SPEAKER_07: 0:14

Hey legends, how are you doing? It's Andrew here. Now, I thought I'd take a quick moment to introduce you to this episode. This is a bit of a special one. Ali and I spent a few days on Borgai in the Philippines at Telekon recently, and we were lucky enough to spend some time speaking to the keynote speakers throughout the conference. So sit back and relax, and here are five exceptional conversations with some really interesting people about a variety of different ideas, all centered around leadership and professional and personal development. Enjoy? And we'll catch you later. What is that called? Juplo? No, no, the little yeah, what is it called?

SPEAKER_01: 1:01

Let Lego.

SPEAKER_07: 1:01

Lego. Lego? Lego, you.

SPEAKER_03: 1:04

So I'm from Adelaide, and I call it Lego, right? And on one episode, and I said that, Andrew absolutely laughed at me and said, no, no, it's Lego. But you had a mix. You had a.

SPEAKER_01: 1:16

Lego. It's Lego. Lego. I mean, it's Lego. It's I'm not sure I can get it 100% correct, but I do feel like Lego is a stretch.

SPEAKER_03: 1:26

Really? Yeah, but. Oh, it's so Radillian. So you can absolutely cane me. It's totally fine, because he did. No, but I I so I did a um I did a road show with BGO and I actually asked the question in Adelaide is it Lego or Lego? And everyone there was like Lego.

SPEAKER_07: 1:42

And so I just from Adelaide. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03: 1:44

Yeah, that's right. But I I felt like I had camaraderie. Yeah, I had five at the time. Anyway, are we gonna record? We're recording a little bit. There we go. No, and we always put it in two. That's embarrassing. All right. We have Dom Thurbon with us. He's from Alchemy Labs. He is a, let me just get what he calls himself, a change resilience strategist. I love the names that we used. Um, and really, if I just nail the whole session down, it was truth. I believe so, yeah. And so welcome to the podcast. Thank you very much. Um look, I absolutely love the concept of truth, but what you had to say was quite um in a word, it was really confronting. Because so often we think we're truth tellers, but maybe we're not as you know, truth-telling is what we actually think about.

SPEAKER_07: 2:40

Why don't we stuck at telling the truth?

SPEAKER_01: 2:42

Why do we break it down? Yeah, it's well, firstly, thank you for the feedback on the session. Um yeah, I uh look, I I think confronting is one way to think about it, but uh the I think the other way of thinking about it is it's probably not something we should beat ourselves up about because we're all in the same boat. Yeah. It is nearly a universal finding in all of the social psychological literature that everyone says the truth is incredibly important, but to a first approximation, everyone also lies. Under the right conditions, in the right circumstance, in the right situation, humans have a tendency to lie even though we think truth is incredibly important. And so the question you ask of like, why do we suck at it? Um I think it's because we're living in a world where it's difficult to have a good relationship with the truth. Um, you know, the there's increasingly, I think, a political sense that truth is very 20th century, that um we uh we should simply never admit when we've got something wrong. We certainly should never apologize. Uh that is the kind of de facto uh way that we approach stuff now, I think, politically. We're living in a world where social media has made it very easy to amplify lies and misinformation. It's the the data around this suggests that um truth uh spreads far, far more slowly than lies on social media. Misinformation will spread further and spread faster. We're incentivized and rewarded for it online through attention, through clicks, through shares, through likes. Um, and then also on an individual level, sometimes telling the truth about your own behaviour or your own impact um can be difficult because we don't like the idea that we've had a negative impact or we've created harm or that we didn't meet our own standards.

SPEAKER_07: 4:28

I want my image of myself to be pure and perfect and everything. And if I have to be honest about maybe some of the grubby stuff that's going on, does that mean you won't like me? Does that mean you won't hang out with me and all of a sudden will I lose all my friends and my f and I think that's that fear of like the honesty and where that comes and and and how you be honest in a way that people just go, uh, maybe we'll remove him from the friends list and maybe we won't hang out with him at the end of the year.

SPEAKER_03: 4:51

Yeah, but that you know, that then says that you know w we are then guiding people as to what we want them to be. Like if you can tell your truth and people accept you anyway, then that's that's the place to be.

SPEAKER_07: 5:01

But I think that's the fear. The fear is that we've maybe been uh disconnected or removed because we've maybe been truthful and because of certain things. Um and as a result, we are now fearful of doing that again, right? Like it's once bitten, twice shy kind of thing, whatever it is.

SPEAKER_03: 5:16

So tell me, Dom, how do we get better at telling the truth? How do we do it, mate? Heal me.

SPEAKER_01: 5:21

Heal me right now. Um uh well, I mean, look, firstly, this is gonna make me extremely unpopular, but uh I I endorse and suggest a strong social media detox uh for people because Yeah, right. Because it tends to be turning us into the worst possible version of the city.

SPEAKER_03: 5:38

Just the rabbit hole that we're where we're just getting validated through our own truths. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 5:42

Yeah, absolutely. But I I think it and I I mentioned this towards the end of the presentation at James's um really beautiful question about lying to ourselves. Um I think surrounding ourselves with the right people is a great first a great first start. Um if we can, as you say, build relationships with people where there is a level of trust and psychological safety and maybe even love, that we feel safe to be truthful, uh, that's an incredibly strong start. And and if we're talking in an organizational context, um leaders creating cultures and environments inside their business where people feel that same psychological safety, that permission to be honest and to not be negatively judged because of it. Um I I think that is a really critical first step. Um all human behaviour, whether it's about telling the truth or any other human behaviour, all human behaviour sits at the intersection of the individual and the environment. You know, all the stuff we've got going on inside our heads and inside our bodies with all the stuff that's going on outside. Um and we can't really control our biochemistry, like we can't just change our neurology, but we can try to put ourselves in environments that encourage us to be the best version of ourselves. Um and so I think that's a a great place to start. Yeah, it's a practice, right?

SPEAKER_07: 7:05

It's it's a muscle you've got to work on, and then the first time you try to be conscious about it. Hey, this is me, I fucking shit, this is the things, and it's bad. And then you eventually get better and better at it, right? Like telling the truth.

SPEAKER_03: 7:15

Andrew, I actually think that you do you actually do a very good job at this in comparison to a lot of people because you like to talk about your fuck-ups and fails.

SPEAKER_07: 7:23

I do.

SPEAKER_03: 7:24

Because you want the truth out there. And I think, but what that does is it provides safety for people to actually be honest.

SPEAKER_07: 7:33

Absolutely. 100%. Because then you can deal with it. It's good.

SPEAKER_03: 7:37

And you know, I there was something that you said right at the beginning of your presentation. You said making truth happen improves your life, your business, and society. And isn't that what we all want? If we all just started to own our own truths, it could improve all of those things. It could.

