I'll get a team. It's Jumbo, it's Fatty Harps. It's the host with the most some say, the host with the lease is the you project. It's doctor Cam McDonald and me sans Tiff because she's up there in the Sunshine State where Cam is probably not visiting Cam at all.
Kaush all about herself and her new bloke. No, just kidding on the last one.
Well, she does have a new bloke, but she's up there speaking at some kind of wiz bang event.
So go Tiff. Another bloke who does a bit of speaking, is not.
Bad at it, travels all over the world, talks to company, schools, organizations, works with people on a massive scale. Dr Cam McDonald again once a month is coming. I'm very excited about that.
How are you.
I'm really well. Harps. Had a great weekend.
I had a perfect weekend of all day work on Saturday followed by all day children on Sunday. I mean a co parenting situation, and I don't have the kids all the time, but it's nice to it's good for.
My brain to segregate the two completely. It was lovely.
That's a kind of brain that you need on need on Saturday versus the kind of brain that you need, or perhaps perspective or operating systems sadday versus Sunday to do a good job at both, it's very different.
I can be both required bit of planning for my brain to work effectively. I need a bit of a target, a bit of a goal on Saturday, I need a very clear list. I need to be very careful of what stimulates my brain as well, like exercise volume, how hard I go, the.
Type of caffeine that I have.
Even green tea versus coffee makes a big difference, Like a green tea on a workday is much better than coffee on a workday, particularly early in the morning, because I just get so stimulated being on and I verge on on too much.
If I don't, if I'm not careful, and then I lose my productivity. So that's and then.
It's yeah, just allowing myself to have breaks every now and again as well, whereas.
On the on the kid day is.
Turning up with energy, knowing that on a Sunday they could be lower on energy and not wanting to do anything, and probably I have to prepare my brain for the for being resilient to their pushback of I don't want to do anything today, dad, because as soon as I get them doing stuff, they love it and it's and if I say, oh, I don't worry about it, then they just sit around and do bugger all, which I'm
not into, I don't enjoy. So I have to get one of them or like sort of essentially say guys, we're doing this and there's no real choice in it, and hold strong on that even with all of the complaints that come initially. And once I get through that, the activity starts. And then the different type of brain is that I'm like a like I have to turn into a bit of a yes man brain of like where can I see the next bit of fun? Where
can I see like the next bit of energy? Where can I If they ask me a question, how can I give them energy? With the answer, it's like how can we do this? Yeah, as opposed to on a workdout, Oh mate, just give me a few minutes or whatever it might be, or like I don't know if I can do that today for energy, it's on that day. I have to answer up if that makes sense, And if I bring that energy then it has a very very good influence on them and how much stuff we
do and how much fun it is. So yeah, that's definitely definitely too distinct. But I have to set a plan and an attention in both both days, no.
Doubt about that. How old are the kids eleven and five.
So that's a decent gap.
Massive gap is it's chalk and cheese for the activities that they want to do and how they want to do it, and how competitive they.
Want to be when they want to do it and all that sort of stuff. So normally I have to get my eleven year old.
He very he's a connector, he's very social, loves his friends, so at all times we're inviting one of his friends. And then that that then frees me up to spend a bit more time with the year old.
But that's that's normally the play.
I'm sure we don't know the answer to this question one hundred percent accurately, but I'm sure you've got a ballpark answer. So when we like we always parents always talk about, oh, my kids couldn't be more different. One's this and one's that, and they're completely different personalities. You know, when you go same kids raised often in the same house.
In your case, two houses. But you know, they're both in the they're both in both houses, they've both got the same parents, they both get treated, you know, if not the.
Same, appropriately the same for their age and needs. And we've got all of these variables. But do we really understand how much of how kids show up in the world personality, expression, language, Do we understand how much of that is really linked strongly to genetics and how much is about environment and media and social media and parenting style, And do we have a an accurate number or not? Really?
Yeah, we do for certain parts of it. We do.
So there's personality, which is natural personality, traits, competitiveness, openness, direct nurse you know, like the diligence, all of those types of things that you see in personality detail Orientation. That as a body of literature is really strong on percentages. So as an adult, middle aged adult, you're about fifty percent of your personality is based on genetics.
So that and when you think about parents.
Are five to seven percent of that or maybe less in some instances. Fifty percent is just your genetics. So most of your personality, more than any other factor combined, is just your genetic material that you were conceived with and then but as a kid, you're at about fifteen percent. And that's because, kid, you're playing the survival game of who do I need to be to survive in this environment? And I'll forego my impulses and I'll just be here
I've got to be. But what you see is that you see their natural state play out in all of their reactivity and their stress. But then when they normalize, their people pleasing because they're trying to fit in. So fifteen percent of their personality is genetic when they're younger. But then when you get older, like you Harps, it's maybe seventy percent of your sixty to seventy percent. And this is because the way that I talk about this
is just you just give. We're on the right podcast, so this is normally I say, you give less stuffs, you give less shits.
And this is like the perfect example is.
