57. The Warriors War

2015.

Last one whereabouts were based last deployment. So I was based with the SAS in Swanbourne and last deployment was to Jordan. We're doing a combined special forces mission there with the American sneaky peaky guys. We're basically in an intelligence skiff. Like watching ISIS in Syria.

Yeah, well, pretty. Pretty intense, man.

It's kind of like the shit you see in the movies driving around in the blacked out four wheel drive in the Middle eastern current country, hoping that shit doesn't go down.

Yeah. Wow. But they got. Was there an energy always around that guys are sort of on the edge a little bit or.

We had a knife in our glove box, man. That was unsheathed that we would. We were gonna. If there was a possibility that we were going to get kidnapped, we were going to end our own life before they could take us.

Really.

Yeah. About that much on edge.

Wow. That's. Maybe we'll start.

Pretty heavy shit when you think about it, isn't it?

Yeah, it is, mate. Here we are. But mate, that could be the intro. What an intro. But nonetheless, we used to live about.

Five minutes away from where one of the guys who created the Taliban was actually born. Yeah, that's where our base was. So yeah, there was a lot of intelligence and stuff around that. It wasn't a nice place to be in. Yeah, but that's all part of the job.

Yeah, mate. Which I'm sure we'll dive into. But those who are listening or watching, welcome to. We will start that as our intro. We'll dive into it. Welcome to another episode of Real Dad Movement podcast. This is Al, your host and I've got Matt Bruce, a man, an incredible man who's got gone from which you might have picked up on just there at the start. Being in elite military forces to now wearing a few different hats. But ultimately the message of thriving with PTSD and helping people be their greatest version understand the awareness they can have inside of themselves. And I guess that even that sentence doesn't really do it justice, which you're going to expand on that to see the gift that you've become made in not only what you've gone through in your own life, but how you're helping other people recreate, redefine and ultimately live theirs at a higher level. But mate, man, welcome to the show and thanks for joining us.

Thank you, brother. Great to be here. And I can see the impact that you're having on my little brother's life. And yeah, on Friday Night Live I could see the impact that you were Having with multiple men and just really proud of what you've created and it's a pleasure to be here.

Appreciate it, mate. And just for you guys who are listening or watching this, Matt jumped in and did a Friday night light session inside of our the inner circle of and man, it was big. The dads really took to it even afterwards and even in personal messages they got a lot out of it, man. So thank you for sharing that. Which is I guess Matt, something that ever since we first met I've always wanted to do this catch up. But it's something that after that it really solidified the understanding of going we need other people to hear this man's story and what he stands for. Which is why we're here, mate. That's why I wanted to invite you to a larger audience of other fathers all over the country and even in different countries that we've seen from our podcast ratings who will listen to this. But mate, I guess I'd love to start with yourself and your journey so far and obviously we've come from as well, mate.

Yeah, thanks mate. To be honest, it's been a little bit of a hero's journey. I was down the bottom so army for 10 years, served in Afghanistan, support staff member with the Australian Special Forces, so the SAS for a number of years and I really wiped myself out. I was at the bottom, I was in the red. And then in the last three or four years it's just really been a journey of me coming back to myself and really making healthy choices to be a healthy man again and then have impact in my community to be able to kind of be of service and help educate other men so they're not making the same struggles that I have.

It'd be very hard, mate. I could only imagine coming back into, I know I say communities but from something which would be so structured and really high end in the missions, the objectives, what you need to do to then almost an open level of freedom when you return Back to go, what do I do now? Was that sort of the case mate, or what?

Yeah, absolutely. So my first appointment was to Afghanistan and I was rocketed like 270 times in a six month period. On top of that I was working about 13 and a half days out of a fortnight. So half a day off in a fortnight for six months straight. You're working roughly about 12 hours a day. So you imagine FIFO and you basically no break in between, no swing home and ultimately that's why we get a medal at the end of it. So, yeah, it is hard work, but it is a level of service for your country and you are pushing your mind and body to extremes. I wasn't really aware as a young male there the effects that that was having on my body. And I was not really honoring a lot of the emotions that were happening within me during those rocket attacks, fear, etc. And a few other bits and pieces. I was pushing them down. And ultimately that related in me coming home and being very hyper vigilant. So, yeah, when I come home and I was looking around at how other people were acting in society, I was kind of very on edge and very hyper vigilant and I basically turned to CrossFit and really extreme workouts up to like three times a day just to try and probably hide or push down some of this stuff that I hadn't dealt with when I got home.

Mate. It's something where it sounds like, and obviously you're with elite forces, but I guess across the whole, those who would experience the things you've experienced to then come back, would it be a common theme or trait to think or feel that way. And I guess what was the difference? Because many might not turn around like you have and even turn around to the level where you now enhance and become the message mate too, which is quite powerful.

