Doctor Cam. Welcome back to the Bloody You Project.
How are you very well? Thank you Harps.
Now I'm off the back of some lovely time in Tasmania supporting some schools down there with some personalized learning. It's now back into full health professional mode.
It's very exciting.
I grew up in Tazzy Well. I did some of my growing up in Tazzy In Well. I was going to say Hobart technically across the river from Hobart, but I love it down there. I actually had this chat with TIFFs the other day whose she's over there at the moment. If I had to live anywhere but where I live, it would actually be Tazzy And I know that's a weird choice for some but it's so beautiful.
Yeah, yeah, absolutely everybody knows everybody.
It's just everybody comes back.
It's talking to a lot of the people there. They all went away in their twenties because they thought they had to escape, and as soon as they thought about having kids, they said, there's only one place I want to bring them up.
It is so beautiful, great little now.
Yeah, it's like it's like a big, just country rural with everything that you need, especially in twenty twenty five, but it is twenty twenty five, but it kind of feels like nine point eighty five over there, And I mean that with love for me. It's like stepping back in time in a good way.
Yeah, the shops have just got slightly bit slightly better posts posters on their windows.
Yeah, yeah, they have what were you doing so person? So people just pricked up. There is a few of them. And when personalized learning, what is that?
It is? Well, we actually do precision learning.
So precision personalized learning is I know that children are different and I'm going to try some different things. I'm going to get feedback from those children, and based on that, I'm going to use my intuition to make it a little bit different for them.
Precision learning is where we actually.
Take quantified objective assessment of the child to understand what are their Cicadian rhythms, what are their bio logically driven learning styles, what are their biologically driven behavioral tendencies, what are the things that we've got to think about for their well being.
So we.
Do that profiling on the kids in a company with the school obviously and the parents, and then we provide the school AI tools that allows them to say, Hey, I've got a child here with this particular profile that's behaving this way, what's the underlying cause of that biologically, and what are the things that I can do about it biologically and psychologically to support them.
So it becomes.
A really, really wonderful way because often a lot of educators will see a behavior and then use a strategy to stop the behavior. And often the behavior is stemming from a stress and the child is under some sort of stress, and so their biology outs itself and then that symptom gets And I'll give you an example. Kids sitting still, needs to move, wants to move, moves, gets told sit still, and they go, oh, now, I'm really angry and frustrated just because I'm not allowed to do
what my body wants to do. But we are now explaining to them, well, the factors that are making them actually want to move are their adrenal system, their steroid sensitivity, the way that the musculoskalidal system has developed for this child in particular, they want to move, and if they don't, they're going to turn, They're going to completely disengage and get frustrated. So if you let them move, if you
let them snack actually have a huge benefit. We've got some teachers out there that now have a really great principle where'll the kid will actually call it on themselves and say I think I need to go move for five minutes. It's this proactive self awareness piece of go move.
They let them go out of the side the classes in year five, shoot a few hoops, come back in completely settled, and they're taking real ownership of their behavior because they're understanding why is this child going into strands? And there's this a lot of the time that I'm talking to parents and educators. It's about.
Developing greater compassion for why.
A behavior is the way that it is. And the funny thing is that adults do the exact same thing themselves. Like we've all got our own stresses. We're just much smarter at at a rationalizing blame and reasons as to why we're stressed, as opposed to really understanding the reason.
So it's a big compassion job and that's what we're doing out there, and you know it's with a year into some research now we're about to do some observational data for the first intake of people with Southern Cross UNI so it's been a really beautiful extension from the health professional work I've been doing for a long time.
