It’s Free, But It’s Gonna Cost You.

It never stops. It's a commitment to what I eat, where I go, what I listen to. We can enjoy the work of ourselves as much as enjoy the work of our hands.

This episode of Growth Ready includes references to childhood trauma, which can certainly be triggering for some listeners. Listener discretion is advised. Hello there. It's me, Steve Mellor, and welcome in to Growth Ready, the podcast that allows high performers to reveal the reality behind what it means to ready yourself for growth, the personal and professional challenges along the growth journey, while also allowing the high-performance executive coach in me to satisfy his curiosity toward what drives optimal performance. On this episode, we welcome Dr. John King, the founder of Give Them a Voice Foundation and decorated author, to the show. John's resilience and courage guided him through a truly traumatic childhood, but his growth from John 1.0 to John 2.0, as he likes to put it, well, that came later in life, which is highlighting the power of the human spirit when we're ready to do the meaningful work on ourselves. Hey guys, as we get started here with the episode, I want to just take 1 minute of your time to make a request for you to subscribe and rate the show. For our show to be easily discovered by other potential listeners, we need our current listeners— that's you— to take the time to not only subscribe, but to also rate the show. Whether you're listening to us on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, whatever platform of choice, There are typically ways to be rating the show. So go ahead and click something like that 5th star. And be sure to take that additional time to leave a comment or two about why it is you enjoyed listening to the Growth Ready Podcast. Your efforts on this will allow our show to be more discoverable, which means we're going to find more listeners and continue to have that significant impact on the community of human performance and personal development that I know you are all benefiting from by being listeners to this show. Please go ahead, take the time, subscribe, rate the show today. Hey, and while you're at it, why don't you share it with a few people as well? I appreciate you guys. Let's get to the interview. Hello there. Welcome back into the most recent installment of the Growth Ready Podcast. I am excited to sit down today with a Commonwealth brother from another mother. who is also based here, based here in the US. So, we're both legalized citizens in this fabulous country now, both down in the South.

Yes. Cheers.

Cheers to that. I've got my tea. I hope you've got a— I don't know what you're drinking there, mate, but—

Coffee, mate.

Coffee? All right. You've adapted then. You've adapted to coffee. I've remained true to the—

True to the cause.

True to the cause and kept with my tea. But, Dr. John King joins us on the show today and it's going to be an absolute blast, this conversation. I'm so excited for it. We've already had about a 3 or 4-minute conversation before we press record, and I know where this is going and it's going to be fantastic. But I'm not going to allow you to go any further, John, without answering the question that I have everybody answer when we first start. And that question is, what does it mean to you to be growth-ready?

Man, to me, it means to live sisu. And so, sisu is a Finnish word which means White-knuckled courage in the face of overwhelming odds. And when all is lost, the spirit of Sisu manifests itself. So for me, Sisu has come to mean relentless resilience. And I think if you're going to turn the crap of your life into fertilizer, you can't sit around and wait for a fairy godmother. You've got to get up every day and do something, say something, speak to someone, and drag your butt out of bed.

Yeah. And that's where we're gonna start here, folks. We're gonna start right in the thick of this idea of relentless resilience because that is your story. And that is where I am most curious to go with you today because as we were chatting before we got started here, so much of the growth journey in the world that we live in is looked at and discussed around the destination, the success, if you will. And so much of your story is exactly that, the story, the journey. The way in which you've adapted and found ways to get through what you've gotten through. And so before we go back too far, I would love to really talk to you about when you think about bringing this idea and this definition for what it means to you, John, to be growth ready, how comfortable are most people with discussing growth, with discussing life, discussing their journey? Through this lens that you're potentially looking at your own journey through? Do they find it a comfortable discussion, or is it typically something that, you know, takes a little while for them to maybe adapt to?

Well, I, I think we are raised to live our life from the outside in. We're often told what to dress, what to wear, what to believe, what job we need to take, even in some cases who to marry. And I know for me, when I had John Aguirre turn up, this life-ordering experience, I had to stop and ask myself, who was I? And that question was not existential. It was a gift of survival. And it's a question we can all ask, but few do. And it's a chance to pivot to live from the inside out. And I think this midlife realignment that happens in the life of many executive leaders and professionals Is just that, a realignment. For the first time, they come to a point and realize, bloody hell, I'm fundamentally miserable, or I really just wanted to take up knitting all my life. I wanted to open a craft store. I do not want to be the executive and senior partner in a law firm. I love to crochet.

Yeah.

So, it's like at some point, are you going to spend your life miserable yet successful, or are you going to take up crochet because you just bloody love it?

The part of that is that who is in our life at that time when we have these kind of awareness to help us answer that question? I mean, I think I'm curious when you talk about, and I love the way it is, Johnageddon. Am I saying that right? Johnageddon?

Yes, mate. Yes.

Yeah. I mean, I love that. We all need a Johnageddon moment in our life. I don't know whether I've had my Steveageddon moment yet. I don't wish that on you, mate.

Yeah.

Yeah. But I want to go there to start with because I'm curious immediately just with you alluding to that with all these, you know, many people can probably start to think to themselves, okay, maybe I've had moments in my life where I feel as though I've become incredibly aware of something that I want to do, but for whatever reason, I've not chosen to do or the path that I wanted to go on.

Yeah.

Talk to us a little bit about this Johnageddon moment, this time in your life where decisions were made that have obviously charted the course to where you are today?

