Good, our team, Welcome to another installment of the You Project. Tiffany, Are you all right?
Yes, harps, I am very good, Thank you.
What's going on over there at fucking cook Central?
So same old just scooting around in the mood boot For most part I get to take it off and punch things a little bit now, which is great.
What's the typical pain barometer?
Because it was a couple of weeks ago, it was about fifteen out of ten and you're crying like a four year old?
What you are? The tears diminished somewhat? Are you okay? What's going on?
Yeah?
Yeah, they're just occasionally rolling down one cheek frustration, but just.
A pathetic tear, just dribbling down one cheek. Well, you're a gangster and so we wish you were speedy recovery. So you secured today's guest. You said he wasn't that great, but he was available. You didn't say anything like that, you said he's fucking awesome. You know, when you're getting someone on the show, you go and do a bit of research and I'm like, well, what research do I need to do?
Because I've loved him and watched him. I'm afar forever.
It's not that I know everything, but I feel like with some people, like we had Tracy bartramon yesterday or the day before, who goes way back, and most people love Tracy and know of Tracy and Hughesy. I feel you can probably at the moment times that by ten. But anyway, for our overseas listeners, I'm going to say this. Our Australian listeners know Hughesy, but our overseas listeners, of which is about twenty percent of our audience. So Hughesy
is he's an icon in Australia. He won't say that, but I will because he's far too humble and self deprecating. But he's a comedian. He's done a little bit of acting. It was fucking horrible. I'll give you the tip. He's a radio star, he's a TV star, he's a host, he's a dad. He is a bogan and we love all of that shit. And if you don't know what a bogan is, a bogan is kind of he's not really a bogan, but he's a bit Boganesque. Like myself. I grew up in the bush. He grew up in
the bush. Tiff grew up in Tasmania. That's the bush.
So there's a little bit of that about all three of us. Husy, thanks for coming on to you.
Projectif it's great to be here, and yeah, I appreciate the intro, and note I will accept the icon status, mate, I'm not that humble.
To be honest, I'm thinking, I argue David William Hughes aka a magic hair he told us before Stiff, can you get a good screenshot of his hair at some stage through the thing, because we need that for the promo.
He's telling us how awesome his hair was.
But I'm only saying that because I spent many years I look back on photos of me with really short hair thinking why aren't I, you know, making the most of a natural assets. Like some people, and a lot of men lose their hair young, or they lose their hair when they're thirty or forty or fifty. I just turned fifty and it's as growing, as strong and as lustrous as ever, and I'm going to make the most of it.
Well, it's nothing if not fucking vibrant and prolific. I don't know how how sexy it is or how styled it is, but let's just go with there's a lot of it, mate, so good for you. But I know I don't look like it. But my hair goes. My hair's like yours, except that grows in thirty seven directions. So people think I've been bored for twenty years. I'm not baled. My old man's eighty one. He's got hair like a fucking yetty, and my hair grows like crazy.
But it's just out of control. But I think with a little bit of product shocking.
I'm actually shocked by that me like everyone else would assume that you're.
Ball, I'm not.
Well, give it a go, let it hang out, Let's see a new you.
It's you know, let's change it up. Why wouldn't you change it up? You don't have to do the same thing every day.
I've been coached by Dave Hughes. I feel kind of privileged. Is he going to send me a bill?
Ah?
Dear?
Yeah, I know.
It's funny though, how we get into I don't know this, this groove where I've been shaved my head since I used to stand on nightclub doors one hundred years ago Hughsey and get punched in the face for ten dollars an hour, right, and so it's been a but it's just been a standard.
I reckon.
I've had twenty pairs of clippers, and probably every Monday fortnight I clip in my hair. I put on a one or sometimes no blade at all, and it just goes. I should have probably been in the military because I'm built for it, but I've let it grow out.
If have you ever seen it long, I've.
Seen it with a little bit of hair. I mean you had a little bit of hair when you yeah that photo with your mom.
I put up this photo. This is terrible, fucking I was going to say it's terrible radio. We're not on the radio. But just just for Hughes's benefit, can you see that or hang on?
Let me.
Yeah, you've got like about three mili. Yeah, that's not true.
Have a look.
Looks HAPs you look like you get a pan.
Yeah.
It just goes everywhere.
And I have to think.
You just put up a photo of you looking like Krusty the Clown. Maybe half an inch there.
I mean, it's like to fucking hell City on Brad Pitt.
If you have a mirror, you're joint after the town Side Joe Bill.
I'm talking about the hair.
I'm not talking about the face.
You're a funny man, So I don't want to ask you all the boring shit, But give us a little bit about Dave.
Who's the six year old, eight year old, ten year old? Where'd you grow up? What was it like? You don't have to give us the cliche stuff.
I feel like someone like you, who's been interviewed a thousand times, I want to not have that conversation. But also, most of our audience won't know the answer to these questions. So fair enough, let's go where'd you grow up?
What was it like? What were you good at? What did you hate? Were you an athlete?
Grew up in a country town, a place called Warnable. At a time, probably twenty thousand people lived in the town. One of the youngest of four children, my oldest. My twin sisters are three and a half years older than me. My brother is a year and a half older than me. So in a commission house, look a humble abode. Dad was a factory worker, Mum was a nurse. And yeah, so you know, I dreamed of having Nike. You know,
the cliche. I dreamed of having added ass and Nike at runners and didn't have them, you know, I was. You know, my kids now just lose their nights and don't give a shit, especially my son.
Unbelievable. So yeah, I went to a.
Well Catholics, you know back when people went to church, and my nana was a full on Catholic, so she thought I was going to be a priest.
I mean she was wrong.
