[Jem Fuller] ​​​​​​​Journey to Enough

Welcome to Exit the Matrix Stories of Success with your host Jane Slack-Smith, where we celebrate the incredible journeys of individuals who've transcended their limitations and achieved extraordinary success.

Hello, it's Jane Slack-Smith here, and I am the host of Exit the Matrix Stories of Success, and welcome. This is where we dive into stories of success that are going to inspire you and hopefully allow you to see sliding door moments in your life as well, so you can stop and think, hmm, maybe I could do something differently. And today I have an incredible guest. I have Jim Puller. Hi, Jim, how are you going?

Hey, Jane, I'm great, thank you. Thanks for having me on your show.

Oh, I'm so excited. Now look, for those who haven't heard of Jim before, he is a man of many lives. He's been a barefoot backpacker— I think he told me he got lost in India for like 10 years— a fire dancer, uh, now he's a corporate leader, but he has also been a kindergarten teacher, a motorcycle courier, a masseuse, a reflexologist, a laborer, travel consultant, and a traditional tattooist. Oh my goodness, so what an incredible adventure of a life. And look, his experience has pretty much taken him all around the world, and for, I guess, a significant part of that time, he has really pulled together this kaleidoscope of experiences into what he now does. As an executive leadership coach. And look, he holds retreats in the most incredible places. I had a glance at an upcoming retreat that he has in 2025, but Himalayas, Bali, and even Australia, which is nice. And look, he's not just a global adventurer, he's a devoted father, partner, surfer, meditator, and an award-winning author of The Art of Conscious Communication. And we're going to get to his latest book as well. And he is a TEDx talker, and he has basically created this consciousness movement that has allowed people to really tap into what they want and how they're going to turn up in the world. So, Jim, I am so excited to share all of your genius with our listeners. And the first question I always ask is, tell us about the sliding door moment that took you from, you know, the, the person that was out there doing all of these many things to where you are today. Wow.

Okay, sliding to a moment I'll get to in one sec, but I do just have to say, what an intro. Oh my Lord, I'm almost falling out.

I've done some research. Don't be surprised.

If you had said, um, Jem, can you introduce yourself? I'd say, yeah, g'day, I'm Jem. I'm a bloke down in Bells Beach, Australia.

I surf a bit and do some work.

Yeah, not a great surfer. Love the ocean. I love my beautiful partner more than anything else apart from our kids, who, you know, blah, blah, blah. That's where I would have gone. But no, yes, it's been a very colorful life. And there was a sliding door moment in there. And to anyone listening, take this as you will. If you want to go full woo-woo on this, go to town. If you want to go full practical on this, it was just you hyperventilating, you can go there too. But this was the sliding door moment. I said yes to going to a men's sweat lodge, a North American Indian sweat lodge on traditional land here, Wadawurrung land where I live down the coast here. And it was on the land that a friend of mine is the custodian of. And we've been sitting in men's circle for years there. At the time, we'd been sitting in circle for about 10 years. And for those of you that don't know what that is, that's just a group of blokes sitting around a fire sharing stories, you know, and listening to each other, catching up every once in a while, once a month, sit around a fire, talk about how you're going. That's it. No booze, no smoking, no nothing. Just, just some water and a good conversation. Anyway, so this group of men had decided to do a North American Indian sweat lodge, which is basically where you create a little igloo-type thing with, with tarpaulins, and you sit in there with very hot rocks, and it gets very, very hot, and it's pitch black. And you talk and chant. Anyway, this was my first proper sweat lodge. Long story short, I don't know whether it was heat exhaustion because it got really, really hot in there. I don't know whether it was hyperventilation because you're doing lots of chanting and breathing and stuff. I don't know how it happened, but I had an out-of-body experience. And what— I don't know what that actually was, but I felt like I was 5 years old and I was flying around out of my body, and it was joyful. I was like this happy 5-year-old, and I'd never had an experience quite like this before. Anyway, I could go on. I'm going to try and condense the story for you. What came from this event from me? I had this, had this. I went back to prior to when I lost my innocence. When I was 6 years old is when I first had an experience where I became cynical. And that when I was 6 years old, my dad lost his temper with me and, and it got physical and I got really frightened. And really scared. And that's when I first kind of realized as a little kid, wow, life's not all just peachy and rosy and fun, right? But I went back prior to that event to when I was 5 years old. And then after the sweat lodge, I went home, I went to sleep, and I had this really profound, very lucid dream. And what— I won't go into it, but what came out of it was that I realized that I'd been harboring a belief since I was 6 years old that I wasn't good enough. Yeah. And I didn't know that that belief was there because it was so deeply entrenched in my subconscious. But this belief that I wasn't good enough had been playing out into every aspect and every chapter of my life, and I had started creating evidence around me that I wasn't good enough. So when, when I would start to get successful at something, I would sabotage it, or I would attract people into my life who would tell me I wasn't good enough, or I— all of this stuff started happening. On this night, of this sweat lodge, I realized that, and that was the beginning. That was the catalyst for what people say was a midlife crisis. I call it a midlife awakening. But very soon after that, and it took a year or two, but I lost my job, my marriage ended, lost my house, all my belongings, kept my two boys. But I had that beautiful midlife crisis opportunity and awakening, and I realized that I had to shift my belief around not being good enough, and I had to flip that to a belief that I am enough just the way I am, you know? And I did the work and that was the sliding door. And I started doing the work and my life completely changed. That was 12 years ago. And now my life is what it is, which wouldn't have been like this if I hadn't have had that night. And my life is truly— I'm so grateful for, for my life. It's full of so much wonderful stuff. And so that was the sliding door moment.

