Life Uncut - Mental fatigue and how to make vulnerability a strength - Uncut with Hugh Van Cuylenburg

Episode Date: April 17, 2023

Hey Lifers, First up, Britt's back from Scotland and has an update on the psychic reading she received. Laura needs to teach Matt a thing or two about tampons and we asked you the sneakiest way they did the dirty on you! On today’s podcast we have the wonderful Hugh Van Cuylenburg. Hugh has joined the podcast before. He is the founder of the resilience project.In this episode Hugh speaks about why he has stopped telling the story of the resilience project, mental fatigue and who owns vulnerable stories.We speak about shame, seasons of our lives and thinking we want things other than what we actually have. Hugh’s mission is to help people understand that being vulnerable is a strength, not a weakness. He believes that by embracing vulnerability and building resilience, we can navigate life's challenges with greater ease and positivity.If you'd like to listen to our previous episode with Hugh you can listen hereFollow our Instagram and our Tiktok Join the facebook discussion group here!Tell your mum, tell your dad, tell your dog, tell your friend and share the love because we love love! xx  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Life Uncut acknowledges the traditional custodians of country whose lands were never ceded. We pay our respects to their elders past and present. Always was, always will be Aboriginal land. This episode was recorded on Darug Walamutta land. Hi guys and welcome back to another episode of Life Uncut. I'm Laura. And I'm Brittany. And on today's episode, we are getting the lowdown from Brits Time in Scotland. Poundtown is what we're also calling it.

The lowdown. Where she's going to be telling us all about the ceiling and the walls and... You make this sound like I'm detailing my sex life. I most certainly am not, but I'm going to give you an update on Scotland. Laura's giving you an update on where she's been because we both had little mini vacays. And also on your psychic reading from your new best friends. My new gay best friends in Scotland. they're 65 Alex and Eugene I love them one's a psychic and I had a psychic reading and you guys

have been on the edge of your seat do you know what happened okay but we are also speaking to the incredible the insightful Hugh van Kylenburg who we absolutely love we've had him on the pod before now Hugh is from the resilience project he is also the host of one of the most incredibly successful Australian podcasts the imperfects we touch on the light stuff in this episode but We also touch on some pretty deep topics and we talk about vulnerability and Britt and I, well, we share some of our own vulnerabilities, which I feel kind of vulnerable about, funnily enough. Hugh also speaks about why he stopped telling the story

of the Resilience Project because that's how Hugh started. There was a story that he used to tell and now he's done a 180 on it and he explains why. We also talk about shame and how comparison is robbing us of being present and building resilience in kids. It's truly a phenomenal chat. guess who's back well back in the same room as me anyway shouldn't really go far away I know Laura's like you're back it's like your first episode back and I was like well

I've been here still I just haven't been physically been here no you've been on zoom and it sucks and I can't touch you with my feet and get close to you and be like in your personal space okay so that is I'm glad you brought that up yeah so this morning in the studio we're sitting here we're opposite each other in our beautiful white chairs. I've got my new very clean pants on. I just got them out of the wash. I'm so glad that you washed your clothes and got clean to come see me. I have my handbag on the ground next to me. It's an expensive handbag. It's a nice handbag. It is. Thank you for noticing. And it's white. It's a white handbag. This is the thing that gets me. It is white. Like what's that material? It's beige linen. Canvas. Oh, whatever. Same, same.

Whatever. It's irrelevant. It's white. Laura reaches. She's just talking to me, looking at me like deep in the eyes connected and her toes which are 10 feet long they're like finger spaghetti fingers and she's caressing my bag with her dirty feet and they're not dirty I cleaned as well this morning can you please not put your literally dirty feet over my very nice handbag so I took the handbag away so instead she starts to finger me with her toes now that that sounded way worse than it was all at my legs and my feet her feet she's rubbing them on me i'm not a foot person so i'm really happy that you're back and how dare you not enjoy the fingering i just gave you well now i have to curl up on my seat like i'm too scared to put my

legs on the ground i'm curled up like a little boiled egg i'm just a toey person i like to touch things with my feet i'm well aware what it means but i like okay apparently i don't think you're that toe we actually no not really it's also monday morning i'm not sorry for anything i've got a bit of asthma as well put your toes away i am a creative person and creative people can't handle wearing shoes or putting their feet on the ground when i sit in a seat my feet have to be up when i'm doing radio my shoes are off i'm always my feet are everywhere i am the same but that doesn't also mean you have to literally abuse me with your toes i love you and i want to be close to you and i show my affection be close to me physically without a toe jam i they're clean

look anyway all right sorry guys anyway we're back yeah we're back brit is brit's back from scotland and she wants to still be there unfortunately i am so jet lagged i've been up since about 2 30 this morning literally wide awake but you know when you you can't sleep but you want to sleep so badly so you're almost you're willing it you're rolling over your eyes are clothes you're like come on think relaxing thoughts count sheep but I'm like this is ridiculous I just laid there with my eyes open for about four hours I enjoy that you asked if I know what that's like welcome to motherhood I don't have kids though I don't need to be up you made that choice I don't need to be up the whole night I can sleep till 7am that's your

fault yeah you made that mistake you did this to you Laura you did this to you and your terrible life decision and one day I'll probably be in your position do you know what speaking of waking up early. I have realised this is something we just got back from Rockhampton, had a beautiful holiday with Matt's family. I did see that. It looked very lush. Look, I love Matt's family. They are wonderful. Sometimes Matt's sister listens to this podcast. Hi, Kate, if you're listening. They are a freaking amazing family. So much fun. We play cards around the dinner table. Matt's mum made me a gin every night. But you know what they do do? They set their alarms for 5 30 in the morning and go for runs they're a running family by choice they wake up early

fucking morning on holidays they were out of the house on a run at 6 a.m and i was minding the kids but that's like why are you leaving what's happening it explains the house on fire they've all got running bodies yeah they're all very like triathlete looking aren't they yeah that's why because they they do it it was just me and nana at home at 6 a.m in the morning with all the kids and a gin yeah but i think you made the better choice yeah same anyway 6 a.m jan okay i want to hear all about your scotland trip which do you know we're just speaking about it before we got on to record and brit was like i didn't do a lot of things we didn't go anywhere we didn't see a lot of stuff but i reckon you saw a lot of the inside of a bedroom but we'll talk about that

shortly bedroom kitchen hallway yeah we saw a lot of the inside of the architecture any any hard surfaces and a few other hard things great ceilings great um really old buildings so like the roof is beautiful how's your back feeling great thanks limber i need to go back to the chiropractor on thursday actually i actually booked into the chiropractor on thursday that's a whole nother kettle of fish when i was in rocky something else happened just i have two stories i want to hear about your holiday but then i'm gonna get them out of the way because this is all that's happened to me over the last two weeks and also i wonder if other people have had funny experiences like this so i unfortunately it's what happens every time we go away for any type of

holiday i got my period tropical holiday period oh you want to go for a swim period that's what happens to me i perfectly time any holiday where there is a beach or a pool involved with getting my period and it comes around so quickly and you'd think after like 15 20 years of having it you'd know it's coming but you don't you're still like oh man come on period as if it's like Matt reckons that I use it as an excuse like he doesn't think that it could possibly have been a month and then I just like creep it forward a week every single month so it's like a three-week period which you could do yeah and some people have that true yeah but not me and it is actually a month I'm very very on time I just forget about it clockwork so I was at the

beach and I was like oh you know you know you know you know yeah and you're like oh shit so anyway I was at the beach and I was like oh gosh where it's code red people so I I was holding Lola and I had the pram and Matt had the bag and I was like Matt I need I need a tampon quick I've got to go to the bathroom take the kids and he's rummaging around in the bag for a tampon and he pulls out the box and he opens it and you know the ones that are like all fluoro colored there's like pink and blue and yellow and green and you know you know the ones I'm talking about yeah I of the ones it's like a box of m&ms but you can't eat them they go in the other hole yeah something eats them but not so he opens up the box and he goes frantically because i've made it

very aware to him that it's urgent it's urgent times yeah and he opens the box and he stops and he looks at me and he goes loudly when people around he goes what color do you need and i was like what do you mean and he's like what what's the right color as though maybe one colors for the morning one colors he thought that the bright colors like yeah he thought the colors like were related to the period in his defense that makes a lot of sense like if for a man if they don't really know much about it and you open a box and there's all these different colors one must be for like the heavy day one must be i think that funny but understandable also it made me think i was like yeah why i mean why are they colored at no point in my life did i ever think