But so I went to Catholic primary school, you know, I did all that stuff, you know, church every Sunday. Went to a CBC Catholic as secondary school. Basically because I was I was scared of girls, to be honest, so I wanted to stay with boys. Every time I saw a group of girls. If I was walking down the street and I saw a group of girls laughing, I think they were laughing at me.
I was so.
And I didn't like being laughed at back then. So yeah, but I did dream of being an athlete, and that was a big thing for me. I want to be an athlete, you know that every night, dreaming about playing Test cricket or winning Wimbledon, or you know winning AFL Grand finals and footy or you know, just sports, sports, sport. I remember Maradonna died the other day, obviously a legend.
And I clearly remember the nineteen eighty six World Cup where Maradonna absolutely lit it up in Mexico and me and my cousin just wanted to be Maradonna as fifteen childs. I was just sport obsessed as a young person.
What was the thing that what was the one thing that you were good at? I mean you might have been good at, but was the thing you were best at if you were ever going to make it at anything?
What might it have been?
It might have been Aussie rule was Yeah, so I was. Yeah, I was a good country footballer, and you know I had I remember one guy telling me I could make the big league.
You know that was like one guy who said, but it was not for me.
Yeah, I knew that dream was over at the age of twenty four, to be honest, when I was jogging around a suburban ground in Melbourne, playing reserves football in the suburban league. And you know what, the captain of the club jogged a lat with me. I think I was twenty four at the time and had terrible hamstring problems at the year because I was eating too many burgers.
Captain of the club jogged a lat with me and said, I reckon, you should stick to comedy, and you know, and that was the inspiration I needed to give up my AFL dream.
Well, you probably need to thank that guy because he probably set you on a trajectory that has served you well.
He did, and I was I was doing comedy at the time. Obviously, I'd done a gig at at the local it was Bentley Football Club actually a suburban Melbourne, and I did a gig for the players and the family and friends during the year and it had gone well, so and I was doing some I was getting paid a bit doing stand up at that time, so, but you know, being getting injured in footy on Saturday was probably not good for trying to get on stage on
a sad day. I've had one injury story involving the adrenaline of being on stage.
This was a Sunday.
I'd played a game I think on a Sunday and injured my shoulder during the day so much so that my shoulder was frozen stiff and couldn't I could not move it at all, couldn't move, couldn't lift my arm above sort of horizontal basically. So I went on stage that night and I said, guys, I played footy today and I have injured myself so badly.
Look how far I can lift my arm.
And I went to lift my arm and went right above my head. Adrenaline of being on stage at that point made you. I realized how much adrenaline you have when you're on stage. It was just the injury had gone away. As soon as I got off stage, my arm was frozen again.
That was interesting.
I fucked my back so badly.
I've got a history of lower back injuries. But touch wood, he says, he touched the table.
It's all right at the moment.
But I've had a bunch of you know, injections, underscan and all that kind of shit.
I haven't had surgery, which is good.
But I had to go to Perth and do two gigs on a Friday night and a Saturday night. Workshops quite big as in, you know, probably about a thousand people. So yeah, and it's not like somebody else. There's three other presenters. It's like it's a Craig Harper workshop and everyone booked in for that workshop and we can't refund it. And I fucked my back horrendously the day before. So I had to fly out on a Friday and speak Friday night, speak Saturday night, fuck my back, and I
couldn't like I could. Literally it took me fifteen minutes to get out of bed, and I was doing the.
Tiff Cook tears. There was just there was just a fuck.
And I wasn't overtly crying, but there were just tears coming out of my eyes, like yeah, real, And it took me so I had to go and I was just in agony the whole way, and yeah, I had to do the same.
Well, I didn't have that experience, but I had to.
Literally I couldn't sit because once I sat, I couldn't get up up and I couldn't stand because the pain was too much. So they just gave me a stool and I kind of lent like a pissed bloke at a bar on a stool for three hours.
But it's amazing.
Once you get in that place, I'll flow and you're present and you're in the moment, and there's energy in the room and there's hundreds of people. I wasn't pain free, but I managed to get through it. And then literally one minute past ten or whenever it was that I finished. There's just this overwhelm of agony, and the same thing happened the next day, and I was fucked for about two weeks. And I look back a week or two later, when I was still in pun I gotta I go.
I do not know how on earth I got up to do that, but I think sometimes when you don't have an option, you know, I feel like you don't have an option, you go, well, fuck, I can't not go, So I just need to figure it out.
I want to ask you about.
It's Steven were great to say being on stage keeps me in the moment more than anything. So yeah, it's That's one of the best things what I've missed this year with not being having much stage time because of COVID.
It is that missing that being in the.
Moment where you're not you're just right there.
I love it, which you're I love that. I love that that. It's like when so I do a fair bit of work with people who want to be speakers, and I'm sure you talk to people a lot who want to be comics, right and by the way, I think being a corporate speaker or doing what I do is twenty times easier than what you do. I fucking love comedy, and if I had more balls, I would have done it.
But I'm essentially a coward.
If you said to me, no, really, if you said to me, Craig, go and talk to a thousand people on changing their life and getting their shit together. My overwhelming emotion is excitement. But if they said there's ten people out there, you've got to go and make them laugh for eight minutes, I.
Couldn't do it. I don't know why.
There's there's some anxiety. But if I'm doing my thing and I happen to be interesting or funny or telling stories or doing my three hour whatever, and people laughing just as part.
Of that, I'm good.
But if I'm I'm there for the sole reason to walk out and be funny, I don't think I could do.
It well on that topic.