SPEAKER_01: 7:54

Yeah. And and I think even more powerful than than owning our own truths is if we could work towards a shared one. Yeah. You know, uh the the because I think the and I I really understand what you're saying when when you say kind of owning our own truths, but I think, and there's there's a there's a lot of value in that way of thinking about things. I I think the risk that we run is building a world where people feel licensed to cling on to their own version of the truth. The me, the me, the me. The me, yeah, regardless of how. I'm right, you're wrong. Yeah, yeah. And how finding a space to navigate where we can create a shared version of it, yeah. Develop a shared understanding, I think is is where the most power lies. Now it's harder. It's harder, of course. But I think often the most valuable things are. I completely and utterly agree with you.

SPEAKER_07: 8:39

And obviously, with truth, you spoke about this, there's judgment that often comes through there. One of the things you said was we judge ourselves by our intent, we judge others by their impact. Oh. Which is interesting. So true. It'd be really truth bomb. And it's I I I I love that you said that because it the word intent is something that I try to talk with our team a lot. Like, and how do you ensure that your entire team and organization that you're working with understands the intent of what you're trying to achieve? Yeah. So that if they see something that maybe is like differing to that, that they can have a courageous conversation and be like, hey, I know your intent is, but this is what we're seeing and what we're feeling, and then that truth can come, something that's there. But that intent is so hard because I know that I intend to be a freaking awesome person, but sometimes I can be a dick. Yeah. Um, but I'd be like, yeah, but I'm trying to be good. It's not my fault that I'm not good. Yeah. Whereas the impact is actually poor.

SPEAKER_01: 9:24

And we give ourselves such a free pass on the basis of.

SPEAKER_07: 9:31

They don't know how I didn't sleep well last night. They don't have red bullshit or whatever it is that you want to complain about. Yeah. I'm complaining about red bullshit.

SPEAKER_03: 9:38

Um I'd say sparkling water, but yeah.

SPEAKER_07: 9:47

Well, what impact did I have and what's the truth around it? And go, it's good to know. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 9:51

And I should say for for listeners, that that quote we judge ourselves by intent and others by their impact, is Pete Feuder. And if you um just Google Peter Fuder, F-U-D-A, uh, why transformation fails. There's a beautiful article specifically about that. Um and it it is it is, I find, since I first heard Pete say that, um, it it is one of the concepts that I think resonates most deeply with with most groups because it's such a wonderful description of how we go through the world. Yeah. Like we we all we all do it, but uh and it's an unfair fight because we have first-party line of sight to what's going on in our heads. Yeah. But learning to extend the presumption of positive intent, which I think Andrew is what you were kind of getting at. Learning to extend the presumption of positive intent to others is incredibly liberating. Because I feel like half the time when we get shitty at people, we're less shitty at what they did and more shitty at the story we're telling ourselves about what they did. And we wrote that. Yep. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_03: 10:50

No, I'm so appreciative of you talking with us today. You've stretched my mind and you've challenged my thought processes, and I absolutely love that.

SPEAKER_07: 10:57

Yep, absolutely. It's been amazing. Thank you. Looking forward to uh hanging out. You're around for the next day, or so you're hanging out here a bit longer.

SPEAKER_01: 11:03

Uh I've I'm speaking in Melbourne tomorrow, so I'm on a plane overnight tonight, so I'm gonna go and have a pina colada today and get out of it.

SPEAKER_07: 11:11

Well, enjoy Melbourne. Um definitely an amazing city compared to some of the others in the uh country. Um, listen to a rabbit is the best. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 11:23

Yeah, it's it's quite far south, isn't it? Melbourne. I've heard about that. I've heard of where it is, but I've heard it's very south. I'm looking forward to visiting the quaint middle town. Thank you, you made my day awesome. Thanks so much for chatting with us. Bye.

SPEAKER_03: 11:40

All right, we have just had the final session at TalCon. And what's that saying you leave the best till last? I think that's just what happened. And I have the amazing opportunity to speak with our last speaker who was a top secret speaker, and so we didn't actually know who it was going to be. And her name is Emma Carey, and um she's from Australia, and she spoke about her story, her journey, and maybe I'll throw to her so she can kind of talk you through that because it's not something that I want I feel comfortable in doing because it's your story. So maybe you can tell our listeners a little bit about you and what brings you here.

SPEAKER_02: 12:14

Yeah, for sure. Well, thank you for having me. Um, so I was so lucky to just speak, and yes, as you said, I was the surprise speaker, but I feel over the last three days of being here I have told a lot of people. Yeah, um, but so basically what I spoke about is I had an accident when I was 20, a skydiving accident where the parachute didn't open. Yeah, and when we hit the ground, I realised I was unable to move. And after going into surgery, I learned that I was a paraplegic. And I'm very lucky today, years later, that I'm able to walk again. But the whole situation taught me so many things. I changed so much from it, learned so much from it, and I just like to share the not so much the physical side of the journey, but the mental and emotional journey that I've been through from all of that.

SPEAKER_03: 13:08

And that's what I so appreciated because it's that part of the journey that we can all connect to and find gold in and find value in. And for you, obviously, you go through many emotions. Can you kind of describe what those emotions were and and as you went through them and what were the gold nuggets in it for you that were just like that's a life-changing moment for you? Because clearly that was a massively life-changing moment, but post that there's been so much life lived since that.

SPEAKER_02: 13:35

Yeah, I think something that really, really helped me, surprisingly, is that I was awake for my entire accident, so I can remember it perfectly. And so I will always have the knowledge of how it feels to think for certain that I was about to die, because I obviously didn't think it was possible to survive something like that.

SPEAKER_08: 13:54

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02: 13:55

And even though that was really, really traumatic at the time, in hindsight, I'm actually really thankful that I can remember it because it's enabled me to always have that perspective of knowing just how lucky I am to be alive, because I knew just how close it came to ending differently.

SPEAKER_03: 14:10

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02: 14:10

And so I think that has been the biggest takeaway throughout all of it, because even when things became really hard afterwards and I was in hospital and there was a lot to get through, above all of it, I was able to remain somewhat grateful because I knew just how lucky I was in the scheme of things.

SPEAKER_03: 14:26

Yeah, so it's it's to about zooming, you called it zooming out, yeah, taking that really big picture perspective and being grateful for what you have and being in that moment.

SPEAKER_02: 14:36

Yeah, and I think just shifting perspective from one of what have I lost to what do I still have. Because it's so easy to get caught up in the things that we don't have and the things that are going wrong. But oftentimes when we allow ourselves to list the things that are going right, we realise there actually are so many, and it can just really shift that um, you know, and I was about to say an attitude of gratitude is great, that's really cheesy, but I don't even mean for that to run. But it's it's just so true. Shifting shifting your perspective can change your entire life.