Well, for me, it started on a beautiful March Texas spring morning. Blue sky, clouds, white puffy clouds, blue sky like a Simpsons opening. And I walked out of my shed and I saw daffodils and I thought, wow, they're beautiful. And then it hit me. It was like, I think it was 2008, Thursday at about 10:45. I had decades of suppressed memories come back to me. Um, you know, I thought my childhood was normal. I thought it was okay to watch your caregivers bathe together. I thought it was okay to, you know, watch pornography and then have sex with female dinner guests. And so up to that point, I'd had these little memories of things I'd done and things that had been done to me, like little 8mm films floating around in my brain. And then when this recall happened, it strung together like a movie.

Yeah.

And, um, playing over and over and over in my head for 7 years. Sometimes it still does. So at that moment, that's the point that I called John again, recall of all this stuff that happens. And as a result of it, and complex post-traumatic stress, John 1.0 was left behind. There was a clear division. John 1.0 was an executive, incredibly outwardly successful. And after his brain vomited over his pristine life, he ended up being neurologically John 2.0. And that was when I had to— I was forced into a situation to ask myself, who am I and what do I like to do? Because I didn't even desire to do what John 1.0 did anymore. I really wanted to discover this guy and find out who he was. So it was something forced upon me that I came to very much see as an incredible gift and opportunity. And I hope for everyone's sake that no one goes through something dramatic. And I don't think you have to. I think you can ask, stop and ask yourself the questions, you know, who am I and what is it going to take for me to live from the inside out? And that is a decisional moment to have your own, you know, your own midlife realignment.

Yeah. And firstly, I, I hope anybody listening to this can sort of immediately understand just the gravity of the upbringing that you've had in order to have such an awareness and to understand so much of the ramifications and the results that have come from that. But at the same time, I truly appreciate you sharing it with us because it helps us understand that for you to then add that little caveat there at the end of just So often we hear these stories like yours and immediately go, well, of course, of course you had this defining moment in the middle of your life where you decided to make this change because of this incredible amount of adversity that you went through. But you are already alluding to it here, John, that why do we need the drastic adversity for us to ask these kind of questions around who am I? And what is it I want to do? And I'm curious, just from your perspective, why do you think we're not doing that more innately? What is it about this outside world? And you alluded to some components of it already, but what is it about the human experience, about our outside world that you feel, at least from your perspective, is preventing us from asking these kind of questions or maybe being committed to the response that we come up with to these kind of questions?

I, I, I actually find that most people have a hard time thinking, like critically thinking.

Yeah.

And we spend so much time entrenched in behaviors that don't give us room to think. You can't think in white noise, and the white noise of life has now been totally changed. Once upon a time, you know, television in America would go off at 10 o'clock at night. Now it's You can watch, you know, midget Hungarian mud wrestling, um, you know, on 47 different channels. And, you know, because like apparently that's a thing. Or the latest thing I saw was shopping, shopping cart competitions in Japan. How the hell, how the hell I ended up watching shopping cart competitions from Germany or whatever the hell it was, it was fantastic.

I don't know what it says about your algorithm for that to pop up, but hey.

I'd rather, I'm telling you, it was fantastic. Um, But we actually don't stop and give ourselves pause. It's like we have a challenge being with ourselves anymore. It is, it is far more taxing to read a book than watch TV. It is far more taxing to sit alone in silence than it is to scroll to death scroll. And we, and we're humans, we're lazy. We don't want to do the hard work. It doesn't matter if the hard work's just sitting there in silence. We really don't like it. And it is hard work to stop and ask yourself questions like— see, the question isn't only, um, am I happy? The question is, am I lying to myself? And it really comes back to an issue of authenticity. And authenticity is being true to yourself, and you have to know who you are in order to be authentic to it. And that rolls down into, um— Having a future you want to inhabit rolls down to setting goals according to those truths and ultimately living susu. So if you bring it back, if you can't ask questions about authenticity, who you are and what you really want, and are you being true to yourself, if you don't know what yourself is and who you are, then those things will never down. So you've got to live your life according to a set of rules and behaviors. And if we don't have those strengths internally, We'll always take them societally. We will allow other people to set our goals and our truths and our inner direction for us. And that can be corporately, that can be in sports, that can be in life. You know, we see it in our country at the moment.

Is it?

America is tossing and turning from a lack of internal pressure. Lots of cultural things on the outside. Character seems to be waning and we're getting some pushback at the moment. And this is the tension we're seeing is Trying to rediscover ourselves in this century.

Yeah, we have to, we have a challenge with being ourselves. When you said that, what I love about that statement is that it really does highlight where the work begins, is just simply knowing who the heck we are. Like you alluded to with that question and the comfort that can come from doing that work, but understanding that the work itself is extremely hard. Like for me, this is where I get to relate to what you're saying. Now is that nine or ten years ago, I I hated who I was. I did not. I I was I was living a life based on the experience that had been that was being created around me, and I was just gravitating towards okay. This is this this must be the lane that I'm supposed to be in. So just stay in the lane, Steve. And lo and behold, it led to misery. It led to depression. All all the things. And I don't need to go into my story too much here. But what what I do want to emphasize is that. The work for me just to find comfort in knowing myself, wanting to actually get to know myself. It's not as simple as just making some time on the calendar and just starting to check in like that, that work. I'm here, I am referencing 9 or 10 years ago when I had some of these awareness, these, some of this initial awareness. I'm still doing the work. Still doing the work.

You always will be, brother. That, yeah. I think people want that microwave answer of, you know, I'll give it 30 seconds, maybe 45 at most, but if I don't have an answer, I'm out of here. Like, I, I'm a really good liar. Um, I grew up lying. I grew up lying to protect myself. I grew up lying, telling people I was happy with what they made me do. But the biggest lie was to myself. And when I had this collision, this Johnageddon, this total life meltdown, I realized that John 1.0 and John 2.0 were 2 totally different people.