god it's weird that they're all bright colors like why why do i need a fluoride pink tampon to walk around with do you think that that's just a push to the feminine like to try and make something that's not cute cute what's the point of make tampons cute again yeah i don't know what's the point of making fluoride tampons anyway go and ask your partners show them a box of tampons and ask them what the different colors mean and see what they say did you ever wear pads like with the wings do you remember the pads with the wings they used to flap under the they were so uncomfortable I tried and look no offense to anyone who still chooses to wear a pad but I reckon it's quite similar to wearing a diaper around the place well always moves and

then you're worried about it slipping to the side and you guys might remember this story from a little while ago but this will make sense in a minute but I'm getting a new lounge this week so I got rid of my lounge last night and my lounge is coming tomorrow so I'm lounge-less for like 1.5 days when I moved that lounge I cannot tell you the shit that was under it like you would think i had a family of five but it's all delilah anyway moved the lounge there were biscuits under their bones all this stuff six tennis balls and then one thing that i've been missing for a long time and i couldn't remember i put it but my period cup was under there delilah you remember how delilah used to love my period cups you know the little yes but you can't like what did you do

you rinse it off and use it again yeah stick it back in the drawer yeah right now bridge no chuck it in the dishwasher but she they used to go missing all the time because they're a menstrual cup they're like you don't use them but they're like a little silicon cup a moon cup menstrual cup period cup whatever you want to call them but mine always go disappearing and Delilah collects them they're under the lounge do you know why she collects them because they probably still have dogs have very good sense of smell it probably still has the width of period on it okay that is disgusting yes where do you think she steals it from me between like no from the drawer you've rinsed it out but she can still rinse it Laura you'd fully disinfect it it's not like you

I reckon there's people who just rinse them in the sink and then chuck them in a drawer I reckon I reckon they're out there you need to try it just try I don't want to I'm gonna stick to my fluoro colored tampons enough about that chat so back to Scotland oh that was weird I'm sorry that we got there for so long oh did you educate Matt though or did you just let him think I just said throw me a tampon no no he still thinks that one's for Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday all right tell me about Scotland how has been are you desperately in love when are you moving there when are you breaking up with me and also how do you feel about working completely through the night when you live in Scotland I am desperately in love yes I'm very in love I'm very

look at your face I'm matching the color of my outfit right now I'm pink for love for love like I'm blushing I know I know no it's embarrassing stop you know Brittany's in young love you yeah ew ew yeah you're like six years down the track i only say this because like why do you only say this laura i say this because you are such a hard-ass bitch and then you fall in love and you're like i'm in love ew i do i do melt tell me about it how was your trip how are you gonna go without your 60 year old best friend neighbors alex and eugene shout out because they're listening i know that you also have an update on the do we call it a fortune it's not a fortune the psychic reading yeah sorry okay Scotland was I mean we spoke as

as we were going we did we did the episodes and I gave little updates but it was it was amazing to be with Ben do I love my time there day to day not really because I'm I don't want to say lonely that's not the right word but I don't have friends there so Ben still trains he's not on holiday he goes to work until the afternoon so I just do my own thing in the day so my savior this time really was my new best friends next door Alex and Eugene who if you've listened to the podcast last couple of weeks you'll know that long story short Ben set me up on a friend date with his neighbours didn't tell me they were 65 year old men I thought I was going partying with Alex and Eugene next door that were like 27 and they turned out to be the most incredible people that I'm just obsessed

with so I hung out with Alex and Eugene quite a lot we had teas and dinners and they cooked for me and then take me to lunch and it was really nice they bought me presents it was just amazing but eugene is a psychic he hasn't done readings in about 20 years so he he sort of retired a long time ago but he was like yes i'll give you one because you're my friend and i like you anyway did he say that he was like picking things up all the time okay i mean i know for anyone who's like listened to the podcast in the past if you're new i am a psychic skeptic i don't believe in a predetermined destiny i think that you know shit happens we make terrible decisions and that's where your life ends up. Yeah. And I'm the same in terms of, I don't believe and I don't not believe

I just, I'm really open to it. So I don't change my life path of what a psychic tells me. And I don't live and breathe, you know, that they said this is going to happen and I better move to this country or, but I'm very interested in it. And I just love it. I love the experience. I'm almost more interested in how the psychic receives the messages more so than I am in what they have to say about me personally I'm like so is someone here now how are you getting this message are you feeling it he said for him and sometimes he can't explain it he'll just get a feeling so he had been picking up messages and I don't know if you say ghosty vibes like vibes otherworldly vibes since he was like seven years old and he didn't know what to do with it like

the sixth sense yeah I see dead people someone else in his family had I guess they call it the site and they they sort of help you channel that I mean we're at lunch one day before he gave me the reading and he had just picked something up and I told you guys a few weeks ago he made a comment a very specific comment about my nana and a death and then he linked that he said oh it's the death of a limb he's like that's really weird and my nana did lose her limb so it was things like that but that just came over lunch that wasn't a proper read and it sort of just came in and I was like okay but then you sat down for like a full-blown like hour like chat put on your voice record and did a reading and the only reason I'm telling you guys this is I can't tell you my dms

have been flooded with you guys wanting an update on the psychic like i didn't know you guys would be so interested in it but you are but he said a lot of stuff about everyone in my life more than me like he was telling me more about you laura matt my family a lot about sherry mitch jury more than i even got messages about myself but he said he's like oh the gay guy that's around you and Laura a lot and I said oh okay Mitch he's like Mitch he's got really bad ingrown toenails he's got an ingrown toenail problem he's like I'm just getting a big toe thing I think it's his left that I'm feeling and I was like oh I don't know like so I was writing all this stuff you're like I'm more familiar with Laura's feet but I'm not that familiar with Laura's feet I can tell you anything

you want to know about them because they're usually on my face speaking of my shoe was on top of your shoe they were making love kissing each other I'm not surprised but then so he said things like that and so I messaged Mitch and I said how's your toes don't ask questions do you have ingrown toenail problems and he's like oh my god yes why do you ask that how did you know that I've had surgery for a recurrent ingrown toenails and I was like is it your left big toe and he was like yes and I was like oh my god the psychic just told me that was it imagine if that was the only thing he told you what a useless piece of information then he also told me about my agent and my agent's you know my age so she's relatively young we are we love you love you he said your

agent I've got really bad lower back pain right I'm wanting to grab my back with your agent he didn't know anything about of course he could google but he's like yeah really bad lower back pain so this was last week so only yesterday I forgot about that so it's been about five days since my reading and last night I messaged my agent and I said oh by the way I forgot to tell you my psychic last week you came through really strongly with really bad lower back pain so I don't know like I was like I'm just telling you and she wrote back immediately she goes shut up the last four days literally since I had the reading she's like I have had hot water bottles on my back taking painkillers my lower back has been agony she's like I don't have back problems

so the second the psychic has said your agent is gonna have back problems she got back problems he did it to her no he made her have back problems but like shit like that and he said information that like you'll do nothing with no but this is the thing I just love it and he said about you you came through a lot laura and basically this is how we summarized you oh laura she's awfully impulsive she's a very similar in nature she's yeah she's pretty impulsive she needs to calm down a wee bit i can't wait to tell her that one to me she's quite erotic to me yeah but i would find her quite funny she could take a vision in her head and she would implement the vision within an hour of having it she's too quick for me you're very

close to her because she keeps coming in and out yeah i spend a lot of time with her her husband's job's changing okay that's very very successful he's a wee bit laid back sometimes he's horizontal but that's maybe why they're stated because she's an exact opposite his job change will bring about travel okay but still within australia i think he nailed your personality and i don't think you can google your personality but he was like you're basically you can't google your personality i mean you could insane yeah he pretty much just told me to tell you that he thinks you're taking on too much and you need to take a breather I don't know where he would possibly get that from you're kidding that is you personified I'm working till 9 30 tonight that's absolutely normal it is

fine it is not fine it's not no Matt's really excited about a new project that I just said yes to he's super stoked by it so maybe that's what he's referring to tell your guys all about that shortly it's a worry then he said some stuff that was serious like about my family and people that had passed and some people that had you know made an appearance like my grandma made an appearance and I mean do with it what you will but they're nice like it is nice when someone says someone in your life that's passed is in the room and you know there's a comfort to it there is a comfort and don't get me wrong when I say I'm skeptic I don't mean that I'm saying I do not believe and absolutely cannot be true I fully am aware that there are things bigger and you know

