinking that's correct thinking. Everything else is not. So I see things through so many different lenses and layers because I see what's beautiful and inspiring about that book, and I also see like, wow, okay, this is this is truly disgusting, and like, it's interesting what I find disgusting in that book. But I think your connection to the public speaking is really interesting because we are talking about how to utilize tools.
I just realized I probably got a lot of my philosophy on self help and growth from man search for meeting. I didn't even realize it walked around. It was probably that one that one line fairly early in the book that you know, I committed to memory, I highlighted. I went back. Success like happiness cannot be pursued. It must ensue as an unintended side effect of one's personal dedication to a cause greater than oneself. And the research is
bearing that out. You know, we've talked about happiness, the pursuit of happiness versus happiness ensuing the side effect, the consequence of happiness, pursuing that which is meaningful. And I'm like, that's probably where I first started getting a lot of those ideas from. And you know, because one thing I one thing I got from and it wouldn't have mattered that much to me if I wasn't at this point in my life. But I probably wouldn't have even caught
the statement. But Victor Frankel said, all suffering is relative. That's exactly what Charlie Palum said when he was on my show. It's relative because I was out with a group of friends and there are just some people that just irritate me, and that number is getting like deeper
and wider as I get older. I don't know, maybe it's me, it's probably me, But it was one of these because there's these comments that you're running a racket, you're pretending that it's positive, or you're pretending that, oh my god, wow, you're you're so like you're so school of hard knocks. But what you're actually communicating, if there were subtitles under it, is like you're bitter, hateful and you're emotionally fragile. Like it's not coming off this way
at all. And it was just talking about people have gone through really bad things and because of that they see the world a certain way and they struggle and it's like, oh yeah, but and in the comment was everyone's got everyone, everyone's got their stuff. So it's like, nah, you're telling me Victor Frankel, right, and and my divorce hypothetically everyone's got our stuff. Now, that's not the same stuff. And if you think it's the same stuff, one fuck off.
Two you really need to unpack that. And it doesn't matter if it's the same stuff, because like we're either talking about your stuff or somebody else's stuff. And whilst your stuff might be relevant to relate to. It doesn't negate or mitigate something that's not the spirit of empathy, you know, like think about that next time somebody is like going through something. Put that thought in your head. Well, everyone's got their stuff. Does that decrease or increase the
distance emotionally between you and that person? Try that out? I mean, not if it's something like really bad, like start small, like they my magic coffee was horrible this morning, Like start there. Well, everyone's got their stuff, but it and a lot of times I think that's a shield because you might not be able to deal with the weight of stuff. But then you have people like Charlie
plum Pow at the Hanoi Hilton. You have Victor Frankel prisoner in four different concentration camps, and they're not walking around like everyone's got their stuff. They're like, No, suffering is relative, and depending upon what you're capable of dealing with and what you have going on, suffering kind of it feels a vacuum. It'll take up as much space
in your life as it can. So I'm not comparing the camp to the divorce, but the divorce can be absolutely excruciating and some of the things like, well, you know, if you think this is bad, you should take a walk through the burn unit of I don't get those. I think those are false equivalence. I think that is a society that is either unwilling or for whatever personal, deep seated reason to protect yourself, incapable of just sitting with someone for a bit. The burn unit is horrific.
Wish that on anyone. The burn unit is not the antidote or a way to dismiss someone who just like lost a spouse or a parent or a best mate or something like that. I think when people have really gone through what I've observed, So when people have really gone through some dark shit, it either makes them a much worse version of who they were, or it brings out this uncommon empathy. I wonder what are all the variables that lead to one direction versus another direction? And
I think purpose is not the variable. I don't know how it would make that determination, but it's definitely one of them. So when you like this book, when you talk about okay, well storytelling, is this self indulgent or is this something that has viable value for someone? Well, what's the meaning behind that story? Like that? It's at the root of everything. I think it makes us more resilient. I think because a lot of times we can tell ourselves a lot of stories and read our own headlines.