SPEAKER_03: 15:09

Yeah, absolutely. And I think that that came across so strongly. And I guess everybody has moments in their life, those those stick in the sand moments, some not so dramatic as yours has been, but we all have to learn the lessons from that. And some of the things that I really took from you was just in relation to, you know, you might look to other people like you mentioned to reappear and think they're heroes and like how resilient they are, but uh sometimes in the moment that that's all you got. Like you've just literally got to put in terms one foot in front of the other.

SPEAKER_02: 15:44

No, I think I even wrote that in my book. I just had to put one foot in front of the other even when I physically couldn't. Yeah. Because yeah, sometimes you just have absolutely no choice but to go through the hard thing, and we often don't realise how much we're capable of, and we can look to these other people who we think are so strong and so resilient, but when we, you know, really they were just people who were going through a hard time as well and did what they needed to go to do and got through the other side, and we're all capable of that, it just doesn't always feel like it in the moment.

SPEAKER_03: 16:14

Yeah, and so what were the things that that you said that you did to kind of help you kind of get back into that moment of I can move forward, you know, these are the things that I can do, these are the things that I can grow.

SPEAKER_02: 16:27

I think it was just breaking things down into not I was gonna say day by day, but not even like hour by hour. Yeah, and I think living in the spinal ward was something that really helped me because you actually get given a schedule of what you're doing each day. You have physio and then you have wheelchair lessons, and then you have psychology, you have so many different things. And I think having that sense of purpose was really beneficial in that time of just breaking it down to, you know, it's way too overwhelming to look at the year ahead or you or the rest of your life and wonder what will that look like. But we can often think, okay, well, what can I do in this next minute? What can I do in this next hour and just do that? And obviously, you know, we're not all in the spinal cord um ward with some challenges bigger than others. No, but I mean like we don't always have a timetable of what to do, and you know, someone telling us each step, but when we break things down into hour by hour, it it's a lot more manageable than trying to view the entire road ahead.

SPEAKER_03: 17:23

Yeah, yeah. And I think something that was going through my mind as you were talking was, you know, there obviously for you there was such a massive part of your recovery journey was the physical part. Yeah. But obviously, there's that emotional trauma part as well. That they are so aligned. How did you deal with the emotional side of getting through such a traumatic event in your life and not letting it encompass you?

SPEAKER_02: 17:50

I think it kind of came back to that gratitude for surviving because I just knew that I didn't want to waste the opportunity that I had at this second chance of life because I knew I was so lucky to have it, and so I didn't want to get weighed down with living a life thinking, oh, but you know, this would be better if I didn't have a limp or if I could run or if I wasn't incontinent, and just getting bogged down by all of those thoughts. I thought that's that's you know, what a waste of the time that I do have left, and so choosing to just remain grateful for the things that I could do is what really helped me, I think.

SPEAKER_03: 18:29

Yeah, and I it's that comes across so powerfully. Um and one of the things that you just mentioned was you know, running was a real passion for you before the accident, and that you you showed a a clip of you um and maybe uh you can t tell that story around what you've recently done in the last month or so, which was a really big thing for you.

SPEAKER_02: 18:50

Yeah, so a life dream that I always had was to do a marathon because before my accident I loved running and just always knew that I wanted to do that. I just imagined that I would have more time. And after my accident, I kind of had to give up on that dream because I could no longer run. But a few months ago I just remember thinking to myself, it's it's something that I still really, really want to do, and sure I can't run, but I can walk, and I'm really, really lucky to walk. And so why don't I still do this dream, even if it looks different to the way that I once imagined it would? And so I went and did the New York Marathon, which was just yeah, it was so incredible. And I couldn't run, it took me almost nine hours to walk, but I just had probably honestly the best day of my life. It was just such a beautiful atmosphere, and it it you know, it doesn't matter to me what time I do, I just felt so lucky to be there and just get to enjoy an experience that I'd always wanted to do.

SPEAKER_03: 19:47

And you could see the joy in the montage. Like I was holding back tears, and all of your montages I was holding back tears, I'm like, oh, don't cry, don't cry. Because the power of the emotion was so clear, like the the amount of joy. Joy that you had from that achievement. And I think there's so much power in reframing how we see things. In in reframing just even in the day-to-day moments of you have that choice to see it in a different way. And when you see it in a different way, maybe you can achieve it in a different way. And that relates to business too. It relates to how we live our lives. And that's a really powerful message that came across to me when you were speaking. Thank you. So I'm so grateful. And I know you had so many people coming up and talking to you after, so I'm so pleased that you whatever you were saying really resonated with everybody in the room, and it was a really powerful way to end the conference. Thank you so much. Do you want to just tell everybody what that book is so maybe they can go ahead and read that?

SPEAKER_02: 20:46

Yeah, so I wrote a book called The Girl Who Fell from the Sky, which we can we know why it's called that. And it's basically just sharing everything I just spoke about, but in a lot more detail. Just um all of the lessons and all of the things I all the little pearls of wisdom that I picked up along the way over the last well, I wrote this three years ago, so it was about, yeah, nine years after my accident. So um everything I learned along the way.

SPEAKER_03: 21:13

Yeah, and I you know, sometimes it's so important for us to actually engage and read these stories of other people and their experiences because there's all these little things that we can take and implement in our lives.

SPEAKER_02: 21:24

Yeah, and I think even though my what happened to me is a very um to a lot of people unrelatable experience, I driving accident and also um becoming paralyzed. So not everybody can relate to that, but I think as humans we all experience the same emotions just through different circumstances. And so I think well I hope my intention when I was writing it was that people would be able to apply it to their own life even if they don't at all relate to this situation that I was going through.

SPEAKER_03: 21:52

Yeah, and I I think there's that level of hope that we all have to hold on to, and yours is a story of hope and inspiration and reframing of how you can take something that's so horrible but turn it into a beautiful life, um, which is what you've done. So I'm so grateful that you were able to spend some time and speak to me. And um we'll leave it there. Thank you so much. Thank you so much. We um have with us James O'Loughlin. He is a TV host, an author, and an innovation expert. And he spoke uh just to us just before the break on innovation. And uh I saw you writing some furious notes, Andrew.

SPEAKER_07: 22:33

Many a note.

SPEAKER_03: 22:34

Many a note. Yeah, please. Do you want to share those notes?

SPEAKER_07: 22:36

Uh I will in a minute, but um James, welcome. Can I like I have to ask, is it Jim, Jim Bob, like Jimmy? I've always been to James.

SPEAKER_00: 22:45

I'd I'd kind of like to be the others, but people have always I've always thought I wouldn't remember being a tough old Jim and no one's no one's ever ever. Like a Jimmy Bob. Yeah, I get a bit of the Jim? Yeah.