You know the grandmother who just calls it as it is, GEEZU look fat.
In that dress. You know you don't bear that you're silly or whatever. I know who I am.
I don't need to pretend anymore. This is how I feel. This is the way that I want to express it. And so you're getting.
It, but you know.
But then where that's really interesting is that early on you've got quite a strong parental influence of the personality that people have. Then by seventeen, I believe sixteen or seventeen, it's down to seven percent and influence of the parents, and then personality is influenced zero percent by the age of twenty one. So now personality is different to how you present yourself to the world and your knowledge base and what your belief systems are. Belief systems are different personality,
and they can inform each other. But you can say, hey, I can be a really competitive person, but I believe that you should be very, very good at table manners, Whereas I can be a very competitive person and I have no interest in table manners whatsoever. So you think it's part of your personality to be really intense on table manners, But it's just that you've been taught and you have a belief that table manners are very important versus another person doesn't believe that.
So beliefs are incredibly plastic.
You can decide which belief you want to hold on to, which belief you want to let go of. Whereas personality like the way you express all this stuff. You know, like a competitive person who loves nice and forks and using them, well, well, so who can do this the
best at dinner? You know, whereas a very detail oriented person that's not competitive that loves knives and forks will say, no, you need to hold your finger at you know, seventeen percent of the way down the knife and you know you need to be cutting.
Three strokes for a piece of you know, very detailed, same belief system.
So when we talk about personality, it's it's quite hardwired.
And then and.
Even like neurodivergence and all of those types of things as well, there's huge tendencies genetically.
Which is very important.
Then we have belief systems and knowledge sets and how much stuff you know and how you can adapt your personality.
That's different.
Emotional intelligence is plastic, so but the core personality is is fascinating and that's why you know, you get people to say, oh, who's competitive in this room? And people immediately put their hand up and say, I know I'm competitive. I would identify as competitive. They don't have to calculate, you know, the balance of competitive moments they've had in their life and say oh yes, I was more competitive than not. And people definitely know if they're not competitive
as well. These are things that are born into us. And so from an identity perspective, because I'm on a roll here, this is what's so fascinating about being able to quantify personalities for kids so that you can double down on their personality. Now, I know my child is very social, Like I know that he's socially inclined. I'm
not as socially inclined as he is. He needs a friend for everything, and it's really healthy for his biology to have a friend for everything, Whereas you know, all the personal development literature says you need to be alone for everything.
You need to be able to do it yourself and drive yourself. Whereas he just does better if he's got friends around. He's just happier.
He's a better kid, he's better behaved, he's more aware, he's better at school. Everything impruves when he's got friends around. And so I'm able to inform him and say, don't worry about what.
Your school says.
You're really social. You'll do better if you get the chat every now and again. He came home the other day and said that he was the class clown, and connectors typically are the class clown. And it took me a moment to get this, but Miam, my response to is mate, I'm just so glad you are bringing light and laughter to the people in your life, which normally old Cam would have gone, Mate, you can't be class clown.
You've got to be focusing and whatever.
But really, like, if we take the structure of school away and just say.
Who is this human? He's fun.
He wants to engage people, and he wants to make people laugh, and that's going to be his strength if he goes off to do sales or a tour guide or a teacher or whatever it might be. And to stamp that out and say class clowning is bad, we're just mean to say my natural.
Response is wrong. And this is what a lot of the work that we're trying to undo.
Is this idea that We've spoken about this before, but the idea that I'm going to suppress my child's natural impulses because they don't match up to mine and the heritability of things is really fascinating. That the child is a combination of your greater ancestral lines rather.
Than just the two parents so you can have.
Things come through that are not at all each of the individual parents because they're from an extended family line that they're being influenced by. So it's absolutely fascinating.
Yes, there is an answer for that.
We no, I love that. We Well, I used me and my team. You have to when you do a PhD, you know you have a team, right, So when I say I did, I always feel guilty because there's more than one person on the team.
But we used.
TIPPY, which I'm sure you've heard of tennight and Personality Index Okay, so it's just it's a version of the Big Five. So there's a very well known kind of set of measurables in personality science everyone which is extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, emotional stability, and openness to experience. Neuroticism used to be in there, but they switched out. But anyway, we use the TIPPY, which is like a ten item version of that scale, as one of our assessment tools for metaperception.
And so essentially how it worked was we got those ten different kind of criteria how people. So it was a three step process. So I would assess myself self assessment on the TIPPY ten items, I'd assess myself one to five on a like art scale, one to five, five being okay. So let's say it's you know, compassion or whatever or empty. I go, yeah, I'm a five,
I'm so fucking empathetic or whatever. And then and then you and I would do it together and and you would rate me on those So column was I'm rating me. Column two, my mate Cam is rating me on those same criteria, and column three is I'm rating how I think Cam will rape me. You got it, you got it. So column one is how I see me, column two is how CAM sees me, and column three is how
I think CAM sees me. And when you get hundreds of those like I had in that particular study, we had multiple kind of you know, resources that we used and protocols. But yeah, it's so funny how how dissimilar some of those scores are, and how people get shocked when they go, really, people think I'm intimidating, or I'm arrogant, or I'm you know, I'm like.