I before I started comedy, I did like I would like accept an award for footy, you know, and I get on stage, You're not expected to be funny. So I was able to be funny, like because it's like a it's a secondary thing and you know, even but even you know, I do a speech at school. I remember I did a religious education speech which slayed the room. And I wasn't meant to be funny. But even twenty first speeches, when you're sort of meant to be funny,
I could do well. But the first time I walked on a stand up comedy stage where the sole intention of the person who walks on that stage is to make this group of strangers laugh, I dissolved into a puddle of anxiety.
I was hopeless.
It was the most pressure I've ever It was like sixty people there a little bar in Perth, and yeah, oh god, I was just it was the worst moment of my life because I dreamed of doing it for a long time, you know, as a kid at least. And I was twenty two when that first gig, And yeah, the pressure of they expect you to be funny. You said to them, you're funny by getting on this stage, and you feel like you're wasting.
All these people's time. It was horrible.
There was no backstage either, so I had to walk through the crowd. And my gig had been about how I got teased at school, and someone as I'm walking through the crowd after this silent.
You know gig I'd done, just said you deserve to be teased.
That's hilarious. What was your what was your What was the one joke that just fucking died? Or was all all time? It was just a collective death.
It's just a collective and it's like and it's when, especially early on in a stand up comedy career, every night for me, possibly especially because the other comedians say, you're crazy up there, because I'd never do the same joke twice, and so I'd get up and do different stories every time I got up on stage, and the older comedians would have shaking their head at me, because if the first one doesn't go well, you feel like
you're ruined. Like the crowd just make up their mind and they you can't get them back because you don't have the skill to do it.
So it was a real lottery for me earlier on.
But I think, you know, there's this concept in sport and high performance, and I would think in well not I would think, I know, also in public speaking, whether or not that's to motivate, inspire, educate, or entertain, and it's really about how well we can perform under pressure. It's not how funny are you with your mates at a bar or how funny are you with your family
at dinner. But how funny can you be? How much can you create connection and engagement in that situation which is uncomfortable, which is unfamili which is with a bunch of strangers who don't know you, and they don't give a fuck if you're funny or if you crash and burn. If you crash and burn, that's funny for them. If you're funny. If you're funny, that's a bonus. But they don't care if you're funny or not. And they don't care if you go home and fucking don't sleep for four days.
Now, you need their attitude in a way.
You need to not care.
You need to go.
You need to get beyond it and go. I can deal with whatever happens here, you know. So in if they sense that you're desperate for their affection, they just won't give it. So it's like a part of you needs to be relaxed. The most tense I get on stage, or the most pressure I've felt in the last probably ten fifteen years, is doing the opening of the Logans, which I've done. I did four years in a row. So you're walking on stage to the you know it's
broadcast it's live on TV. People love getting on the internet and just slaughtering whoever's on stage because it's a sport to hand shot on the Logans. If you're from overseas, it's astral Is Television Awards Night. And so to walk on that stage and you know that, you know your peers in the audience are half and the want you to.
Fail at least probably because they don't want to.
They don't have to laugh at someone else because they want to be laughed at themselves. And so yeah, that's the most pressure I've felt in a long time. And if you've ever been to the Logans Australis Awards Night, the crowd do not shut up before the broadcast starts. There's just it's a dinner and show. There's a thousand or fifteen hundred people just talking really loudly.
The warm up guy they don't even listen to him.
He can hardly be heard above the din of people just clattering, eating and bloody yelling.
At each other.
And so to walk on that stage, which I've done a number of times and succeed in that stage has been a very satisfying thing for me to do. To get that crowd silent and listening and laughing. Is Yeah, that's pressure that I've handled through years of doing every gig, getting on stage at tiny pubs, getting on stage at big theaters, just taking every opportunity, and yeah, and then doing the work. If you've done the work, and I imagine this is in all fields. If you've done the work,
you can handle the moment. If you haven't done the work, well good luck. But if you've done the work, you've got yourself a chance.
I feel like for you that your natural habitat is spontaneous, unscripted, organic raw. Well, I can't see you loving the old AUTOQ or.
No, I'm not ANOQ guy at all.
I do not. I did a TV show for the project, which is on Channel ten or one of these train networks, and I was started that show and I was there for five years and I never used THEOQ.
It just did not work for me. So yeah, you go.
But I am a guy who knows routine, and so I do when you say you want to look unscripted when you're doing stand up comedy, but you know what you need the ammunition of stories. You know the work, and I would for doing that opening of the awards night. I would go to pubs, you know, and talk to backpackers who didn't even know the stars that I was talking about, the Australian TV stars. But I would fashion
jokes that even they could laugh at. And so if these you know, backpackers pissed in a pub could get the essence of the joke, I knew that joke was bulletproof. And when I took it to the stage of people who knew who I was talking about, I knew that they would really work well.
But it was that.
Crafting of stuff in in pubs and in small comedy clubs that allowed me for that sort of gig, to get it right.
I'm like you in that I can't.
I get this constant bit of feedback when I go and I'll do something for when you do a corporate gig in the space of personal or professional development, generally what happens is the speaker will turn up. They'll go, here's my USB, here's my presentation, here's my three videos I want you to play, here's the debt that I don't have anything. I just turn up and I write on a whiteboard and I talk, and they go, where are your notes or where's your this, or where's your
timetable or whatever? Or where's your where's the where's your presentation? And I say it's in my head. And they they panic because they're so used to everything being very scripted and planned and choreographed. And I say, how can I pre plan a conversation with people I've never met?
Right? And I know my shit, right, so I know what I'm going to tell.
I don't need to go and learn new stuff for today. This is what I talk about all the time.
So it's inside you.
So's and you tell them stories that you believe in. So you need to read them off a piece of paper because there's they're your stories.
But you can.