It kind of illuminates our path in front of us. So it's a light and a compass. I think this book touches upon every aspect in our life that's essential to what does it actually mean to be a human being? Like what is that?
It's a really interesting time at the moment because there's so much exposure to all of our everybody's collective processing and understanding of life and others and us. And I think coupling that with how we connect or fail to in twenty twenty five compared to how we used to.
Is.
So I'm in a conversation yesterday with one of my guests and hearing about their travel, and I was thinking about travel and how healing and life changing travel is, and essentially in my mind, I just kept landing on Yeah, because we step out of all the doing and we just connect with people. Take take away the connection to people and culture. Culture is just connecting to people in a way where you are open to learning and hearing
about how life is. There like if you take the people out of the travel, then the travel.
Is no longer.
It's not the it's not the soil that you land on, it's not the material that the house is built out of. But yeah, and I was just thinking, like, it's just one time of everyone's life where they put down so much of identity and expectation and I am this and I have to do that, and they escape for a moment, and in escaping for a moment, they are open to being with people and it.
Changes our life.
It is so life changing talking to people about where they've traveled, when they've traveled somewhere new, and what it's done to them. And it doesn't matter what the story is. It can be visiting a temple, or it can be climbing a mountain, or it can be sitting with someone in a shop in a country they've never been, and they feel completely changed by the energy of the experience. And I was just like, I love that.
What.
I don't know where that tangent came from.
Do you low the bouncing ball?
It's quite a radic I don't know what happened there, but I think we've talked. We've talked about everything on the show where you're on your deathbed when you know time, time is finite, and you know you have a pretty good idea about how finite it is. We're talking about a hospice situation with that show. The show I told, oh God, I've had so many conversations. It's like, who did I talk to? There was a show on on Hulu out here Dying for Sex I think it was
was it Hulu? Anyway? It was about It was about this woman who she was in remission from cancer, and then the cancer came back and it was really clear, like, Okay, she's probably not going in remission again. And it just
forces her to evaluate her life. It's like a giant mirror being thrust in her face and how she deals with all of these unreconciled issues that she has with you know, childhood trauma situations her her mother had put her in and like with her current husband and all these and there's no time to figure this out and what she's going through and what becomes increasingly more and more important to her. I think it all comes down to me and you, right, I mean, not meeting you.
We're not that important like us people. It's gonna be the little things, isn't it. It's gonna be the people we meet, the little things that we do, our little routines. That's what's probably gonna matter more than anything. It's not gonna be oh wow, what type of cards did I drive? Like what was my title? You know, and my income? What was that? You know, that'll only matter to the degree where it touched other people or I don't know, maybe it was like a seventy one Chevy Chavelle Supersport.
I'd like to think that would still matter. But other than that, those things are going to be irrelevant, and the things that bring us, Like in the camps, where I really had an emotional response was not the guards and like the captains, the commanders of the camp. I had an emotional response to the coppos that were prisoners
put in charge of other prisoners. And he's talking about the brutality, and on the one hand, it's kind of like, God, you're a prisoner yourself, and it's like you're doing more than self preservation, Like when Victor Frankel's saying that there were coppos who were more brutal than any guard, And it's like, on the other hand, if you think about everything that would make a human being truly miserable and keep them stuck there and have zero dignity about who
they are. It's behavior like that because all things being equal, and I'm not saying we don't engage in like health and fitness practices and get a good amount of sleep. The thing that really enhances our well being comes from one another, like that kind of stuff, like being kind to one another, really caring about someone else instead of apathetic or hostile or something I see emerging in society.
I don't know if you've noticed this where people deeply want others to be punished to the maximum degree for the slightest infraction. Like have you noticed that kind of thing?
You know?
I mean those people have always been there. But like you said, we see everything all we're like processing a collective consciousness right now, Like what is it like to be you? What is that experience?
You know?