That's amazing, that's bloody, that is so exciting, that is so needed. Yeah, and teachers have it so hard because you're working in, you know, something of an outdated system in some ways in that you know, you've got thirty kids being taught with one particular model or style or protocol and thirty different you know, biologies and psychologies and emotions and personalities and fucking attention spans and all of
that myriad of variables. And then it's like you've got thirty kids who don't feel well, and we give them all the same medication despite the fact that they're all got different ailments. You know, it's not a great analogy, but it's not terrible. But yeah, I think the thing is people don't realize that. Correct me if I'm wrong. But my kind of thinking is the behavior is not
the problem. The behavior is the symptom. We need to figure out what's the underlying driver of that behavior that's not perhaps appropriate or desirable or optimal in that setting. So if we can figure out what is the underlying driver or mechanism or whatever the fuck we want to call it doctor cam that's not too science y, and
then deal with that. Then we're going to get kids that, like you said, you go run round, spend some energy, throw a few hoops, or eat a fucking you know apple, or scream in scream into a pillow, and then come back whatever it is.
Yeah, well that's exactly right. And the funny thing is I normally start this whole conversation with the educators and we go through all of many of the different environmental factors that actually drive their own stress, and we go through some funny little examples, like you can you can exercise at a time that's not ideal for your body, and that will raise your cortisol levels for the next four hours if you do it at the wrong time.
But another person that they drop back down in fifteen minutes. And I know that we've discussed that at some point along our way on our journey together.
Whereas a person can have they can walk into a room and it's twenty two degrees and I.
Always do this as an example when I'm speaking they who hates air conditioning, and then I asked them, how do you feel when you've got air conditioning that's up too high or too cold, and they say, I feel angry, and then I say, everyone just checked that for a second. We've got this person right here and they are genuinely angry because of the temperature. And you walk in and you're having an interaction with this person and they don't respond the way that you think they will because they're
angry about the temperature. But when do we ever think, Ah, it's got to be the temperature that's causing this person to be a little.
Bit aggrad We never ever think that way.
Similarly, and there's some really fascinating stuff. We go through a whole lot of things, whether it be the different types of food that can cause the same thing, lack of sleep, even a crowded environment versus a like an isolated environment. But another really fascinating part of it is you can spend time with people in the same space and through the electromagnetic radiation that comes off your heart
and heart rate variability. This has been studied by heart math for the last seventy years, you can actually change your persons. If you're in a stressed state and you're standing next to somebody who's neutral, they don't know it but they walk away in a more stressed state. Their heart rhythm actually mimics.
The more stressed person next to them.
And if you've got people on mass that are stressed, it en mass stresses the other people as well. And so we really talk about self accountability because and any those things that can disrupt your heart rhythm can be I caught this person at the wrong time of day. They weren't ready for it because they didn't finished their second coffee. I was ready for it because I'm feeling great right now. We've not had a great conversation. All of a sudden, they're stressed because I'm rushing them at
the time when they don't want to be rushed. They're now in a foul mood. They go and talk to somebody about that. And psychology is more infectious than bacteria. It's amazing a bad mood and how it pushes out into the system. And so a lot of the work that we talk about is let's actually have some grace for people.
And even if you go.
Through like when you have a bad interaction with somebody, imagine if you were to say, oh, as you're walking away, maybe it was their exercise this morning that made them a bit stressed. Maybe it was the broccoli that they had that was giving them a bit of mental fog. Maybe it was the lack of sleep that they had because their kid poked them in the eye at three am.
Maybe it was the temperature in the room. Maybe it was just they were surrounded by a bunch of buggers with a bad heart rate the day, the moment before I walked in, and in that moment, you've gone through five different compassionate understandings of why is this person stress? Because at the end of the day, everyone just displays the result of stress or the result of the stress
on their system. So it's a very powerful message and it immediately creates a whole lot more grace when you're dealing with people.
I apologize for not looking at you. I was listening to you. I was trying to find I was trying to find a But yeah, I did a little video on Insta a week or two ago about a thing called into personal neurobiology, Right, So the impact that you have on others, which is what you're talking about. And it's funny how literally being around just like let's say I love you and you love me, we're mates, which
of course we are. But like, well, I like you, and but we haven't spent much time together, but I like you, and I would imagine for me being around you because I'm interested in you. I think you're a good dude. You've got good energy, you've got good intentions. I like you, right, So I would think just being in proximity of you, not necessarily even giving you a hard or talking to you, but being near you would do good things for me, so selfishly I want that.
