166. The War On Patience, Presence & Persistence

Welcome to another episode of Real Dad Movement Podcast. The point and purpose of these episodes, as always, is to have a point and purpose towards helping you win the second half in life by building a path of becoming the best father, husband, man and member of your community that you can be. We do this with various ways of connecting. Life is connection. And as you hear these words spoken time and time again, know that the driving force of connection in life is energy. Which means that how you turn up as a father, as a husband, as a valued member of society will always start and end with how you turn up as a man within yourself first. This is why it's my mission, my purpose, our mission, our purpose through Real Dad Movement to inspire, motivate, educate and guide you into thoughts, feelings, actions and a change in your belief systems to rise up, cut the shit from your life and live and leave a real legacy. When dads win, everyone wins. And when you win, I win. Let's get moving forward, mate, right here, right now.

Welcome to another special edition in our podcast episode. Reason why it's special is because we have a special guest with us today. We've got Mr. Nathan Hitchcock. Hello, sir. Welcome.

How are you, mate?

Hey, great, man. Good. Good to have you on. I'm excited for this episode. We're going to be diving into Nathan's story. Nathan's been a member with HPF for several months. Probably somewhere between the. Maybe four, three to three to six months. Jesus, mate, that's.

Yeah.

We know everything. You've got your own special unique membership number and all that, mate. So we definitely, we definitely know when, when you join and it's written in history and seared into the history books, but it's just a crazy year, man. It's literally gone that fucking fast. I'm like, mate, you know, it feels like we've done a lot together. Nathan, obviously we're going to. We're going to dive into yourself, your story and where you've come from. But also it's crazy because when you talk about that, Nate's been with us for four or five months. It's. We're at the stage now where, I mean, I've had fathers and I've worked with for years, but in terms of the online format and space, what we're doing, we've had dads with us for, you know, coming up to four years now, which is pretty cool, man. Have that longevity to the point where, mate, I don't know if you've ever heard us talk about, but yeah, we have member for life programs and that sort of stuff, which is great, man.

That's the goal in the end.

Yeah, you absolutely are, mate. You're an absolute statesman of the tribe right now. And Nathan's actually probably the man. There were a couple of one or two other members who were using at the stage, but Nathan is very unique and specific in his role and what he does in the education industry. And, you know, he also runs his own. His own gym, which is pretty special and also quite, Quite crazy. You know, married man with three boys.

Three boys? Yeah, yeah, we're three Earthside, mate. We've. We've had four. And I'll touch on that a bit later. But, yeah, look, little Lucas up in heaven. And look, I always talk about him, mate. Always talk about him. Yeah, I'll touch on that later, eh?

Yeah, yeah, for sure, man. It's very special. A lot of the stuff you've shared with me and with us and with the tribe and, you know, I see a true leader who wears his heart and his sleeve when I. When I see you, Nath, which is why I refer to you, even though you might not have been here as long as some of the older guys, as a true leader and also an innovator. Like, you fucking love what we do, man. And you live and breathe it and you've applied a lot of the things that you've done inside of not only the education and some tools, especially around parenting, which has been fucking awesome, but also, you know, handling and helping and guiding children. But also, mate, you know, with. With the My Zone, an introduction of something that I think is just already. Even though we're officially launching in January, all the dads are getting geared up with it, but the way that we're gamifying, you know, the. The fitness component, which we refer to as, you know, our energy pillar, but getting that primal power back, mate, it's epic. The boys are going crazy. We got guys who are, like on rides and they're getting fucking 7 to 900 MEPs and they're getting all these points and. And I'm like, I'm doing a strength session and I'm getting like fucking 60. I'm like, what's going on?

I've been left behind. You know, I feel like I'm going to live up to this. So it's one of those things when you suggest it, like, you better make sure you bring your A game as well.

Yeah, absolutely. It's been awesome. I think, you know, to have. This is the thing that I want to let you guys watching or before we dive into Nathan. I stopped talking for a while. This is, this is what I love. You know, our tribe is full of leaders, the men that take the step. When I crunch the numbers, man, I'm going to talk about this with other events that we run, but the guys that take that step and commit and do this, not that you're not a high performance father if you don't, but for what it takes for a man to actually take that step is, you know, it's less than, less than 1%, mate. Of actually moving through life when we're looking as a whole doesn't mean it's right or wrong. People have choices. But moving through a hole, it's less than 1. It's probably less than half a percent of guys who are like, you know what I'm proud of, I had done good, I want to do great. You know, I'm good in this area of life. I want to improve this area of life. I want it all out. And that's what we really, that's what we really gauged, to coin that term, high performance father. Are you succeeding in family and self and service? What does that success look like for you? What are the standards of those? Success across all three? Not just one. You can't have one sky high and the other one none and be like, ah, that success makes up for the other one that isn't. That doesn't work that way. And you know that, man. But you're all, in a way pioneering this with me and with us together. You know the podcast episodes that I create individually when I don't do interviews, they're off the ideas of the dads in the group and the stuff that I learned. But that's why I'm excited to dive into this man, because you've obviously had a wealth of life experience and many different paths to navigate in all areas, but I'd love for you to just open up and share a bit of your background, your history and your story, mate. And then also like I said, why before we hit record, why you've somehow confused and there's not a Panthers jersey on the back wall, there's a Canberra Raiders one, but that's all right, we'll get into that.

Absolutely, absolutely mad Raiders fan. But yeah, look, have been since I was five, actually. I remember sitting out on the. Oh, it was the lawn at Seaford Oval in Queanbeyan where the Raiders were founded. And yeah, watching Melmeninga break his arm on the goalpost and absolutely heartbroken, you know, so, yeah, but like the Senior hero. I will say he is, you know, someone I hold in high regard. Big Mal, you know, he hurt himself as a young fellow. I remember tearing up. So, look, it was, yeah, back in those days, very confronting. But, yeah, look, I'll start off by, you know, saying thanks for having me, and thanks to all the other fathers, too, that will listen to this. You know, it's. It's a great, great, you know, podcast to listen to the RDM podcast, but also just to hear everyone's stories. It really is motivating and helps me, you know, be accountable to myself. But, you know, here's some ideas here and there, and it's just terrific. So. But, yeah, mate, I'll kick off by saying, look, I'm a Canberra boy. Have been, you know, since I was born. I was born in the Canberra Hospital, the new Canberra hospital, not the old one that was blown up. And there was a big issues with that in Canberra. But, yeah, we ended up. I grew up on the south side of Canberra down in Monash, and, yeah, went to Monash primary. Grew up with a group of boys and friends that. We're still friends today since we were mates in kindergarten. And they're very special to me. We're all mad Raiders fans and love a bit of a punt and, you know, get on a house on fire when we're together. And for me, they're true friends because, you know, nothing changes if you haven't seen them in so long and everyone's just real keen to catch up. So, yeah, grew up down there, down south, and it was massive on footy as a kid. You know, we used to play 21 questions, me and the boys, and I'd always be the winner because I knew every player. The statistics was kind of like a little Dave Middleton running around, you know, back in the day. That's changed now a little bit. But, yeah, look, we were rugby league mad and we were also cricket mad. So I played a lot of. A lot of footy and a lot of cricket as a young bloke. I was a bit weird. My way I played cricket. I was an opening batsman and a fast bowler. So maybe a bit like Watson, Sean Watson, I think it was. Yeah, yeah. So definitely not like. Yeah, definitely not like him. In a sense, I'd be out there forever. I hardly made a run and just, yeah, good, you know, good on the front, forward, defensive, and everyone else made the runs around me. I was just. I was the brick, you know, when I was batting. And I ended up, yeah, eventually they didn't like that so they put me down the order a little bit but yeah, I ended up bowling and would good line and length and fast bowl. But as a kid I, you know, really loved playing cricket. I was down the nets forever and you know, with the fellas and my dad, my dad was a first grade cricketer in Maitland. He was a, an all rounder actually. And cricket mad I loved was footy mad as well. Played some footy up up there as, as a pumpkin picker, you know, which was, was awesome. But yeah, look very, very big on sport as a young bloke. And in the end, you know, I got to high school and went in and kind of dabbled in other areas and yeah, I was, I remember actually saying, I think, I think you were saying you're one of the charge ups. Like you know, say something that you did in high school that was kind of you find astounding or something along those lines. And I jumped a meter 80 meter 82 in high jump which is my height one one year. And funny enough I came second. I didn't win that. Couldn't believe it. I was heartbroken. Went to, went to state for it and all that kind of stuff. And yeah, if I was born a year earlier, a year later I would have, would have, you know, absolutely shitted in with the first place. So this kid that, you know, you meet these kids that you go to school with, some are just freaks, you know. And I thought I had it in the bag, but I did it in the end. But yeah, look, I got to the end of high school and look, my sisters played softball. This is where, you know, the sports you love I found as a young bloke growing up were the sports I was kind of average at. I wasn't, you know, the best footy player of all time. I played 58 and fullback and had a good kick and that kind of stuff on me. But look, I didn't play junior reps or anything. And yeah, my sisters played softball and I would go along to their, you know, their games and, and mum actually floated the idea with me and said oh, you know, do you want to have a go at softball? And I was like, yeah, all right, I'll play three sports, you know, and see how it goes. And they pretty much saw something in me as a softballer back in the day that, you know, when I was 16 and probably 15 actually, but here I went on to represent many different teams and yeah, played a lot of state level softball, a lot of a grade softball and played with a whole lot of really like high performance athletes in the end. Softball in Canberra was a pretty big sport. So we, you know, up at Hawker, we head up there and we'd spend all weekend there and you know, I started at Centrefield and then had a bit of a go at pitching and also at third base. But yeah, they ended up asking me to pitch a bit more in a grade and mate, I could chuck a pitch under arm at. I think I got clocked at 116, 117 an hour. Yeah. So big long levers and that was good. But I just loved kind of the biomechanics and the manipulation on the ball and all that kind of stuff. So really I'm telling you the sports stuff because I was sports mad. Really kind of sports mad. Discovered girls, I'd probably say at the end of high school. Had a long term girlfriend for a while there and we met in the ACT system. We have high school finishes in year 10. And then I went off to college for year 11 and 12 and went off to Arendelle there and Arendelle College for the sports program. And something kind of happened there where I just realized it wasn't where I wanted to be. You know, like I love playing sport and I love being, you know, involved in sport and a whole lot of stuff but it just for me, like I wasn't getting anywhere when it came to wasn't. I think the penny drop moment was it wasn't going to make me the money that I, you know, would need to get by as an adult in society. So I sacrificed a few things and you know, tried to concentrate on, especially in year 12, on my academics to improve what was back then a ter to get into university. And I remember the funniest thing, I was filling out my university.