Yeah, and I think it's got a lot to do with how we grow up as children, mate. And that's why I'm so passionate to being here, talking with the dads of, you know, how important it is to educate our children around their emotions these days. And I didn't have a high level of emotional intelligence from my father and from the reference points in my community around men and ways to behave. And I kind of took those into the army. So when you're taking, you know, low level of emotional intelligence into the military and then you're taking that to Afghanistan, you don't have the vulnerability, you don't have the tools to yourself. You don't have the tools to, you know, move through your emotions and then you start to turn to negative coping mechanisms like my dad did back in the 80s and drinking alcohol and not talking and not being vulnerable. So, yeah, it started a long time ago, I think.

Is that something too that. Not that I'd say that the army would manipulate, but it's something that I guess would be a level of helping you survive in that arena as well though. Like when you're in there, it's like, well, we don't have to think about all the. Or have all these Feelings. This is what we need to do, and this is what's most important.

Yeah, agreed, man. It's a system and we're basically being you know, built to perform a certain function and that's to, you know, defend the country or to provide a certain capability for the government. So, yeah, that's all part of it. And ultimately, even if you did have emotional intelligence moving into the military, the system is basically built to kind of lower that and to have you in this kind of fight or flight reactive mode. So, yeah, it's definitely one of the reasons why if we do have low levels emotional intelligence or just the military system in total, when we come out the other end, we have such a struggle reintegrating back into civilian life is because we're very disconnected from our inside as men.

So. And that's. That's something that I think there's a lot of power here with our audience with fathers, when we're talking about emotional intelligence and being disconnected. Because a lot of times, dads, we're conditioned in society to just maybe not be emotionless, but to put everything else first and foremost in front of ourselves. Giving to our children, our careers, putting food on the table, our partners. And we sacrifice and give and give, but ultimately there's nothing left for us. And then there's just this breaking point where it just becomes too late. It's like, oh, that's all she wrote, mate. And, you know, good luck trying to repair that. And then we're looking at fathers. This is happening where it's compounding in the 20s, 30s, and 40s, and then in the late 40s and 50s. The pattern I see is just ultimately breakdown. People talk about midlife crisis. That's something that's created from a line of perspective, but also experiences they literally have where they've got nothing left to give, mate. And I guess tying that into probably some of the things that you've experienced. And we'll go into some of the stories of the military and also what you do now, but across the last, probably at least 10 years of your life, what's the biggest gift or value or lessons that you've learned with yourself in terms of the experience you've had in your emotions that you would think would apply to modern men and fathers today.

Probably would be if you disconnect from kind of one emotion, you're disconnecting from all of them. And as we try and disconnect from anger, or we try and disconnect from sadness or grief or fear, you're really disconnecting from Joy and gratitude and all these other ones as well too. So as men, we can burn ourselves out and we can be putting our families and our friends first. And, you know, we're probably not really getting into these states of joy or states of gratitude that exists within us. Our sense of joy comes from having a beer with the boys, which really isn't actually a true level of feeling, like an emotional state in your body. So, you know, when we disconnect from the negative emotions, we're limiting ourselves in the positive. And that's a journey in itself to be able to honor the negative emotions and the ones that we've labeled as negative as men like society saying that men shouldn't cry, men shouldn't grieve, men shouldn't be emotional. And they're the ones that we've disconnected from, which is actually limiting us from having our fullest potential and our fullest, our greatest life.

I agree, man. It's like I still get angry. Natural human emotions need to be expressed, man. Like it's its energy. Like, I still get angry, I get upset. You know, I've cried this year plenty of times, mate. There's been tough times. I'm about to have my third child. Like, there's just times where we're tired, we're fatigued, our backs against the wall and our ass is hanging out. It's just like, mate, you know, but to try and suppress that and go into robot mode. I've done that before with elite sports. Obviously not to the level of lack of security or the risks of you out in the field, but from a common energy point of view, I don't think anyone wins there, mate. If they don't, you're right. Both good and bad celebrate the good. Recognize, acknowledge and express that. The bad, they all play a role. And then all of a sudden, like you said, people, and especially fathers stop questioning why they even do things which are really hidden coping mechanisms like drinking beers or watching copious amounts of TV and just becoming slugs or not investing in them. Health. In their health. And what do you see happens, man? If they suppress this over a long period of time, what's the outcome?

We kind of like disconnect from our bodies. So you're right. Like the slug is kind of like the representation of somebody who's disconnected from their emotions and disconnected from their body. And then they're not treating themselves with love and self worth and they're not showing up for themselves in their best way. So when we're kind of like disconnecting from a Internal world can have pretty dire consequences. And it's a slow journey back to connecting back into these emotions and not shaming ourselves and not judging ourselves. But I see a lot of negative coping mechanisms in men that are basically pushing down their emotions. And whether it's like a lot of anger or a lot of anxiety, they're basically some of the signs that men are going or drinking or a lot of disconnection, a lot of porn use. And all these things are just signs to show that we're not honoring something within ourselves and we're not basically in a state of harmony or balance. The human body is kind of no different to a tree. If you give it the right environment, it's going to be happy, it's going to flourish. A little bit of sunlight, a little bit of water, and we're good to go. And our emotions are part of that. We need to be able to create an environment for ourselves as men, to be able to express our emotions and to have outlets and groups like the Real Dads movement so we can actually flourish as men, as humans.