Right.
Conversely, just being near somebody that I think is a fox stick, right, it's rightly or wrongly, just like some people think that of me, I'm sure. But it's like when you're around people that you perceive to be toxic or whatever, or not trustworthy or dangerous. You know that has a psychological, emotional, and physiological consequence as well.
Right, yes, absolutely, And this is where we know that you've got three people in a room, and unspoken, they can be facing a different way. Unspoken, the fourth person in the room will mirror the heart rhythms of those other three people. If they're calm, they will mirror calmness.
If they're all stressed, that person comes in and their heart rhythm will show stress and so and what we know is that that heart rhythm that's related to resentment and frustration and all of the negative emotions that we carry around with us when we're not dealing with our stuff. We know that that heart rhythm is also highly associated with cardivascular disease, type two, diabetes, cancer, every chronic disease that you can think of, there's a dysfunction that comes
along with those emotions. So I really make the point that you can shorten a person's life by not taking responsibility for the state that you turn up in. And it's and I know that it seems like an extreme thing to say, but hang out in a bad relationship for three years, your health declines and your mental health just goes to pot. You're not having a good life, And it's definitely it's definitely creating an environment that shortens
it as well. So this and the really important part of this is that so much of this stuff it's unconscious, Like it's not in our normality to speak about the air conditioning causing a bit of stress, the time of day causing a bit of stress. I'm holding onto resentment about this thing that happened from my childhood. You know, it's just not part of our normal conversation. In fact, it's a little bit sensitive and people all get a little.
Bit funny about it.
But these are truly the things that are influencing us day to day's. And just always assuming that a person is doing their best but they just don't know what's causing their stress. Is a really nice attitude to bring to it.
Yeah, I think it's a it's a different kind of awareness I talk. I've spoken a fair bit about when I was a kid. When I was you know, in my early twenties, I figured out I didn't want a job. I wanted to work, but I didn't want to buss. I didn't want to be an employee. And I just figured out what kind of work model in inverted commas worked for me. And also even now, you know, I've I've created an environment at home, like I'm in my office now. I have a studio downstairs to record. I
record up in my office sometimes. But one thing that nearly everybody says when they come to my office is I fucking love your office. Because outside is just all forty foot trees, inside a big comfy leather chairs, there's just this big, mushy carpet, you put your toes into the recording studios, cool my out. You know, it's just like an environment. Even if I'm not thinking, I'm not
consciously interacting with it. Subconsciously, it had this great impact on you know, everything from my nervous system to know my brain biochemistry to everything where oh I'm healthier and happier and more focused and more productive. Even if I'm the same bloke doing the same task, but if I'm in this environment, I work fifty percent better, you know. And as the amount of times where I've said, somebody tell me about your office and they're like, well, I
do you want to know? And I go, you know, and basically they work in an environment that they don't like being and it's not stimulating. They don't feel good.
There's no nature, there's no view, there's no and you know, just trying to talk to them about the idea of well, you're in that office, you know, thirty to forty hours a week, what can we do that might might make that a better place, not just aesthetically or whatever, but from a literally from a biological point of view for you, like, we're you know, and I think we don't think too much about the consequences of not only the relationship we have with other humans, but with our pets, and with
our environment, and with our workplace and with you know, in fucking nature, with everything, with.
Ourselves, you know, like the amount.
And I was just speaking to a friend just before this call, and it was a good way to thinking, like, you know, I'm like the amount of real estate that I'm giving to certain people by thinking about them so much, you know, but they're actually causing me.
Stress to think about them because they're stuck in my head.
And this person's been in my life for a year, and it's and we often talk about this little quote when we're discussing having hard conversations with teams and things like that. And resentment is like drinking poison, thinking the other person is going to die.
