Good a team. I hope you're bloody terrific. Welcome to another installment of the Youth Project. Tiffany and Cook over there at typ Central and Craig Anthony Harper here at the other branch in Hampton, doing the very best that I can. Just a shitkicker, trying to make ends meat. I do what I can, tip, don't.
I It's been a while, So I h it's been a while, hasn't it.
Yeah, well, you and I haven't got together since the podcast we did all two hours ago. Have you been good?
I've been good. I squeezed in a little twenty minute stroll in what we just learned was eighteen degree sunshine.
Stroll as in stroll or sprint.
Yeah, just a stroll, just a stroll. Really, I'm thinking I'll go for rid.
I've had minimum vitamin D today, so I do need to get out after this and just walk a couple of laps of Hampton so that I might get some vitamin D into me. But I tell you bloke who's probably lacking none because he's in the fucking Sunshine State and was beating his chest and bragging before we got to know each other, So this could be a fucking nightmare. The next forty five minutes. There we go, Heston, Welcome to the show, my friend.
A Craig Tiff, Thank you so much. From twenty four degrees up here in Brisy.
Yeh whatever, right, Well, I thought it was about twelve or thirteen, and I just looked at the little weather thing on my phone and it's eighteen in Melbourne, which is pretty much tropical for this time of year. So stop complaining, harps, that's the story. How's bris Vegas these days?
Yeah, it's good.
You know.
I grew up here and I just moved back here April last year, and I met a place called Newstead here at the gas works and they really done well you activating the Brisy River and so much development going on. It's got a good modern feel to it.
Where did you move back from Sydney?
So I spent most of my time living down in Sydney per my military career and what I sort of did for a couple of years after I got out from that.
Now rather than me banging on with something that I ripped off the Internet, which I do have steering at me from the computer screen next to your face. Now, what don't you do with the honor and give us whatever, as much or as little as you want on the Heston Russell kind of bio, and then we can expand and go wherever we want because we have no rules here. We can even say fuck. So enjoy that for sure.
Who is he? All right? Heston Russell? So my mum had a crush on Charlton Heston. That's where my name came from, not from Hector Heston. Bloomenthal was fifteen years old when I was born. So just to clear that up quickly, we're talking Charlton Heston, Moses, ben Her, all that good stuff, pre mra sort of stuff.
How are you now?
I am thirty six?
Oh you're My fucking shoes are thirty six. So but tell people who Charlton Heston was, because there's quite a like tiff. Do you know who he was?
Naw, he was, you know, he was again bad connotations, but he was a Tom Cruise of his apes.
He was.
He was ben Her. He was Moses in Moses. He was the original lead actor and planet of the Apes. He was the male leading role star back in the days.
He was the goat really of leading men and rock star, good looking Hollywood superstars. He was maybe, if not the first, definitely one of the first, right.
Yeah, I mean back in the days you know where Ben hur was the real life chariot racing scene where people died. He was the big blockbuster stuff back before there was CGI and everything else in.
Between, exactly before there were special and effects. You know, people used to actually get killed in the filming of movies.
Tiff no, no looks just google chart and heston and he's no Patrick Swayze, Oh, come on, bro, go back to his young staff. He was definitely your mother and grandmother would have had a.
Saw what they would have gone off like a frog and a sock, your mom and your grandmom. But you know, there was speaking of people dying in movies. Here's some trivia no one needs. There's a James Bond movie called Live and Let Die. And there's a scene in that movie where a boat does a jump and it's the longest so literally like off a ramp and can you just double check this, Tiff, Live and Let Die boat jump actor or driver dies. So the guy that did that stunt in the movie and they kept it in
the movie actually died. Wow, And they kept that. See this's got nothing to do with special forces or Glorrior.
Yeah, no for sure. Look, and I grew up here in Brazil, went to school here, got out, went down
to Canberra for four years. When I joined the Army, I went to the Defense Force Academy for three years, the Royal Military College for one, got my commission, became a Lieutenant lieutenant and went up to Townsville in an infantry battalion for three years, where I deployed to East Tymoor for Peace tam and that twenty ten I completed selection into the Commandos to become a beret qualified commando and I spent the majority of my years there where
I deployed to Afghanistan four times, Iraq, did a whole bunch of domestic caniterrorism stuff and stuff in the Asia Pacific region. And then I ended up coming back from deployment to Iraq, moving over to the US to live with my at the time secret boyfriend, and ended up moving back to Australia when I brought a brand called
Barry's boot Camp over here to Australia and Singapore. And fast forward lockdowns, breakdowns of relationships, my own sort of mental health decline, failing in my transition from the military mental health decline and suicidal ideation the end of twenty twenty and ever since then, I've really sort of taken the torch to the veteran welfare and support system, namely the Department of Veterans Affairs and a bunch of legislation which saw me campaign for the Royal Commission into Defense
and Veterans Suicide, which we won April last year, and then also step up post the accusations of war crimes against special forces, just to make sure that you know we're actually focusing on the full story, that those who do have things to enter for are actually gone taken to court, not trial by media, while the other three thousand plus people who being collectively punished weren't done something.