SPEAKER_07: 22:59

I'm an Andrew and I've always got an Andrew. I never get an Andy.

SPEAKER_03: 23:01

Yeah, I don't know.

SPEAKER_07: 23:03

Don't I get Drew? I don't like Drew.

SPEAKER_03: 23:04

I'm not sure. No.

SPEAKER_07: 23:05

Anyway, that's not what we're here to have a conversation about. Thank you. I was trying to be innovative with choice of names.

SPEAKER_03: 23:18

Thanks, right?

SPEAKER_07: 23:19

I I love that Ellie keeps lifting me up and tearing me right down to the body.

SPEAKER_03: 23:22

That's that's how we that's how we were.

SPEAKER_07: 23:24

But um you did have a good old chin wag with us about innovation. Now you've had a bit of a career playing in this kind of space and hanging out with people who are doing new things and thinking things differently, yourself as well as others. Talk to me about it. So the whole the whole premise of what you kind of walked us through was the barriers to innovation, what they look like and what we're gonna do to kind of like you know, break through said barriers. What do you find? What do you find in that kind of if you could summarise that kind of conversation in like a th in a 45-second spiel, what would you give us here?

SPEAKER_00: 23:49

Well, I don't think you need to make the case very hard to almost anyone that you need to be innovative. Like you win that that argument without within 15 seconds, and people always have good intentions, particularly at conferences, particularly when they get away from their businesses, they think, yeah, definitely I need to invest some time thinking about how to make my business better because the world's changing, and then they get back and they spend the next week answering emails and go to meetings and they don't have time, they're too busy. And it's I guess because the urgent often is prioritized over the important, and so it's a matter of recognising what's important. If you think working on your business, working out how to get it ready for 2026, 2030, 2035 is important, then God and will set aside a bit of time, not just now and again when you're too tired for everything else, every single day when your brain is sharp, yeah, to start thinking about that and then break it down into specific things. That bit of our business, that that little thing there where we deal with clients and it irritates clients, that's a problem. We need to fix it. How do we fix it? That staff member, I don't know, there's something about them we just don't connect and and therefore I'm not communicating with them. That's a problem. What can I do to fix it? Treat those things as really important.

SPEAKER_07: 25:07

I loved how you you you linked that problem and opportunity. It's something that I've I've really been passionate about, but I forget about it as well. It's like you can always look at something as a problem and just complain and minge and whinge and moan about it. Yeah. Or you can look at it and flip it and go, well, hold on, here's an opportunity. Like well, things aren't going so well. Well, the opportunity is we can make things go well. You know, think but people don't understand. Well, the opportunity is we now can create an experience where people will enjoy it. Whereas if we just get stuck in that apathetic, simple-minded kind of we're not thinking and paying attention to what's around us.

SPEAKER_03: 25:34

You can definitely choose that. And I one of the things, and I think you got every accountant in the room when you said this, is that one idea a month is a KPI.

SPEAKER_06: 25:42

Just say the word KPIs.

SPEAKER_03: 25:45

I'm adding it to my employee checklist. But it's something that's so tangible, and accountants are very checklisty, let's be very honest. And so it was something that we can tangibly do for not just ourselves but for our team as well. And it's something so simple, it's those little baby steps sometimes that can really help us to break free from where we're at.

SPEAKER_00: 26:01

It's really important to build people's confidence in their ability to innovate because so many people and and and lots of people in professions like law and accountancy that is process based label the heck out of themselves as non-creative, they call themselves boring. And I I I hate it when I hear people say that. So there we can be creative in how we run meetings, we can be creative in how we deal with stuff, we can be creative in all sorts of ways. And the hardest bit isn't doing it. The hardest bit is finding the confidence to have a crack and then not kicking the hell out of yourself when you're not immediately brilliant.

SPEAKER_07: 26:43

Dr. Zarai's uh session uh in the early in the morning, which is about confidence and about bittleness. So maybe they can compare that with yours and roll through. I did I did like uh one of the things that stuck out to me, you were sharing a story about when you I think you purchased a car and then the car yard owner or or leader called you up for some feedback. And it wasn't necessarily the story of that, but it was what you were saying around there is like if you send like a feedback form, it's just not going to get completed or if it's gonna be blase. Like, how do we actually go about gathering data in a way where it's listening? So are you actually gathering data from people who will give you an honest and and reasonable response? And is the person that's gathering it someone who can actually do something about that, or is it just someone who's told to gather information it gets passed up the chain to the big wig who doesn't give a shit?

SPEAKER_00: 27:25

Yeah, that is so true. And and really interesting definition of of data, because we think, well, if people fill out a survey, we'll have uh you know 18 data points, yeah, but no one's gonna fill it in. I'm never ever ever gonna fill in a survey from anyone, and I'm never gonna give an honest answer to someone junior who rings me up and robotically says, You just bought a car, can I ask you five questions? But if, as you say, the the owner of the business is humble enough to say, is there anything that we can do better? I'll think, wow, that's really impressive, and I'll try really hard to give them something helpful. And I think that's fairly common human psychology. So don't, you know, if if you want insights from your customers, yeah, ring in yourself and be humble, and you'll get them. Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

SPEAKER_07: 28:12

That links right into the last point that I've got, and then I'm gonna let Ali roll to finish this off, which was I think a lot of business owners and leaders put this in this thing is don't question if it's too hard or if it's hard, question if it's worthwhile. So that whole idea of getting on the phone and talking to a customer, it's just too hard. I don't have time. Like it's this is beneath me. That's gonna be like, hold on, is this worthwhile? Actually, this is really worthwhile. If I take this action, if I do this thing, those decisions around that become really valuable. And I know myself, I'll often sit there and be like, oh, that's just a heap of work, and I'm gonna have to do a heap of work, and it's just too hard, it's not worth it. Yeah, yeah. You're not looking at the potential benefit from there.

SPEAKER_00: 28:45

Well, exactly, because from say you make seven of those calls, and six of them you get just get, no, everything's fine, or someone's too busy to talk to you, and you think, yeah, maybe this is a way so on the seventh. Someone says something that exposes a flaw in the systems you've set up, something that works well for you, but really irritates customers, and suddenly bingo, you've worked you've found from that person an opportunity to make things better that you would never have seen because you're looking at from your side. So the return on investment is less predictable, it's kind of more of an up and down graph, but when you get it, it can be really, really valuable. So do it.

SPEAKER_03: 29:28

Amazing, and that's the gold, really, isn't it? That's the gold nugget. Um, and one of the things that really stood out to me, which kind of you know allays to what you were just saying, is in relation to when the newbies come on board, ask them what are the problems, because those are the opportunities, and though that's the that's the great stuff that we can get from conferences. And so, James, I'm so grateful that you're able to talk to us today. It's a pleasure and you know, give some insights to our listeners.