You can read a room, right, You know if something's working or not working. You know if you're connecting or disconnecting. You know if people are engaged or not. But you can't when you go in with something I think that's pre set, prescripted, predetermined for me. Anyway, it's the worst way to work because I feel like I'm unplugged from the humans, you know, I feel like I'm doing this choreograph thing that isn't me and I feel like a fraud.
And it doesn't always work, but it nearly always works. If I just go in and I go, well, I'm going to talk about resilience. I'm going to talk about metacognition, which is thinking about thinking, and talk about a bit about physiology, and talk about beliefs, and I'm going to talk about these eight things. Reset go and then I go. I walk in and I go, put up your hand. If you're an overthinker, and every hand goes up, and I've got instant engagement.
Put up your hand.
If you put up your hand, if you got in shape and then got fat, every hand goes you know. And so it's if I can get hands up and people laughing or nodding, and I've got connection in the first thirty seconds, we're good.
And then you just go from there.
Yeah, but you know you've done the work. You're not a fraud. You've lived it. And so that's and they will sense that as well. So that's why you don't need the scripts, because you've got it all inside you. So yeah, but for me, and again, never a script, never read off on autoqu ever. But yeah, but have the stories inside me and have them ready because I've lived them and I know them.
And I trust them.
I did some stuff for a few years on the David Kimshell and Channel ten on the Morning Show or whatever it was called, and they're like, at the start, I got asked to go in and be interviewed about something. So I just went and did a gig and then they then the executive producer asked me to go see her after the show. Anyway, so they said do you want to come back next week? Because that was great, I went short, came back, and then the next week
they went, do you want to be a regular? So anyway, I ended up being a regular for a few years. But what they wanted to do, they wanted to They wanted me to send all the questquestions that they wanted that I wanted asked about this topic, or they're like, do you want us to I go, I don't want any of that.
I go, please don't do that. Let's just sit on the couch and have a conversation.
About like if we're talking about resilience, let's just talk.
I go because if I have.
To remember what they're going to ask me, or if I have to kind of come up with some pre organized answer, it's I'm going to be terrible because I'm shit at that. But what I'm good at is just talking to humans about whatever. And so they were quite and I did a couple of outside broadcasts from a few places with people and stuff, and they wanted to be scripted and they wanted auto Q and all this, and I go.
I can't, I can't.
I'm just just let me do it once without it and then if I'm terrible, either get rid of me or I'll do you know, if I'm shit, get rid of me, or I'll do the AUTOQ. And they went, well, that was good. So yeah, but I had to fight to be so that I could just do my thing. Now, this is what I do all the time. It's just that there's a camera on at the moment.
Yeah, absolutely, and it's a look, yeah, I mean that's I hear you, and yeah, I'm with you on that. So and it can be frustrating being on TV when you do have producers wanting you to ask the exact questions that they've written or you know, like that's sort of yeah, it's a you don't want to be corralled. That's part of the reason I left the project, to be honest, is that sort of desire to have everything in a neat little box, and there's not enough room to spread your wings, I suppose.
So I think that's why one of the reasons that one of the reasons that.
Podcasts have proliferated.
And of course, like any other product or service, there are good podcasts and shit ones and okay ones and Joe Rogan at the far end of the scale, but rogans or do you.
Have a listener Rogan?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
So he's always talking about as you would know, he's talking about comedy and writing and the skill and the craft and you know, the organic nature of this and that. But he also talks about the freedom that comes with you know, you and I don't need to go to
a break. We don't need to do a station idea or a time check or a weather check, or we're not throwing to the news or you can and we can talk for thirty three minutes or fucking two hours and ten minutes, and we could talk about whatever we want and nobody's standing in front of you waving hands or going we've.
Got to go to a break or fucking all that shit.
Right, I went on to TV and say I don't want to get back to the project. But that was my real.
Example of you know, you've got producers in your ear who are just spending half the time panicking. So you've got someone yelling at you, and your like, I've done this. I did this joke at the Logans one night.
I remember that. It was a true story where I'm halfway through a sentence.
And I hear someone in my yell out stop speaking, and I'm like, it's going to sound like I've.
Had a stroke if I stopped speaking.
Now, I mean, I'm literally halfway through a sentence. But I think on the night, my eyes just went crazy. You know, I just sort of shut down. People would have think I was I was, you know, I had a medical condition.
But only someone who's never been in front of a mic or camera would screen that in you.
But I understand they're panicking.
Is I think they've got to go to an ad break and yeah, so but yeah, no, it's crazy.
It can me crazy.
So do you have a Rogan talks all the time about his the way that he writes and the way that he kind of develops material.
Do you have a specific process or does shit just.
You write notes down in my you know, just in my phone or in the notes section of my phone. I just write stuff down that comes up. You know, I have a look now, just what am I reading? You know, I was on a plane yesterday.
This is just so.
I don't know this will ever become anything, but I was on a plane yesterday. I'm happily married and you know, not going to ever cheat. But there was an attractive flight attendant. You know, it's just but then she spent an expended period of time in the bathroom and just do all the romance. When goodness she gone before she got on the plane.
Yeah, what's that about? What's that about? Gail?
So when did you stop eating meat? Tell us a little bit about that, because I'm interested in that.
I stopped eating meat. I became a pescatarian many years ago.
I think, I, look, I've got a history of bow cancer in the family. So my mum's had bow cancer, and you know, there's quite a history of it. I think I read years ago that meat could be a factor in causing bow cancer. So I thought, well, I might stop eating meat, you know, and just because I don't want to get bow cancer.
So that was many years ago, and didn't really miss it. That much. It was a pescatarian ate a lot of fish.
