I get atif cook, I'll get a cray Harper.
Hey, welcome to Welcome to my show, and me, welcome to your show. We didn't talk about this being a co share, but fuck it, I'm making a corporate decision.
Fabulous.
I like it.
It might remind me. You'll forget this and the listeners will want to know. But I need to tell you something. When we get off air about about work stuff.
Remind me, so your listeners remind me because I'll forget.
Can you remind me to remind you? You know? When people say to me, can you remind me? I'm like, fucking no, I'm sixty. My head is full of shit and I'm trying to fucking I'm trying to finish a PhD. And I'm trying to remember stuff. It's like I feel, I feel I'm near my kind of cognitive threshold with some stuff.
What if you do? What is your thing for retaining information? How do you figure that out?
Well? It depends in what realm. Like if it's with names and stuff, I just if I know another person with the same name, then I just associate, like I bring that person's face to mine so I remember with with with dry academic jargon. I struggle, so I try to make it interesting. But there's there's a theory that Okay, so well, this is my theory. And my theory is that if I hear it and then I write it down, and then as long as it's something that's not overly complicated.
But if I hear it, then I write it down. The more you write, the more you're likely to remember. So we know that I forget what the number is, but it's pretty significant percentage. So if you go to a workshop and just listen versus go to a workshop and listen and write down, the chances of you retaining and then applying and then getting benefit from the application are exponentially greater versus sitting in a room like I can I say this. I'm going to give him a
shout out. David from Queensland Rail. I'm going Queensland next week to do a gig, right, And so I did a gig for them two years ago for two hours, right, And we sat yesterday, we're on the call and we're talking about what I'm going to talk about next week and talking about content and he said, okay, so these are the things that you covered last time. Because last time I sent him a bit of checklist of what I was going to cover. Fuck, now that's distracting.
I'll just get him just turning my electric blanket on.
Oh god, she's playing. She's playing with a cat. Everybody on the cats just here anyway, anyway, so old mate. Anyway, We're talking about what I spoke about two years ago for two hours, and he's like, which I understand, is like, look, half the audience will be new, but we don't want you to cover the same content. And I'm like, while I understand that, of course I won't. But what's hilarious is two years ago they heard me talk for two hours.
I'm like, I could almost guarantee you that all of them forgot all of what I said, So, you know, but that's just about you know. I try to when I'm teaching stuff to make it memorable. I try to story a fia it turn it into a story because people remember stories because stories create emotional connection. Humor creates
emotional connection. But just fucking information unless that really relates to you strongly, right then generally it doesn't have the same emotional, psychological, or physiological impact because emotion lives in the body right. But when I say, which I won't do again today for the millions time. But if I talk about the data and the science and the research around childhood obesity versus tell a story about my obese childhood, it has a very different impact.
Yeah.
But from back to your question, from our learning, I need to listen to it. I need to write it down. I need to record it sometimes in my phone, and then I play it in the car. And then as soon as I can, I teach it. Yes, as soon as I can I teach it, I share it. So there was a term I heard recently which I really loved. So this is an example because I'm a bit of a slow learner, but once I learn it, it's kind of locked in. Like I struggled to learn functional anatomy.
But now twenty five years after my degree, I pretty much remember all of it. Once I learn it, I retain it. But learning it is not that quick. But I remember reading a thing about a month ago around this idea that we most of us automatically think that other people think like us. So they my intention will be their experience. They'll understand what I am saying because I understand what I am saying right. So that phenomena in psychology is called the false consensus effect, right, And
I'm like, oh, I fucking love that. I love that because that's so relevant for my work. That's so relevant for my research. But for about three weeks I kept forgetting the term and then the moment that I started talking about it as a component of self awareness, communication rapport, you know, like into personal stuff. And now I remember it, you know, and if you ask me in ten years, I'll still remember it. But for me, it's like when I hear, for example, a new term like that, and
you go, that's an interesting term. It's kind of explains in one term a whole bunch of stuff, and it's relevant to my work. Yeah, that's my process. What about you? Do you have a specific learning process or is it a bit rando?
I feel like.
I'm almost the opposite to you in that I'm a really quick learner but a terrible retainer, right, and um, so being really interested.
A really good point. Actually, use it's really about retention.
Yeah, isn't it? Retention and recall.
It's almost like I feel like my head is a teenager's messy bedroom and there's a lot of really cool shit in there, but good luck digging it out when you need it.
Such a nice analogy.
It's not nice one. It's your head though.
Mamma did always tell me to clean my room. Yeah, I did not have better retention.