incomprehensible beyond my existence I'm not someone who lives in a silo who's like well if i don't know about it it can't be real exactly but i guess for me the only time that i've ever sought out someone like a psychic or a uh i don't even know what else like a medium medium is because i was going through a really troubling time in my life and i wanted them to give me an answer i feel like most people or often people will go because they want an answer to a solution do i go with my boyfriend yeah it's always a fucking boyfriend it's the boyfriend do i stay with this guy or go with this guy like what do i do it's always because there's like a there's a fork in the road and they almost want an answer as to which direction they should turn do you feel

like with the information you were given do you think that there was anything that would make you go i'm gonna live life differently i'm gonna do this or was it just nice to know in general well he did say i was gonna have a daughter in 2026 so i'm abstaining from sex until 2026 so yes that's how i'm gonna live my life watch this space if you don't have a daughter by 2026 we'll know the whole thing is just i'm coming back it's a sham in 2020 it's a sham and we will know i'll keep a tab on this episode so went for an hour and a half and funnily enough this was the last thing he had to say and the boy that works in the middle of you i'd be getting him a long term prescription for paracetamol because he said that's the worst i actually agree with that that's

true mitch needs a paracetamol like we're hard work mitch needs an award and a trophy and a pay rise therapy and a pay rise therapy session all right well over the weekend we're discussing something and it was a meme that popped up and it was a guy who had come up with a very creative way of deceiving his girlfriend that he had a side piece. Now, this is not your typical saving a name in the phone as another name, but what this guy had done is he had created a picture. So like it looked like it was a group on WhatsApp. Like it was a picture that had all the different little symbols of names and letters and he'd written the boys as the actual name profile for this apparent group chat but actually it wasn't a group at all it was just that the profile picture was

made to appear like a group and the name was the boys but it was a girl that he was dating hooking up with behind his girlfriend's back i actually don't know how he's done this because usually it wasn't whatsapp it's just like a normal i message where you put five people in the chat and it comes up like if it was us three it'd be a k an l and a b so it's come up like that with like five or six but i don't know how he's created it with only the one number just saved a picture so like you know you can save a photo as someone's icon instead of like so in iMessage you can save a photo so instead of it just being like you know the the letter prefix he saved a photo of a group chat so it's saved over the top of it and it makes it look like it's a group i don't even know i'm

going to put it again on instagram because it's so hard to explain go have a look we'll put it on a static post i'm actually impressed now yeah yes now that i know it's like how he did it it's very deeply deceitful and we were talking about like this is pretty fucked what are some of the most creative ways that people have come up with to cheat not the nicest call out that we've ever done but let me tell you there were some very very creative ways and y'all need to keep your eyes open ladies and gentlemen keep your little peepers peeled trust no one especially not dominoes my ex named a girl dominoes on his text so it looked like a pizza special offer every time she text said he joined a band and took his guitar to practice every wednesday like the commitment

like he dressed up he went he got in the car he drove and that guitar was not what was getting played let me tell you my ex had an app that looked like a calculator but it was actually a folder full of nudes my ex did that that's a real story i know yeah i was laying on a beach in bali and i opened up the calculator app and then realized it was actually he wasn't an accountant he was hiding his nudes yeah it's an app where you type in a password like you type in a sequence of numbers and it opens up to a photo vault let me tell you there were a few things you shouldn't have had in that photo vault um okay changed georgia to george in his phone smart yeah it's Not a bad one.

Told me his female friend was a lesbian. Was actually dating her the whole time he was with me. Okay, this one is very similar. He had a profile on a dating app that said he was in an ENM, which is an ethical non-monogamous relationship. We had never spoken about being anything other than monogamous. He was a teacher and told me his second phone was just a phone he found at school from one of his students.

What, just kept it? And he kept it forever? He just stole it. Rosted them both on the overnight shift together so that they could – oh, that's bad. Okay, so he was obviously the boss and he rosted him and the girl that he was sleeping with on the overnight shift together so they could fuck at work.

Problematic on so many levels. You can't have sex at work. I mean it depends on what your job is. And they were on an overnight shift. it's probably a hospital if you i'm getting hospital vibe oh yeah i'm getting hospital storage why go there could just be like a nighttime cleaner could be cleaning the office block that is true yeah and go crazy yeah that's fine no one else is there fuck in the bathroom i'll find on the desk i found extensive messages between my ex and another girl on facebook

when i confronted him he said his female cousin had logged into his account as she wanted practice on how to chat up chicks and it was a secret that she was into girls so I couldn't say anything. It's so elaborate. When the lie is so elaborate you know it's a lie. You can't even follow yourself when you're like my cousin's best friend's neighbour's dog is actually trying to chat up another dog down the street. My cousin's best friend's neighbour's dog is actually a lesbian

who is using my Facebook account to chat to chicks. He logged into my Facebook account. He did his practice. Okay, if I ever caught cheating, which I would never do, i'm blaming on delilah oh this is so bad she said that she had to work christmas eve boxing day and new year's eve she worked in security when really she was with her other partner that's bad it's not the time you really ruined christmas didn't you my ex did that to me did he work in security no but he was just a sociopath for double life but yeah he spent all the good

holidays with her because she was the main girlfriend you know when you're the side piece when you don't even get easter you are such a fucking side piece no she got like the good friday and i got the monday she got new year's and i got like two days later she got christmas i got the week after you could tell that she was the favorite of the girlfriends i'm really sorry for you because that's a double blow you find out you're being cheated on and then you find out you're not even the primary yeah that's what it was i was a side piece side piece i was side piece inception anyway but i didn't know what you don't know can't hurt you is that what they say honestly i look back sometimes and i'm like makes so much sense she turned off find my friends the

app that uses the gps to show you know where you are because she was worried that she would be hacked but it was just because she was at her ex's house and she didn't want me to see it imagine insane I don't want to be hacked so I'm turning off my find my friends I mean like red alert amber alert you're cheating producer Keisha has one which I've just realized that she left it off this list you discovered that your ex was cheating on you because their uber account was linked to your email Keisha come over here you can tell it better better from a first person it was a boyfriend who lived over in the UK and so I went over there and stayed with him for a couple of months and because I wasn't working, I helped him out running his business. Like I was doing the

admin for it. So I had his email account logged in because it was his business account. Anyway, long story short, I'm back in Australia. You've got to get those tax deductions. So I'm back in Australia. I think I was back here for like two weeks. You know, we were still very much together and I was still logged into his email accounts and I was kind of just helping him out with his invoicing and blah, blah, blah. One night he disappeared. It was like nighttime for him, morning time for me. And he just disappeared from the face of the planet. Like wasn't replying to any of my messages or phone calls, which, you know, play on. And I got a message in the morning that was like, oh, I'm so sorry. You know, I went out for some drinks with

the boys last night and I ended up having a massive one and I just came home and crashed. Like my phone died, blah, blah, blah. And I was like, no worries. Like have a good day. Couple hours later, I'm like doing work for him, helping him out again with his business, being so kind and I see this uber receipt come up from the morning and I was like what like you said that your phone died and like you went to the pub which was down the street from his house anyway I kind of did the math and the time conversion and it turned out that he got an uber from an undisclosed location that cost him 16 pound back to his house at 6 45 in the morning and I was like little fucker um literally fucker wait how did you know he didn't just have a sleep

over at the boys because the pub was down the road from his house so did you did you send him the uber receipt i just screenshot it and i sent it to him because it had you know how uber has the map yeah where you've been he's not a very good cheater when he's like linked it to your email didn't reply to me for two days because he'd obviously found out so he's a real catch yeah yeah no he was a great boyfriend i can pick him one of my friends just found out in the last two weeks and you've just reminded me that the person she was seeing cheated on her because they were supposed to catch up on the weekend long story short and he had said he was not available he was going away for the weekend and then she went to a random place because to get a very

specific dessert for a party she was having with her friends she doesn't usually go there but she went to this very specific place and when she was there he drove past with a chick in the car chick in the car and then it gets worse she looked at him and he looked at her and they clocked that they saw each other and she just waved because she was like I was so in shock but then she's like I'll give him the benefit of the doubt then the place that she went to didn't have what she needed so she went to another place down the street and when she got there they were out the front having post hookup breakfast so like they'd obviously been together and then he and then she had to stop and say hello to him and she was respectful she said hello and introduced herself to the I

was like i would have lost my shit no and then they just haven't spoken it's flight or fright what do you do you just right it's right i'm so scared it's fight or fight or flight you don't know sometimes you just be fucking nice and then you're like oh and then you think about it afterwards and you're like god damn it i should have ripped a new one she told me after the analogy she wishes she said and it was really good and i was like i wish you said that she's like yeah I was too far it was just panicked it's so funny how your brain does that it's like something terrible happens and then afterwards you come up with the best line that you wish you could have said and then you just play it over and over and over in your head

until you it's almost like you did say it anyway let's get into the chat with you don't cheat it is such a pleasure to have you back here today Hugh you joined us back in what was it It was September 2021 when the world was very gloomy. Very different. Did you know that off the top of your head it was September? No, she prepped it. It is written there. You guys could have all just rolled with it.