It's just like what you're holding is affecting you.
It's and to your point, you know, there's a number there's particular people. Obviously it's important for you, and it's definitely important for me. There's particular people that the first bit of homework I'll give them is to, hey, have you got any cluttered rooms at home that.
You want to clear up.
Just go and clear that up this weekend, and they come back with a breath of fresh air. It just the background stress that can occur. And I know that I've mentioned it once already, but if you've had a bad relationship and then all of a sudden, that relationship stops, the background stress that you've been holding on to, the
void that that leaves is remarkable. But we just think we can push on and carry on, but it infiltrates every interaction we have, every bit of energy we have, and it's good to assume that people have got their own stuff going on when you haven't had the perfect interaction with them one hundred percent.
You know what that reminds me of two Cam is, you know the things that you know you need to do, they're on the to do list, but you keep pushing them further and further down because you kind of you know you need to, but you don't want to because you're scared, or it's going to be uncomfortable or hard or inconvenient or uncertain, or there's you feel there's some you know, but whatever, and then you do it and you're like, ah, fuck, why didn't I do that like
a year ago? And by the way, how awesome do I feel now? Where there's low level anxiety constantly because there's a conversation we're not having, or a thing we're not doing, or a behavior we're not embracing, or a habit we're not owning up to. You know, It's like when you go, all right, okay, so I'm going to do It's not going to be fun, quick, easy, or painless, but that are and then you do it, you're like, shit, why didn't I start a year ago?
Yes, exactly.
The the it's it's just amazing what we cope with. It's amazing what we cope with and were just and the fascinating thing about it as well, And this is a big message that we're driving all of the time, is the importance of mindfulness, the importance of just stopping and checking in with yourself.
And sometimes the symptom of.
That is you get really tired because if you're if you're cartersold drops and you're neure adrenaline drops and you don't mean drops because you have a mindful moment which doesn't involve hyper focus, that actually involves the opposite in many ways. If that happens, you then get to register how your body's actually feeling.
But before that you were fine because you were riding.
Essentially, the stress hormones that mask your sense of self. And this is this is both a biological thing and a psychological thing. You know, when you're running and you've got a bit of a niggle and then next day it's blown out into this full on tear or whatever it might be, it's stress hormones mask what's going on.
And then once you rest and recover, that's when you really understand where your body's at and the you know, this is where you can go from I feel fine to sick and lying in bed the next for the next week, when you were you know, absolutely sprinting towards a deadline as well.
And it's it's that.
When you're constantly on the go, a little bit underslept, a little bit more caffeinated, a little bit more on edge with a relationship, a little bit more urgent with work, a little bit more worried about people are thinking about, all of that just suspends you away from yourself in a disconnected.
Space, and that then doesn't allow you to.
Say, oh, I'm in a stressed state and I can identify that you just think I've got to keep going.
And it's and this is so powerful.
Just to bring people into a moment of breath, just to just for five minutes so they can check themselves out for a second.
You know.
It's yeah, it's a routine that we don't teach.
