Things moved from friendly to a little bit more friendly.
Yeah, I remember the exact text where things went from friendly to a little bit more friendly, and I'm not ashamed to say it was me. Do you remember the article why I wrote the articllo? He was talking about the time we.
Broke up that one.
Hello, and welcome to separate bathrooms. We would like to acknowledge the Gadigor people of the urination, the traditional custodians of this land, and pay our respects to the elders, both past and present. We are Ali and cam Dado, We Droy we I stole your name.
You feel like you want to own the show today. I own the potty today. No, okay, well let's go. I just need to know while we set it up.
No, I just thought. I just thought I'd do something completely wild and crazy.
Was how good? It's just why it's a whole new thing. Whole new thing after two hundred episodes, we're doing something.
Yeah, I said we instead of I.
You claimed me.
Small bite sized pieces of sexy.
Actually you claimed me. Do you ever feel stuck?
Yes?
You so? You do get stuck in life?
Absolutely?
What do you do aside from being stuck?
I think The first thing is to acknowledge that I feel stuck. I think that's the first thing. To just go why do I feel so yucky or awful? And go, yeah, I'm feeling really stuck, and then keep asking questions why do I feel stuck? What's going on? Am I repeating something? And then what do I what would make me feel unstuck? Oh if I just went for a walk, and or if I went for a dance. Sometimes dancing really helps me feel unstuck a.
Bit of it.
It's a really good answer. Oh great, thanks?
How about you? How do you get unstuck if you're stuck?
Well, I think the first thing, yes, acknowledged, jeez, I feel stuck. And then maybe just sit in it for a while, allow myself to feel it, and go all right, is this what I want to be?
Where I want to be?
And then it usually starts with fresh air, fresh air and salt water something, but just move and just go okay, one step, another step, another step, and just do it for half an hour, whatever it is, and then see what again, staying curious to what's happening. And then it's usually when I'm coming returning to the car or walking off the beach or something. Afterwards, I've done it and
I've got nothing happened. And then if I pay attention to the last five minutes of that moment of going out and doing something, invariably the answer to whatever I'm looking for, or you know, some kind of a response or something like that happens. And so I always pay attention to the last five or ten minutes of that moment when I take myself off for.
A bit of a breather. Okay, yeah, cool.
We're in the middle of winter here in Australia. I know we've got overseas listeners there at the heat of summer. We're in the cool of winter. A lot of us turn inwards in winter. We hibernate, ruminate about our lives. So we thought it'd be a great time to chat with author daniel Collie.
Danielle is an integrative life coach, speaker, event facilitator and writer. Now for the past five years, she's been helping people who are feeling stuck, what crazy we just made that segue and feeling dissatisfied with their lives and help them to reach their full potential.
Danielle also delivers leadership workshops for well known brands that include Sony Pictures forty five, Fitness, The Leadership Institute and Transport of New South Wales. She's got a new book coming out. We can chat about that, and she's bringing in her partner Nick here. We know nothing about correct not as scaic as they say, so we're going to mind them for their story about how they navigate their relationship.
We might learn something about what they know, no doubt.
Please welcome daniel Collie and Nick Denham.
Welcome Danielle and Nick to the bathroom. How you guys, feeling good?
Good? Thank you? Excited to be here?
Nick? Are you excited to be here?
Yeah? Okay, I'm a little excited.
This is Nick's first podcast listener.
It's very exciting. Hey, we are our relationship podcast. Just bring us up to speed with who you are, each of you and how long you been together, that sort of stuff, just in a nutshell, just so we're all on the same page.
Okay, we've been together for well this time ten years, but we have history. We were friends with benefits for a while about twenty years ago, and we had a little bit of on again, off again kind of stuff, and then I went away and got married. And had a couple of kids, got a mortgage, all of that, and we stayed in touch loosely.
Yep.
And then just as my marriage was ending, my first marriage was ending, Nick sent me an email and said, would you like to come to my fortieth birthday with you? And your husband? Was the invitation? And I said, well, I will, but he won't. And that's pretty much.
Yeah, that's yeah.
Were you with someone at the time for your fortieth Have you been married before?
I have not.
Wow, you've always held a flame for Dannie out Okay, so down into the juicy stuff. So let's take us back twenty years ago you were. This was friends with benefits time.
A little bit before then, I was working in a restaurant with He was a maid of mine, which is Preston, her boyfriend, and Daniel was working in a restaurant at the same time for my girlfriend at the time was her manager. And that's how we met. Okay, Yeah, and then we kept stayed in touch. There's a few things went sideways with Preston, but I stayed in touch over the years, and things I moved from friendly to a little bit more friendly.