SPEAKER_07: 29:50

I'm sure, James, growing up that this was on your life bucket list bingo card. Like speak at an accounting conference in Boracai, right?

SPEAKER_00: 30:00

And be on your podcast. Thank you.

SPEAKER_07: 30:06

And um, my kids are up there too. But thank you, mate. It was a it was a great session. We've enjoyed getting to know you around the rest of it. Yeah, you've got to couple more days of UMCing and looking after us. I'm sure that you've got plenty more planned.

SPEAKER_00: 30:15

Yeah, yeah, I'm I am looking forward to it. It's been lovely talking to you. Thank you.

SPEAKER_03: 30:23

So we've just come back from the afternoon session at Toa Con and we had an amazing speaker called Ollie Bridge, who is a peak performance specialist. Now, as the listeners will know, I am very into the health and well-being space and into fitness, and um I had an idea of what was coming, but I think I was blown away by just the detail and the scientific evidence behind it, which makes for me it just resonates as to how powerful it can be when you're educated in this space. Um, so welcome, Ollie. Thank you very much. Thank you so much for uh do you do accounting conferences very often, by the way?

SPEAKER_05: 30:58

No, I don't. I do lots of conferences, but um no, it's uh a whole range of engineers or you know, this time accountants. It it's kind of the the the the joy of doing what I do is that everyone's human. So when it comes to human performance, it doesn't matter whether that performance is in the workplace or when you perform as a parent when you get home or a best friend or a brother or a sister. You know, we all generally want to do any of those things better. So I'm very lucky that it doesn't really matter so much who the audience is as long as I can get down into that sort of humanistic centre.

SPEAKER_03: 31:30

Now obviously we weren't peak athletes in the room. What did you call us?

SPEAKER_05: 31:34

You're a you're a corporate athlete.

SPEAKER_03: 31:37

Corporate athletes. I really do like that one. I think I might update my business card for that. Maybe just give uh the listeners, I guess, a little bit of an overview of who you are and where you've come from and and why you do this type of work.

SPEAKER_05: 31:48

Yeah, sure, sure. So I I um studied in the UK as a sports scientist. I then was lucky enough to go on and work with um some elite athletes in in Formula One and uh Olympic gymnasts, and and one thing that I um I struggled with was I loved the work. Yeah, but you really couldn't buy a house and get a mortgage and have kids. Yeah, because you know there's there's 30,000 different grads coming out that want to take your place, and so it was a really and and you know it was very, very fun, but I knew it wasn't going to be my everything. And so when I transitioned into sort of the corporate well-being space, I found I had a beautiful blender being able to um use all of that knowledge and use some of those techniques, but for everyday people for really meaningful work, and I feel incredibly lucky that I now run two businesses, one Builder Bridge, which I'm here talking under, um, and also Essentio, which is working one-on-one with people, which I feel so so lucky to be able to do.

SPEAKER_03: 32:50

Yeah, so amazing. I'm gonna do the most horrible thing that I'm sure a lot of speakers really hate is can you from your session break that down into I guess the three things that you really focused on just so that people can get an idea of the types of things that you're talking about. You don't need to go into detail, but just kind of the legs of each of those of the stool.

SPEAKER_05: 33:09

Yeah, sure. So so fundamental to the talk is is about the balance of a three-legged stool. Um, and the three legs need to be grounded on the ground to be a stable base to build your life off.

SPEAKER_04: 33:20

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05: 33:20

Um and in the athletic world, we talked about the the training, the physical training, the exercise as the stimulus for change, but it needs to be coupled with the other leg, which is the nutrition plan and the fueling of the system, and then the third leg being recovery.

SPEAKER_04: 33:36

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05: 33:36

Um and then when I sort of scan out from there, there are eight keys that come out of that. When we talk about physical activity, we're not just talking about incidental movement, we also need some of the more high-intensity stuff. And then when we talk about recovery, we're talking about things like gratitude and relationships and sleep and breathing. And then when we come to nutrition, it's not just about what we eat, it's also about when we eat and timing. And so those eight keys that I've just talked about there, there's a huge body of evidence behind us that shows that when people keep those eight keys as really paramount, the stability of that three-legged stool can withstand a lot of external pressure before it falls over. And when we talk about overtraining in the athletic world, and lots of people have heard about um over-training syndrome, it's just burnout in the corporate world. Yeah, it's too much load and not enough recovery. And so I feel lucky that hopefully I can break it down into these little habits and these little bite-sized portions that mean that it's accessible to everyone. Yeah. And people don't have to feel like they have to completely throw their life out upside down to change things. They can actually just stack things on top of them.

SPEAKER_03: 34:50

Yeah, and that was the habit stacking that you were talking about as well. And as part of that, there was little keys for me. And I when I think about the exercise component, some people think, oh, you know, I've got to go to the gym every day, and I just, you know, I don't have time, or that isn't me. But it was even simple things like standing up, you know, taking a walk, going into nature, those types of things. Can you um maybe give us a little bit more information around the standing and how important that can be? Because that's something that as office workers, we sit down in front of a screen literally, you know, seven to eight hours a day. And what are the little things that people can take and do to kind of change that up?

SPEAKER_05: 35:26

Yeah, so um there's a whole body of research around exercise snacks and the impact that that has on things like the way your body copes with the glucose that it's taking in and insulin spikes, and just breaking up your seated time with intermittent energy sort of boosters and uh exercise snacks, like take the stairs, not the elevator. All the things we've heard of many, many, many times. I like to play around with, and on stage I play a couple of songs where people do movements when they hear their trigger word, and it just it hopefully starts to break down that I'm not an exercise person mentality and starts to get into that inner monologue of well, I don't need to be a gym junkie. I can just be a human that knows that it needs to move, and if we do it in nature with our friends, it can be a magical moment in our day that doesn't have to be putting spandex on and going into a sweaty gym if that's not what you want to do.

SPEAKER_03: 36:19

Yeah, and I think that that is what makes it livable and real and things that people can actually do. It's those little baby steps, those habit stacking things. So I think that that was super important. That was something that really came across to me. The other one was in recovery with the focus on sleep and how important it can be. Um can you break that down a little bit more for us and how important that can be to help us kind of reset and recover?