We started, I started we at the You Project, started a new mentor and group this week on Monday, and it's it's ten weeks and week one is called Life Design one oh one. You'd love week one right because it's it's in your wheelhouse, right. And I was just talking to people about I give this example, mate, where
I say, all right, let's let's let's say this. I'm going to give you an acre of land looking at the ocean, and I'm going to give you two million bucks or three million bucks to build what whatever you want. You know, you've got all the council permits. Everything's good. You've got the land, you've got three million bucks. You're going to build a house looking at the ocean. You know, when are you going to start building? Like you've got
it today. And they're like, what do you mean, I'll go well when you are starting and like, oh, well, I've got a you know, I've got it. I've got architects, and I've got designers and landscape gardeners and furniture to you know, and then we go through this whole thing where well, you would probably plan and structure and timeline and chews and you know, like manage all of these variables to create create this house that you want to live in so it's perfect and it's optimal for you,
and it's right now, we're talking about a house. So we spend all this time on a thing that could literally burn to the ground, but we spend five minutes, if we're lucky, designing our life right, because we're it's like we're on this unconscious auto pilot and now I'm fifty. Oh fuck, this wasn't my plan. Oh could I see the plan? What can I see the plan? There's no fucking plan, right, because most of us don't really have
a plan. We just have an idea of how things might work out, or how we hope they'll work out. But in terms of a plan and a structure and a process and accountability, and you know that the way that we would manage the building of a house, we don't really do apply the same ideas or processes to building our optimal life. And so we were just talking about very much about stepping out of the autopilotness of your three out of ten existence into this conscious creation
rather than this unintentional kind of journey. And people like I've never even thought about it. I go, that doesn't make you bad, it's just normal. And how many people if you go, do you want to be healthier? Yes? Would you like to make more dough yes? Would you like to be less stressed, yes, would you like a better job, yes? Would you like you know? All these and then you go, cool, what are you doing about all of those things? What you know?
What I'm saying?
Yeah, well, yet, of course you're not going to fucking accidentally win. You're not going to accidentally win, you know. So this openness, I think, and I think also it's important to point out that it ain't about self loathing. It's about self awareness and honesty. And you've got to be brave, right, You've got to be brave to acknowledge the shit that's not working.
Yes, absolutely absolutely, And it's that's one of the things that I'm often doing. And I get about a point five percent strike rate on this question, and that is who's planning what time they're going to bed tonight, right, And it's in this context of well, you've planned every bit of stress in your life, but you haven't planned any kind of recovery.
And it's the recovery that enables you to grow and be stronger and various.
Things like it's a very very baby version of that something.
That you're doing that's far more powerful.
But it's it's we don't prioritize for the outcomes that we want. We just as you said, we hope.
So it's yes, that's great, it's cool.
I want to come I want to come back to the start of the conversation where you were talking about, you know, working with the kids in tazzi At. Do you want to give a shout out to the school or do we not allow to do that?
No?
No, We've got we've got some incredible schools that we were working with down there. The first we're in a research partnership with the hutch And School down there. Oh yeah, yeah, which is that's fancy.
I know that's a fancy school.
It is a fancy school. They have just got the most incredible staff. They've taken this information on really well. They you know, we were working them for a couple two years two and a half years now and have done a whole lot of work with them and now it's really starting to land for the parents, which is great.
I did some work with St.
Virgils as well, doing some work with Fun School down there too, working with some a couple of schools up here too. But the it's been it's been amazing working with those schools down there, and there was a particular there's some really really fascinating tools that are becoming available now because one of the hardest things for educators is right, great, you've given me a precision learning profile for twenty five kids.
What now you know how am I supposed to do this?
And this is where the things that we've been working on you can essentially plug in. I want to do this lesson and I've got all of these children in the class. Can you differentiate the instruction? Can you provide an assessment that leans into each child's strengths. So what you have for like we're going to study the weather patterns of Perth or whatever it might be for a year four project.
Some kids are out.
There in the wind measuring wind and doing something experiential. Other kids are analyzing stuff online and writing a report. Another one comes up and gives a little talk. Another person gets a small group together and leads that because at the end of the day, you just want them to know about the weather patterns. How you they're actually ticking the criteria off is less important, but the fact that they can do it is very important from a
curriculum standpoint. And the whole idea is that if we know that you're really great at this, then let's get you to do that. And what we know if someone sits in their natural strengths, it lowers their stress, it increases their productivity. It actually increases their sense of self
and their sense of contribution and makes them engage socially more. So, you can have the most introverted person instead of being told to go out into the wind, because often true introverts are very sensitive to the wind as well, which is interesting. Cold temperature and being out in the wind and doing experiments would stressen out. If you let them have their nice quiet corner and do their work, they're much more likely than to have the energy to come
and interact. But it's just you know, the tendency is to say, oh, look, my experience is this, so you should be good at this too, and oh you're a little bit quite great, get into toast masters and will make you louder. Oh you're a little bit loud. Great, Let's get you into something quiet like detention or something where you consist.