Yeah, but it's true, though, isn't. It's trying to it's trying to shuffle through the fucking filing cabinets in your head. It is like most of it, most of it is in there. But I also think that, you know, we've spoken about this a little bit before, Like, so right now, as we record this, it's eleven thirty nine. I know that my brain, my cognition, my clarity, my fucking articulation of things is better now than if we did this
tonight at six thirty nine. Yeah, you know, if we did this tonight at six thirty nine, not eleven thirty nine, am, people would not not that this is the high watermark for a podcast what we're doing now. But it would be dogshit if we recorded it in seven hours, because I would have already been up and working for thirteen hours. You would have been doing the same. Yeah. So I think understanding how you work is important, and what time of day and in what you know, like also down
to how do I best? I'll shut up after this, I realize I'm over talking. There's my self awareness moment. But you know when you go like, I'm good in twenty minute chunks. Yeah, unless it's something that I'm passionate about, then I'm all in. But if it's actual research where I've got to read papers twenty minutes and then get up fucking and walk around the block, come back to another twenty minutes, do some push ups, do some squats, I can do some jazz or size touch of toes
twenty minutes. You know, I've got to I've got to work to my I reckon, I'm a little bit. I'm not you, adhd, but I'm a little bit. I'm a little bit. Probably ah i am, I am if I'm not into it. Fuck, I find it hard to concentrate.
Yeah, and finding out that you know that level of engagement that's needed to get you to focus and retain because it's really easy for me. I learned pretty quickly that in a classroom's good for me. Online is not a great method of learning because I'm impatient and I'm enthusiastic, but I'm impatient. I'm impatient at just digesting information for the sake of it watching a live video. If I miss a live video or workshop, the experience of watching it back is which is weird, right, because.
It's the same thing.
But when you know that what's happening is live and your interactions are also seen on the other side, there's.
A different there's I don't know, it's very different for me.
Wow, there's interaction. I mean one there is interaction. One there's no interaction. And also I think like I used to teach exercise programming at UNI, So I used to teach first and second year students exercise programming and half of what would be an a lecture theater, which was
fucking horrible. So you know, you're talking about flex and extension, internal external rotation and which is you know, functional anatomy to a point, and then you're talking about like the theory of weight training, which is you know, But then when I'd get them into the gym, it was a whole different an experience where I'd have humans and bodies and joints and muscles and movement and planes of movement and fucking overload and like eyes wide open and energy
and it's different and like trying to teach something which is a practical thing in a theoretical way. I hate it. I hate it. I'm an experiential learner. It's like, you know, I'm only moderately good at business because I owned businesses, and I've owned businesses for nearly forty years. Right, that's and I just because I fucked up, made money, lost money, got things right, got things wrong, employed good people and not so good people, hired fired, dealt with lawyers, dealt
with counsel, dealt with landlords. You know. It's like figured out marketing, figured out branding. You know, Like that's how I got good at business by doing business. You know.
Yeah, it's such an important thing to highlight and understand about yourself losing it. Like how much I have beaten myself up over time about my inability to learn a certain way or retain things. You know. One of my biggest things that challenged me was not retaining stats and data and science and decause I wanted to tell people
and teach people things. But the stuff, the depth of things that interested me that I was fascinated by, the ability to retain that and recall it accurately was just wasn't there, and it can lead to people really like inhibiting potential because you choose not to do things, you choose not to I'm not a business person. I'm not good at that. I couldn't do that. I couldn't teach people. I couldn't you know, I couldn't go for that job. And then we forget about all the things that make us great.
And also, I think, you know, because understandably this is a slight on education or the system or teachers. I love teachers, They're amazing, but not everyone fits ideally into the same kind of model of education, you know. And I look back now and I think, ah, I you know, I wasn't full of full blown ADHD or you know, but I I for me, the traditional model of learning wasn't optimal. You know, it wasn't terrible, but it wasn't.
But for some of my mates, it was terrible, Like it was completely Yet you would put those same because I went to an all boys school, so that's why I say mates. But then you'd put some of those guys in a different environment with different required skills or aptitude, and they were fucking amazing. And I was the biggest dumb ass of all time, you know, and I think this, you know, this speaks to the spectrum of what is intelligence,
And sadly, in our culture, we think intelligence is IQ. Well, I know some people with high IQs who are fucking idiots, you know, Like, you know, do they have a lot of data stored in their head? Yeah? Can they catch a ball? No? Can they change a tire? No? Do they know how to have a meaningful conversation? Can they be instinctive and intuitive and in the moment and read the room and read? No? No, some of them are terrorit.