Like Harps always says what's it like to be you? In terms of reflecting the experience others have with you? No, No, what what experience do you have with yourself? Like where does that come from? Talk about like happiness and things that block you from ever feeling happy? That's probably it for most people. I mean, if you're truly a psychopath, I don't really think it matters or impacts happiness that much.
But for the vast majority of people who are just so injured or afraid or disappointed, and we're going through life taking it out on other people not realizing that is the one point of interaction within your control that you can utilize to not only lighten the weight of someone's day, but how much life in general ways for you. The act weighs ounces, The consequence of negligence weighs tons when you think about it. I mean, we all do it.
Maybe we've all had our you know, we've all had our moments, but as a daily practice that you're not even reflecting, like did you did you read the thing that you posted? Did you listen to the thing you said to that person? Were you present at the table where we're talking about people struggling, like, well, everyone's got their stuff? Did you hear the tone that came out in not just because I'm going it didn't sound exactly like that, but not too dissimilar, Like did you did
you hear like the inflection? What is that like? And I'm like, what what would it sound like, not just the context, but the tone. What would it feel like coming out of your mouth if it was coming from a very different place, a place that wouldn't make you miserable enough to want that for another person? Start there. I think.
It's interesting, Yeah, like having an awareness on the present moment, and because because it's easy to look back and reflect and see where we've come from and where we've grown and where we're what we've been through.
And that's awesome.
But to a degree, I don't know if maybe I'm the only one, maybe I'm slow, But there's just times when I go, You're you've been causing yourself pain in your attitude and you and why couldn't you see that before? Like there's a version of it right now that I feel where I go, you've been You've been telling a story that's been keeping you trapped in an area of
your life, and it's not the way. It's not aligning with the story you're telling yourself, and that is keeping you stuck and in, you know, like ineffective and unhappy in areas not huge things, but I find that really interesting.
It's like self help in inverted commas or self awareness is this ebbing and flowing, continuous thing that when you're never really fully you never master it because you're always ebbing and flowing through different states, emotional states, frames of mind, circumstances and environments and situations that inflame you periodically, and the US shift the window you're looking through that affirm and when you're very like I watched this with people
in coaching, is when we are working on ourself, you have to be careful that that doesn't just become a perpetual I'm not good enough, because that's just a very strong message that I'm not good enough. So I have to work I'm getting better and I'm not good enough. And it's like you can do that for years and all of a sudden, you'll actually you've improved a lot that your attitude about yourself is that you're still shit.
And for me, that was one of the things that started shifting my focus to what's going on out there? Like what do you want to be better at? Like if you could be the top twenty percent of anyone working in any field, what field would that be? Like? Why what would that do for you? I'm not just talking about I'm not talking about materially, I'm talking about in tra personally, emotionally, your state of well being. What's
the value that that would be built on? Because when you do that, those sacrifices to get there are life giving in and of themselves. So what's that out there? Because if you're always looking in that's another thing you can get highly neurotic. You're right about that, Like it's like, Okay, what's going on with me? How am I feel I'm not good enough? Like this deep sense of shame And it's like you keep going over and over that line in your head and that story. You can convince yourself
of anything. In some cases maybe it's true. But non stop incessant self focus, I think that's like really bad for your psyching. And it's like there's there's no root, Like there's no room for perfection when you're completely focused out there because whatever it is that perfection is staving off where it's like, oh, I want to be accepted, but if I do this, oh they're going to see like I'm different, or maybe I don't want to be
judged harshly whatever. When I'm focusing on something that's bigger than me, a contribution, it's on that thing. I'm going to get better and better. But it's not because oh I'm not good enough, I'm not good I need to do this, I need to I think that's a lot of times where I think we're going into what really
irritates me about the whole do the work. Yeah, of course, it's just think about what that does to someone who doesn't have a how or struggling with a why and they know that they're kind of stuck in limbo and it doesn't feel good and I want to move forward. It's like, you're not doing enough and you're not doing this, and it's like, if you're doing that, well, then you must not be doing that. Oh you're doing that too well.