Kind of.

Application to, you know, be drafted into whatever uni it was. And the funny thing happened where I actually didn't know what I wanted to do. I had no idea. So you had to list 10 things and I thought maybe I'd like to be a physio. So I put that down as number one and that was my. In the end I suppose it would have been my dream job and really thankful I didn't do it. I'm really thankful I didn't get into physio. I was probably 15 points short of it anyway, so there was no chance. But then my second thing was PE teaching. I put down a, you know, PE teaching and I actually didn't get into PE teaching either. But I did get my third pick and that was primary teaching. So, mate, off I trotted to Australian Catholic Uni. I was. I went through public school, three public schools and then went to the Catholic uni and it was a. It was the best experience I've ever kind of gone through with education because it gave me a perspective of, you know, a different system and it made me think like, you know, along the lines of it doesn't really matter what kind of institution it's labeled with or what it's labeled as, as long as you make the most of the opportunities when you're there. And I sure did that. I went off and I did a couple of years as a primary teacher at uni and I got to my third year and I transferred across to University of Canberra to do PE teaching and I got cold feet, I got cold feet in that and I actually didn't start it. I came back to Australian Catholic Uni and thought, I'm just going to stick this out and be a primary teacher. And that's what happened. I graduated primary teaching in 04, 2004 and it was cracking. I really loved it. I loved all the pracs I did and. But, you know, we would. I remember doing a kind of couple of rural practice. One was out at Lake Cajellico where, where everything. Oh, shit, I just got a cramp where everything was. Need some magnesium. Yeah. So it was all red dirt out out there and. And water capacity building kind of experience to go out there and have a bit of a dig. And then I went down to Aladala Public School and. And that was cracking too. And that kind of reinvigorated my love for the coast and, you know, kind of getting on the beach, having a bit of fun. But yeah, look, I was appointed as a primary teacher down south, not too far from where I grew up in Canberra and actually I'll come back in my. In my fourth year at uni I met my first wife, actually, so I'm divorced and remarried and I met her at uni and kind of acted a bit quickly and we ended up. Mum and dad separated around that period as well and things moved fast and I ended up going to live with her in my first year as a teacher, but with her parents and look, that was great but things in that relationship went a bit south, a bit sour and I learned how to be resilient, very much so. I was knocked down massively. I remember huge emotional kind of breakdowns and things that I wouldn't expect, you know, from myself right now with the wisdom and age that I've got But, yeah, look, it was a probably kind of a period in my life that I remember. I remember vividly, but I also remember it for the good things. And as well, I, you know, I'm very. I feel gracious for that time because if it wasn't for the universe, and the universe speaking in the way it did at that period in my life, I wouldn't be where I am now and I wouldn't have the lovely family I have and, you know, my four boys and my wife, that wouldn't be what I have, you know, and so I'm kind of thankful it happened, you know, and so I went through that, which was a real tricky period in my life. I lost all self confidence, absolutely. Just, you know, rock bottom kind of stuff. Probably not quite rock bottom, but, you know, was really down.

So.

And one of my best mates, Robbie, he said to me, said, oh, Nath, you know, I can see you, you're really upset. And I think he said this just tongue in cheek, but I took him up on the offer and he said, mate, if you want to travel, I'll travel with you. And I contacted him a couple weeks after, you know, the separation, and I said, mate, let's do it. He said, are you serious? I was like, yep. So, mate, we booked a trip to America and Canada and off we went for six weeks. One of my other mates, literally two days before we were about to go, he broke up with his missus and he decided to jump on as well. So three of us went off and, mate, I rediscovered who I was on that trip. I rediscovered, you know, my confidence and my steam and that I could overcome, you know, obstacles and roadblocks that were really large ones, the capacity that I, you know, was able to build. I remember crying myself to sleep over there and, you know, having little breakdowns and then maybe we'd head off to a bar and, you know, there'd be this absolutely drop dead gorgeous, you know, blonde Canadian that had come up and, you know, think I was hot shit, but in fact, you know, they were just interested in my accent or something like that. So. So we, you know, we had a blast doing that. And I came back and I decided to get on with things, with life and, you know, and not really concern myself with the past and really look to where I was in the present. And then the future was where I wanted to be. And I made the decision to go back to the school that I started at and speak to the principal there. And I said to the principal, look, are you interested in? Because my Time was up at the school. You do five years roughly at each school that you're appointed at and they try and move you on so you don't get stale. That's really the theory behind it. And yeah, look, I approached the principal and said, how about you keep me on for a couple more years on the provisor that you give me a PE class as well as teaching primary. And at that point I had year six. I was teaching year six at the senior campus at the school. They brought the year six class over there and yeah, look, ended up at that point I got to the senior campus and I was really thankful because when I got there, this absolutely gorgeous blonde lady walked through the door and she was a contract teacher by the name of Claire. And I'd met her before. I remember meeting her down at the snow with another teacher and she'd been appointed to, you know, teacher 6pe. And it was pretty funny how I ended up someone that one of the executive teachers there, I was an exec teacher at the time. They said, oh, who'd like to mentor Claire? And mate, my hand went up nearly through the roof, I think. So I stuck my hand up, I said, I'll do it, I'll do it on keen. And then, you know, they went and asked Claire and Claire was like, yeah, yeah, that sounds good. And anyway, so I positioned myself quite well. And yeah, so I suppose the short of it was that Claire's my wife now, so I was able to do quite well there. And look, we met, we met at the school and she's a teacher as well, and she's a very considerate and quite reflective teacher and that's carried through into our boys as well, which is brilliant and absolutely love her to pieces. It's been a journey with her and we're still on that journey. But I remember getting to that high school and I was teaching that, that PE class and learning from Claire as well. We go in and observe each other and, you know, in more, more than one way, I think, you know, that was happening. So. And then, you know, yeah, we talk about practice and, you know, how we could get the best out of the adolescence. The school we were at was a low socioeconomic school. And, you know, we had a lot of kids that were impacted by trauma, you know, impacted by poverty and other things. And we go above and beyond and really help the community, you know, and that's what I loved about, you know, the school and, you know, staff kind of bonded together. And then Claire was there too, which was another bonus I remember one day I dropped Claire an email and I said to her I was just interested to travel again. I thought, I'm going to see if she wants to travel with me. And dropped her an email which was the Union Jack, just a British flag and the Canadian flag. I wanted to go back to Canada. I hadn't actually finished it in Canada with a question mark. And she responded 100%. The travel we had was planned for 2011, so we decided to rejet it off. We spent a year in London, lived and worked in London for a year as teachers, and we went through, amazingly, 46 cities and 26 countries in. In 12 months.