I'm only throwing you under the bus because you did. Hugh, welcome to Life Uncut. Yeah, thanks, guys. In real life. This is the first time. I mean, last time we interviewed it was over Zoom. Yeah, we can touch you now. Last time you were on the pod, you told us a story about the time

you wet yourself when you were a little kid. Yeah. Yeah, it was traumatic. it was an overshare and we love an overshare here yeah it was but you told me that you have a new embarrassing story that maybe it's happened to you recently yeah it's funny it's not like it's no it happened a long time ago and i just thought about it because i was trying to think embarrassing stories this one here like it's actually probably falls under the category of mortifying more than embarrassing good we'll take that yeah so i was a school teacher for quite a while a primary school

teacher and i taught at a school and one of the teachers was like a specialist teacher so i think she had maybe an illness it was like a disease but it caused her to be quite oh this is not like having going at all it was like genuinely like an illness but she was very big like she was very very big person and i think because of that she had very low self-esteem very low confidence and i noticed along with another teacher friend of mine that she would get around school holiday time like when all the teachers are getting really like pepped up and i can't it's like at school holidays this is so exciting it's the best time to be a teacher when you've got holidays she would go the other way she always seemed to be quite down and we had this theory that was like

that was her only social connection was you know at school so we're like oh so we used to make an effort to go and see her a lot especially just before school holidays and anyway she this is such an awful story and this is how Hugh got cancelled yeah no no nothing like that anyway we'll call her Claire this one particular day I went there was a day before school holiday started it was a very hot day in March in Melbourne and I went down there and she was eating a sandwich and i was talking to her and she'd taken a particularly large mouthful like her mouth she was just really going for it and i said something funny i don't remember what it was not amazingly funny but it caused her to go she went she went like she just

laughed it was just like this and so much food came flying out of her mouth and one of the bits it was a really big chunk of sandwich it just went really high and just went and just landed right on my lip and it was really big now then this happened some reason my brain just went the message my brain would get rid of it and i was like yeah and she's talking to me we're looking at each other we're both pretending i could see her going oh i got him and i was going oh she got me but i was like don't acknowledge it don't acknowledge it and then my tongue is just like I got it And my tongue just like

Like a lizard Just went like And I just like Lipped it up off my And then I had to Because it was so big I had to chew it Like it wasn't like

I went To like chewed for a bit And then swallowed It's a whole piece of bread It's like It's a piece of Multi-grain bread On his lip

And she watched me She watched me do it Disgusted in me She looked Absolutely disgusted I don't know Who I know who's worse here

That she spat it on you Or that you licked it on up Hugh Hugh's worse here Oh I'm easily worse I ate her masticated food why do we do this like when somebody and i know exactly what you're talking about when somebody you're talking to somebody and they spit on you you should just sit there

and you leave it and you're like because you don't want to draw attention to it and then after a couple minutes you pretend you're scratching your face and you wipe the spit off your face yeah why don't we just be like oh you got me and like we all know in the room that it's happened do you know why because it comes down to something we do all the time in all different scenarios we don't like making other people uncomfortable so we would rather be she made her uncomfortable we would rather i ate a sandwich yeah but we would rather be in discomfort ourselves rather than embarrassing someone else or making someone else feel uncomfortable i had someone deal with that perfectly on friday night i was saying before i'm here in sydney for athletics i did the master's

athletics and on saturday i like that you dropped that in there brought your medals so so old people's olympics but at night it was the sydney track classic which is like an australian championship all the best runners in australia some of the best runners from the whole world are here and so we had to share like a warm-up track and as I'm walking off I bumped into a girl called Sam Geddes who I know quite well we trained the same track and Hannah Bassett both of them are two of the fastest 100 meter runners in Australia right now they're awesome weirdest thing happened Sam had sunnies on her head and she laughed at something I said and they fell down and landed and she tried to like flick him up to her soles with her foot and she just

kicked them straight into my balls like extremely hard and then she just goes got him right in the dick and we talked about it for quite a long time and it wasn't embarrassing this is funny when Hugh just walked into our little studio he stood in front of us we were just saying our hellos and then he pulled his phone out of his pocket and then he pulled something else out of his pocket no one noticed for a second and then he clunked him around he's like oh sorry sorry for the noise guys these are just my medals and we were like what he's like oh yes I have won some medals I didn't mean to bring them we're like you could just tell us that you won the athletics Hugh I didn't mean to dangle them and like clink them and then we're like well we did have an Olympian

in here last week but you are here for which i didn't know this was who's the olympian ellie cole paralympian australia's most decorated paralympian wow i'm embarrassed about my medals now you have to go back and have a listen yeah two silvers in the old people's olympics oh she had so many medals she wanted to bring them in to show us some but she couldn't even find them all she didn't even know imagine not knowing where your olympic medals are because you've got so many that's what she was like that's awesome i really like that i don't know where they are but i'm really surprised that you are here today when we did ask you i thought it was going to be a no because you're a big hot shot now. You're on Amazon. You've got an Amazon Prime special so I

thought you might be too big for us. Congratulations on that. That's absolutely incredible. How did that come about? Yeah, thank you. That's so nice of you. I do feel sort of proud of that one because like it's been 14 years of running around to venues all around Australia to speak and I'm talking about like a lot of schools. I love working at schools but then also some really non-glamorous places like you'll go to a shed where there's a whole lot of blokes who are tradies who work for you know a mining company or something and it's like that you don't get the warmest welcome there but i've been doing this for like 14 years to sort of have something like this happen is pretty crazy i reckon i've done about i'm thinking about 5 000 times so

there's quite a while doing like five talks a day and one year i did like i think it's about 500 talks for the year and i collapsed at the end of the year but on stage literally on stage i was so exhausted but i was talking to my psychologist just before covid about it and i said it just makes me feel the thought of doing it i wake up in the morning and i feel physically ill like i'm so over it and she says well you've lost the enjoyment and the passion that you once well yeah and she said you have to it was this talk in particular and she said you have to stop and I said I can't it's really helping people and she said I'm not here to help other people I'm here to help you and I'm telling you it's got to stop and I said I agreed like I was like yeah that's

I do but then COVID happened and I thought well this is not the time to stop doing a talk on mental health and well-being so I kept going and all of a sudden it was on zoom so I was doing five a day again and then when it's when we about probably i don't know it's about nearly a year ago amazon said to me if we would love to capture it and made a tv show out of it anyone can watch it anywhere in the world at any time oh yeah bingo i was like oh this is it because everyone said oh we could record it i'm like no it has to be done really well i want to capture it really well and so they said we'll get tim bartley to do tim bartley's from hamish nandy so radio karate and he's just a beautiful wonderful incredible person who's great at making television shows

and so he said yeah we can do that and so that's kind of how it happened so we had the privilege of talking to you just I mean well when COVID wasn't thick of it and I mean we were one of those five a day I guess where we unpacked your story does that mean that part of that talk you're not doing anymore or you've removed yourself from telling those stories yes I won't talk about my sister and it's been a weird one for my sister as well because she lives in LA and she kind of didn't like I think she knew I was talking about it but didn't know exactly what I was saying and It's something I feel a bit ashamed about is that I didn't say to her, here is what I'm saying word for word.