Couldn't agree more, man. That's something where the environment is very powerful. It's so important because something that's greater and larger outside of our internal world is ultimately what influences a large portion of the experiences we have in our life. Literally the physical environment around us, people, places and things. And I guess I'd love to see, like, how you handle that. So what do you do to help move that forward? So environment's important, but what do you do, man? Like, what are some of the practices and things you put in place now that we'll go back to some of your stories, but just to paint that picture of where you've come from, what are some of the things that you do now, mate to help men help yourself and ultimately change?

So, yeah, now I host a group called Thriving with ptsd. Pretty similar to the Real Dad Movement, where I hold space for extremely traumatized people across the world at the moment. So whether you're a veteran or a mum who's been through something traumatic, you've had sexual abuse and you're extremely disconnected from your body, you've used coping mechanisms for a number of years, probably not too much similar to some of the dads that you're holding in Real Dad Movement, and then allowing them to come in and feel accepted and feel part of something and to be able to have growth and to have mindset. So that's one of the things that I'm doing personally as far as my daily Practices and I kind of really break it down to just try and choose the healthiest choice in the moment for myself. Alex, that's pretty simple. If I go to a cafe, I don't drink coffee anymore. I have a turmeric latte. If I go out for dinner, I will choose the healthiest thing on the menu. I won't. I won't buy a burger and chips. If I go as friends, I won't drink beers. I'll just choose the highest choice for myself in that moment. If I wake up in the morning, I could turn on the TV or I could do a meditation. So in every one of those moments is always a healthier choice for myself. And that's how I show up for myself in every moment. How you do anything is how you do everything. So I can't show up for myself in one moment beyond eating a cheat meal and watching Netflix with the feet up, and then think that I can be something else. And that's become my baseline, is to just have such a high level of self worth for myself that then I always want to make those choices of what I'm doing, who I'm hanging around in, the environments that I put myself in.

Funny, the simple things, mate, they're the most powerful. You know, like physical health and how that affects your mental state of mind. And then the choices that we make and choosing a line that I say this with our dads, ask yourself, because of everything you do physically affecting you mentally, what can I do right by my mind, by doing right by my body? And you're right, man, it's a case of choices. And maybe we don't win all the time. And maybe there's a lot of patterns that need to be changed and undone and whatnot. And that's okay. We don't come from a place of judgment. I'm not perfect either. But what are some of the methods that you would apply in, I guess the 1% every day or the slow transition that you would either adopt or suggest with some of the dads that will be listening to this?

Yeah, I'd say meditation is a huge one. You spoke of that then. So the body affects the mind 100%. And sometimes the mind will affect the body. The mind will run its own game and its own program and do its own thing. And the deeper our understanding of our own mind, the more time and attention we give our own mind, the more we treat it like a muscle and actually, you know, work it, the more control that we have over that, more of an ally it becomes versus worse friends, through meditation. And you know, it's not Woo Woo. It's literally just taking our brain to the gym and mind to the gym. And then that 90% of the time when we're treating our body with respect and our body is influencing our mind, then that 10% of times when our mind wants to influence what our body's doing, we can actually then steer it in the right direction and we have 100% ownership over our vessel, over our body and our mind.

That word ownership, man, like that's, that's so important, isn't it? You know, like ownership and responsibility of yourself and your mind. And there'll be things we can't control, of course, but then we don't need to worry about that, do we? We control what we can control. And the big thing about what you said then with Woo Woo as well is, look, every, every dad, even dads listening to or watching this, you're all on your own evolutionary journey, so to speak, or discovery, whatever you want to call it. You know, even, even some guys might look at that and, and squint away and God. Spades are spade owls. Black and whites. Well, what you said about meditation is literally putting your body in a state of vibration and frequency. Like it happens at an atomic level. It happens here and now. Just because we don't see ourselves shaking doesn't mean it's not happening, mate. But the reality is when people see that and create stories inside their own head, Matt, around yogis or hippies or whatever, what they're doing is they're reflecting their internal environment or insecurities. Everything you project is a reflection of your internal environment. And that's like, yeah, so, yeah, I'll.