Wow.

So, mate, we hopped around and yeah, I had a bit of a loan to dad and mum when I got back, needed to clear that up. But we did really well, really well. And we taught in some very interesting schools over there. The kids that are here that I currently work with, you know, they don't know how good they've got it. They really don't. You know, it's amazing that, you know, some of the stuff you kind of opens your eyes when you travel and, you know, we went over and we had a great time. Had a great time. And we got about halfway through that trip and I remember vividly a bit of an argument that we had, and it was about IQ actually. And one of the houseplants, we had asked me to do an IQ test. And I didn't realize at this time that people could be quite manipulative. And I didn't realize that this particular housemate didn't like Claire. And this person positioned me to do an IQ test. And, mate, I did an IQ test and I was quite happy with my result. And then Claire was asked to do it as well. And I thought, well, here we go, this is getting a little bit tricky. And. And Claire got, you know, a good result too, but it wasn't, it wasn't high as the other housemates won and look, we were all around the same marker anyway. It wasn't anything too huge in any way a difference. But this housemate then, you know, put a lot of shit on Claire and, you know, in the end it was something that nearly broke us apart. Something that was, you know, very confronting for her. And we toughed it out. I remember, you know, about two week period of her wanting to go home. And, you know, I decided, I said to her, let's go jump on a boat and we'll go to Croatia. And we really kind of, you know, reconnected and bonded there. You know, the after that, we came home, you know, in 2012, and yeah, we had a whole lot of stuff happen in between 2012 and the current day. We bought houses together. We've done a whole heap, you know, and we've had four boys mate you know, over the period from 2015 onwards. Got married in 2014, which was a beautiful wedding, out of Poacher's Pantry in Canberra. If you ever come down to Canberra, make sure you go to Poacher's Pantry. Absolute ripper place to have breakfast. But we, yeah, we had our wedding there and then our little firstborn, Beau, he was born in 2015. We then had Fletcher a little bit later in 2017. Then Luca came along and, yeah, look, this is the story about Luca. So, you know, Luca was our third born and, you know, we were very excited to have another boy. We've got, you know, a front row. We thought we'd have, you know, two props and a hooker. And in the end we went out for a 12 week scan and 12 week scan was all good and got to our, you know, eight weeks later we had our 20 week scan and we're a bit late on it. We did about a 21 week scan and discovered that Luca was quite unwell. And look, you know, I remember doing our compound, our initial call, Alan, and talking to you about this one. And I think, you know, this was a bit of a moment of undoing, you know, again, kind of a trough in my relationship, in our relationship, sorry with Claire and myself, but Luca ended up having an open spina bifida, which was a quite a large kind of lesion on his back. And, yeah, he ended up not making it at around that 21, 22 week point, which then we had to kind of overcome, to be honest and grow from, which was a big experience to have to kind of, for me, you know, say your own son's eulogy, you know, kind of your kids are meant to outlive you and it doesn't happen sometimes. And, you know, the trickiest part of that was how to actually navigate, you know, the whole process and really what went on. And look, if I can give any advice to anybody when it comes to grief is to never bury it. Once you bury it, it comes back to bite you in the ass. And, you know, and in the end what happened was that I did bury it. And I'm okay saying that I'm a bit disappointed in myself because I have very high expectations of myself and. But I didn't know what to do. And what I did know was how to support Claire and best as I think, you know, thought I could. So I focused on, you know, getting on with things with. With Fletcher and Beau and really kind of kicking on and didn't really deal with my grief and. But Claire did, and, you know, she was saying grief counselor about, you know, multiple different things and, you know, trying to overcome that adversity.

And.

And I was. I was just, you know, I didn't really want to talk about it. Kind of buried it, you know, and. And then Claire kind of got to the end of that period of the grief and was able to kind of accept what had gone on and what.

Had happened.

And I then started to grieve. So at that point, mate, that's roughly when I contacted you, Al, and I ended up talking to you. It was only this year, but between. I kind of say, oh, gee, what do you reckon it would have been four months ago that I'd spoken to you? Maybe five months ago. Yeah. In between the initial call that I had with you and the death of Luca, like I said, I'd suppressed it all. And we ended up having another boy in that time as well, by the name of Sonny. And, yeah, mate, he's a beast. Absolute beast. He reminds me of the Tassie Devil, Looney Tunes, you know, unreal. Like he made. He could throw a barbell over his head, I reckon, like, you know, he's just, you know, full on. And he was a good combination of both, you know, Luca Bo and Fletcher. And he's our rainbow baby. We talk about rainbow babies, the baby after a baby passes away. He's our little fella who's our Rainbow. And I named him, called him Sonny Rainbow for sunshine, that kind of stuff. But as well, you know, thought he'd be a bit like Sonny Liston or Sonny Bill, you know, bit of a beast.

And.

Yeah, look, so things were busy around that, you know, when he was born and, you know, he's only. He's only one and a half nearly. He's probably nearly two now. But look, you know, would have been around when he was one that I started heavily grieving and not communicating and not talking to Claire about, you know, life and how I felt and why I was doing things and, you know, why I was reacting in a certain way throughout that kind of grief period. We had a lot of close family and friends leave our lives, which is unfortunate. They just didn't know how to support us. And, you know, that's very common. But I'm proud to say, you know, at this point, usually after the death of a baby, it's very. Also very common for a divorce to occur. And no, we're not there, we're still together. And that's something I reflect upon a fair bit and I'm quite proud of. So, yeah, and then take me fast forward. I remember being down the south coast. We'd just bought a house down at Brow Lee, and Brow Lee's a cracking spot if you haven't been there. But we bought an apartment down there, kind of a towny, actually, townhouse that overlooks the water and absolute bargain. Picked it up at absolute bottom price. We've been renoing it a fair bit recently. But, yeah, we ended up. I was down there and I was. I was googling father's groups, dad's groups, you know, places to help fathers around, you know, emotion and how to be a good dad and all of those different kind of search terms that. That popped up and what you think of. And I remember doing it and I found you, mate, I found rdm. And I was a bit kind of apprehensive. I was very nervous to reach out just because I didn't know what, you know, what will come of it. But it was the grief hour that I didn't want to. Want to talk about, you know, and, yeah, ended up booking a consult with you. And, mate, we're here today in between the consult now, I've reconnected with Red Nose and I do grief counseling once a month with a lovely lady called Sarah. And, yeah, look, you know, I've had to navigate a lot myself when it comes to the grief. And, you know, I'm accepting of where I'm at and where we're at when it comes to our four boys and our life to this day. But I'm just proud. I'm proud that, you know, of overcoming things and the resilience that we've shown as a family, but also the journey that I've had. And, yeah, it's all about the journey. It's not about the destination.

And.

And, you know, I think that kind of. That quote, you know, I've heard many a time in RDM is really kind of resonates with me, you know, about the journey. So, yeah, I suppose. There you go. What's that worth? About 30 minutes. Here we go.

I'm just kicking back and really taking in what was a very powerful share, man. Like, that was. Yeah, yeah, appreciate the. The share, Nathan. And, you know, opening up like that as well. I mean, huge, huge life experiences, man. Like traveling around, you know. Yes, a Love and a passion for sport. But then navigating what the next phase of your life would look like as you move into your twenties and then fatherhood and, you know, to experience what you experience with. With Claire, it's. That's really tough, man. Like, this is why, you know, and then you. You're amazing on the inside. We fucking love having you on the inside, mate. But this is why it's. You know, I see. I see two sort of extremes, mate. When. When we're in this day and age, right here and now, I see a lot of the old guard and. And. And you and me, you know, even the cricket as well. I grew up playing cricket too, man. Couldn't fast bowl, but I could open the batting. I was the brick as well. I couldn't get through.

I'm paying for it now. Yeah, Anterior tilt, lower back issues, but I was like. Was it Malinga, the slinger from Sri Lanka? It's terrible. Yeah, good. Throw it down. Bit erratic.