Okay.

So, the last 15 years for me has been getting to know John 2.0 and the work. I mean, the hundreds of thousands of dollars. We started today by talking about how do I start my day. My day starts at 5. It's got to start at 5. Because I've got to read, I've got to read my Bible with my wife, I have to go to the gym for the hour or I become crazy. So my first 3 or 4 hours of every day are setting up for a win, um, so I can love the woman who loved me whole and interact with the rest of society. Right. So it's a 3-hour commitment every day to get through the rest of the time in the day to be able to walk around. So It never— that never stops. It's a commitment to what I eat, where I go, what I listen to. And sometimes I think we need to be comfortable with the fact that working hard at everything, including yourself, is okay. And you should find a groove that that's actually an enjoyable process for you and not a bind.

Yeah, I, uh, you, you struck a chord with me, um, with this idea of finding comfort in working hard at everything consistently and being okay. I, again, maybe, maybe it's the 20, 22 years you have on me in life right now, but, uh, I think for me, I want to feel and believe that I've figured parts of my life out. I want to believe that. I want to believe that I've finally figured out my schedule. I've finally figured out how to take care of myself or whatever it is. But that's what I love about what you're saying is why it almost just kind of took me aback just now. It's not information that I didn't know, but hearing the way you delivered it, Hit me on a level there that I need, I know I need to hear. And I have no doubt that other listeners will need to hear it too, is it's just look, looking at yourself and saying it's always gonna be hard work. It's always gonna be hard work and it's comfortable. And it's actually almost, I'm hearing from you at least, mate, like there's almost a clarity and a freedom. that can come from just actually accepting the gravity of the work and the fact it will always be there?

There is a freedom. Look, the reality is you've got to get up, drag your butt out of bed every day, read something, do something, talk to someone, because your fairy godmother is not coming to save you. No one's coming to save you. You have to work every day to get tools for your overcomer's toolbox. That's just the reality of the life we live. And like, look, we're men. We are created to work, you know, from your Genesis story all the way through. It's like, this is what we actually love to do. And so we can, we can enjoy the work of ourselves as much as enjoy the work of our hands. And I think in some ways it's a greater work. It's a, it's a really fulfilling work if you'll allow it. Um, to be able to understand that you have the power to craft a life and enjoy your life. And here's the real power, is that no one else gets to destroy that or control that. You are the captain of your own ship. You are the one who gets to determine the quality of the things that are important to you. Now let me define that just a little bit. You know, we as a society, we value what we can buy, what we pay money for. But the real lot, real value, the real worth lies in things that you can't buy— love, family, health, the ability to think, the ability to reason. So if we spend times on things that are quality and of high value, high worth, it literally shifts our internal weight. And the things that we put weight on for the approval of others, you know, we buy crap we don't need with money we don't have to impress people we don't like. So we put weight on that crap and then allowing it to shift internally into things that we really value, like, you know, your own company, your ability to sit and be with you. Like, when did we lose that gift? You know, it's—

Yeah.

Most people don't like themselves. I've come to understand, which is really kind of sad because you're stuck with yourself for a hell of a long time.

Yeah. I, yeah. And that, that was, that was the origin of my own story of my own work was, was when life put me in a moment where it was me, myself, and I, and I was just like, holy crap, this is not the company I want to be around. I don't like this company at all. Like, it's terrible. This guy sucks. Right. And I just like, I, that awareness, you just go, Good grief. Like, if I'm doing the math right now, there's, there's, you know, I can look around me and, and bring whoever I want to bring into my life, but I'm still going to be spending more time with me than anybody else. Um, and, and so, like, can, can I just be comfortable hanging out with me? Like, never mind all the other stuff that I've got to figure out on this journey.

That's good. That's good work, Steve. That's, that's the hard work, brother. Congratulations.

No, thank you. Thank you.

It really is.

But there's something you said there around these internal rules and behaviors that we can create for ourselves. And I want to really go now towards this idea of performance and performance mindset work that you are doing in your work today, because I have to assume that a lot of these rules and these behaviors that we're trying to implement internally has a lot to do with the way we look at performance. And so I would love for you just to maybe talk to our listeners now Even a term like performance mindset, like again, this if you Google something like that right now, you're going to be inundated with thoughts and opinions and studies and all sorts of stuff. And I would just love to hear what lens are you coming? What lens are you coming at performance from? How are you approaching that?

So do you want the like podcast answer or the real one?

Oh, the real one, brother. We might be assuming the real one. The podcast is just the it's just the vehicle. We're we're we're I want the real fuel. I want the real fuel.

I think the term performance mindset is bandied. about by very shallow people because it means crap. What it is is a label so you can buy my 12-DVD or now download series and attend my conference for $7,000 where I'll stroke your butt and pat your head or whatever it is we're doing nowadays that's politically correct. I think it's bullshit. I'm sorry, I probably shouldn't say that. For the edit, I think it's unnecessary.

Yeah.

So, how I started this, how I really got to being the PerformSet mindset guy is that I wanted to talk about trauma, but people won't click on an email when it says trauma, hey, listen, I want to help you get your crap together.

Yeah.

They'll click on an email that says develop and how you can understand your performance mindset. So, I had to find a way to get disingenuous people to have a genuine conversation.

Yeah.