I'd have fish with every meal, basically a lot of dairy about a year, just over a year ago. I mean you might have watched it, and I'm not saying it's perfect, but the game changes doco that was on Netflix, and that made me think about how store I was getting.
I love exercising, I said, just turned fifty the other day, and I love running and I have for many years, but I get so sore the last fifteen years or I can you go for a run and then put hardly walk the next day, struggling to get down the stairs as when you wake up and on the dock. I was saying that, you know you don't get a sore, and you know what, I'm going to give that a go, and I swear to god, I'm a year later and I do not get sought at.
All when I exercised crazy. I can.
Around the tan the other day, which is just under four k run in fifteen forty seven and just don't get.
Sore at all. It's not at all. It's unbelievable.
That's pretty quick, dude. That's four minute k's. That's averaging fifteen kilometers an hour. That's for your fifty year old self. Congratulations, I'm making fifty.
That's awesome.
So, without being too boring, but give us a and I know it probably varies, but give us a typical day of what goes in your god from when you get up to when you go to bed, or just just a version because people right now are going, I'm sore too.
What is Hughes the well Birchu musical? This morning?
With coconut milk, you know, with fruits like you know, blueberries and strawberries and.
Rock melon.
That's we say breakfast, you know, Lunch might have avocado on toast or something like that. And dinner try to get a salad in. And you know, I am you know, I'm probably eating too much of that sort of process and meat meat sort of thing, you know what I mean, that's not processed non meat. I wonder about it. I know it's a lot. It's everywhere now, you know, fake meat, if you know what I mean. So I wonder whether that's any good for me. I ate quite a bit of that, but yeah, so is.
That where you get? Is that where you get?
Because all the buffheads listening all my bullfed bodybuild a.
Weightlifter powerlifter mates. So listening going, what do you get your protein from? Husey?
Yeah, well, I mean that's probably your point. I don't know where I get my pate hand from. You know, I ate a lot of nuts. But am I getting enough protein? I don't know.
I'm not lifting many weights.
You know.
My upper body strength is poor, there's no about that, and.
I would like to improve that so that my daughters don't mock my man moobs as they do. So that is yeah, But you know, am I gigging up bread? And I don't know, mate, But I tell you what, I'm just not getting sore. And as a fifty year old to not get sore around ten kill me eleven kill minutes the other day, you know, I'm just over
four minute case and not sought at all. I swear to God from the age of thirty, I reckon, I've been sore after exercise and I'm now fifty running that sort of distance and we're at speed and not for a second getting sore.
That's unbelievable.
How are those once very chalky, vulnerable hamstrings?
They're fine. I tell you what.
My calf muscles, which I was probably from the age of forty, I was getting real bad calf or just constant calf injuries.
So I never get any momentum with my running.
So because I would just pull a calf, take a month, get over it, pull a calf again, and I was like, that was really basically shut down my running. And I'm not getting any touchwood. I'm just not getting any calf injuries. A physicist, I'd say that's the old man injury. There's nothing you can do about it. You've got to accept it. Well I don't. Well, this appears that I don't have to accept it.
You know, there's this I mean, all my listeners are board of all the shit that comes out of my mouth with this stuff. But you might not have heard of this term. It's just called biofeedback, and all it means is that your body's always telling you stuff. And I believe that we should all I'm not talking about with medicine and drugs, but I'm talking about with food and exercise and sleep and lifestyle and hydration and coffee
and tea and booze or whatever. I think we should all do some self experimenting to see what works well for your body, because you know, there's a lot of people who would not advise you to do what you did, a lot of people who would advise you to do what you did, which just basically tells us there's no universal right. So it's trying to find what's the best food strategy, exercise strategy. You know, how much sleep do
I need? How do I hydrate my body optimally? And how much recovery time do I need between you know, sets and reps and runs and all that kind of stuff.
And it's really individual.
But people think there's this one best program or this one best eating philosophy.
And so I always encourage people.
If you're listening to Hughesy and you go, I wouldn't mind giving that a go. I would say, go, give it a go. Do like twenty eight days. Do it to the latter though, don't half do it, don't kind of do it. Don't do it for four days and then get shit faced on the weekend. Do it for twenty eight days, or do it for fifty six days or whatever timeframe you want, and then literally just see how your body responds. Because this is you know, you can't get another one, the one that you've got the only one.
You can get. You can't replace it. It's not renewable.
And so I think that the idea of you know, stepping out of doing what doesn't work, and most of us are doing what doesn't work. And when you can go through fifteen or so years of constant pain and exhaustion and post exercise muscle soreness, and then you change one thing, which is not an insignificant thing, but you change one variable, and then all of a sudden, your physiology is different, your energy is different, your performance is different.
It's amazing.
Yeah. Look, I'm I've got mates who work in the dairy industry and they get angry at me for saying this, and I'm like to say it too loadly.
Listenership. But you know, I wonder about dairy. I really do.
My brother works at warm Wool Cheese and butter factory, and it's really angry when I questioned dairy. But I wonder whether I wonder whether because I was a pescatarian, you got a member for a long time, so I didn't need any red made eat each chick for a long time and I was still getting sore. But go on, the vegan is the difference so you got rid of the fish. Is it the fish or is it the dairy.
I don't know one of those two.
I reckon getting rid of one of those two, or maybe both. But yeah, I wonder whether it's a dairy.
But I think this is that that's just a great question. I'm always saying to people. Don't believe me because I say something, or you like me or you trust me. Believe me when you take something for a test drive and see what happens. And this is the thing when and no disrespect to people in the dairy because my old man used to marry marry manager joint called the Muey Dairying Cooperative Rights. And I grew up in the middle of farms and my mum literally grew up on a dairy farm.
So and I drink milk.