I remember the exact text where things went from friendly to a little bit more friendly. And I'm not ashamed to say it was me.
It was me who did it.
What did the text say?
I can't remember it because we were always very platonic and friendly and nice and it was just all above board. And I remember the day I was like.
Oh, should I do it?
Should I should I start the flirt? And I was like, I'm going to go for it, and I did. It was quite well received.
So what was that about each other that you really always remembered?
What was it?
Like? A cheekiness gives me heaps with jabs in the rigs and that hasn't changed. And so we always have a laugh. And so my best friends, I've going to hang out and given and up on the bed in an afternoon and end up having a giggle. So that hasn't changed in twenty years. So that's the thing that's persistent.
There's a real ease. There's a real ease in our relationship, even when there are tough moments like we don't we don't fight, we don't blow up. I've had a lot of really sort of volatile relationships or combative relationships whereas we can communicate really really easily with each other. And yeah, that humor that it's always always ever present humor inappropriate and you are.
Very much about play. That's something that you're a huge proponent of in life and probably in relationships. Yeah, is that what's a huge part of your relationship now?
I'd love to say yes, Allie, I really would, But we get in the grind like everybody else, you know that that Yeah, that sort of day to day with you know, kids at school and and to businesses and you know, the day to day definitely becomes quite monotonous. So I think I have a like a big air of spontaneity. I do like to get out and about and do lots of stuff on the weekend. So I'd say I do drive, variety and playe.
Do you like shiny things a bit like that too?
Things?
Yeah?
I attracted easily what that?
No?
Yeah, I do. But I also like, I feel like if I'm not doing if I'm not doing stuff, then I'm kind of wasting time, which is you know, I think a really big testament to society. Actually I'm not I know I'm not alone on that because I you know, work with people in my coaching business all the time who feel that same sort of thing like, so be able to have I think it's the it's the combo of play and of course res being able to have the downtime. Right.
I'm more of the resting type with you.
I love the rest, the quiet. Cam's the busy bet it has trouble just sitting down and doing nothing unless football's on.
Sure, well that's not sitting down and doing nothing.
That's getting internally hot.
I was thinking this morning about that great quote that Mike Tyson said.
I'd love to drill down and where that came from.
But you know, everyone has a plan until you get punched in the face, right, And then I was thinking Bob Dylan, he sings about the hard rains going to fall. We all deal with life's ups and downs. I reckon success is how you bounce back from that. You got fired, Danny l from a big job, and that's when things changed?
Is that? If I got that right?
So, how did you bounce back from tell us a little bit about that big job and Nick were you and the picture as well during that time? Okay, great, so can you can both sort of give.
You So I had been in the grinder for a while before that job came along.
What's the grinder? What do you mean.
Grinder on the treadmill? You know, I really like hammering hard to survive, always hustling, living on adrenaline and cortisol. I was a freelance writer. I was a solo mum, so Nick was on the scene, but we weren't living together and we were seeing each other every second weekend at that stage, which is all very romantic, but I was constantly sort of stressed about survival for myself and the kids. So that job offered me a sense of
stability because it was working in a magazine. It was just a few days a week, and it gave me, I thought credibility because I was I had been freelancing as a writer, and I felt like an impostor and like I was going to get found out at any moment.
So the job was like a validation.
The job was absolutely my identity had become really wrapped up in that job. So when I lost the job, I really questioned my self worth. My self esteem really felled out. The way that the firing was handled was really bad as well, because there was no communication around it. I was just told to go home. Yeah I got ghost Yeah, I go home and wait further news, And three weeks later I was still trying to find out
from people what was happening. I don't want it to be a beat up on the publication because they they went through some major changes, you know, there were changes in management. Like for whatever reason it happened, right, it was my reaction to it that has has been a point of interest for me to see what I made it mean. I made it mean that I suck so having to ago or having to get myself from the place of feeling like I had nothing to offer and
I was dispensable. It was very hard for me then to get back on the freelance kind of thing to have because it takes a lot of as you both would know, it takes a lot of energy to be putting yourself out there all the time, you know, coming up with the ideas, pitching to editors, and if you're coming from a space of self esteem deficit, it's really Yeah, it's so hard and fear exactly. Yeah, it's so hard to have the pump required. Yeah, I don't think I
did bounce back. I wouldn't say I bounced back. It was more of a like it's crawling, I'm bleeding stumps. I was still sort of pitching, feeling really bad, hoping I could get things going again, and I decided that I would take a little bit of time off to recalibrate. And that's when I got a call from my dad and my dad actually had cancer and he had been given only months to live. So I decided to use my hiatus to go and spend some time with him
and see, if you know, I had an epiphany. I had this idea actually to create a well being hub, like to repatriate all of my old health and wellbeing articles because I wrote so much in that space health wellbeing, relationships. Dad done hours of research with you know, so many different experts. So I thought, if I take all of that information and create some kind of hub to help people who were feeling like me to feel better, right, And I didn't have any real like structure or idea
around it. I just thought I could. This is something that I could do. So I thought that while I was with my dad in New Zealand, I would I'd build this you know, new platform. And it didn't happen. I didn't, Yeah, it didn't happen. I realized while I was there. I needed to just be there, and Dad sort of died within a month of me being there.