They're good people, but they admit that. Like now, like I often say to me one of my friends who's real smart, and he may or may not have been on this show, and his name might be doctor Alex Kaofeman, Like I love him and he's obviously a genius. But Alex always says to me, how the fuck you just get in front of a room and just like with no notes, no plan, and you're not stressed, and you just start and you keep talking and it's and that's a different And I'm not saying I'm a genius, because
I'm not. But there's a few things I'm good at and that's one of them. But you know, as soon as Alex starts unpacking the fucking the brain on a medical level, my eyes roll back in my head and I'm like the Sarah, what the prefrontal? What the fuck?
You know?
And I only understand the brain reasonably well now because I've tirelessly studied it. But it's not my natural kind of habitat. It's not my natural operating system to learn that way.
Yeah, it's interesting.
I did an episode with two guests recently, and I found a challenge. Sometimes having two guests on a show is a bit clunky and challenging. I find it very different because, you know, managing people on Mike's talking over each other, one of them completely blind, so they have no visual input as to who's speaking and about to speak and what's going on.
And that was running through my mind.
And I've been a bit crook lately, so I've felt a bit under the weather and a bit cognitively delayed. And there were a huge inner critic in my head just throughout this whole conversation.
I was like, you are shit it this this is terrible.
But in the middle of analyzing that whole experience, I was like, that's like, that's it's a real skill set. This is improv this Like I did improv workshop a couple of years ago just for fun. I was like, that's things that that's something people get taught to do. And only when I'm challenged to a level of it in one scenario do I realize that that's actually a skill set that I don't even recognize I have that's very valuable that I do every single day when I'm podcasting with no plan or notes.
Yeah, that's that's social intelligence. Like that is intelligence. That's literally called social intelligence at intersex with situational awareness is knowing what is, what isn't appropriate, what you know. Yeah, no, that that is definitely And by the way, I'm not
discounting IQ as an important thing everyone. I'm just saying that the cultural kind of standard that we have that intelligence equals or intelligence is represented by IQ score or academic prowess is a very very misleading concept, like very misleading and in the real world, in the real world doesn't work.
Yeah, well, it's relevant only when you look from the standpoint of matching where you're going or where you want to be, what room you're in, to what type of intelligence. You look at you get people working in the arts and give them an IQ kit to a Q test, it's probably not that relevant, yeah, someone in academia.
Yeah, I think about my three best mates, right, the crab that I train with. The crab is like, if you're going to get stuck on an island or remote island, get stuck with a crab because he'll build you a house by tomorrow lunchtime, right, or.
A wooden squat rack. So I've heard.
Yeahing like, don't get stuck anywhere remote with me. You'll die by dinner time. I'll probably eat you, So don't fucking do that, right. And then there's Greg, my mate, who's a musical genius. Like you could give him four bits of string and a couple of other pieces of junk, he'll make an instrument. Right. So he's never been taught an instrument but plays about twenty instruments, writes songs, records sings.
He's a musical prodigy. Like, it's fucking and I learned guitar for eight years and it's like, compared to him, I've never had a lesson, which is fucking annoying.
Right.
And then Vinn my mate from school, best mate from school. You know, he's an electrician, he's a tradee. He's just he just knows how to fix shit. And he'll come to my joint and something I've been trying to fix for three weeks He'll fix in four minutes and tell me I'm a moron, and I go, yes, I agree. Like it's it's context. To Pennant, it's skilled, it's situation, Like what does this moment require? Does it require fixing that broken thing or having a conversation or knowing how
to fucking change a nappy? Like I know that's this is a probably embarrassment. So I've never changed the nappy in my life. Imagine me doing that either, thirty five? Have you never done that? No, well, you know there are certain things that So, yeah.
I was thinking about school when you were talking about school earlier. I remember in high school getting my desk. I mean, I should be old enough to know better by then. I think it even happened in year eleven, to be honest, but I remember this in about year nine, getting my desk moved out to the hallway because I was disruptive and a pain in the ass and ruining everybody else's learning opportunities, and yet Math's was my best subject.
So I'm getting kicked out of the I'm not paying attentioning, I'm stuffing around the whole time, and then I get a pluses and my teachers hated it. But you asked me today about any complex maths equations that aren't just basic shit that you use all the time, and I don't retain it. So now I'm a math dummy because I didn't listen properly, but I could learn it really quickly.