SPEAKER_05: 36:43

Yeah, one of one of the tenets of the talk is around sleep being an active process, not a passive process. We often think we shut our eyes and then suddenly we wake up a few hours later and something magical happens. And it really does. But the problem is the magic only comes when we set ourselves up appropriately. And I go into uh in the talk, I go into detail around from an evolutionary standpoint, going to sleep was a real survival hazard. When you're asleep, you know, a predator could come and eat you pretty easily, right? Um and so for us to be able to fall asleep appropriately, we need to not feel like we're under attack, which is why we created tribes and you know, the magical things that happen when we sleep only happen in certain elements of sleep. So lots of listeners will have heard of deep sleep and REM sleep, and I go into detail about why they're so critical. And the reason why I say it's an active process is because if people can start to think about if I was going to the gym, I know that if I'm gonna try and lift the most amount that I can when I squat or bench press or whatever it is, I need to make sure that my body is well prepared and I've done an appropriate warm-up. When it comes to sleep, your sleep hygiene is that warm-up. So making sure that your bedroom is your sanctuary and it's nice and cool and calm and quiet and dark, all of those things. And then the preceding hour, there are things and signals that we send our body that are making it conducive to good sleep or bad sleep. And so trying to create that habit, again, it all comes back to habits of making sure that we can start to manipulate certain things in that warm-up for sleep that mean that we can wake up feeling magical in the morning. But that magic only happens if we put the work in ahead of time in that sleep hygiene.

SPEAKER_03: 38:30

And one of the things that I really took from that was that um consistent sleep routine of going to bed at the same time and waking up at the same time and having that 70 kind of minute window on the weekends, you know, where we might want to sleep a little bit more, but it has such an impact on you know our recovery, on how we feel, and you know, our emotions throughout the day. So that was something that really stood out to me. And the last leg um was nutrition. And it's often when we get a peak performance specialist, I mean, they do focus a lot on nutrition, but it wasn't a huge focus for you today. And you really tried to break it down into something that that is livable, that is something that is really simplistic. Because we get thrown this information so often about what we have to eat and when and how and where, and you know, you get body shamed or you get shamed for what you're eating. Where it really it's uh it's about just being mindful and being balanced. Um, what what was your take on that? What what sort of um extra bits can you give to our listeners around that?

SPEAKER_05: 39:28

Yeah, it's uh it's a really challenging topic because it's something that lots and lots of people have had uh pretty poor experiences over their lives, or they've had people in their family that have, or friends that have. So I try and be very deliberate about what I talk about. Um and with my business essential health, we work one on one with clients on how do we get the numbers, how do we interpret those numbers with them, and then how do we put a plan in place. And through all of the years that I've been doing this, I've never once found it useful. To use guilt and shame and get people to feel bad about stuff. And so we do that very, very poorly in society around food. Plus, we have a whole industry that is pumping billions of dollars a year in making these things hyperpalatable and almost addictive to the point where we can't stop. So we're fighting a very, very challenging battle. So my job on stage is to try and simplify things, to say, hey, 80% of the time, let's try and make sure that when we're looking at what we're fueling our body with, it's in view of what we want our bodies to do. And our bodies are incredible and amazing, and everyone is different. One's not right and one's not wrong. Now there is a very important balance here, which upon reflection I realize I didn't talk about it today, but I often do. Around when I look at the plethora of clients that I have that I'm working closely with, I have some clients that are carrying excess body fat, not to a dangerous level, but they're carrying more body fat, but very low levels of visceral fat. And we only know that when we do DEXA scans with them and so on. And actually, from a metabolic health standpoint, they're in a much better place than some of my clients that are very lean and they look great in an Amani suit, but when we do a DEXA scan on them, they have high levels of visceral fat that you can't see with a naked eye.

SPEAKER_04: 41:27

Yeah, wow.

SPEAKER_05: 41:28

And I'm not saying that so that um I can sell more DEXA scans.

SPEAKER_03: 41:30

That's that's not the very interesting though to go through and read over your own body competition.

SPEAKER_05: 41:36

Absolutely. And and if we think about muscle mass being our longevity engine, if you want to be a kick-ass retiree, you need to be focusing on your muscle mass.

SPEAKER_03: 41:46

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05: 41:47

And ultimately, again, if you can go for a very simple DEXA scan once a year, you'll be able to see what your bone mineral identity is, which is super important for a lot of my female clients. We think about muscle mass, which is super important for both my male and female, but also that differentiation between body fat and visceral fat. We live in a society that judges people by the look of their body, not what their body can do. And that is a real crying shame. And I try my best to try and get across. If we demystify the Nas Ali, if we rate our plate and we are eating a fistful of protein, two fifths of vegetables or salad, and a fifth size of slow-release carbs, 80% of the time, we demystify all of this, and we can just have a much, much healthier relationship with nutrition than obsessing over certain things. I touch on fasting and I touch on a few other things as well, but it fundamentally comes down to hey, we're all different. We'll all respond differently to different training protocols and different nutrition plans and so on. But knowing your numbers, knowing where you actually are and working with someone who cares is really critical in all areas of health. I spend a long time in a senior role in a health insurer. And ultimately, this ability for people to take control of their own health is getting more and more and more important. And the reason why Essential Health is a preventative health program is because if we don't get on front of this, this is going to be a tsunami that is going to overtake our country.

SPEAKER_03: 43:21

And I think simplifying it, investing in yourself so often that we're not looking at our health long term, we're just looking at it today, and things can become too big, like, oh, that's too big a change, or I'm not that type of person, and we literally box ourselves into who you are, and that isn't how it should be, and it's those little baby steps, it's the conscious choices, it's the things that we do on a consistent basis. And one of my favorite things is consistency, it's not being the best of the best of the best, it's actually just that it's a consistent actions and that works in the business, but it can be applied across every aspect of our lives. Is that is that consistent action? And that part of that is the habit stacking, and you've said that so many times today. Habit stacking, if you've already got a habit, just add that little baby habit on top to really build and develop. So is there kind of one thing that you want to leave our listeners with?

SPEAKER_05: 44:15

Well, I love the fact that you said it's all about simplification because our tagline is health simplified. If we confuse people, we're not helping man nor beast. So the habit stacking that you talk about, one of the things that I have seen work so many times is building up that person's self-belief. So not starting with 50 different things that we want to do here. But some of the simplest breakthroughs that I've had with clients is just saying, when you brush your teeth, do excellent. And for some people it's do 50 squats. If you do 50 squats, when you brush your teeth morning and night, that's 700 squats over the week. If you were to say to someone, okay, we're gonna go to the gym and do 700 squats, most people I know would really struggle. Yeah. Even if your life survived.

SPEAKER_03: 44:59

They would come up with an Andrew excuse that ran out because you didn't want to do it. Didn't want to be a part of this, as you might notice. Andrew's not here giving me uh little comments as we go through because he decided to rush off and must probably have a coke. But um it's something that we all need to do, isn't it?

SPEAKER_05: 45:15

And it's and it's different for everyone, right? But it's it's the the ability to I can, and then once I can do this, and I start to feel like I'm unstoppable. Now I've done this, I'm gonna do this and this, and that's an absolute magic landslide that we can create for people. But no one's ever done that with shame and guilt and all the other BS. So making people feel powerful, making people feel proud about what their body can do, not what it looks like. And when they have the energy to go, you know what? One of the hardest things about doing the business that I do is that um I'm not telling people things they don't already know. But what I need to try and do is find a way to make them do the things they've always said they wanted to do and they just don't find time for it. So habit stacking is a great example of that.