Jump in there, man. That's the nature of the mind. If you know something's different to us or it's an unknown, we'll throw out a label and say, hey, you know, that's not for me. Hippies actually being afraid of something that it might actually want to change or it might actually improve itself. The mind doesn't ever want to really improve. The mind never really wants to change. It just wants to stay in the exact same state that it is because that feels comfortable to it, because it's alive. So the mind is basically just here to keep us safe. So if you see some hippies doing something different, they're like, well, that's not for me, that. That's the mind actually taking control over you and you not having full ownership over, you know, one of the programs that your mind's running and not allowing you to open up to greater possibilities. And to be honest, she's going to be pretty low. Sad life if you're not opening up to fucking some of the maze. Sorry. Put your F bomb in there, mate. You might have to drop that one out if you don't open your mind to some of the amazing possibilities that exist out there today.

Yeah, absolutely, man. And now you're. I mean, the shirt I've got on today's dad. Strong. But we've got other ones, which is hashtag fuck. Yeah, the dad. So we dropped the occasional F bomb here and there, mate. Yeah, it's. It's a funny thing. Like I said, it can be so sad to be. To be pulled into a lower state just because you've created a story which is limiting you from a state or a position of something which is here for your survival. The brain. So that's it.

Okay.

If it's here and it's doing its job, why do I need to do this? And we see it all the time, don't we? You know, comfort and discomfort. And where do we grow? Out there on the edge. Maybe not severe trauma, although that can really turn around, like, a lot of the traumas I've turned into, but not overnight into the greatest triumphs. Not overnight, but it's just that little 1% every day of just discovering, what else can we do? And I guess the big thing, too, Matt, and it's definitely nothing against yogis or hippies. It's trying as yourself, as a man, as a father, educating yourself and going, okay, if I don't understand that message, how can I? You know, like asking yourself questions or finding the right context. That's what I'm big on, creating context. So I guess for me, I'd say, like, all right, if dads are a bit funny about things like meditation, let me ask you this question. Like, how often do you actually take time out? Because everything's with purpose. That's what we. When you peel layers back, it's very simple. What's the purpose of meditation? All right, cool. Let me ask you this. If you're a father listening to this right now, how often do you actually just take time out and spend 100% with yourself for yourself? Fuck all. None the greatest breakthroughs in my life, Matt, the greatest moments and the greatest triumphs have come off the back of what we call an idm. Creating space, which is meditation, creating space, time for yourself. Whether there's music or not, whether it's podcast, whether it's stillness, whether it's different environments, whether it's on the beach, in the forest, man. And I'm more than happy to hear your side as well. But it's taking that time out for yourself to just reconnect and realign with you.

Yeah, 100%, man. And I probably want to say that there's probably a few dads out here that are watching this who haven't actually committed to the Real dad movement because their mind is actually putting up a bit of a protection mechanism there. Saying, you're interested, you can see that, you're watching this podcast, but why haven't you pulled the trigger? And normally you haven't actually pulled the trigger to join into the Real dad movement because of the unknown, because of the mind saying, you know, what's there, what might happen to me. So, you know, lean into that resistance and actually, you know, press the button sign into the real dad's movement. See the mind call its bluff and actually do something for yourself. And, you know, beyond that, the mind doesn't want to have stillness. You know, we're moving at such a fast pace in society these days that that's our normal. For us to sit still is so foreign. So the mind, the mind doesn't like different. The mind that just likes to keep doing what it's doing, it would drink itself to death. You know, it will allow you to just sit in front of the tv, you know, drinking beers every night and eating terrible food to a point where you nearly die. And that's the actual nature of the mind. It's insane for then you to actually then not. The mind doesn't want to allow you to sit down and actually have some stillness and some time to yourself. So, you know, when this is a thing that's steering a ship, that's insane. You really need to get some time and attention and get a control over this, have some ownership over the mind and the stories that it's telling you and. And allow yourself to actually sit down, have that space, find that stillness and create the duality in your life to be able to just slow down a little bit.

It's a great way to put it, man. Like, you think the number one person you could trust in this world is yourself, right? Yet if the stories and what your mind tells you, like you've just said, what your mind's feeding you is coming from a place or a version of you that you're not entirely happy with, why the fuck would you listen to them?

And you can see I'm getting pretty fired up about this, mate. I'M pretty passionate about meditation in the mind and just how misleading it can be and just, you know, how much it can be game changer when we actually understand it as well too. And, you know, a large part of my healing PTSD was me mastering my mind. I become so reactive. My fight or flight response was so switched on from my military training that my mind would basically be scanning my perimeter looking for a threat. And then bang. Cortisol and adrenaline would just be activated within my system, whether I liked it or not. It's kind of like the old saying, if you think you see a snake, you jump, but you didn't even see a snake, it was a stick. So my mind was just so wired to want to trigger my body. So for me to create the environment, for me to create the space for my body to heal, for me to turn off all the cortisol and adrenaline that existed within my environment, my body, I really had to see how the mind worked and took ownership of it and basically, you know, allowed myself to turn off all of those fake threats so then I could relax myself.