Yeah, yeah, but you have that capacity. It's like there are some things, depending on what it is, there are some things that you learn really quickly, and there are also some things that you can know that I love the stuff that you intuitively and instinctively know that you've never been taught. So just a quick example of that is the other day I was looking through old photos and old whiteboards, and I found a whiteboard that was nearly ten years old, and the whiteboard said what is
it like being around you? Which is literally my current research, which i'd never heard of. Metaperception, meta their accuracy, metacognition, theory of mind. I'd never heard of any of those things. But even ten years ago I understood the significance of having that kind of awareness, and I was talking about it, and nobody told me that. I didn't learn that anywhere.
I didn't read a book on it. I just became aware that I was working with people, often with bosses, managers, leaders, coaches, who had no fucking idea what it was like for their team, their group, their staff to be around them. And I recognized if they knew what it was like being around them, or they were willing to at least lean into that idea, probably things would go better for them.
And then, you know, six years later, five years later, I'd discovered this thing, and then I start doing this fucking doctorate in it, and I'm like, I knew this stuff before, I knew that it was even an area of research, or at the very least I had an awareness of it, you know. And then you find out, oh, wow, there's this has a name, this has thirty or forty years of research invested into it. This is a skill that's teachable, you know. And I think that, you know,
like my dad is I probably should say was. He doesn't paint any more, but he was a very very talented artist. Award winning artist who never had one lesson You know, how the fuck do you become an award winning artist when no one taught you ever? Like he never had any lesson ever in art? Like that's just an intuitive and nate kind of intelligence or gift.
Right. Yeah, there's a really good book on when I started sketching in Lockdown. I've got a lot of people told me, and I read about three pages of this book fascinating, but also I don't know, I think it was practical, and I didn't continue with it. But it talked about you draw. It was called it's called drawing on the right side of the brain. And funnily enough, when I bought it, my young nephew said, I've read that book. He's he was told to buy that book
because of drumming. And it just one thing I remember it talking about is how artists see things differently, and when you learn to see the way an artist sees the whole world, life looks different. And I was like, what interested me about that? Is when I started sketching. I remember meeting with a lady that taught painting. I'd met her through networking, and I was talking about how I've just started sketching, and it's you know, it's like
I can do it. Likes to think like I hadn't sketched since school and didn't think I.
Was good at it.
And she said something about blurring. She goes, do you blur your vision? I said, yeah, blur like I kind of. It's funny because when I get in the zone with it, I blur my whole vision. I'm going at the speed of light. I'm smudging shit with a tissue like it's just crazy. I almost watch myself doing it, going, who's even roaring?
This?
It's crazy.
So obviously this way of seeing, I was dropping into that, and then I was interested in, well, what is the world like if I didn't already see like that? What does that even mean?
But that fascinates me, Well, you're very good at that, Like when you when I first saw something that you'd sketched, I'm like, jeep, it's and that's like, no, it's good. Fuck, I look like a four year old using their wrong hand. That's what I look like.
Who you do use your wrong hand, don't you?
Yeah? Well, the funny thing is I can, like, yeah, I can write really well on a whiteboard, like I don't know if that's a fucking much of a claim. But I constantly get asked about my whiteboards on Instagram, and I actually put up. I put one up the other day, like the finished product and the original, just the photo of the whiteboard. Yeah, and people like, I can't believe that you write that neat with your hand, and I go, I don't know why, but that's just
how I write. But if I write on paper, I'm not nearly as neat these days as on a whiteboard, because who the fuck writes on paper? I don't on paper other than just scribbling notes while I'm chatting to someone, but yeah, I don't. Anyway, it's I wonder, I wonder how much of that kind of left brain right brain stuff is you know, inherent. I guess a fair bit that creative versus you know, strategic logic, and how you know how trainable it is? Do you remember? I don't
think you did it. I think it was Melissa, But so that brain scientist doctor Jill Balty Taylor. She's that very famous and she did a very famous Ted talk.
What was it called? It will come to me? But anyway, just if you want to listen to it, everyone, I think it was called my Stroke of Insight or something like that, doctor Jill Balty Taylor, and she spoke about when her the left side of her brain show down, and so literally the left hemisphere of her brain shut down, so she couldn't read or write or discern numbers or she was obviously still alive and the right side of her brain was still as she calls it online, but
the left side of her brain had gone offline, including I guess the amygdala which is the emotional epicenter of the brain where fear arises from, and all of that. And even though this horrible thing she was having a massive stroke, she said it was the most blissful, beautiful, amazing experience she'd ever had in her life.