But you know, I think the thing is that everybody, especially when it comes to things like food or religion or sport or politics or exercise, everybody lives in an echo chamber and people are just, you know, immersed in this thing called confirmation bias, which means I'm not going to listen to Dave Hughes because he doesn't fucking think.
Like I think. Hugh Hughes doesn't agree with.
Me, so he's on Twitter knows all no, But that's what I'm saying.
You can't like.
This is this is the part of personal growth and consciousness and self awareness is to recognize your own prejudice and bias and go, look, this is what I think. But I could be wrong. The problem is that but I could be wrong. Is never there. Everybody everybody is one. I was talking to a guy the other.
Day about such an issue and he was saying, emphatically, this is how it is.
And I said, so, what you're telling me.
Is that everybody in the world that doesn't agree with you on this, everybody is wrong. Everybody who doesn't think like you in the.
World is wrong.
And he didn't want to own up to that, but that's what he's saying. And I'm saying, you know, like even with me, and I've seen a lot, done a lot, worked with tens of thousands of humans, educated myself a lot, worked in the space. You know, I owned multiple gyms, all that shit, there's still way more that I don't know than I do. And everything's an evolution and some of the things I used to firmly hold on to
as truth or belief or knowledge or science. Ten years ago I've now let go of because I realized that my thinking or my belief was flawed.
So if there's no kind of.
Flexibility in our ideology or our beliefs, we make ourselves unteachable. And if you're unteachable, that's fucking terrifying.
Yeah, open minded. We've got to be open minded. We yes, we've got to. You've got to be able to listen to other opinions and not just just just just dismiss them straight away out of hand and then go, I'm never listening to that person again because they had that opinion. It's just no one is going to learn that way. He just yeah, absolutely.
I want to take a left turn, as I do. And so you get an opportunity to sit one on one with the Deli Alama, one of two or three people in Australia at the time. I think that got that opportunity. And your big fucking question is whether or not i'll bless your football club.
But his answer was great because he said I would, I will, and bet it won't help. That's what he said, and he was right, he did, and it didn't help. It still hadn't come good.
How long did you get to sit with him?
I've made have.
Been ten minutes maybe, but you know, I did feel a connection and I love, you know what, I'm the Buddhist way, I think generally is a good way because just to see the smile and the laugh on their leader makes that sort of part.
That's part of my philosophy as well.
It's like, you know, you feel like he sees the ridiculousness of life life and he's able to laugh at it, and that's always what I want to be able to do.
So yeah, I'm getting deeper. I really am starting.
I'm annoying people about this, but I've gone into meditation twice a day now and that's only a recent thing. But I'm absolutely loving it. I'm just morning and night set it in twenty minutes a time. It's a again. You know, I want to go back to the Netflix, I go, but this is I think this is a game changer for me. I've banned on about it. I was band interest in Buddhis philosophy since I was at in my early twenties, you know, over almost three decades ago.
But I'm really starting to invest in it now. Just with myself and I'm feeling the benefits.
I really am.
I just quiet, Just find the quiet, get behind the noise, and it's all noise in your head, is all noise.
If you can manage your mind, I think you can manage your life, you know, because it's it's such or it can be such. As I said before, when I ask an audience, you know, to put up your hand. If you're an overthinker, every hand goes.
Up, and then go, well, let's talk about that, and who wants to be an overthinker?
Will nobody? Who is everybody?
So you know, generally the root of overthinking, the underlying causes fear.
So let's talk about the fear of what he is scared of. I want to be loved and valued, needed.
Accepted, popular, sexy, desirable, and all of that shit is temporary. Anyway, I think part of this, let's go deep, husy. Part of this is really where does where does Hughesy finish? And where does Dave hughes start. You know, there's there's the not that you're disingenuous, but there's the Huesy persona.
There's the public, funny, lovable, fucking alarican. And then there's Dave Hughes, the human being, the conscious entity, trying to figure out what the fuck life is about and what the fuck you're about in the middle of that life. You know, when we live in this duality of existence, which is the external world, situation, circumstance, environment, are the humans Telly Radio stand up all these extern all stimuli
and experiences, But where we live is internally. Where we live is in our thoughts and our values and our beliefs and our love and our compassion. And so there's this concurrent existence, this duality, and trying to figure out where does the external stop and where does my internal world start?
And what does that look like?
And where does where does Dave's stuff finish? Where does day's brand and business and reputation and house and money and all that stuff which is not bad or good, it's just stuff. Where does that finish? And where does Dave start? And where does Dave get his sense of self from?
Well, I mean I've got to the point where, you know, I know what you're talking about external internal, but actually it is all internal.
Like there's no external.
We create our all, We create everything. There's nothing created outside our own brains. It's all inside there, and everything else is an illusional insides, an illusionble. I know I'm certainly getting a bit, but it's like it is all noise. Everything is noise created by ourselves. No one else creates the noise. We create every single moment of our reality. No one else creates it. No one creates my reality I do. No one creates anyone's reality except themselves.
And that is what. Once you realize that, you go, wow, it's everything. It's all up to me.
That's right.
No no other entity makes and it makes a choice.
I make every choice, and that's it.
And what I want to do is get beyond even that, in which I've started to do through this focus of just living in the moment and realizing it's all noise in.
My head, created by no one else.
I decide how loud the volume is or how low the volume is. No one else can decide for me. No one else can do it for me. I have to do it for myself. And I'm turning down the volume and enjoying life much more by doing that. And it's like I'm not worrying. I'm worrying much less about the bullshit, which is comparing yourself to others the whole time.
The ego I've been.
I've been a prisoner of my own ego for a long time. And maybe it's it's meant that I've got to where I'm at.