So this is what I love though, mate, about hearing that sort of stuff and you sharing though, Matt, and your passion. Because you guys listening to this or watching it, it's coming from a man who's played elite sport, who's, who used to want to tear people's faces off. And I can be the big fucking tough man, but it doesn't serve anyone, any purpose doing it for no reason all the time. And someone else is working with the SAS who can switch gears and dive into some of the stories that you want to share. This is very high end, perceivable powers of human performance and aggression and ultimately something that macho man would perceive as strength, right? But here we are talking about actually loving ourselves, connecting ourselves and creating the space and the time. Meditation to invest in ourselves so we can have a better scope to see everything, including our own lives, mate.

Yeah, brother, it's the way. It's the new way. And you know, hopefully there's more men like you and myself, you know, talking these messages to society so we can create new reference points for men to be able to have this level of change. Like, you know, when I grew up in Country Victoria, all of the males that I looked up into my world were drinking beers and not loving themselves and not honoring their body. And, you know, hopefully we can change the world pretty quickly when we've got a bunch of men that are out there being reference points in society where they're looking after Themselves, they're treating themselves with, you know, worth and respect and their families and their children more importantly as well too.

Yeah, absolutely. Like what we're doing is passing down the energy. We pass down our kids, our mannerisms, our actions, our behaviors. That's leadership, man showing, not telling, do as I say, not as I do. Like where does that fly, mate? Your kids are going to grow up, they're going to see the light, they're going to see the energy you expressed or didn't on them. And then ultimately that time's almost certainly passed where it is very hard to get back if you wanted to as a father in setting the standard and leading your family's life, mate. But, you know, it's, it's pretty amazing, Matt, when you're sharing this sort of stuff and what you do coming from also where you've come from, mate, and what were some of the things like you were doing overseas and I guess some of the experiences or situations that you found yourself in, mate, if you wouldn't mind sharing.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So when I come back from Afghanistan and Brisbane, I did a pretty good job in Afghanistan. I was requested to move to Perth to work with the sas and then I was basically after my initial training there, I was placed into recovery squadron. So that's the short notice to move squadron and we could basically be anywhere in the world in four hours. Would be on a plane ready to fly anywhere to any kind of like international hostage situation. So that could be, you know, you would get a phone call on the weekend, you'd grab your backpack, you'd go to work, you'd pack your gear, you'd be on a plane to the Philippines. So yeah, that's pretty high stress environment. So your nervous system and your mind and your body is just always on, you know, you're always got your phone near, you're always looking at your phone, you're always kind of on edge. One of the other trips I got to go in there was the deployment to Jordan. So I did a six months combined special forces task force with the American jsoc, so their kind of special forces unit. And it was when ISIS was kicking off, we went into Jordan and we were basically collecting intelligence on Australian citizens that were moving into Syria as part of isis. So that looked like six months in a Middle Eastern country driving around in blacked out four drives and looking at really inhumane graphic stuff on the Internet. So a lot of beheadings, a lot of people being burned alive, set on fire and a lot of really, really gross Stuff I didn't have the emotional intelligence at the time to just realize how disconnected I was and what that was doing to me. I was drinking like six cups of coffee a day, black American coffee a day, training in the gym, you know, thought I was one of these big macho men. But really when I was watching this content, my inner world was flinching and my inner world was closing down and I just didn't even know it because I was so macho and thought that, nah, that doesn't bother me, I'm too tough for that stuff. But it was, I was really extremely disconnecting to the point where, you know, my partner of eight years would ask me what's wrong, you know, what are you up to? I'd say I'm fine, you know, there's nothing wrong, I'm fine, I'm fine. But I wasn't, I just didn't have the level of awareness inside to know that something was going on. Come home from that deployment and that Mrs. Said I want to leave you. So that was a bit of a ball buster right then, like a bit of a kick in the guts to think that, you know, I just done multiple deployments. I was really not coping as a man inside and then to have my fiance of like 8 years want to leave me as well too. So yeah, there's a bit of a journey. I'm not sure if I've plugged this yet but I've written a book, it's called Warriors War. So you know, too many words telling one podcast. But yeah, I have put it all into a book which is a really amazing activity based book where guys can understand more about what I got up to and, and how guys can change as well.

Where can we get access to that, mate? I'd love to get it as well myself.

Warriors Wartopia and Amazon. So just Warriors War and you'll see Matthew Bruce and yeah, basically the punchline is the real war is to heal your heart. We can all go to war, we can all be trained, we can all be institutionalised, we can all react, we can all have massive amounts of fight or flight response. We can all come back and be on a pension and drink beers for the rest of our lives and look at the army and you know, say how jaded we are for the military, breaking us as individuals or we can take radical responsibility for our mental health as men. Ownership over what our, you know, what difficulties we've been through and transform our life just one choice at a time.