I know you're not doing this. And it's like, we go through as many levels as we can until we find something that someone's guilty for. It's like, what does that do to them? Like if they're not connecting stuff out there in the world to something that extends beyond them, that could be that could be a constant loop in
their head. So it just I used to go to these sessions, these big professional personal development self help events, and one of the things it was funny because it was right at the time that I started hanging out with Paul Taylor. It's so funny because Paul came into my life as my aspirations to be a motivational speaker a self help speaker went out of my life. Those two aspirations almost bumped up against each other, that's how
close they were. And one of the things I started noticing is anyone who comes in here with any level of self not satisfaction but self accept din'ts is chastised by the entire group and the message, no, you need the next book, you need the next course. You got to work on this. What do you mean you're happy with who you are here? Don't you see? You're really fucked up. You just don't know it. And it's like,
what's this person doing. They're like raising a family, they're going out, they love their career, they love their spouse, they this person seems like the most mentally healthy person in the room, and all the rest of us are freaking out like people. We get upset, like almost teary eyed at this person's unwillingness to acknowledge how screwed up they actually are. And I'm thinking, oh, this this guy's great,
Like I want to get to there. And it's like, oh my god, the whole machine, the whole mechanism, the whole culture is you're broken and here's how you need to get fixed and there's only one way to do that. And I was like, well, how are we arriving at these conclusions because it seems like the gurus know everything. And then Paul Taylor was coming into my life and it was like, you don't know anything until you start to take a look inside the brain. And it's like, okay,
that makes sense to me. You know what they say, like when the student is ready, Paul Taylor appears. I think that's how that's saying goes. But I was like, yeah, there's there's something. Somebody is running a racket here. Something is not right. And when I started hanging out with Paul, one of the things my friend Richard had called me and said, oh, we're doing We're doing a whole tour in Australia. We're going to be out here for a while and I want you to come out. I want
you to come out on the speaking tour. I want you to be a big part of it. And it's like, oh, just one thing I don't know how this is going to go, so I'm not sure I'll be able to pay you. I'm like, what are you talking about, Like thirty days of work straight and no pay. It's like, all right, I'm hopping on a plane. I'm there. So for me where I was, I was so ready to get out of that environment and it changed my life. It didn't work out really well those sessions. It led
to the creation of PTA Global. It framed a big event that we had meeting in the minds. But I think it was a big transition where it's like things are complicated. Don't make so many assumptions, because it's staggering how little you know about what's going on in your own head, not to mention somebody else. I think there are certain there are certain emblems of behavior we shouldn't accept, Like someone's behavior is blatantly hurting somebody else, especially if
there's intention behind that, that's not acceptable. It doesn't matter what happened to you. But all these other little conclusions and judgments that we have with so much fevor, like I don't even know why we'd be so invested in it anyway, it's kind of weird. Yeah, you don't know that much to make that conclusion, and that's what started me on this journey.
Do You're a no fun story?
When I talk about my first boxing boxing fight, which obviously was a big shift in the direction of my life. That started through I'd met someone in business networking that was from America. I'd traveled to Australia. They'd come and visited our meeting and they'd reached out to Caver one on one catch up, and when we were having one catch up, they said to me, I'm staying at the Cullen and I'm going to Akimodum, which is the gym downstairs there, and there's this guy that's doing a talk
and I think you'd really love it. He's doing a talk on resilience and he's an ex a Navy aircre officer or whatever the fuck Paul is. Anyway, so I went this whole My whole boxing journey started because I went to that talk and then I got a tour of vacuum Otum and the basement boxing downstairs, and that
was the fight. That was my first fight, and I signed up after hearing Paul speak on resilience and the how physic hard doing hard physical things changes our mind and our mindset and our brain and.
Yeah, boom, all started with old mate.
It's funny like looking looking back, it wasn't until I started sharing the story of my first fight that I realized, oh my, that's kind of come full circle like.
To where it began.