So I did a pivot in that, and I don't, I don't like it. I'm in the throes of, you know, trying to work that out, you know, internally. It's a marketing thing, but I just don't like, you know, and I'm trying to work with some people on that. Do I, do I believe that there is an aspect to overcoming trauma that is a performance mindset? Yes, I believe that everyone with trauma wants to perform better at their life. Particularly men have trouble clicking on an email and going to a session that's going to deal with trauma because, like, brother, like, seriously, most guys don't get recall about what happens to them as a kid even, or in life, until 45. And most of us are wired in such a way as we don't want to admit vulnerability. Not that we can't with a mate, because women talk face to face, men shoulder to shoulder. Not that we won't with a mate, But just that in our workplace, there's not these authentic conversations about it. So the reality is, under everybody that's driven passionately to succeed, there's something driving them. And often that driver is a traumatic event. It could have been how they are raised, something they saw, something they experienced. There is something that's pushing them beyond themselves, often for the accolades of others because they're having trouble sitting and wrestling and being with their own self. So this push— the way that I can try and get to people is by having a conversation with them about performance mindset. And the very first thing I do is I take them through a 12-week program on trauma.

Wow.

That's the very first thing. So it's purely marketing. It's a marketing thing that I did just to do it. So you're right. So, the things you talk about like the 3x5 mindset, some of those things that we do, the biohacking things we do for trauma also work for performance. So, it's purely a marketing trope. Is that inauthentic? No, I'm telling you it's a marketing trope. I know it's a marketing trope because I want to be able to get people with— because part of the challenge, and you'll know this as a coach, you have to start where people are to take them to where they want to go.

Yep.

You just can't talk about it's all up here, brother, or say, hey, listen, mate, I want to talk about your childhood trauma. Who the hell are you? I ain't gonna do that crap.

Right.

So it's a way to do that. But really what I try and get is conversations and opportunities to help people reconcile things that they've never reconciled before.

I appreciate you giving us the real answer, the real response, because I can't help but see a lot of truth in it. Just even from my background in sport, I used to always call it the chip on the shoulder in some of the athletes that I worked with. some coaches would hear me say like, oh gosh, I love when I get an athlete with a chip on the shoulder. They're like, what are you talking about? I'm like, no, you don't understand. Like, I, I, I say chip on the shoulder and you hear problem.

Yes.

But when I see chip on the shoulder, I say something— there's something there that hasn't been addressed and/or attended to. And because of that, we have an opportunity to just to discuss the chip. Let's discuss the chip. Because when we discuss the chip, we can actually own the chip. Very good, mate. We can use it in a way to benefit our performance. And the beauty of that is that we're freeing the person up to just become more aware.

Very, very good, mate. Well done. It's like Harvard when they started the MBA program, they would deliberately recruit men from broken backgrounds and sexually abused backgrounds because those young men would spend all their energy fanatically proving and getting acceptance from their— not only their lecturers, but their first boss. They all burnt out at 35, right? Um, but for the next 10 years, they just wrung them dry because they, they mobilized this chip, not in a good way, but in a negative way, right?

Yeah.

And I love, I love what you've done because if you can help someone address that chip as a coach, you're actually freeing them And able to speak into their life in such a positive way, Steve. That's phenomenal, mate. Well done.

I appreciate it. I appreciate it. And the irony now that we get to move towards is really what you've been referencing is that when I left this world of swim coaching and moved now into working with executives and leaders, obviously when I first did that, people couldn't understand that. What's the— how does making someone swim fast help me in the boardroom? And I said, well, You have to understand that it's not just about simply getting someone to swim faster. There's so much more to it than that. And that's what I've been doing a lot now the last few years. But to speak to where we're going here is that when you can actually meet with a person head on and start to talk to them about, listen, what is it we're not talking about? Like, until we start talking about what we're not talking about, because why you hired me is not actually the reason why you hired me yet. The reason you— You don't know it, You don't know it.

Yeah.

But yeah, this is good. Because you, because you, because you said it like we, you bring in a coach, right? You bring in, you bring in a performance specialist because you've got a goal, you've got a, a, a, a, a standard that you're trying to get to out in the distance, out in the future. And all you want to discuss is this thing that's out in the future. But a good coach and a good, someone that truly understands performance the way that you're coming at this from is at the end of the day, there's, there's something far beneath the surface in the moment we're in right now. that we've yet to address. And that in itself will not only unlock your forward progress, but it may even completely redefine where the hell you want to go to in the first place.

And that's the big question. I'm really comfortable with a failure rate of about 80% with my clients. I say no to about 80% of them, or I know that they disappear after. If they can get through my book, I think, okay, you've got a chance. If they can get through, um, 4 weeks of coaching with me, they'll make it. If not, you'll be surprised at how many things turn up and how they've got to go out of town and they'll never get back because they get to a point where the mirror they're holding up for the very first time is themselves.

Uh-huh.

And they're having to admit that the person they are today is a result of their own choices and actions. See, being a victim looks at life through the lens of what was done to you. Being authentic is understanding that your past can either refine you or define you, but you are the person that makes that choice, right? And I know in my own life, that's the only way I survived, was to draw a circle around myself and said, you know what, mate, it changes in here because I can't do a bloody thing about what's out there.

Mm-hmm.

And when it comes to that, then that I can control. I control my reactions, my responses to circumstances. That is me. Everything else, I can't do anything about.

Yeah. I remember when I started my business, I told my wife, I said, don't ever let me complain from this point onwards. And she said, why? You're starting a business. And I was just like, because it's on me. Literally every decision is on me. I don't get to complain. about anything I bring into this world because I brought it into this world. Like, I told her that. And so anytime I even flirt with any sort of complaint, she's on it straight away. She's my accountability system. I'm just like, don't.