We campaigned and succeeded for a few things there. So I now run a charity and up here Brisie with my little three year old sausage dog Copper.
Awesome, we'll get onto TiO. What did you find?
Well, I forgot. I forgot half way through what I was googling.
Don't worry about it at the Moment's past.
Live and let die of boat stunt rather dies. Yeah, but I haven't found any you know, just living.
Live and let die James Bond tragedy or something. You know, this really doesn't matter for the podcast, does it. This is what we do, has don We just bloody. It's a little bit Joe Rogan esque. We're just freestyle and we have a chat about anything. But all right, tell me about your secret boyfriend. Hang on, tell me, I just want to So that wasn't tell us about that? How was that? So you obviously couldn't be out and open about that.
So this is the whole thing. I mean, I've just spent the last two weeks going into a hand to hand conflict over this lighting up the try to remembrance rainbow colors type of stuff. I kept myself in close at my whole military career. The best part about my career was that it focused on what we call the
daily renewable contract. The focused on how you showed up and your confidence and character as opposed to any other label that even now you know, you just google me and have a look at all the different labels, different outlets in the media try and put on me and people you know, to define them by traits that we were born with, you know, differences that shouldn't define us, but I used to define us because we'd like to
understand things. So I kept myself in the closet because it was at a time I only first came comfortable with my sexuality twenty fifteen, when I was thirty years old. I was actually living in the US for a year on exchange for their Special Forces, and it was the first time I got to see professional gay men who
didn't wear their sexuality on their sleeve. I was in LA hanging out with Disney producers, you know, big tech people who I didn't know they were again until someone else told me, and I got to see the difference between that and otherwise Oxford Street and Sydney, which is all I knew. All I knew was drag queens and middrifts, and I do celebrate that side, and I now understand that piece of that culture that needs to put their identity on display when you've rejected or had people reject
your identity. But yeah, I kept that to myself. I kept my personal life out of my work life. That's what made me perform better. And I never wanted anyone to judge me on anything other than how I performed and showed up each and every day.
But you know, an amazing mate, so good, so good. I mean, that's like, what was that? I mean that moment that when was that twenty fifteen where you decided to open that metaphorphoric door and walk through and go that Ah, hey, guess what give us a snapshot of that?
Well? This is it. It was me becoming comfortable with who I was. I was in the US and my sister was actually living up in Banff, Canada, and I flew to her and she's the first person I told and love her. She's four years younger than me, and she said, you know, as long as you're not doing anything illegal and not hurting anyone, why does it matter what you do? And she said, as long as you're okay?
And you know, she's just absolutely authentically amazing that I told mum and she cried because she wanted to have grandkids and I told her, apparently you can still do that, and then she's all happy again. But what I never did, I never came out. I never had a coming out.
I told those who I wanted to because I felt like they needed to know, because otherwise I didn't want them finding out for our other people, but I kept it completely removed because again I didn't want it to be a consideration because when I got back to the US Craig, this is when the whole gay marriage vote and pleposite was going on, and society was looking for
examples to use to be symbolic. You know, even within Defense, we were looking to celebrate and raise up people who were different in this diversity, and that was the last thing I wanted into the Defense force. You are praised publicly based on your performance, and to identify anyone on anything other than the way they perform in their role completely go against our culture. The defense culture is service, service before self, the team before self. You know, there
is no individuality in that. There's individual excellence for the benefit of the team. And again hence why a bunch of the sort of culture wars I've been fighting the last couple of weeks because I also appreciate in this space that unfortunately so much of this comes from trauma. You know, I know what it was like literally rejecting my own sexuality and not being comfortable with myself, and how others have had that experience by others, and when
people come from that place of trauma. It all depends who's around them once they reach that level of self actualization, whether it turns into entitlement and a stick they use to beat others and get back their pound of flesh at or it turns into which I was fortunate enough to now see it as a lens of responsibility over a responsibility to show people that I'm the same person to encourage those who feel like they can't be themselves, but at all times to focus on that external purpose
and that team before looking to progress myself based on something that I choose to be honest.
The hell good for you? And so, what's the did you say that currently there's been a little bit of who are around the lighting up that was at the shrine in the city remembrance. Have you had to deal with a bit of bullshit in the last couple of weeks? If so, what was that?
Yeah, So there's this big the Shrine of Remembrance down there in Melbourne that was going to publicly display the LGBT rainbow lights on the external of the structure. It's doing an internal display, an internal year long display on LGBT i q A plus people within their service. But they want to do this big external signaling essentially, and they didn't consult with any of the veteran community. The CEO of the shrine isn't a veteran in itself, and
they didn't consult with Victorian RSL. They didn't consult with many openly gay veterans like myself are out there in the media doing that thing, and a few of us just spoke up and said, hey, this isn't what we do. You know, this is virtue signaling. This is jumping on to a lot of these issues that are going on in society. And people immediately put up the wall saying you know you saying not to do that is homophobic. It's like, well, hold on, I'm a home so settled down.