SPEAKER_03: 45:58

Simplification of that. And we we have to look after ourselves and be grateful for the bodies that we have and say, how are we gonna get to that? Like long distance, how are we gonna get there? And what we do today will help us tomorrow. And I've I people pay me out a lot about my lifestyle. Like, I don't drink alcohol or caffeine and do it because those are choices that I've made, but as you get older, it has an impact, right? Like, so I had my 50th birthday in September, I feel like I'm 30, and I have a joke with Andrew that my physical age is most probably younger than he is and he just turned 40, right? Like I think it's so important that we prioritize ourselves and our health. Like, I've got three kids, I want them to live a healthy life. You've got a role model with this crap, right? Like, you've got a role model, right? You have to show people. And I think sometimes if and this is something that I say to people like encourage people if they're taking those little baby steps, don't give them all the advice and tell them they can't do it or you tried that before. Encourage them, bring them on the journey with you, take those little steps with them. And I'm I love what you're saying around don't shame people into it, encourage them through it, and that that has an impact, and that's where we need to change how we view ourselves in society because we have it has such an impact and it will help us long term. Yeah. So thank you so much, Ollie. I've loved every second of your chat and um our chat now, so thank you so much.

SPEAKER_05: 47:29

No, thank you. It's been an absolute pleasure.

SPEAKER_03: 47:33

We are back, and uh Andrew, you you said to me before we broke that you wanted me to find to speak to somebody that I didn't know and pick a random and find someone that we might be able to talk to, and I went for the absolute top gun.

SPEAKER_06: 47:47

You did.

SPEAKER_03: 47:47

Um I went home because that's what I do. Um and we have with us the lovely Shardane Zaramyami. Is it Ramah? Is it Ramayami? Um, who is a behavioural uh specialist and a recent doctor of it to whom name recent Doctor Doctor Sharday, and she absolutely set the scene for us this morning. They went out strong at Tamicon, and she really just spoke to us around self-image and how we there is expectation bias and what we can do with that. But she had four guiding principles which are absolutely fantastic, and maybe you can guide us through those.

SPEAKER_09: 48:30

Thank you for having me. I love that you came and like accosted me, but in the best way possible. And I actually said I'm very best. If we're gonna do a podcast, we have to schedule it. I'll give you this link. It's like, no, no, no, it's right. It's yeah, we do it now. Brilliant. I love it, I love it. Okay, so these four things. So essentially, it is you know, when we look at what determines someone's success, what determines someone's performance, someone's happiness, their career satisfaction, and we look at over 50 years worth of research, we find that it invariably comes down to four things which shape how we see ourselves. Yeah, because how we see ourselves creates the expectation of how we expect others to respond to us, the world to respond to us, opportunities to respond to us. And so, you know, a lot of us know this intuitively, we've seen it on social media or from a motivational guru saying these things, but there's actually hard science that tells us just how powerful this is. So when we look at self-image or how we see ourselves, there are four drivers of that. The very first one is what we refer to as self-acceptance, your level of self-acceptance. It's linked to the personality, quality, or attribute or trait of self-esteem. But the trainable part of that, how do you improve your self-esteem? It's through self-acceptance. What is that? It's the question of do I matter? Am I worthy? Am I enough? When you don't feel like you're enough, there are four really common painfully familiar habits. The first one is called the likability trap, where you feel like you need to get everyone to like you and approve of you in order for you to approve of yourself. The second pattern here is the pressure to prove. So because you don't accept yourself, you feel like you have to prove your worth through your achievements and your performance. And so you're constantly pushing, you achieve the goal, you don't really feel as satisfied as you thought, so you then set the next goal, which is even bigger and harder, and then you get there and you're perpetually seeking that feeling of, hey, I've made it, but it never comes because you don't accept yourself. The third one is the shrinking syndrome. So we find people who are about to achieve something amazing, they're on the brink of it, and because they don't accept who they are, they take a step back because they feel like they don't deserve it. They feel like they're gonna mess it up, and then that's gonna mean that they're the failure. And then the fourth one is a really interesting one. It's where you tend to find a sense of solace or satisfaction from seeing other people fail. It's called Schaudenfreude. It's a German word. Yeah, that's it. Hopefully, I'm saying it's totally like it's a good thing. It does! It's a Schaudenfreider. It's so it's like, yeah, it's the dark side of when you enjoy seeing other people stumble and mess up because it makes you feel a little better about yourself. Yeah. But it's just reflecting that you're lacking self-acceptance. So that's why it's so important, you know? You will internalize failure if you don't accept yourself. You will take every hint of disapproval as a verdict that you're not enough.

SPEAKER_03: 51:13

Yeah.

SPEAKER_09: 51:13

So that's our first driver of self-down. The first part of our self-image. Second one, now guys, this is quite a long response. Did you want short ones?

SPEAKER_07: 51:22

Go through it. I love the fact that you're going in the depth because it is like we just had an hour of this. So it's hard to kind of grab this in in like 35 seconds. But the second one was agency, right? Agency, that's right.

SPEAKER_09: 51:32

Yes, so second one is agency, which answers the question of can I do this thing?

SPEAKER_06: 51:35

Yeah.

SPEAKER_09: 51:36

Can I actually do it? Do I have the skills and abilities and competence or the resources, or can I learn? And if you don't believe that you can do the thing, you're not gonna take the step forward. You're gonna sabotage on the way, you'll feel like the imposter, the fraud, you'll constantly compare yourself to people who are better than you further ahead, and you just feel inadequate. What also happens is that you're constantly waiting to feel ready, and you tell yourself, or you give yourself the excuse of, no, no, no, I'll know when the timing is right. When I feel ready, when I feel confident, then I'll do the thing. But what we know, it's which is so fascinating, confidence, that feeling of confidence, doesn't come before you take action.

SPEAKER_06: 52:11

Yeah.

SPEAKER_09: 52:11

When we look at the literature, it actually comes after you've done the thing because it boosts your self-efficacy, you feel like you can do it, and then you have more motivation to keep doing it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So what comes first is actually that belief, hey, I can do this.

SPEAKER_06: 52:22

Yeah.

SPEAKER_09: 52:23

That's the second. The third element that drives our self-image, which then fuels all these things about whether we believe in ourselves or not, is what we call autonomy. Now, if you don't have a high degree of autonomy, it means that you're focusing on things that you have no control over, which makes you feel powerless. Because you literally are powerless to change things when you're focusing on things you cannot change. So we see complaining, we see resentment, we see a lot of blame, we see people who keep telling the same stories over and over again about how they were hurt in the past. People mistreated them, no one understands me. And so what happens is that they end up repelling the positive connections in their lives and end up attracting people who just reinforce how they feel. Other people who are also complainers or negative, or and that's why autonomy is such an important one and we often forget about it. It really is.