Yea.
And a really fascinating example will come up at a different school altogether. And we were going through the process with father and son and the son just wasn't interested at all, and he was in our model. He was a crusader. Crusader's are strategic rule breakers. They're very intelligent, and they know where the boundary is, they know what they can get away with, and they'll just push, particularly
if they don't feel like they're in control. And so this is exactly what this child was doing, swearing at me, but like being really I mean, his dad was not loving it. It was so fascinating. We pulled the AI up and said, look, we've got a crusader here that's expressing a whole lot of defiance. What could be causing this? And the AI said, look, this type of person. They're looking for control, they're looking for autonomy, they're looking to
feel like their thoughts are important. They like a sense of structure, they need context, they need outcome.
So the best way to support them would be X, Y and Z.
Like the intelligence that we now have, and what that does is it honors the child. Like what we now know is that child is lacking autonomy, lacking independence. And of course the language isn't great, but what are we seeing here. We're seeing a child in stress, That's what we're seeing. So let's deal with the stress rather than let's just bash the symptom on its head. And this is where precision learning is going to.
Where it's where.
It's where it's available right now, essentially, where we can have these very very powerful insights into the biological driver of behavior, which the reason why I'm interested it is that creates this incredible compassion. You get a wonderful sense
of I understand you, and it's amazing. Even my son in a today, he's very fiery, and he was very very fiery in the car today, even just knowing that he just needs to vent it out, he needs to play some physical games where we're hitting each other for a second and then he starts laughing, just knowing that I've got to hold that space, let him get it off off off his chest, and then he normalizes rather than saying, mate, you can't talk like that. You've got
to fix yourself up. You've got to do this. Why aren't you doing that? Like having the whole conversation? And when I do do that, you just see his energy sink and it goes the wrong way. So it's just how can we understand more about what's driven that stress?
Just if we were talking about the start, it's it's it's a very very exciting space.
Do you Is it all biologically driven in terms of the behavior and the learning stuff, because you, yeah, you don't really talk much about the psychology or the emotional stuff, but does the biological stuff pretty much determine the psychology and emotion.
What's the right.
It's the way to think about it.
It's not nature versus nurture. It is nature through nurture.
And what I mean by that is you put two people, one hates air conditioning, one loves air conditioning in a room. The environment the nurture. The nurture is the environment that's the environment around us, or could be a person. Whatever the environment says to one person's genes. I'm really cold, and that person's gene says, I hate the cold.
I'm now aggravated.
Whereas another person the cold comes at their body and says, I'm really cold. The cold says I'm cold, and the body says, thank God, because I was overheating. I feel really calm. And so what happens is you get the nature of this person shining through as a result of the environment. So when we're talking about the psychology, let's say that we have a child that's been abused.
Their biology will deal.
With that in a way that's unique to their biology. So let's say that you've got a like a drenalized testosterone driven body and they are given a trauma. What we see is heightened heightened aggressivity or the other thing we could see meekness, and we know that there's a pathology there because they should be outward with their energy,
for example. So whereas another individual goes through that same trauma, and normally they're very reserved and they're more participators rather than initiators, and they don't have the same energy to be up and out. They're more conservative. They think about things for three or four weeks before they respond to things, and so what that's going to do to that individual. It's just going to shut them down even further, or
it may make them explode really regularly. But if we understand the biology as a psychotherapist, psychologist, whatever it may be, you.
Can say, well, I know what's normal for your biology, so what.
Part of your childhood or your life circumstance has altered your normal response And it allows for much more directed questioning. If we know that we've got a really fiery person and they are really meek and non competitive and not showing any signs of that. And I've dealt with many of these people and I've just said, hey, you should be a little bit firier, like angry, and by the end of the session they're crying. I've never been allowed to be that way. I've always been told I'm too much.