What it isn't is it's not people understanding our culture. It's projecting society's culture onto the shrine of remembrance. Is there to commemorate service and sacrifice and bullets and bombs do not discriminate people do and to individually identify people who served based on a demographic or a piece of them that has nothing to do with that responsibility, but comes down to entitlement and seeking personal example. I see
personal promotion goes completely against our culture. And this is at a time where I will take up the fight on culture left front and center, because if we don't fight for those values that we believe in, like, what what are we fighting for?
How ironic? Well, firstly, that was incredibly well articulated, that was bloody amazing. But how ironic that you kind of get labeled homophobic? Any did you go? Hang on what?
Unfortunately, I've even had my own run ins with the heads of Marty Gorara and people like this who I've been told that I'm not gay enough to be seen as an adequate representation of the community. You know, I don't conform to the stereotype. You know, I come across as quote sis male heterosexual who's actually homosexual. And this is where I said at people and going, look, I'm Hester Russell, and I am who I am each and every single day. You know, I'm sorry that I don't
conform to what you think. But I have that many closeted homosexual gay men reach out to me from militaries across the world saying how just seeing me being a normal person and wearing my labels with responsibility not in toilerment, has made them feel so much more comfortable in them in themselves and not needing that public affirmation to make them feel accepted, which, as we know in this day and age, is what we actually need more young people to do, to not rely on external affirmation, but to
be confident with who they are internally at an intrinsic level.
How dare you not meet their expectations? How dare you not be how people think you? Stop being yourself? You fucking rebel?
Well, what I love is, Craig, I haven't even had a personal conversation with these people. It's all based off social media snippets, you know. That's the way we live it at the moment. It comes down to what people perceive your brand to be without taking the time to have a physical conversation.
By the way, everyone over one hundred combat missions serving with the Special Forces. I mean.
I used to be cool. I tell people I used to be cool.
I think you still wear the cool badge pretty well. Right, let's talk about something else. But so so much respect for you being so transparent and great with all of that, because we all need to like, it's just nice to know how you think and not that the way you think is the only way people should think but for you to know who you are and how you are, and to have clarity about yourself and your identity and
to be comfortable in that. I wish we were all that comfortable with whoever we are and how we are.
Let's come quickly, job in there, that's come. Like I said September August twenty twenty, mate, I sat on my lounge after a whole period of you know, de escalating and living in authentic life to a point where I was literally planned on how I wanted to take my own life in the service of so many other veterans
who are experiencing this mental health and suicide crisis. And when you get to that point where you know, I've been in one hundred combat missions, I've had plenty of bad guys shoot at me and hit parts of my equipment and all this. But the closest I came to, you know, being removed from this earth was by my
own hand. And when you reach that point of extreme sort of self rejection and get to that mental state of a place you really start to you really have the chance to sit there and do that self assessment and go, you know who I am, what do I stand for what is the authentic version of me, because everything else is causing all of these issues to snowball
and progress further. And once you figure that out, and again do so through a lens of responsibility, not a hey, this is me, fuck you all, but like, this is me and this is my responsibility. All the rest of it is a bit of white noise, mate, as long as you're working for the right reasons, which is helping others.
In my opinion, what's it like being in the middle of combat when people are trying to kill you and people are shooting at you? I mean, apart from shit and terrifying, can you.
Expand the best time in my life?
You know? We had a guy on TIF what was his name recently, I shouldn't know his name. He said, you never feel and he'd like you combat whole bunch of times and a similar space, but different story. He said, you never feel more alive than when someone's trying to kill you. That's what he said.
Absolutely, I give this talk on leadership. People want to talk about combat leadership. Combat leadership is the easiest form of leadership because there's immediate feedback. You know, if you don't do something you're going to get shot. You make the wrong move, it's going to hurt you or your team.
And when you say easy, come on, bro, So I mean.
That's Look, that's what I've been trained to do. You know, my whole career was trained to do that. Imagine training for you know, representational rugby and never getting to run on and play. I got to do that, and I got to do that with a team that I worked with. You know, eighteen months beforehand. We're at this intuitive level of mental and emotional and physical connection to the way
in which we conducted our operations. You know, career leadership is the hardest when there's so much more time for people to question decisions. You know, combat leadership, your stuff up. Someone gets killed in your career leadership, your stuff up. It grows and slowly eats away like a toxic cancer, you know. And it's not that purpose and that motivation isn't immediately there in front of you to manufacture and
generate and inspire people so much more. I often say this, particularly the last couple of years of politics and everything else. I miss being overseas mate, because everything is so practical and pragmatic and relevant. If I tell people, Hey, I need extra helicopter otherwise we can't get our dudes out if someone gets injured. You get it. You know, you're able to justify these things. You're not sitting there playing politics,
you know, trading one thing for another. It's like, this is why we need this, because this is the mission we need to achieve. And you literally are going out there with people who are risking their lives to achieve this.