You know, and if a bunch of people are saying that, you know, you've got to Yeah.
Especially when you do ones in groups. I did one study where I had over two hundred people, and we put everyone in a group, a group of five, and they got to spend time together just talking. And their directions were just talk, get to know each other, whatever you do, whether or not you go hey, I'm Craig.
You know you guys, sort it out. And they didn't have a long time, but they had fifteen or twenty minutes just sitting the five of them in a circle talking and then after that they had to do this assessment of themselves and then of each person in the group, and then how they thought each person in the group perceived them. And the insights out of that were crazy. So I and.
I could give you a bunch of takeaways, but I'll give you this, which is not a big surprise. But most people I don't really know how other people see them. There's not a huge level of alignment between how I see me is interesting, but how you see me is where that's almost the money maker, and then how I think you see me.
That gap.
It's a real revelation for people because it gets them to see things in a different way, and knowing it doesn't fix it, but it's certainly a good awareness to have.
And sometimes the awareness can give person permission, but this is a it can be fixing it in some instances because I just now have awareness.
I've got a label for it.
The Yeah, we see the same thing, and I would I would say that because we do a lot with natural strengths. When people are in their natural strengths, they go into flow, they feel like they contribute more.
People have no idea.
That who they are has inherent natural strengths. They don't value them. And it's the same thing here. It's like people see from the outside. You see, oh, your natural strengths that you're not aware of, that you think are just.
Normal, that everybody's got.
An interesting example, I was at a workplace. We did this kind of what strengths do you think these people have got?
And I go, who got given a strength?
And one guy said, oh yeah, they said everyone said that I was level headed, and I said, and he goes, isn't everybody level headed?
Though? No, mate, they're not. Yeah, and wow. But people think, oh, surely you would think about this rationally and fairly like I would, you know, And they just.
They don't even see it as part of their personality because it's so baked into who they are. That that's where it gets really really interesting because and when you get that external sort of report, particularly someone who's got some awareness as well, and even if they don't, but when they have got some awareness and they can label what you do, well, man, it can it can be very very powerful for your sense of self.
I'm just writing myself a few notes while you're talking about it's it's like the one thing that every already has in common when they come to see you or you work with them, or they come to me one on one or they come to me at a workshop seminar, is that they want to on some level, they want to be different. I want to be different. I might think different, might be think different, do different, create different, look, feel, function,
but they want change. But the interesting observation, I don't have a solution or an answer, I have thoughts, but is like wherever most people are practically, metaphorically, physiologically, relationally, whatever, psychologically emotionally, DA data might have said that one they're not where they want to be. They always want to be somewhere else. It's like very little contentment, and you know people will have a goal.
Oh if I could just have own earn, do be create, that and then they do it. They get there, they get there, and they're like, fuck, this is not it, because we're always trying to resolve internal stuff with external stuff. If I have this, then I'll feel that, or I'll be calm, or I'll be content, or I won't overthink, or people will love me, or I will be desirable, or I will get more attention or fill in the blank.
We have this kind of erroneous assumption or story around that thing will equal this thing, and most of the time it's kind of bullshit.
Yeah, yes, it's so funny to bring this up. Obviously, we didn't plan any of this.
I'm day ten through forty days of lent. I'm a bit late of just accepting myself for who I am and not needing to grow.
And I suck at it like big time.
And it was probably one of the important things that came up on the weekend.
Was sitting down with a mate. He's in a better financial position than I am.
He's just sold a business that he's had for three decades and he's got just this pile of cash sitting in the bank account, and then there's another payment that comes in twelve months based on how well, the business does because there's a bit of a clause like that in there. And he's got more money than probably thought you'd ever have in the bank account. And then they got back to him and said, oh, look it's not
two people have dropped off. It's not performing quite likely thought it would, and so it's going to reduce his payment at twelve months. And he's like, oh, you know, I don't have enough. He's in this space of I don't have enough, even though he's got more than he's ever had. And it was such a reality check for me to say, it has nothing to do with money, and just this idea of where I think I want to be and to your point of I need to
be somewhere else. And what's so interesting about this whole abundance mindset.
It starts with gratitude. It starts with.
Being completely satisfied and replete with where you're at right now and just having inherent value in yourself and what you have. But yes, and then the longer you search outside, the worse it gets. But it's a hard habit to shake. It's a really interesting one. And even as you were talking about it, I was thinking how poorly I've done it this. I still want to get fitter, and I still want to look better, and I still want.
To da da da da da.
And I was just thinking as you were talking, It's like, maybe I need to just be thinking about that what is great about my body is what is something that I'm really appreciative of within it, that I really value that I'm really glad I've gotten.
Just sort of.