Yeah, it's. Yeah, it's brutal when you look at the mechanics of a fast bowler. But I remember one year I just. I was the blocker. I didn't get out all year, and so I technically didn't get an average. But essentially your average is your total runs. And so I won the local club award, but didn't go past the state. But it's looking at the old. The old school, right? Having that real fucking spine. That's something that I think is very valued and needed in today's world. But unfortunately, what comes with that at such a tough exterior extreme is a lack of opening up, of expressing emotions, of holding on to toxicity inside a poison, if you will, man, which is probably. And I'm sure you know, I'll ask you in a second about your grief and thoughts around that. But it is, you know, if there's no opportunity to express, things fester and then manifest, and then it would be like a. Like a cancer with any form of, you know, suppressing of. Of emotions and beliefs, especially from trauma and experiences. But then I look at the. There's nothing against millennials or young people. I just look at a lot of the new age, especially with a lot of the different types, and I understand that there may be needs for it in points with things like political correctness, but ultimately there's people who are just. They don't have a spine at all. And they're just. Everything's just fucking. Just gets blurted out and it's like, well, do you even know that? Have you even reflect? That is It Is that even a reality? Or is it someone who's just living in a world of feelings and fantasy? And what I love, man, is it's like our Viking and Panda episode, right? We have a great sweet spot where it's necessary to check yourself and then use and leverage a true and genuine environment to check in on yourself and check in with yourself, with others. And credit to you, man, for, you know, really opening up, doing that. Because so many men would be broken inside or too proud or, you know, that light bulb moment might be 25 years later, but it's just fucking cut them in half, man. And when that time comes, it comes. But how many, how many, how many guys, how many fathers do you think out there, mate, you know, suppressing emotions or, you know, really pulling back and trying to be that tough, whether it's for the family and do this and that and, you know, be brave and do it for them and sacrifice. And that's a common thing that we, I guess, we fight against. It's not that we don't acknowledge their efforts, but it's not a great thing, man, because you can't be 100% if you're doing that. But what do you think? Do you think that's a common thing through fathers of today? And what is that? What is it? What do you think that becomes, mate, down the track in their 40s and 50s, if they keep all of that tucked away?

Well, look, I'd say nearly every father suppresses emotion. I think, you know, a lot of blokes are described as grumpy and angry and they're the two kind of emotions that a lot of fellows express and show. But there's a lot more to, you know, the human body than anger and. And being grumpy, you know what I mean? And really, when it comes down to it, we're all humans and we all feel and it is important to talk about things. And look, there's a company down here in Canberra here called Men's Link, and they're the most amazing company. They kind of, they support young boys and young men to. To really follow the idea that it. And they say this in their promotional material, that it ain't weak to speak, you know, and it's huge. And I kind of. I would really love to see more guys talk about how they feel, but importantly, they need to look at the function of why they feel that way. And look, in my role as a high school leader, I talk about function of behaviour and why we do things the way we do. And often it can be emotional connection to something. It could be that you have a trigger or something along those lines. And it's. Yeah, it's important to look at the function of things and you know, on the flip of that Al, it's also, it's important to look at the function of what may be if you don't actually take action on expressing yourself. And that is essentially it's death. Like when you think about it, you know, if you don't, if you bottle things up and you continue to do that, you're not going to live that longer life and that fulfilled life is what I think anyway. I kind of. You want to have that release and feel relieved about emotion because if you don't have that, that has a physiological effect on your body. And that's called stress. Stress can result in many different things. Yeah, look, I actually think it's the major contributor to male suicide is that we suppress our emotions and that's why men have a higher rate of suicide than women.

Couldn't agree more, man. It's very tough. And I think if you couple that, maybe on purpose, maybe not, I don't think it's a direct thing, but also there are plenty of times when men get, get the fucking short end of the stick. But ultimately as a whole, I think all the individual parts that make our culture and society what it is definitely, you know, on, on a lot of averages. It leaves us, it leaves us, you know, isolated or alone or home dry. Look, things, things are changing. The support groups. There's things like what you mentioned, men's link that sounds amazing like this. There are things that are building but still exponentially or ratio wise. It's been a, you know, it's been a tough trot for, for men for a long time in ways that people wouldn't even know because of what you said. It's suppressed or it's, it's a stat, but maybe it's a stat that isn't spoken about or addressed or you know, you know, with things like suicide, it's tough man. And I, you know, it's not about getting into, I guess, opinions. But even when I look at things like I see a lot of terms, especially sometimes from Hollywood thrown around with this. Things like toxic masculinity and whatnot. I'm like, mate, who's, who's that really helping? Like it, you know, men, there are a lot of men there that are suffering in silence, man. Like they really are. And you know, you want to talk toxicity. If you're a human, you're Human, whether you're male, female, it doesn't. It's irrelevant. So I see that, man, and I completely agree with you. These. These men almost feel like they can't have a voice because there is. And maybe it's just. It's thick enough, you can cut it with a knife, but, you know, in terms of awareness. But maybe it isn't on purpose, but it certainly is there, where you feel this, there's just this air of, no, no, no, you're a fucking man. You don't. You should just do this or that. And then also, this is what frustrates me. Like, take away things like feminism, whatnot. How about we just focus on ourselves and go, you know, what. What about the. Either the. Whether it's a workplace or a work site or a group of mates or where there's. There's men that are doing themselves in, you know, because they are calling each other pussies and this and that and don't cry and all that. So, unfortunately, the hard part is, man, a lot of the times you get in the wrong environment, the wrong groups, guys put it over each other, you know, to see who the alpha is. It's like, if you're really a fucking alpha, you don't need to say it, right? And. And then these guys think it's tongue in cheek and they hide behind him and they go behind closed doors and they fucking fall apart.

Yeah, and that's one thing, man, about the group, you know, rdm, is that we don't play who can piss the furthest, you know, and, mate, that's one of the major, major attractions. I believe that the men in the group is that what a safe and supportive community, you know, to be part of. And, you know, there is no poison, there is no, you know, negativity. It's all about what is possible. And, you know, the kind of growth, coaching approach that you guys take as a team. And look, for me, that's important. Blokes have got to feel safe and supported, but maybe we'll just take it out. Let's take gender out of it and just say that people need to feel safe and supported. And it's all about humans being great humans and supporting one another. Yeah. So, yeah, I went to the Resilience Project the other night and one of the major takeaways was that the presenter, his name was Hugh, he was talking about, if you want a certain behavior to occur more regularly, you need to model it. And when you model something that you're after or really how you behave, it's in the end, you know, other people will kind of have a bit of uptake with it and potentially do the same thing as well.

And.

I kind of feel like I'm doing that by speaking about my emotions and talking about, you know, I suppose the grief that I've gone through, but also how I feel as a man. I think it's. I think it's important.

I agree, man. You know, like we. And you're on the inside, you know, we drive. We try and drive good facts, good actions, lead and lag measures. You know, not that we take a corporate approach where there's just all these different charts and there's a shitload of acronyms. We got some good ones, but, you know, we're not. We're not living in the land of just creating something because it looks cool, but, you know, and there is. There is value to them. But for us, we try. We walk that line with, okay, we want to. We want to hit facts, we want actions, we want this and that. But also, as you know, because you're on the inside, the core or the crux of anything that's going to become reality, which is driven off a series of actions, is, is this person connected to it or not? And you're always going to be connected through an emotion. Like it is always going to be the emotional attachment that makes the logical pathway work. Always. I mean, you could be as logical to say, if I do this, and I'll end up getting this job, you know, if I do this job, I'll get this amount of money. If I do this job, I'll get this amount of money. Even if logically you choose to change jobs and have that one because more money. Why? How will that make you feel? By having the same job but a higher financial reward. It's always tied back. What will you do with that extra money? Is that an extra holiday every year for the kids? Or there's always men. I wouldn't even say a trigger. I'd say an anchor point. There's always an emotional anchor point that then is, you know, I know I talk, I say ignite or spark. Ignites the spark of the. You know, if we're talking a fire inside, but if you're talking an anchor point, it always comes back to something. That something is. Is the emotion. So being able to check yourself, reflect on that, express that, and build those. Because this is the crazy part, man. Life is. Yeah, I think I started with 50% and then a year or two ago said 90%. And I think lately I've said 95%, man, life is 99.9%. Skill sets. Emotions are a skill set, Nathan. Like, you look, you, you having that awareness of yourself as a human being and being a great human being is a skill set. Monitoring and managing your triggers, your controls, what you do, how you talk to people, your tone out. It's crazy, isn't it, man? Like, I don't know, like, if you want to look at performance and different things, especially sport. Yeah, Mugsy Bugs is cool. We know he was a rare thing, but basketballers are generally taller. I get that from a genetic point of view. But in terms of innovating, adapting, leading, performing, it's all fucking skill sets, man. It really is. But we've forgotten that one of the greatest skill sets that can connect us, because connections are through emotion, connect us to what we love most in our wife, our children, our work, our job, what we do, communities, society. And communication is a skill set. And no one works on that, though. Most men, they don't. They don't work on communication or a skill set of understanding their own emotions, expressing them and balancing them out. It really is a chemical balance as well.