They believe in it that much. And you could just imagine that collective mindset and motivation that comes with that, as well as being able to do you know what is a very masculine thing to do, you know, go out there and serve and protect and do all those sorts of things that you know require us to provide physical courage. And very rarely in modern society do we ever get to show physical courage. It's that moral courage
that we need. And once you are able to test yourself and test yourself with those you love to be around and are trained with that level of again the different levels of self actualization, I realized being able to go into that on that one mission, on that one deployment in twenty twelve, you know, we flew sixty seven mission. We killed one hundred and seventeen bad guys. I killed my share of those. And none of that is to celebrate. It's finally being tested at doing the job you've been
trained to do for the right reasons. And once you do that, it really provides a perspective that is now my responsibility to bring forward into everything else we do as well. If Nathan Bolton episode eight hundred and seventy two, everyone, jeez, you guys are busy.
Yeah, yeah, eight seventy two. What are we up to now? Eight nine ish?
Yes, ish, yeah.
We do one every day, mate, We're a bit crazy.
That's great. Gives the mind engaged. There.
We're three hundred and sixty five days of even Christmas, New Year's Day, and New Year's Eve. We put out episodes because we can. It's how we roll awesome. It's always interested me. I'm not really asking a question, I'm just thinking out loud about something and maybe you can
roll off the back wet. I've always been fascinated, like we grow in our culture where you know, thankfully now there's a focus on you know, bullying and looking after people and keeping everyone safe and out of harm's way. And don't hurt people, and be kind and be thoughtful, and these are all great ideas and constructs and kind of guidance principles. But then you and your mates you get trained to kill people, understandably, because like it or not,
that's fucking more. And so all of that kind of cultural and I guess in a way like moral and ethical and perhaps spiritual kind of principles that most of us grow up don't hurt anyone, and definitely then you have to kind of park that and then learn how to kill people?
Is there?
How does that work? Is their internal conflict? Is there? Like fucking don't blah lah lah, don't think about it. I don't know what how do you manage that? That's a really good question. No one has ever actually asked me anything that sort of touches on that question. And I think it all comes down to purpose. So I've just saying, you want to hire performance, you need a higher purpose. If you know why you're doing what you're doing for the right reasons, then all of that sort
of fades into the white noise. And particularly in.
Afghanistan, I knew why we were deploying, I knew the mission we were doing, you know, we go out into a target and we'd take fingerprints off things, or we'd get someone's phone, and you know, we'd track down and capture or kill someone who'd manufactured and detonated an ID in a crowded marketplace and killed women and children, you know the previous month, or you know, had built an ID that had killed one of our guys or an American guys. You know, we didn't just go out there
indiscriminately getting people. It would take us a month, you know, or just at least a few weeks to develop and get all the intelligence together to justify these people as properly bad people that we needed to capture or kill. Fast forward through to my last appoyment to Iraq. We were fighting isis dash Literally, the best way I can put it, is the true manifestation of evil on this earth. I won't tell you some of the things they did to innocent women and children, but I've actually never felt
more there. I say it righteous in actually going out there, and the most enjoyment I've ever taken from my career is taking the fight to those people who are trying to persecute fully and kill those who can't defend themselves and being able to protect those who can't defend themselves is where so much of that moral authority essentially comes from to enable us to do that, and again putting
that purpose and your immediate team before yourself. None of those situations sort of ever registered into a personal mental health or an emotional health aspect for me, and I've still to this day have absolutely zero issues with any of the combat and carnage I've seen. To be honest, I miss that all immersive and inspirational purpose and team. If anything, you.
Know, it's weird. I mean that love and caring, compassionate brother heston. What's weird is that people like you perform great under pressure, but the average person or many average people, don't perform really well under pressure. But then sometimes people, not necessarily you, but sometimes people like you come back to mundanity suburbia where there's no war, there's no one trying to kill you, there's no immediate threat, and you take away the pressure and they're not as good as
when they're under pressure. Is that right?
That's where I struggle, mate, That's where I literally struggled in my mental health. I struggled for relevance. I went from planning and coordinating gigantic missions, you know, doing no fail stuff through to waking up and the biggest responsibility I had was taking my dog for a walk that day. That's where I struggled And what I realized is I struggle without having a team. I struggle without having that purpose. I struggle without having responsibility. And people don't rise to
the occasion. They fall to their level of training. I've been taught that time and time again, and before I deployed on my first trip to Afghanistan, I've been through seven years of training in the Army, eighteen months worth of intensive training to do our job. There's so much that goes into that. It's not like you're just thrown into battle in my role to go out there and
do it. So everything else is that de escalation and that decompression from that, and that is, to be honest, where defense actually is really failing a lot of soldiers in that sort of transition from defense process is one.