Wow.
Yeah. And then when she they were amazed that she lived because like, the whole left hemisphere is shut down, and then it took her years years of rehab and therapy and anyway, she did that amazing talk, amazing talk on TED. It's probably twelve years old now, my stroke of inside I think it's called. Yeah, but then we had her on the show and yeah, she was talking about which is no news, but you know how adaptable the brain is. You know neuroplasticity. We didn't know that,
but now we know that the brain can. We used to think if the part of the brain that does, for example, find motor skills has damaged, then you're going to be fucked forever. But now we know that other parts of the brain can adapt to take on that role. But we didn't know how to train it. We didn't know how to train it. Now now you know, all the geniuses that operate in that space know how that works.
I found it really interesting.
I was talking to Kevin McGhee the Grand Prix Motors of Grand Prix Superstar yesterday and he.
Had a brain injury and had to have a brain he's something. I think he had something taken out of his brain.
I can't remember exactly, so he had an accident, how to take it out and when anyone was getting back on the bike in next to no time in a matter of months to race again.
Was this on a show or just out and about you met him?
No, this on a show because him and Ben Felt and the fastest blind man on a motorcycle are the guests at the event that I'm am seeing in a chooka.
Can I just say, can I just say that term that sentence the fastest blind man on a motorcycle is maybe the most ridiculous sentence or unexpected sentence. How the fuck does a blind as somebody who rides motorbikes?
Yeah, it actually gets you into a fascinating and this is one of the things that fascinated me. So he did add to go do all this neurological testing to get preble to get back on the bike.
They do all this like.
Reaction time testing, and the eurologists is like, well, go get your gear on and get going because your reaction time is four times faster than the average human.
And just thinking about that.
To go what actually goes into becoming greater to sport? What do you really need to train? Do you really need to fang around a track or do you need to go? How do I best get a result in training my reaction time because that's what's getting me the wins on the track. And I think it's fascinating and same goes. One of the biggest things I was fascinated about was when I got back on my bike recently and I'm going around a bend and I'm observing myself
going I don't know what I'm physically doing. It's funny because all I do is look where I want to go, and the bike goes there. Because that's just what's happening. But if I had to tell someone, if I had to tell Ben who's got no vision, how do you translate that?
It's actually fascinating.
Yeah, that's incredible. I mean that. That makes me nervous thinking about that.
No, two hundred and seventy k's an hour.
By the way, that's how fast he goes.
Yeah, two hundred and seventy one k's in our world record twenty eighteen.
They did it first time Kevin navigated him.
He got his lefts and right it's wrong and sent him into a baile hay.
Fuck that fuck that. I used to train Todd and Rick Kelly and Michael Caruso and James Moffatt who were the Nissan Motor Racing V Supercar team, right, and I used to go to their warehouse factory fucking high performance center in Brayside and they had this incredible gym there just for the drivers, Like, so four blokes, they've got this incredible gym. But they also had this which you've probably seen, this amazing thing on the wall, which is
a reaction time training device. And so there's like all these let's just call them, big buttons on a wall that lights up, and so you've every time one lights up, you've got to hit it. So it's you would fucking this because you're ADHD and you're super You're like a fucking you're like a cat watching a mouse. You're like ready to spring. Right, Yeah, you would fucking love this, you'd because you'd be so high and you wouldn't get off it because you want to keep beating your time.
But what it does is it it'll like I can't remember the number, but it might it might have light up like sixty times. And so one of the kind of it's almost like a you don't like the round blue lights on top of a cop car. Yeah, like half the size of that, maybe a third the size of that, but it lights up and you got to hit it. When you hit it, the next one will light up. When you hit that, the next one will
light up and so on. So how long before the next one light lights up is determined by how quickly you hit the one before, right, So I think it's I don't know, maybe it's eighty eighty like it goes well. The first time it took me sixty five seconds and then sixty two seconds, and then you know, and then I think I was with I can't remember. It might have been Michael Caruso. Anyway, one of the drivers. They told me how it works, and I'm fucking around with it.
I'm like a fucking dinosaur with boxing gloves on. And then then he jumped on and did all eighty or whatever it was in about like twenty two seconds, like it was as the moment that it lit up he touched it, and they're all lighting up in different spaces. It's like a one meter square maybe a bit bigger. Yeah, And I thought, oh, yeah, this is so it is
in answer to your question reaction time. But then you think, also, obviously you need skill, Obviously you need fucking big balls metaphorically, you know, like you need talk about equanimity, talk about chaos, like fucking ducing a bike is chaos.
