Have you ever wondered whether the problems in the world today would exist if we had deeper connection to ourselves, others, and the environment, and acted from that place? Welcome to the Conscious Action Podcast with your host, Brian Berneman and Kayla Greenville, who believe that connection is the. Key to taking conscious action as individuals and creating a better world.
We're here to raise awareness and inspire meaningful action by sharing stories, knowledge and conversations with thought leaders and change makers. From sustainability to wellbeing and everything related to conscious living. Our mission is to empower you to be the change that you want to see in the world. Welcome everyone to a new episode of the Conscious Action Podcast. I am Brian Berneman and your host and I have the pleasure to be joined all the way from Australia and Victoria by Jem Fuller.
Thank you and Jem for taking the time for being here for. Really doing what you're doing, uh, because we need more of this conscious communication. We need more leadership. We need to show up better in the world, as I believe. But I want to, to explore this topics a little bit more in depth during this episode video. But first of all, thank you for being here and for everyone that is listening. Can you share a little bit about who is. Yeah, absolutely.
Um, first of all, it's a pleasure to be here and um, and thank you very much for offering me to come onto your show. Um, I'm very appreciative. So who is Gem? I'm, uh, I'm 50. We can start there. I reckon I'm about halfway through my life. You know, I don't know. I mean, we never know when we're gonna die, right? But I'm just gonna, I'm gonna presume that I live to about a hundred . So I'm halfway through. Um, I'm happily partnered.
Um, my, my partner as a, a wonderful human being, uh, gorgeous woman, and we're very lucky in relat. Yeah, we both came to the relationship with, with two of our own children. So I've got two teenage boys. My boys have just turned 18 and 16. Um, my partner has a, a teenage girl at 15 and a younger boy who's 12. So we have the Brady Bunch. Um, and again, the kids have all been.
Around each other long enough to just relax into it and just, and, um, well they, they're actually very happy to see their mother and, and my boys to see their father, um, in such a beautiful, conscious, kind relationship. You know, we both came from marriages that had become quite, toxic is a strong word, but, um, but to some degree toxic and, and certainly not being very nice to each other.
And so for our children, growing up watching that, I was always very conscious, very aware that that was role modeling for them and I didn't want them to see that. Anyway, that's a long story. But, um, but now over the last six or seven years, they've been able to see what a really beautiful relationship. Um, so that's me personally. Um, son, brother, community member. I sit in men's circle with a group of men down here.
We sit around a fire once a month, have done that for about 12 years and talk about meaningful themes and just hear each other, just listen and to each other. So, yeah, I, I, I feel. Well placed in a really lovely community. My work, my mission is to, is to help people create more ease and more flow in their lives.
You know, the wording of, of my purpose for myself when I wake up in the morning and say, Right, let's go, because I'm, I'm very motivated, but my mission is to help people create habitual perspectives and practices. That bring them more ease in their life, more flow, more success, success in averted commerce, whatever that is for people. And so, you know, my bread and butter work, I'm, I'm a leadership coach.
I have senior leader clients across government departments here in Australia and, and in the private sector also, mainly in the health sector. I work with a lot of health practitioners. And then also in the not-for-profit sector, there's a couple of clients who are quite large disability inclusion organizations. So I work with really beautiful people doing good work and just help them become better leaders. And my team is, we're reaching out into the states at the moment.
My, I published a book recently, which I'm sure we'll talk about and you know, so my team are reaching out into leaders in the states. And we're, we're building an online leadership, um, communication program, which I'm really excited about. That's getting launched in about six weeks. And I've got an online resilience course, which was built just before Covid.
Yeah. So working in the space of more conscious leadership, helping people build healthier workplace cultures, so, so people can get along with each other better, communicate better, and then be more. Effective in the work that they're doing. So that's me in a nutshell, man. I just, What do I love? I love the outdoors. Massive outdoors fan. Um, you know, surfing, hiking, camping. I love music. I've been writing songs, playing the piano and the guitar forever. Yeah, that's about it. Beautiful.