Of the challenges. Before I asked this question, So you retired as you were a Special Forces major? Is that correct?
Yes?
How old were you when you became a major?
I was thirty one?
Is that young? That seems really young.
Yeah, I sort of. Well, going to school here in Queensland, I graduated, I turned seventeen in November and when then went straight down and I passed selection as a twenty four year old. Always been the sort of youngest in everything that I've done. I was the youngest in my platoon. But that's that's pretty much the absolute youngest you could physically be.
Wow, amazing. We talk a bit on the show about identity. While we talk more than a bit, but you know, that sense of who am I and what defines me? And where do I get my sense of self from?
Absolutely?
You know, And when I was a fat, insecure kid, I had all this weight and then I last weight. Then I used to for a long time we've spoken about this, I used to get my identity from what I look like, my body and my biceps and all that shit, and you know, then it was kind of from my business. And when you're a soldier and you do what you do, it's kind of what you do is pretty much who you are to a level. Am I correct?
Absolutely mate? And that is where I've struggled my entire life.
And so then you're this Special Forces fucking literally trained killer who's done, you know, gone over there to serve, by the way, thank you for your service, gone over there and done all this incredible shit on our behalf. Literally put your life on the line over one hundred times. And then you come back and it's Wednesday, and you're on the couch and you're not a soldier, and you're like, fuck, is it Netflix or is it a pizza? Or is it both?
Is there a bit of that that goes well, this is my struggles And you've hit the nail on the head. The military is fantastic at grabbing people off the street and issuing them with a collective identity that makes you
subordinate to your team and subordinate to the purpose. What they don't do is successfully reconstitute that individual identity when you leave, and you leave a giant organization that is a not for profit, it is a full purpose organization, and throws you into a world which is arguably for profit in employment at least, and you are unable to
find that same level of personal satisfaction. And for me, mate, I left the military and threw myself headlong into my identity being a gay man, you know, finally accepting myself and in joining so much that I had deprived myself. I fell in love. I'd never been in love throughout my personal career, and then society wants that to be your label. And I've made my relationship become literally my identity. And then when I lost that relationship for four years,
I got sent back to that identity crisis. And what I've learned time and time again is it then comes down to the community you've built around you. Everything has to come back to those you surround yourselves that help you to either find your identity again or find your purpose. But everything does come back to who you are outside of any other label. And that's where you heard me say before I finally reached the point where I understand that I am Heston Russell, and I get back to
that daily renewable contract. The day you rest on your laurels is the day you become irrelevant. But it's so hard in this society. Mate. You know, before every interview, before every whatever, people like, hey, how do you want us to refer to you? Hey? Tell us about you. It's like, what parts you know? I could stuff up tomorrow? In my entire life of successes, I mean absolutely nothing
in this society. That's just show short term focused at the moment, and that's an opportunity, but it's actually massive threat and you feel like it's his inauthenticity piece. Mate, when I when I transition to the to the gay version of me, everything is measured by you know, biceps, speedos at pool parties, what your last Instagram post is.
You're comparing yourself to the last version of yourself. And that's with these layers of in all authenticity creep in social media is one of the worst things for it. And just cutting through all that and you know, creating your own content based off what you're doing as opposed to just creating content for the sake of content. That's what sort of really helped me get back on this right narrow.
Everyone that I talked to that's been in the military, there's there's this I suppose it was the same for you, but they seem to have this this level of connection and trust and loyalty with their you know, with their colleagues, the tribe, with their tribe. Thank you like this. There's this loyalty and trust and connection and I guess understanding that you can't get outside of the military. Is that a struggle.
Well, it's when you've been through adversity with people. You know, true bonds are formed when you're under pressure, be that physical pressure, be that you know, out in the cold, shivering and feeling that freeze to death. You know, you form bods when someone you're snuggling up to in the same sleeping bag just don't have those same pressure. So same particularly physical and mental pressures on the outside that
I've experienced during my time in service. A lot of people have gone through some of those personal, mental and emotional pressures doing COVID lockdown, feeling alone, isolated, everything else in between, but particularly that physicality and the endorphins and all the chemicals that go with going through that physical adversity together and you know, training and progressing and being
like minded with it. You just don't find that on the outside because people's interactions are either within work, which is designed for a purpose, or outside socially, where you know you pulled in so many different directions. It's such a finite and focused and high precious sort of situation, and those bonds are for much faster and stronger.
How did your tribe respond when you came out?