I've always been told that I'm too aggressive. And you can give them permission to then start expressing themselves as well. Whereas the other person, where they've become more reserved to a point where they're.
Paralysis analysis or analysis by parass whatever it may.
Be, you can actually say it's normal for you to consider things, but we actually need to get you out of that analysis paralysis and into some quick wins, into some action. And so same a different person, same trauma expresses differently through the biology. So biology is not everything. Biology is the filter and you apply the stress and then the output is filtered through the biology. And this is why if you know what that lens is, what the filter is, then you know how to navigate those
other environmental areas as well. Does that make that make sense? That's a yeah, yeah, yeah.
What about what about here's my curve ball. You've got thirty people in a business meeting. They're in a big boardroom, big table. Half of them hate air conditioning, half of them love it, and the airs just pumping.
Yeah. Perfect.
So the one of the fastest ways of reducing stress is through awareness. So what happens to the cold people in that room is if they're unaware that air conditioning bothers them, they'll just be pissed off.
And they won't know why.
And whereas if you say, who hates air conditioning in this room, particularly if it's blasting you in the face, which it can be sometimes as a presenter, who hates air conditioning in the room, And you'll see these little hands go up and you go, just know that it is totally.
Fine to be aggravated by air conditioning. Have you felt that before?
And it's when you allow someone to be aware of their biology, it allows them them to transcend their response to that environmental queue. And the same thing goes for let's say that, oh, I know that I'm aggravated if I don't get food regularly. If you're unaware of that, which most children are, they're just angry because they haven't had food. But if you say, oh, it's because you're hungry, that's why you're angry.
That awareness allows them to say.
Oh, I'm not angry, I'm just angry. Okay, I'll get that now. And by having greater self awareness, that's where you actually have a greater tolerance.
That's where resilience comes in, and you know the yeah, I mean that's probably.
The easiest way to understand it is if if you can call it out, if you can make it known, and if you can say, hey, if you're really cold and you're really annoyed, go grab a cardigan right now.
It's probably one of the.
Best pieces of advice you can give because why else would you say, Because there still is a physical.
Strain, but it's lessened if you're aware of what that strain is.
You had me until you said the word cardigan.
But with that, it's normally it's normally females that are putting their hand up so that they love a CARDI yeah they.
No, no, I love it, And I just think this is you know, it is so important that we that we understand that everybody's different, everybody you know, responds differently to the same and different stimuli, and that that we like trying to understand ourselves, our own behavior, our own response is our own you know that metacognitive Why do I think like this? Why am I trying to impress doctor cam? Now? Why do I feel intimidated? What is
this about? Why am I you know whatever? Just that level of psychological, cognitive, emotional, and even body awareness by biological awareness, just to just go, ah, I that that is great, Like just what you said, Oh yeah, air conditioning pisses me off, or I'm the opposite. I've got an air conditioner about one meter above my head that's blowing cold air on me. Now I'm happy as a pig in shit. It's like my yeah, I can't if
I'm really hot, It's one of the things. It's funny you mentioned this because me being hot, I'm that I would say the quality of my conversation, communication and focus goes down. I don't know twenty percent. So if I'm doing, you know, like we started recording at two o'clock, I come in. I literally put on the air at one fifty five. So I'll sit in a space. That's cool
because I'm better. I just know that my body and my brain and my attention and my focus communication, and hopefully the end result for the listeners is better if the bloke who hosts the show is not thinking about how sweaty his ass is and how hot he is and how ruppy is.
Yes, absolutely, one hundred percent, one hundred percent, And it's so hard to understand sometimes another person's perspective on that.
You know, you just think, oh, I'm cold, I'm hot. This is awful.
Other people like perfect example, talking to my mum and dad. Dad like you loves the AC, like just just melts slowly in summer, and Mum is a very delicate little flower and she Dad goes, oh, we've got the AC on full blast, but we're melting a slow death.