I packed the kids up, we went to his little remote place in the Bay of Islands, and I was fortunate enough to be able to walk him through that experience and be with him by his side, and that like, that's when I really that's when I really plunged. After that sort of that experience of profound beauty but also deep grief. I really, yeah, I was pretty I was pretty lost, wasn't obey. I spent a bit of time crying on the couch a few months, I would.
Say, I mean, that's that's a huge double whammy. And as you said, you know, your identity has just been stripped. You've lost a job, and now to lose a parent, you know, and such a I mean, that's a month is not long. No, when you look back on that time, now, do you see it as it had to happen in that way for you to be who you are?
One hundred percent. I even think that the entire journey because my father and I had a complicated relationship. He wasn't around in my youth. He lived on a yacht and started around the world, which is a great adventure for a man. But that was in the era before mobile phones and technology, you know. So he was gone for a lot of my childhood, and we became good
friends in my twenties. So he was never a parental influence so much as a man who I always loved, and he was on the periphery of my life, and then he became a very strong support, you know, in my twenties and throughout my life it just got stronger.
Our friendship got a lot stronger. So for me, it was like recognizing that the entire journey that we'd had together when he wasn't there my childhood, that formed a lot of beliefs that I had about myself and all of those different things, you know, because there's been a series of terrible choices in boyfriends and self esteem issues and eating disorders and all of that sort of stuff that's all sort of so tightly wrapped up with those
sort of parental relationships and things like that. So for me, I realized that every step of our life together was I call it a sacred contract. I think that Dad had to be that guy so that I could become this woman.
Yeah, yeah, beautiful, Wow, and Nick where you've watched your I guess girlfriend at the time marriede. It like just fall into the pit. How were you with all that?
It's hard because we're sitting on that. We're basically sitting on the sideline, and you can Daniel would share with me or in the thoughts you can see the story going on in ahead. But i'd seen her from when we first started seeing each other again, taking a mummy blog and a food blog, and then turning it in, monetizing it, and then transforming it into when she transformed into becoming like a freelance writer, and then transforming once
again into the life coach she is now. So for me, it was a typical guy trying to fix things, you know, So that's not what it is. This is what it is. But sitting on the sideline and just trying to go have a look. Look, here's what you've done. You have done all these great things. These are all wins. But you've got to try. And if you can't look at it as a win at the moment, it's going to be very hard for you to move into the next
stage of your life. But you have to go through that in the grief process and then also look at your identity again and try and figure out who you are, but who what do you want to do? Because what you do isn't who you are. They're two different things and we often get those confused together.
Did you know that twenty years ago? Or is this something that you've learned along the way subsequent.
This only happened in the last ten years.
So we've been together for ten years, just saying yeah, so I've done learning about stuffing things up many times myself and then going, well, you know, you get to pick up your bat and ball and keep going.
So and also I don't know, looking at it from trying to be pragmatic about it, it's not always the easiest way to look at things. But when you're on the outside looking in, it's easy to see all that individual components that you can consider wins in your life. But when you're in it yourself, and I know that feeling of the depth of despair, it's very hard to
see out. You just feel like you're sinking. So I was just trying to be like a life raft on the side and just you know, and just be there for her.
Well, you guys should do a podcast called The Life coach and the life raft. I love that.
But just even just hearing you say, like you just being the life raft, that's exactly He's never said that before, not using that word, but it's actually it's making me. It's given me the feels because he was exactly that. Like there were many many times I felt like I was kind of clinging. I was lost at sea, I was clinging, and you were just so rock steady, always so rock steady.
Realization is that you can't make people change the way they feel. They've got to work through its patients not one of my virtues, but with Daniel, I have patients and a ton of empathy. Apparently, Daniel, you.
Talk a lot about the hustle culture, and the two of you we were talking off there before, have made a sea change out of Sydney. How has your life changed away from the idea of the hustle culture now that you aren't understood it so much.
It's interesting because hustle culture is part sort of where you are, but it's also an intrinsic thing. So when I first moved to the beach, to the under the mountain, I was anticipating this sort of epiphany to just occur, and I remember going for a coffee with a friend and I said, it's still the same. You know, I'm still as soon as the kids are out the door, I sit down at my desk. I'm working all day.