Thinking about my thinking that way. It's a yeah, it's a fascinating one. Just how dissatisfied were I even saw we were talking about it just before. Stephen Bartlett, he was on a podcast with one of his guests the other day, and you're saying that there's a direct link between happiness and your expectations of where you think you should be in life, and if you're constantly forward projecting,
then you'll never be happy. And if but if you backward project into where I thought I was going to be or where I wanted to be when I was five, you know, this is beyond all expectation.
And I've actually done a whole lot of great stuff and happiness scales up as the result of that.
I know there's more to it than that, but it speaks to what we're talking about here.
I think this is a really good self awareness kind of reflection because you know, rather than going, oh, fuck, I climbed the wrong mountain. That must be that mountain over there. Then you've got to get down and then you go, ah, but that's got a higher peak and I've got to and I should carry more weight, and I should whatever.
I think it's it's something that we I'm I can't speak on behalf everyone, but it seems that a lot of us don't really spend much time in deep reflection, thinking about our thinking.
And thinking about why we are the way we are, and where these stories come from, and what is this anxiety about, and where does this despite the fact that I've got more shit than I need and by the way, eighty percent of the shit in my house I never used, never touch, but fucking hell, no one can have it, right.
What's that about? That's interesting? You know, don't touch my shit?
I might use it, bro't you haven't worn that or used that or for fifteen years and I know someone who could really Nah, it's like okay, but that kind of just considering what that is about, and what is like, what is the correlation between stuff and contentment. What is the relationship between you know, external success and internal success. And I apologize for my listeners who have heard this a few times. I've probably told it ten times in
two thousand episodes. But you know, when I was just over thirty, I had three gyms that were all making money, and I had two other health businesses that were making money.
So I had five.
Standalone, different location businesses, all in the black. I was fucking I was making more money and getting more shit and and more stuff and being more successful than I could have even conceived when I was eight and nine and twenty years old working in pubs getting punched in the face for twelve bucks at night and working in the gyms through the day, and you know, and not that I was the high watermark, but for me, I
was crushing it. And the irony was that in the middle of all of that, I'd kind of never felt more lost or I wasn't unhappy, but I was confused because I'd ticked all the boxes and twenty six more, I'm like, oh, how could I've got it so wrong?
Like how am I borderline sad or depressed? Or when you know I've got this and I've got that, and I've got like all of these are like when I would do which was what you alluding to before, One of my spiritual teachers back in the day said to me, every day, when you get up to a treasure hunt on your life, right, do a treasure hunt, come up with ten things that are He didn't say, fuck, but I will fucking amazing. And when I just I think about what is good in my life, what is bad,
it is so lopsided into the good. It's so wildly lopsided. And then when I want to look out of my own little self built, self created, psychological and emotional and self pity kind of castle and I look at what other people are going through, then it gets even bigger my list because apart from the fact of personally what I've got going on, then there's the fact that I live in this amazing country. That's for the most part, and I'm talking about contextually with what's going on around
us globally. I'm like, bro, you have so much to be happy for. If you are not happy, if then you are definitely the problem. Now that's not self loathing. You need to do a deep dive on what this is about. Because what definitely what you don't need a bigger arms and shoulders. I know you think you do.
You definitely don't need another car or another guitar, or another motorbike or you know, even another girl whatever it is, like another girlfriend, because you know you've kind of gone through a lot. Maybe actually you're the fucking problem in those relationships or some of the problem or a lot of the like we're always going, oh, yeah, I just need that, but just that that just doesn't arrive for the most part.
And this is why I.
Think you get to the like, this is my picture in my mind. I just take a stroll through my mind past beliefs and ideas and failures and disappointments and creativity and experiences and memories. And then finally, when I get to the end of my mind this there's.
A door there and at that door is the spiritual realm or that is that the end of my brain and mind and logic.
And I open that, I go, oh, there's shit in here. I'll check this out. Maybe it's not about my thoughts and feelings and ideas and physiology and knowledge and brand, and maybe it's about none of that. Maybe I'm missing them in fact, maybe me being a better version of me isn't about me at all. Maybe I need to look somewhere else and through someone else's or some other window, you know, And that whole perception piece is a mind fuck because you know, you're trying to analyze your mind
using your mind as the tool. It's like the tool measuring itself. Right, we get that, But I think the beginning of consciousness awareness begins with at least acknowledging. I don't have much consciousness or awareness like it's that. Just be humble, dudes.
You know you're always despite how objective you think you are, you aren't because you're always looking through the Craig lens.
That's not a bad thing. That's a human lens. That's a human thing.
But let's just start there with that and go oh, also with your beliefs Craig that you know are right, they're not because you look back. How many things have you gotten wrong? Fucking thousands? How many times have you been addicted thousands? How many times you've been trapped in
ego thousands? How many shit choices have you made? How many people have you intimidated or made feel bad while not ever intending to fucking probably thousands or hundred, you know, you go, and this is I just think we're too scared to really self reflect in that way where we're we're not throwing ourselves under a bus, but we're trying to understand how we are beyond the story that we have about how we are.
And there were so many, so many things to pick up on that.