You know what I love about that is that and it doesn't— you don't have to be in a sweat lodge, right? There is, there's often an experience that people will have that takes them to a point where they were free and flying and joyous and happy and loved and safe and secure and all those, those good kind of nurturing moments. And the contrast is, wait a second, I'm not like that now. Like, what happened? And the fact that you could pinpoint it is extraordinary. And we know just even from neuroscience that, you know, 76% 80% of the neuroconnections are made by the time you're 7, and then we carry those through life. So that is an example of that, is just so profound in the, in the fact that not only were you conscious enough to have the awareness that that was a beautiful moment, but you then had the awareness of the contrast and went, wait a second, this is not right, I need to change.

Yeah, it's amazing. The direct— when I got home from the, from the sweat lodge, um, my mum was at my house, kid babysitting. My boys at the time were young, so they would have been, uh, 4 and 2 years old, I think, around that. Anyway, so then mum left and I went to bed, and I— and that's when I had this incredible dream. And the dream was there was a serpent living in the core of me, like down my core, and it had been there for a long, long time, but it was time to get the serpent out. And I was literally reaching down and taking this serpent and dragging it out of me. And it was writhing and struggling to stay in me. The serpent didn't want to leave its home, which was in my core. And it was completely lucid, like one of those dreams where you feel like it's actually real. And every time I pull the serpent out, it would slither back inside me again, and I couldn't get it out on my own. And then men appeared around me. No, no one specific, just like a brotherhood. And these— I needed the help of others. That was an important part of the dream. I needed the help of others to get this out. And anyway, we got the serpent out halfway through the dream. One of my kids was unsettled and I had to get up out of my bed and go and settle my kid back to sleep. But I knew that the work wasn't finished in the dream, so I settled my kid. I went back to bed, lay back down, went back to sleep into the dream again to finish the work, which was—

talk about—

insane, right? To get this serpent out. During the dream, I didn't know what the serpent represented. As soon as I woke up that morning, I sat up and that's when I went, that serpent was the belief that I'm not enough and it's time to get it out. Anyway, it was, it was quite profound. Yeah, yeah, quite profound. And, and, and, and from through my lenses, through my experience, it was spiritual, you know, and spiritual being this, this interconnectedness of everything and that which we can't explain scientifically. And So for me, it was very spiritual and anyone is welcome to comprehend this story through whatever lens you want to. But it happened for me, so, and it was a turning point.

So that's beautiful. And, and, you know, you kind of mentioned this, but the struggles post that, you know, and it's interesting just that, that reference of being also acknowledging that it was I'm not enough because I'm not enough kind of comes from past experiences where we've got the proof. As you said, you know, you consistently demonstrated and could prove to yourself that you weren't enough because you created these situations. And, and on the converse, people who feel that they're not worthy, they're looking at a vision that's so great, they're like, can't have that. So it's interesting to, to actually see that, you know, how that, that correlates there. But it wasn't all plain sailing. You had, you said, relationship problems. You couldn't just turn around and go, okay, I am now enough. Like, I'm stepping in. Well, tell us about the struggle the obstacles that you faced and how you dealt with those.