Thank you for sharing that. And you know, I, there's a lot of topics that you already mentioned that I want to go and explore a little bit more. But before we get into that, how did you get into all of this? How was your journey to get into all of this different avenues and perspectives? Yeah, sure. I mean, before it was before I was. Formally applying myself to understanding human behavior and.
And, um, and working in this space throughout my life, I always had a burning curiosity about humanity. Uh, especially humans, people that were really different to me. So I travel. I spent most of my late teens and right through my twenties and early thirties. Pretty addicted to travel, to be honest. I just wanted to keep traveling and, uh, but I wasn't interested in traveling to cultures that were similar to where I grew up.
I was really fascinated about traveling to cultures that were really different to. Mm. And at the time I felt like I was, it was just my adventurous spirit. But I look back now and, and I understand now that I was actually driven for this cross cultural communication, this cross cultural connection.
You know, I wanted to find out what I had in common with peoples who, you know, grew up in a completely different geographical place on the planet to me, and had a different culture and a different set of beliefs. They looked different to me. The food they ate was different, and I was really curious to sit with them and connect. Um, so that, that was the drive behind all of my travel. So there's always been a curiosity in, in humanity. I've always been quite introspective as well.
I've, you know, as a, as a writer originally writing songs and poetry and then now books. I was always quite introspective, you know, through my twenties. I smoked a lot of hash, man. I smoked a lot of weed and, and, and also, um, it did a lot of exploration with psychedelics as well, because I was curious into the nature of the mind. This was when I was in my twenties. Um, I explored that as much as I wanted to then, and I haven't felt the need to, since I don't smoke anymore.
Um, I don't do any, any drugs anymore because I've, I've kind of understood what I could understand from that. I'm now more interested in the mind and. The, you know, and the nature of the mind through meditation. Mm. Um, so that's what I've been enjoying for quite a long time now, is a practice of meditation. Yeah. So how did I get to what I was doing? I, when I became a father, I, I'd been, um, just kind of bumming around the world for a long time.
I'd never had a career, I'd never had any qualifications. I've done everything from fire dancer to traditional tattooists to kindergarten teacher in Taiwan to volunteer in Bangladesh to, um, laborer in London. Um, I've been a punk. You know, squatting in abandoned buildings and, um, I've, I've lived a very colorful life and then when kids came along, I needed to get a job. So I got a job working for an international travel company cuz I'd been traveling, Ended up in senior leadership.
And then when I was in senior leadership, we, the, the company I worked for were quite good at spending money on, on development, professional personal development. So we had a coach come in from the outside and he is a human behavioralist and a, and a profiler. Very, very good at what he did. And he came into the senior leadership retreat one time and it was like magic. That was just, you know, he, he understood us behavior. Really well with just when he just met us.
And to me it was like magic. I'm like, Man, how do you know me so well? You've just been listening to me talk for half an hour and you've got me completely, you know? Understood. Um, so I was fascinated in that and I asked him what he did and he told me that he'd studied NLP and coaching and human behavior, et cetera, and I decided I wanted to do. Then comes the midlife crisis where I lost my career, my marriage, my house, my everything except my kids. I kept my kids 50 50.
Week on, week off, but lost everything else, but decided that that was the time for it to be my midlife awakening. And so I, I started all over again and I went and studied coaching and studied NLP and human behavioral profiling, et cetera. Started my own coaching practice. This is about 10 years ago now, and haven't looked back since. Thank you for sharing, sharing that like, I mean, there's so, so much in there and you know, I can see.
Because I have, when I was younger, that as well that, I don't know if it's called an H or or what, but to explore the world, to explore different people, to explore different cultures, living in different places and discovering more of myself. Yeah. And, and that has been my path as well. And in a sense, I'm, I. Glad that I found out of this when I was like quite young.
So yeah, it's not the same, but I just love something that you just mentioned that like in the last part that was really interesting. Um, you said like the midlife crisis and then you said midlife awakening. Yeah, and I thought the same experience. Very different perspective. Yeah. Yeah. I, I, um, I never thought of it as a midlife crisis. I used that term because that's what people know. Mm. And I used the inverted s midlife crisis. Uh, for me it was always a midlife opportunity.