The first one, I mean, at most, the last thing you said was just people don't well, I still have beliefs that I don't am, not even a like, they're just they're operating, conducting so many of my decisions and layers upon layers of beliefs. To even start investigating your thoughts, it's almost impossible because you have to access something that you're unconscious of.
And then but you have to start there, and you realize, why have I got that there? I don't know why that's there?
That greats pain there is I'm aware that this doesn't make any sense, but I still believe it anyway, And that's you know, the starting point of where you can
then start diving into the subconscious. But you ultimately need another practitioner to hold a very conscious face while you're in that very subconscious sort of presence while you're doing it, which is why it's so important to go to the right help for this, so that in and of itself, and it's so many of our who we think we are and how we operate is associated with those subconscious beliefs.
And then.
The other thing get working backwards is the idea of what is all of this whole thing about anyway? When you start getting into quantum physics and to realize that there is virtually nothing physical anywhere at all, and it's all just a whole bunch of energy that's reflecting back light, and that's that's changed.
With people looking at it. And if you were to flyer, you know.
An atomic size microscope down into your body, you would pass through it without seeing anything, you know, like just the concept of what we're actually made of, and then how malleable that quantum system is, and then how time is separate to that, and that at all things, at all times is happening.
Right now in the in the fifth dimension. It's just that blows.
Your mind to think, what's the purpose of all of this? And that was a bit of an existential crisis that I had over a while. I was thinking well, if all of the time is happening right now on some dimension, then what does it matter what I do at all? You know, like, what's the point of any of it?
And you start thinking nothing really matters. You know, it doesn't matter how I parent my kids, doesn't matter how I at the end of the day, it's all just happening all at once and in with no real understanding of what's the intention of this. But then at the same time, and I know for some people will just be thinking, can You've gone nuts?
And I completely understand that.
But then you come down to the three dimensional reality where time does exist, and where you've got a very long period of time on this planet, in this existence, in this consciousness. The thing that really landed for me was a mentor of mine said, like, nothing matters, but everything matters. All of your choices will influence your experience
right now and the experience of other people. And that idea of nothing matters and everything matters is a very useful tool to be able to travel between to say, well, this didn't happen the way that I did.
It doesn't matter. But at the same time, I'm.
Going to make as many great choices as I can, and people often talk to me, but how do you even know that you're making the right choice? And the only way that I understand that is if you think it, feel it, and believe it to be the right choice, it all lines up internally for you.
That it feels right. Then that's as good as you can get. Because there is.
No journal article on the planet that everybody agrees with, Like, you can get the best evidence and you'll still get people that disagree with the findings. Really it comes down to what feels congruent as much with as much awareness as you can for you. Yeah, and so that is just a whole another world of what theough. And I've got a bunch of friends that are just doing the most incredible things with hands on healing and energetic stuff, and I sit back and watch it understanding some of
the principles. I'm seeing the objective change in people's health, and then I just think, well, and even the stuff we were talking about last time, with the electromagnetics and understanding that you can literally change the way irons are moving in and out and around the body, and change disease processes and change the way that tissues are growing.
It makes you think, what is this? What is the thing? And then.
The first thing that you said was just around that list of good versus bad stuff in your life and when you run an exercise. And I do this quite a bit with schools, schools, particularly workplaces, where we get them to find each other's strengths and we get them to tell them what kind of impact that person's strength has on you.
And so one of them was a very.
Introverted girl, so diligent, so good at things, follows things through the whole way. And the feedback from her team is you just follow things through so well, like if we give you a job, we know that it's going to get done.
And she sit in. I said, oh, what was the strength that got shared with you? And she shared that. I was like great. I said, did you know that that was one of your strengths?
And she said no, no, And I said, and I asked the people that gave her the feedback. I said, when you see her following things through, how does it make you feel? And they both said, like work so much more fun. I just feel so much more relieved because I know that that part of my work is done. I don't even have to think about it like that releases so much stress me to know that she's on the job. And then I said, how do you think
that would affect you when you get home? Well, I was completely burnt out before, and now that we're working as a team, I actually go home and I'm happy. And I reflected back to the girl and I said, do you realize that you just turning up as you are, don't even change anything, just be you, and you're actually improving the lives of two families, just in this group
of people right here, just by being yourself. But we never have that conversation around what are the great things that you're bringing, what are the strengths that you have, and how does that positively impact the people around you? And one of the bigger revelations, and I have to say I haven't fully embodied it yet, is this idea of like the Eastern philosophy of purpose versus the Western flow.
The Eastern philosophy is what impact, what's your role for your community?
That's what purpose is for them, whereas in the white world of personal development, it's all.
About how great can I be and where am I going? And that it really.
Jogged me as you were saying you know, do I need to Is there something greater outside me that I need to be thinking about? And when you think about your purpose in it, how do I serve this community the best? It is such a different question than how can I be better myself?
So anyway, that was no, I.