Well again, so I never had a whole coming out thing, and I just gradually let people you know, I was just more liberal on my social media. Essentially, I made the rule that anyone who ever asked me, I'd tell them absolutely upfront. And you know, I actually attended a wedding with some of my old platoon guys that we sort of post all this and the amount of guys who came up to me and just be like, dude,
why the fuck didn't you tell us? Yeah, And it was from a place of we could only imagine what that was like for you, holding yourself back, like we are so sorry that you didn't feel supported enough to come out and be like that. That's so I said, hey, no, no, stop, I'm the one who wasn't comfortable with me. They have been the most amazing people, particularly in the Special Force aside of the house. You know, you're performing at the
elite level. And this is what I've realized. I was bringing ninety five, ninety six percent of myself to everything that I was doing, but there was still, you know, that four or five percent of me that was holding myself back. And my regret is that I hadn't allowed myself to be fully one hundred percent emotionally and mentally aligned to what I was doing. But that's my own development phase.
Do you think that if you had come out to them, I don't know earlier I'm not. I don't know if this is I'm not suggesting you should or shouldn't do anything, but could that have proven a distraction and maybe that's why you didn't do it?
Or yeah, again, it was all timing. So I came back from the US at the end of twenty fifteen fully prepared to live an openly gay life. But again, who you sleep with and what your sexual preference is completely irrelevant to day to day. Within the military was such a high operationally focused unit that you're not sitting there going, oh, by the way, guys, I'm gay and like accept it. Like that again goes against our entire culture.
But the issue was that society was reaching in looking for diversity for diversity's sake and also to progress those who were over those who weren't. At that same time I was dealing with, I was running the commando selection course. We had just opened it up for women to finally be allowed to apply for the selection course, and I was told by our general that I was to reserve ten positions for female candidates, which for a selection course
goes completely against everything. There is a standard. That standard comes from the operational requirement backcasting. And I did a public consultation with the other support staff females in our unit, and they burned it down in flames. They said, don't you dare undermine our success by giving us a quota. We want to earn that off our own bat and particularly in that society. And that was that same sort
of context for me. There was also that time and space relevance where it just wasn't the right time to do that publicly. But the biggest thing was, Mate, I had to become comfortable with it first. It's only once we can become comfortable with ourselves can when you actually withstand if people can't tolerate or it's just something new for them to catch up on.
And when you think about it, it is, I mean, for ninety nine percent of you know what I do in my job, what you do in your job, what Tiff does, maybe even nearly it's not relevant. Like I've never walked into a meeting or an environment or a workshop or a conference and made a point to let anyone know that, by the way, I'm heterosexual. I just thought i'd put it out like it's not a thing, is it? So you shouldn't need to feel on any way.
I don't know, like required to open that door because it doesn't really make any difference to what you do.
And that's my aspiration, you know. I said to one of my guys, is like, hey, mate, why don't you just come out and tell everyone about it. I'm like, mate, do you come out and tell people you're heterosexual? And he's like no. I said, exactly, why the fuck do I need to tell people sexual preferences? And he just you watched them. He sat back and went, I don't know, it's just what everyone does. I said, why do.
They do it? Yeah, because why do they do it? What's your take on that?
It's it's a way in which they feel permission to I guess progress that next level of self acceptance for many many people. Unfortunately, it is also a way in which many people use to gain attention and gain affirmation. Per our love languages. People need affirmation. They need to feel permission to be different because they're made to feel different.
They're not sat down and taught hey, you know, difference and diversity is actually empowerment, but you have to use it with responsibility, you know, particularly if it's not something you've earned, it's something you've been born with. My whole aspiration is for this just to be so normalized and we focus on the content and character of people, not you know, their sexual preference, you know, religion, skin color,
all these things. When I was a kid, we'll talk, never judge a book by its cover, But all we do in society these days is put more and more labels on that cover and make that the measure of the person.
Yeah, now, everyone, I've just looked at Heston's instapage and hang on, steady on Champ. He's nine hundred people away from one hundred thousand. He's ninety nine point one thousand. So jump on, follow, Follow the little fucker, give him a bit of love, send him a message and tell him he's ace because he's killing this podcast. Tell him how awesome he is. But most importantly, hit the follow. Hang on, I'm going to do it right now. There's you can you see the blue? Yeah? I can right
now live follow and I don't follow. Many people only follow about two hundred. Oh wow, so you are now part of my tribe, whether or not you like it.
Thank you, mate. I was at one hundred and four thousand before the election, and then I got shadow bound apparently, and I'm just dropping numbers every week, really blue tick and all, mate, like it means nothing if.
You turn that around, peepsy, let's turn the big steering wheel around all in the ring. A couple of questions, So tell me you came out of the military. Was it in fifteen, twenty, seventeen, seventeen? Okay, so five years ago. Now there's a weird question. But coming out of the military. Before you came out of the military, you were obviously had an idea in your mind of what that would be like. Yeah, so the idea of what it would be like post military. Give me a comparison with how
it actually was. How was it different to what you expected?