Mm. Um, and, and it was also a midlife awakening because I had a, a. Remarkable experience in a North American Indian sweat lodge on aboriginal land here in Australia with a, a group of men. And we were doing a, a sweat. I don't know if your listeners know what that is, but I'm sure you do. And uh, and I had an out of body experience and. It went back to being five years old.
Anyway, long story short this night, I woke up the next morning after a, a very intense healing dream, and I realized, and at the time I was 41, I think it was about 41, maybe 40. And at the time I realized that I'd been harboring this subconscious belief that I wasn't enough. Mm. And I wasn't good enough. I wasn't smart enough or deserving enough, or man enough or insert here, whatever, all the insecurities that we tend to foster. And I'd had this belief in the background that I wasn't enough.
And so because of that, I had created the life that I'd created for myself with very unhappy marriage. Um, I was pretending to the outside world to be happy. I had a great job and I had a beautiful wife and I had two children, and, and we built a house and we lived in a beautiful town. And so to the outside world, it was like a social media profile, , you know, But, but on the inside I was deeply, deeply sad and tortured and, um, dysfunctional.
Uh, and so when I realized this, I was, I was really curious as to, you know, can I change that? Is it possible to change the wiring? And I found out obviously that it is thanks to the understandings through neuroscience, we've got a Western perspective now on, on something that the Great Eastern traditional wise ways of thinking have known for a long time. And so I went to work on myself and I very literally and laboriously with a lot of tenacity.
Um, I was determined and it took me about a year of, of high repetition and I just rewired. So I brainwashed myself into believing that I am good enough. I've got everything I need to be the best version of me and that I'm okay. So I did this self reparation work, which I still do now. It's become habitual, but I, I really had to do this self love, self acceptance piece of work so that I could be okay with myself so that I could get out of my own way and go and serve , right?
It's easier to, to be of service if you're, if you're not caught up on all your own stuff. So I've created a, a, a daily habitual way of being really kind to myself and, uh, very accepting and, and, and also still passionate to go and make a difference in the world. Yes. And you know, there's something that, that I found is so interesting.
We live in a society and mostly I'm not, I'm generalizing a little bit, which I don't like, but that we haven't done a lot of our inner work, a lot of that work of integrating and healing and as you said with that word, reparations. Like we, we grew up in a society that for most people, our childhoods gave us a lot. Different experience that we weren't able to actually process. Whether they were big traumatic experiences or small experiences that were still traumas in our body.
Yeah. And, and how can we show up later on as adults for ourselves and then for others if we haven't done that work? And then how can we. Communicate our needs, our wants, how we want to live our boundaries if we don't understand them. Yeah, and I think that that is so important and, and I want to explore that with you in terms of, you know, I, I believe that you were sharing as well in terms of like conscious leadership. I believe conscious leadership as well in our lives.
People, not only for someone that is in a, let's call it leadership position. Yeah, Yeah. So can, can you share a little bit more around the importance of that inner work for being able to communicate consciously? Yeah, absolutely. And it's interesting, isn't it? You know, the idea of, um, leading for me, you know, in terms of self leadership, And being a conscious leader of self leading means that we're going somewhere, right? And so if we're not physically moving location, where are we going?
Well, we're going into the ex. We're expanding into our potential. We're, we're, we're going to the next version of ourselves. With this self work. So this healing process is the journey for us to continually keep becoming that next iteration of self and hopefully this journey, the relationship with self becomes easier. Not harder.
, you know, the more, the more self-love, self-acceptance, self-compassion, self reparation work we do, then relationship with self becomes much easier because you're not still. Holding onto or attached to the past, which is yourself, right? Your relationship with the past is really your relationship with self. And so as we do this work and the mind becomes, when I say it becomes more quiet, I don't mean thoughts stop near under, always firing.
There's always the little bubbling book of thoughts. I just mean that you're less identified with them. So it's less of a fight, you know, there's less of a, you're not caught or stuck in this loop of identification with thought emotion. You can notice it, but just less affected by it. So, so for me, that feels like there's less static, there's less noise between me and, and. So if I'm perceiving you, so I, I see you, I hear you.