Yeah, so, you know, I was— how old was I at the time? I was 41 when that happened. And then over the next year and a half, I had to continue to hit rock bottom. So my marriage unfortunately had gone too far south. It was irreparable, and we weren't meant to be together for the rest of our lives because we're not. And, and that was hard. I mean, no one gets married— no one falls in love and gets married thinking you're going to break up. You think you're going to be together forever, especially when you've got kids. And so accepting that we weren't meant to be together forever was one of the hardest things either of us had ever had to do. It was really horrible. Thankfully, we were reasonably conscious in our uncoupling, um, and, and we, we tried to navigate it as harmoniously as possible, which wasn't always easy, but we tried. Um, letting the kids know was super hard, you know, because you're just so worried about traumatizing these two young people who mean the world to you. Um, and plus on top of that, through the, through the marriage, I had, you know, all through my life really, I had developed, um, very, very private, shameful, intimate anxieties. You know, but I would have anxiety attacks in intimacy and nobody knew about it because I don't tell anyone about that. You know, that was my— there was massive blanket of shame over that. And it's only in, in the healing from this over the last 12 years that I've been able to share about that, write about that, publish about that, be interviewed about, you know, sexual anxiety and intimacy anxiety attacks, you know, and through the sharing of it and, and other work, to, to completely heal myself from that, thankfully. So that's not a part of my life anymore. And I think actually being able to talk about your deepest, darkest, even if it's just with a close friend, but with anybody, is an important part of the healing.

It takes the energy out of it, doesn't it? I think there's like, there's Bible sayings that say, you know, when you name the demon, it loses its—

yeah.

And, and being able to vocalize that, especially in a world where men don't usually share their experiences or vulnerabilities. And I know I just want to move on to, you know, what you're doing now, because I know with your latest book, you're pulling those threads, aren't you, together?

Yeah. Look, it's all been part of why I chose to write a book about conscious communication. And then when I was in manuscript stage of that book during COVID I had a book writing mentor Susan Pearce in Sydney. Hi, Susan. Who suggested that I pick an audience, a more specific audience to write for. And she even suggested it. She said, I think you should write this book for men. And I just took her guidance and said, okay. So I wrote the book for men. That's The Art of Conscious Communication for Thoughtful Men. And there are chapters in there around, you know, accessing and communicating our emotions, accessing and communicating in a safe way our vulnerabilities. Raising our boys, you know, communicating with, with, with yourself and then with others more consciously. Or, you know, that's, that's the whole book. But yeah, look, a big part of it came from that. It also came from my curiosity around contextual abilities with communication. So when I was, you know, in my corporate leadership role, I was a great communicator. I could stand up in front of, you know, 100 people and communicate a vision and have most of them on board going, yeah, let's go, right? Or if I was in a one-to-one with one of my managers, I could communicate really effectively with them and help them understand where they needed to develop. But then I'd go home into my marriage and I was terrible. Yeah, at communicating. And I found that really fascinating. And my then wife would say to me, oh my God, you're, you're a terrible communicator. And she was right in that context. And I'm like, isn't that fascinating?

Now a quick word from our sponsor, Your Success Club. Your Success Club is a group of vibrant abundance seekers. If you subscribe to exitthematrix.io, we are going to drop you into the club room, which has lots of goodies, resources, and a free gift just for subscribing. Now back to the podcast. It's interesting though, because, and I was fortunate enough to have a one-on-one, um, chat to you about conscious communication and how to navigate difficult conversations, and you've got an absolute process to do that. And thankfully, I'll I'll give everyone the link later. You know, you're going to give people that ebook, that Essential Guide to Being Understood. But when, when you think about, you know, your spiritual path, let's call it, to this sliding door moment and awareness, and today you're working with C-suite, you know, incredible leaders of companies, how do you navigate that kind of conversation with them around, you know, how to go into those those softer, more vulnerable areas, especially if they are the titans of, you know, the industry?

Yeah, I mean, look, it depends on the individual, but the first step is for them to trust me and trust us and trust the safe space that I create for them when we're coaching, when I'm coaching them one-to-one. That's the first part. And my objective is their objective. You know, I want for them what they want for themselves in terms of their leadership. And essentially when we break it all down, the people, I mean, so what is success as a leader, right? Well, I mean, we're going to measure it at the end of some process. We're going to measure it through profit. But that's not actually what success means. When you ask people, what is, you know, profit? How does that make you feel and how do you get there? And so then we start to get to the human element of leadership. Well, it makes me feel satisfied or fulfilled or, you know, like I'm doing a good job and how How do you get there? Oh, through people. And so how do you get there through people? Well, by creating an environment where they can flourish and thrive and live their best lives personally and professionally, work together, etc., right? So it's, it's all about people and it's all about us as humans working together.

And you have to communicate, right?

That's the ticket. And you have to communicate.

Yeah.

So every time, every time a new client sits down with me and I say, so what are your challenges at the moment? What are you struggling with? It always comes down to people. It always comes down to people, and which means it always comes down to communication. And so, yeah, that's, that's the work that I do. And, you know, inevitably we end up getting deep because our inability to communicate it to do with our limiting beliefs or our own, you know, reference points to ourselves that we have from our childhood.