You know, we talk in education circles around, you know, why we teach, what we teach. And when you think about it, al, we are very content driven, very content heavy. And there's this thing called an iPhone and Siri and content is no longer king. Content is no longer, you know, in my eyes, the, you know, the most important thing it is skills. And, you know, from a young age we need to be teaching, you know, you know, kids in particular. I even go back as early as primary school on how to be a problem solver, how to be a great communicator, you know, the 21st kind of century, skills that are, you know, what an employer essentially is after. And one of them is that, you know, you can communicate about emotion, I believe, and it's that, you know, you're clear and you're concise about how you're feeling. You do walk a thin line when it comes to this kind of stuff as well, because you don't want to, you know, continually talk about how you're feeling, because there's got to be a kind of a point where you get on with it and actually do something and take action on those feelings, you know. But, yeah, look, you talk about emotional connection a little bit there too, and it's actually a really good quote by a neuroscientist by the name of Helen Imou Dinner Yang. And she did some research around emotional connection. To learning. And here's the teacher coming through right now. But she basically looked at brain activity and you know, what was in the way of content and what was being learned at the time of the subjects. And she came to the conclusion that it's actually neurobiologically impossible to learn about things you don't care about. For me, that just makes a lot of sense, you know what I mean? And I use that, that quote like it made it rolls off my tongue, you know what I mean? It's one of those things that I use all the time because, you know, my other role is as a teacher, like my new role. I head up a student engagement team, which is the. For a lot of you fellas listening, it'll be the student services of school when you were at school, or you know, the welfare team or something along those lines. And. But I help teachers understand kids with complex needs and trauma and things like that. And that's one of the things that I talk to them about, is that they couldn't give a shit about trigonometry or they couldn't give a shit about history in regards to, I don't know, medieval history. They want to learn about the history of the NRL or they want to learn about cryptocurrency or something that's a little bit more to their liking. And you know what, just let them, just let them do it because they're emotionally connected to it because you're going to absolutely pummel this trigonometry and medieval history into them. That's short term memory. Catch you later. You're not going to retain anything and actually not teaching them anything. And look, I apply that kind of principle to, I suppose, my parenting, but also, you know, to my own learning. I don't go reading things I couldn't care about. I read about things that I want to learn about, you know, and then I retain it. So yeah, it's interesting. Interesting.

Yeah, man. Fascinating insight there, you know, because it looks like you said even though there's this whole thing around it with, you know what you mentioned that lady's name, which seemed way too long for me to try and say it properly in one go. It is really simple, isn't it? If you don't fucking care about it, you're not going to invest in it. I wonder where, you know what I'm thinking when you say that? I'm like, how much of these men care about. Is it that some of these men who get caught up in the chaos of life don't care about their Family and their wife. Maybe, maybe not. Maybe it's also a dismissing of how real a situation might be, which hinders them or creates a hesitation to learn new skills and new skill sets as well. But I understand what you're saying too, man. I agree. But it's a fine line to walk where no one should ever be a chronic punching bag of emotion to receive on your end. But also I see it as, even though it's an emotion, feelings, it's your internal reality. So it's not that it isn't true when we talk about facts, it's how can we connect the internal reality with the external? Because when you line both those up, mate, that's a fucking win. Like, it's a big win. True. It doesn't mean the inside isn't real. It doesn't mean the outside isn't really that like the house is burning down. No, it's not. I mean, obviously there are some realities that we can't. As much as we try to avoid them, they do come, they do hit. We get that with men, whether it is relationships, their work, their health, some health scares. I've got a lot of people, mate. I'm not 50 years of age yet. And there's a lot of people I know that are already dead. It's crazy, man, that were close to me even from being a teenager up, you know, suicides, accidents, motorbike accident. Like, it's a lot, man. When I sit back, it sort of sends chills down my spine, you know? It's crazy how temporary life is, Nath, but. But I see it as a tool. Like, we got a tool belt. It's like, okay, what's the tool for the job? So I guess my point is, when it comes to building these skill sets, a big one for men being communication and emotions, when you build and develop that, and you build that mastery in yourself as a skill set, this transferability, because you might not need to express your emotions unto others or even communicate with an active form. You can read and feel where others are at. And you can listen, which is a form of communication. You can read the emotions, which is a form of understanding, connection. So it's a really powerful thing where a lot of the times it might not be for a lot of these men and fathers, whether it's grief bound or not, daily challenges or not, what they stand up and speak with, but what are they actually actively receiving and showing that. Because people aren't dumb. Like, are you. If I'm sitting here talking, keep talking. Nathan, tell me about your Stories in your life. And am I actually, like, if your wife's trying to talk to you and I'm sitting here looking at my phone.

Your phone down there.

Yeah. You know what I mean?

Attention. That's right. It's a podcast, you know, and this happens all the time. Happens all the time, you know, and. And it's sad. It's sad. Like it's, you know, be present. Show people you care, you know, and show love. Imagine if, you know, one day we all just turned, you know, every person in the world turned to the person next to them or near them and said something, you know, positive or, you know, very gracious or we kind of, with one small action like that, we change the world and we need that. We really do. We've got to really focus on the evolution. But you're not wrong, Al, about life being short. And yeah, I kind of get scared when you say stuff like, win the second half of life. And I think, fuck me, I don't want to hear about that right now. But I'm not quite there yet, actually. I'm not quite there. I'm seeing the first half by one year. But, yeah, you know, like, it's, it is, it's. It's confronting and. But how motivating to hear that too, like to say, yeah, I'm gonna, I'm gonna nail it. I'm gonna absolutely nail it. I don't want to be an absolute, you know, shredded animal when I'm. I'm 75, mate, running down the beach at Browley with my shirt off. Not nothing like David Hasselhoff, but definitely like, you know, I want to be. I want to be strong, I want to be fit and I want to do it for my boys and for my wife, you know, and actually part of the. When I went to the Resilience project last night, he told us a story about Dusty Martin, you know, Dustin Martin, the AFL player. He was talking about his journal and it made me just think about the journal that RDM has. And he was saying that. But Dusty Martin sat through his presentation basically for the club, and the club had asked that a whole heap of his journals were available for the players and one per person. And up walks Dusty Martin to collect his journal and he took 10 of them. He took 10 journals away and they're only, I think that was six week journals or something along those lines. And. And he ended up with, you know, a whole heap of journals, basically.

And.