It's a very incestuous group. We have, like such a small world. How we all like, how we're all tethered to each other by seemingly random, weird events, But it's all the same circle. So we were all there the whole time in the periphery, and we just got pulled closer and closer together. Now Poll does some remarkable work. I mean, I think I love the things that he's
curious about that he researches. He's extremely interesting as a present as an individual, and he's he comes across extremely to me anyway, academic and passionate at the same time. I remember going out and speaking with Paul because when we first started, like he was the science guy and I was the application guy around behavior change. So it was neuroscience and me just starting to make that transition again from self help coaching. Right, I'll ask you a
few questions. Find out what's wrong with you tell you how to fix it, not coaching to actual coaching. So I was making that shift. So I was the practical application person. He was the egghead, and you know, we would we would like share seminars, like he'd do one section, I do another. And I loved it. I absolutely loved it. When he stopped being on the road with us is when I think I started getting into lanes, too far into lanes that, Yeah, I don't think I really belonged going there.
I don't.
I don't think it was I don't want to say my passion because I'm passionate about it, but I don't think it completely aligned with who I was and my purpose. I went so far down the neuroscience rabbit hole because I thought, oh, he's not on the road with us, I kind of need to Like this is because I realized how important it is for methodologies to be informed by neuroscience, because otherwise, like, what are we actually talking about here? So I went really far down that road.
But I think that there's kind of like a balance, And what I really missed was how that balance between me and Paul worked itself out in terms of what we brought to the team. So Paul's I think a massive impact on a lot of people. I know he had a massive impact on me.
I remember reaching out to him and asking him, asking if I could just follow him around when he was doing big corporate speaking jobs, and I was really I was really fortunate that he said, yep, and let me, you know, just come in and be in the room as hes an inverted Commas assistant, just so that I could, you know, get a sense of what people how people are doing this.
M Yeah, Like I remember Paul took me under his wing as a mentor because I had asked him if I can like follow him around dressed as Gargamel when
out smurfing. I didn't even know what smurfing was, but he showed me a strange and disturbing world I wish I had never seen, but had so much fun, and I had the Monk's outfit for years after until there was a fight with a hitchhiker in the woods a few years ago, and there was there was a lot of there was a lot of alcohol involved and let's just say, yeah, the the Monk's outfit did not make it, but I had that Monk's outfit from smurfing, which I
learned from Paul Taylor. Do you do you not like know what smurfing is.
But no, please explain.
It's when grown ups paint themselves blue and dressed like Smurf characters from the cartoon The Smurfs, And then there's always a Gargamel, which is very risky because he was the monk, the monk that hated the Smurfs. He was like the Smurf adversary. So if you go out smurfing as Gargomel, you're taking a risk. Your safety is not guaranteed. But first time dressing up in that outfit, it was in San Diego. So we have a baseball team here at the Padres, right, And I didn't know this at
the time. The mascot is a Friar, a monk. So I had rocked up to the pub I would say about fifteen minutes before everyone else got there, and someone had bought me a beer and they were cheering, and I was like, Gody, Wow, they really love the Smurfs in this town, don't they. And I had no idea
that I was dressed like their mascot. And then Taylor rocks up as brainy Smurf as you would and we had a friend of ours Jen, I won't give her a surname, and you know she's blonde, so she was painted blue a smurf fat and the pub went from being highly enthusiastic to extremely confused. So I was like, Okay, this has nothing to do with the Smurfs, does it.
I didn't give a shit as long as I got like a freak guinness or two out of it, all good and that and that is an example of a self indulgent story tip that has to do with anything anyone wants to hear. So, yeah, you're you're welcome. You could take that back to your course and go, yeah, do that. So what did your course say about, you know, self indulgent stories versus like, what's their take on delivering a story?
So we're working through a process which we haven't done yet. So all we've done so far is decide on our stories and how we're going to tell them. That the unpacking and delivery of lessons comes in the next phase of how we work through this.
So I'm looking forward to.