Love that well. I always had a bit of a revelation, so I was very down the spiritual rabbit hole for a long time in my early adult I mean a long time, right over a decade and one of my early I think it's a psychological as well as a spiritual revelation, and it's not a big one, but it was to me at the time because I realized the more selfish I was, the more miserable I was. And even if my selfishness resulted in me getting lots of shit, Now.
That didn't mean not caring at all about the practical things of you know, owning stuff and making some dough and paying bills and driving an okay car. Right, there's still that.
But I realized the more I without trying to sound too I don't know, self elevating, but the more I did for people, the joy that I got from doing something for someone versus doing the same thing for myself was almost immeasurable. And I remember first time, I, you know, because we didn't winning rich, like mom and Dad both worked and we were middle class. I would say middle of the middle class, maybe even slightly, I don't know,
maybe slightly below. But I remember when I was making really good dough, and you know, or that in that time, when I was young and earning dough that I never thought I would write, and also, to be honest, didn't
feel I deserved. That's a whole nother chat. But I bought my mama car because she'd never had a great car and always cars but everything secondhand and shared between Ron and Mary, and so I brought her a new little car, which was just a little Toyota, and I drove it up to their joint and stopped it stopped about five hundred meters away from their joint.
Clean.
It was clean, but like it had driven from Melbourne, so a hundred k's of dust on it. And they gave me this ribbon, about eight inch inch ribbon, and I put this ribbon on the bonnet and I drove it up and like I'd never really remember my mum crying. She's very stoic you know, she had a tough childhood and she just bowled. Firstly, she didn't even when I gave her the keys and there's a fucking ribbon on it. She didn't know what was going on.
Like nothing in her mind went, Craig just brought me a car, because that doesn't happen, right.
Well, that doesn't happen in life. And I went, it's yours, mum. She goes, what do you mean? And she like, how is it mine? What do you mean?
I'm like, I bought it for you.
And then that when that landed, and ah, that feeling I got from that, And it wasn't an excuse. It was just a nice little I think at the time it was like a Toyota Echo or something. It was one of the little four cylinder things, but it was new and it was nice, had little mags, and it was beautiful for her, right brand new car. And I had never felt that good in my life doing anything
for myself. I'm like, oh, ah, I get this, And I bought myself lots of toys by that stage, probably somehow expecting some kind of I don't know, ridiculous life changing experience as a result of having that thing.
Now.
And what, ironically what happened with me is whenever I would buy a nice car, I'm in a nice, nice car, I'd be on cloud nine for about twelve hours, and then I'd start to worry about the car. I didn't want to park it anywhere, I didn't want to take it anywhere. I didn't want to let anyone drive it. Don't get in my car. I just became a fucking pain in the ass, this neurotic idiot that I literally had more anxiety than joy around the car and eventually
sold them all. And I did that for it. I haven't owned a nice, nice car for a long time now, and now I drive a shitty seven year old Suzuki Swift that I fucking love. And I'm not buying a good car because I know it doesn't one I don't need it, and two it doesn't equate to anything great for me. But to do that for somebody else, please don't send me in an email saying you need a car. But you know what I mean, it's like, oh, you just like learn these things as you go. And just
one more thing. You know you're on silent by the way, have you muted yourself?
Yeah?
But one other thing I was going to say off the back of what you were talking about, is that whole kind of I use this quote in a I don't know if I eliminated it, but I.
Originally had this quote in the start of my thesis talking about, you know, the beginning of wisdom is to know thyself Socrates or whomever it was. I think it was Socrates, being as my area of research is really about kind of self awareness and self understanding and.
And like even the idea of trying.
To figure out who you are, like who you are beyond who you think you are, and who you are beyond who others think you are, and who you are beyond your ideas or your beliefs or your biceps or you're pretty handsome pretty or handsome face, or your brand or your PhD or your and then because I'm none of that, They're just things that I've done or things that I have and I'm grateful, but I'm not any
of those things. Then then going on that little fucking kind of cerebral journey, we're trying to think, Ah, well, if I'm not this or I'm not that, then what am I?
Then?
Who am I? Is trying to find that you beyond the idea of you that I love that conversation. Yeah, yeah, because you're none of that dude. You've done all this cool shit, so have I. Yeah, but that's not you. Doesn't mean that's not representative of you in some way, But it ain't you.
Your body's not you, your brand's not you, your bank balance is not you, your kids are not even you. Great, well done, you can produce offspring, but even then you know, you're like, ah, and I don't know that that's an answerable question, but it's a fucking great kind of.
Consideration or ponderance.
And absolutely and what helps with that, I think is who are you to other people in your life? And that is a very useful tool at different times to say, oh, like, I'm here because obviously I'm here to be a parent to my kids, but what kind of parent am I going to be?
What kind of beliefs am I going to instill in them?
And some parents have still terrible beliefs in their kids, which is just what happens from time to time. But that's also part of who you like, that's part of your greater purpose for why you're here is.
Maybe however it was divinely.
Crafted or whatever the way that you want to believe in it. An experience like that was to be had, because they're going to be had around the world. It's not to condone it, whatever it might be, but just to say things like that do happen, and there's a purpose for it.