Yeah, don't you do it. Melissa just hands me my book and says, read chapter 3.

It's like, yeah, at least your wife read your book.

Yeah, well, there you go. Yeah, sorry about that, mate.

It's okay.

We can unpack that a little bit if you want, No, it's okay.

She's more, she's, she's more into this world that you are now moving into as an author, cuz I know you're now moving into, uh, a diff— different type of writing. Am I correct?

Yeah, I am.

Yeah.

So at the, at the beginning of this year, um, we decided we were in a position where we could take a pivot and we took 12 months and our commitment was to believe to get an agent. And we've got a great agent out of New York, wonderful lady, and then commit to go that way and see if I could launch a writing career for the next 20 years. And so, you know, I, I've come through 15 or 20 years of recovery.

Yeah.

And I want to give that gift away, but I also don't want to camp there because if I camp there, I'm enshrining the past and I don't want to do that, you know. And a lot of people say, well, you know, and I've got Business partners at the moment. We'll build on that. That's your thing. Well, that's kind of not really my thing.

Yeah.

Um, it's the thing that I had to do because I never really realized what my thing was. Yeah. And now I've got a chance at 62 to do that. So I don't know. I've always wanted to write.

Yeah.

I never thought I was an author, believe it or not. Written 27 books, never thought I was an author. Until my wife goes, "Here's a list of all the books you've written." Ah, normal people don't do that, do they? She says no. Maybe this is real. Here you really are. Yeah, I think so.

Yeah, love that. Love that. Well, I'm still at one. I'm still at one. But and now I've I've got at least I've got what twenty, twenty-one, twenty-two years to catch you up. So you'll be right, brother. I'll be there. But I think. Something you said there, which is so fitting for our podcast because we don't— it's the beauty of the show is that I never have to worry about filtering out or making sure I position things politically correct in the sense of protecting people's feelings. Because it's like, you don't tune into this show to not be challenged. Like, that's the only reason you should be tuning into this. We're not really recruiting folks that are unwilling to hear the truth. And something you said here is this like, You don't want to camp there. You don't want to camp there. And I think what you said was it's a shrine to the past. Is that what you said?

Yeah. Your past either refines you or defines you. And so early on in my recovery, man, I would watch and read everything. And I remember watching a documentary on artist therapy. A lot of it had veterans and people who'd been trafficked, and they were involved in artwork. And they would show in the course of this documentary, they showed some of their first artwork and artwork that they had created 10 years later. And brother, it was exactly the same. It was telling exactly the same story.

Yeah.

But I look at the very first book I wrote in this theory, which is a series of poetry, a book called No Working Title. So I wrote that. And in the course of the 5 or 6 years I wrote that book, my poetry at the end was radically different than the very first piece I wrote called Rain. And so I ended up organizing this book based chronologically upon the stages that I had come through recovery. And now I go back, I can never write those first pieces again. They're, they're in a sense enshrined, but that represents then.

Yes.

The latest book I've written is one called Sins of the Father, which is about, um, based on true stories, you know, military sexual trauma. Overcoming and the conversations we have on both the left and the right in the country about change. So it's a fictional, a fictional thriller.

Yeah.

And I could never write Rain again. I could never write that. I read that poem. I got a TED Talk coming up. I'm reciting that poem. It's bloody horrible, mate. Like that guy, what that kid went through. Gosh, man.

Yeah.

He had a set of cojones to survive. This guy, like me, I'm a bit of a pussy now, mate. I don't want nothing hard. Cuddle me in marshmallows, bro. Like, you know, I wish I could eat peanut butter and just lose weight. Yeah, I don't want to go to the gym anymore.

Oh man. Uh, I, I, I, anyone listening to this, please hear what John just said around sectioning off. The part of your lives, like recognizing that, hey, listen, this was me then. This is who I can be now. This is who I can, this is who I get to be moving forwards. Because as you're talking through this, my mind just flickered back to like 5 different versions of myself in the last 15 years. And it's always funny, like the, one of my favorite versions, one of my favorite versions of myself to talk about, I definitely did not enjoy being him in the time, but I enjoy talking about him now. Was this guy who was so sure that he wanted to be a dad, but was absolutely terrified of commitment. I.e., the thing that the missing piece, the missing piece, the missing piece in actually creating a child was like, that terrified me. That part.

The whole wife thing. Run. Yeah.

Run and never, never look back. But then, but give me the child. Give me the child. I can't wait to do that. And There was so much, there was so much in that intimacy component that I had work to do around myself that I eventually went and did. And this is the way the universe and the way God works, is that within 6 weeks of me starting that work, lo and behold, I meet my wife.

Yeah, like he does that, doesn't he?

He does.

He just sneaks up and just whoops you on it.

He's just, he's just playing a big game and we're just, we're just the pawn. We're just—

And you kind of like, like 6 weeks later you're going, seriously, I'm not ready.

Right.

I just prayed these things, and now I've got to now I've got to actually do the bloody work.

Right.

And then your wife ends up pregnant. Oh shit! Now I've got to do this father thing, and I'm not even a husband.

It's real. It's real. But I get to look back on that guy, and and again to to the point that you were making, like I get to look back on him and be like, gosh, he was so he was so lost. He was so lost. He was so unsure. But and I love the way you put it because it allows us to actually then. Shift away from judging that former self that we were and actually look at them and say, good for you. Like, good for you getting the help. Good for you truly doing the work. Because again, like you said, the guy that I am now, he's actually got it pretty easy compared to that guy. Like, that former self, golly, he had it tough in so many ways, but he was willing to face it. He was willing to do the work.