They come home and doing the run around and in the dinner time, then I sit down and work some more. And she said, you know, the proximity, like where you live isn't going to be the thing, Like nothing changes if you don't make changes. And she I know, she said, is it's sacred land where we live. It's between two song lines and it's magnificent. And she said, you know, you need to slow down and let the land tell you how you need to live here. But you've got
to be quiet enough to listen. And I have heeded that, and I've tried really hard to unwind and unravel all of that programming of the doing. And I have to be productive, and I have to be kicking goals, and I have to have all the ambition and I have to be striving for those. And I think that ambition and goals and achievement there are awesome things, and they're really important for a human to have that direction and that sense of satisfaction. It's the energy with which you
do it. So trying to unravel my intrinsic urge to be on the go all the time and pushing and trying and struggling and all of that to being able to go with a sense of ease and fun and play and curiosity like let's let's try this. I wonder what happens as opposed to like grouping on with your fingernails and like you know, white knuckling it through through the good stuff. You miss it because you're just constantly looking at the next thing.
Where do expectations fit in the hustle culture and stress?
Do you think for both of you.
Expectations from internal exity.
Having expectations of all the doing For me anyway, that's way more stress. It's work better for me to take away just do because I want to do it and have an intent to do something and lose the expectation of how it's supposed to be perceived or look or what rewards.
Control. You're talking about it. So if you don't get the outcome you've set your heart on, then you're not in control of it. Is really more.
Success and the failure that acceptance.
Yes, it's the judgment of whether something has worked or it hasn't worked. I took up painting in COVID and I anticipated being awesome at it, and sad to say, I was not. And I found myself in the process of it being really set on the outcome, and when it wasn't that, because the mercy middle in the creative process is always a bit hideous and hard to get through.
When it wasn't that, I was hard on myself. I judged myself and I wanted to quit, and I went into the There's a Facebook group where the mentor, Tracy Vijugo, where she you can communicate with her. She's since become a friend. She's amazing. I asked her, captain, my captain, how do you enjoy the process, because right now it's not fun. This is I'm supposed to be doing this for play and it just feels hard and I'm just
judging everything that I do. And she said, I encourage people to approach it with a sense of curiosity, like I wonder what happens if I try this. I wonder what to happen if I put this here. I wonder what to happen if I do that? And I realized, Cam's that's the expectation, right, if we if we change the way we look at things and approach it from this. I wonder, you know, this sense of curiosity. I wonder what happen if I do that, if I throw myself
into this, I wonder how it'll go. I have. It's good to have a sense of the outcome that you're moving towards. Otherwise you're kind of like flailing around, right, so you have a sense of where you're going. But I think being able to sort of release the grip on what you think it should be, because sometimes where you end up is actually much better than where you thought you were going.
Well, and you don't know where you're going, So the curiosity is a huge piece of the puzzle.
Every's going to plan to you punch in the face, all goes out the window.
I'm constantly remembering and forgetting, and then we're forgetting this this this thing that I that I think I'm genius every time I remember it again.
Is that?
Is it like painting or like when I learned something new, I'm exactly the same. I'm like, I'm going to be so good when I when I sing or a paint or do pottery, and then you know, I talked to the to the teacher, the coach and say, yeah, I've been doing it since I was twelve years old, and I'm like fifty four thinking I'm going to be like you. And it's like, Ali, please take the expectation you have to if you want to put in the work and put in years, you might actually get to where she's at.
But it's like taking that, as you were saying, the pressure, the experience of what I think it's going to be, just to be able to go, I'm going to start something new and I'm going to be really crap at it a first, And how cool is that?
Yeah, that's totally fine. Okay, we're sucking at something. I suck at.
It for a long time until I might actually get better, who knows, and I forget it all the time.
Yeah.
And I remember.
You talked before about relaxing and how you're a master of relaxing master.
I think I think relaxing is completely under rented.
Yeah.
Yeah, yeah, it's important because to.
Set yourself up for it. You know. I found like, now we've got a dog and we can go to the beach and it's I found if I take my watch off and chuck my phone in the car with the watch, then I'm now I'm completely unconnect disconnected from the world and time, and it can only be in the moment. I can't communicate with anyone else other than the people on the beach. And I found that's a
good way. Otherwise, like, oh, you get an email thinking about work, it's like the sun and the escarpment and the dog, and it's more important to take that time out and if you can't, then remove those distractions.
Danielle, this the hustle culture and the grind. You're asking the question, is it really worth it to do the hustle and the grind? Is it time that we take a different approach to it?