Two key things. One was, again in the military, you're working for purpose, whereas on the outside everything is based on profit and there was a big sort of personal disconnect with that. I never had to do that before. And second was just the value set. So service within the military, particularly where I was, came down to responsibility, selflessness, leadership, teamwork. They were those sort of core values, you know, courage, physical and moral courage. And then into the outside world,
responsibility is replaced with entitlement. Selflessness is resplace, is replaced with selfishness. You know, teamwork is replaced with dog eat dog Leadership is replaced with risk avoidance, you know, abdication, passing the buck. There's no accountability, all these things. And so I found that completely different. And it's funny because even though you're in the military, you're still living in wider society, but your outside living is more dwelling before
you go back into it. At least it was for me, you know, there was really that rejection of those values. But unfortunately, what we're also trained to do so well
is to assimilate into our new environment. And I found myself getting on that gravy train, becoming entitled, getting you know, fixated on how I looked, going out to parties, you know, recreational drugs, all those things that are in society that you know, we were drug tested every week on our special Force of stuff, things like this, but you never taught, you never had those adult conversations like hey, you're going to go out in Sydney and every person, every bathroom
is going to be doing this stuff, and that's actually the worst thing for your mental health as opposed to, you know, just getting caught up in the short term
existence of it. And it really was a struggle. And it was this whole collision of what we call this moral injury or this dislocation from your values, combined with being lonely, not having a team, not having a purpose that understood you at an intrinsic level, with everything else being focused so extremely and it was a whole new identity shift.
Was there a this is a dramatic question, but fuck it was there a grieving? Like when do you feel like there was a grief period? Because there was a loss or a sense of loss.
I think, particularly for me, I've been operating at such a high and fast level that you know, it's the I call pendulum swing. You've got to swing away. And I really enjoyed that first year living in the US. Again, I'd never been personally in love or fulfilled my personal needs. I always focus on those professional so I really loved
and enjoyed that. But then once that pendulum starts to swing back to its resting place, you sort of sit there going well, this is all enjoyment and I fulfilled that, but I'm actually missing that deeper level of purpose and value and giving back and service. I was missing that element of being able to serve, to put the needs of others before me, And that is where I have
really struggled. And that's where I missed my tribe. That's where I drive past and army barracks and remember and wish I could drive on and go do PT in the morning at seven point thirty, which is the time every base does PT. Just go join in a group and go do PT. Go and be equal, go and be accountable. Do you miss that? You really do miss that authenticity?
And so as part of your mission purpose fill in the blank, to create your own tribe it is.
And I struggle with that, mate, And I you know, I have my meeting, my weekly meeting with my psychiatrist actually before having miss chat.
Well, if you're going to talk to a psych before you talk to me, that's a great time, because I'm a fucking hand I'm a handful. So well done.
Yeah. My issue these days is again my love language is active service, and I love doing things for people. So I continue to build relationships based on me being able to do things for them and in order in return, people get coming to me looking for ways in which I can help them. But the way in which I feel love is actually quarterly time. People who want to be around me and be with me just for the sake of hanging out with you. Again, That's why I
have a three year old dog. So I actually really struggle informing those connections with people that aren't based off any form of service. That's where you know, I contemplate going back and joining a rugby team or joining a water polo team. Finding that camaraderie where your actions are that which define you as opposed to anything you say or any perceptions otherwise, something I'm still working on and I really need to.
Well, if you live down here and not up in the bloody tropics, you know we could hang.
Out coming down there in November, putting together.
Hit me out buddy, you and me breakfast arm wrestling you know, no arm wrestling, I reckon you might have it. Oh yeah, So as much or as little as you want to tell me about twenty twenty when you momentarily thought, fuck, do I want to be here anymore?
Yep? So I literally had been other day at the park of the day with my dog and came home and I've got a message from one of my former guys who told me that a person we knew who I deployed Canisteen with beforehand and tried to take his own life and tried to overdose, and he had his young son in the back room. And there was a long string of by that stage, known more guys who'd taken their own lives than we lost in combat, And
there were so many factors going on. I was in eighteen months worth of a fight with the Department of Veterans Affairs. I was alone. I was suffering from depression anxiety that I refused to ever see a psychologist to admit any weakness as opposed to vulnerability. And it took me to a place where I just sort of sat down and applied every ounce of my professional planning skills
to pull apart what was going on. And the scariest part is I had the sharpest moment of clarity I've had I'd had in you know, three or four years, where every ounce of me decided that what I needed to do was to be the next veteran to take
their own life. I needed to write a letter to Senator Lambee, who I'd connected with, and all of this in order to and at this stage, I had, you know, seventy five thousand followers on social media, and I'd been on the news a couple of times supporting veteran things, and you know, I was this picture of biceps and
Barry's boot camp and all this stuff as well. I needed to use my profile to be that next veteran suicide that would finally get cut through because I was you know, when people say this, I was one of those people that no one would have ever expected it to sort of happened to. I wasn't sitting there drinking myself into misery. I was excelling at the top of
my performance. And you know, for that five or ten minutes or fifteen minutes, whatever it was, I was sitting there so clear and set on my mission and purpose. And it really helped me appreciate and understand that suicide can just happen like that. You know, it can just take that mental shift where you literally think you are doing the right thing. And as a story goes, my dog came and literally put his head on my lap.