Sometimes there can be an.
Incredible purpose for it, because that person goes on to break free of those shackles and do incredible things because of that initiating thing at the start of their life.
And the same thing goes you know, when someone does something that's a little bit out of sorts towards you, there.
Can be an incredible learning that can come from that and an awareness and whatever it might be. And so just seeing things is not good or bad, but seeing things as things that happen and how we respond. I mean, we get into really murky territory here, because there's a lot of bad stuff that happens that you would obviously want to eradicate from the world. But what impact are you having on the people around you?
What purpose?
If you were to have a purpose, you're one of three kids and you have you've been landed on the planet to provide a purpose to these people that have also are in your family as well. How are you going to influence their life? How are you going to And that's the conversation I'm constantly having with my oldest because he can be a bit of a bully to his youngest, and I said, what are you creating him?
Mate?
Like, how are you trying to influence him? What kind of world is he going to know after he's been your brother, you know? And it's a bloody difficult message to get and you've really got to get out of your own road.
To be able to look at that properly as well.
So, yeah, that idea of removing all of those three dimensional things and then to also see it as a community and an ebb and flow.
Absolutely, it's fascinating.
What's the juxtaposition being a dad or a parent more broadly, of course, between trying to guide your kids in terms of values and treatment.
Of others and morals and thought and all of that, Between trying to guide them but also getting out of the way to let them just figure shit out, you know, because you don't really want to program.
Your kids to be a version of you. But at the same time, please stop punching your brother in the face.
Yeah, that's a good one, and I think with some awareness it's worse because you think, ah, am I saying the right thing? If I'm saying the right thing, but obviously it makes sense for me to discipline my child in this way, but then you know, am I doing the right thing or wrong thing?
Whatever it might be.
So essentially the way that I figure it is, I'm here to be my best version of me as dad, and I've got some values that I've tried and tested that I think work for me and that I think.
Are reasonable to push and to hold strong.
So and then I parent around those values as best as I can. And the thing that I'm probably looking for in my kids is that they know what they've done, and they know how it's impacted people, and they know how to behave. So I'll see my son be a little angel at dinner when he's meeting someone, he's very polite. Da da da dah, and then he will be this
screaming terror at home and go. You know what, he knows how to perform when he needs to if he wants to get he knows the rules, and if he knows the rules, I'm good because at the end of the day, all they've got his choice.
They're going to have choice when they leave home. But as long as they know the rules, then that's all that I can do.
And if the way that I can inform those rules is to is to have consequence and various things like that. But I guess maybe I do it a lot more just because I like the sound of my own voice. But I really explain it to him after the fact as well. I say, hey, when Mum said.
Something like this, what could have been going on for mum? Because you didn't receive it very well? What could have Oh well, Mum could have been tired, and could have been this, and could have been that. And it's like, exactly, so is it about you? Will it still hurts? I think, yeah, And it's allowed.
To hurt, Like you're allowed to feel the feeling that you've gotten all of those types of things. But then after you've felt it, you can then think, Okay, well is this me?
Is this hurt?
Whatever it might be. So it's it's a protracted conversation. But that's the best way that I know how to do it.
Is to just get them to dissect this thing constantly. But that's my style.
You know, there'd be a lot of other parents to go mate, just get on with it and tough enough, and that can be really effective as well. And for a person's value systems that might perfectly fit. It's just that it doesn't work for my value systems. And it's
interesting watching all of this. You know, masculine feminine chat about who is the masculine, and the masculine is very defined, and they're you know, they hold a particular line a particular way, and they do this various thing in a particular way, and emotions are a particular thing in a particular express in a particular way, and not all of it.
Really resonates with me.
And it doesn't make sense to parent the way that the true masculine, you know, or whatever should parent. So if it's incongruent with me, they're going to feel that conflict.
I'm not going to hold the line as well. They're not going to see consistency.
And so what it boils down to, after a very long expose at into my parenting thoughts is I think probably one of the greatest things you can provide is consistency around your decisions and integrity on the things that you say, so, this is what I believe, this is what I'm holding you to. When you're eighteen, you can do whatever you want, but right now, these are the values that I believe you need to know. And when I say this, I mean it, and when I mean it,
things happen. And so then they get to understand, Okay, well, firstly, this is a safe environment because it's consistent and things have been done that they said they would. I can learn about integris behavior from that as well. So you make up your mind, you do the thing that's most congruent with you. And then probably the other thing as well is just not reacting, not reacting from a place of emotion, but reacting from a place of reflection. I
would say, is the greatest thing that I see. There's so much that happens in that first three seconds of I'm annoyed now, and you're going to hear it that if you just miss that, just miss that window by a minute and take three breaths and then parent, you often do a much better job and you're not having to then unwind or hold a hold a line of a mistake that you made when you totally when you said it impulsively as well, so taken a few seconds
to actually just have a think about what this situation needs is probably a thing that I'm constantly learning as well.