That's incredible, mate. And those guys you should absolutely look into that book. I certainly will. Straight off this, mate. I'll be getting it and having a great read. Because to see that the change is what impresses me the most, mate. And that's not to take away like absolute respect, man, like you serving our country and whatnot. And also what you're doing now, serving the country in a different way. But it's, it's, it's the change and not where you've been as opposed to where you've come from, you know, because you have leveled up your life in your own evolutionary way. And I guess I'm just curious, man, like what, what was the trigger for you or the switch? Like how come you turn it around and change when so many won't?

Yeah, there's probably like a rock bottom was one of them. I was, you know, on drugs. I was pushed every single one of my friends, where I was pretty much a loner and like literally had basically self destructed my whole entire life. Bank account, the works. Somehow I was managing to still hold down $180,000 a year job in some mining office. Sorry to the corporate people that are employing me and playing my paycheck there. I definitely wasn't the highest efficiency. And I think that that's probably a sign of the masculinity of today and how the real world's operating that we can be so unhealthy as men and still showing up to workplace and getting paid for it. And you know, once I basically hit rock bottom there, I knew that, you know, I needed to make massive change within my life. And there's probably two phases to that. Like I started to turn around my eating, I started to turn around drinking alcohol, my drug use. And I started to improve as a male. And I really did that all off my own back. Just me reading and learning and showing up for myself and you know, making those healthy choices. Then I was lucky enough to see a gentleman speak. His name's Julian Pace. He's now like my boss and kind of one of my business partners. And he come to that workplace and he spoke for me once. He was kind of like, he was like an Alex. He was a motivator. And he stood up in front of me and in that moment of me hearing that, I knew that I needed to go all in. I needed to basically push all my chips in for me to be the best version of myself. So I walked upstairs to my boss. Didn't know where I was going to go, what I was going to do. I didn't have a plan. I said to my boss, I quit. I said, I'll give you two months notice because it's a hard job to fill, but, like, I'm basically resigning in two months. He said, what are you doing? And I said, I don't know, but I know that I'm not going to be the best version of myself in this job here. And I know that I've got some deeper work that I needed to do. So I basically put a million dollars worth of mortgages on the market. I canceled my phone plan, I limited all my bills to my maximum potential, and I brought a plane ticket to Bali. And pretty much once all my houses had sold and I sorted out all my finances, I had bloody like a credit card to my name. But I knew that I needed to go heal. And I basically spent the next nine months in Bali doing breathwork, deep breath, work, journeys and meditation and really showing up for myself like juice fasts and all sorts of modalities for me to kind of really level up as a person.

That's amazing, man. It's something where, you know, it takes a lot of balls to make that decision in leaving that they will be listening. Go 180 grand. Oh, man, you're mad. It's such a. We live on an economic planet, but people let it work them instead of them working it. Which ultimately comes down to A, the value add to the world, but B, the level of value add to the world comes from level of value add to yourself.

Yeah. My income stream has had gone down for me to adjust to this new life, but to be honest, my income streams are nearly gonna match that shortly again, I reckon I've just like launched any day now. We're launching a preventative mental health course for FIFO industry with the Happiness Company, one of the largest preventative mental health organizations within Australia. So myself and some other people who've worked in the mining industry, 28 years of mining industry between three of us, we're launching this course that are basically going to go help change, you know, maybe 100,000, a million people's lives across the world in the FIFO industry. And I can start to reclaim some of that money back, but just reclaim it in a way that lights me up inside and. And reclaim it in a way that makes me feel good and makes me feel empowered to get out of bed in the morning because I can help other people and I feel in alignment. And, yeah, I'm basically living my best life.

Yeah, and that's very needed, man. Like, there are a lot of men and women, A lot of people in the mining industry, where the environment doesn't serve them the hours, what they do to their body doesn't serve them what they put in their body. And there's a lot of friends I know have been in and some still are, that they're not happy, man. They are doing damage. And these are people, some are older, but some aren't. And they're already on the down, which is scary because these people have families as well, mate.

Yeah, great, man. Like, the mining industry is really tough. It's pretty similar to the military in a sense of the impact that it has on our nervous system. And our nervous system basically goes into, like, a small version of fight or flight. And we're so tired in our bodies, and we turn to coffee, we turn to anger as a way to stimulate ourselves just to get through the week. Then we don't even have the emotional intelligence As a FIFO worker who's just worked a long swing that we can't actually say to our partner, hey, honey, I'm actually really tired today. I can't wake up and be there for you and the family straight away. I've got to rest my body. I've got to listen to my body, and I've actually got to tune in because I've flogged it. And, you know, the first thing we do is we feel pressured to wake up, to go out into, you know, mending the relationship with our partner and making up for the time that was spent away. But straight away, they were just going into, you know, not actually having any rest, not honoring our body. And then our nervous system and our body slowly wears the toll. Then our emotions and our mental health and all these things are just a natural progression of the rigor that we're putting ourselves through in the mining industry. It's, yeah, it's quite a. Like a cumulative effect that, yeah, takes its toll.