What I loved going into this was what will I learn That I had no idea I needed to learn, and to find someone in this space that I felt comfortable with, that I felt I respected, that I wanted to, that I liked what they were delivering, and that I trusted to go through. This was big things. I feel like there's a lot of there's a lot of people in the space that are like, I'll teach you how to do this, and they don't know. I'm just I'm wary of process, you know, like, what are you teaching?
How are you teaching?
It? Is it?
Does it take into account the things that matter to me when I'm sharing?
So so you resonated with the presentations style of this person, You're like, sign up for that course?
Yes, thank you for taking what I was turning into a fucking way too big explanation and condensed in it.
Yes, so resonating.
I feel the same way because I've worked with people like that and it's energizing. I've also signed up for things and I'm like, watching the demonstrations of this person presenting, I'm like, I wouldn't sit through the seminary. Why am
I even here? That doesn't mean that that person doesn't have anything to teach you, but I think having a teacher you resonate with, it's a lot more effective than it's like, Okay, I paid my money, Let's see what I can learn from this two very different experiences.
I'm very much a unscripted speaker into it, well, yes and no. Like I do a lot of planning when I'm speaking, but I don't plan the words I'm going to use when I tell the story. I understand what aspects of story I'm going to use in order to lead into the topics that I'm exposing. But as we're looking at the process of this, I'm learning a lot about the importance. But it's challenging because in order to do that, there's parts of this course where we we're
looking at scripting and we're looking at time. How do I feel a time allotment? And how do I give like? How do like? I don't know. It's there's challenging aspects.
There's aspects that are challenging me a lot, and you've got to be open to I have to be open to being the beginner in this and going Okay, I'm going to park all of my I know, I cling to what's comfortable and yep, it served me really well, and maybe I'll come back to aspects of it, but for now, I've got to put it in the corner and leave it there and shut up and fucking listen and try the things that I'm being told to try before I say whether or not they fit. And maybe
it'll be worse. Maybe it'll be worse before I'm better because it's a new thing and I'm going to be shit at it when I try and deliver it. And maybe that's like, are you willing to be shit shitter before you're far better? Or do you want to cling to Nope, I'm I'm at this level and I'm not going to drop down any levels for any period of time in order to reach higher levels. Like that's that self indulgent? I think so, But it's challenging. It's really challenging me.
Why. I don't think you've said anything on this podcast that is self indulgent. But I will say that was a master class on how to approach to learning and skill development. Like that attitude, that's perfect, Like I'm so happy that you're in this class. I think you're going to get a lot out of it, regardless, that's exactly that's exactly what it takes.
MM, thank you. Do you want to wrap us up?
Yeah? It would be really rude if it was like, all right, so times up, get off my show. I mean, god, it's like I'm not going to get you back as a guest anytime soon. Are you my guest or my yours? I don't even know who's the guest of who here?
But I don't think either of us know anymore.
It's awkward thing like really, like, you know, do we really need to fuck we.
Get near the engine, I'm like, is it?
Is it?
Am I a guest?
Do I do? I?
Do I have to ask permission to.
Wrap it up? Or just like how does this happen?
Yeah? Society puts so many labels on us, like who's the guest, who's the host? Does it really matter?
One thing I do know is that if I don't nudge you to wrap it up, I'll still be here at four pm this afternoon, which will be some ridiculous hour of the morning for you.
Does my wife know that? So anyway, so as we're into the wrap up, which I think we've given plenty of hints, none of you should be surprised at what's coming at this point. I just want to thank you all for listening, because you're the most important part of this show. If it wasn't for you, it'd just be two weird people like telling shit stories to one another. Hopefully they didn't come off that way for you. And yeah, so thank you. Thank you for listening to self help
Atidude and Roll with the Punches. Tiffany, thank you for being my guest host and cover all bases. Love chatting with you.
Thanks Bobby, Thanks everyone.
That was a horrible wrap up. You know what, I don't care. It was from the heart.
She said, it's now and ever I got fighting in my blood.
Coastcart Ucas scared at a countchard three