You know, the presenter in the end didn't say anything. He just thought, oh, shit, I Just got to get some more journals. And, you know, what happened at that point was, you know, Dusty Martin's obviously intending to use all of these journals and apparently he did. He used, he filled out every single one of those journals and about his feelings and about, you know, who he was and, you know, all that kind of stuff. And it made me kind of think the stuff that, you know, RDM have on offer and kind of plug and present, it's all about, it's all about, you know, growth and it's all about, you know, getting to a better place and where you're at and, you know, really discovering your potential and where you can be and, you know, and, you know, that was, it was, it was just for me like to sit through that presentation and to not actually be thinking about the presentation and what was being presented, but the application of what, you know, was like and what it was for me in my life. And, you know, there were different things that popped up. But rdm, man, it popped up a fair bit, you know, and great platform, you know, for everyone to really grow.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's. I appreciate that, man. Like going through so many books now and different journals and things I've done over the years, it's great that you can have a level of impact and service to people with something that they can then apply to themselves. What I really love is with us, it's like, well, how do we keep. It's why. And it's not disrespectful to anyone else. It's why I don't work with women. It's why I don't work with, you know, the elderly or grandparents or kids or teenagers. They're bad, they're great. And essentially, if they're connected to the man we work with, you know, they, they do win, they do get a benefit. But what that's given me, Nath, over the last few years is depth. And it's not. The other journals aren't good. I've seen resilience, I've used it, I've used, man, like eight, probably eight to ten very different journals from high end business coaches to, yeah, mindset motivational guys to the more Very, very about gratitude and state and then obviously habits journals. And when I look at this one, man, I've got this one here now. It's. Mate, it's just amazing because what it is is just, it's just a little spark up. The world's hard enough as it is. Nice that, that we don't need to be giving ourselves and, and getting the cat of nine tails out on our back every day and we do it, we do it through. It's one of the latest episodes. I did shit talking ourselves and shit talking could be your thoughts, your emotions, your feelings, your trajectory on what you want, your gauge on whether you can do something or not. And when I look at this, I'm like, straight away, like I'm looking at Wednesday first thing, rise to win, thoughts, plans, goals. Like there's, there's subtleties in here, man, and it's not. And I never claimed to be a psychologist or any of that sort of stuff, but although I've had heaps that come to me and I work with and I give them a lot of advice. But anyway, we'll keep that. That's. That's not a plug for me to plug for what you guys have taught me, which when I show, because I do, I've got psychologists, hypnotherapists, even psychotherapists, but they're a little bit of a different angle. But marriage counsellors, when I've connected with them and I show them what we do, that's when they're like, holy shit. Like, this is. This is it, this is life coaching. But properly. Not that I'm. Not that I want a bag. I've got good mates who are life coaches, but it's properly done for the father is what they meant. Because obviously a lot of them have worked with, as you said, around self harm and suicide. A lot of them have worked with middle aged men. And I look at this man, and there are little subtleties in here that a lot of guys wouldn't even know that we've tapped into these psychological leaves that pull. Because this has been built from you, this has been built from all of you guys essentially. And when I look at this, what's your most important thing? What are your key habits for this area for the month? Was it achieved today? Here's a tick box. Here's something to gauge your protein, your movement, alignment, self value on the path, nourish, move, restore the body. So there's self scoring in here. I know guys are listening to this. I'm holding it up for guys who watch the video on YouTube. But yeah, you've got a score at the end of the day, then you've got R and R, which is reflections and revelations and all of this together, man. It's not writing 500 words. It's probably essentially, I'd say 60 to 100 words, that's it. So it's effective, it's Checking. It's setting the declarations, it's reflecting on the actions, it's closing the day. And when you build this, these little, these little 1% is every day and you have something to work with, whether it's a book and obviously an online platform. But I love that book because it can't do anything else except exactly what it should be doing, right? A phone can be lots of different environments and uses, really does, because I love Hugh and I've gone through his book, the Resilience Project, and he's got a new one out and great stuff, man. Like amazing stories and the impact they have. And I look at this, I'm like, fuck. This is, this really is the next level for forefathers. And it gives them the tools to create, you know, a stronger connection to life. Everything we've spoken about, that's the next.

Thing for you, mate. You know, stand up, you know, up at a theater or the M War or something like that, and you can get on stage and sell some tickets and yeah, mate, I'll be there. I'll be. I won't even heckle you. But yeah, look, yeah, anyway, just go back to. Because now I remember my point. All right, So I was talking about Dusty and then I forgot and then I thought I'll quickly, you know, add something else in here. And anyway, so here's the bit. He actually filled out those 10 journals and then messaged or rang Hugh and said, oh look, I finished some more. And Hugh had no idea who he was at that point. He's messaging him kind of randomly and he figured out who it was and he ended up telling me how to six months journal. And that would have been helpful in the beginning instead of a six week journal. But he said that Dusty Martin actually came out and, and mentioned that he doesn't like journaling. And I was like, oh, that's weird. Why has he filled it out, you know, for six months straight? Like really, it's a big commitment, you know, kind of thing. And the response that Hugh actually mentioned on stage was that he doesn't do that for himself. He does it for the people that he, you know, that love him. Because, you know, when he does it, he's at his best. And that journaling and, you know, goal setting and all of that kind of stuff, he obviously does it for him a little bit, but, you know, the majority of it was for his family, for the people that love him. And that made me think, that's so true. Like the actions we take and the path we choose may not be the path that we desire, but it is sometimes the path that's best for the people we love. And it made me reflect. You know, at the start of the podcast, people always wouldn't have heard this, but Al was asking if I was the deputy principal. And I was going to say, yeah, definitely, I'm actually a principal, Al, you know, and let him know, spin him a little lie. But no, I'm not. I'm not a deputy principal and I'd love to be one. I've been ranked as a deputy principal in interview and I'm ready. I'm ready to be a deputy principal, but my family's not ready for me to do it. All right? So I choose not to be where I want to be because I love my family and I don't want to miss out on things, you know, like I don't want to miss out on swimming in the afternoon when the boys go swimming and they go up a level. Or, you know, I don't, I don't want to miss out on sitting down and having dinner together as a family and that kind of stuff. And in those higher level roles, you kind of wed yourself to them. And that's not where I want to be. But it made me think, you know, I'm not, you know, my time will come. Obviously, you know, I've been ranked as one, but it's not. I'm doing what I'm doing now a. Because I love it, because I love my family. You know what I mean? And I think that's important as a bloke to note, we can be quite career driven and sometimes we need to reconsider those things to be what's best for everyone around us.

I agree, man. That's a great point and a great share in everything that's connected to us is connected to us in life. So when I see, not when I see, when I. When I say the things like, if you sacrifice at the cost of yourself for the family, you're sacrificing the family. I always add, because that's a saying of mine, of ours, and it has a word in there before that which says chronic. If you're sacrificing at the chronic cost of yourself for the family. Because you know what? There are plenty of times where we can, will, and should make these little sacrifices that we do. I agree with you, man. There's. There's times when, you know, I would love to get an extra training session in and maybe be that over a period of time. I mean, I'm in Good shape, but maybe be 2% leaner in body fat. Does that mean I miss dinner with the kids? Does that mean Corinne has the extra stress of going and picking Lillian up from daycare so I can get an extra session in here? And so when, when we look at being a true 100% for yourself so you can be 100% for your family sometimes what will top you up to being that 100% is the fulfillment of what you encompass as a father, when you put that hat on as a husband, as a man, and it takes away some of those choices where similar to yourself, man. It's definitely not in a light which I'm sure people are aware of, given I've got a big coaching team and I, you know, we really look after them well and everything gets reinvested back to getting this, this RDM ranch one day I could make a fuckload more money right now, man, but I wouldn't see my children grow up and I wouldn't. And there's plenty of time when they're older, especially if this continuously builds and I'd rather do it that way. And maybe from one area there's a percentage and the percentage is less in terms of, from a business point of view, I want to look at profits. But what the fuck does that even mean? One day, mate, I know I've got the skill sets, the ambition and growth and what I do that moving through into my 50s, it's a fucking given, man. Like, even if I didn't do something like this, the, the awareness you have when you continually seek, like you said, a growth, growth coaching or that, that growth towards life, the opportunities are there, man. You, you are in high demand because it's not just who can tick boxes or fill in content. It's who has the skills, who can connect, who can add value. Just like what you're doing about before with, with your, you know, the curriculum and stuff with schools, like, okay, here's the content. But can the teacher articulate and develop those connections to the children for it to be seen of value and then received? Like, that's, that's where people, you know, it's crazy. People think teachers get 12 weeks of holiday a year. My wife's a primary teacher. Like, and you obviously know there's fucking way more that goes on after 3pm and into late nights and through the school holidays. And you know, and this isn't, this isn't a session about bagging people who bag teachers or anything. Everyone chooses a way to work. And most people do work hard in Life, but it's, it's the, it's the value behind how things are connected and delivered that creates the true connection, man. Whether it's relationships, works, job opportunities. You had that foresight and saw it. It's powerful, man.

Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. It's. Yeah, definitely interesting. So maybe you want to talk about the, the gym. What do you reckon?

We haven't even spoken. That's right. You run a gym as well, mate. Jeez, you don't muck around. Yeah, I'm curious, man, because I know you've told me a bit about it and showed me some of what you're doing. Like I said, the. My Zone stuff is epic. But I guess, yeah, how did you slot. Obviously, health and fitness is a key point to a man's life and having the ability to perform and that energy to back it up. But where did all this come into? Like, you know, getting. Getting. Getting a gym, starting that business, having that, you know, being as. One recognizes one of the, you know, the best services in, In Canberra as well. You know, it's. It's pretty cool, man. Like, what, what's. What happened there to. For you to go, this is, this is what we want to do with working with people in this area.