SPEAKER_07: 53:18

The promise of the movie, let it go. We knew that comes through, but it's it's a big part of it, right? Completely getting good at just letting things go. Yeah, detachment. Absolutely, and and and I I find that that whole idea of like you're not defined by what you go through, but how you go through them. So just easy there doesn't mean it doesn't mean you have to hold on to that thing. Completely, absolutely right. Is it would you say that out of I mean there's a fourth one coming as well, but would you say out of all four, that third one you have less control over the autonomy? Because if you're in like a roomplace environment and I s and and you have a role of responsibility, you might be given autonomy, but it might be withheld from you by someone. Like, is that one you have less control over, or is it we're looking at a different way?

SPEAKER_03: 53:54

But this is power when there's no power. You don't want to feel useless in any situation. In any situation, you have a choice. I would actually say that it was less then. Like sorry. No, you're the expert. No, it's actually great. Seriously. We have really high confidence and really low skill. We've we heard about that this morning.

SPEAKER_07: 54:13

Yeah, yeah. You're on the hill of uh stupidity with the stuff.

SPEAKER_09: 54:17

No, no. But these are great. These are this is exactly what we want people exploring and discussing when they've come across this framework. It's the questions, what about in this situation? So when it comes to autonomy, there's two levels. So we have external autonomy where we are given the autonomy to make decisions, we are given the power at work to be the decision maker and to delegate and all of this. But what we're talking about here is that personal level of autonomy. So you might even have someone who has a lot of autonomy in their work, yet they are still complaining about everything wrong. They're still blaming.

SPEAKER_07: 54:46

Why are you looking at me like that, Allie? Why are you looking at me?

SPEAKER_03: 54:50

You personally, Andrew, but there are lots of people in lots of organizations that don't have their autonomy even though it's granted to them. They'll rather sit back and complain. Yes, yeah.

SPEAKER_09: 54:59

And we see what happens to them. They end up, again, repelling the positive connections and the people that could help them advance in their careers, and they become someone that people don't want to work with. And often they don't necessarily leave companies, they just kept keep getting given to other departments.

SPEAKER_03: 55:15

And and they suffer from a syndrome that I like to I self-diagnose is called blamatitis. I love it. Everybody else's problem about theirs. And so they yeah, but it's a lack. Completely. So we do have a final one, which was adaptability.

SPEAKER_09: 55:28

Yes, and adaptability in the context of self-image and self-doubt specifically relates to can I handle the emotions that come with this thing? So it's the ability to navigate and adapt to and harness whatever you're feeling. Because if someone, let's say someone's about to take on an opportunity or step onto a stage or whatever it might be, if they say, okay, can I handle the emotions that are going to come with me being on stage, being unsure of how it's gonna go, and then if it fails, can I deal with the emotions that come with that? We go on this little detour in our thinking. And if the answer to any of those questions is no, I cannot handle that part of that emotion, then we're gonna hold back. And we're gonna keep ourselves safe and keep ourselves comfortable because the brain's primary role, aside from keeping the body functioning, is to protect us. And if it can magnify all the things that can go wrong and all the emotions that might get in your way, then you're more likely to step back and hold yourself back, stay safe, but then you're also completely stagnant. So these four dimensions, they shape what's called our core self-evaluations, or at least the psychology, uh the personality elements that underscore them, shape fundamentally how we see ourselves. Now, what we talk about, so I have a book coming out in January, which is actually just a culmination of my five years of PhD research, looking at how to develop these four things and essentially reach what we call a state of big trust, which is where you back yourself, you trust yourself across these four dimensions, no matter what is coming, no matter the uncertainty that you're facing, no matter if you've done the thing before, you've never done it before, no matter if you, you know, you uh think you know how it's gonna turn out or you don't. If you back yourself and trust yourself, you're always going to take the step.

SPEAKER_03: 57:04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_09: 57:05

And that's why we love this idea of big trust, because it's not even something you have to wait for, it's a decision that you make first, and then everything else can catch up. Some people think that, okay, no, I even when we're talking about this concept, this idea of these four elements of our self-image, people think, well, I have to wait until I have strengthened all of these things in order to take the step. And that's just an excuse. That's just procrastination again in a different guise. The idea is no, you can choose to back yourself in any moment. And when you do that, when you back yourself and take the action, even if you are still shaky, that in itself is powerful. Yeah. Because you are rewriting the narrative, telling your brain essentially that I can still feel like I'm not ready or I'm not worthy or any of these things, and I still took the action. Awesome. And that's how you fundamentally change how you see yourself. Yeah. Which can also fundamentally change your personality, which I think is one of the biggest insights that a lot of this research has revealed. So it's very powerful and very cool. I just think absolutely trust.

SPEAKER_07: 58:02

Love it. Big trust. I love the concept. I think the um your conversations, the how the room is really engaged. There's already a lot of people I'm hearing walking through saying, Well, what did you take away? The cow and the bison? There's a lot of different elements. If you listen and you haven't heard, come and check out Doctors or I stuff. We're looking for social media. There's a book coming out. There's some really good concepts there that can help to, I guess, elevate what future looks like to you individually. Thank you for joining us. Thanks for having me.

SPEAKER_09: 58:45

I've been gone for since the 21st of September. I've actually done a massive tour to the US. So I did the J Shetty podcast recently, Cody Sanchez's podcast, and like really big names sharing all about this recently. And the response has been phenomenal. But I haven't seen my husband or my dog since the 21st of September. So he's joined me here, which is amazing. And then I see the Dummy on the 7th of December. Thanks for having me.

SPEAKER_08: 59:08

Appreciate it so much. Thank you.

SPEAKER_07: 59:13

Well, there you have it, friends. Five conversations with five interesting and exceptional humans. I hope you enjoyed it. Hit us up on the socials if you want to share any more about what you learned today. Otherwise, we'll catch you for the next adventure. See ya. Wasn't that a fun adventure, my friends? Thank you so much. So incredibly much for hanging out with us today. Allie, you've been amazing. Andrew, you've been alright. How good is it to be able to have adventures together?

SPEAKER_03: 59:46

It so is. And you know what? Keep following us. We are all over the socials at accounting adventures. Check us out on the website. Give us a bit of a like. You know how much we love that stuff.

SPEAKER_07: 59:58

The best thing about the adventure is the People that we do it with. So thank you so much for listening. Thank you so much for hanging out with us. And please bring all the ideas. I think we can't wait to share more cool adventures with you.

SPEAKER_03: 1:00:10

We love you guys.