I, you know, if we're in the same room, I could hold your hand and touch you. I'm perceiving you if I've got a lot of noise going on in here, A lot of lenses, a lot of bias, a lot of belief, a lot of stuff. I'm gonna get a very distorted version of you. Because my perception of you in my mind has gone through all my lenses and biases and beliefs and all my hangups. Conversely, if I'm reasonably quiet in my mind, then when I'm sitting with you, I'm seeing you more clearly.
You know, I can really seek to understand. More. Not completely. I can't completely see the pure version of you. I can only perceive you in my mind, , but, but we can certainly see each other more clearly when we do this work on ourselves, which means that, you know, there's more compassion for others then and there's more, uh, less judgment. We don't need to shout at each other, you know, we can listen. Hmm. Doesn't mean that we always need to agree.
We can still disagree, but we can agree beautifully with respect and love, essentially. So it's a really beautiful practice. I, I guess some people would think of this as a very spiritual practice. I, I guess it is. I don't, I'm not really too concerned about what labels we give things. Um, but we do need to use language to help us have a conversation, but certainly it helps in conscious communication because communication is a sharing, you know, communication is to make something common.
It's not a telling, uh, If I'm telling you something, we're not communicating. , , you know, it's a sharing. We have to come to some kind of understanding That's communication. And so conscious communication is being aware of that, being aware of the other person or people being aware of the reason why we having this communication, being more aware, not being so stuck. In the identification with your point of view. Does that make sense? Yes, definitely.
And you know, I think there is a few things and, and I want to ask you if you use at all these frameworks or not, but I, I, I have been introduced many years ago to nonviolent communication. Mm-hmm. and as well to understand in, in my life. And of course it doesn't always happen. But to, to create agreements or to create an understanding of. What is happening, because sometimes I do have the time to sit with someone and to actually be, and to connect from that place.
And then there's other moments with some people that it's like, okay, we only have. 15 minutes. Yeah. We need to get to like the agenda items that we need to go through. Yeah. And, and it's like, let's, let's briefly create a Yeah. An understanding. Yes. Because I love that. Yeah. I, I, when I was living, uh, this remind me.
I, I lived at Tibet Boost Retreat Center for a few years, Uhhuh, and at one point we used their, what we, what it was called, essential speech, which meant we only spoke if there was something that needed to be said. If not, we were silent. Yeah. And that as a practice already was incredible.
Yet at the same time, we had an understanding that if I said something like, if you were supposed to go and pick up that table over there, and you hadn't done that, I would just say to you, Hey Jim, the table needs to be picked up. And I'm not saying that from a judgmental place. I'm not saying that from a you to, like I'm saying that as that was agreed upon and that is still there and you haven't done it.
And what I noticed living there, because there were people sometimes that would come to live there after I was there. That if they hadn't fully understood that agreement, they felt attacked by me or by someone else saying things in a direct manner. And I realized like, Oh, like okay, anytime that someone new comes to do in the community, we really need to.
Sit down and have an understanding that when we are talking, we're talking from a place of love and compassion and kindness, and we are doing it in that sense just to be effective with our time. But it's not a judgment, it's not me trying to tell you about for anything. Yes. I I love that. It's so much easier if, if there's an understanding and and consent even. There's a chapter in my book where I, I talk about consent in communication.
Mm. You know, and the obvious, the obvious topic or context when we talk about consent is, uh, sexual consent. I believe also it's functional. If we can have consent even in communication. It's not always possible, but, but if, if it can be, if there can be consent, the communication will definitely be more effective.
You know, if, if, uh, you, like you said, if there's an understanding, if you have permission, if you've given each other permission to speak from a place of love to share that, it's certainly much easier. And in a very practical sense as well, if you've got a team leader, uh, and they, they're responsible for developing the people in their. And so there's a certain element of needing to be their coach, to coach them to being the next version of themselves.
I, I say to all of my clients, if you can ha if you can get consent, I call it the green light. If you get the green light to coach, your coaching will be way more effective than if you are just telling someone where they need to get better. But if you've had a conversation to frame, frame the coaching to put it into perspective, into context and say, Hey, part of my responsibility is to help you be the best version of you to help you love your job, to help you thrive.