Often.

That's right. Yeah, that's right. So it, it, it goes there and, and it's good. And I look, I feel very, I feel very honored to be in the position where my clients trust me to guide them to these deeper places and we get great results. And, and so it's, and, and that, you know, that gives me a sense of nourishment and fulfillment in the work that I do because it's not about profit and it's not about money, it's about people and connection, making the better leaders.

Just quickly, I do know that you run extraordinary retreats, and when you were telling me about one a few weeks ago, um, that, that you are creating in the Himalayas, do you want to just go through that? Because I loved the way that you kind of take people through an incredible process of building them up and then transforming them.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, I don't— we, we don't, we don't build them up. We It's a hero's journey, the one in the Himalayas. We've been running a version of it since 2013, and it was a, you know, an idea that first came to me back in 1998 when I lived with this family in a little tiny village. I just looked it up the other day to give people a geographical reference point. It's 80 kilometers as the crow flies due east of Dharamsala, which is where the Dalai Lama lives. So it's India. Northwest India, Himalayan Mountains. And just across the mountains a little bit, in a little tiny valley, is a village that I had stumbled across when I was a barefoot hippie backpacker and, and lived with this family that adopted me in. And they have since been my, my Himalayan family. And back in the '90s, I had an idea I was going to take people there. And then when I started my leadership coaching consultancy, I realized it was a leadership retreat. So in 2013, we took our first bunch of leaders there, and pretty quickly, right from the first one that we ran, it was clear to me that it was a very, very special location. And combined with the cultural paradigm shift and the content that I teach and the trekking that we do— it's not for everybody, it's remote trekking, camping, high altitudes, pack horses carrying the gear, you're off the grid for 7 days, phone doesn't work, etc.— that it's a really transformational program. Actually transformational. So we just got back 4 weeks ago from running it and a mate of mine, Tiff Cook, if you have heard the Melbourne podcast Roll With the Punches, that's Tiff Cook. She came with us and I just heard her being interviewed on a different podcast yesterday and she's actually been transformed, you know, so I'm doing happy dances in my kitchen while I'm listening to this podcast because that's what we care about. But back to your question, Jane, Now we've taken it to the next level. So now we've created a 14-day immersion. That's a high-ticket item. It's for people who've successfully created wealth. They've created enough money to realize that money isn't happiness.

Yeah.

Yeah. And I've got lots of friends who are in this space. And so what we do is that you come into Delhi at the level of opulence that you're used to. It's all lati da and 5-star and beautiful. And then we gradually strip away all of the stuff and we end up in the mountains where it's very simple. And then we end up trekking and you're sleeping in a tent and it's uncomfortable and stunning and beautiful. And we have a lot of process work that we do as well. And there's, you know, days of silence and meditation, proper retreat. And then we come back down and we know that you're going back into the world that you're used to where money can buy you whatever you want. So we go down to the Oberoi Taj Mahal and we stay in the 7-star experience of the Oberoi and we visit the Taj and we eat the finest food. But now we're facilitating for you to see through all the stuff, right? To see through it all and to see it for what it is, which is just stuff, you know, and to create daily. And they need to become daily habitual practices. That form the foundation of true inner peace, true contentment. And this word that you and I have spoken about, deep happiness, you know, not fleeting happiness, but that depth of sustainable foundational happiness, you know. And so that's, that's the new program that we're, that we're excited to launch. That's October 2025.

I'm so excited about that. And, you know, I was reading the authors of the book Ikigai, uh-huh, have just released a new book called The Four Way Path. And they've gone to India and they're talking about the Hindu religion, and they were talking about the Sandhu people who are believers. It used to be the Brahmins, but now others do it where they strip everything away. And they were saying, oh, very wealthy people, and a lot of them have stripped everything away, even clothes. And, you know, some of them have silence, etc. But what I found really profound about about that was that there was an exercise they suggested, which is for the next 100 days, take one thing out and see if you miss it.

Yeah.

And, and just get that sense of, you know, do we really need the stuff?

Yeah.

I had my list of things to do this afternoon. Oh, I saw that shirt down in the window and I've just sat there. I don't actually need—

yeah.

Having that observation that you've taken people through, which is you strip, you strip back what's essential, right?