Melissa, my wife taught me that. When I look back at, you know, I, I remember when— so, you know, recovery starts with authenticity, is being— you've got, you've got to know your enemy if you're going to beat it. You know, lost my family, lost my career. Um, I was told I was unlovable and unloving. I would, you know, I was a failure as a man, a husband, and a father, um, that I would never get well, so I might as well just kill myself, you know. So that was the encouragement from a previous administration. And I, I carried that weight for decades, you know. I carried it because I— my marriage broke down, estranged from my kids. I was doing my best just to survive. And and Melissa would often say to me, "You did the best you could with what you had at the time." You made a series of decisions. Some of those decisions were made in brokenness. Some of them were harsh, but some of them were survival. And to to look back at ourselves and not measure the same level of grace we would measure to one of our coaching clients is. It's inauthentic in and of itself. You know, men aren't good at that. I think men are very good at measuring grace to everybody else except themselves.

Okay.

And I think forgiveness is something as men we need to be practiced in, and it starts when we forgive ourselves. We have to be very comfortable knowing that we didn't have any models. There's not a whole lot of books out there for young boys who have been anally raped for not tidying their room with a plastic green soldier. You can't find that. You don't go to Barnes Noble and look at What— how do you file that stuff away?

That's it.

What you do is you have a total light meltdown and you fight and you just rage against it and you do the best you can. And at some point you look back and go, I'm really sorry that others were inflicted with what I was coping with. Would I have had children again? I don't know, brother. Like, I don't want to hurt anybody. I don't want to have hurt my first wife the way I did. You know, emotionally. But there's nothing I can do with that. So in order to move on, I actually can't live with that. What I have to do is have— be at peace with that, is I did the best I could at the time, and going forward, I'm committed to being a better man. And the only way you vacillate between that is by allowing it to refine you, not define you. By saying grace is sufficient for me, I will move on, and I'll measure the same grace to myself as I give to my children and my previous administration.

Yep, refine don't define is certainly something I'm taking from our conversation. And when I when I when I think about you now moving forwards and you you. You've painted this, this vision for the next 20 years, this author that you're gonna be and this, this life that you're gonna live around that. Talk to us a little bit about how you maybe see rules and behaviors now evolving for you moving forwards. 'Cause I, I, I can't, I, I, I, 'cause I, I just love, I, I talk about, just to sort of add a little bit of context as to why I'm asking that question. Like for me, so much of my work I base around standards. Like I try to refrain from talking about goals. We try to talk about commitments. We try to talk about standards. We try to talk about behaviors. But to hear you sort of talking through this lens of rules and behaviors, I can't help but now want to know, when you look at your life moving ahead, what do you foresee for these rules, for these behaviors, and how they maybe evolve over this next chapter?

Man, that's a great question. So when I started, my rules were everything from No red food coloring, no orange food coloring, no processed food. High fat, high protein, low carbohydrate. Go to bed at 8 o'clock, get up at 3 o'clock before the nightmares, go and work out in the gym, have a nap in the afternoon. I totally redefined my normal. Um, couldn't work outside, had a chronic stutter. People had run away from me because I was, you know, a large freaky stuttering guy. Doesn't get on with everything, you know. So I had these series of rules that down to the music I'd listen to, the people I'd be with, the clothes that I wear, because everything impacted my soul. So I was doing something called biohacking back before biohacking was a thing. So then I learned about red light therapy, feet on the ground, sunlight, grounding mats. So all of these things add up. And it's not that they so much are now a set of rules as a way I live my life. I, I, whenever I'm outside walking between my house and my shed, I, you know, I walk bare feet. I always take my shirt off in the afternoon before because sunlight's good for me. I turn the TV off, you know, at 7 o'clock because I want to be asleep by 10 o'clock. So that's just how I live. So these rules have evolved into a way that I've learned that if I adhere to them makes me very stable and very productive for the next day going forward. So the reality is I think I'm gonna have less rules because I think I'm gonna get more comfortable with me. And I remember when even I was applying for an agent. So most people, when they try and get an agent, they will take 6 months and they will apply for—

8 months.

20. And if they don't get a response for the book after 20 agents, then they give up and they go on Twitter or Threads and just complain and bitch about how bad the world is. I applied for 364 in a 3-month period and had an overwhelming rejection rate of 99.5%. And I ended up in one weekend securing 4 offers from agents, Chose the one that I valued and believed that would be it. So, so now I'm here where I am. And I say that to say the passion and the fight and the fire is still there, but you just apply it differently. This is the thing that I'm going to do. I'm going to take all that fight and fire and I'm going to apply it to this now. But what was interesting is rejection once upon a time would have totally dismembered me.

Oh.

Spirit and soul. But now it was like, come on, bring it on, let's go, let's go. Because the more nos I can get, I'm closer to my yes, you know. So that fire and passion is still there. But what's interesting is I'm really comfortable with myself, and I gave myself 12 months. And if at the end of 12 months it hadn't happened, I was going to be very, very happy just moving into whatever the next phase would be. So what I'm noticing is that I'm at peace with myself. I'm at peace with whatever I decide to do, and I'm also at peace if I put in the effort. I'm going to be at peace with the outcome regardless of where that goes. And, and that is a very post-40 thing, is I've found it in the arc of my life. I'm coming into my 60s now, and I realized that all the stuff that I was worried about was crap, and who really cares? And it made no difference. So Why don't I just work hard and be at peace with everything? And that's what I would wish for you or any member in your audience is honestly, the old saying is don't sweat the small stuff, man, because it doesn't matter. It really doesn't matter. You face death down a couple of times, become bankrupt, lose everything. It just doesn't matter.