Totally. And also I guess in that it's like her story became your story to tell. Yeah, exactly. I felt like I was telling my side of it. But I think it was just like, well, you're also talking about my darkest years of my life to everyone. She didn't really realize and I didn't realize. She was on a plane coming back to Australia when she sat down next to this guy

and he goes, oh, where do I know you from? And she went, oh, I don't know. And he said, oh, I saw your brother speak. And he said, I've heard about this, this, and this. And she got off the plane and said, did you tell people, have you been telling people this, this bit? And I went, uh. How did you respond to that?

Very defensive. I was oddly defensive. And I was like, but this is my story. And she said, yeah, but it's also my story. Like, I'm okay with you talking about me, but I want to know what you're saying. And even the photos you're using. I had a photo up of her when she was quite unwell. And she said, don't show them that photo.

That was like 15 years ago. I said yeah I'm just trying to paint a picture of what you look like and she said yeah but I don't like that photo and then she chose a better photo we're fine but we're great now like we've talked about it and she's she has helped so her story has helped so many people but if I could go back in time I would actually I would genuinely fly to LA and sit down with her and say let's spend a day working out what we're both comfortable with I've actually said this before but but like let's work out what we're both comfortable with you know then I can go and but I didn't know just went here's my side of the story and i selfishly was like and then i got defensive when she called

me out on it so well you also don't i think there's an aspect because we're in the same industry you know the podcasting and storytelling storytelling there is a level where sometimes other people in your life don't realize how large your platform is and so your sister might have been aware that you were telling aspects of the story but not putting together just how far that was going and how many people retell that and then how many people see that story. I've had moments like that too, where people have not realized, oh, I knew you were talking about it, but I didn't know that that was eventually millions of people are going to hear about it. But I do that with like, you know, I've only had two partners in the last couple of years, but I do exactly what you said

you wish you did. I sit down with them and say, this is my platform. You've got to know what you're getting into. And for Laura and Matt, they've been in the industry a long time and they're both very aware. They talk every night before they tell a story, they do the same thing. on a more like daily basis to make sure they're comfortable with the story. But to bring somebody new into your life knowing it's going to be a platform, you have to have that sit down and say, what are you comfortable with me talking about?

Because we'll make sex jokes. We'll make all sorts of jokes. I feel like if like someone dating you would sit down to first date and go, just before I say anything, how much of this is going to be? You are going to be fucked. Put it that way. Take a checklist, yeah, and sign this non-disclosure.

but it's it's very important and i'm glad that you've gotten to that point with your sister now the decision to take these stories out of your story moving forward is that because you have exhausted it or is it because you need to have a level of respect for those around you no it's no because george is really happy with what i say now like she's very happy with with my talk now i'm exhausted from it i just can't keep getting up it's funny here's the thing though in the amazon special i've told the story of my sister i don't know how many times but and i can get i can say it now without being emotional in the amazon special i don't know what happened out of nowhere i got really really emotional and i was telling a story about a doctor looking at his watch it's

part of the story and i just held my watch and stared at it and i just couldn't i was like i can't look up i'm gonna start crying and i was really weird it really got me i think it's because i knew it's the last time i was having to tell it yeah that was so it just it just hit like i actually engaged in the emotion of it whereas the 4 000 times before that i said it and it probably came across as it's a quite emotional story but i was able to disconnect from it i fully immersed myself in the emotion and the heartache of the story and it just got me in the amazon special and there's a moment where i was like i could really lose it here and it's not the time to lose it maybe it was the time to lose it though maybe that's what really drives home the impact

to the people watching yeah maybe a semi lose i was like not like a melting ball yeah that's what I was going to be. Hugh, you have such a phenomenal reach and some of the stories that you tell and that you have shared, you probably don't even realize how much they impact people and the extent of that reach. A personal story I have, and I don't know whether you're aware of this, is that you actually made it into my wedding vows. I do know that. I thought someone might have told you. Yeah, no, I remember listening to that on the plane and then I didn't message you straight away because I was on the plane. That was wild. Hugh, I didn't even make the you should be on it i couldn't believe it have i not messaged you about that no you haven't i am

so sorry how dare you i know i mean i don't think you're supposed to know that you were in i don't think you know we spoke about on the podcast but i would love for you to share a little bit about that story because for me that was such a moment in my life and it's something that i go back to whenever i'm having days where i'm wishing away the days or i'm in frustration or i'm not loving where my life is at, you know, and being a mum of two kids and working multiple jobs, sometimes it is stressful but I do often go back to this conversation that you had about seasons. Yeah.

Last year in particular, Penny and I were finding parenting really difficult in Melbourne and I just remember our nanny came over and she's 27 and she lives with her partner and her housemate and she was saying to me, her name's Annie, she's amazing. It was 8 o'clock in the morning, she said, how's your morning been? and she said, yeah, good. I went for a run, went out for coffee, yeah, and then got changed and came here and I was like, what?

I have been like, I've changed three nappies already. I've dealt with two meltdowns. Definitely haven't left the house. I was still wearing like pyjamas and my hair's all over the place. I feel, I'm exhausted. I had no sleep and I was so jealous. And then she went outside with the kids and then Penny handed me her phone and goes, I think you need to read this.

and the article was entitled are you in tune with your life seasons and from the heading i got it like straight away i was like oh i'm not but i read it and just talked about the fact that our life is a series of seasons and you can look back on your life now already and see them as different seasons or chapters and so many of us spend every chapter wishing we're in another chapter or a season wishing another chapter and the great irony of is that there will be a point in time when we look back on this chapter we're in right now and just think I wish I was back in that for me I look back on my early 30s where I was single from the age of 27 to 35 and all my friends are getting married everyone's like having kids and I was just I just felt so lonely and I just

wished so much to be married and I used to I remember sometimes just thinking like there's someone out there who hopefully like I'm gonna meet but like I'm getting a little bit skeptical of this like i don't know if i'm gonna meet someone here feels you it's like my last 10 years totally it's a real thing yeah it's like a bit of a panic but like this self-esteem as well you're like well yeah and in that i don't know this would be an interesting conversation because you're a man from the male's perspective but i know women feel it a lot in those years where okay so you're in your 30s now you're thinking what if i don't meet anyone time's moving on. Women, myself, producer Keisha and I talk about it. A lot of my single friends talk

about it. You're like, okay, let's call a spade a spade here. I'm getting older. I feel like I'm getting less attractive. Like I look back to what I was five years ago, seven years ago, your skin's tighter, you're fitter, you're healthier. You know, you look younger as the years go on. You're like, what if I'm past my peak and I'm only going to get quote unquote more unattractive. Did you feel that when you were hitting 34, 35 before you met your now wife were you like I feel like I'm aging I'm getting wrinkles I'm getting older what if my options are decreasing because of that do you feel the same thing I felt my specific one was hair loss I was like just I was like come on here hang on for dear life here just hang on please just like

you can fall out the minute I made someone but like which is unfair to that person but yeah you can let yourself go once they've got a ring on it she was like but I think everyone's got their own story attached to self-worth and for me it was like my hair's falling out just hang on please please please don't like because the less hair i have i felt like i'm going to appeal to a smaller totally the pool's already small yeah and then if you think you're going to cut the pool in half it's going to be drained and empty but if i could talk to that person now and just go mate the person that you want to spend your life with couldn't give a fuck totally it's like yes the pool might be smaller but in a good way you're actually now you're making the pool smaller

and the people left in the pool are fucking good people because I couldn't give a shit what you look like. But, I mean, that's also the thing, right? I think it's coming back to the question that you just asked, Britt. That is when so much of your self-worth is tied up in the way you look. You know, when your most important quality is how you look, then I think that that fear increases as you get older. But just kind of circling back to what you were saying, Hugh,

the reason why I resonated with that story so much was because I spent my entire, I would say my entire teenage years, my entire 20s thinking the thing I wanted the most was to be in a relationship and to have that security and then I have it and then there's no part of me that wanted to be single or anything like that but I wanted the freedom that comes with being single the being able to go on holiday whenever I wanted to and I remember speaking to Matt about it after listening to you speak about on a podcast and it was him that grounded me but I think so many people can relate to that wanting to be in a different season when they should be trying to find

a gratitude and appreciation for where they are now because it may be everything that they always wanted yeah it just made me realize that every chapter has got negatives and then we blame the whole chapter we're like i just want to be out of this because i was like i just i need to be married now i'm married with three beautiful kids that i couldn't love anymore but i find myself going i wish i could go to the pub tonight i wish i could just wake up and go what i'm gonna do today i don't know rather than just like have it dictated to you so yeah we all want to be in a different season or so many of us want to be I mean I know I remember hearing that Maddie said to you no I don't I love this season like amazing that's like Jedi level of yeah I was like you're