I don't know. But it's not enjoyable to do that. I much prefer just to look at.
A tree and go, Wow, that's amazing. And when you're quiet in your mind and you work on it constantly, and you've got to make it a practice, and I think it's going to make it a lifetime of practice.
Life becomes so much more enjoyable, you know.
Even just making the school lunches every morning, which I do because my wife is a teacher and she goes to school and I make the lunches, which is just a tedious job of just drudgery of day after day. Once you turn your attitude around and go quiet, it becomes a nice moment and it's yeah, I'm really into this at the moment, and I hope I continue.
Yeah, No, I love it. It's the.
Yeah, the separation of the internal and the external. And like one of the challenges for us is that we grow up in a collective culture and message that says to an extent, success is about what you have and what you earn, and what you own and what you do and what you drive and where you live. And that's how people are and it shouldn't be that, but
that is how people are evaluated. And as you I talk about the subjective nature of being human, and one of the really easy to understand explanations is, you know, we might have ten thousand people listen to this episode, and although they're all getting the exact same message, with the same intent from the same people, probably no one is having an identical experience of this moment in time,
or this podcast or this Dave Hughes experience. No one's having an identical experience to anyone else because we are the creators of our experience. We are the creators of our reality.
We created all, We created all. And that's that's the powerful message that I've sort of realized recently. There's no one else creating my reality. I'm doing it myself, and it's my decisions, my decisions.
Every moment of the day.
I make the decision as to what I'm going to think and what I'm going to dwell on or not dwell on. No one else is making them for me, and it's yeah, it's but I mean, I'm not even trying to consciously now make say I'm good or I'm great, or I'm funny or I'm you know whatever, just.
Go beyond that. I don't even need to. And it's funny.
The more that I quieten down, the more other people are saying nice things to me. It's because I'm not walking around desperate for attention. But it doesn't matter that they're saying nice things because I think I don't even need them to say nice things anymore. I really, you know, I'm not perfect, but I'm getting better at it, you know, and it's lovely.
I think.
Yeah, it really comes down to awareness of self. And I talk about my numerous shortcomings, but you know, ego and self esteem stuff and the need for approval. And you know, when I was a kid, I was this Morbley. I was the fattest kid in my school. My name at school was Jumbo. You know, all this bullshit that you carry with you and and even even when you succeed in inverted commas to a degree, it took a
long time for me. Like I owned, I had five different businesses and one hundred staff when I was thirty years old and I was making lots of dough in.
Life was good.
But in the middle of all of that, I was still a fuck with I was still anxious, I was still had low self esteem. I still couldn't get enough, or have enough, or get enough. Attentional, We'll never.
Get We'll never get enough. When you need to get enough, You'll never get enough. There'll always be people better than you, richer than you, stronger than you, farther than you. You know, just there's never going to be enough.
Do you think part of the awareness or part of the trigger for this for you, because it was for me, was being around people who are successful in inverted commas, who in the middle of all of their shiny existence, their Hollywood like existence, which from the outside looking and they were killing it. But when you get to know
them beyond that. So many of my clients over the years that I work with were super duper wealthy and successful, but simultaneously anxious and depressed and insecure and exhausted and physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually bankrupt. And you go from the outside like what you would see externally was not at all any indication of what was happening internally.
Absolutely, you'd see very successful people who were bitter and jowous and just aren'nhappy.
And it's like, what is the point.
Honestly, I look at some of the big example that is James Packer, who's, like you know, was Australia's richest men. But if you if you met James, I did a few times, you just came across as so insecure and so just you could see how fragile his ego was.
And you could, you know, you could from my brief and caounters with James Packer, I to hear that he had problems, you know, down the track was just so evident because of the ego that was just constantly needed to be fed, and it's just it was never going to end well. So it's just to get beyond that ego. And I've had it, don't get me wrong, still to.
This day, I you know, to that.
This morning, I pick up Twitter and someone says something that triggers me. I want to respond, I don't. I look at it again. And a friend of mine selling out the Sydney Opera house. I'm triggered, and I'm like, what is the point.
Well, if you listen to Rogan, you know, he would tell you, don't pay attention to that ship mate, don't read it.
I know, I agree, I'm one hundred percent on that. And it's just but the more we quite in the mind, the more we just you know what, just this sounds very deep, but just to just for us to realize how amazing it is to be alive and just to be able to breathe, and just what gifts were given, The gift of life is just there's nothing else you need.
You have had a spiritual liking.
I even Jonko now.
No, but I like it.
But you know, you think about this, how many people have a moment in their life where something goes horrendous, you know, an accident or a tragedy, or a death, or an illness or you know whatever bushfires or COVID even for some people just the stuff, just the really hard shit in life.
And all they want. All those people want, understandably, is all they want is what they had yesterday before all this shit started. Yeah, if only I could.
So what they want is the life that they didn't really appreciate value. They desperately want that back because now they have a new regard and a new attitude and new psychology around it. And I always say to people with two on two fronts. One, you know, don't wait for the tragedy before you step into your potential and your possibilities. But also don't wait for the tragedy before you have gratitude and awareness of how fucking amazing your existence is.
Yes, like I go in.
Your existence is every moment we should be going, My god, look at this, I am spinning around through space on a rock. Look around me. This is amazing. And that appreciation is what you're saying. They're the gratitude of that. Everything else falls away, all the bulls, it falls away.
You're like this.
One of my mentors used to say to me, Hughes, you do it. Do a treasure hunt on your life. Yeah, go and do a treasure hunt. Find all the good things, because you know, most people, if there's one hundred things in their life and one's not so great, but ninety nine are pretty good, too, amazing, they'll focus on the one.