Really? And that's performance, right? Again, this is why I love having this conversation with you. I could talk to another performance expert on another episode and very much be in agreement, very much understand where they're coming from. And this isn't about like canceling out what's, or establishing, sorry, what's wrong and what's right. But what I love about the lens that you've presented performance through with us, John, is what if we were striving to get to that level of performance? To where we could actually not sweat the small stuff, to where we could be so comfortable in who we are, in what we want, that when the result comes, we can be at peace with the result. That surely that is actually a level that, that there's an element of mastery to that, of just how much work do you have to do to get that comfortable? And find that much peace with a potential outcome, especially when it's not the outcome you were maybe wanting to aim for.

That's the one there, because it's not only at peace when the, when the results, positive results come, it's at peace when the thing that you want doesn't come and you go, okay, that's disappointing, but that really doesn't affect me because it's not me. It's maybe just not the thing that I was supposed to do at the time. Or ever. I've had— I've only ever had one thing that I wanted to do, not do, and it, it was tough.

Uh-huh.

And it still is tough because I really wanted to give it a go and I just couldn't. I just— it wasn't going to work out. Too late in life, too many other things, particular thing. And it was like, but you know, so that was about 3 years ago. And the reality is, I would not be where I am today without that no, because I would not have gone looking for the path less traveled. Because this was going to take me on a trajectory, and it says, oh, okay, so that didn't work. So here I am through this whole thing, and I like where I am now. I like this is awesome. What could have been awesome back there, probably, but this is more awesomer because that's a word. So this is this is okay. And it was probably about the time that I came peace with this being less awesome that this became more awesomer because it was just— and it doesn't, it doesn't matter. So, so give you a snap. So you heard the background. This is where I'm currently up to. So in Australia, there was a policy called Breed the Blackout where they would take— because melanin in Aboriginals is a recessive gene, so they would take kids off their parents and put them with European families to breed the black out. I only found out about my family in Australia 18 months ago. 18 months ago I went from orphan to tribe. So leading up to this whole period, um, had a company, invested $1.5 million, valued at $120 million. The pandemic turns up, all that COVID rubbish turns up, lose an investor, end up in Los Alamos. Hired at the National Laboratory for Los Alamos. Harder to get in there than Apple and Google. Last on, first off, stuck in Los Alamos, locked down in New Mexico, bankrupt because everything went chaos. Came back to Texas, 4 days and $400 from bankruptcy. Heart attack. A guy working for me was murdered. And I made— let me just be honest about what this arc has been in these last period of times where people look and go, man, John, your life's so together. One brother murdered. I just lost my last another brother yesterday. I got another brother in jail. I mean, I mean, it's a cluster. If you look at all the lows, the dips, it's been a really in some people's minds a really difficult thing. But the overarching sense of arts that I've learned is it's possible to have peace above the fray. And that doesn't mean that you're shallow. It means that you've found the place where you can bring compassion, understanding into other people's lives without necessarily meaning anything for yourself. And I think for people who really want to perform at a high level, being able to walk into an environment and a situation in sports or in business or in the ministry or whatever it is The very best thing you can do is don't come from a place of need. Now, you have a need for things, but you don't shop that need into those markets, right? You answer those questions yourself, because the more you can be at peace and in tune with yourself, the greater human being you can be to those that need it.

And that, that idea of keeping your need Yours and not making that need the driving force, driving factor behind the connection, behind the work that you're doing maybe in other areas. Again, it's a level of performance where the work, all the work that we started with here around who am I and what do I want, right? It further emphasizes why we start there. And I think that is what I really want to get across here today is that you've thrown a lot of different thoughts and ideas at us. You've shared so much of your story. It sounds like the last 5 or 6 years of your life in itself is enough for numerous people's lifetimes. And so, when you hear this, you go, okay, what do I take from this? What would be a good action item, let's say, coming out of a discussion like this? And for me, It's go back to the origin of where we've started in this conversation of just do the work around knowing who you are and what it is you want. And the clarity that is born out of that becomes this just true force in your life that takes you where you truly need to be going, right?

It really does, Steve. And the reason I said the back end, Was because people often hear my story and they camp on something that happened at 45. Yeah, I'm 62 and it's never got better in one way. I've got better. Yeah, there's, there's an old story I used to tell in church, you know, when I was preaching, is you take a can of Coke and you can stand on top of a can of Coke. You can stand there, but if you empty it out and you stand on and you touch the side, it'll collapse because the internal pressure is enough to out— withstand a stronger external force. If people, when it comes to performance, if your clients would understand that what you're committed to doing is firming up the insides so that they at some point will never need to see you again except for Christmas and Thanksgiving, because as a coach, that's what drives us.

Right.

And that work that you're talking about, And you can take that around wherever you go and whatever you're faced with in life, you have it with you. And that is a wonderful sense of, of just freedom.

It sure is. Be, be a can of Coke is what I'm getting from this. Be a can of Coke. But I— it's a great, it's a great metaphor. It's a great metaphor. Honestly, it's a great metaphor. It's a great example of, of what this is. And Again, it's a very, it's a very simple visual of just focus inwards, focus inwards. Just, just, and again, there, there's a selfishness to that, which some people are gonna push back against and say, how can I be? Again, I, I could do it easy right now. I'm a, I'm a, I'm a husband. I'm a, I'm a father to a 6-year-old and a 5-year-old. Trust me, they need me at this point in life. And, and like that, that is all. All of these things I'm aware of, but some of what you've said here today, I really want people to hear is like, okay, yeah, but knowing all of that, how do I still make the time, prioritize the time for what I need to do to invest in me? And it can be something as simple as waking up at 5, 4 AM, whatever it needs to be for you to get that fix that you need for you to then show up And be filled the way you need to be filled to take on whatever's coming your way that day.