a better man than I am that's a sure standard well you're not a man but yeah he's a better better human than I am well Hugh last time you were on the podcast we spoke a lot about gratitude we spoke about comparison culture yeah but something that I realized we didn't actually speak much about which is interesting considering that you're called the resilience project yeah is resilience yeah i don't know how that one's it truly did swing straight by us i feel like resilience as a concept we all know it's important it's something that's important to instill in our children it's important for us to have ourselves but how does one create resilience in themselves okay so the best and i'll try not to be boring here definitely not be boring but

you are not please don't i'll kick you out no fair enough so the best ever research ever done on resilience is by a lady called barbara frederickson and she actually worked out the most common personality characteristic amongst resilient people and that characteristic quite simply and she did this research in new york in 2001 she'd got the personality profile of thousands of people she worked out like assess their personalities had their personality character profiles done and she was like right now i need to test them i need something really challenging to test these people to see who bounces back and she couldn't get anything approved by ethics it's quite hard to like with research to you've got to be careful not to do harm to people anyway when

she's trying to work out what to do 9 11 happened twin towers come down and she's like oh this is not the time this is just not the time for this and she's sitting on the train the next day and there's a couple sitting opposite her and they were crying and consoling each other and she's thinking this is just so awful and she turned around five minutes later and she saw they were still in tears but they were laughing about something they were hugging each other laughing about something and she thought hang on a minute this is the time this is actually the test that this is the thing that i'm going to see how those people bounce back from went back to the personality profile she followed them for years and years i don't know how many years i should

know that but anyway and here's what she found the most common characteristic amongst people who bounce back is positivity and positive emotion that's not to say that people bury their head in the sands and pretend it's not happening but they still people who are going through something difficult they still find reasons to smile they still immerse themselves or involve themselves in activities that will bring them joy and i still feel i find reasons to laugh the example she gives from her research is a couple this old couple who did book and they lost someone close to them 9 11 they had a book club they did every week people doing book club said obviously we'll cancel this week and they said we don't feel like it but we got to do it

we have to do it so people who are resilient will still involve themselves in activities that bring joy and they still experience positive emotion well i guess in that there's a level of keeping a routine and staying grounded and it's the one thing that you might be able to control in your life is doing something that you have done previously every single week you're dragging yourself out of your house you know if you're grieving or going through something keeping that one thing a week that's going to keep you reminding that life does go on and there are still good things out there I think there's something to be said for that for sure yeah totally and I think a lot of us when something really bad happens we just want to go into our

shell and disappear and that makes sense and you can do that but when you want to climb back out of that shell and and start to see the light again you need to start it I mean that's what gratitude empathy and mindfulness that's how you what we talk about resilience project that's how you cultivate positive emotion yeah it's also so true i'm just thinking as you're saying that like the times that laura and i have gone through something that's really horrific in our lives and we've one of us has been upset and you know really crying in those moments when you look back at them it'll be this peak moment of sadness and one of us will just make the most stupid inappropriate joke and then we burst into laughter like you guys do that never it pulls you out of it and

it's the idea of humor and being positive and trying to keep that emotion i think humor as well is such a coping mechanism for some people it's i mean it can be positive and it can be negative because it can be a deflecting mechanism where people instead of dealing with the way they feel they make jokes about it totally a question i have and it's something that i've really struggled with with my own children i mean they're three and two at the moment so we haven't had the big world problems yet by any means but how do you build resilience in kids that's the heart and sold the resilience project always like my first ever talk for the resilience project in 2010 no 2011 was at a primary school with preps to grade threes it was like six to nine year olds so when

you teach a child to pay attention to what they have not to worry about what they don't have that gives them great perspective and perspective's really important when you're trying to bounce back from something to understand how bad is this and what can i do about it empathy is huge that's why we teach that to kids so we're teaching kids how to feel what someone else feels because when you feel what someone else feels you're more likely to act in a kind way and the neuroscience behind kindness is life-changing it says when you do something for someone else something small hold the door over someone shout someone a coffee let someone traffic your brain releases oxytocin which is a feel-good hormone and then mindfulness is just the ability to be wherever you are when

you do that you're better at the other two i'll give you a really nice example from empathy which is just like how powerful it is to help you bounce back from something really difficult or a tough time you're going through or which is the same thing or something not as you know a bad mood like a low mood i got asked to do q a on abc a couple years ago if you ever get asked to do that just say no it's a trick question it's awful it's terrifying really okay it's terrifying i have watched it and i feel like it would be oh my god they crucify you don't they well it's just like the most intelligent people of all time sitting in a panel and the most intelligent people in the audience and they're all discussing stuff and i'm sitting there going and you feel like

you're answering you know that homer simpson meme where he's got the fat fingers and he's just typing on the keys and there's like just a burger in your brain like you're not even answering that's what i would die for that's why i couldn't be a teacher either because i'm like what if the kids smarter than me and they ask me a question i don't know that's why i couldn't ever do it it's terrible that we have a podcast no i get what you do i i just on that you would be an amazing teacher because the kids would love you and you would say to them i don't know let's find that out together and that as a student first person to google gets 20 that's what i'd say first person to come to me with the answer yeah so wonderful show i love the show but it's just

terrifying and i said i'd do it and i was in the car on the way to abc studios melbourne and i was i've never felt that nervous or anxious before about anything i was just terrified and i pulled up at the lights there's a road in melbourne called mount alexander parade four lanes and often when there's four lanes near the city there'll be someone like washing your windscreen for money and i was fourth in line red light four cars in front of my fifth in line four cars in front of me and i saw this guy and he was walking down the and everyone was saying no to him and i was like oh i don't have money i'm gonna know as well but i felt really bad and so i wound my window down to explain why i was and i was just i don't know he gets towards me i said sorry

madam and i don't have any coins and he didn't hear me so he came right up to me and i had the window down he goes what's happening and i said oh i don't have coins i'm really sorry and i felt I had to prove it so I lifted up the sender console and I lifted it up and, you know, you kept a pile of shit in your – sitting on the top of that pile of shit in the sender console was a $20 note and he just looked at it and I looked at it and we looked back at each other and I was like, and I had this moment of like, gosh, he needs this a lot more than I do.

Totally. And I gave it to him and the second the note touched his fingers, the tears just streamed down his face and he said in the proudest voice, He said, I will wash your windscreen twice. And I said, no, no, no, no, no. Once is fine, mate. Once is totally fine. Because you don't even have to do it.

And he goes, no, no, I'll do it twice. And he does it once and then goes to do it twice. He pulls the windscreen wipers up and he covers it in soap, the whole thing, and then the lights go green. And I was like, fuck, I can't drive now. So everyone's beeping me. I was like, mate, I really need to start to drive. Soap going everywhere.

He's like, but you haven't had your second wash yet. I know, I know. But anyway, the point of that story is my nerves and my anxiety for Q&A were completely gone. out the window with but literally with the $20 note gone and it was because i just did something nice to someone else when you do something nice to someone else your brain takes over and goes here's oxytocin enjoy it oxytocin is it's the love hormone it's the connecting hormone it's the bonding it's a feel-good hormone when you sit down with someone say you're on a date and it's

just like oh this is really we're on here the brain's releasing oxytocin it's like it connects you like you're both having this release of oxytocin is that what you used to do on your first date so just bring them 20 bucks just give them 20 bucks yeah that'd be a weird thing on a first date hi how you going that's for you what the fuck so yeah it's very powerful I don't even want I can't remember why I'm telling that story but that's a good story in terms of building resilience and I guess bouncing back from adversity what are your thoughts on the victim mentality on when you are a victim of something but then carrying that throughout your life not being able to overcome something that's happened to you how does somebody differentiate sort of

that line between being a victim and then staying a victim I think talk therapy is unbelievable any form of talk through it's a counselor psychologist like actually being able to share your story to someone who can say to you an adult in authority saying to you I'm so sorry that happened to you that is not fair that should not have happened to you that's really freeing it's incredible research out of i know it's out of the uk and i've heard johan harry talk about it a lot so the research was it was looking at people who were suffering from like a really really severe obesity and they were unpacking because someone said one of the scientists said well if we just if we put them in this group and they can only have this amount of food and this amount of whatever it is