Yeah, And in the.
Middle of the in the middle of people trying to pass you outside inside undercut, you turn two, turn three, fucking straight, heavy braking, lean in, knee on the ground, elbow on. That's fucking chaos. And in the middle of all of that. You've got to be the opposite of chaotic.
Yeah.
Yeah.
There was one instance where he kept shifting to the left right and they couldn't figure it out. And what was happening was every time he had to do a gear change, so the pressure when he takes his foot off, puts it back on. And when you've got and this is the thing, when you got visual feedback, your body just does what the subconscious does what it does, and it's understanding. I love this because this is what I
do with training boxing. All the time. People are there looking at things, controlling things, and I'm training the stuff that they're controlling but not controlling, and then trying to teach them by the methods of the things they do control. And so every time he shifts his the gears and takes pressure off both pedals and then puts it back on, he's shifted, you know, a couple of inches to the left, and like you do that on a track so many times and then next.
Minute you're wait way too close to the wall.
Fuck that that is just so terrifying the thought of a blind person riding a fucking high performance motorbike and they can't see what's going on.
I will post the link to in the typ group too, and I'll send it to you. There's a link to the video of Heaven behind the bike as he's no no, I think it's on the dash of the bike that Ben's riding as he's doing this.
And I watched it and I felt sick with nerves. You've just got the bike.
You can feel the bike, you can see the bike shattering, and it's just like, oh, especially if you know what it feels like to ride a bike and you just see the gauge going up, and it's just insane.
I tell you what. You don't want to have happened. Your colms to break down.
That's happened. That's happened. He's done that.
Fuck that you're heading into a corner and you phone go offline. You can't get that.
He ends up so in tune with the look and that, like he said, by the time we've done however many laps around the track, and comms did drop out once or twice, it didn't matter because he knew exactly where he was on the track and on the circuit, and he said, I wish that I could get my vision back now, just because I'd be a much better writer because everything else is so heightened because it doesn't have the vision.
So if we extrapolate everything that we've spoken about so far, you know what makes you know, what makes us a good learner, what makes a good teacher, what's the ideal environment to like some things are practical, but we need to do some theory before the prack. Tell me about teaching boxing. Tell me about what makes somebody a good student in the boxing space? Which students you feel like some sorry I'll shut up up to this, like some boxers. It seems to me like you can only learn boxing
by doing it. Of course.
Yeah, it's a process of I think, being able to really listen and understand to and get into your body. So it's about getting into your body. And for me, like I wasn't a natural at it, and that's why I love it so much, and I think that's what's made me very good at figuring it out and teaching
it to others. Because when you can just do something, it's really hard to know, Like what we've just spoke about, if you're just good at something, you haven't analyt had to analyze all the different things that are getting in the way or out of the way of you being good at that thing. So boxing is we think we're making choices, but the choices we're making are happening before the movements, right, So by the time a glove moves towards.
My face, there's not enough time for me to move out of the way.
So what's actually happening is my subconscious is identified what happens before a punch, and I've trained that reaction. But where I think the choice is happening actually isn't where it's happening. So it's understanding what position do I have to be and how do I have to hold myself.
If I hold myself in a.
Different posture, the things that I choose to do will be different. So sometimes it's just it's just the way you hold your posture that's going to make you make a different choice. You can have the same amount of bravery, like if I, for example, if I stand really upright with my head up and my shoulders back, and someone throws a punch at my face, and even if I'm throwing a punch back at the same time, I will pull my head back and lift it up and out
because the body will always keep you safe. So the body goes, shit, there's something coming to my face, Get up, get out.
Whereas if I just.
Engage my core, crouch down, round the shoulders forward, that same thing happens, and I will my head I know safe for that to punch me in the top of the head, and I will step forward and I will drop. My knees will drop, so I won't lift my head up and pull out. My knees will drop down and I'll throw a punch straight away. And that's that's not it's a choice, but it's not a choice. It happens despite what you want to do. And that's the frustrating
part of boxing. Do you train, train, train, train, train, You get in the ring, you're stand in front of someone and everything you've trained for straight changes, and you're.
Like what the fuck?
Like I know what to do and now I'm not doing it. And then you've got to go to the drawing board and go, what's happening? How am I managing my anxiety? What's that doing in my pasture? Where's the actual what part of the chain of events is affecting what I want to do compared to what I'm doing?