Turn your bloody phone off. Get your ass out of bed.

Yep.

Don't give me an excuse. Give me a reason. Yeah. Just do it.

Just do it.

Really?

Just do it.

I'll take it at lunchtime whenever you gotta do it, man.

I'm, I'm gonna, I'm gonna take this very short 20-second clip and play it for my wife because I, I, the one thing I'm very curious to know is how you convinced your wife to wake up at 5:00 AM with you to have coffee with you. Because my wife has this weird rule about no sun. No, nothing. Like, if there's no sun, if the sun is yet to rise, I'm not rising either. So she's very strict on that. Very strict.

Well, Mrs. Malaw, I do not take any responsibility for what your husband's about to do. Thank you.

Love it, brother. Listen, this has been— I said at the outset, and it's not only been confirmed, it's been absolutely annihilated in terms of just how great this has been. But I need to let you have the opportunity here just to share with folks, where can we learn more about you? Where can we access more of your story? Where do we go?

Thanks, mate. If they go to drjohnaking.com, the website, .com, or any social, they can connect with me. And in fact, I made a program, a performance mindset, it's called MindFire Challenge on the website. They can get that for free. It's normally $500. It's a 5, 6-week course. And the reason was I was going on to so many podcasts and people wanted help, and I wanted to come up with a way to help them. So they're more than welcome to go on there, enroll with that weekly coaching on a Thursday night, Tuesday office hours. We just want to help people, man. It's, it's a way— it's one of the things that we want to do. So Dr. John A. King, um, on social, connect with us on the website. And I've got this book coming out, so I'm going to ring you up and I'm going to bite you. When I get the book published, I'm going to invite you to come on and do a launch on the Grow Ready Podcast.

Let's do it. Let's do it. I love that. And I will say this too, I've never felt more challenged to invest and take up someone as my coach, as the guy that says after 4 weeks typically, you can prove yourself, you can prove your value. So I feel like I've got some people in my audience right now that are like, I like— that sounds like a challenge to me. Is this like to be, to be a client, to be a coachee of, of Dr. King? It's just like, yeah, you know, can I pull this off? Gotta pull this.

It'll be— it's free, but it's gonna cost you.

It'll cost you all your— I love that.

It'll cost you time, it'll cost you being a pussy, and you're just gonna like— so suck it up, sunshine, fill out the form, and let's see if you can make it past the first 4 weeks. And if you can Awesome.

It's free, but it's going to cost you. I think that's, that's, that I might have to get that tattooed somewhere. That's, uh, that's a, that's a beautiful statement right there.

But yeah, your wife, it'd be a great tattoo for your wife. It's free, but it cost me, man. It's free, but that thing cost me a lot.

5 AM, 5 AM. It's free, but it's gonna cost you. Um, John, listen, I could talk to you for hours, mate. This has been an absolute blast. Thank you so much for the time, for the generosity of the insights. Just best of luck with everything, mate.

Appreciate it, mate. Cheers.

Cheers. And my thanks again to John for joining us on this episode of Growth Ready. Um, that was a lot, right? It was a lot, and— but it was a good a lot. It was exactly what I think we all need to hear from time to time. And there's something about this episode as well being released towards the end of the year for you to really stop And I mean it, just stop. Take the time to stop, please. I'm begging you. Just to reflect, just to think, who are you in this moment? Are you doing what you want to be doing? Is it serving you? Is it filling your cup? Is it making you feel as though when you look at this journey that has been your life, you're doing what you were put on this earth to do? It's okay if you want to do that. You know that, right? So much of what John is alluding to is if you do feel comfortable with who you are and you are on the path to doing what it is you want, brother or sister listening to this, let's go. Let's do the work. Let's get way more comfortable being in that discomfort. In the sense of what are you willing to do? What biohacks are you willing to make to create that extra hour in your day just to free up some time? But secondly, how can you then double down and look at the way you're currently using your time towards such efforts that you believe are sending you in the direction that you're trying to get to when really, truth be told, and you look at how you use that time, present company included, there's a way that you could be doing it better. There's a way that you could be leveling up and actually using what God gave you to do more effectively each and every day. This is deep stuff today. This was hard to hear. I'm sure there was some quite alarming insights and stories that John shared. that caught you off guard that you weren't expecting to hear. But I'm glad because it probably drew you back in to listen a little bit more attentively. This was a good one, folks. But don't let it go to waste. Make sure you've taken some notes. Make sure you go check out John's information on his website. But more importantly, keep going on your growth journey. Keep coming back to this show. To ensure that you are investing in yourself the way you need to be from the inside out, not from the outside in. Take this information, but then personalize it. Make it about you. Don't cut and paste what it is that we're saying. Hear it, understand it, make it your own, and then internalize it and make it what it needs to be for you to grow, for you to get to where you want to get to. That's my ask of you. That's my call to you. And that's what I hope that you took from this episode specifically. But in the meantime, folks, as always, best of luck with anything and everything you've got going on. Be sure to share this episode with others, and I look forward to doing this with you again very soon. Bye for now. Thank you for tuning in to Growth Ready. If you liked what you heard and are feeling ready to grow, be sure to leave a 5-star rating, subscribe to the show, and share the episode with someone you know is ready to fuel their growth journey today. We love our community, so don't hesitate to reach out to us at podcast@growthready.com. And until next time, we are growth ready. And you will be too.