An awareness that most people, many people don't, don't ever actually come to realize, mate. Yet. You did nine months in Bali, People would say throwing it or giving it all away, what you had to do with your home, with your job, that sort of stuff. But I see all of that is completely investing yourself, which at the age you're at now, tenfold, mate, you know, now let alone in 5, 10, 15, 20 years time, as opposed to if you did the same. But do you have or had friends that went the other way, mate, you know, where they didn't take ownership over the military and what happened and so on and so forth and obviously liberate themselves like you or some that you have helped come through as well.

Yeah, so yeah, I just got off the phone with a veteran in America, so Green Beret, American veteran. So yeah, he's joining the pack and he's in there, you know, the thriving community. To be honest, not a lot. And that's okay. There's not a lot of brothers that are coming with me in my immediate circle of friends, but they're seeing me, they're seeing what I'm doing, they're seeing the reference point. So if they get to a point of struggle within their life, they're going to have impact. When I wrote the book, there was a number of friends that I grew up with that probably weren't in a great space as well too who actually reached out and got a copy of the book. There was a couple of them that weren't in a great space that actually sent them a copy of the book. The book is like really a blueprint for how to come from that, you know, unhealthy masculine state and how to.

Level up your life.

And it's, you know, it's not wanky, it's not too over the top. It's just real. It's just a real story and a real how to guide of pulling yourself out of a bit of a hole as a male and how to treat yourself with self worth and respect. But yeah, so I've made a lot of new friends, I'd say, in the sense of when you level up your life and you create that new environment for yourself, you attract a new bunch of blokes. As you know, you've probably got people in the Real Dads movement that are really connecting with new people and making friends online and we kind of creating a new tribe for ourselves.

Tribes are very powerful as well, mate, aren't they? You're on the same wavelength and you can start to see and have that respect and rapport for what you realize and what you begin to see is possible in your life through an energy source bigger and greater than you with other people, which is very important. You know, it's something, mate, where we see the power of what you said in your book having a how to as opposed to many things. Like you said, it's not to castrate other people who are looking in the social space. There's heaps of social support groups and fuck, good for them. There's thousands of people, it's diluted and the message ends up being fuck all. Other than a little bit of talk or Feelings. But the how to is important for me, Matt, because you can have the answers. But I think the greatest way to have the answers have a physical, tangible application, especially as men and fathers, because that's what they connect to. First and foremost, physical health, like you said, looking after your body. And secondly, probably asking questions. Because naturally when we ask questions, how we've conditioned ourselves is we want to find the answer asking questions of ourselves. But is that something that, you know, I'm obviously going to get in the book, but something that we can look to? It's been an awesome episode, man, but I guess wrap up in a way of giving that advice and guidance to fathers. Listening to this now. I mean, you've given some before with the meditation, meditative stuff. But what would be the greatest? I guess one to three things you'd say that they could or would or should do right now. If there are guys sort of struggling and then they need to start investing in themselves, man. Like, what's some advice that you would give?

Yeah. Firstly, practice openness in a sense of just be honest with yourself and with the people around you. If you've got some dark secrets and you've got some shit that you're hiding in your life, get rid of it. That would transform your life in an instant. Being open and being vulnerable. And then once you've done that and you're seeing that you're still accepted and that you are still loved, then practice that everywhere you go, remain open. That's one of the keys to life, is to be able to do that. Probably another one is humbleness. Be humble in how you see the world and how you treat other people as well too. And, you know, create stillness is another one in the sense of create that balance in your life. Like take ownership over that. You know, don't run around telling everyone you're busy. How busy are you today? Yeah, I'm so busy. I'm busy. I'm busy. That's bullshit. Change your language, change your world, change your instant, change your environment. Take some ownership. You know, I was on a zoom last night to, you know, 7:30 last night. I went straight home and I meditated. I went for a walk around the block and then I meditated and then I woke up and went to Pilates first thing this morning at 6:30am so yeah, I had a full day, but I'm not busy and I'm still take ownership to make space, space for myself and to create that balance. I think that's the three, isn't it? Yeah, I think.

And I remember, like, you did something actually, which I'd love you to share as well, the breathing side of things. Like just something simple with dads. Like, their dads might be listening to this and might be like, okay, cool, I'll plan to go for a walk and I'll plan this and that. But what's like, right now, like, even if I was going to, you know, or, you know, today at lunchtime. Okay, I need a quick break. How do I recenter myself? I think breathing was something you touched.