every single day surely they'll lose the weight and they'll be fine and that's what happened those people lost all the weight but then as soon as they went out of the trial group they were i think it was like 95 percent and put the weight back on and they go well why do they want to go back to their old habits so they went back and interviewed all these people and one of the girls I interviewed they said well what happened to you I'll send you through the actual research so you can put in the show notes but one of the girls said to me the strangest thing happened I was at a bar and a guy hit on me and I felt so awful and so ashamed and I just hated it so much I went away and I decided eating again I put the weight back on because I realized that for me overweight meant

overlooked and people i wasn't getting attention from men and then the guy the research is like why don't you want that attention then she told this tragic story about how she was sexually abused as a young girl that was that was her weight was her putting her guard up it was her putting her guard up and then she lost the weight her guard was down so put it away but anyway the point of that story though is that she then went and got counseling for that specific thing and an adult and an in authority like a psychologist was able to say to her this is to come back to your amazing question, Laura. I'm so sorry that happened to you. That should not have happened. Counselor, all the people who went through this research, all the people, all the subjects of this research

were given the opportunity then to have counseling. The counselors were instructed to say to them, I'm sorry, that should not have happened to you. And just having an adult in authority saying to someone who's been the victim of something, I am so sorry, that should not have happened to you, you should have been protected, but you weren't. That was incredibly freeing for that person. So the very short answer to that question is talk therapy. Because if you're a victim of something you deserve an apology from someone at some point and and is the validation as well yeah to say like we recognize it we see it we hear you yeah we hear your story and it's and that is a valid story and it's not fair here we wanted to do something a little bit different you are the king

of speaking about vulnerability and the importance of vulnerability and one of the exercises you do is vulnerability yes vulnerability yeah vulnerability house is how we say yeah and this is like a series of questions that you could ask maybe it's your partner or a friend or someone who you want to open up these conversations with and you have a list of questions which are incredible thought starters these questions really allow you to deepen your connection with someone and to get to know them on a very vulnerable level yeah i have a question for you out of this yeah yeah we're trying to connect with you yeah deeper all right what is an event from your childhood that changed you oh i mean there's it's so funny looking there's so many little moments like little

innocuous moments things that happen that if someone stopped me that moment said do you reckon you'll remember this when you're 42 i'll be like not a chance but i just there's one that's popped to mind straight away and it's not like a life-changing groundbreaking thing but i just remember this i just i feel so sad and remember this but i was in primary school i was in grade three there's only only one grade three class at my school and there's a boy i'm gonna call him Nathan and he was like he was a little bit on the outer of the friendship this friendship group because there was only like nine of us in the class and only nine boys so there was like pretty much sort of two groups really and he was sort of on the outer of both he was a nice kid like he was

nice but he just didn't quite fit and quite shy didn't offer a huge amount but and I liked him in fact I remember mum always used to say to me like you're going to play at Nathan's house or we're going to have him over and I look back and realize that was mum trying to make sure that he was included yeah and mum would often say to me you need to include nathan but anyway one particular day i can't remember it so vividly it was really really cold very windy one of those like you know when it's windy at school that just everyone just loses in primary school everyone loses the plot yeah it's like dog in the classroom or windy day yeah exactly but anyway i just remember last time it was very windy and we're running around and me and these other guys i can't remember

what we were doing but we were so we're not at the time and we ran i think we were trying to run away from him but without him knowing so we could just i just feel awful same but anyway i thought we'd lost him i thought he wasn't anywhere near us and i said and i didn't even really think it i was just trying to like because i knew those guys wanted to get away from him i didn't really think it i said i'm so glad he doesn't know where we are i hate him so much i didn't think it i honestly didn't think that i just wanted to impress these other guys and i turned around he was there and he was right there and he just had but i he already was he was already crying by the time i looked around and made eye contact he was already crying because i was kind of like

his one i think i was kind of like his one friend and it had the most instant like a change coming for me instantly as in like i'm not going to talk about someone in a bad way when they can't hear me i'm like i'm just not going to do it ever again that was the most one of the most awful feelings I've ever had and it very much it was so pivotal in me just going I'm just I don't want to be that I don't make anyone feel that ever again and the best way to do it is just to not talk shit about someone ever it achieved nothing like and I didn't even really think it and you're a kid as well kids are little shits like kids don't think you haven't lived enough as a kid to learn what you've just said like that moment was where you did learn and the

And the only way we learn is by experience in those situations. And also, I guess, you know, kids so desperately want to fit in. Everyone wants to fit in. But I did fit in though. I knew that I fit in. I knew I was like, I knew I already did fit in. I just, I didn't need to, I just said it. It was just a, but it just made me think about the world we live in today.

And one of my concerns is, was kids communicating over social media. I saw what it did to him. Like I actually saw him crying because of what I said and that changed me. But I reckon when kids are communicating over text message or however they're doing it, like whatever groups they're in, and you say something nasty about someone or you leave someone out and you don't see their response, you're not learning empathy. And I guess that's what I learned on that day.

It was like, wow, that's a really powerful lesson in feeling what that kid feels. Like I really feel that. Well, ignorance is bliss. And that's what a lot of the kids are missing these days because they're not seeing the damage that words and the power that words have. Can I ask you guys a question?

Yes. I've just got on my phone because Ryan, Josh and I from our podcast are always coming up with different questions that we think might be good to ask and put on our vulnerability cards

so we're the ones usually doing the interview Hugh I know I know what am I doing this is not my podcast I'm so sorry

okay so the other really funny thing is just you know with notes like you just I'm not that organized I write everything in notes but I just put them under I don't start a new note

I'll just so oh yeah there's a hundred notes in one yeah so this has come under I've got some questions here but I've written under the top thing just says petrol undies pram jackets ask brenda laura about their most vulnerable moment it's a very

interesting shopping list you have there okay so questions okay brit here's one for you so what i love this question what did it take you too long to learn do you know one thing i do think it took me far far too long to learn if i could tell my younger self i would is that nobody is thinking about you and cares about you as much as you think. Like nobody is judging you as much as you judge yourself. And everything that I did when I was younger, I was so worried about what other people would think. To the point of even when I was an adult and I started a business and I was like, oh my God, the podcast. I was like, what are people going to think when I say I've done a podcast? People are going to judge me. People are going to be like, try hard. People

are going to laugh that I'm trying to do. Yeah. Because we live in a society, I guess, that's laced with judgment in everything that you do. And I feel like I did that since I was a kid. I was always worried about what other people thought about me and far too long. And now I think it's probably evident that I will just, as long as I'm happy with what I'm putting into the world and I think I'm a good person and I'm doing the right thing. I don't want to say I don't care what people think because I do, but that's because I care about my product and what the impact I have on people. But I don't care in the sense of if someone thoroughly disagrees with me and then calls me a twat I'm like that's okay because I know what I did was was okay now so I feel like

I've found this really it's a really fine line I think I think a lot of people will agree with that but that's definitely something where I feel like I would just go back and say live your as cliched as it is live your true authentic life yeah and what is meant for you will just come totally what was the catalyst that changed do you think was there a thing that happened or was it a slow progression was there something that made you go I think it was a slow progression but I think there was a time where I was bullied a lot online and I think once you go into the public eye there are always people that are going to be really nasty and say really nasty things and I cared so much at the start and you you'll know that you care so much and you're like

how can somebody think that of me am I that person and you start to listen to these people these people don't even know you totally I think I just got worn so far down it was exhaustion I was like You get desensitized. You do. And then I was like, do you know what? It got to the point where I was like, I don't give a fuck anymore. I'm not going to sit here and cry because someone I don't know. Hates me.

Hates me. Yeah. You get so broken down that you hit the bottom and you can only go back up. Well, you can't. There are other options, obviously. But for me, it was like, okay, I'm just, I have to just wash this off and just live my life. Yeah. Awesome.

All right, Laura, you're up. Okay. Petrol undies, pram, jackets. Okay. Okay, here's one for you, Laura, which this is, again, this is a full-on question to answer, so I hope you don't mind I'm throwing this one at you, but what are you ashamed of? Just a light one to finish today's conversation.