Yeah. So Maida was 2008. We. I was. When I went through my divorce and I just felt like I needed to keep my mind busy. Obviously I had a sport background, all that kind of stuff, so I thought, oh, well, I'll go, you know, do a personal training course. And yeah, just went from there. And yeah, look, I did. It was pretty. Wasn't very rigorous, the course. You know, you could, you could kind of get through quite easy. And especially with the sports background, you kind of. It's your bread and butter. You're able to understand this kind of stuff. And so, yeah, look, I went and finished the course and then and just kicked it off from there, put her on hold when we traveled and then came back and really gave it a kick in the guts and started. I think I was probably about three months in after we got back from traveling in 2012, and I put on three staff, just real kind of casual rates, just contracting and it just grew. And the biggest thing I did was, I don't know if you remember Groupon and Living Social. Remember those little coupon? Yeah, they were an absolute. They were gangbusters. But I did a Living Social deal and think it'd sell really well. It was $19 for five sessions. Go figure. You make no money off this stuff. It's all about collecting emails and that kind of stuff. And so that's what I did. And I had 132, 132people bought that. And then I shit my pants and didn't know what to do because I was like, how am I going to service this many people with the amount of staff I've got? And so we'd split it into two time slots and it just grew from there. We remained outdoors. We're an outdoor company. Company's called Defined Fitness Canberra. And yeah, we ended up just gradually building over time and it kind of got to approximately about five years ago where I kind of thought, look, we need to develop our niche a bit more. And along came the ndis. And I registered as an NDIS provider and really have evolved that service delivery a whole lot, to the point where we do a lot of work with people who have disabilities and we work on the 20 components of fitness, not the 11 components of fitness, because there's 11 physical components of fitness. Talk about like speed, power, agility, that kind of stuff. But there's also nine components of mental fitness. And I have a really strong belief that we need to be mindfully fit. And I talk about being mindfully fit in the fact that we need to be mindful to move our body, because from a physiological point of view, if we don't move, we're like an old rusty car in the paddock or rust up and then when you go to get it moving again, it's bloody hard to get that moving again because you'll be seized up. So we're built to move. And then importantly, we also need to be exercising our mind. And we do that with my business through connection to community. And we go out and we have fun and we enjoy things and we assist personal activities, we build capacity in community participation. And, yeah, look, we've really gone on to develop that niche. I would have been 2019, this is probably my greatest claim to fame in business, was that we were the only health and wellbeing business left in the Telstra Small Business Awards awards for the whole country, which placed us in the top 0.24% of businesses Australia wide that applied. So we were, you know, down to the last 150of about 25,000 businesses that are, you know, were part of that award scheme. And, yeah, we didn't take it out and I had a few frothies at the awards night and I went up to the judges and I said I was really, really organic and I said, why didn't I win? And they actually Came back and said that actually I did it in a nice way, obviously. I was like, oh, look, I just want to know why we didn't win, what we can do to improve that kind of stuff. And they said, hey, the hardest thing about you guys is that you're across too many categories. Like, you would have come second in all categories. So we needed to develop further, you know what I mean? And really kind of dial in a bit more. And we have done. I've got about 11 staff that work for me during the day, during the. When I'm at school, and I've got a great, great team. And yeah, look, it's. We're just growing exponentially. That's good fun.

It's unreal, man. Would be very rewarding seeing too like that. You're adopting the 20. Yeah, if we're looking at working with disabilities, yeah, of course they're disabled. There's a physical element that we want to try and create. Movement, strength, symmetry, all of the above. But ultimately, what does that directly link to, of course, man, Their mindset, their mind state where they're at. I could see that being, you know, critical. And even if these guys don't have injuries, a lot of fathers who come to us, or a lot of fathers as they move through their 40s and 50s, are disabling themselves because they're chronically not moving, man. Their hip flexors are, which means their back pain's through the roof. And it's like, man, you, like you said, you are rusting up and you may not have something as specific or unique as probably the clients you work with in terms of, you know, a. A legitimate disability. But these guys, just like I said, we're born to move, man. If we don't, if we're not using it, it's not even a fact of losing it. You don't use it, you lose it. It's fact of it. It will turn on you and it crushes you. It will make you.

It happens. We talk about here in Canberra. Well, I do. I hope everyone else does too. But it's called the Canberra Curse because we're a public service heavy town. You can imagine a lot of people are sitting down and live a sedentary life and they are sitting there typing away at their computer. They have inactivity in their body. They don't really move. And the Canberra Curse is that you end up sitting for a long period of time. You're shorten your hip flexors and you end up with overactive hip flexors. Those of you who don't know. Your hip flexors are kind of at the anterior or the front of your body, the little violin string that sits below your hip bone. And there's a few things in there that really tighten up when you sit for longer periods of time. And as a public servant, that's what happens. And then they go to stand up and, oh, off they go. They get up off their chair Al, and as you know, they. They like my back sore. My lower back sore. Was my lower back sore. And it's alignment. They're out of alignment and they end up with what's called an anterior hip tilt. And they don't use their ass because they sit on it all day, but they find it hard to really activate their glutes. And I'm sure yourself and Swaney are well aware of fathers that have this as well. And, you know, I guarantee there's a fair few of us within the group that, you know, have probably got underactive glutes. And yeah, look, in the end, we see a lot of that and I see that nearly in every client I work with. It's unreal. And it's due to the way we've evolved. We've almost gone backwards, like, you know, when it comes to anatomy and physiology, you know, but it's. It's interesting. It really is interesting.

Yeah.

So there's an article on me, Canberra, Curtis, look it up, boys.

Yeah.

Times they asked me about it. So they actually interview me. I'm not kidding. That's on there.

Google. We'll make that. Make that picture for this episode, mate. We'll pop it up there. Yeah, it's. Yeah, very true, man. You know, it cracks me up when people say they've got tight glutes and that's the. I'm like, no, no, you're not even using them. This is the problem. Your hip flexors and even where they become and turn into your zoest, it attaches to your spine. So not only do you lack alignment, but you're actually compressing the lower discs of your spine. It's. It's savage. I feel that, man. Yeah, from. From running gyms and walking 13-15ks a day, because I would clock up 20, 000 steps and obviously instructing and, and training myself to sitting down a fair bit. But yeah, you do a good. You do a good realignment, which includes some hip flexor work and maybe some trigger points. Sometimes it's. That's the thing. It can get you quick, but if you have the right tools and people around you, you can you can undo it and re. Establish some sort of symmetry or normality again as well? But it's really special, man. Yeah, it's. It's pretty. It's pretty special that you're doing that, Nath. What a great, What a great service to the community, man. Like, it's. Yeah, I really, really love that. What's. What's the. I've enjoyed this episode, mate. It's been a very powerful one in a lot of different ways. Very unique and they all are with the guests we have on. But this is. This has covered a fair few things that I guess I don't really normally talk about either, but it's just as important when we're looking at core things, society as a whole, other people being a great human. Yeah, you know, what's, what's. What's on the cards, man. I do appreciate, obviously, in this, in this episode, man, that you've shared your personal experiences with us and you enjoy what you're doing with us and we're building for. For a great year next year. But I love here just probably two things on some final thoughts, man. First one is, yeah, what's. What's next for Nathan? You know, what does that look like for you? Is there. Is there a bit of a guide or, you know, a North Star that you sort of think, this is what I want to get or achieve or do or desire in 2022? And then enough that, mate, I guess, you know, final thoughts or advice or for fathers out there struggling or some key mindset or piece of advice, you think that they'd benefit from man in your terms or your words?

Yeah, yeah. Oh, look, 2022 for me is I really want to connect more with the people around me and I want to show gratitude. Al I talk about gratitude in my temples and tabs a lot because I haven't got it. I quite haven't nailed it. You know what I mean? And, you know, I want to show true gratitude. And what I mean by that is that I suppose I want a penny drop moment. It's going to happen. It'll happen to me one day. And I'm hoping It is in 2022, but I don't want to be, you know, searching for, you know, that gracious moment or that moment where, you know, I don't want to be creating it. You know what I mean? I want it to just happen. Where I suppose a good example is, you know, the other day, the boys, my boys were having a. Having a moment. You know, there was Bo and Fletcher just you know, cutting sick and Sonny doing his little twisty kind of Looney Tunes Tassie devil effort. And it was mayhem. And one of the boys pushed the other one and he fell over. And I looked at Claire and I thought, I'm cooked. I'm absolutely cooked. Are you going to deal with this is my thought, because I was absolutely busted. And she just started crying and I was worried about her. And then they all started crying. And I actually thought to myself, gee, gee, I wish Claire's mum and dad were here right now. My parents were here. And that for me was kind of that moment where it made me think, that's a moment where I really love them and I'm grateful for what they do. You know what I mean? So I kind of want more of that to happen in my life, that organic realization. But I don't want to chase it, so that's important. I'd like to kind of delve into a little bit more mindfulness for 2022.

And.