It was my time to feed him. And as I've realized, for me, it was that service someone else needed something of me. That sort of actually snapped me out of that moment. And I sat there and I read the email that I'd written in all of this and just went, what the fuck are you doing, you idiot? Why are you outsourcing? Just cut through? Why not get out there and be that voice yourself? And that was that.
Well, mate, we're very glad you made that decision. And what's your dog's name?
Copper? Copper, like the color like the metal copper.
Yeah, well, thank god? Is it a he?
Yeah, hey, he's a good boy.
Thank god he came over and interrupted you, bloody the rabbit hole that you were going down. Thank goodness for him, and thank goodness. All right, now tell us about Voice of a Veteran. What is it? What do you do, how does it work? How can we help if we can?
Yeah? So, Voice of a Veteran actually just ended up being a podcast and a social brand that I started up to start talking about my own mental health decline.
I then even then needed a platform that wasn't me talking directly talking from a platform as a veteran, and just took off when me telling my mental health story really started to help so many other alpha masculine males, and then very strong other females step forward and say, hey, you know, I now have mission to acknowledge that I've been struggling, and part of it has then been making sure that the continuation of that journey for them is
through a lens of responsibility, not entitlement, because so many of my problems came from again outsourcing all of my problems solving to departments, agencies, politicians, and it's about getting back to solving those problems yourself. That led us to campaign for the Royal Commission, and I've then set up the charity Veterans Support Force. It's the website is VSF dot org dot au where we are a charity organization and we support veterans and their families during the current
Royal Commission. We do projects, we do surveys, we've done some campaigning up to government, we do community activities, We support veterans who want to engage with the Royal Commission and off that that is where I find my projects with purpose back for the community of my people. So I want to get involved. Head to VSF dot org. Dot au and otherwise it's whatever else comes across my table that I find purpose doing and jump on board.
Awesome. Do youv dot org dot? Are you? Is this your and I mean I know this year is your purpose and your passion, but is this also your career? Do you do corporate stuff? Do you do like how do you make a buck?
Yeah? So that's been and to be honest, I've only actually had to start looking at that. So I did the lead up into politics, which was unsuccessful this year, and up until that time, I've just been sort of living off savings that I screwled away, very conscientious throughout my career. So I'm actually at that point where VSF stuff is all voluntary. What I do do to earn a buck is I go in and do corporate speaking.
I give it a speech on leadership, and my website Heston Russell dot com is where most people go to get info on that. But corporate speaking workshops, even helping out recruiters select people, that's the stuff I love. Anything to do with people and teams and particularly leadership is my number one topic because no amount of technology or you know, outsourcing innovation is going to help that. It comes down to people and purpose motivations. That's how I earn a buck.
And what do you do for fun mate? Do you still train? Do you still lift heavy? Shit? Are you still jacked? I can only see you from the kind of the chest up, but you look like a fucking hell mate. I shipped away.
Just I'm getting I'm getting back into it, you know, particularly after the campaign, I actually let myself go. You know, my mental and physical health sort of went by the wayside. That sort of happened to those hyper periods. But I try and get to the gym every day. I really
enjoy going to the gym and working out. I enjoy a bit of sort of group fitness, And to be honest, I've spent the last two years so focused on the purpose side of the house, campaigning for those things we spoke about, and then the politics piece that the rest of this year is actually focusing on me. I actually got a contract to write a book on my own memoir last year and it's finally due to get published by the end of this year. So that's been a
real passion project as well. But I'm in the rebuild and refocused face. And that said, fitness is such a huge part of that fitness and nutrition that I need to get back to. Absolutely well.
Mate, when you come to Melbourne, we'll lift some heavy shit as well as have a coffee. It's really good to meet really good to meet you, great to chat to you. What you're doing is awesome. Thanks for sharing some of your story with us and maybe we'll get you back again. I reckon, there's a lot more we could unpack.
Thanks for letting me chack Craig, thanks to let me have I call this my mental fitness session, so thanks for just let me have that chat with you. And there we go. Mate, you've got a man here. You go elusive. I like it.
Heston Russell Voice of a Veteran. Is that the name of the podcast?
It's now just called the Heston Russell Podcast.
Heston Russell and Russell Podcast and VSF dot org, dot au TIF. Very good scouting by you, good job.
Tip, pretty happy, Thanks Hestin, Thanks Harps.
I feel like you might be on roll with the punches soon and you might be back at TYPO. Will talk in a minute, but for the minutes. Thanks everyone, Heston, thanks so much. We appreciate you.
Thanks great. Thanks Jeff