Yeah. Is that okay with you if I, if I invest some resource, some time in helping you? Love your work. Is that okay with you? And the person says, Yeah, that's great. There you go. You've got consent. Now you can coach. And you know, even as a father with my children, I can't always get consent to communicate with them, but I try.
Hmm. You know, so if there's a time when, when one of your teenagers has done something and there needs to be a conversation around that, because you are their parent and you need to help them hopefully grow up to be adults who are kind and nice and functional, et cetera, before just going into the room and saying you that was blah, blah, blah, and telling them, I'll come to the bedroom door and say, Hey, I'd really like to have a chat with you about that. Would that be okay with you? Mm-hmm.
. You know, and when they say, even if they don't want me to, but when they say, Yes, dad, you can. We can have a chat. I've got consent. The communication's always more effective. You know, cuz there's an understanding that we're gonna talk about this now and the consequences, et cetera, blah, blah, blah. So yeah, I love that. I love that, Brian, the idea of, of an understanding is so good with conscious communication.
Yeah. And I wanted to to ask you in terms of the work that you do as well, because for me, in terms of communication, most people tend to focus on how we speak. How do we listen? How are we present? And can you speak of that receiving end? Yeah. Yeah. I, Well, first of all, it, it's easier to listen and hear if you have been having a mindful practice. A mindful, yeah. If you've been meditating over, over a period of time where you are training your mind to be present.
You just, you get better at not being so distracted. And so when you're listening, the, the more present you are, less distracted, you know, you're not queuing up to speak or you're not thinking about what you're cooking for dinner. You are just really present with that person seeking to understand. The person speaking, they feel that, they feel that you are right there with them listening and seeking to understand, and they actually communicate more effectively.
It's this beautiful, symbiotic relationship. Energetically, the, the more beautifully you listen, the more beautifully they relax into their communication and vice versa. If you are not really listening to someone, if you are kind of distracted or you're thinking about how you're gonna. Debate them or refute what they're saying, or add your point of view in if you're just queuing up to speak or if you, or if you're not even present, you're thinking about something else.
They start to stumble over their words. They, they, they become clunky in their communication because it is a relationship. You, it's this beautiful symbiotic relationship and we are of the same. entity in communication. Mm-hmm. , you know, so we affect each other very much. Yes. Makes like, I, I have done, as you can tell from my, some of my experiences, a lot of.
Practices to be mindful, to be able to listen to what I might call hold space as well when I'm working with, with people as well, to, to be able to, to be there, present for someone else and, and that a lot of times I feel like it's one of the most important gifts that we can give to someone is to just be present. And, And as you're saying, there's such a tendency to want to interject in someone's sharing or to high check the experiences like that. That happens to me as well.
Without giving the space for the other one to share, because we all want to share. And that's, you know, like, uh, something that is there. And one of the things that came, came up and whilst you were just talking, was a time that I, I had a partner in, in the US and, and she met my, my family like in Argentina and the way. At home, we will just communicate in the dinner table. I never noticed this, but until I had someone else saying like, Why are you all screaming? Why?
Why are you all fighting? And it's like, Oh, we're not. We're just. Talking, but you know, it's, it's, it's such a like talking, going back to like different cultures that you were talking at the beginning, like there's all of these different ways and, and being, I don't know if it's because it's Latin or what, but it's this way of, of talking that it suddenly like, It's getting louder and louder. Louder. And the only reason, like someone will listen to you because you were the
loudest one . So I was just thinking about that and it's like, ah, Like in my experience, I, I should say that. I'm like, Wow, I, I have gone from that way of communicating. Even my entire family has gone from that way of communicating. To a much more conscious way of doing that by creating space. I'm in a sense, fortunate that my parents and my siblings in a certain extent have gone on retreats, have experienced and practiced so.
We can meet each other within that, that, and that's not always the case in all families. So from that place, I'm, I'm really, really grateful. Yeah. So I, I wanted to, to, to ask you a little bit more around that, especially with families. You're saying that you have a much more conscious relationship now with your partner.