And it's really about where the fuck is your attention, Because where your attention is, your mind is, your emotion is, your body is, and if your attention is on that bad thing, that happened four and a half years ago. That's where you are. You know, you're not present, you're not here, You're not in the moment.
Absolutely.
So for me to a small example to do, I've got a TV show, Us We have a Problem, which is on its fourth season, coming back in February. But the ratings will come out every Tuesday whatever, and I won't look at the people who are watching.
I'll look at the people who aren't watching.
I won't go, Wow, maybe four hundred thousand people watch that. I'll go, oh, look at all the people who didn't watch.
You know what the fuck?
I'm a little kid who grew up in a commission house and I've got a TV show on you know, a network, and it's making me miserable.
Yeah yeah, when that's the case, you know the problems not the TV show or the network.
You know, you're the fucking problem. But we're all the problem, aren't we. So we've got to go.
But I want to ask you a quick few questions before we go, So just one, give me, give Tiff and I and the listeners one minute on Hughes's parenting style.
I am, I am. You know it sounds corny, but I want my children to be happy.
And you know, my son's playing basketball under under thirteen's.
He's freaking out, you know, and.
It's the corny thing to save. He's doing rep training. And you make sure you enjoy that. You enjoy it. You're out in court, you take those shots. You don't worry about it. You know, we're in the backyard. He's cracking the ships because he's missing free throws. And I say, mate, the real winners are the ones who stay.
In the moment.
They haven't even they don't even think about the ones they've missed. They just they're right there.
So that's one thing.
But and just love comedy in my house. And the kids are really into it as well. My daughter eight year old nine year old daughter. I went to get it some toothpastes out of their bathroom yesterday and there's a note on its on the door saying this is kids toothpaste only not to be touched by adults. I just love that she's taking the time to write these notes out. And yeah, so I just I want a lot of laughter in my house, and I just want the kids to have a good time. And you know what,
they're watching friends at the moment. God, they love Friends and I love Friends.
That's hilarious.
I think I watched all ten seasons of Friends in about three months, about ten years ago, which is not a good admission, but I fucking i'd never like. It was already done by the time I started watching it, and somebody bought me the DVD series.
Have you watched Friends Tied?
Yeah?
And I found it quite addictive.
But it's good to know that the kids in your house are creating boundaries for.
You, Hughsy They there's very little respect going on, but in a way, there's a lot of joy in the here.
They look.
If I could all the drugs that my kids appear to be on because they're so happy that, you know, I'd make a lot of money. Obviously want that to continue, their joy to continue.
And did you did you marry Holly because you needed a grown up influence in your life or.
She sees she was someone who is Actually she's obviously very attractive. And I did do get a lot of comments about how bat and above my origin.
I do appreciate that.
And there was the famous time my son, at the age of seven, said, Dad, did you meet mamake?
He got famous, and it was hurtful at the time, and I.
No, is it though, or is it just insightful?
What's insightful?
I said, mate, you worked that out, but you still can't you still take you half an hour? But to jump on mate, exactly. So yeah, she's very grounded and very she's school teacher. Now, she was a journ up the Herald Son, but she she didn't like chasing ambulances and she wasn't that keen on, you know, getting a chad opportunity to be TV and stuff. But she never really went for it. I didn't understand at the time, how do you not want that attention?
So she didn't.
So and she's teaching grade one and she's very happy doing that. So yeah, she's very doesn't seek the limelight. And it's very, very grounded. And it's always trying to tell me to be grateful when I get a bad review, you know, or someone someone says something hurtful about me in the newspaper, and she goes, look, you've got a pretty good life.
You need to stop winging. So I appreciate that.
Yeah, you're doing all right, you get you're going all right. Get over at housing commission. Boy just fucking get some perspective. If everything last question, if everything goes great on planet Hughsy, everything goes awesome, things work out, you go where you want to go, Things unfolded beautifully.
What's happening in five years?
Mate?
You know what if I'm going to dream the dream I'm you know, I don't know. I do a TV or a comedy special which somehow gets picked up internationally and all of a sudden, you know, people we don't have to explain well overseas listeners who they have huses, you know they already know. So it's happened to the occasion, it happens. You know, Hannah Gadsby and Usie Comic had a special that went international and then she was talking some very serious subjects in that special. But it does
happen occasionally. So I look for anyone here from Netflix is watching. You know, I'm happy to give you a special, real cheap, put it on your platforms, and who knows who could go We could go international.
That would be fun.
But otherwise, zen as mate, and you see me in the street, you'll see me smiling.
You know it.
From too many years people have seen me in the street and yelled out, what's wrong here?
Is it?
You know? It will probably never happen because obviously I'm thinking about you know, those tickets I haven't sold, or those those ratings I didn't get on the TV.
So no more.
From now on, we're just going to walk around, smell on the flowers, appreciating the birds, singing and enjoying life.
We're going to get you.
We're going to send you a caftan, some Jesus sandals, a couple of a couple of dream catches, a fucking tambourine.
My kids, my kids actually say enough of this, Guru, Guru, bullshit Dad.
Well, mate, we really appreciate you being on the project. You're a ripper. Thanks for taking an hour out of your day.
I know you're busy, and you genuinely are busy, and I know you get a lot of requests and we're nobody, but I appreciate you talking to us nobody's and taking the effort and bringing bringing the energy to this moment for everyone to listen to.
So thanks a lot yours. I really enjoyed it.
Thanks mate, Thanks, thanks everyone to stay there.
Huge, Thanks everyone, tip anything else if if I forgotten any housekeeping.
You never forget the housekeeping. You've done well, Heart's well done, gold Staff for you all right, I
Do my best, Love your guts everyone, See you next time.