I really want to focus on my morning and night routines. You know, I talk about mindfulness in being that I don't mind running. I actually find that when I run, that as mindfulness for me, that allows time and space and I think and I reflect and I. But I also take in my surrounds. I don't know if I shared this. The other day I went for a 10k run and, you know, it was pissing rain and it was the most beautiful thing I've done in a while because of the. The rain falling on my face. I could hear frogs, I could hear, you know, water. It was just really nice. And I kind of took note of that and it made me think that, that, you know, I've got to do more of that kind of stuff. So, yeah, nighttime and bedtime routines, I've got a poor habit of staying up too late and really kind of trying to finish things or tick things off. And, you know, some days I'm pulling five hours sleep and that's not good for my body, so I want to really focus on that. We've got some sleep issues with our kids as well, so it's a bit hard. But, yeah, look, we'll get there. But I've got to do what I can do when it comes to that stuff. And that's about being organized and planned before bed and then also in the morning. One of the best things I've done recently is the breath work. Absolutely love it. It's amazing. One of my most important things this week was around family and that was to do my breastwork with my children and get the boys involved and Sonny loves it. The other two think I'm a weirdo. But Sonny actually, he joins in, he thinks it's hilarious. So yeah, we've been doing that together. Yeah, so they're kind of the, kind of the micro goals for me. And I think the big macro is that I want my relationship to be better with my wife. You know, I love her to pieces and I'll do anything for her. And look, I'm on that path but I'm not there. You know what I mean? But then the question is where is there? You know, so it's all about the journey and you know, that's where I want to be, is in a very good and positive place with Claire and also, you know, those Micros. So that's 2022 for me. There's other things, you know, business I want to, I want to have a better culture within my business and I want to solidify the team that I lead at school to be a high performing team as well, which is where we're at. We just need to make sure we're better again and yeah, I suppose last thoughts, you know, for me is that I'll go back to it ain't weak to speak and I really, really would love the fellows who are listening to do that. Whether it's talking to a friend, talking to, you know, your other half, your partner, talking to whoever, it's important to talk and you know, it's probably the most profound thing that I've learned in more recent times is that speaking, you know, about yourself and about, you know, what you've experienced and things, it actually enables an evolution within yourself and a realization of where you're at and it actually helps you align where you want to be and where you want to go to. So for those who are kind of hard ass bloke out there that is bottling things up, it's not the case that no one wants to hear you or no one wants to listen to what you've got to say. There's always someone there who you can talk to and, and I really make sure that you reach out to someone because in the end it can be something that really is your undoing and you don't want that. We're all high performance fathers in here and it's important that we remain at a high level and I think that talking is very important when it comes to that.

Yeah, couldn't agree more, men. It's what really connects and initiates what's going on inside us. Whether you call it a brain or your mind, your heart to others, just like we're doing here now, just like you guys are listening to or watching this now, the words you speak, unless you're on your. Sorry, not unless you're on your own, but even if you are on your own, they're always received. The question is, whose ears are receiving them and what are you speaking? If. And then also probably the bigger question is, are you even doing that? Like Nate said, it ain't weak to speak. Great, great point, man. And an amazing one to finish on. Like I said, I've really enjoyed this podcast episode and, you know, I guess for a lot of guys who may be bottling things up, like you said, think of it this way. Actually, this would be a coaching piece on one of our Sunday charge ups. Imagine a pendulum swinging and it swings. One side is facts and the other side is feelings. And it's a pendulum. It should always just swing. But unfortunately, we either put ceilings or we chop down the sides where it'll swing and the fucker gets stuck. And then it's just stuck on the side of facts for so long. Where the men are like a spades, a spade, black and white, and they become so, so binary in their approach that they don't realize the trauma they're causing inside. But I'll tell you what, sooner or later, the crack in that ceiling that that big spike of the pendulums caused is eventually going to. And when it swings back the other way, things will be blown apart. And they always are. And they always. That was always be.

That was. That was exactly me. That was what happened with my. With grief. That's exactly what happened. You know, just bottled it up, didn't do anything about it. And then the pendulum released and. Yeah, God, it was. It was a. It was a release as well. It was, but also a relief, you know, and thank God it happened like it's. You know, because I couldn't go on that path any longer. It wasn't good for me and it needed to happen for my family, you know, and thank God it did. Yeah. Yeah, I got Mick Killingham here, Zach Mason, all these boys on the attack on this here about.

What are we.

I don't know what we're talking about. But I'll tell you what, I love the feed. The chat, it's.

Oh, the chat on your phone's going on and.

Yeah, yeah, sorry, I forgot we're on video there, too. We're actually not on video, but yeah, look. Yeah, stuff that's come through is unreal. I picked up an aura ring too, boys.

Yeah.

Loving it. Loving it. The funny thing I'm trying to get to 100 readiness. I just can't get there. Have you ever hit that? L.

No way. 100%. That's. Look, for me, anything above. Anything above. 83 for sleep and mate. I dominate the day and then readiness. When I hit the 90s, unstoppable. Look, I enjoy coffee. I love coffee. I enjoy the mojo, our own natural supplement. But honestly, when I have that, if I get a readiness in the readiness, 88 and above and sleep. 82 and above, mate, I'm just. I just don't eat anything. I'm charging, man. And look, it's. It's rare only because I've got the kids with their sleep, what they're going through 5, 2, and 1. But. But also probably something that's, you know, not. Not different to yourself. I mean, there's people who would have worse morning night routines than you. But generally, for me, what has saved me is my morning night routines are like, bang on, man. They have to be. Otherwise I just. I. I would crumble. I could not to, you know, And I know, ironically, that sounds funny, even though guys will listen to this at all points of the day, that you and me recording this at night time. But, yeah, where we are right now, man, I would have. Fine now had the nighttime tea, hit the sack, had our night rider, for those who don't know that's what our nighttime tea is called. Hit the sack. I would have had that. And then had our night rider, done my little breath work and routine. And it, you know, it takes hardly anything. I reduce the light, you know, I do have blue light glasses and all that sort of stuff, and I do enjoy them. But, you know, I'm not. I'm not making that a complete solid yet can do, but I'm. I'm cautious, you know, I'm not crazy with technology. But yeah, man, the ring is good. The ring is good to track some of those key things. Yeah, it really is. I enjoy what we do because it. It does help us, like you said, bring out that competitive nature, man.

I think Maydad was texting me earlier saying that he's got one, and I'm just gonna. I'll lay the challenge down. I reckon I can pull an 80 tonight. May. Dad, when you. When you listen to this, you've got to do one as well when it comes to readiness a.

Yeah, sounds good. I love it, man.

Who can sleep the best, you know? Love that challenge. How good is that?

We had that in. You're coming towards. You came in during winter wars, but the very start, I think in June was one of the badges to be earned was. Was Captain Snooze, who had the longest and the best quality sleep. And it was cool, man. It was actually a real different spin to. For challenges because it got a lot of guys who. Obviously, only one can win that, but a lot of guys improved their morning and, well, their morning improved, but they improved their night routines, and that led to good sleep, good night routines, and then their morning improved because they. They woke up better. But, yeah, that was pretty cool, the Captain Snooze badge we had. Yeah, for the guys. But that's what I love about the challenges and what we do on the inside, too, because the boys, you know, they're pretty tight, you know, and they. They love it, but awesome having you on, man. I really appreciate, you know, this. This episode as a whole. I hope you guys got a lot of value out of this. I certainly did, and it really peppered home a few things. I've made some notes here because I always do. I jot down some notes and I apply them to our coaching because the best thing is not necessarily just knowing the answers. A lot of you guys listening or watching to a degree, do know a lot of the answers. It's bringing it back to the surface and remembering it and making sure you stick it there. Like, fucking pin it there, man. This is important. Don't. Don't let it just sift back through the sand. Let it. Let it fucking sit front and center. Because even those things about gratefulness and speaking in comms, it's. Yeah, that's imperative, man. Appreciate you, Nathan. Appreciate you jumping on and give us the time as well, man.

Yeah, thanks. It's. It's good. Good to be on. And if any of the boys want to reach out and have a chat at any time, make sure you do. But, yeah, go dominate, fellas. Yeah, Enjoy your week.

1,000 minutes a day. It's a lot. But when you're wasted on shit that doesn't serve you or move yourself or your family forward, you are bleeding the most valuable resource that you and I never get back. How much time do you think you have and how much quality do you think you've had? Don't be a fool like the masses, thinking you'll cheat the system or get round to it one day or worse. Just accepting life and sinking back into a slumber of regret. This is your moment, your time. You're cut from a different cloth. You have the hunger and desire to be more and live more. Otherwise you wouldn't be here. So stand up. Find the golden nuggets. In this episode, you just listened to and align immediate action with them and where you want to go. You are worthy. This is your life. You are the king. And this is your kingdom. Now go and claim it by showing, not telling, and be the real leader you and I both know you were born to be.