How does that look like for people that are now in a, in a relationship and potentially they find that they are either arguing or having difficulties just from a communication standpoint. What are some of the things that you can share from your own experience?
Yeah, sure. Before I do, I just, I have to share with you, I was imagining you and your family and how beautiful it is that they've also been on retreat, but I was imagining a different, Argentinian family where just one person went on retreat and practiced for years and, and became, you know, more quiet. And when they would come back to their family and their family's all speaking loudly and talking, and the family would be like, What's wrong with you?
And the man is, There's nothing wrong with me. I'm happy they're going. There's something wrong with him. He's depressed some, What's wrong? Wake up. Where? Have you gone? No, no, no. I'm just chill man. I'm just listening. . But the family would think there was something wrong with you, right? Oh, no. He's depressed. He's gonna kill himself not talking. Yes. I, I had that one when I was younger. Like he's not talking. Like he's repressing and, Yeah, yeah, yeah. There's something wrong with him.
Actually, when I was a kid, I didn't think that I was doing that, and later on I was like, Oh, I was doing that. But anyways, um, oh look, I, you know where to start. Having a, having an understanding of, of my ego and when it's my ego that is about to jump in and speak. That doesn't mean that I don't have an ego. Of course I have an ego. We all do. It's necessary. It's having a sense of identity is a part of being human. So that's, that's fine.
But we can develop a more acute awareness of our ego through practice and, and, and understanding, and it's so helpful, you know, because if my partner says something and my ego wants to react, I can catch it now. I can go take a breath, pause, and I call it out in my, in my mind I'm like, Oh, ego, look at you. Go. You're desperate to be right in this moment, or you are desperate to place judgment or you desperate to justify your actions right now.
And I have this conversation with my ego, and I say, Bless your cotton socks ego. I love you. I know you're trying to keep us safe, but we're safe right now. There's, there's no lion coming to eat us. We're not in danger. You know, my woman has just said something and you've just had a reaction to it. That's okay. Just take a breath and then lean into the communication. Seek to understand. You've got nothing to defend.
You don't need to defend anything if your partner is wanting an explanation as to why you did something in a particular way or what or how you thinking about something, by all means give. Talk with each other, seek to understand.
But it's this kind of aggressive defensive life and death energy that the ego has, you know, because we identify our ego, identifies with our ideas, with our beliefs, with our political beliefs, with our ideologies, and then people go to war with each other over an idea or a belief. And they end up, you know, fighting either physically or, or, or, you know, psychologically, emotionally, verbally fighting. And, uh, it's unnecessary. It doesn't help, it doesn't help evolve the situation.
You know, I, I, I find anyway, so my partner and I don't fight. Mm. We just don't fight. And when we first got together, because we came from tumultuous relationships, we were like, Are we supposed to fight? Do we, do we need to fight? Is that where the sexual charge comes from? How are we gonna stay sexually attracted to each other if we're not fighting ? But we just didn't wanna fight because we just, we love each other. We don't want to be mean to each other. So we're just nice to each other.
It doesn't mean we don't disagree. But we can disagree beautifully and, and with love. So the good news is that you don't have to fight to have sexual attraction. We're still very sexually attracted to each other. Um, but we are just nice to each other. So, yeah. You know, there's one of the things that I, with a lot of my clients, that a lot of times I, I, when I listen to them, I notice. That there's a tendency to, when things start to get charged up to continue until someone in a sense wins.
Um, and I, and I say, What if in that moment you just call time out and you actually process the feelings and you come back when that church is not longer there, so that you can actually. Listen to each other and you can share actually what's happening. And yet I think that as well, the more conscious that we are within our experience, the easier of course it will be to do that. Because one of the things that, that I usually share, I, I use a very differentiation between reaction and response.
And for me, reaction is completely automatic pilot. All of those. Parts of ourselves that we haven't held and integrated yet, and respond responses how we are wanting to respond. It's more conscious. Yeah. And as you were saying, if if it's not about my inner experience, it's not. It is not there. It is there. It's just that I'm not clinging into it. I'm not actually, it's just reacting. I'm. Okay. You're there.