You know, it's funny how that stuff that we do on autopilot that we don't have time to go, oh, this is happening. Oh what's the appropriate response? Oh, you know what I'll do? Like there isn't that time. The other day, I was riding to the gym and I you know, I started riding motorbikes when I was five or six, and I started riding all the time on the road when I was eighteen, which is forty two years ago. And There's not really many days of my
life where I'm not riding a motorbike. Right, So there's it, you know, which not say I'm the best rider in the world, but it is to say that I'm very very very very experienced, right. And it was funny because you know, when you're on a motorbike, you've got you know, you've got a front break with for those who don't know, you have a front brake and a back break, and the front brake is pulled in with your right hand.
The clutch obviously where it is in a car, you know, but the clutch on a motorbike is the left lever, and then the gear changes at your left foot and the back wheel brake or the back brake is the right foot, and then you've got indicators left and right and canceling on your left thumb, and then you've got you know, fucking high beam also on your left thumb, and you you know bunch of things right, But you just ride along and you don't think about what you're doing.
And the other day this lady just pulled out, just happened to be a lady like I was riding along Ludston Street. She just pulled out. She didn't see me, and I nearly fucking plowed into her. And if I wasn't paying attention, and I wasn't a good writer, I would have just ridden into her. And within I don't know, not one second. I would say, one tenth of one second, my thumb was on the horn and like, and I'd probably toot my horn on my motorbike once or twice
a year. It's not like it's something like you yeah, but it's just so funny. This thing happens, and you're straight away reacting, and then all of a sudden she realized she was just pulling in front of a vehicle, which was me on my vehicle, and it all turned out okay, and obviously she wasn't I trying to kill me, but she almost did. I was thinking when I got to the gym, I was thinking, if that wasn't me, if that was someone who got their license two weeks ago, that would have been.
Messy, oh one hundred percent.
And that's what my biggest fit, that was the biggest cause for my nerves and anxiety getting back on was the realizing in the moment that I didn't have that that wasn't automatic.
For a while, that I didn't have those automatic.
I was thinking so hard about the controls of the bike that including traffic and all of the other things I need to focus on. I was like this, this is too much of my head.
But you know what's great. I mean, we know that, like one of the things that gets spoken about a lot is not enough, and I think needs to be spoken about more. But increasingly we're talking about improving cognitive function as we get older. Right, And this is going to be this is going to sound like a stretch, but I absolutely mean it while writing, and I'm fully acknowledging everyone motorcycles in general, it's not a safe hobby.
I recognize that. But also Tip Scott full writing gear with body armor in a great helmet, great gloves and all of that. So as protected as you can be, she is. But apart from having fun, and apart from the brain chemistry that's going on, and apart from you know, just the fucking thrill factor, Like, it's actually cognitively enhancing because you've had to retrain your brain to become very familiar with this thing that you'd become less familiar with,
and to retrain your brain around these new skills. Right, even the automaticness of what I was talking about before with horn, the indicator, the light's lib lot, low beam, high beam, break clutch, you know, front break, back break, Like, all of a sudden, you're using this new language with your body, this new language, these new skills, and for you to get from A to B, you need to become very good at this language of riding this thing
and interacting and becoming one with this thing. So the biology and the technology kind of merged, the technology of the motorbike and the biology of the human. And it sounds bullshit, but you watch someone who's great. It's just one unit moving, it's not some blob sitting awkwardly on top of this missile it's like this fucking I don't know. It's this synthesis of technology and biology and performance. And if you ride, you get that. You know, when you
first get back on a bike, you're the blob. Yes, You're the awkward blob. Yes.
And there were days when I would get on it and feel it, one with.
It and be like, awesome, we're there.
And then another day where I'd get on and I'll be a bit clunky and a bit rusty on the and I'm like, what is going on?
And the moment I felt like that, I was very overthinking.
I was trying to control it, like controlling the punch in a boxing ring. Yeah.
I think it's so important as we get older that we consciously and I know I say this a lot, but I think people don't really get it, Like I
need to be careful what I say here now. But I spent a lot of time with my mum and dad lately, and you know, obviously they're in their mid eighties and obviously there's going to be cognitive decline, and I get all of that, but you know, I went out to dinner with them on Sunday night and there was this old dude there and he's eighty six or eighty seven, like fucking hell, his brain was like a sharp fifty year old And I was talking to him and he still works, like he has a farm and
he's still And I'm not saying we should all be working mid eighties. But the point is not that he works. The point is that he's constantly using his brain. He's constantly solving problems. He's constantly having to do things, make decisions, manage things, coordinate things, create plans, make hard decisions, take action, create outcomes, adapt and adjust. And because he's you know, I'm sure part of its biology, but for sure part
of its lifestyle and behavior. And then I look at people with respect who basically just hang up the gloves, you know, at a certain age, and really don't do consciously do anything to keep their brain firing. They just kind of metaphorically or perhaps literally, just retire to the couch. And no, we don't need to all work until we're eighty five, and we don't need to be you know,
curing cancer and joining the space program. But to realize that, just like you need to walk and move and try to retain some physical strength, you've got to use your fucking brain, because if you don't, it's going to fall apart, you know. So I think that lifelong learning is such a crucial component but overall health.