On with the group mate. So literally, you put your hand on your chest, close your eyes, open, mouth, connected, breathing, and it looks like this. So it's a constant breath in and out is equal. So you're not hyperventilating yourself. There's no pause in between the two. You're filling your chest and your belly up with oxygen. So all you need to do is 30 of those in a row and then just sit there with your eyes closed for a minute. That will change your life. If you can use that simple breathing technique when you come from the office before you go inside, that's going to allow you to give the attention and the time that you deserve to your family, to your Mrs. To your environment. It's going to allow you to leave your work at home and change your state. Walk in through the front door and be like, okay, I'm relaxed. I'm centered. I'm here to be dad. I'm here to be in that role, versus I'm going to bring all of my problems home for work, and then I'm going to dump them onto the family. So that's one really good opportunity where you can use breath work first thing when we wake up in the morning, because how we set our day up is so important. If we can tap in with a little bit of breath work and just sit there for a minute, you know, you're creating stillness up front. There's a very highly likely chance that you'll create stillness throughout the rest of your day if that's the first thing that you're doing. We're pretty simple creatures. And another really good time to do breath work is if you're feeling stressful, like acute levels of stress in your life. So if it's something that you're feeling overwhelmed or you're really struggling, or you've just had a barney with the Mrs. And you're feeling really worked up, jump in to do some breathing. Just sit there for a minute. You'll be able to regulate your own adrenaline, your own cortisol and you'll be able to kind of like turn off that fight or flight response or turn off that anger or turn off that stress through just taking ownership of your own body and regulating your own nervous system.

That's awesome, man. So simple as well, what is it? Like two minutes, you're just breathing 30 breaths and then a minute of pure silence with yourself. And you write like you enter. Like, I come home, right, And I might be on the phone or something's happening and I'm entering a preoccupied environment, my wife and my children in the house. And whether it's going crazy or it's calm, I'm entering that. And how I bring my energy and presence is crucial, whether it's to balance out the craziness or to balance out my own craziness, to have that nice temperament as I enter. But a lot of times we shackle out, bring our shit with us through different. Into different environments, which is. Can be very damaging, mate. But something so simple where ultimately I remember working out the formula, if you sleep for seven hours and 20 minutes a night, some do, some don't, but you get a thousand minutes a day. So if we're looking at 2 minutes, 10 minutes is 1%, 2 minutes is 0.2 of a percent, that's all you need to do those listening and hearing right now, a quarter of a percent, a fifth of a percent, to just reset yourself. And even if you did that four or five, five times a day, like you said, it can change your life.

If you had any form of mental health issue, any form of struggle in your life, even like if you're on the cans too much, you're really struggling from an exercise perspective, or you're extremely overweight, one of the best things you could do is do breathwork three or four times a day. And I guarantee you, if you did that for a couple of months, it would change your life. It will heal people from ptsd, it's that simple. But, you know, ultimately it's different as the unknown. And the mind's going to give you a lot of bullshit stories of why you can't do it.

And it'll challenge it as well. Like, you'll try and do that and you'll be thinking about things, whereas I love. It's so simple. I'm just going to focus on my hand, on my chest, breathing in and breathing out. And that's something that in itself dials in the most important thing that creates our reality. What you focus on, where you pay your attention. Love it, man. Was there anything else you wanted to add, Matty, or any lines that you wanted to either people get in touch with or see more about you. Warriors Warriors War is amazing. I'm definitely going to be getting that. But anything else you want to share, mate, as we wrap this up?

No, just maybe give us a like on Facebook. I'm always posting some stuff and the more followers the better. And you know, if you do own an organization out there that is actually a corporate space and you're looking to help transform your workers, Happiness Co we have amazing in live and online programs that speak corporate language and we actually go there and help your employees level up some really amazing facts out there for beyondblue at the moment where if you spend $1 on preemptive mental health in the workplace, you get a $5 return, which is insane. So if you are owning a business out there and you do want to help your workers and you are feeling in a great space and you know that, you know, you as boss probably aren't really capable of being that presence in your workplace to help transform them, Happiness company, that's our specialty and that's what we do. And we're working with Rio Tinto, Roy Hill, Western Union Road Transports, like you name it, with an Optus Stadium purpose partner at the moment. So we're really blowing up. It's a huge organization. We do really amazing things, but most importantly, we have real people talking about real stuff and helping transform lives, which is really amazing.

Love it, man. That's awesome. Thanks again. Thanks for joining us, Matt. And look, I hope you guys got a lot of value out of this. Whether you're watching on YouTube or listening on our six different platforms that we have with our podcast channel. This has been awesome for me, mate. I'll be doing that breath work straight away today and also getting that book. I'm excited to go through it and it's something where it can be that simple. All the fathers, all of you out there listening, it really is possible. It's about taking ownership and making the choices that will serve you and help you expand in your life. The end, like that's what we stand for. That's what it's about. But it starts always. It starts and ends with you. But thanks again for joining us, Matt. It's been awesome having you, man.

Very welcome, brother. Look forward to the next one.

Bloody oath, mate. And like I said, hope you guys enjoy this. Tune in for another episode of Real Dad Movement and we'll see you soon.

Cheers, guys.