Yeah. And you have this relationship with yourself and you're like, yeah, I, um, I ran that experiment in India when I was in my 20s, and people— I, I didn't see myself as a sadhu, but people, locals over there, certainly would put me in that pigeonhole and categorize because I stripped myself of all my material possessions. I was walking around wearing local garb, you know, so a lungi, which is a piece of material that you wrap around yourself like a sarong kind of thing. I I even stripped my guitar. Now that was big for me because I travel everywhere with my guitar because writing songs and singing is my therapy. And I even left my guitar behind for almost a year. I had a small bag with pots and pans in it, was cooking my own meals on a fire. I was living mainly outdoors. I had a long beard and dreadlocks, and I wandered around India for a long period of time doing this. It was one of the most remarkable years of my life. So when I'm suggesting to people to strip stuff away, um, I'm not just— I didn't just read it in a book.

I did. Given up on a shirt. That's as good as I've got so far.

I didn't mean it like that. That sounded terrible. That sounded like I was talking about you. I— that was so terrible. I didn't mean it.

Tomorrow will be another day. I'll give up something.

Oh yeah. No, strip— stripping stuff away is Yes, taking people to the Taj, right?

And you, you're giving them back to the life that they're going to go back to and showing the relationship. So it's not like a retreat where you kind of, you turn up, you do the stuff, and then you go back and go, okay, back to work. You kind of come back as a new person.

That's right. And, and also what I offer, um, people who've come away on retreat with us, because it can be, um, a big thing to have, you know, this meaning on the mountain experience, but I offer them a lot of support when they get home, including if they want to have me there as their ongoing mentor/coach/accountability partner, that I'm there for them. You know, it's really important for me that it's not just this, oh my God, moment, and then you go home and everything goes back to being the same, or you go home and make crazy decisions like leaving your partner and selling your business. It's like, no, no, no, no, don't make any big decisions when you get home. Gently, gently, you know. And so I quite often, I coach approach our clients for at least a year after we get home to make sure that they create those daily habits that are important.

So just before we wrap, daily habits for those of us who want meaning on the mountain, but we're not going to go to the mountain with you. Yeah, literally, but figuratively, tell me some, some of the daily habits that we might look at, because I know life's changed for you, and you told me previously that daily habits were one of the, the ways that you now manifest being enough and, and having a life of happiness.

Mindfulness meditation, even if it's just a couple of minutes of it, which is quite simply an observation of the present moment, you know. And to your listeners, if they don't know how to do mindfulness meditation, I just give you my course for free. Just put the, put the word podcast into the coupon code box and you can download my course and keep it forever for free. So mindfulness meditation, a couple of minutes a day. Affirmations. I used to think they were woo-woo. Like, I used to think, oh yeah, whatever, but there's science now to help us understand how they work. But positive affirmations daily, if that becomes a habit, that'll, that'll make a big difference. And my last tip: pause often. Just pause often. So throughout the day, in between shutting your laptop and racing to the car, stop, pause, take a few breaths. And continue. Now, that might sound too simple to be a life-changing habit to form, but I tell you right now, it's one of the most powerful habitual practices that I have in my day-to-day.

Perfect. Well, before we finish, Jim, just for fun, the question I always ask: tell me something bizarre or something that people would not expect about you. Something bizarre, or, you know, gave up everything, went to the Himalayas, have a second family up there, all of those things already shared. Something completely different.

All right, I was on Neighbours in 1994. I was an actor on Neighbours.

Oh my goodness, okay, didn't see that coming. Was it a, was it a romantic lead or something exciting like that?

It was, it was a romantic part. I was only on there for a few months, but it was a part. Um, and if you look for Gem Fuller, you won't see it because back then my name was still officially my birth name, which was Jeremy. But if you type in Jeremy Fuller Neighbours, you'll you'll get to laugh at me when I was a 20-year-old on Neighbours.

I love it, I love it. Well, look, um, we're gonna close it out here. For anyone who's listening, I really encourage you to go to exitthematrix.io/s for short, /gem, and you'll be able to get that Essential Guide to Being Understood Communication— Conscious Communication eBook. Put in the coupon code PODCAST and you'll get that amazing course as well, which is going to give you some meditations that will really lead you down the path of, uh, some awareness. So that's amazing. So thank you so much, Jim. I really appreciate you, uh, coming on and sharing your sliding door moment.

You're welcome, Jane. Thank you.

Okay guys, just before you go, when you do go to exitthematrix.io, subscribe so that you can actually get notified when our next guest's podcast is actually live. And when you do that, I'm going to give you a special gift as well. So make sure you go and subscribe. And why not just crack the algorithm and go and give us a review on Google Podcasts, Spotify, Apple, wherever you listen so that we can get in front of more and more people. So as always, I really appreciate your time and I hope you've enjoyed this incredible talk with Jim Fuller. And until next time, here's to your success. Bye for now.

Thank you for listening to Exit the Matrix Stories of Success. Make sure you subscribe to future episodes at www.exitthematrix.io. Until next time, here's to your success.