Yeah, it was training Mark the other day, and one of my favorite things about that is like he comes in at sixty six years old, often mentioning that he's sixty six years old with shittyknes that don't work and can't this and can't that. And one of our recent conversations, he was like, you know, one is just managing his emotions. It's like he manages his emotions differently. He goes like, I'm angry.
A need more. I deal with emotions differently.
And also the way he can walk out on stage when he has nerves. He goes like, the way I manage nerves and manage going on stage has transformed. And he looks around him at people in around his age group, and he sees the decline and now he's not bound by that.
M It's great.
It's the best.
I mean. And also we're talking about Mark Seymour, everyone from Hunters and Collectors, who now is doing his own solo thing and just an album called The Boxer out now. But yeah, I mean, he's he does not move like a guy whose next big birthday is seventy.
Yeah, I'm sixty eight, settled down. No next big day.
That big birthday, Yes, sixty seven now, isn't he yeah sixty eight? Yeah, And he moves like a forty five year old. Forty year old, and I mean a good forty forty five like on stage and his energy and also you know how when some singers get old, their voice gets shit got better? Voice is the same or better better?
Yeah?
Yeah, Well it's been good. I've learned a lot. I've learned a.
Lot me too. You must have ticked the box on my learning style.
Yeah, well, I do my very best. Well, I hope you get better. You've been a little bit shit, you've been a bit crooked, but you did rock up. You didn't wing or sook once, So fucking.
Win out.
We're hanging out with me. It's therapeutic, isn't it?
True story?
Let's be honest. Yeah, I mean I'm like a big fucking pill.
With it here.
I am just taking my medicine, rocking up and taking my medicine.
Have you noticed how short my hair is? I just got back from Danny the barber?
Oh, well done, Danny looking sharp harps.
Danny the barber speak. I'm going to lead with this, Danny the speaking of intelligence. Like this dude. You know those people that you just want to be around. Yeah, this guy like his I mean, obviously it's his own business, so and he does great and hiss, but his social, emotional, situational intelligence it's off the scale. When I go in, it's like he's just met his best friend that he
hasn't seen for twenty years. His energy is crazy. And this sounds weird, but even when he puts his hands on you, like when he will touch his shoulder or he'll touch your neck because he's shaving this or cutting that or trimming that, it's just funny. It's one of those people. I like being around him and every time, and he doesn't do this for every time I go in. I overpay him every time. And even though I overpay by quite a lot, every time, I feel like I'm
getting the better deal. And it's like I'm only going there forty percent for the haircut, Yeah, it's sixty percent for the experience. Yeah, And that dude he is there's a kind of intelligence that he has that you cannot teach.
One hundred percent. That's a kid.
That's a good point to make to anyone that's running their own business or thing.
Whether or not you're a personal trainer or a barber, or an accountants or a fucking podcaster. Yeah, if you can be the person that people love to be around because of your energy and your mindset, you know, it's it's contagious.
Yeah, yeah, I love.
There are some people I love being around. He's one I often walk past because it's one hundred meters away. I just go in and give him a hug. We fucking hug each other. I go, hey, y'ar mate, He's like good, and then I walk out. He goes, love you. I gotta love you, mate.
I just keep walking And do you go and buy hair growth supplements so that you can get more haircuts so your hair growth faster.
I tell you what I do do when I'm getting what I do do when I'm getting a coffee. I often walk up there and ask him if he wants one, Oh yeah, because I want. You know, he's cutting head like a motherfucker, and he's you know, sometimes he's probably on his feet doing that. Like I often go past, there's three people waiting I'm like, when does this guy have a wheel, or a pool or a sandwich. I can't imagine that. Oh sorry everyone, I'm just going to go have a shit. I'll be back in six minutes.
I didn't think about that. That's something for everyone to think about as we close out another episode of The Youth Project. Thanks Tim, Thanks helps Boom