I had a look through some of these questions, so I had a look through some of the options, so I've had time to kind of process this and think about what I would say. And really feel that shame. Yeah, and really sit in my shame. Okay. No, look, this will probably make me cry, but there's something that I – so my grandfather passed away.

you are you can't talk about your grandpa I honestly can't really struggle with it yeah so a couple of years ago my papa passed away and my papa was very much my father figure all throughout my life and he and my grandma had been married for you know 60 something years and my nana has very bad dementia she was put into a home shortly afterwards and I think like for me we'd go down and see them they live in Wollongong we'd see them all the time we were really in contact and and really a part of their life but as my nan's dementia has gotten worse and worse and i've had kids and covid happened i found that i go down and see her less and less and i think for a really long time i sort of said to myself she has dementia she doesn't remember me coming

anyway she doesn't remember when i visited and i was watching you can't ask that that show that's on tv and they did an amazing episode on dementia and there was one thing that one of the women they interviewed all these people at different stages of dementia and she said you know it doesn't matter how advanced it is you still have these moments of clarity you still have these moments where you might remember your old life or you might remember and I for me it was this real moment where I was like wow you know I think sometimes with the elderly we can kind of go oh they don't they don't remember or like it's easier it's out of sight out of mind I'm too busy and it's not that I don't see my nan as much like it's not that I don't see her at all I just don't

see her anywhere near as much and then i think like wow i've just wasted three years where i needed to put in more effort and that i feel really ashamed of yeah but how beautiful that you've had that realization now before it's too late yeah yeah and it's not too late totally and now and that was a huge turning point for me i call her all the time i take the girls down as much as i can and she she doesn't remember but the thing that i've realized is that my girls might you know marley now gets to see her great grandma she knows who her great grandma is and that's really special that's beautiful yeah oh thank you for sharing that that was amazing oh sorry guys we actually had we had so many questions we have so many but we um and so many private therapies

we wanted to deal with but we have just run out of time what i would love and i'm going to put you on the spot though i would love to in the near future get you on as a guest for our ask uncut our thursday session because we do have some questions that people wrote in would love to so um i i would love to do that if you can and you can't say no now because i've done it live on the podcast i've really pressured you into it but we'll do that i think in the future you know how you you guys put out on social media yesterday saying any questions you want to ask you people were sending the questions to me and i didn't know you guys had done that i didn't know you guys had done that so i was like in a hotel room last night and someone didn't get the memo it was

saying what's hugh's relationship like with his mom and i was sending it to you but it said it was like using my name i was like what the what is that and then someone else wrote like what's who's most challenging and i was like what are these questions about and then i saw you guys well the next time we have you on we are gonna ask you point blank what is your relationship like with your mom so i hope you're ready for it it's beautiful i'm so lucky i'm the most best mom but yes but we can go there well we'll do that but doing amazing things so thank you so much for giving us your time today and for bringing your medals in from the race you won last night yeah that's fine anytime yeah if you want to take a photo of my medals that's okay you are an absolute

breath of fresh air thank you so much for your time we love having you on the pod uh you guys are doing such amazing things thank you so much well you guys know we never end an episode without our suck and our sweet the highlight and the low light of the week laura i have a weird feeling that you've got some solid sucks this week i know what your sweet is your sweet is me touching you with my feet that's my sock that's your sweet come here you little sweetie pie you need to get this way okay my suck for the week no i don't have solid sucks but i have one suck we flew to Rockhampton as you already know because I told you at the beginning of the episode two flights to get there flew to Brisbane with five kids because you know took the cousins it

was you know it was brave yep it was just Kate so Matt's sister so Matt's sister's husband didn't come so it was like you know me and Matt and our two Kate and her three we got to Brisbane airport we landed we were supposed to have a one hour layover stop oh is it a quarter layover whatever interconnecting flight I don't know there was fog something happened Qantas the flight was cancelled So we had six hours in the airport that we waited and we went and we had the conversation. We said, look, guys, our baggage, our baggage is going to end up in Rockhampton, right?

Like you're going to put it on the new plane. And they were like, yeah, yeah, yeah. And we're like, you're going to pick it up and you're going to put it. So just to confirm, you will get it off the plane and put it on the new plane. Take it from Brisbane, you're going to put it into the plane. And they were like, absolutely. And we were like, it's going to go inside the plane with us. And they were like, not a problem.

We're like, okay. so anyway we get there and we land in Rockhampton and every single person who was on that previous flight that their flight got cancelled there was something like 32 of us not one of our pieces of baggage made it to Rockhampton so we were just standing there by the carousel like a pack of chumps and because there were so many people we were all so convinced that more luggage was coming yeah so we were like oh it's fine there's more luggage coming anyway the luggage never came so when did it come it came that night at 8 30 p.m which was fine it was like three hours after we had landed it was came on the next flight but we were in yapoon which was like a 50 minute drive

so then we had to drive back and get it anyway so annoying when you've got five kids to do that much travel in a day but you know what i went on holiday so i should stop fucking complaining you did and you saw a lot of snakes and perspective is important yes and my sweet for the week is yapoon is bloody lovely it is such a nice place in the world i was so pleasantly surprised by how amazing it is also we took marley and lola to this like national wildlife parky thing where you can touch reptiles marley was so brave so obsessed i loved how much like they brought out this massive python she wanted to hold it she wanted to hold and touch all the things you absolutely shouldn't hold and touch there was these fucking scary emus running around and

marley was like i'll put an emu i'll ride it like literally she has no fear obviously as a parent you want to kind of protect them but at the same time give them as much freedom to explore and do new things as possible but the reason why i love it so much is because that's what i was like as a kid like i was the kid that was always patting weird animals and sticking their hands in things that they shouldn't stick their hands in and i love that she has that fearlessness about her so yeah we had a really great time it looked like a lot of you your poon you if anyone's thinking about a holiday to far north queensland go to your poon it was fucking cracker I've just gotten more Aussie since being there oh I love that for you love it well

my suck was probably that I got home from overseas I got home at midnight and I reckon your suck is probably just that you left your boyfriend in another country oh yeah Ben might be listening that's my suck yeah no Ben we miss you that is obviously a suck but like my second obvious suck is that you guys might have heard last week maybe Laura on the podcast you came to my house to do the recording and you put your hand in to get the key from the lockbox and there was a huntsman in there. My house which was Laura's old house used to have a huntsman

infestation. We did get people in anyway I got home at midnight and as soon as I walked in my door and turned the light on there was a huge huntsman in there and now I'm back and I couldn't sleep because I was like you're, I know you're one of 45. You've got cousins, you've got

extended family in here hiding. Yeah it was like me and your poon. Yes. That's the the huntsman's in your house so that was my sock your house and i know we've spoken about it before but your house is i don't know why it's because you're kind of like deep and there's like rain forest i'm in bondi but i'm in the bush but there's like birds of paradise around you and there's like lots of garden stuff it is so infested with huntsman's it's petrifying so ben is coming here soon he's coming to visit actually which is amazing so we'll we guys all get to meet him not you go listeners but you can he can come on the podcast we're gonna do a meet

and greet with Ben we'll do a meet and greet but he's petrified and now if he listens to this he's gonna he's like were the spiders in there when you got home hun I was like no babe nothing to see here let's just hope when he says he listens to the podcast he doesn't actually make it to the end I don't think he does I think he just listens to the intro but my sweet is your sweet your kids my sweet's Delilah I was reunited with Delilah and it was like a beautiful moment I really missed her she's my little squidlet did she behave in a way that makes you know that she knew you were gone like was she like your home or was she kind of like hey mom she does she gets really excited but she's sewing like just for a minute though it's a really short hello and then she's because

she's so independent like i've raised a really independent dog child i'm so proud of her independence she's the village dog literally because she spends half her time living at keisha's house already that she's like oh mom's back no she's a village dog sometimes people message me and they're like hi it's keisha's flatmate's girlfriend's sister i've got delilah And I'm like, what the fuck? She's like, yeah, Keisha had to go out to left with the flatmate. The flatmate had to go out to left with the girlfriend. The girlfriend had to go out to left with the sister.

And there are random people that have Delilah. She's literally a village dog. Well, they do say it takes a village. That's right. And that's why she's so well brought up. Anyway, that's it, guys. Okay, well, if you loved the episode, we love Hugh. We think he's an absolute dream.

You can jump onto Apple Podcasts, leave a review. I mean, and if you don't listen on Apple Podcasts, why don't you just tell a friend and tell some people? you can also join us on our life uncut discussion group that's facebook where a lot of the juicy saucy conversations go down or you can jump onto our instagram which is life uncut podcast on instagram don't forget tell your mom tell your dad tell your dog tell your friends and share the love because we love love