I think like the problem can be that when I say to people, you know, getting out of the hustle and grind, the flip side of the coin is doing nothing or just chilling or watching, you know, binge watching, or you know, like losing any of that sort of momentum or ambition. But I think that it's, as I said before, the energy with which you do stuff, so hustle and grind is that constant driving force success at all? Costs. It doesn't matter that I'm exhausted or tired. I'm not
listening to my body. I'm not paying attention to the red flags that i've you know, being waived because emotionally, physically, mentally, I'm under pressure, right And it's okay to have times. We have times where you're like, okay, I'm under the pump. I really need to knuckle down and get things done. But it's when we've got that sort of prolonged push for a really long time that the wheels start to
fall off. So I think it's, you know, to the antidote to the hustle and grind is to have your ambition, know where you're going, and be able to do it with a sense of ease. It's the striving and the pushing and the hustling that's the problem, not the doing. So what that means in actuality is in your busy day, have moments of peace. I mean you said before Ali, it's just nice to sit there and do nothing, sit there in daydream and you don't have to do it for an hour. You can do it for five minutes,
ten minutes. Bring your nervous system back to sort of a baseline. After each little burst of energy and allow yourself more space in the days, because we're just constantly cramming more and more doing into our days, and then our downtime is cramming more and more information into our faces because we've got that social device in our hands. Yeah, which I love. I love my phone. I'm not going
to blaspheme the phone. But it's it's knowing that we can set ourselves up for holistic success, whole life success with just a few simple tweaks on what we're already doing, which is just stop cramming so much in all the time.
Is that in your book? Do you tell us how to have the Chocolate Bar life?
I do, Yes, I do, you know, So it's all about it's all about the balance of work, rest and play. So the Chocolate Bar life is is a play on the Mars Bar.
Tell them about eight hundreds ha ha ha.
I saw that on I know. I met with Mars recently because because of the Chocolate Bar life, I'm talking about this Mars Bar philosophy that I have and I met with Mars recently.
And you a person like mister Wonka.
So it's a family. Yes, they're going into their fifth generation of the Mars family. It is still a family run business. It is now down there. I think there was three kids and now it's down to the two of them. They sent me. I asked, you know, how about a bit of merch for my book launchers that are coming up, and I was thinking, you know, a couple one hundred eight hundred Mars bars landed and I
got usually have seen the kids very excited faces. But then, hilariously, a couple of weeks ago, I was doing a keynote at the PK and Women in Packaging Awards and I was talking to to the VP actually of Ankor, who have done the new packaging for Mars write the new recycled paper packaging. Oh yeah, And he noted that in my keynote the image that I had just ripped from the Internet was the old packaging plastic wrapper and he mentioned it to me. So I sent him a cheeky
message saying, hey, I'll do you a deal. Shoot me over an updated picture with the new packaging and I'll send you a book. And he thought, I said send me product. So he's sent me more Mars bars and more snickers. So now like if this gig doesn't. If this gig doesn't work out for me, I'm just going to open up a chocolate shop. Yeah, totally.
You also wrote an article called the bucket list that saved my relationship.
Oh gosh, you did go back through the archives.
Yes, now, can you tell us how that came out? And I also want to hear from you Nick about this. Did you contribute to that article?
I contributed, probably to the bucket list?
Yeah, supplied the bucket.
I'm quite happy to do the same thing over and over again. I like routine and the process. Daniel left after we've done it twice in a row. So I'm absolutely bored with this. My life sucks and we've got to do something else.
Nice balance you too.
Yeah, it was like, okay, we'll get a list and write it all down all the things we can do so we never have to think about it on a weekend because it's like dinner time.
You remember the article? Why I wrote the article?
Though?
He was talking about the time we broke.
Up one that's another bucket.
That's how the bucket list first came about, do you remember. So we were together for eight months maybe, and then we split for a little while. I was bored. I mean, there was a lot more to it. I was also going through a really messy breakup. Not a super messy breakup, but it was I felt messy internally separating their home and their kids and all that sort of stuff. I broke up with Nick. And then maybe twelve weeks or something later, maybe a bit less, he says it six weeks.
I think it was a few more, but.
I said it involved these I say again, so let me just get this straight. Second, you were having you broke up with Nick, but you're also dealing with the breakup prior to that you did, do you know you're dealing with two breakups?
Well, kind of like with my ex, my first partner and I my first husband and I we had been separated for you know, eight or nine months, but there's still like it's protracted that kids, Yeah, it's protracted, and you know, the house and getting the new routine, and then there's like dealing with that other person, Like that's a whole that's a whole thing, right, that's that is a whole energy onto its own, and so trying to sort of navigate that and keep my kids happy and healthy,
paying a mortgage while a freelancer that I had a bit of stress going on. So there was that, and there was trying to like navigate a new relationship. And I mean I think emotionally I probably wasn't ready. I did go from one to the other like really quickly, so I think, yeah, probably wasn't quite in a great emotional position to commit.