I'm, I'm here with you and I'm going to listen to you and I'm going to respond without escalating the situation because escalation won't help us as, as you're saying, and, and escalation a lot of times is, is the problem because a lot of times I recognize like we all come with our baggage, we all come with our life experiences and all of our, um, processed feelings. And all of those buttons that someone can do something and sudden it's like, uh oh, they are triggering me.
Yes. And, and the more aware that we become of that through practices like I I I use meditation and, and if few other practices, but it can be whatever works for someone. To get us to that place of understanding, uh, this is how I function, this is when someone does that, this is what happens to me. And it's not about them doing that. It's about me. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Actually responding in a way that is based on something as you're saying.
Like it could be if my five year old that respond in one way and the only way to actually work with that is. Through meditation or healing, or as you were saying, in a sweat lodge and having experiences like that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, and when you think about, really the only thing that's personal is. What you do within yourself, your, your reactions, your triggers, your perceptions, your staff. That's the only thing that's personal.
When, when somebody else comes up and, and does something to you or triggers you. When someone comes up and makes it personal, I'm doing inverted comments. When they make it personal, they can't actually, it's not about you. They might come up to you and say, Brian, you are at this and you are that. And they might say horrible things about you, but they're not actually talking about you objectively. They're talking about their perception of you. Mm-hmm. , they can only know you in their mind.
That's why if we got 10 people in the room who know you and we asked them to describe you in detail, you'll get 10 slightly different versions of Brian. So which one is the real Brian? None of them. None of them can actually completely know you objectively. They can only know their perception of you. Their projection in their mind of you. So when someone comes up and does something to you personal, it's not personal. They're, they're attacking their own projection.
, they're attacking themselves, you know? And so the only thing that's personal is what you do to yourself, what you say to yourself, what you, how you perceive and project your experience of reality that's personal, you know? So I believe that's the work to do. Mm. You know, how do I talk to myself when I set myself a goal, when I wanted to live up to one of my values and I fell short when I didn't show up?
In a way that I'm happy with, and then I have to come into some place of retribution or, you know, self coaching. How am I talking to myself? What's the quality of the words that I'm using on myself? Because quite often us humans are horrible to ourselves. The words we use are abusive. To any of your listeners, next time you're standing naked in front of the mirror and you're not feeling very good about yourself, have a listen to the choice of words. What are you calling yourself?
Because that's abusive. It's self abuse. Change it. Change the quality. Now, I'm not saying that you just kind of go, well, full self acceptance, therefore I never need to improve and I, It doesn't matter how I show up. That's not what I'm saying. You can still. Have standards on yourself. You can still have your own core values. I want to be kind. I want to be compassionate, loving, generous, whatever they are, right? You can still aim to be the best version of you.
It's just that when you fall short or you trip over or you make a mistake, cuz that's what we do when that happens. Coach yourself positive. There's no excuse to be cruel. Cruelty is just simply dysfunctional. Full stop. I, I cannot think of a time when being cruel serves any functional purpose to yourself or to others. So it's just, I think it's, this self work is, it's the only thing that's really personal and that's what we should be working on. Really, you.
Yes, Yes. Like I, as you're saying that, uh, a few of my students that are there at university were working on starting to realize how to befriend our own experience and how to listen to those voices in our heads and how to actually notice the way that we are talking to our. And like I gave them some practice like going into the mirror as well, looking into their eyes and just seeing what comes up. Not, you know, like not doing anything.
Just seeing what comes up to start to notice their self-talk and to start to realize they are, that's their inner roommate. They are living with that there. How do you want to live with that? Do you want to have a good relationship? Or do you want to have that critical relationship? So it's a, it's a lot of self, self work that is needed, um, to do there. And Jim asked, as I noticed that we are starting to get towards the, the end of this episode.
I wanted to, to ask you if you would be able to share a little bit on some. Some ideas that you believe that everyone would want to have discovered, perhaps earlier if they haven't yet to be able to show up better for themselves and for others, and perhaps those are things that are in your book. Yeah. Yeah. The idea that I'd love to share, it seems simple, but it's deceptively simple. You are.