And Mum goes I'm fine, like she chirps up from the back. You know, I'm fine, And.
It's just understand those differences are so real and probably one of the ways that I bring all of this together in my mind as well is that your mind, your mind and how you're perceiving these things is just a work bench of lots of different stuff that's coming into influence how you feel about that moment.
And Michael A.
Singer came up with this great quote saying, you are not the thoughts in your head, You're the person listening to your thoughts.
And cold.
Being given a signal of I'm cold is just another thought. Being given a signal of I'm hungry is another thought. Being given a signal of I haven't had enough sleep or I'm tired my body is tired, is just another It's another thing to acknowledge on the workbench and to your question before separating yourself from all of that data that you're collecting to say, oh, look, my body is actually my body is responding to that cold in an
interesting way. That's interesting, what's actually happening. My brain is responding to Craig in a really interesting way. I'm trying to impress him and make sure I sound intelligent, all of those types of things. That's really I'm going to hold that out there. I'm trying to impress Craig. And
then this other thing is like I've got whatever. And so it's amazing that when you are able to just see all of these inbound thoughts as things that are separate to you and things that you can interact with individually, it's obviously just an exercise in mindfulness. It's amazing what you can tolerate, what you can get through, and how much clearer you are as well.
Did you ever read The Power of Now back in the day?
Can Yeah, it's partly inspired by that. There's an Eka Toll and yeah, that's it's a perfect book for understanding that.
Absolutely.
Yeah, And he like, I forget exactly. I don't know if it was like I read the book twenty years ago, so and I've read a lot since then, but what twenty five years ago? He basically says, you know, like, I'm not my thoughts, I'm not my feelings. I'm not this, I'm not that, you know, I'm not a body, I'm not a job, I'm not a height. And then he said I'm the awareness of everything I'm not. You know, I'm like, I'm the awareness of everything I'm not. I'm like,
I'm like, that's brilliant, But what does that mean? That was I've told this story before, but I read that book or I started reading that book. I don't know when I was pretty young, like when it first came out, which would i'd say be thirty years ago, maybe even a bit more, probably yeah, mid nineties. Maybe I thought it was just fucking mumbo jumbo. And then maybe I don't know, six or seven years ago I picked it up. I went, oh, how long is this in around? This
is brilliant. That's right, it's like the same I'm different, it's the same, it's the same information, the same.
How do these people, out of these people not get this?
It's so clear?
The I had another We actually did a meditation ext I was on the weekend in a similar way to that point, and that was listening for the silence between the sounds that you can hear. Wow, and it's it's the same thing. It's the of what you're not, it's the it's the everything that you can't perceive, and it's the that looking for that space brings you into that that that that sense of wherever you are at that
higher level. It's it's a you can you meditate on that for hours and just just try and get there deeper on it.
Love it And if if any of our listeners want to do an interesting little exercise, going to chat GPT and ask this question, is there evidence that the mind is exists? And see what it comes up with? Mate, You're awesome. Tell people how that can find you, follow you, connect with you and learn more about all you do.
Yeah, thank you.
There's a I work for the Shay Group. We're a bigger conglorerate. We do a whole lot of things with health professionals, schools, corporate workplaces, gyms, relationships, a whole bunch of stuff. There's a website Shay dot Group, forward slash doctor Cam McDonald. I think I'll send you the link and that's pretty much got every bit of vertical of what we're doing. But we're leading the space in precision
health and wellbeing, precision medicine. It's a very very exciting space right there, and lots of good things coming in the future for all of our healths.
Mate, We're glad you're doing it. Because you're at the forefront and you're opening doors and people are following, and I love this stuff. I love all your stuff, like I love all your stuff, but I love the stuff that you're doing with schools and in the learning space because it's it's obviously super important. But yeah, well done you. We'll chat again.
Thanks mate, Thanks having me, mate,