Now you've broken up with Nick, Yeah, eight weeks.
Later, yeah, eight weeks later. Well, I had bought the kids this big, cubby house on gum Tree because I was broke. It was Christmas and the guy said, have you got a car big enough to pick it up? And I was like how big can it be? I've got a station wagon and he was like no, no, I'll bring it over in my ute. So he like he dismantled this thing over seriously serious, true floors. It had climbing thing, climbing net and like a yeah. It was an epic And when I got there, I was like,
oh shit, like I can't do this. This is not a solo person job. And I didn't have anyone to ask, so I was like, oh, favor, do you think you could come over and help, you know, while the kids are away, we'll get it up a couple of days before Christmas, and he came in here as he was digging those holes, because that's what it required.
With the picks going in there, He's grunting.
And every time as you just went, oh what am I doing?
Do you know? Pretty much, except it wasn't quite It wasn't as like a pheromone driven things of course, slamming it down quick. No, it was more look at the lengths that this guy will go to, look at look at his commitment, because those holes really they really did require big, big holes to be dug. And yeah, I just it was that again, that sort of steadiness in him. So we got back together after the thing. But I decide,
I said, I'm bored. We're like this married couple, so early in our relationship, we're doing the same things we can on the weekend. We're gonna do this, we're gonna do that, We're gonna do this. It is boring. Let's create some variety and ride a bucket list of things to do, right, And it's not necessarily you know, a bucket list of things to do before you die, but things to do before I die of boredom because we
do the same shit every weekend. So we created two lists, one which was like a family list, one we can do with the kids, and one we could do with each other. And it wasn't you know, some of it was expensive, right, go hot air ballooning, but some of it was like, explore different beaches that we haven't been to within an x radius. You know, it's just getting out of the hun drum, you know, exploring new things. But the brain loves my brain, my little ADHD brain
loves variety. So for us, it was being able to have this sort of collection of things that we could just dip our hand into and be like, what are we doing this weekend? Right, Okay, let's get let's get amongst it. So yeah, that that definitely saved our relationship. I will have to admit, I think we're getting it. We've become a little bit complacent again. But also we're ten years older and I don't mind a bucket list.
Yeah, the bigger house.
I actually really really love that idea, Like we've been married for thirty four together for thirty four years.
And that's such a huge thing like that it is. Yeah, you guys are like the poster.
Straight. It's a great idea. So it'll be a bucket list to play.
Golf kind of this is going to be a great bucket list. Yeah, yeah, but I love the idea, like you could have your, yeah, your fantasy bucket list, which is like travel Europe or like you said, let's go visit other beaches, let's go have Lebanese food, you know, down the coast somewhere. I mean, just stuff that.
Like, yeah, I love what you said that our brains love new things.
And friends of mine did they swam in every ocean pool in New South Wales.
They did that. That's a great thing to do.
They drove down south and they go and hit they go back to all the places and they just went where are all the ocean pools? Took photographs of all the ocean pools in New South Wales. And because we have their heaps of.
So many, there's five just where we are right one of them.
Nick, can you recall I know this is sort of a big question, but can you recall a specific moment or experience in your relationship with Danielle that really strengthened your bond or changed like the course of your marriage. Was there one experience that you remember.
So it's a rolling series of things like it was obviously with getting back together than meeting the kids. So that's a moment. But then to New Zealand and was there when Richard Daniel was nursing and he passed away, and being there in just critical moments. Obviously getting married in New York was fun.
Oh that's a good story.
I was working in New York at the time, on and off. So this last stint was like four weeks, and I've been doing it for six months. Ago over two weeks, come back for two weeks, and then it was getting really tiresome, and I said to my bosses today, can I I'm going for four weeks. The family's getting a bit upset with this, so I want to bring Danielle over. Can the company stump up for some so
for accommodation. So they paid the accommodation and gave us like two hundred fifty dollars a day stipe end, which Danielle spent all of it. And I was a work and she's just tripping around Manhattan about because.
But we were at a bar in it somewhere in missus Palmer's in Sydney and marriage hadn't really been on the cards for us. We've been together for probably four years, maybe five, and Nick just said, out of the blue. The New York trip was planning, and Nick said, out of the blue, wouldn't it be cool if we eloped in Central Park? And I was like, yeah, it would be she would be Yeah, it would be super cool.
And I said, don't think that that is a proposal, buddy, Like that is not That is not going to cut it. And he proposed the next day on the beach and that was rad. That was so fun. You get a fancy dress, organize a photographer, get the kids all frocked up, and then send photos back to our family, going.