I am You. Exactly who you're supposed to be perfectly imperfect, and you are completely enough, completely enough, and a perfectly enough to be you. And you shouldn't be more like anyone else cuz you're not them. You're you, . So apparently you are supposed to be you cuz there you are , right? It's like, oh wow, I am enough to be me. I don't need to be more like that person on social media. Or I don't need to be more like that person down at the football club.
Or I don't need to be more like that person who's going out with my ex. I don't need. More like I, I'm actually completely enough. I wish I knew that when I was younger. You know that that radical self acceptance and then it goes beyond self to everything. If we could take a snapshot in time, if we could freeze frame time and look at it right now, apparently everything is exactly as it's supposed to be. How do we know? Well, reality tops us because there it is.
I love, There's an author thinker from America called Byron Katie. Everyone just calls her Katie, and she says, You can argue with reality if you want to, but reality will win only a hundred percent of the time. Right, And so, yeah, I would want the world to know that everything in this moment is exactly as it should be, including you. That doesn't mean that we don't look to improve, to evolve, to grow, to expand into the future.
It just means, oh, right now you are exactly who you're supposed to be, and you're enough and you deserve all the happiness that you can manifest. You know, you really do. That's what I'd want the world to know. Yeah. That's so beautiful and and I love as well that where we are now, not only is enough, it's perfect and there's in the next moment a new version as well of ourselves. Yeah. If we choose to, Yeah. We can stay where we are or we can go to the next version of ourselves because.
This is my understanding. Each moment we can choose. Yeah, Each moment there's an opportunity for change, whether we want to call it growth or not, that there's always a new version of ourselves if we want to choose that. It's one of the things that I remember my teacher saying so much. If you don't like what's happening now, now you can choose. Now you can choose. Now you can choose.
Now you can choose like how many of these moments do you want because it's every single nanosecond that you can choose. But, but I love that message because I think a lot of people, you know, a lot of times haven't heard that. Mm, that they are enough and all that they need to do is to be themselves.
Yeah. We, we live in a world where there's a lot of comparison and there's a lot of, as you shared before, a lot of that false comparison based on what we might see as the snapshot of someone's life, that curated social media presence. Or even as you said, like it seems that you have the perfect life where inside that's not the. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Absolutely.
Yep. Beautiful. And Jim, for everyone that is resonating with some of the things that you're sharing, what can they find more about what you're doing and what are things that they might, if they want to do and work with you? Yeah, sure. I'd love it if you, if you felt like reading my book and I can, um, recommend my book now wholeheartedly, because the feedback that I've been getting from around the world is so beautiful.
People are emailing me and thanking me for writing this book, um, because it's, they, it's helping people. So yeah, that's that. Yeah, grab the book. You can get that from Amazon or Booktopia or wherever or just off my. Gem fuller.com and on the website you can contact me, you can email me through the website. You can find out about the, the retreats that I run. We run retreats in the Himalaya and Barley and other places. I work with leaders.
All around the world now and, and especially over the last couple of years, taking everything online means that I can do that. We're forming a, a group of leaders, uh, specifically to talk about communication, conscious communication for the modern leader. If you're interested in that group, just email me or follow me on Instagram, Gem Fuller, Facebook Jam Fuller, LinkedIn, Gem, Fuller. Uh, a little bit of warning.
I have a team that managed those accounts, um, so you might be talking with someone on my team, but if you want to just reach out directly to me, just email me through the website. Beautiful. Beautiful. And we'll have those links on the show notes so that everybody can us to all of it easier.
So if you're listening to us now, whatever it is that you are, give us a comment if you resonated with something that we talked about and whatever it is and, and your platform, uh, we'd love to know what's your experience with conscious communication, conscious leadership. So there us a comment on that and. Thank you once again, Jim, for this wonderful sharing, for this conversation and for the work that you're doing because it's so needed. You're welcome.
Yeah. Thank you again for having me on, and it was a really lovely conversation. That's, That was beautiful. Thank you. Beautiful. Thank you everyone for listening as well, and we'll see you in the next episode. Bye. What did you like the most about this episode? Take a moment to think about what change you can make in your life today.
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