I think also, like most other things that are organic and um you know, in a constant state of change, is that it's a practice, it's a process, it's a protocol. It's not a fixed thing. And what's going to work great with a five year old will be a disaster with the eleven year old, or even if you had two eleven year olds, you know one, you know, it's not like, hey, everyone, this is how you optimally parent
step one. It's like this is like saying this is how you optimally eat well for who, This is how you optimally work out for who. Like I would imagine, and I'm not a parent, so I'm guessing, but I would think that the way that kids.
Respond to or interact with or develop optimally is in the middle of that. There's going to be a range of approaches and communications, styles and conversations and experiences in and.
Around parenting that's going to be different for every kid. So to assume or you know, it's like I I put up a post the other day and how influence influencers on Instagram always say the best way too is and I wrote underneath that whatever comes next is bullshit because there is no best way for everyone. There's no best way to parent, there's no best way to eat, there's no best way to lift weights, there's no best way to build a business or complete a PhD, or
like who's the person in the middle of it. It's going to be dependent on the individual, you know, So I would imagine your evolution as a dad and as a parent, and even the evolution and understanding of your own or evolution in your own understanding and perception and awareness and knowledge around all of that is really evolved. Like if you had another kid, then there's a fair chance the one to five years might be quite different compared to the last two times.
Well, the second child with chalk and cheese, Like, just how much more relaxed you are.
You just know what to say, You're not dealing with the same insecurities and you're not projecting those as much. Like, definitely the second has had a much better run from an emotional or intelligence perspective from me as a dad, There's no doubt about that. And to your point of two eleven year olds. I can have the same eleven year old from one week to the next and the same strategies will not work. But it's just the way hormones change their reactivity and what's going on for them
and how they're perceiving the world. Man, it's as soon as you think you've got it nailed, I'm doing this pretty well, it just switches and whatever you're doing is now an absolute fail. So there's a it's an adventure.
Does your kid get confused when you call him? N? E. Colls one?
No, he's actually on the contrary, he knows he's a connector, and he's very good at picking the health.
Types of the different teachers that he's gotten all that sort of stuff.
So really, yeah, he plays the game pretty well.
Yeah, yeah, tell.
Me one thing that you know now about parenting and we'll finish on this. Who knew we'd talk about parenting, but we go all over the place. I'm sure you could teach me a lot one thing that you know or understand about parenting now that you were clueless about twelve years ago.
It's the.
Understand the child first, and you'll know how to parent them, rather than understand the rules of the world first, and then parent the childs are the rules of the world.
And that's I have so many beliefs and so many voices in my head, mum's voice, dad's voice, my dietitian's voice, my precision health voice, my x's voice, all of these things that are constantly creating noise, and then it gets you stuck in, Oh, my child's got to behave like this and hit these milestones and whatever it might be.
And it's just to have the understanding that my child is just having their little experience and I'm here to to cushion it and to guide and to essentially make their life in their version the best way that it can be, rather than their life in my version. And I still come up against that, you know, old beliefs. They should be my oldest wonsor play soccer. Oh, you should really play training more and be out there juggling the ball all the time, because that's what I did.
But he doesn't want to do that, you know. So it's just like, mate, what are we going to do instead? You know, let's let's do something else instead. So and then he gets way happier and then he engages in life way more than thinking I need to push him down this path because this is what I know. So just taking myself out of the equation and thinking of myself as I've got a bunch of.
Tools, and what are the tools that I.
Need to use for the child in front of me, and knowing that it's a completely different set of tools for another kid. Well, so whereas you know, when I started out, it was very much I just got to do the right things and read the books and you know, do things right by me.
That was the big, the big shift that happened.
You know, it's an interesting observation slash study, slash exploration in psychology and sociology is going to like an under twelve or fourteen football game in Melbourne standing on the sidelines.
With the parents, I'm like, oh my god. You know, it's like you would think it was the bloody AFL Grand Final in September and the stuff that comes out of people's faces, it's hilarious. I'm like, thank god you didn't parent me, you know, like, yeah, hey mate, it's always good to chat with you. Tell people where to find you, connect with you, and yeah, see what you're all about.
Yeah, yeah, So the easiest way is it just a google doctor Cam McDonald at Shay Group, Shae group, and then if you've we've got some really cool parenting tools where you can understand your child's biological makeup and their little genetic personalities and AI that helps you navigate that and actually ask questions, say what's next for my child?
What do I do next? To help you get yourself out of the road. That's a bloody good tool. You can find out about that.
There.
There's corporate staff, there's.
Health professional training, psychology, medical specialists, Allied Health Fitness, there's stuff that we do with gym's, stuff that we do with relationships. Really, our whole goal is elimination of chronic disease and pain by twenty fifty and helping people live their best lives in their natural strength. So every tool that you would need, we have an ARI ecosystem, So you can check that all out at Shay dot Group, forward.
Slash doctor cam McDonald. But just google it and you'll find it.
You definitely will. Just don't ask him about parenting for the minute. He'll get back to you. Always good mate, say goodbye affair, but appreciate you and thanks again.
Thanks mate,