So fru Did you take the kids to New York?
On?
Which beach were you? When?
Was raand Game? Actually sailing club?
Yeah?
Yeah, I know exactly where that is. Yeah, and then and then Elope in New York. It's so fun.
Is my mum's sagrin?
Did you do something he's never forgiven us?
I guess we did? We have another ceremony? And where was it?
Guy Mere at the Yeah Gallery?
Yeah?
Nice?
When did you know that you wanted to that Danielle was the one for you that you wanted to pop the question.
It's not something over that. They've really crossed my mind at popping the quest and always I wanted to be with her.
Yeah, but there was she didn't see himself as the marrying kind.
No, no, no no.
But Daniel had sort of dropped it in conversation. It's been like three four years, you know, and it's like she's talking about marriage. So I was, and then they came up and I was like, oh, this is a great opportunity. I can really get some brandie points here. So New York women take advantage of it, right. So the photos we have from the photographer incredible. Yeah, the park amazing. And then we went to Nobu for dinner after he was there. Yeah, it was on fifty seventh Street,
which they called Billionaires the high rises. Then felt financially violated.
After that, that was the honeymoon money spent.
We had two minutes.
I got one little piece of that meso.
Yeah, the food was great, and then we stopped back in Hawaii for like ten the nights in Kawaii the honeymoon, so we had.
Our honeymoon was unfortunately and natural disaster that happened two days after we got there, and we were the quest to our hotel for three or four days, couldn't leave.
It was.
Yeah, these days we'd be like, no, four days. How was the transition to becoming a step dad for you?
It hasn't been without a challenges. Sure, Yeah, I come from a split family and under stepdad my whole life as well. And so I look back at and just the way he had just got a shoulder some of the responsibility and try just do your best to be a stable like for me, like being a rock, you know, a life raft. Yeah, like that for Danielle. But yeah, well straightened, not straight and narrow, but like this is
wrong and this is right, you know. And sometimes my what I've seen is when you call it straight and narrow road, the path to walk is somewhat a bit too straight and narrow.
Sometimes when parenting styles differ, yeah, they do. Yeah, And I think it's it's doubly hard for Nick as well, because our parenting styles differ. And they're my kids, yes, so I don't It's not like I would ever pull rank and be like, well, they're my.
Kids, you need to say that.
Yeah, it's just kind of there. There is always just is knowing, even with the kids. It's and that in itself is a problem. You know, sometimes I'm not I don't back Nick enough, and the kids know that. Sometimes Nick I think is not as flexible, probably flexible or maybe even as like warm as he would be if they were his biological kids, even though he's been with them since they were two and four.
Understandable, there is a.
Different dynamic there, really is. So it is a it is a sort of constant conversation and negotiation. But we're all good at we're all good at communicating, I think.
Yet, So that's what What are some strategies there for communicating for one with the kids and also for you two as in a relationship.
The strategy really is it's just open and if we need to, like say, call the time and get everyone to sit down and make a point at the dinner table, for instance, we can do those. We don't have to do that often. Daniel and very open communicators, so evens I love it. Just wake up first thing in the morning, out we're talking about parenting. Yes, let me wake up first.
I haven't had a coffee.
Yeah, but I don't think we sit like have a strategic session and how we're going to parent kids. This way, the kids are happy and doing well at school. You know, no one's breaking the law yet, so you know, we don't have any real major struggles, I think in terms of that other than do the washing picture of washing in the washing basketfold you're washing that the normal stuff that everyone has an issue with, and then getting the assass and the talk back.
Yeah.
Every now and then we'll have a flurry, so we'll butt heads as a family over something multiple times, and then Nick will be like, what we're doing isn't working. Let's do whatever, like a parenting course, let's read this book whatever, and yeah, and we'll we'll start something, learn one thing from it, try for a minute, get distracted, go back to our old ways, and then yeah, yeah, yeah. But every now and then we're like, right, we're gonna
we're going to change up how we're doing things. Ultimately, I think we're doing okay, right that the kids are doing good. We're doing good. Nobody's too wayward. It would be good if they could put their socks and stuff away, though, like they just.
The biological kids for both of us, and they still don't put their socks away. So that's that's certainly, that's the universal.
System on the bed.
For some reason, the cat loves to pee on the wet towels on the floor. So I'm like, this is this is what happens kids. If you leave your wet towel on the floor, the cat peas on it.
They need to learn along the way, you know.
And we've had many a couple with who you know, one or the others become a step parent, and not a single one is said smooth silk, not a single one. It's all been a work in progress, really hard at
the start. Good now, but like sore therapist did that, did a psychogy, I mean, like every single one, right, It's always been like yeah, it's been tricky at times, and I think from what you were saying, you know, just finding that balance of particularly with the rules and the parenting, it's it's a fine line to walk.
It's that thing where on Instagram everything looks flashy and fabulous, and that's what we want to look at, you know, we don't really want to look at the gritty stuff. But it's good to know that we're all going, we're all navigating difficulty. It's challenging and it's sometimes really hard, so.
Hard your kids it's not just us.
We do a two minute shower. We'll ask you to keep your answers short.
Sure, and it's been raining a lot where we're not in to so much water conservation. We have a lot of it. His first question, what about your relationship makes you feel the most grateful?
Daniel's very caring and nurturing, and I know that actually always got my back.
I would say humor, and he listens and tries like I want to expand on that, but it's a short answer only you know, like I know that it sounds really bad, but like when I when I he tries so hard when I say something to you, we communicate and I'm like, this is this is how I'm feeling, this is what's happening. He listens, and then he tries to not make me feel that. Yeah, I like that.
What the world needs more of is well listening.
Yeah, I was gonna say that, and probably empathy. I'm coming from a point of lack of.
So, yeah, what does your perfect day look like?
That's easy. Get up, go to the beach with the dog, come back, workout, chill in the pool, do some work, you know, barbecue preferably steak, and then bed.
He's a simple man. He's a simpful man.
Nice to keep things simple.
Yeah, I'm like so for me, the days that I think it's a perfect day is when I've had all of the different things satisfied. So I will have like a sleep in, which is like seven o'clock sleep in, walk at the beach, maybe a pastry on the beach, then go and do something like go for a hike, come and do some art, then spend some time with some friends, and bed by nine o'clock. Like, oh, that's so good, so old.
Like our last question, one word to describe each other?
Fun, one word.
I've got so many going through my brain. Reliable.
Yeah that's awesome.
What's your one word? What would you what? What? This is a good one. That's one where you would used to just gobe each other.
Yeah, no one's ever turned the table on us.
Sorry about that, guys, dry, I couldn't see that.
I was like, actually I felt the same thing.
Mind nice, that's a good one.
I really related when you were saying about nick about about trying hard.
And it's not the right thing to try hard to.
Yeah, he's really like the same thing. He listens and then he really wants to. He really loves to make me happy. So I don't know what that word is, but I was thinking conscientious. But that's but yeah, you like to.
Like, we have a dog called Curly who who is just he tries really hard.
He's he just tries hard.
To be a good dog and he just messes up.
He'll nip someone's heel on a wall, like.
Because anxiety gets the better and.
We're all gonna die and Curly will die, but on stone it will be like, good boy, Curl, you tried really hard. I do feel a bit.
Like, have you just written your own epitaphed really hard?
You've written your own book, Daniel Collie The Chocolate Bar Life.
It's out now in stores. Y.
Yes, it's chopped full of goodness, How to live, How to live a Chocolate Bar Life.
I think it's awesome, sweet, fantastic. Thank you for being with us in Daniel and Nick.
How great was that?
We've just been left with a bunch of the Mars bars that that Danielle was given And there's a little tag on the end with a QR code. I'm like, what's the QR code? So the QR code takes us to her website, and there's actually a program you can do related to the chocolate bar life, so how you can live the chocolate bar life. So you can actually get on board and not only read the book, but do an actual program to help you lead that kind of a life as well.
And we get to enjoy a chocolate bar on my mouth. Lost.
No, I was thinking how much I wanted a Mars bar when we were talking about them, And I.
Imagine our listeners sitting there right now again, bloody baggery, I'm pulling over.
Three Mars bars.
In the new recycle, the new packaging. That's right, Well, that was really really lovely. Nick nick, nick, I know so much wisdom. So still, yes, come salt the earth, as they say.
Kept it simple. I love that he set up. I leave my watch and my phone in the car and go head down to the beach.
Yes with the dog school old school man.
It's so shouldn't be old school, but it is, unfortunately.
Yeah, but just uncontactable the way you used to be on an aeroplane. Yeah you're not. Yeah, that's right, you know, it's it's just it's just.
Lovely to give yourself that piece and time. The other thing, I really liked what Daniel was talking about was asking that question. I wonder, I being curious about I wonder what woul happened if we do this, I wonder what would you know and be open to that scenario rather than just follow the same old, same old.
And I love that that's just a little It's just like a little tool that's so easy to do.
Yes, you know.
I mean, we're not changing the world and our lives and giving up everything. It's like just adding one little question in here or a little change there. It's just those bite sized steps that can actually get you out of that grind.
Bite size chocolate watering. Right, we better go byite side.
Thanks for listening everyone. I hope you enjoy and make sure you check out the Chocolate Bar Live